by Cathy Gohlke
“Dachau. Two years. Rebecca was herded—like cattle—with the women, and Benjamin with me. Our daughter taken away with other small children and those too old to work. We never saw either of them again. I do not know how long my wife lived, what happened to her, if she was shot and buried in a mass grave or burned in the ovens.” He closed his eyes. “The little children and elderly—killed right away.”
“I’m so very sorry.”
“You said that. What difference does it make—you coming here, you being sorry?” He pushed the wheels of his chair and came close to me, close enough to spit in my face if he’d wanted. “They shaved us and examined us, laughing at any infirmity, shooting or gassing immediately those who were weak. We worked as slaves, our tormentors standing over us with whips and riding crops and clubs, nine hours each day. At noon we stopped for half an hour—no food, only a brief rest in the hot sun. At night we were given a cup of rutabaga soup. A dirty broth with barely a vegetable.
“Eighteen months Benjamin lived. He was taller than me and heavier when we walked through those gates of hell. When he died in my arms, he weighed nothing—almost nothing.”
I looked away. I couldn’t listen to any more.
“Do you see the color of my skin, eh?” He pushed his arm beneath my nose and pinched his skin, pulling it from the bone. “For three years after liberation it was the color of ash. Stained from the grime. It took so long to grow new skin. For those two years in Dachau I never washed—not but once was there a shower in all that time. One and a half seconds we had for the toilet and to wash, if we’d been able. Hundreds of men in four minutes. That was it.
“Covered with lice, we slept huddled together, desperate to keep warm. And if you slept near a broken window, too bad—you were frozen dead in the morning and piled in stacks, like wood, outside the door, waiting for the burial detail.”
“Please, I don’t want to hear any more.” I couldn’t stop my tears.
“You don’t want to hear any more? You say you don’t want to hear any more? Do you see the snow outside—the snow that is beginning to fall?”
“Herr Horowitz,” Carl cautioned, “please calm yourself. Lower your voice.”
“Yes,” I breathed, relieved for a new turn of conversation, relieved for the late snow in April. “I see it.”
“I thought for the first month that it snowed every day in Dachau—even in summer. But it was the crematorium, running day and night, seven days a week. The ashes of the dead so thick it looked like snow on the trucks that drove in, like snow against the windows of the barracks, like snow on our faces as we turned out and stood for hours in roll call. It could have been the ashes of my wife! Do not tell me, Fräulein, that you do not want to hear any more. You have heard nothing! You have endured nothing!”
I bent over, holding my sides. I could not stop the tears streaming down my face.
“You cry like a child, as if your sorrow, your pity, will bring back my Rebecca or Sarah, my Benjamin or little Wilhelm. As if you have lost someone! You bring me these trinkets now, when I am an old man and have no son and no daughter to give them as a remembrance or even an inheritance from their family. What do you expect me to do with these? Eh, what do you expect?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I thought only to offer them as a—a peace offering, a kind of atonement.”
“These baubles? Atonement for the lives of my wife, my children?” Herr Horowitz nearly stood from his wheeled chair. He flung the rings across the room. Ping! Ping! They bounced off the radiator. “Blood money! You offer me blood money. Such cruelty I have not seen, not even in the SS!”
I covered my ears with my hands, shutting out his anger while his voice rose.
“Orderly! Orderly!” he screamed. “Come! Come now, before I kill them with my bare hands!”
“The orderly is not back yet, Herr Horowitz.” Carl stood between us. “Calm yourself; please calm yourself. Fräulein Sterling meant only to honor you. She could not know what you have endured.”
“Dummkopf! The young are always foolish.”
“You may be right. But foolish is not the same as cruel—at least it is not intended.”
The old man’s fury wavered until he sat back, exhausted. Carl crossed the room and fished beneath the radiator for the rings. He held them in his palm, waiting. I pulled my hands from my ears.
Herr Horowitz held out his hand. “Give them to me.” He spoke softly, as a child whispers.
Carl placed them in the old man’s hand and sat beside me, wrapping his arm around me, holding me up. The silence stretched long. I knew we should go. We’d done what we’d come to do. But I could not move.
“I apologize to you, Fräulein. I have never screamed at a young woman before. I do not wish to come to the end of my long life doing so.”
I sat back, swiped away the last of my tears, shaking my head. “It’s all right. It’s nothing.”
“Nein. It is something.”
We sat in silence, except for the jerked movement of the wall clock’s minute hand.
“May I ask—?” But Carl pressed my fingers, urging me to stop.
“Ask what you will,” Herr Horowitz answered.
I pulled my hand from Carl’s. “How did you get out of the camp alive? Were you there to the end of the war?”
“Till the end of the war. And then—” he shrugged—“there was nowhere to go. All our property had been Aryanized. German Gentiles living in our homes, using our things—those they had not thrown away or sold. So we lived in the camps for months. The same camps we’d been living in as prisoners, we lived in as free men.”
I’d heard that before, but it seemed too cruel to be true.
“They said the food was better and the labor less under our ‘liberators.’ But I wouldn’t know. I lay naked like the dead for three months in a camp hospital ward. So many sick and dying. There were not enough blankets or clothing for all. Many continued wearing the prison rags they’d worn during their internment. Clothing was given to those who would most likely survive, or those able to clamor for it.”
“But you recovered.”
“I did not want to. I wanted only to die.”
“What made you live?”
Tears glazed his eyes. “Meine Schwester. Meine ältere Schwester came looking for me. She knew I’d been sent to Dachau. She never stopped, never gave up.” He swallowed. “I remember her that day, as yesterday. I saw her walk in, a lady in her dress and high-heeled shoes and handbag. She began at one end of the ward and looked into the face of each patient. Sometimes she read the name on the chart at the foot of the bed. No one looked as they had once looked. We were men only in our thirties and forties, but we looked ancient—unrecognizable with our sunken cheeks and hollowed eyes.
“I can still see her standing in the middle of my ward. She called my name, but I did not answer, was too weak yet to answer. She looked just like an angel, a vision that would surely vanish, as all my family had vanished.
“When she found my bed she searched my face. She nearly passed by. It was the first time I had cried since Wilhelm died. I cried and I cried. I could not stop. I’d thought all my family was dead, and here was my angel Schwester.
“She turned and saw me . . . knew me . . . cradled my head against her chest, like a baby, then laid me down. My skin peeled off in her hands, so thin it was. I was ashamed. I knew I must have disgusted her. Never had I allowed myself to be dirty before the camp. Tears poured down her face, but she did not turn away from me.
“And then she did the thing I will never forget, the thing that spoke of her great love for me. She pulled her panties from beneath her dress and gently pulled them up my legs—the first covering I’d had in months. She gave me my dignity again—the first dignity anyone had given me since the day Herr Sommer stole these.” He fingered the rings in his palm.
36
LIESELOTTE KIRCHMANN
OCTOBER 1944
By the second week we understood the established routi
ne—a routine broken daily, hourly, according to the whim of the guards on duty.
Whistles blew at 4 a.m., followed by a mad dash through flying straw and dust to the center of the room to grab what at least looked the color of ersatz coffee and our morning ration of bread. By four thirty, regardless of the weather—rain or sun or early snow—we slogged to the Lagerstrasse, the wide, open ground before the hospital, to join thousands of prisoners from other barracks.
We stood at attention in our ten-wide, ten-deep formations for an hour, or it might be four hours. Finally released to our barracks, the whistle might blow again, and we would rush back to the cinder avenue and begin roll call once more—calling out our numbers, over and over again.
Workers inside Ravensbrück lined up for two “meals” per day. The thousands that marched to the local factory, Siemens—a mile and a half from camp—received three. Eleven grueling hours each day we loaded heavy metal plates from railway cars into a handcart, then pushed the handcart to a receiving gate within that factory.
Only the morning and evening marches to and from camp made the work bearable. Looking up, the mile and a half through the forest, beneath the changing autumn leaves framed by a blue sky, reminded us that life went on somewhere—at least in the realm of birds and clouds and scuttling squirrels. Were we not starving and filthy, with torn dresses and broken shoes, it might have been a stroll through Berlin’s Tiergarten—at least that’s what Mutter Kirchmann said each morning. Birdsong kept me from utter despair. If that one little bird could live—like the sparrow whose life Mutter Kirchmann said was important to the Lord—then perhaps so could I. If that one little bird could live and breathe and sing and fly away—even to see my Lukas, wherever he was—then perhaps I, too, might one day see him.
During the march to and from the factory, women whispered to one another—as long as we weren’t caught. Making acquaintance, asking for information about husbands or sons or daughters or news of the war. How close were the Allies? Were the Russians near?
We grilled new recruits for outside information. After the first week I understood that urgency—every bit of news was a slice of heaven from home.
In our second week Mutter Kirchmann met the Dutch Sisters. Forbidden the use of names, we rarely asked, but we knew they were sisters—women Mutter Kirchmann’s age who bunked across the narrow aisle from us in Barracks 28. They were a blessing to her that I could not be. “Very religious,” I called them, and often closed my eyes at night, pretending to rest from my exhaustion, while they sang hymns and read, eyes and voices aflame, from books of a New Testament one of them had smuggled into the barracks.
I rarely joined in. My fledgling faith in the God of my Confessing Church wavered. How could He allow Ravensbrück? And if He didn’t, then He was either not God or not there. Perhaps, as some said, He was on leave.
“Lieselotte,” Mutter Kirchmann whispered night after night in my ear. “We musn’t lose faith. We don’t know why things happen, but—”
I am ashamed to say I shut her out. I couldn’t listen. I couldn’t comprehend.
At the end of the second week, as dusk fell during our return from the factory, the guard blocked our entrance to Ravensbrück—just beyond the heavy iron gates. A number was shouted. Weary after a grueling day at Siemens, my brain didn’t register the number. All I could think about was crawling onto our hard wooden bunk.
The woman beside me whispered, “That’s you—that’s you she’s calling!”
The guard shouted the number again. Uncertain, I glanced at Mutter Kirchmann. It was not a good sign, being noticed. I stepped forward from the lines. The Kapo, a prisoner in charge of prisoners—often more cruel than the guards—motioned me to follow her. The columns of workers, including Mutter Kirchmann, marched silently into camp, while I, quickly as possible, followed the Kapo down an alley.
She stopped, then came behind me, impatiently pushing me along. “Schnell! Do you think I have all night?”
We turned a corner, nearly running into another guard—a man, who slipped her a roll of bills, then pulled me roughly by the arm. I couldn’t see his face, but the very fact that it was a man terrified me. “No,” I whimpered. “Please.”
“Shut up! I’m not going to hurt you—not if you do as I say. Not if you become the meal ticket I’ve wagered.” It was the SS officer who’d goaded me the day Mutter Kirchmann and I were first processed, the one who’d flirted and run his hands and eyes over me with vigor. My heart beat so fast against my ribs it nearly burst its cage.
He pulled me along, then pushed me through the door of a whitewashed building. The bright lights, the row of sewing machines, the women still bent over their needles surprised me.
“I—I don’t know how to operate a—”
But he wasn’t interested and pushed me through the doorway at the far end of the room. Three other women stood in the center of the narrow room—each looking as frightened as I felt, and each about my size—height and shape and hair color. I glimpsed two men in suits and fedoras standing in the shadows against the back wall. I narrowed my eyes to better see but was immediately shoved to turn the opposite direction.
“Spread your arms!” The order surprised all of us, but we obediently spread our arms.
“Close your eyes and turn around—keep them closed!”
My heart beat all the faster. My mind ran through every scenario I could imagine—none of them good.
I wanted to open my eyes, to glimpse the men observing us, perceive their intention, but was afraid.
“Face the wall! Hands on the wall!”
We obeyed. And then I heard the officer’s heels walk to the back of the room, heard the men murmur, heard the voices become more intense, grow demanding, then falter. Something familiar in the cadence, even though I couldn’t hear the words, made me tilt my head to listen. I lifted my head, certain I recognized a voice—a voice I’d known all my life.
“Vater?” I whispered.
“Keep your eyes closed! Face the wall!” the officer barked, new anger in his voice. Footsteps quickly crossed the room. The door opened, then closed with a decided latch. My heart wouldn’t stop beating. Had Vater come to release me—to free us?
The officer walked behind us, slapping one woman after another on the backside. “You, you, and you—return to your barracks. Now!”
But he hadn’t slapped me. And that made my heart stop. Freedom? For me, and if for me, then surely for Mutter Kirchmann! Vater must have realized what happened, must have come looking for me!
“Not a word.” He grabbed my arm and pushed me forward, opposite the doorway where the man with the familiar voice had gone. This can’t be right! The other way! They left the other way!
“Mein Vater,” I whispered hoarsely.
“Apparently not.” He jerked me into a long, dimly lit hallway, blocks of cells on either side.
“But . . . I heard—”
“What you heard—” he pushed me into a cell and slammed the door behind him—“is a man who claims not to know you, who claims that his daughter is dead.” He pulled his gun. “I expected to be rewarded for my trouble and expense in finding the missing Fräulein Lieselotte Sommer, beloved daughter of the great and rising Party member. But it doesn’t seem he really wants to find you—and my discovery has only led to my superior’s fury.”
“No. Please, let me talk to him. There is a mistake, a misunderstanding.”
“‘Mistake’—an understatement. Well, I say if Herr Sommer believes his daughter is dead, we have nothing to lose. We might even prove him right.”
“No! No!”
“On the other hand, there are things more profitable to me than your death.” He smiled slowly and holstered his gun. “Yes, more pleasurable and profitable, indeed.”
My heart stopped. My legs barely held me up.
He unbuckled his holster and his belt and tossed them aside.
I cowered to the farthest corner of the cell, but it did no good. I screamed and screame
d, but he came on, ripping open my filthy prison dress. And when I continued to scream he slapped me, again and again, hard across the face.
37
HANNAH STERLING
APRIL 1973
Night had fallen by the time Carl unlocked Grandfather’s kitchen door. He turned the electric switch. I winced in the sudden light as he led me to the table and a straight-back chair.
Carl lit the stove and placed the kettle on the burner. He swirled warm water round the china pot, emptied it, and spooned in tea leaves. He set cups to warm but did not speak. What words could follow Herr Horowitz’s story?
When the kettle whistled, Carl poured boiling water into the pot and covered it to steep. He sliced bread, slathering it with butter and honey.
“I can’t eat. Please don’t fix me anything.”
“You will eat and you will drink your tea and we will talk this through.”
“There’s nothing to say. I don’t want any part of this; no more.”
“But you said—”
“I know what I said. I know it was my idea to track him down, but I had no idea he would hate me—they would all hate me. It’s as if I called the Gestapo, as if I slammed the door of the camp on them.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “I feel dirty . . . like I can never get clean. As if I shouldn’t have lived, as if my family should not have survived.” The tears I’d pushed down for hours came very near the surface.
“But your mother did survive, and you were born . . . if for no other reason than to tell them you are sorry your grandfather did this. If for no other reason than to listen to their stories and remember, to promise that you will never forget.”
“Remembering doesn’t redeem anything!”
“No. Who are we to redeem anything? We’re not redeemers, after all. We’re not saviors! That’s what Hitler claimed for Germany—and look what he did!”
I covered my face with my hands. If only I could shut out the world, shut out the blinding light.