When I got there, Dittman called me into his private office and belabored me with dire threats. In the end he ordered me to report to the tailor shop for punitive work on the assembly line. “Report to Oberscharführer Graf. I’ll phone him to expect you. Get going!”
On August 10, 1943, Milena’s Czech friends showed their affection for her. Suspecting that this would be her last birthday, they decided to give her a real party. In the orderly room of a barracks with a Czech Blockälteste, the table was covered with presents. All those who loved Milena were present: Anicka Kva-pilovä, Tomy Kleinerovä, Nina the dancer, Milena Fischerovä, the writer, Hana Feierabendovä, Mana Opocenskä, Manja Sve-dikovä, Bertel Schindlerovä, and others whose names I have forgotten. Someone went to get the birthday child and she was led to the table. The gifts consisted of handkerchiefs embroidered with a prisoner’s number, tiny cloth hearts marked with the name “Milena,” figurines carved from toothbrush handles, flowers that had been smuggled into camp.
Milena, who was very ill by then and too weak to keep up all her friendships, was moved to tears: “What a surprise!” she said. “And I thought you’d all forgotten me and weren’t friends with me anymore. Forgive me for not coming to see you more often. But from now on I’ll be better.” Surrounded by her Czech friends, Milena was all joy and gratitude. I, the “little Prussian,” stood a little to one side, watching the others laugh, enjoying the unusual atmosphere. I felt transported to Prague, to Milena’s natural surroundings. What Milena wanted most in the world was to have friends. She once wrote: “If you have two or three people, but what am I saying, if you have just one person with whom you can be weak, miserable, and contrite, and who won’t hurt you for it, then you are rich. You can expect indulgence only of one who loves you, never from others and, above all, never from yourself.”
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MILENA’S END
The winter of 1944 was hard in Ravensbrück. We knew what was happening at the fronts, we knew that Hitler’s star was on the wane, but many of the inmates were at the end of their strength, they needed to be rescued in days or weeks. But we had to stick it out, to look on helplessly while each day exacted new victims.
In the early years of the camp, the dead were taken away in a rustic horse-drawn hearse driven by Herr Wendland of the Wendland Trucking Company. As more and more inmates died, Herr Wendland’s business thrived and he bought a motorized hearse. But then the first crematorium was built, and the SS went into the undertaking business. What was the need of coffins? Simple crates would do. Why waste a whole crate on a single body? The bodies were so thin, there was plenty of room for two. In the early days the infirmary workers would carry the dead through the camp gate—now, with more than fifty deaths a day, crate after crate was loaded onto a flat-topped truck and driven to the crematorium.
That winter Milena’s condition grew worse from day to day. Her resistance was broken. She dragged herself to work for fear of being given a lethal injection or being shipped to a death camp. But she kept collapsing. She felt she was losing her moral fiber and despised herself for being more and more willing to compromise. She often spoke of death. “I’ll never get out of this camp alive, I’ll never see Prague again. If at least Herr Wendland would be taking me away. He looks so good-natured in his peasant jacket.”
After the arrest of Dr. Rosenthal, a new SS medical officer took over. This was Dr. Percy Treite, whose mother was an Englishwoman. At the same time, some doctors from among the prisoners were allowed to work in the infirmary, which seemed to lose its terrors. Dr. Treite was distinguished from his predecessors by his good manners. He inspired confidence, especially after he had set up a separate barracks for mothers and their infants. It looked as if the babies born in Ravensbrück would now be allowed to live. But then they would have to be fed. Dr. Treite applied to the camp commander for a milk ration, as their undernourished mothers were unable to nurse them. He meant well, but the camp commander turned down his application, and all the newborn babies starved to death. It is hard to say whether Dr. Treite, who held a low rank in the SS, could have put pressure on the camp commander.
Milena made Dr. Treite’s acquaintance in the infirmary, and he treated her with great consideration. He told her that while studying in Prague he had attended Professor Jan Jesensky’s lectures, and that gave her confidence in him. She told him about her illness. He examined her and found that one of her kidneys was ulcerated. The only hope, he said, was to have it removed. Milena decided to risk it. She was admitted to the infirmary in January 1944. Treite gave her a blood transfusion. When I went to see her at midday, she was overjoyed and showed me her hands. “They’re all pink,” she said. “Like a healthy person’s.”
During the operation she had awoken from the anesthetic and asked Treite to let her see her kidney. He did, and she was put to sleep again.
During the noon break I ran to the infirmary, where she lay silent and deathly pale. Still under the influence of the anesthetic, she lifted up her voice and solemnly said the Lord’s Prayer in Czech.
She survived the operation and her condition even improved. She thought she was going to get better and recaptured her will to live. For the six dying women in her ward she once again became Mother Milena, whose mere presence sufficed to give them strength. A package came from her father. She distributed the contents, which made for a festive atmosphere in the dismal room. Across from her lay a French girl, hardly more than a child, who was dying. She couldn’t bear the camp food. Her eyes sparkled at the sight of Milena’s delicacies, she ate a little, and began to sing the “Marseillaise”: “Allons, Enfants de la Patrie”; the others joined in.
For four months my day had no other content than the quarter of an hour spent at Milena’s bedside. Before the morning roll call, while it was still dark, I ran to the infirmary with some breakfast for her. At noon I hurried to a distant barracks with a Czech Blockalmte to warm some food for her. Then I would sit with her, hiding my anguish and doing my best to radiate optimism. Of course I was forbidden to set foot in the infirmary, but I felt that nothing could happen, that some mysterious power was protecting me.
One day Milena got up and went down the corridor to her office; she wanted to sit at her desk once again; from there she could look out at the world of freedom through the bars of the camp gate.
But her remission was brief. She was soon too weak to get out of bed. From where she lay she could see a patch of sky, sometimes traversed by friendly, more often by menacing, cloud formations. Vera Papouskova, another Czech friend, gave her a deck of cards that she herself had made, little works of art. We played cards to dispel our dark thoughts. Snatches of song broke the silence of the sickroom; a passing column of prisoners were singing: “The roses are blooming in my country, that’s where I long to be….” Milena buried her face in her hands and wept.
In April, Milena’s other kidney became ulcerated and all hope was gone. In my despair I prayed to the sun and the stars, but all in vain. The more her condition deteriorated, the more convinced Milena became that she would recover. Not until the last few days did she recognize the truth: “Look at the color of my feet,” she said. “Those are the feet of a dying woman. And the hands!” She held out her hands. “The lines are disappearing. That’s what happens just before the end.”
At short intervals her father sent her three postcards, romantic views of Prague by Morstadt in the Biedermeier style. Milena looked at the old engravings and on the brink of death guided me through Prague. Pointing at one of the postcards, she would say: “This bridge, I often crossed it with my friend Fredy Mayer. He had an eye for beauty … That’s Saint John of Nepomuk on the parapet … and those narrow streets back there, they lead to the big marketplace….” We looked at the magnificent facade of a church with two tall spires; the door was hidden by a colonnade. Milena’s finger pointed at an old fountain; four angels with drawn swords were standing on its rim. “Come this way,” she said. “That little street still has its dear old bumpy cobb
lestones.” We passed through a gateway into the courtyard of a palace, surrounded by tiers of arcades…. Later we came to a church tower. The three of us started up the spiral stairway…. “Not so fast. You know I have trouble climbing stairs with my stiff leg. So does Fredy for that matter.” I looked up and saw her faraway look, She had burst the bonds of captivity. She was at home with Fredy and me, looking down through the embrasure at the top of a tower at her beloved city with its hundreds of steeples, its maze of gabled roofs, its little streets and courtyards and sleeping places. Then she shook herself, picked up her father’s latest letter, speaking of the beautiful spring day and his morning walks in the Kinsky Gardens, and said sadly, “Why doesn’t Tata say more?”
One more card came from her father. In it, for Mitena’s sake, he told a lie. He told her that Honza had passed her examination at the Conservatory. But Milena—who may have seen through his falsehood—turned away and read no more.
On May 15, 1944, packages were distributed, and I was sent for. There was a big box for Milena from Joachim von Zedtwitz. I ran to Milena with it. She was not fully conscious, but when she heard the name of Zedtwitz she sat up. Her eyes were failing and she made me read the name again and again. Then she sank back with a happy sigh and cried out, “Thank God he’s alive. It’s a miracle. I thought he had been shot.”
Joachim von Zedtwitz, who had been arrested soon after Milena, was released at the end of 1943 when a well-placed uncle had vouched for him. Though still under police surveillance, he got in touch with Milena’s father, found out which camp she was in, and prevailed on a Berlin lawyer to apply for a pardon for her. The lawyer wrote to Prague for the necessary documents, and all was in readiness when a bomb fell on the lawyer’s house and killed him.
Later, that same afternoon while I was at work, someone came and told me that Milena was dying. I ran out of my work station without considering the possible consequences of such an act. What could happen to me now? Milena was in a state of euphoria. She was radiant, her dark-blue eyes were shining, and when I went up to her, she held out her arms in that beautiful gesture of hers. She was no longer able to speak. Her Czech friends were surrounding her; some by her bed, others stood outside, at the window. Milena looked blissfully at them all and took her leave of life. In the evening she lost consciousness. She died two days later, on May 17. Only then did I go back to my barracks. Life had lost all meaning for me.
When the disposal squad loaded Milena’s coffin onto the truck, I asked leave to ride to the crematorium with them. It was a spring day, a warm rain was falling. The sentry at the camp gate may have thought it was rain running down my cheeks. A water bird was piping sadly in the rushes on the bank of Lake Furstenberg. We unloaded the crates and carried them to the crematorium. Two male criminals with faces like hangmen removed the lids. As we were carrying Milena’s body, my strength failed me. One of them said contemptuously, “Get a good hold on her. She can’t feel anything.”
On Dr. Treite’s order, Milena’s body was left in the vestibule of the crematorium. He had sent Dr. Jesensky a telegram, notifying him of his daughter’s death and informing him that he could have her remains sent to Prague.
On June 10, 1944, news of the successful Normandy landing reached the camp. I was unable to share in the general rejoicing. I grieved all day and cried all night. Why go on living when Milena was dead?
Not long after Milena’s death, when conditions in the camp were growing more and more chaotic and the prisoners were torn between hope and fear, Anicfca, whom I had been seeing every day, asked me to go in the evening to a certain place along the wall, not far from the men’s camp. A large number of Czech women had gathered there. They sang the Czech national anthem, hoping the men on the other side of the wall might hear them and respond. Years before, at a time of great danger, Milena had written: “This anthem isn’t against anyone. I Kde domov muj’ wishes no one any harm, all it wants is that we may continue to exist. It is not a battle hymn, it merely celebrates the countryside of Bohemia with its hills and dales, its fields and meadows, its birches, willows, and shady lindens, its fragrant hedgerows and little brooks. It celebrates the country that is our home … How beautiful it was to stand up for our country and to love it.”*
I recovered my freedom and carried out Milena’s last will by writing our book about concentration camps. Shortly before her death she had said to me one day: “I know that you at least will not forget me. Through you I shall live on. You will tell people who I was, you are my indulgent judge….”Those words gave me the courage to write her story.
* Milena Jesenskä, “On the Art of Standing Still.”
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES*
BLEI, Franz: Director of various magazines (such as the Hyperion of Munich), translator, publicist, author of comedies, discoverer of Musil and Robert Walser.
BŘEZĺNA, Otakar (1868-1929): Czech poet; one of the greatest European symbolists.
BROCH, Hermann (1886-1951): Austrian novelist steeped in the German literary tradition; depicted the decay of bourgeois values in the Germany of William II. Emigrated to the United States after the Anschluss.
ČAPEK, Karel (1890-1938): One of Czechoslovakia’s greatest writers in the twentieth century. Considered a symbol of his friend Masaryk’s liberal republic. Published many novels and plays dealing with the perils threatening humanity and democracy; criticized dehumanization and mechanization in industrial society (he coined the word “robot”) and also the fascist menace. His wife, the actress and writer Olga Scheinpflugova, was the author of numerous plays and novels inspired by the lives of women.
EHRENSTEIN, Albert (1886-1950): Poet, close to German expressionism; Karl Kraus’s collaborator. A great traveler, his travel writings reflect a strong anticofonialism. In 1932, he setded in Switzerland, and in 1941 he emigrated to the United States, where he died in utter poverty.
EISNER, Pavel (1889-1958): Translated Kafka, Rilke, Mann, and others into Czech and such Czech writers as Bfezfna and Halas into German. Wrote critical essays about the poet Mächa, Mozart, the Czech language, and so on.
FISCHER, Otakar (1883-1938): Sensitive and highly cultured, this professor of German literature was also a celebrated translator (of Kleist, Heine, Nietszche, Goethe, Shakespeare, Kipling, Calderon, Corneille, Villon, etc.), a playwright as well as the artistic director of the Czech National Theater, a literary critic, and a poet. Died of a heart attack when he learned of Hitler’s occupation of Austria.
FUCHS, Rudolf (born in 1890): A Prague poet who published The Caravan at Kurt Wolff in 1918. A friend of Kafka.
FUČLK, Julius (1903-1943): Newspaperman and literary critic, as well as militant Communist. Arrested by the Nazis and executed for underground activities.
GERSTL, Alice: Followed Otto Rühle in exile to Mexico. Killed herself the day he died, in 1943. Wrote a book of memoirs about Leon Trotsky, Kein Gedickt für Trotzki (Verlag Neue Kritik, 1979).
GROSS, Otto (1877-1919): Austrian psychoanalyst who studied with Freud. Fervent advocate of free love.
HAAS, Willy: Czech writer. Friend of Milena. Edited and wrote introduction to Franz Kafka’s Letters to Milena.
HAŠEK, Jaroslav (1863-1923): Anarchist, then Communist, fought in Russia during the revolution (about which he wrote Adventures in the Red Army). Also a newspaperman, the author of many humorous and satirical stories, creator of the archetypal figure of Svejk (Schweik).
HOFFMEISTER, Adolf (1902-1973): Prose writer, dramatist, poet, cartoonist, illustrator, caricaturist, he was a member of Devetsil, the cultural association of the left, and had ties to surrealism. During the war, directed the Czechoslovak radio in exile in the United States. After the Prague coup, he was successively ambassador to France (1948-52), professor, delegate to UNESCO. He was sympathetic to the Prague Spring, taught at the University of Vincennes near Paris, and, forbidden to publish, died in his native land.
HORA, Josef (1891-1945): Newspaperman, Communist, then Liberal; translator of poetry from Russian, Ger
man, Serbo-Croatian; for a time novelist; he was above all one of the great Czech poets of this century.
JESENSKÁ, Ružena (1863-1940): Milena perfectly characterizes the writings of her aunt, which included more than fifty collections of poetry, volumes of short stories, novels, plays, and children’s books.
KALANDRA, Zavis (1902-1950): Newspaperman, former leader of the Czech Communist Student League, he was expelled from the Czech Communist party for having criticized the Moscow trials. During the 1930s founded a newspaper with Trotskyist leanings. A historian of the Czech nation, he was arrested by the Nazis late in 1939 and imprisoned at Ravensbrück. He pursued the study of history after the war, but during the first Stalinist purges in postwar Czechoslovakia was tried and executed for “high treason and espionage.”
KLSCH, Egon Erwin (1885-1948): Czech newspaperman who rallied to communism after a trip to the USSR in 1928. Lived in exile in France after the advent of fascism, participated in the Spanish Civil War, took refuge in Mexico, died in London.
KODICEK, Josef (1892-1954): Theater critic, literary theorist, scriptwriter, and film director. After Munich, expatriated himself in London, where he directed the BBC’s Czech broadcasts. Took part in Radio Free Europe broadcasts from Munich after 1948.
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