The Dutch Wife

by Ellen Keith

  I promised myself I would do whatever it took to make it through the war alive.

  My chance came on a cool morning near the end of June. At four o’clock, the reveille sirens woke us. An SS officer with a clipboard walked down the rows with a female guard. With a cleft chin and sagging neck, he appeared even older than my father, the type of man I’d expect to see bundled up by the fireplace in a café back in Amsterdam, smoking a pipe and complaining about the persistent rain. Whenever this officer passed a woman with light hair and fair skin, he stopped to look her up and down. Some, he pulled aside. When he got to me, he asked where I was from and when I told him, he reached out to cup my breast, rubbing his thumb over my nipple. “Good shape,” he remarked.

  He noted my number on his clipboard and ordered me to join the others. Attractive girls, all of them. Despite their pale, bruised skin, they looked young and healthier than the rest of the inmates. All of them had their hair. Most wore black triangles for “asocial” behaviour—sexual deviants, alcoholics, prostitutes, troublemakers. Some wore the “criminal” green; a few others, red, like I did.

  We huddled together but broke into rows of five as the officer approached. I pinched my cheeks to draw some colour into them. How many times had I seen it before: women pulled out of the line, never to return? He surveyed us with a wry smile. “Consider yourselves lucky. I’m going to offer you a rare opportunity, a chance to serve the Führer, to help promote the efficiency and operations of camps across the Third Reich.”

  He paused to glance at the guard and suddenly I was sure he intended to make us Blockovas—block supervisors. A despicable function. Twice, the Blockova in our block had demanded my bread ration because she claimed I was too pretty, that I needed to learn that things wouldn’t always be handed to me. Other Blockovas beat women or assigned extra labour. We hated even those who did nothing but follow the rules, because they had the power to hurt us on a whim.

  “Strip.”

  At that, I unbuttoned my shift. Goose pimples flared across my chest as it fell at my feet. Some women tried to cover themselves, but I knew well enough to keep my hands at my sides. The officer circled us, removing a shadow of a girl with a spine that stuck out like a string of beads, and two women with misshapen breasts. He ordered them back to the work Kommandos before returning to position in front of us. “I want sixteen volunteers to service the prisoners at our new bordellos. We need some ripe, willing young women.”

  It took me a moment to understand what he meant. My skin started to prickle, bringing flashes of an Amsterdam alley: low necklines and tawdry earrings, drunken soldiers stumbling out of doorways, smears of cherry lipstick on their chins.

  “Through the Führer’s generosity, you’ll receive fresh food and a quarter of your earnings, and you will be released from the camp after six months of service.” He grinned, letting that remark dangle.

  I touched my hand to my side, yearning for the reassuring weight of my wedding band, which the moffen had confiscated upon my arrival. A pain hit my stomach, as if someone had reached in and pressed down on my gut. Six months, could it be? The girls around me shifted their weight. Perhaps their own stomachs were growling, their minds clouding with visions of hot dinners, of comfortable trains with dining cars headed away from Germany.

  “Who is willing to service the Reich?”

  At first, nobody moved. Eyes remained cast to the ground. The only sounds were the distant steps of marching prisoners.

  “Think about it,” he said. “Quarters with proper beds and hot running water.”

  A crow cawed, drawing my gaze upward. The bird sailed high above the compound, a dark speck against the dark sky. It swept past us, beyond the electrified confines of the camp, and disappeared.

  A girl stepped forward. A green delinquent triangle marked the uniform at her feet. Her hair was the colour of butter, and she wore a certain confidence, like she’d spent years weaving her way up through the German underworld. I wondered what had brought her here, if she’d been accused of theft or maybe assault.

  The officer nodded and turned to us. One by one, girls hesitantly offered themselves. Some looked as young as twenty, others twenty-six or twenty-seven. Only two had brown hair; the rest were textbook Aryans.

  The officer rapped a pen against his clipboard in impatience. “If no one else volunteers, I’ll select someone.”

  Hunger scraped at my insides. I pictured a plate of fresh fruit and even a slice of meat, imagined being granted my freedom, but I considered that the officer might be lying. He watched us without any emotion. Yet if he’d wanted to, he could have driven into camp and carted us all away without a word of explanation.

  Two days earlier, on the way to the factory, I’d passed a group of women digging ditches, the roughest work of all. One stood knee-deep in water and mud, wincing as she heaved the shovel over her shoulder. She’d rolled up her sleeves to reveal a fierce rash, a clear sign of typhus. In a few days, she would be dead, her body fed to the greedy fires of the crematorium.

  A heated room, a hot shower. Away from the scourge of lice and vermin, a chance to maybe feel human again.

  “Where are you sending them, sir?” The woman beside me shook as if she couldn’t believe she’d dared speak up.

  Without a glance in her direction, he swatted away the question. “To my men’s camp, Buchenwald.”

  That name. One that had taken seed in the transit camp at Vught, as I’d spotted Theo’s back retreating into the cattle car. A rumour passed on in whispers, as we wives and mothers, sisters and daughters watched through our tears, watched our very purpose for living disappear down the rails. A name I’d also heard at Ravensbrück, but one that had never seemed like anything more than a word, a spot in my mind where I’d tucked him for safekeeping. But it was a real place, a camp with fences and a crematorium and a brothel.

  Two SS men approached and stood behind the officer, leering at our nakedness. One of them winked and moved his hand to reveal the erection swelling in his trousers.

  The officer cleared his throat. “Well?”

  I knelt down to pick up my uniform, making sure to glance up and look that dirty mof straight in the eye. I felt the solid ground against my palm, dirt beneath my fingernails.

  Then I stood and took a step forward.

  Chapter Two

  KARL MÜLLER

  JUNE 25, 1943

  BUCHENWALD CONCENTRATION CAMP, GERMANY

  KARL MÜLLER ARRIVED AT BUCHENWALD JUST before dawn. The morning was already muggy. He’d spent the entire night on a train, and the rattling of the carriage and a broken window had granted him no rest.

  The camp Kommandant came to meet him at the station in Weimar. In his late fifties, Otto Brandt had a high widow’s peak and a hard-boiled appearance. He’d inherited the camp just a year earlier. The previous Kommandant and his wife had been arrested and were under investigation for fraud: stealing from camp coffers. As the new Schutzhaftlagerführer, Karl would be second-in-command and responsible for ensuring that such a scandal wasn’t repeated.

  Brandt stretched out a hand. “You must be Müller. Karl, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s an honour.”

  “My associates in Berlin have said nothing but good things about you. But I have to say, I was surprised to hear they were sending me someone who has never set foot in a camp before. You’ve risen up the ranks quite quickly, it seems. Family connection?”

  Karl dug his heels into the ground. “Hard work, sir.”

  “Very well. I’ll give you a tour of the camp myself, along with an overview of your duties here. And I’m warning you, as deputy commander, you’ll find yourself stretched very thin.” He led Karl to a parked Mercedes, where a driver was waiting. Karl opened the back door and slid onto the seat next to Brandt. His eyelids felt heavy, and he struggled to stay focused as the car wove its way through the woods toward the camp.

  “Seven years ago,” Brandt said, “all of this was virgin land. The prisoners bu
ilt everything: the barracks blocks, the railway, even this very road. Paving it was a terrible hassle but well worth the lives lost. The inmates call it Blutstrasse.”

  Blood Road. All Karl could see in the dim light was vegetation, mostly oak and beech trees, and it struck him that a camp of that capacity, one of the economic powerhouses of the Reich, could be hidden by such peaceful surroundings. They turned in past the SS garrison, down a straight street with a gas station and a painted wooden carving of inmates in uniform. Robust-looking men with stiff smiles. The flower bed at its base gave the place a quaint feel, reminiscent of some Bavarian ski resort. Another sign pointed to the zoo, which he took to be a joke until he heard monkeys screeching. A long building ran down the left side of the road. Brandt explained that this held the camp command offices, where Karl would be based. On the right, an iron gate marked the entrance to the protective custody camp, where the prisoners were detained. The driver stopped the automobile, and Brandt checked the gatehouse clock while a guard rushed to open the doors. “We’re running a bit behind schedule. Reveille will start shortly.”

  Karl debated asking for some time to rest, but decided that the Kommandant was not the type to grant favours. Still, the camp was shaping up to be a more comforting and welcoming place than he’d anticipated. They passed through the gate, and Karl pointed to the iron message that topped it, the letters painted bright red. “Well put.” Jedem das Seine, it stated—to each his own. You get what you deserve.

  Brandt beamed like he had forged the words himself. The gate led to a huge square, the muster grounds, where thousands of prisoners assembled.

  “Roll call happens twice per day.” Brandt stepped out of the vehicle, motioning for Karl to join him. They climbed up to a platform at the top of the gatehouse and looked down over the camp pitch. “All prisoners must be accounted for. You may be asked to preside over this, Müller, so pay attention.”

  A number of SS officers with clipboards gathered nearby. More and more prisoners appeared. They formed perfect squares of perfect lines. Karl assumed that camp figures fluctuated with new arrivals and deaths, but to the best of his calculation, he estimated some fifteen thousand prisoners, virtually all male. One of the officers began to call out numbers, and certain inmates stepped forward. Karl was a bureaucrat, a stranger to this military discipline, but the order and precision of it all astounded him, reminding him of his father, who valued such things.

  It was then he heard the music. The initial squeal of a trumpet. Then a drum, a trombone. He searched for the source. To his right, a brass band had set up. The musicians wore cheerful red trousers and navy jackets with gold piping, but their bony frames exposed them as prisoners. The conductor raised an arm and the players burst into tune, a lively number that Karl didn’t recognize.

  He looked to Brandt. “Nice touch, sir.”

  “We try to make the camp as civil as possible. You’ll also hear music broadcasted at times.”

  The inmates stood still, their faces hardened like stucco. One in the front row started tapping his foot. At first, Karl thought he was marking the beat, but then the man began to sway and collapsed. Karl turned back to the band as he was dragged away.

  The roll call crawled on for more than an hour and got held up at various points. Karl’s fascination with it waned as he fought to stay awake. A barbed-wire fence blockaded this part of the camp, and a city of barracks, some wood and some stone, sprawled across the slope that led down from the muster grounds. Beyond the far edge of camp, rolling green hills crossed the horizon. Brandt took him back downstairs and guided him along the rows of prisoners, pointing out the different symbols on their uniforms. The Gypsies, the communists, the Jews, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the homosexuals.

  “You’ll notice we keep the Jews in segregated quarters to avoid spreading their filth.” Brandt looked at Karl for a response, who nodded. “You do agree, don’t you, Müller?”

  “Of course.”

  Brandt leaned in to study Karl’s face. “Where is it you come from, exactly?”

  “I was raised in Munich.”

  “And your parents?”

  “You’ll find they’re well bred and well established there. My father served as a colonel in the First World War and now works as a banker.”

  “A banker?”

  “I assure you, the party ran a bloodline check on me, if you’re implying anything.” Karl cracked a smile, but Brandt didn’t seem to find this amusing.

  “Indeed,” Brandt said. “Let’s carry on. I’ll show you the highlights.”

  Brandt led him along the front line of barracks blocks as he went on about Karl’s new role. He would be in charge of the preventive custody camp, which meant responsibility for the financial administration, the performance of the prisoners, ensuring order, preventing escapes, and so forth. Karl nodded where necessary but spent most of the time studying his surroundings. The asphalt roasted under the sun. Prisoners caked in dirt slogged off to the quarry and factories with their labour Kommandos, as if they hadn’t bathed in weeks. The Kommandant indicated the arm bands that identified the Kapos, the prisoner overseers. The stink of sweat was obscene, and he fought the urge to cover his nose with his sleeve. Had they no shame?

  Up ahead to the right, a foul smoke curled from a high chimney, and beyond that, guards stood in the watchtowers, their machine guns aimed inward. A sandy security strip covered with long, spiked chevaux-de-frise bordered the fence. Karl gestured to it. “Do many try to escape?”

  Brandt shook his head. “Look at the slope we’re on. Building atop the Ettersberg created ideal surveillance conditions. Mind you, there are always the ones who decide to throw themselves into the fence.”

  “But why would—” Karl stopped himself as he noticed the electrical insulators along the wire. He tried to reconcile this gruesome image with the cheerful, robust-looking men from the road sign on the way into the camp.

  “You’ve got a lot to learn, don’t you?” Brandt halted in front of a lone, wizened tree, the only sign of vegetation Karl had seen within the prisoners’ camp. “Here’s a fitting place to start.”

  “Is this Goethe’s Oak?” he asked.

  “I’m impressed. You must be a man of the arts.”

  “A man who knows his trees.” Karl stepped forward to run his hand along the knotted bark. “Do you think the stories are true? Did Goethe really sit right here to write?”

  The Kommandant smiled, as if to himself. “Who can say? But what better reminder could you ask for of our noble heritage? It sends a strong message to the inmates, don’t you think, reminding them of the enduring power of the Reich.”

  As they walked on, Karl pictured himself resting beneath the trees in the forest, just as Goethe once had. He imagined they would have had plenty to discuss and contemplate together. But Brandt gave him little time to reflect on this. He picked up the pace and identified the buildings to the right: the camp kitchen, the laundry, the disinfection facility, and the depot where they stored the inmates’ personal property.

  “A lot of the day-to-day business runs smoothly on its own, thanks to the prisoners we’ve put in administrative positions,” Brandt explained, “but the criminals and the politicals are always fighting for favour and will pit themselves against one another like dogs if you don’t stay on top of it.”

  A Kommando of prisoners with green triangles marched by, but Karl had already forgotten the meaning of all the different symbols and hoped Brandt wouldn’t decide to test him. He drew Brandt’s attention to the decrepit wooden blocks that were fenced off up ahead. “What are these?”

  Brandt replied that it was called the Little Camp, and that they had converted those horse stables into a quarantine block for Jews and new arrivals. “Bring a handkerchief if you have to venture in there. The stench is awful.”

  Pushing on toward the northwest edge of the perimeter, they passed the infirmary blocks. “You’ll hear all about the medical experiments we’re pioneering here. A vaccine for typ
hus, among other things. Fascinating to take a look, if you have any passion for science.” Brandt checked the time. “There’s not much left. The cinema, the greenhouses, the factory. You’ll see it all in due time. Let me show you your office.”

  They crossed back through the rows of blocks, encountering several work Kommandos along the way. Inmates carrying shovels and gardening tools, buckets of sod. Dark shadows marked their faces. They lowered their eyes as they passed, parting to give Karl and the Kommandant a wide berth. For the first time in his life, Karl felt what it was like to be a man of power. He envisioned himself as a great Bavarian lord of centuries past, surveying the construction of a grand estate. He had the sense that he was part of something important, witnessing the rise of a great empire.

  But after crossing the pitch and exiting through the gatehouse, Karl felt himself breathing more easily, like he’d returned to another world. The men on this side of the sentry line looked fit and healthy in their guard uniforms, prime examples of the Aryan race. Off to the right, a bunch of dogs started barking. He paused to pinpoint their location.

  “Would you like to see the kennel?” Brandt asked. “We have some of the best-trained dogs in the nation.” Without waiting for an answer, Brandt led him across a grassy patch to a brick building. Along one side, open-air enclosures contained wolfhounds and Alsatians. The dogs yelped excitedly as the men approached. Brandt unlocked one of the enclosures, and an Alsatian jumped up at them, its tongue lolling. Karl bent to pet it and got covered in drool as it licked his face.