by Ellen Keith
ALMOST all of us had arrived at Ravensbrück by cattle car, boarded up in suffocating darkness for countless hours before tumbling out at the station in Fürstenberg, a picturesque town of red-roofed buildings that lay on the opposite side of the lake. The sixteen of us now left from that same station, but this time, we journeyed by truck. We clumped together at the far exit of the station for a good half-hour while the driver loaded crates of ammunition into the military vehicle. An SS woman stood around us while a guard from Buchenwald sat on the back of a nearby bench. He cupped his hand around his lighter, unable to keep his cigarette lit in the breeze. As he struck the flint, a little boy came skipping down the street. Upon spotting the guard, he stopped and dug his hands into the pockets of his knit shorts, which he’d far outgrown. He looked from the guard to the gun that rested on the bench and then back up at the guard, who beckoned him over to ask him something. The boy grinned in response. Then a woman carrying a suitcase and a bundle of brown paper packages caught up to him. She laughed flirtatiously as the guard winked at her, but when she noticed us girls, she pulled her son toward her and urged him on. I buried my fist into the fabric of my skirt and watched them continue down the road toward the water. The church bells pealed the hour, and at the strike of nine, the guard tossed his cigarette into the bushes and ordered us into the truck.
The vehicle jolted and bounced along for many hours, but I took in the fresh air and the view of the countryside out the open canvas back. How easily life seemed to carry on outside the camp walls. Farmers herding sheep, horses grazing in the pastures. The only sign of war was the occasional roadblock, a few soldiers loitering against signposts.
The guard and SS woman accompanied us all the way to Buchenwald. I lowered my voice and joked that she’d come only to keep an eye on the guard, to keep his paws off the precious cargo. This got a laugh from the girls, but no sooner had I said it, than I cringed at the meaning of those words. Cargo. Something to be tossed from person to person before coming out worn and battered at the other end. I apologized for my remark, but Sophia shook her head. “We need to be able to laugh about what life throws at us. How else can we expect to press on?”
The driver stopped several times, letting us out to relieve ourselves in the bushes and to eat some stale biscuits and a can of green beans. Sophia compared it all to a summer outing, a drive out to her uncle’s lakeside villa on the Bodensee, and she told us stories of long mornings spent reading Madame Bovary on the veranda, of crabapples plucked from low-hanging branches, and for a few blissful moments I was with Theo again, sailing on the IJsselmeer, my bow coaxing Bach from my violin. “Music like spun sugar,” he’d said, as we drifted in circles, going nowhere together.
The truck hit a rut and the music dropped away.
HOURS later, dusk crawled out to meet us as we turned onto an access road, signs pointing to Buchenwald. The paved road wound through a lush forest. I fidgeted as I scoured the trees for barracks blocks or some sign of the camp, but the surroundings were disturbingly serene. Part of me wanted to believe that Buchenwald meant a proper prison with individual cots and adequate toilets and rations, but if Ravensbrück was how the moffen treated women, I dreaded what awaited us at a men’s camp.
After a couple kilometres, we drove past the end of a railway line, where a throng of men in shirts or wrinkled suits surged from a cattle car. I leaned forward to get a better look, curious where they had come from, if they were as frightened as I. Was this the same path my husband had followed into the camp? Had he stumbled, stopped to rub the sweat from his neck, or had he walked with his head held high, as only a few of them did?
We passed a curved row of two-storey blocks painted a deceiving sunshine yellow. Officers milled around outdoors, but we drove by them down a side road. The column of fresh arrivals ran alongside the truck, clutching their suitcases like life preservers while dogs chased at their heels. Did they realize they would lose everything in a matter of hours?
The truck made a right. Sophia and I exchanged nervous glances as it slowed to a stop. We heard a gate clang open with the understanding that we’d arrived at the prisoners’ camp, and when a guard rushed to close it behind us, I tried to decipher its iron-clad message.
“Jedem das Seine,” Sophia read.
THE building that would serve as the brothel stood between the infirmary and another structure, which we later discovered to be a cinema, a reward for good behaviour. We were intended as the other reward, the grand prize. A fence ran around the brothel, isolating it from the rest of the camp. The long wooden building had shuttered windows and a number of flowering plants on either side of the concrete steps that led to the entrance. The prisoners’ blocks lay out of sight, and I quickly understood the slim chance of spotting Theo. He would have to come to me.
The two guards who had accompanied us ushered us forward. We filed through the door, anxious about what awaited us. Bare, cold bunks? Some twisted form of bondage? A crowd of randy men? Sophia squeezed my hand as we stepped over the threshold, but when I looked around, the tension fizzled. A vase of sunflowers brightened the centre of a long table, and a leafy plant stood in the corner near the radiator. A radiator— all those times I had woken up in Ravensbrück shivering under my thin blanket, dreading the thought of autumn and winter. We gathered in the middle of the room and admired its every detail. Framed landscapes hung on the wood-panelled walls, which were lined with chairs and benches. So civil, almost cheery.
WE had two weeks to settle in before the brothel opened for business. One of the Buchenwald doctors knocked at our door on the first day, a man with an unusually high forehead. He examined each of us, chatting away as he groped our private parts. When he told me I had a lovely face, I dug my fingernails into my palm to keep myself from frowning.
Despite the discomfort of the medical exam, we had little to complain about those first weeks. The smell of ersatz coffee woke us at seven. The brothel supervisor fetched it from the camp kitchens along with our breakfast. I made a big show of parading around the day room with the Thermos, pouring out each girl’s ration. Bread with jelly, even butter. Whereas in Ravensbrück we’d wolfed down our watery soup in desperate gulps, each meal at Buchenwald became a spectacle, something to be savoured. I rolled butter across my tongue until it melted.
The second morning, Sophia and I sat in our shared bedroom, which we had for just the two of us. A small vase of wildflowers stood on each nightstand, their perfume almost overwhelming in such a tiny space. A sketch of an Alsatian hung on the wall, the same dogs that had bared their teeth at us each day at Ravensbrück. But what perplexed us most were the framed photos of handsome men on each of our nightstands, men with perfect smiles and white-blond hair.
While I reclined on my bed, Sophia tried to rearrange the blossoms, plucking out the ones that had begun to droop. “Do you think they’ll replace these once they all die?”
“You’re talking about flowers, not their labour force. God knows why they’ve even bothered to dress up this place. Who are they trying to fool?”
White petals fell across her pillow. She gathered them one by one and nodded at the photo on her nightstand. “Clearly someone, judging by the presence of our imaginary boyfriends.”
I shoved the framed photos into the drawer. “Don’t waste time trying to rationalize their thinking. They don’t deserve it.”
“Maybe they had a photographer come in, propaganda photos for Himmler? Something he can show off at his banquets?”
“Or send as postcards to our parents? ‘Be proud of how your daughter is serving the Third Reich!’”
She gave a throaty laugh. “My mother would rather me dead.”
What would my mother think? Where did she even believe I was? What had they told her? At Ravensbrück, I’d received permission to send a letter, but maybe that had never even arrived. Whole paragraphs blacked out by the censor, it could have gotten lost in a mailbag somewhere along the German border.
“Is this all a ruse
?” Sophia asked. “Will they start giving us pig feed in a week or two?”
“Who knows? The heart of a Nazi must be no bigger than a toad’s.”
“Just like Hansel and Gretel—do you know the story? They’re fattening us up.”
“I suppose nobody would visit the brothel if we all looked like ghosts.”
She twisted a stem between her fingers. “The question is, why do they want a brothel for the prisoners in the first place?”
We both sighed. Then I noticed an orange wildflower sticking out of the bunch. “Look, the colour of the Dutch royal family. Last winter, my cousin got arrested after she wore an orange brooch while teaching at the primary school, and I was fined for hanging laundry out on the line in the tricolour of our flag. Soon they’ll place spies at all the windows in Amsterdam.”
“Here.” Sophia tucked the flower into my hair. “Press it between some books so it lasts.”
She went off to dispose of the wilted petals, while I stayed in the room, running my hands over the furniture, feeling out the oddities of this new, unexpected prison, and letting my mind drift back to Theo, hoping he’d also found someone at Buchenwald in whom he could confide.
That night, it was my turn to bathe. We had a proper washroom with hot running water. I sank into the tub until water lapped at my earlobes. My hip bones jutted up like mountain peaks separated by a wide valley. I stayed in the bath until the water turned cold, and while towelling off, I folded my arms across my chest, studied myself in the mirror, and wondered whose hands would next explore my naked body.
TWO SS women assumed the roles of brothel supervisor and cashier. One of them was a proper Greta Garbo, with arched brows and cranberry-stained lips, but her words rushed at us like a bitter gale. The cashier stooped with a bad hunch, and three dark hairs sprouted on her chin, but she did her job and left us in peace. In private, Sophia and I referred to them by absurd names: Beauty and the Beast, Athena and Medusa, Ahab and Moby, and, simply to spite them, Harpo and Groucho.
The day the brothel officially opened, I woke with a tearing pain in my gut. I prayed it was cramps, that after two months of growing weaker, my body had switched on again. Menstruation meant a five-day break from “work,” something we all yearned for from the outset. One of the Polish girls swore our cycles would resume after six or seven months of our new diet. Sophia argued that we would be freed before then, like the Kommandant had promised. I laughed. That line had lured so many of the girls, but the moffen were not the type to return their catch to the sea. They would let us flounder about, gasping for air, as we died a slow, humiliating death.
As I lay on my bunk that morning, clutching my stomach and contemplating my fate, I tried to think of Theo and why I had volunteered. Not for freedom but to find him. The more men I bedded, the more I could spread the word. Somebody out there would know him.
The tighter I clung to this thought, the more the ache subsided. I dragged myself to the dining table, where we ate in silence. Fifteen hardened faces around me.
Edith gave us a warning. “Servicing a stiff-collared businessman is one thing, but if Buchenwald is anything like Ravensbrück, we’ll be dealing with starving, lice-ridden men who haven’t touched a woman in months.”
While we finished our coffee, the brothel supervisor came to the head of the table to brief us. “After you clean the rooms, you’re free to spend the rest of the day as you like. Indoors, naturally. Dinner is at seventeen hundred hours. At nineteen hundred hours, our facilities will open for two hours, as they will each day from now on, except Sundays, when we offer extended hours.”
“How many visits should we expect?” Sophia asked.
The supervisor’s painted lips twisted into a smirk. “Each man is allotted fifteen minutes, no more than twenty. No fancy positions, just man-on-top. We shall strictly enforce this. You’ll receive up to eight clients each night.”
The wrenching pain returned. Eight chances, I told myself—eight chances to find Theo—but even those words felt like a betrayal.
“You’re only useful to the Reich as long as you’re healthy, so we will take every precaution against any undesirable consequences. You shall receive regular injections against pregnancy and venereal disease but are responsible for using a rubber sheath with all clients. Use disinfection ointment to clean yourself after each visit. Anal and oral intercourse are forbidden. Is that understood?”
Her instructions passed through me. I was no longer Marijke, not even Number 21522. I was a whore.
When the supervisor left, the cashier carried in a laundry basket heaped with worn men’s socks. SS socks. The other girls grabbed needles and thread, eager for a distraction, but I refused to join in and nobody minded. A sparse collection of books filled the shelves in our common room, where men would wait their turns in the evenings. The books had German authors, all patriotic and fascist, more propaganda than literature. I chose Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, a slim novel that appeared mildly entertaining, and settled in a quiet corner.
By late afternoon, I’d given up on reading, unable to focus. Dinner consisted of peas, bread and sausage, but I couldn’t eat.
Edith leaned over the table and whispered to me. “The meat will boost our energy. They want to prepare us for an assault of cocks.”
Even that word made me wince.
At a quarter to seven, the supervisor led each of us into a koberzimmer, a cubicle. I had koberzimmer 9. We had just showered and smelled of harsh soap. The tiny, narrow room contained a single bed with a thin pillow and mattress cover but no sheets. An array of plants turned the windowsill into a potted jungle. The room had two doors, one for my use, which opened into our sleeping quarters, and the other for the client. A photograph of Hitler and two watercolour sketches hung on the wall. One showed the ruins of a medieval tower, the other a series of colourful old buildings. The name “Weimar” was written in calligraphy under both pieces, the town we had passed on our way into camp.
I paced back and forth, every muscle in my body tense as a thread pulled to its breaking point. A hesitant knock sounded at the door. I flopped onto the bed. Stood up. Sat down again and blinked back tears, bracing my body for a rough beating, a blitz of lewd remarks.
The prisoner who entered walked with a limp. Wire-frame glasses hung on his sunken face, and he wore a thin, patchy moustache. “My name is Ernst,” he said. A German with the markings of a political prisoner. His handshake felt so weak that I worried my touch would leave bruises.
“Marijke.”
He sat beside me on the bed and struggled to undo the buttons of his striped uniform. I slipped off my blouse, angling my shoulder to hide my chest. His cheeks flushed as he opened the final button to reveal a ladder of ribs. The scrawniness of a child. I thought of my brother, a boy of eighteen hauled off to work in German factories. The moffen made men out of boys and boys out of men.
“I . . . Marijke, I don’t want to hurt you.”
I looked away. “You won’t.”
While I began to remove my skirt, he reached out, grazing my hip. We both recoiled at the touch.
“I’ve never done this,” he said.
“Me neither.”
“Really?”
“Not like this, I haven’t.”
Inching toward me, he placed a hand on my thigh and stared at it doubtfully. While he stroked my leg, I tried to estimate how much time had passed—two, three minutes? He tugged on my skirt and my eyes closed as it fell to the floor.
“Look at me? Please?”
“I’m sorry. I just . . .”
“I know.”
Then we were both naked. I tried not to see the growing hardness between his legs. I wondered if I’d even recognize Theo’s body anymore, or if it would have also withered away.
Ernst lowered my head onto the pillow, pulled himself on top of me. Tears gathered, but I held them in.
“Marijke?”
“I’m ready.”
He sighed, rolled off, and posit
ioned himself beside me. “Just give me a minute.”
We’d been warned what would happen if the client wasn’t satisfied. My hand wavered as I reached between his legs. “Please, go ahead.”
“No, I can’t, not like this.”
“What can I do to help?”
“You—no, nothing.” He sat up, passed me my blouse and stared up at the ceiling. “In Berlin, there was a girl I’d known since we were four or five. Her mother used to do our laundry, and whenever she came over, we would build forts from the clean linen. She had the prettiest laugh, like handbells at mass.”
I hesitated before slipping on my blouse. “Where is she now?”
He looked at me with feverish eyes. “What if I never see her again? Two of my friends have dysentery, another collapsed in the quarry yesterday. I always thought she and I would get married, have four or five children. I would have taken such good care of her.”
“I know how hard it is.”
“I’m not asking for your pity.”
“My husband is in here, somewhere.”
“Oh.” He bowed his head. “I’m sorry.” When I didn’t answer, he pulled on his trousers. “I just assumed . . . well, it doesn’t matter.”
We sat quietly, wallowing in our own shame and embarrassment. His fingers twitched against the pillowcase. Unable to stand the pained desperation in his expression, I shifted to lie down, and he curled into my back with his cheek pressed to my shoulder. I held his hand and we just lay there. After a while, a dampness crept across the back of my blouse. “Don’t cry,” I said.
“I don’t want it to end like this.”
“It won’t.” As those words left my mouth, they drifted away into nothing, but the croak in his voice gave me the resolve to offer hope, even though I had little to spare.
“What if I never touch a woman again?”
“You can’t think like that. You’ll never survive if you do.”