The rest of the day and a night passed before Elise Hess woke.
When she did, she thought she might be in heaven.
She was warm.
No one was screaming at her, no dogs snarling at her.
She could think of—nothing.
In fact, words seemed to have left her completely. She looked around at what she would have, in another lifetime, called a bed, a pitcher, a glass. She knew the objects—the thing people sleep on, that which holds water, the thing we drink from—but the words wouldn’t come. Maybe I’ve died and I’m in eternity? she thought. Limbo?
Or maybe I’ve lost my mind.
She considered her hands. They were mottled with bruises, the nails filthy and torn. Pain radiated from her shoulders.
She looked to the wall next to the narrow cot. The wood was scarred with initials, full names, and occasional phrases. Eva, my child, you are 9 years old, who will tell you the truth? Try to grow up the way I hoped was scratched in tiny letters and dated June 1939. A heart with initials and an arrow slashing through. A crooked single word: REVENGE.
Out the window, the sunrise was incandescent. In her other life, the one before camp, Elise had slept through sunrises or, if she was up, didn’t take the time to notice their beauty. We miss so much, she thought, watching the sun change from red to rose to gold. I have missed so much.
The word came to her: infirmary. She was in the infirmary. The pressure of her bladder made her move. Ach! The pain! But she managed to stand on her bloody and swollen feet, and shuffle down the row of beds to the toilet she glimpsed through an open door. Afterward, she cleaned and washed herself the best she could, shoulders, arms, and hands burning with pain.
She shuffled back, blocking out the wails and moans of the other prisoners. Back at her cot, she eased her aching body down, and once again slipped out of consciousness.
Minutes passed, or maybe hours. A nurse came, a fellow political prisoner with a red triangle, who brought her food and helped her sit up. Elise tasted the first spoonful of lukewarm soup—turnip broth with a bruised potato floating to the top—and thought nothing could be more delicious.
She had swallowed one spoonful when one of the guards entered.
“Attention!” the guard called.
Elise knew her—Hilda Jaeger. In reality, she was quite an average-looking middle-aged woman, with tightly braided light hair, the black buttons of her gray uniform straining against her ever-increasing bulk. But in the eyes of the prisoners, her actions had transformed her into a creature neither human nor animal, more like a she-devil in a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.
“25487! You will come with me!” Jaeger commanded. “Now!”
It took Elise a moment to remember her number. Jaeger was calling her. She handed her soup to the prisoner next to her, who bolted it ravenously. Next to her cot were her cap, coat, and clogs. She reached for them.
“Schnell!” Jaeger roared. Rage mottled her complexion.
Elise walked, stumbled, and slid with Jaeger out of the infirmary down icy paths, to Ravensbrück’s administration building. It was an innocuous-looking yellow-brick structure. Nothing about it betrayed its true purpose.
Himmler and his cronies had worked out the ratio of the cost of keeping a slave alive to profit off her labor—to keep her working as long as possible, and then to liquidate her as cheaply as possible, chiefly through the principle of “extermination through labor”—working all the prisoners to death. The profit motive drove everything. When the mathematical equation proved it cost more to house and feed a slave than the worth of the work she produced, the worker was killed.
But each woman was ostensibly at Ravensbrück for a specific “crime.” Elise, along with the other political prisoners, wore a red triangle sewn onto her jacket, above her number. So-called race defilers wore red triangles with black borders. Common criminals wore green. Homosexuals, pink; Jehovah’s Witnesses, violet. The Gypsies wore brown. All others wore one yellow. Jews wore two yellow triangles, making a facsimile of the Star of David.
Of course, categories overlapped, so a Jewish woman who’d fought for the French Resistance wore both a yellow triangle and a red. A prostitute who spied for the German Resistance wore a green triangle and a red. “It’s easier in America, with the colored people,” the woman overseeing her sewing on her own red patch had said. “With their black skin, they don’t need anything else, the way we do here. Although I pride myself on the fact I can always spot a Jew.”
Now, Elise’s curiosity finally overcame her fear. “What’s this about?” she managed to ask Jaeger, taking off her shoes and shuffling barefoot on the icy path to keep up. “Where are you taking me?”
“Don’t you know?” The guard laughed, a humorless yap. “You’re to see the Commandant.”
Everything had still seemed distant and removed to Elise, but that word, Commandant, brought her back to reality with a blow.
Jens Foth, the Commandant of Ravensbrück, was infamous, even among the thugs and villains he’d hired for guard duty. Under Foth’s rule, canings were distributed arbitrarily. He liked to hear the prisoners howl. “Start screaming, you pig!” he’d cry, often making another prisoner—usually a friend—beat one of her own. But often the prisoner being beaten stayed mute—at least as long as possible. Self-control was the only form of rebellion.
As they walked up the slippery steps to the main building, Elise wondered if she’d have been better off dying on the cross.
—
Inside Commandant Foth’s office, it was excessively warm, a fire burning red in a cast-iron stove across from his massive desk. In a place of honor was the ubiquitous official framed photograph of Hitler.
Elise’s heart was beating wildly. She knew what it meant to be sent away. To be “transported”—sent to Auschwitz or one of the other camps, where no one was ever heard from again. But why was she here in the office then? The Commandant must have another fate in mind for her. What would they do to her first?
“How much money do you have?” Foth barked at Elise without preamble. He was an older man, with silver-gray hair and a chin as wide as his forehead. His once-trim figure had run to fat, and a hunch ruined what must have once been impeccable posture. There was an open bottle of schnapps on his desk, and the office reeked of alcohol.
Elise stared at him, shock freezing her tongue.
“How. Much. Money,” he repeated, his chewed fingernails starting to tap in agitation. “Do. You. Have?”
She thought back to the wallet she’d surrendered when she first arrived. “Thirty marks,” she replied. “Sir.”
“Is it enough to get to Berlin?”
Berlin? Go to Berlin? “Yes,” Elise managed, bewildered. Berlin? The city was as real as a kingdom in a fairy tale. “Yes, sir, it is.”
Foth grunted, then thrust a form at her. Bold black letters spelled out: RELEASE.
The letters danced in front of her eyes, tantalizing her with their elusive meaning.
Then Foth snatched the paper back, slashed RELEASE with a black pen, and wrote below, 9 DAYS LEAVE.
Elise stared at the piece of paper. The letters seemed to float. She couldn’t recall the meaning of the number 9, or the words release or leave. They were black squiggles on white paper.
“Well, what are you waiting for, Fräulein Hess? Don’t you want to go?”
All Elise could comprehend was, for the first time in months, she was being called her name once again. A name, instead of a number. It sounded almost indecently intimate coming from his lips.
Foth turned to Frau Jaeger with a sneer. “Look, she wants to stay! I’m sure we can accommodate that….” The two sniggered.
But Elise had grabbed at the paper. To be warm, to eat, to sleep in a bed. To go to church and receive the Blessed Sacrament. No more endless roll call in the freezing darkness, no more barking and biting dogs, no more screamed abuse…
Foth put his palms together. “Elise Hess, you are released.” Then, “Well, get ready! Schnell! In
ten minutes, I want you out of here! Take her! Get her cleaned up!”
—
Frau Jaeger led Elise to the warehouse where all the prisoners’ clothing was stored, sorted, and meticulously labeled. When Elise saw her old clothes—her underthings, a floral linen dress and cotton sweater and high-heeled sandals—she thought once again she was in a dream. She remembered them, and yet did not—so much had happened since the summer and it seemed so long ago—although in reality it had been less than a year since she’d arrived at Ravensbrück.
Her fingers fumbled with the buttons on her uniform, but they were too swollen, too bruised. When Frau Jaeger saw, she helped Elise undress, as though she were now a small child instead of a prisoner. Elise stood very still, frightened by the change in Frau Jaeger’s demeanor. The summer dress, once tight, hung off her gaunt frame.
“Before the war, my parents took me to Berlin,” Frau Jaeger said in a kind, low voice. She was hunting for something—and procured a silk scarf with a smile, the like of which Elise had never seen from her before. “This will cover your head until your hair grows out,” she added. “And here’s a pair of thick tights. And a wool coat.”
“Thank you,” Elise responded, accepting the items, trying not to imagine what had happened to their former owner.
Frau Jaeger continued to help her dress, as if she were a doll. Not gentle, but not rough, either. “We lived in Dortmund,” she prattled, “but my family and I went to the opera in Berlin once, when I was thirteen. Such a grand occasion!” She paused, savoring the memory. “We saw your mother in the role of Isolde—oh, she was so beautiful! And your father conducted. So romantic!”
Elise didn’t know what to say. She managed “Oh.”
It was impossible for her to put her old shoes on—not only were they strappy sandals but her feet were too swollen for them to fit.
And so Frau Jaeger found her large-size men’s bedroom slippers, which would have to do. “When I heard the famous opera star Clara Hess was your mother, you can bet I wrote and told everyone in my family!” Frau Jaeger eased Elise’s feet into the black slippers. “They were impressed, let me tell you.”
“Oh.”
Frau Jaeger’s face fell. “I was so sorry to hear of her death.”
“What?”
“Don’t you know? She died, from wounds she received while protecting Germans on a train to Switzerland. Your mother is a national hero. That’s why you’re being released—to attend the memorial service.”
Elise was silent. She’d wondered what happened to Clara on the train they’d all taken—she, Clara, and her father—from Berlin to Zurich, and now her suspicions were confirmed. Clara was dead.
“I’m sorry.” Frau Jaeger’s brows were knit with concern. “I thought you knew. I thought they’d told you.”
“It’s all right,” Elise assured her, although she felt nothing inside. How odd, to be comforting this Nazi creature when it’s my mother who has died. “Really—it’s fine.” And, for the moment, it was. She was too numb to take the thought in.
Frau Jaeger blinked back tears and sniffed. “Now we must go back. There are many forms for you to sign.”
—
Back at the camp’s main office, Elise struggled to write with her damaged hand. One of the forms she signed stated, The released inmate is never allowed to talk about camp life, the setup of the camp, camp punishments, and other events. Frau Jaeger was happy to explain: “If we discover you’ve said or written anything about the events in the camp, you will be immediately transported back by the Gestapo and receive fifty to a hundred lashes. You wouldn’t want that, would you?
“In Berlin, you will be able to attend the memorial service planned for your mother. You will also go to the office of the Gestapo. There, you will sign official documents to denounce Father Licht and exonerate the doctors of Charité Mitte, including Dr. Brandt.”
Like hell I will, Elise thought.
The last form she signed stated she had been released from the camp in good health and would lay claims of no kind upon the state in regard to possible future sicknesses. As a trained nurse, she knew all too well the damage her body had suffered, and what it boded for her health in the future—should she even live to see the future. But she signed the paper anyway.
In the office, Elise saw another political prisoner, not more than thirty, as tangible as a ghost. The two exchanged glances for a brief moment, but didn’t dare speak. The other woman gave the slightest nod.
Elise smiled back.
And then, in less than ten minutes’ time, Elise found herself being walked by Frau Jaeger to Ravensbrück’s high guarded gates. There, Frau Jaeger exchanged a few words with the SS guard on duty. “I’ll take you to the station,” she informed Elise.
Elise wanted nothing more than to walk alone, and certainly not to be accompanied by the guard—but she acquiesced, mute. Frau Jaeger began walking, and Elise followed, the borrowed black slippers sliding through the slippery white snowflakes. She had a suitcase of the things she’d arrived with in one hand and her papers in the other. She was leaving.
Alsatian dogs barked as they went through the black metal gates, and Elise let out a soft sigh of relief as they finally left the sinister walls. As she walked behind Frau Jaeger, she saw, on the other side of the road, beautiful houses, gardens, and even two chubby little children playing and laughing in the snow.
One, a boy about seven, ran up to the chain-link fence to stare at her. Elise tried her best to smile, her dry lips cracking in the cold. She was aware that her bald head, even under the scarf, marked her as a prisoner. What do they know about us? What do any of them know? They’re so close, and yet a universe away.
She and the young boy locked eyes, blue to gray. Even in her time at the camp, she had never seen such a vicious glint, such a brutal expression. The boy bent down and scooped up a stone.
He threw it.
It struck her on the face, hard, causing her to flinch and take a step back.
Elise raised one hand to her face, a red mark already blooming on her pale skin. As the boy ran off, she stood still, watching. She’d become accustomed to random cruelty during her time at Ravensbrück, but it was still startling to see it from a mere child.
“Schnell!” Frau Jaeger ordered, seeing only that Elise had stopped. Then, in a milder tone, realizing she wasn’t talking to a number anymore, but Fräulein Elise Hess: “Come, please. You don’t want to miss your train.”
Elise looked wide-eyed at everything as they trod over the slithery snow to the station. She’d never seen it; she’d come to Ravensbrück in a van with black-painted windows.
On the platform, people stared at them—such an unlikely couple, a prison guard in her gray uniform and a former prisoner. The train arrived in a cloud of steam and a shriek of brakes. “Here,” an older woman urged, pressing bread and butter wrapped in a coarse cloth into Elise’s hand. Elise gasped at the woman, speechless, as she disappeared into one of the cars.
Frau Jaeger raised an eyebrow but decided to ignore the transaction. Instead she asked, “Now, do you know where you’re going in Berlin?”
“I still know where I live,” Elise stated flatly.
“No.” Frau Jaeger pulled out even more papers. “Your family’s home in Grunewald has been requisitioned and taken over for official Party business. You will be joining your father, who has been set up in the Adlon Hotel. The address is here.”
Elise knew the hotel, a short distance from the Brandenburg Gate. “Thank you,” she managed.
Frau Jaeger’s face turned red, and she spoke quickly. “Would you mind very much inscribing something in my album?” she asked, pulling out a small leather notebook. “Just a few lines? In remembrance of our meeting?”
Is the woman mad? Elise could not process the request. Once again, reality seemed to float away and she tried hard to remember names for things before they left her. Book, pen, guard, she made herself think.
Frau Jaeger continued, “
For instance, a few lines from the Liebestod, in the last act of Tristan and Isolde? It’s just—your mother was so wonderful. I have such fond memories of her.”
Elise wrote as though it were someone else performing the task:
Do you not see?
How he shines
Ever brighter.
Star-haloed
Rising higher
Do you not see?
Then she wrote, underneath, Tristan and Isolde by Richard Wagner. And then, Clara Hess, soprano. Under her mother’s name, she added her own: Elise Hess. She handed the book back to Frau Jaeger, who took it with a shy smile.
“Good luck, Fräulein,” the guard said, as Elise struggled with her suitcase up the steps of the train car.
“Frau Jaeger—” Elise tried to decide what to say. So many things went through her brain, from profanity to prayers.
Then, finally, she called back, “There’s no need of luck where there’s faith.”
—
Freedom.
Elise nearly fell onto one of the worn upholstered seats. What a feeling! Life! Vita nuova!
With a screech and snorts of steam, the train pulled away from the station. Elise, grateful to sit on soft cushions, gazed out the window. The sky was the purest blue, and not even a gentle breeze stirred the naked branches. This was Germany, forests and lakes and ancient trees, as it could have looked during any period of history. Germany’s story is long, she thought. I pray this is but a short black mark on the totality of it, not the end….
Up in the clouds, Elise glimpsed a bird, a crane. Now it soared above a lake, then over the forest, flapping its wings, flying higher, faster. Birds have the most precious gift in the world—freedom! Her eyes tracked its flight. All of the wretched people, robbed of their freedom in prisons, penitentiaries, and concentration camps, envy you, little bird. I’m ecstatic to be free—and grieving for my fellow prisoners, whom I left behind in hell.
She closed her eyes and recited the Lord’s Prayer. That is, until she reached the line As we forgive those who trespass against us.
The words stuck in Elise’s throat.
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