by Helen Burko
His love for Hannah was especially tragic. Everyone listened, engrossed, for although Hannah had already told the story, it was interesting to hear his side of it.
“We met by chance, in Warsaw, at the Jewish committee; they were aiding the survivors and refugees. We found much in common and fell in love. After what I had lived through, I dreamed of starting life over, with a wife, a home, and children. My own wife and children had been killed by the Germans.
“When I was in the forest, I didn’t think of those things, but it is only normal that, if you survive, you want to live. My love for Hannah grew stronger every day, and I was glad to find one single ray of light in all the darkness. I thought I would be able to have a family again; how desolate I was when Hannah refused to marry me and told me the reason.
“We were able to come to America, and here we went to all the professors and experts in the hope they could help us, but it couldn’t be. The experiments that were done in the camp could not be reversed. I finally persuaded Hannah to marry me, after she begged me to find another woman, to live a normal life, to bring up children and be a happy man, but my love for her is stronger than my wish to be a father again. I had lovely children, and their memory and my longing for them has not faded.”
Grisha took a deep breath to control himself and continued. “Those were the circumstances when she recognized this Nazi woman from the SS.” He looked in the direction of Mathilda. “When Hannah told me she was certain it was her and no one else, I became enraged. In my mind, I saw again the forests, the ghetto, the shooting I had escaped from, my poor wife and children and all my family, my relatives, and friends. I lost control, and I wanted to murder her on the spot.”
And when he finished his testimony, he said in a voice charged with emotion, “We must never forget our suffering! We must never forgive those criminals!”
Now Jacob approached the witness stand and asked, “You said, Mr. Magnus, that every Nazi who fell into your hands in the forest was shot without pity, right?”
“Right!”
“Were you always certain that every Nazi you shot was really a Nazi and responsible for the tragedy of the millions? Couldn’t he have been also a victim of your hatred? Maybe he was a simple soldier who had also left a wife and children at home. Maybe they had now lost their father, and maybe he was innocent?” Jacob again asked this provocative question.
“Innocent?” Magnus was enraged. “Innocent? You call him just a simple soldier? If that ‘simple soldier’ had caught me, would he have let me live? Wouldn’t he have brought me to the Nazi command post? And there they would have killed me after they tortured me to obtain information! Didn’t he help his comrades in their murderous actions? Wasn’t he part of the murderous gang that brought all the evil upon us? Didn’t I and not he have to hide in the forest? Didn’t…”
“But it’s possible that he was free from evil intentions and was just conscripted into the army and forced to follow orders or he would have been shot?” Jacob interrupted the witness’s torrent of words.
But the witness wasn’t confused. His eyes flashed and his hands made fists. “Why all the philosophizing? I didn’t look into his evil soul to see if he was guilty or not. If it were only possible to see into their souls as we look into mirrors and see what they contain. I’m not a psychologist or a philosopher! The fact I lost everyone who was dear to me and I ran away completely naked is enough for me! That I existed on weeds like an animal and, most important, that I am miserable because the woman I love is miserable! That I saw with my own eyes cities and their whole populations destroyed—that’s enough to make me have no pity for the Germans! Who forced them to fight? Who raised their arms and made them shout ‘Heil Hitler’? An eye for an eye! All those who raised their arms and helped the murderers, whether they did it willingly or were forced to do it, should be killed! Let us kill them! Rise and kill them!”
“I have no more questions,” said Jacob with a bitter smile. The witness stepped down and looked around as if to say, “I told him, didn’t I?”
That same day, more witnesses were called, among them some who had been present at the theater when the scandal broke out. Leonora, Eddie’s wife, was called to testify, and she nervously described what happened when Hannah recognized Mathilda.
Jacob didn’t ask her any questions, and everyone knew the real battle would begin when the prosecutor started the interrogations and the rest of the witnesses would appear, among them the most important one, the woman who knew Mathilda from her home.
The continuance of the trial was called for the next day at nine o’clock in the morning.
The crowd began to disperse. The newsmen gathered around the witnesses and around Hannah and Magnus in particular. People interpreted, praised, blamed, and waited impatiently for tomorrow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
This Thursday was no different than any other Thursday. The sun was shining in the sky over New York. People, as usual, were running around, cars were trying to overtake other cars, and the hectic life of New York City continued as usual.
“Important day in trial!” called out the newsboys, and the papers were snatched by people who couldn’t attend the trial and were avid for news about it.
Gigantic headlines, together with photos of interesting people in the trial, screamed out from newspapers trying to catch the attention of the public. A place of honor, the front page, was devoted to Hannah Rubin’s picture and her testimony in all the papers.
Under the picture, these words appeared: “The wolf attacks the innocent lamb because he believes he is a superior race!” or “No animal is dangerous when he is caged!” and “I know something about animals!”
Under the picture of Mathilda, who was photographed in the act of taking her seat and smoothing her skirt, or when she was present during the struggle her lawyer underwent to be allowed to ask certain questions, were these words: “The poor, innocent accused!” or “I am not guilty!”
One paper showed an unusual picture of Jacob with this caption: “Who, in your opinion, is man?”
Under the photos of Claude and George was just one word: “Psychology! Psychology!”
And the judge appeared in a photo with his gavel raised and the caption: “The accused is not yet a criminal!”
All the newspapers announced that during that day, a very important witness would be called whose identity the prosecution had not yet revealed, but it was known that this witness knew the accused in her home in Lublin before the war.
That morning, as the trial opened its second day, the witness, Betty Grasolska, was called. She was no surprise to Jacob nor to Mathilda who, when she saw the woman, became very pale as she had done when she first saw her sitting with Hannah Rubin at the preliminary hearing.
When Betty took her seat in the witness box and turned to face the spectators, Jacob remembered he had seen her sitting next to Hannah and whispering to her, so this must be the best friend Hannah had talked about.
When he glanced at Mathilda, he understood she was uneasy at the sight of the new witness, and when he looked at the witness, he saw she was pale and anxious. It was clear to Jacob that behind the paleness of these two women were two different reasons. Mathilda was pale with fear, while Betty was pale from an inner struggle, a recollection of horror, anxiety, and the excitement of this surprise meeting with a woman whom she once feared greatly and never expected to see in court as the accused.
Betty looked about thirty and was blond with an upturned nose, blue eyes, a round and sweet face, and a good figure. Everyone gazed in wonder at her beauty. It was difficult to imagine how this soft and pleasant-looking woman could have survived the camp.
When Betty was announced as a witness, everyone looked at Mathilda to see what effect this had on her, but she sat motionless. The tension in the courtroom increased.
George clasped his hands behind his back and began to interrogate the witness as he paced in front of the witness box and avoided meeting the witness’s
eyes so she would feel more at ease.
“Tell us, please, Mrs. Betty Grasolska, do you know the accused personally?”
“Yes, I know her very well.” Betty pointed to her in the courtroom. “That’s her! Mathilda Krause! I am glad I have met her again in America and as an accused in a court of law!”
The next day, a picture appeared of her with her arm raised, and this caption underneath: “It’s her!”
“Please tell us in your own words where you first met the accused, and afterward, your contacts with her.”
“I don’t want to repeat Hannah’s words, but I will tell you that we were together in Majdanek. I’m a teacher, too, although not of zoology, but of languages, and we became good friends in spite of the fact that Hannah is Jewish and I am Catholic. The suffering we shared made us almost like sisters. We both come from Poland but not from the same city. She is from an area that once was Polish—the Western Ukraine—and I am from Gdansk where, after Germany gained control and began to Germanize the city, they took me and my husband, Miechislav—an engineer and Catholic like me—to the concentration camp in Stuttgart. Then they separated us, and I was sure he had been killed, but to my joy, he survived too after passing through many camps until he was freed by the Allied Command.
“How we found each other after the war—that’s a story by itself and has no connection to the accused, although it has such for the trial in general.
“So now I’ll answer the question of how I came in contact with the accused. I knew her better than any of the other prisoners at Majdanek. I was taken to the camp in 1941, and I spent hours with her at her home in Lublin.
“Once, during a Zapfenstriech—my friend Hannah has already told you what that is—Mathilda Krause was there with the Gestapo officer and his dog, and she asked me where I was from and what my profession was. When I told her I was from Gdansk and a teacher of languages, they took me to a car and brought me to Lublin.
“I didn’t know where they were taking me because they didn’t say a word to me all the way there. Only after we stopped before a large apartment house and I entered her luxurious apartment did I realize I was in the home of Krackel, the Gestapo officer. All the women in Field Five trembled at the sight of him and his dog, which I would do as well once I knew him. The dog would always look at me suspiciously when I was brought to the apartment. I was sure they had brought me there to be a servant, but I found out I was brought there for a different purpose, and I was sorry I had revealed my profession. I knew that after they had used me, they would shoot me so that their secret would never be revealed. I had heard the SS did that to all the men involved in secret work.
“But before I relate what happened at the home of the Gestapo officer, I want to tell you some things that engraved themselves on my memory and disturbed me all the time I was in the camps—first of all, the luxury of the apartment and the impression Mathilda made on me after she had shed her Gestapo uniform.
“I saw before me an ordinary woman…with sex appeal, with womanly caprices, with a love of life and feminine charm. She was no different than any other woman, and I wondered how she could see the prisoners’ suffering without being shocked. My God! I thought when I saw her in her home the first time without her uniform, this woman is just like me and so many other young women in the camp. Why is our fate so bad? Why are we suffering while she is living in the luxury that comes from robbing us and at the expense of our miserable existence? What was our crime? Why had they taken me and thousands like me to the terrible camps? Didn’t she have the same feelings as I did?”
Betty cried out, and her face turned pink from excitement. “No, Mathilda didn’t have the same feelings because she had never suffered, never stood in a Zapfenstriech at midnight and felt the SS or the Capo beating you with rubber truncheons, and she didn’t know the humiliation of subhumans touching your body.”
Betty paused and took a deep breath and then continued. “I tried not to think of what would happen tomorrow; I would enjoy the day. Those were my thoughts, and my fear left me. I didn’t want to remember my home in Gdansk that I was thrown out of just because I belonged to another nation. If I had been a German, they wouldn’t have arrested me and I wouldn’t have had to undergo all that I was experiencing.”
“So what did you do there?” George interrupted her.
Betty wiped her lips as though she had tasted something bad and continued. “Yes, that is the most important thing. When I remember those days, my insides quail even today. Mathilda took me to a room that resembled the room of a princess—subtle perfume drifted in the air. She told me to sit on a straight chair, and she reclined in an armchair. In a soft voice, she said, ‘From now on, you’ll be my teacher. Good that you’re from Gdansk and also know German. It will be easier for you to explain the things I have to know for the new mission they are giving me soon.’
“I didn’t dare ask her what the mission was, but I was quite sure she was being sent to Warsaw to fill a high position in the Gestapo.
“‘Every Monday, they will bring you here to give me lessons. Nobody else should know about this. After every lesson, you will be returned to the camp, but you won’t live in the same hut anymore. Do you understand?’
“‘Yes, I understand,’ I whispered.
“‘And most important, you won’t tell anyone, understood?’
“‘Understood!’
“Yes, I understood very well that my life hung by a thread, for as soon as Mathilda had no more need of me, I would be shot. So I dared to say to her, ‘Yes, I know what is in store for me. I know that after I do what you want, they’ll shoot me anyway.’
“‘How can you think such a thing?’ Mathilda was angry. ‘We don’t shoot innocent people! You people don’t understand yet that our fuehrer wants to save the world from the cannibalism of the Russians and the English! That’s why we’ve arrested all of you! You’re all enemies of the Third Reich!’
“Then she rose and paced the room awhile, and after that turned to me again. ‘Listen, I promise you nothing bad will happen to you! All you have to do is teach me the Polish language quickly, and since I know the Russian language perfectly, it won’t be difficult for me to learn another Slavic language, understand?’
“‘I understand.’
“And that’s how I began my lessons with Mathilda Krause.” Betty sighed. “I tried to teach her slowly to lengthen my life, but she learned quickly, and I had no choice but to teach her at her own speed.
“After a while, Mathilda treated me more warmly, and I understand she became more liberal so I would feel freer, because only in an atmosphere free from fear can one teach or learn successfully.
“Sometimes, I would sit at the table and forget who I was teaching Polish to…for I didn’t take into account I was probably giving her a weapon to use against me, against my country, and its millions of people. After I had lived in my new quarters awhile, I understood what I was doing, but I had no choice.”
“And what were the conditions in your new quarters?” asked George.
“Much better than the other prisoners and as far away from them as was possible. The food was better. There was a group of men and women in this hut, and they called it the ‘experts hut,’ and the hut held people of all different professions. Every one of us was careful not to reveal to the others what work we were engaged in. Meanwhile, everyone there was glad the food was better, and before we were taken to our work, we were taken to a bathhouse. That was a great comfort.”
“Can you tell me the fate of these experts?” asked George.
“As far as I know, they were taken out at night, one by one, and I never saw them again. It was clear that after they completed their work, they were shot so as not to reveal their secrets.”
“And how did you escape that fate?” asked George, knowing that if he didn’t ask that question, Jacob certainly would.
“It was like this. Once, they came in the night to take out a woman I had become very friendly with, a woman wh
o worked with me in Field Five. This woman, Popova, was born in Kiev and a member of a Kolhaus there, a quiet, modest woman, a typical Ukrainian. We trusted each other, and I was surprised when she told me one day that she was also taken to Mathilda to teach her the Ukrainian language as well as the Russian language and customs. She told me she thought she would be ending her lessons soon, and she was frightened and fearful of what would happen to her after that. That made me watchful, because I knew my fate would be the same as hers when I finished teaching Mathilda. When Popova was taken away and disappeared, I knew immediately what happened to her. I decided to talk to Mathilda at our next lesson, even though it might be dangerous, and so I did.
“‘I promise you…’ She tried to calm my fears. ‘…that nothing bad will happen to you. When you finish the lessons, you’ll be taken to another camp. Don’t be afraid.’
“‘She was in a good mood that day and even joked with me and asked me about my husband, where he was and where I learned to speak German so well. I talked to her with tears in my eyes. I was afraid to tell her that my husband and I had been arrested for no reason. I was careful not to say anything against the Nazis. I don’t know the real reason I survived. Maybe because I knew the German language and maybe because I came from Gdansk. Mathilda told me herself—I’m sure she remembers what she told me, but maybe she has a short memory like the rest of the Nazis who now say they don’t remember anything and they didn’t do anything bad—‘You’re half German, so they won’t do anything bad to you,’ she told me more than once.
“One night, they woke me and told me to get dressed quickly. I was sure they were taking me to be shot like maybe they had done to Popova. They put me in a car. I was the only prisoner in that car, which was taking me to an unknown destination. Mathilda hadn’t told me we had finished our work together. If she had at least told me and said good-bye…
“The journey took a long time. Toward morning, I was brought to a camp near Chenstochov. Two men of the SS handed me over to the head of that camp, who put me into a women’s hut. The women in that hut were in bad shape and dejected. The hut was terribly overcrowded. I was told I would be working in a factory making munitions, and this was for me the beginning of more suffering and torture, of backbreaking work. Here we were also candidates for the gas chambers that, through some miracle, I wasn’t put into.