by Nigel Jones
Yvette left the hospitals to help oversee the process.
Jacques observed her throughout. In the hospital she was caring, albeit in pain and hurting. Seeing the fear in the eyes of the S.S. guards who carried the decomposing, diseased bodies to their graves took away that pain.
As each mass grave was filled, Isaac Levy, a senior army Jewish Chaplain held a service for the deceased. Yvette attended every one.
The strongest of the survivors were relocated to houses commandeered from German civilians. At Yvette’s suggestion all these civilians were taken to the camp to see what evils had been committed in their name. Jacques would not let her attend these tours, he was afraid of what she might do.
Isaac Levy had also been watching Yvette, and he came to Jacques to voice his concerns about her state of mind. “Jacques, Yvette is a lovely girl with a good heart. I have watched her in the hospitals and seen everything she has done for her people. But there is something else there…”
“I know. It is hatred, Isaac. It has kept her alive since her family were taken. And all this has made it worse,” interrupted Jacques.
“What can we do?” asked the Chaplain.
“I will help her to find her family. If they are alive, it may make a difference. But if they are not, then I will do all I can for her.”
“You are a good man, Jacques. I will pray for her, and for you.”
“Thank you, Isaac, we may need it.”
That night Jacques said to Yvette, “We have done all we can here, let’s try and find out what has happened to your parents and sisters. We can start in the camp, there must be records of people who have been incarcerated. The Jews have only been brought here in recent months, so we can ask some of the survivors about their former camps, Auschwitz or any others in which they may have been held.”
“I know what has happened to them, Jacques. I’ve seen it here.” She looked desolate.
“And we’ve seen thousands of survivors too. Many are quite well now. It’s not hopeless.” He lifted her chin and smiled at her.
She managed a weak smile. “Okay, Jacques, we will try.”
The next day they extricated the chief administrator from the lock-up in which the captured guards were being held. They made him take them through the few records of inmates, which had not been destroyed. Three other guards and administrators were commandeered to go through the records, one a female guard called Helga who spoke French. Unfortunately Helga was an arrogant anti-Semitic, dull of mind and totally lacking in charm.
Helga was at best, unhelpful and at worst, obstructive. She made no attempt to hide her contempt for Yvette and her family. Jacques watched and waited for Yvette’s reaction. She smiled at Helga and gave her a cup of tea.
They spent three long days searching the records, but there was nothing of any use.
At the same time they asked the inmates if anyone knew of her family’s whereabouts. Yvette’s old friend from the Resistance was useful; pointing them in the direction of anyone he thought may be able to help.
One day Jacques heard Yvette asking the inmates questions about Helga. “What was she like?” she asked a woman about her own age who was making a good recovery.
“A bastard, a real bastard, one of the worst. She would beat us and shoot women for fun. She must have killed dozens of us, but maybe they were the lucky ones.”
Jacques later heard her getting confirmation of Helga’s crimes from other prisoners. That night, in front of him and before he could stop her, Yvette put a bullet in Helga’s brain.
He leapt towards her when he realised what she was about to do. “No, Yvette you can’t. It won’t help!”
The trigger pulled, she holstered her pistol. “Oh, but it does, Jacques.” Then she left the room.
Jacques looked at the dead woman. The door opened about two minutes later, it was the C.O. with two other officers. He looked at the body and then at Jacques. “Jacques, my friend, this War is still going on, so she will get away with it, but when it is over you must rein her in.” He turned to the other two. “Get some of the men and get rid of this piece of….” He did not finish the sentence.
What Jacques did not know was that Yvette had left the room with the intention of executing the Camp Commandant Joseph Kramer, who would later earn the epithet the Beast of Belsen. She was unable to carry out that intention, as when she arrived at the quarters in which he was being held he was gone, along with the rest of his staff. Ironically he would later be caught and tried for his crimes against humanity and subsequently executed. However, that day, the female guard called Helga was the first victim of Yvette’s one-woman jury and execution squad, and whatever Jacques said or did he was unable to stop her.
That night he tried again to make her see sense, but Yvette just said, “She deserved to die.” It was an answer with which he found it hard to disagree.
Despite their investigations they were unable to get any leads as to her family’s fate. Yvette’s surname was a common one and a great many of the inmates could identify people with that name, but none appeared to be related to her unless they had been split up, which by all accounts could be a real possibility.
They remained at Belsen for three weeks doing whatever they could for the people, while the majority of the Allied 21st Army continued their push towards the final defeat of the Third Reich. Many of the inmates had lost their entire families along with their homes and the lives they had once lived. Within this group a dream was born of the possibility of a new life in Israel, a place in which they would be safe and be free of persecution and hatred.
On May 8th 1945 Karl Donitz formally signed the surrender of Nazi Germany, after Hitler had committed suicide on April 30th. But Yvette’s war was far from over. She and Jacques returned to Paris to try and trace her family’s journey from Drancy Internment Camp, where they had first been taken.
Back in Paris the heady excitement of liberation still filled the air and the Boulevards thronged with Parisians enjoying their freedom. It appeared to all that the summer had brought the finest weather for years. There were dark spots in the general bonhomie, not everyone was happy; revenge was in the air as there were collaborators to be dealt with. But for Yvette and Jacques it was the last time there was any real intimacy between them, fuelled by the hope that the great city radiated.
Jacques insisted they spend a few days enjoying their freedom from the rigours of war. He hoped that normality might weaken her appetite for revenge, and for a few days it did. They were young and if not in love, they were still in lust with each other’s bodies. They ate and drank in the bistros of the Rive Gauche and walked hand-in-hand along the Champs Elysee. They talked about their adventures with the Resistance, the friends that were now bad farmers once again on their farm in Normandy, and the friends they had lost or had disappeared. For days Yvette was almost the happy girl she had once been, the girl that had seduced him and the woman that was to have given birth to his child, but it did not last, it could not last. Once again the dark clouds began to build around her as the pain of losing their child began to eat at her anew, and she was consumed by guilt at being alive whilst so many had perished. She grew restless, and anxious to find her family. In short, she was uncomfortable with being happy. She did not deserve happiness.
Four days after arriving in Paris she walked into Drancy Internment Camp, with a purpose to her step and menace in her eyes. She had never been in the camp before; it would have been too dangerous for her to visit her family. Initially her friends had been able to take them some small luxuries, but that had soon ended when one day her friends returned saying her family were no longer being held there.
Yvette inspected the ghetto that had been home to her beloved parents and cried at the conditions they had been held in. Her fingers caressed the pieces of cheap furniture and she imagined them being there. One room had two beds in it. Their guide told them it was a typical family room. She could see her two little sisters curled up together in the smaller of the two
beds. Everywhere she looked there were ghosts. But there were records too, here they had not been destroyed so there was hope.
It took a while but eventually there they were. Judith and Samuel Hayek transported to Auschwitz September 3rd 1942. The one place she had prayed it would not be. As she closed her eyes she suddenly panicked, where were Laila and Esther, her beloved sisters? Their names were not there. She frantically searched through the lists of names. If not Auschwitz, where? It took another hour, and then with forty other children there they were. On August 2nd 1942 they had all been ripped from the protection and love of their parents and put on a train and taken to Treblinka, situated just to the south of Warsaw.
When Yvette had been walking around the ghetto she had cried, but as she stared at her sisters’ names there was cold steel in her eyes. Jacques knew he had lost her again.
“The girls first. They will be nine and eleven now. Will you come with me, Jacques?”
Jacques knew she did not need him anymore, but he had promised and he would keep his word. “Of course, Yvette.”
She smiled at him. “Thank you, Jacques. I know what you think, but it will be easier with you there.”
The next day they boarded a train to Treblinka.
“Well, Buster, not the most pleasant of memories, I‘m afraid. Tomorrow, weather permitting, I think some thoughts about Honeysuckle would be in order.”
Buster knew the name Honeysuckle well. He wagged his tail.
FOURTEEN
It was three more days before they found themselves back on the bench. The thunderstorms had started the night after Jacques had been remembering Belsen and all of its horrors. Jacques thought it rather apt that such dark memories should culminate with the heavens and gods raining down their wrath on the Earth below. He felt for Buster though, he hated the thunder and would physically shake at the anger the skies were showing.
Slowly the storms abated and the angry gunmetal skies gave way to clear blue again. Secure in the knowledge that shaking and barking at the thunder had frightened it away, Buster set off at a pace to the Warren and the bench.
Jacques finally caught up with the revitalised dog and sat down next to him, producing the chew that Buster knew he had in his pocket.
“Lovely day, old boy. The rain has washed all that summer gloom out of the air. Look, we can see Studland Bay.” He pointed at the horizon, still half-expecting Buster’s eyes to follow the direction he was pointing in, but as always his stare never left his fingers, expecting another chew to appear. Jacques ruffled his ears and kissed the top of his head. “More interested in food, as always.”
“Honeysuckle today, old boy. At least a lot of it is about her, so I’ll enjoy that part, anyway.“ At Honeysuckle, Buster wagged his tail. ‘Good, there would be smiles.’
Jacques was back on the train with Yvette. It was a long journey to Treblinka and they had fallen into a companionable silence, having already relived the days they had spent in Paris.
Jacques was idly turning the pages of the newspaper he had purchased at the station and was vaguely aware of Yvette studying him. He looked up and returned the smile she had on her face, and then returned to the paper.
He sensed she was still watching him and was about to ask why she was staring at him, when she said, “I met her you know, I met your little next-door neighbour. The one who stowed away on your boat to Dunkirk. The one you used to talk about all the time, and who now you never mention.”
Jacques looked up abruptly from his newspaper with an obvious look of shock on his face.
Yvette laughed at his perplexed look. “She came to see me in the nursing home. Marched up to the bed and introduced herself in perfect French with a Normandy accent. It could have been you talking.” She was enjoying his reaction. “I was expecting a little girl with pigtails and grubby knees. Not a siren with the smile of an angel.” She giggled. Jacques looked distinctly uneasy.
Jacques had not been in touch with Honeysuckle since his last visit. He had managed to write her a couple of quick letters but had no idea if she had ever received them. His life had been itinerant, to say the least, and he had never expected to receive any replies. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
Yvette just shrugged, but continued to smile at him. “Little Honeysuckle is infatuated with you, you know.”
It was Jacques turn to shrug. He did not know how to deal with the conversation they were about to have.
Yvette realised his predicament and knew how much she owed him, so was not about to cause him further embarrassment. “You all looked so shocked when I arrived back in France. I would probably never have returned if it was not for bloody Honeysuckle!” She looked more serious now.
“Go on,” encouraged Jacques.
“As you know I was in a catatonic state, or at least pretending to be. I did not want to talk to anyone. I had nothing to say and there was nothing anyone could say to me. A stream of well-meaning do-gooders traipsed in to tell me everything would be all right and I would have another baby. I wanted to tell them all to fuck off, but it was easier to say nothing. Then Miss English Rose appears and tells me not to be such an idiot and that I owe it to you to pull myself together. Then she gave me that bloody smile. The one it’s obligatory to smile back at.” Yvette was smiling warmly at Jacques now. “Don’t worry, she is not that perfect. She was also there for another reason.” Jacques cocked his head and looked confused. “She came to see what her opposition was like.”
The look on Jacques’s face encouraged her. “At least I hope she was there for that. If she was only there for me, then she really is an angel.” Yvette raised her eyebrows. “She sensed I was a fighter and would compete for my man, that it would be my natural reaction. She made no attempt to hide the fact that she adored you, almost goading me to react. It worked, for a girl to fight she had to speak to her adversary. So eventually I spoke to little Honeysuckle.” She couldn’t hide the irony in her voice, as that is how Jacques had always described her. “Anyway, I’m sure her perfect eyes were twinkling as she goaded me.”
Jacques still did not know what to say. What had Honeysuckle told her?
“So little Honeysuckle, with the body of a goddess, did the trick. I knew I would never be able to keep you, but I sure as hell wasn‘t going to give in easily. If I can defeat the entire German army by myself, I was not going to let bloody Honeysuckle trample all over me.”
Jacques was laughing now as he tried to imagine the two of them together. Yvette was smiling too.
“The trouble is she is far too nice to hate. You are peas in a pod and made for each other.” Now she was looking affectionately at him. “We know we will part company, Jacques. We have already discussed it. I hope she will be there for you.”
“Thank you, Yvette. We didn’t….”
“I know. You are both too perfect and too damned English to have done anything. If I had been in her shoes, you would not have been allowed to be so noble. I would have had you, even if I had been only sixteen.” She surreptitiously stroked his inner thigh to emphasise her point.
“What did you talk about?” Jacques was no longer afraid of anything they may have discussed.
“After my dressing-down, you mean?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
Yvette laughed. “Apparently you could not win the War on your own and I should stop being such a prima donna and get out there and help you. She was a clever little minx; she knew exactly how to get me to react. Then she told me off for being so self-indulgent.”
“What did you say?”
“I was about to give her the full extent of Yvette’s vocabulary, usually reserved for the Nazis, when she bloody well smiled at me. Christ, when you two are smiling at each other the whole world must glow!”
“And…”
“I said I was sorry, and I cried. But I spoke. I finally said something. She held me and I didn’t stop talking for over an hour to someone who was a complete stranger. I talked about my family, I talked about o
ur baby and I talked about the Nazi pig that had murdered her. She sat and listened whilst stroking my hair, just as my mother had done when I was a small child. I told her about my hatred and demons and I told her about the love I have for you” She was quite serious now. “I do love you, you know, but I will let you go. When we have finished my search, you must go to her. She is delightful and perfect for you”
“Are you sure…?”
“Yes, Jacques. I have been blessed to have you in my life and to be part of yours. In spite of all I have done you have been there for me, but you belong to Honeysuckle,” she said it as a simple matter of fact, then added, “but I still have you for now and will use you.“ Her eyes displayed the mischief that had once been there all the time and had briefly returned whilst they were in Paris.
Jacques leaned across and hugged her, wondering how someone who could be so sweet could also be such a devastating force majeure.
Yvette continued, “Miss Perfect stayed for two days. Caused mayhem. Every male doctor in the place fell madly in love with her along with every patient, and I include myself in that.” She tipped her head to one side to emphasize the point. “She is like an English Sophie.” Her thoughts obviously turned to her great friend, and absently she added, “I wonder what happened to Sophie? We can‘t find any sign of her anywhere.”
“She is a survivor. Sophie will be fine,” said Jacques, praying it was true.
“So is little Honeysuckle.” Yvette’s thoughts had returned to Honeysuckle. “She told me that she would join us in the Resistance. She would have been unbelievable, what strength she possesses.” Admiration was written all over her face.
Jacques did not like the thought of Honeysuckle fighting as they had done. In his mind she was to be protected and put on a pedestal, but he understood what Yvette was saying. He could vividly remember Honeysuckle with the soldiers at Dunkirk, her compassion and her fortitude. Yes, she would have been remarkable.