Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright

by Justine Saracen

  vacant space, and the SS combed through the barracks regularly looking for those no longer able to work. The feeble and infirm were promised recovery in the Jugendlager, but everyone knew the terrible truth.

  Now it was June, and the midday sun soothed even Katja’s depleted body. The twelve-hour labor was still killing the prisoners slowly, but both the Kapo and the SS guard seemed placated by the spring warmth and left off tormenting them.

  At day’s end, the women put their shoulders to the heavily laden cart and shoved it over the rusty track toward the camp. They unloaded the cuttings into the wood yard and were ordered to take up formation for the final roll call.

  Cecily still collapsed over the last pile of kindling. “I can’t,” she muttered. “I’ve got nothing left.”

  “You have to,” Katja insisted. “Come on, march next to me. I’ll hold you up. You can sleep as soon as the roll call is over.” She draped Cecily’s limp arm over her shoulder and took the first step, pulling her along.

  Throughout roll call, Katja held Cecily upright, calling out both her own number and Cecily’s to avoid delay, and soon they were back in their barracks. Cecily could no longer sit up without help, but Katja saw to it that she got her ration of soup and bread, and added half her own to Cecily’s bowl.

  Katja helped the exhausted woman up onto their platform and watched her until she slipped into unconsciousness. Only then did she allow herself to fall asleep.

  The disruption next to her awakened her, and she wrenched herself out of her own stupor. Two Kapos had dragged Cecily off the platform and were carrying her on a stretcher toward the door. Panicked, Katja clambered down from her place and staggered after them.

  “Don’t take her. She’s still strong. She can work!” she begged, but the absurdity of the claim was obvious. Cecily couldn’t even raise her head. She signaled “come here” and Katja leaned close to her face.

  Cecily’s whisper was barely audible, but Katja understood. “Stay alive for me. You must…tell what happened. Promise.”

  “I promise. I swear,” Katja said through tears. “I promise,” she mumbled again as the Kapos carried the stretcher through the door into the darkness.

  The roll-call block of one hundred was reconstituted the next morning, Katja noted with numb bitterness. A new woman stood next to her, though it was not yet clear what language she spoke. In recent weeks, the nationalities of the inmates were increasingly mixed as barracks were filled to bursting with new arrivals. Katja no longer cared. About anything.

  At the end of the second roll call, as the wood-collection detail was assigned, she didn’t hear her name. What did that mean? Where was she being assigned? Then, as the work columns began to march toward the camp exit, she heard, “Sommer, report to the commandant.”

  Had the Gestapo found out about the spying? Or was it simply her turn to be taken to the Jugendlager? She was too exhausted to be more than faintly alarmed and followed the SS Aufseherin to the commandant’s office.

  SS Hauptsturmführer Fritz Suhren grimaced in obvious annoyance as Katja was led in, and she dropped her eyes anxiously. Being the cause of annoyance could be fatal. The commandant cleared his throat. “Well, well, Fräulein Sommer,” forcing her to look up at him. His square Aryan face and blond hair reminded her briefly of Eric Prietschke, though the scowl was more severe.

  “Obviously you have a friend in a very high place. We have received a communication from the Führer himself requiring your release.”

  Katja stared in disbelief. Had she misheard? But no. The commandant opened a register and made a note in a column next to what appeared to be her name. Then he handed her a folded document. “Your release papers. You’ll need them at the gate. The Aufseherin will provide you with regular clothing and accompany you to your barracks to change. You are to leave Ravensbrück without delay. That will be all.”

  “Yes, sir,” Katja stammered, and as the commandant turned away in disinterest, she timidly backed out of the office. The Aufseherin met her outside. She already held a woolen dress bundled under her arm and thrust it against Katja’s chest as they walked.

  Once in her own barrack, she changed clothing, noting the way the wool dress hung on her. It smelled a little of its previous owner, whoever she was. A new arrival, perhaps, who would be assigned to replace her on the wood detail. An exchange of souls in purgatory.

  She left her prison rags on her bunk and followed the Aufseherin back out into the Lagerstrasse, still clutching the release documents. Bertha was approaching, presumably to collect the discarded clothing for renumbering. But she already carried a dress. As she came near, Bertha held up the dress to display its number and Katja halted as if struck. It was 111,202. Cecily’s number.

  Bertha smirked. Cecily Lefort had already been gassed.

  The Aufseherin propelled Katja forward, and with the image of Bertha’s gloating face imprinted on her mind, she stumbled toward the main portal.

  An SS man stepped out, his Mauser on a strap across his chest, and she mechanically held out her papers. He thumbed through them, then signaled for the gate to open.

  While the gate slowly rolled toward the side, Katja glanced back at the Aufseherin returning to the camp. The rows of barracks were quiet now. The work details had marched out and only a few women remained to clean the grounds. In the distance she could see the chimney of the crematorium. A thick, sooty column of smoke rose silently into the springtime sky.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Frederica had arrived before dawn and waited, staring at the high concrete walls that flanked the entrance to Ravensbrück. Between the walls was the gate, made of steel panels as high as she stood, with a row of openings at the top. In the predawn stillness, she heard the muffled sounds of a mass of people calling out numbers and assumed it was the roll call. It terrified her to stand before the entrance to the camp and know what went on inside. In the dull gray light, it seemed a vast, alien predator with a wide metallic mouth that threatened to swallow her the moment it opened. Only the knowledge that orders of Adolf Hitler protected her allowed her to stand so close.

  The waiting was excruciating. She’d handed over the Führer order to the guard upon arriving, assuming that a telephone call from headquarters had preceded her. But she had no way of knowing. She was realistic enough to appreciate the distance between Riefenstahl’s vague promise, “He said he’d order it for Thursday morning,” and the realities of favors granted when they had no strategic value.

  And so she waited. Waited while the external work teams marched out and climbed into trucks for their respective fields or factories. She scanned the passing faces and none was Katja, though the women’s heads were covered by headscarves and she couldn’t be sure. What if she had missed her? What if an angry commandant was countermanding the Führer order at that very moment?

  At eight fifteen the gate slid open again, its wheels rattling over the uneven ground, and this time it stopped after a meter’s width. Silence followed and Frederica stood white-knuckled for what seemed an eternity.

  Then a small, bent woman crept forward, clutching herself, as if her own arms could hold her up. She half stumbled past the wall of iron, her kerchief-covered head lowered, and even as the gate clanged shut behind her again, she stared at the ground.

  Frederica approached gently, as before an injured bird. “Katja? Is that you?”

  The creature glanced up, desolation in her expression, and burst into tears.

  “I was so afraid you wouldn’t come. That something had gone wrong.” Frederica rushed toward her and embraced her tightly, pulling off the hideous kerchief and exposing ragged short hair. “Oh, my God, what have they done to you? Oh, the bastards.”

  Katja stood passive and shaking in Frederica’s arms and rested her head on the soft shoulder. Frederica held her for several moments, then drew back. “Come, darling, get in the car so we can get out of here. Everything’s going to be all right now. I promise.”

  Katja nodded obedientl
y, still not speaking and, dreading the silence, Frederica chattered on. “Here, let me help you. It’s Leni Riefenstahl’s car, in case you’re wondering. I’ll tell you all about it later.” She opened the door and gently pressed Katja into the passenger side. Taking a blanket from the backseat, she folded it into a pillow, tucked it behind Katja, then closed the door. Returning to the driver’s side, she started the motor and pulled away from the camp.

  Still numb, Katja stared straight ahead through dull eyes and Frederica stopped talking. They had to stop several times at checkpoints, but Frederica presented all the necessary passes for the journey and they continued. After nearly twenty minutes, Frederica asked, “Are you hungry? I brought some sandwiches.”

  Katja shook her head.

  Five more minutes passed and Frederica could stand it no longer. “Please, talk to me, Katja. Tell me you recognize me. Tell me what you need.”

  Katja released a long breath and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then spoke in a monotone. “There was someone inside, a friend, who took care of me. Every day. Kept me going, waiting. This morning, the Kapos took her to the gas chambers. They were cremating her as I walked through the gates.”

  “Dear God,” Frederica whispered, and took Katja’s hand. “Listen, I want you to tell me everything…later, when you’re stronger. Don’t think about it now. Try to empty your mind and rest. Here, move the blanket around and lean against my shoulder. Sleep if you can, darling. You’re safe now. You’re free.”

  Katja did as she was told, resting her head against the welcoming shoulder, and grew drowsy. “Free,” she murmured. “Not yet. Just in a bigger prison.”

  *

  To Frederica’s relief, Katja had slept most of the way back to Berlin, exhaustion and the warmth of the car interior finally overcoming her trauma. When she awoke, as they turned the corner into the Richterstrasse, she was less morose.

  Frederica helped her up the steps into the apartment, and while warm water ran in the tub, she undressed her gently. She suppressed a gasp as she saw the signs of battering and starvation. “Look what those bastards did to you.” She ran a hand gently down Katja’s upper arm. “My poor darling. You’ve got sores on your hands and feet too. I’ll put some iodine on them after your bath.” She helped Katja into the warm bathtub and sat on the floor next to her.

  “Shall I shampoo your hair? All I have is bar soap, but it’s better than nothing.”

  Katja nodded consent.

  “When did they cut your hair?” Frederica knelt beside her on a towel and rubbed the block of soap over the matted hair until a thin film of foam emerged. Then she threaded her fingers into the hair and began to squeeze the soap through it.

  Katja closed her eyes. “They didn’t just cut it. They shaved all our heads the day we arrived. But after that, they left us alone and it grew back.” She leaned her head back into Frederica’s hands. “Tell me about Leni Riefenstahl. How did you convince her to help me?”

  Frederica spread the lather downward to wash the lines of soot from around Katja’s neck, wiping gently around the protruding bones of her shoulders and back.

  “It wasn’t easy. When I found out what happened to you, I tried to track her down. She had just gotten out of the hospital and had gone off for some kind of cure, but no one would tell me where. After more than a month, Peter found out she was in Kitzbühl with her mother, but I had to wait another month until she was back in Berlin. Then I went to her house and stood in her living room until she listened. I convinced her that German victory was looking more uncertain every day and she had to decide whether to act like a Nazi or a human being. If anyone deserved her help it was you, and that she owed it to you.”

  “That was audacious. I said the same about Rudi, but she claimed she had no influence.”

  “At first she said more or less the same thing, but I insisted that she was one of the few people that Hitler trusted. She could use that friendship at least once to rescue someone, and if it couldn’t be you—a faithful secretary and loyal German who’d lost a husband at Stalingrad—then she should be ashamed.”

  “You actually told Leni Riefenstahl to be ashamed? That took nerve.”

  “Yes, I even shocked myself.” Frederica poured warm water through Katja’s hair and lathered it again for a second wash. “And since the war-widow remark seemed to impress her, I mentioned your other virtues, such as the fact that you had at one time worked for Dr. Carl von Eicken, Hitler’s throat physician.”

  “For five minutes, maybe. I handed him his clipboard.”

  “She didn’t know that. Then, for good measure, I added what I’d heard from the nurses, that you hadn’t really said anything seditious, but only comforted a soldier with a head wound who was raving. Anyhow, cumulatively, it worked. I convinced her and she was able to persuade Hitler, on this one occasion, to intervene. It took her a few weeks to get an audience with him, but she got him to order the release and the travel permits that would allow me to drive there to get you in her car. However, there are two conditions.”

  “Oh, hell,” Katja moaned, closing her eyes. What?”

  “One, that you return to the Charité and resume your work as if nothing had ever happened.”

  “I suppose I’d do that anyhow. I need to work.”

  “And that you never talk with anyone about your time at Ravensbrück.”

  Katja grimaced. “What? What sort of a devil’s pact is that? What goes on there is hideous. The world has to know about it.”

  “The world will. All in good time. You can’t accuse the Nazis of anything now. They’d clap you back into Ravensbrück in a minute. You can tell me, though, and I’ll get the information out to Handel and the SOE, if it concerns them.”

  “It does. I haven’t even told you the worst yet. Aside from the hunger and brutality that everyone already knows about, the camps are for killing.”

  “I think people are beginning to grasp that. Stories filter back from the East.”

  “Not only in the East. In the German camps too. Anyone who comes in is automatically under a death sentence. Death takes place deliberately and randomly, and in a dozen different ways. At Ravensbrück they killed three women from the SOE.”

  Frederica’s hands fell still. “What? How do you know?”

  “I met them. They told me their names. Do you know Denise Bloch, Violette Szabo, and Cecily Lefort? The SOE parachuted them into France, but after only a couple of months, they were all captured.”

  “Dear God, yes, I know the names. I even met Cecily a few years ago. We trained together in 1938. You saw them at Ravensbrück?”

  “I was on a work crew with them when Violette and Denise were taken away and executed—and cremated right after. That’s the way they do it. I saw their prison dresses come back from the crematorium. Cecily held out longer. Maybe they wanted more information from her, but they let her die of starvation and exposure. She was still alive when they carried her out of my barracks, just a few hours before I was called to the commandant and released. She made me promise to get the news out to the world, and I swore I would. Then they killed her too. They were burning her just as they released me, as if it were some kind of grotesque exchange, her life for mine.”

  Frederica was somber. “No, darling, you can’t think of it that way. You were both victims, but they succeeded in murdering only one of you.” She chewed her lip for a moment in silence. “Handel has to know, of course.”

  “Yes, of course.” Katja stood up on uncertain legs and Frederica enveloped her in a towel.

  “Come to bed now. Our first concern is getting you back to health.”

  Katja followed obediently and let herself be dried and tucked in bed. “I feel so guilty, wanting to just fall asleep by your side and stay that way for weeks. But I know we’ve got work to do.”

  Frederica slid in beside her. “We’ll start doing it tomorrow. First get a good night’s sleep.”

  “So how’s Peter? Is he still all right?” Katja was becom
ing drowsy again.

  “He’s doing wonderfully. Wait till you hear—”

  “Frau Riefenstahl. I need to contact her, to thank her.”

  Frederica caressed her cheek. “No. She specifically said she didn’t want to hear from you and only wanted her car returned. She’s back to working on her film. Amazing, isn’t it? Total War and they still want to make movies.”

  Beginning to doze, Katja could hardly form a sentence. “So much to do. Want to work, have to stop them.”

  “We will. Now it’s certain.”

  “Why now? What’s changed?” She was mumbling now, half-unconscious.

  “Of course. Nobody told you at the camp, so you don’t know the good news. Yesterday, the Allies landed at Normandy.”

  PART FOUR

  APRIL 18, 1945

  BERLIN, GERMANY

  Chapter Thirty-two

  In one of the offices that had survived the partial bombing of the propaganda ministry in March, Frederica sat at her desk brooding on the deaths of the SOE agents. Cruel irony that they’d been captured while she, in the heart of the enemy country, had survived so many years. But it was perhaps precisely because of her location that she had become immune to suspicion. It had cost her a lot, but now she was part of the machinery of the Nazi government. She worked at the very right hand of the second most-powerful man in the Reich, and she read his every notation.

  But it had become harder to keep up the charade. The horrors and deprivations at Ravensbrück had etched a sort of solemnity into Katja’s face that she retained even now, nearly a year after her liberation. Seeing her day after day, Frederica felt protective and vengeful in equal measure. And what had become of Rudi, who had perhaps suffered even more?

  She forced her mind back to her typing. Yet another diary entry full of strategically vital information that she tried to memorize as she transcribed it. As soon as she got home, she would summarize whatever she was able to retain, then code it. She was getting quite good at it now.