The German Midwife

by Mandy Robotham

  Without blonde, typically Aryan features or the heavy stature of some German women, it’s true that my looks were ambiguous and sometimes drew suspicion. I found it strange that people’s reactions were either put on hold or tempered by where they thought I belonged. I was me; I was Anke – the same person in front of them. Sad to say that in war there was little guesswork; Jews no less proud of their religion were forced to display it to the world, the crudely stitched yellow star to be used not as a talisman of luck or pride, but as a cosh to beat them with.

  ‘I’m going to visit my aunt,’ I said, producing my hospital identity card.

  ‘She hasn’t moved out yet?’ the soldier quizzed. ‘There are plenty of apartments over on the west side, where the Jews have moved out. She could get a nice place there, very posh I’m told.’

  ‘She’s old and, well, you know what old people are like,’ I laughed. ‘She’s very stubborn and won’t be persuaded, and the least I can do is visit her with some dinner.’

  ‘Sounds as stubborn as my grandmother. And what’s in the bag?’ He gestured with the butt of his rifle to the large satchel on my shoulder.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, as if the bag was an afterthought. ‘Typically, one of her leg ulcers is playing up and, as the nurse in the family, it falls to me to sort it out.’

  His face crinkled. It was a certainty that any mention of ulcers would stop a detailed search. He looked briefly into the bag, as if the contents themselves might be suppurating, and waved me on.

  ‘Good evening to you,’ I trilled over my shoulder.

  ‘Good evening, Fräulein. Don’t forget about the curfew.’ I felt the guards’ eyes follow me down the street and into the unknown quarter of humanity, and then laughter as their attention moved elsewhere. Relief quivered through me.

  In the city, there was no official ghetto as such, but Jewish families had been ordered out of their west side homes and businesses early on in the war, and herded into a small enclave in the north-east corner of the city, an area neatly marked out by the burnt-out synagogues of Kristallnacht. Thanks to a huge voluntary exodus of Jewish families since the grip of Nazism had taken hold, the Jewish population in Berlin wasn’t as high as in some German cities. Those with great foresight had moved entire countries to escape persecution. Others had fled Berlin after the fires of Kristallnacht but were still within reach of the net.

  In the past months we had heard of large transportations of Berlin Jews sent to live in newly created ghettos across the border in Poland, fenced and hemmed in, overcrowding and disease living side by side. It wasn’t common knowledge, but those with links to black market trade or letters filtered back the grim details. In just a few short years, the bright yellow star had become muted, and Berlin’s rainbow of cultures had smudged to a dull spectrum.

  I walked up the Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse with as much confidence as I could muster and – gauging that no uniforms or unknown men lurked who might be Gestapo – turned left and into the heart of the Jewish quarter. Minna’s one eye appeared through a slit in the door.

  ‘It’s me: Anke,’ I whispered.

  She opened and ushered me in, taking the pot and leading up to the first floor, where our clinic was waiting.

  As with the past months, the room was a mixture of old and young, the sick and the simply weary, who no longer had the right to access German welfare, and were forced to squeeze into an already overcrowded living area for some help. Ever efficient, Minna had sorted the line into those with the most pressing need first. As a nursing assistant up to the point when her skills suddenly became unnecessary to the Reich, she was a master of organisation. The pot went immediately onto a table in the impromptu kitchen, where the stew would be dished out to the hungriest children.

  I emptied the satchel and began organising the workstation. A bowl of clean water was waiting, alongside a tiny tablet of soap and a towel; it never ceased to amaze me that in such crowding and potential for dirt, the linen was always spotless. A pot of water was already boiling the scissors and instruments we might need for today’s variety of ailments, Minna’s mother at the helm.

  I had brought whatever I could ghost away from the hospital in the pockets of my uniform, which were mercifully deep. Each day for the past year, I had been careful not to overfill them, to take just one of everything so the store cupboard never looked raided: sterile dressings, antiseptic creams, needles and surgical thread, bandages and any amount of medicines not locked in the official cabinet. I was stealthy in my thievery.

  Did I ever think of it as stealing? Never. The Reich had abandoned its own people, good families who had worked hard through their lives, paid their taxes and deserved more than this filthy betrayal. It would be instant dismissal – and worse – if I were ever caught, but my own moral compass never wavered. Besides, folklore through history was littered with others happy to redistribute wealth. I was just one in a long line and, I suspected, one of many in this war too.

  Without wasting a moment, Minna guided the first patient to one of the two chairs, and we worked through the list of twenty or more. I took on the wounds that needed stitching, with Minna in charge of wound dressing, eking out the bandages to make them last longer. We spoke little to each other, working industriously. There were always one or two dog bites to disinfect and stitch, mainly in young men who had chanced a night raid on an allotment and been almost caught by the dogs, if not their guards. In winter, the ground hard with frost, they were forced to breach the walls of factories or warehouses, sprinting for their lives.

  The rest were chest infections, children mostly, their little ribs standing proud as I listened to their flimsy chests and the dusty wheeze within, a bare membrane of skin between the world and their own brittle skeleton. Minna took time grinding the precious antibiotic tablets into a fine powder, blending with water, and we spooned the mixture into the children’s mouths as if they were baby birds in the nest – one or two, depending how deep the rattle of their breath.

  At the very end came the old and the infirm, some of whom we could treat, others who simply needed a place to go and a friendly ear. Minna and I dispensed a good balm of sympathy and empathy, peering at sore toes and mysterious bruises, nodding together and pronouncing them well enough to go home. There was no other choice, but the act of taking the time to look was often medicine enough.

  As we finished, Minna’s mother was there with a cup of fresh tea. I’d never seen her without a kettle in her hand, thin beads of sweat just above her heavy brows, and a friendly smile despite the sad turn her life had taken, her husband lost in the violence of Kristallnacht.

  ‘Have you time to see Nadia?’ Minna said. ‘She’s just a few weeks off. I’m not sure the baby’s turned yet.’

  I glanced at my watch. ‘If we’re quick. The curfew is strict, and if I’m stopped my name will be taken.’

  She handed me a coat belonging to her sister, the yellow star already stitched on its sleeve. We walked in the gloom to a similar house two streets away. Minna seemed unaffected by hers, but I felt that yellow pulse like a beacon on my arm, fiery with meaning and the deep injustice of my own countrymen. Weren’t stars meant to shine brightly? This one, it seemed, could only lead to darkness.

  Nadia was on the second floor, in the far corner of a small room with her mattress curtained off by an old bed sheet. It was something nearing luxury, though, since only one family occupied this room, and she shared it with her mother, father and two younger brothers. Nadia was tight-lipped about the baby’s father, but the family’s suspicions leaned towards a German soldier, one who thought his superiority gave him the right to invade her innocence. It was only her family’s love that had overcome the shame and anger in equal measure.

  She sat up as I ducked under the curtain, clearly pleased to see me. Her belly rippled at the effort, causing her to laugh and wince at the same time.

  ‘Is this baby still doing gymnastics?’ I said.

  ‘It never stops. I hope it’s full of life – but
perhaps not quite so active when it comes out!’

  Nadia’s face was animated but pale; she was likely to be anaemic. I handed her mother a few iron tablets, and told her to make them last at least a week, with as much nettle soup as they could manage.

  ‘So, shall we see how this baby is doing?’ I dipped my head to hear the heartbeat, conscious that under my fingers the baby’s head was still nestled below Nadia’s ribs and not deep into her pelvis. In the past four weeks it hadn’t showed any signs of wanting to spin round.

  ‘The baby sounds lovely, pumping away,’ I said with a broad smile. She beamed back, delighted at growing such a bounteous baby. With Nadia’s blood pressure and urine normal, I said I would call again the next week, since we’d estimated a due date somewhere in the next three weeks.

  ‘Is the position a problem?’ Minna asked as we descended the stairs.

  ‘It’s difficult to tell,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t feel like a big baby, and plenty are born breech but it is a more difficult journey through. They either come smoothly, or there’s a problem that soon becomes an emergency. There’s no middle ground with breech babies.’

  ‘You know she won’t go to the hospital?’ Minna said.

  I feared as much. The Jewish Hospital was the only health centre open to Jews now, but it was also a collection point for the first transport to the ghettos out of Berlin. Word – and deep suspicion – had already circulated.

  ‘You know Nadia’s uncle was on the first transport out?’ Minna said, eyes bright in the gloom.

  ‘Yes. And I can’t say I blame her. But it would be better if she was at least nearer to the hospital. Can you talk to her?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  I made the curfew just in time, the same young lads at the sentry post.

  ‘Did she enjoy the stew, your aunt?’

  ‘She can’t get enough of that fake fish,’ I laughed, embroidering the lie. ‘You’d think it was a gourmet dish, the way she wolfs it down.’

  ‘Well, there’s no accounting for taste,’ one bantered. ‘Goodnight, Fräulein.’

  I turned and walked, not a saunter, but neither was I too quick, and I could feel their bored eyes upon me, weighing up the question as they stamped their toes against the cold.

  ‘Would you?’ one of them would say.

  ‘No, not for me, too dark, too much of a Jew’s look about her.’

  ‘Yeah, perhaps you’re right. You got a cigarette?’

  12

  Employment

  I left early the next morning, as the sun’s rays began their crawl up the mountain. Doubtless, the ever-efficient Sergeant Meier would alert Frau Grunders I had not absconded. The Berghof chauffeur, Daniel, was waiting, and as I moved into the car, Captain Stenz’s own black sedan drew up and he stepped out. On seeing me, he adopted a quizzical look.

  ‘Are you going somewhere, Fräulein Hoff?’ He stooped to peer through my open window. With Daniel by my side, his voice wasn’t confrontational, only curious. And perhaps tinged with a little regret?

  ‘Um, yes, I’m to help out a relative of Frau Goebbels. Fräulein Braun has given her consent.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said with wry smile, and then looking up. ‘Drive carefully, Daniel – we need Fräulein Hoff back safe and sound.’

  He pulled his long fingers from the car door, and they hovered somewhere around his pockets. As we drove off I cast a glance backwards – one of the Captain’s hands twitched and rose slightly in a semi-wave. I couldn’t help but be perplexed – and yet curl my lips into a smile.

  Beyond the gates, I felt a physical weight lift from the crown of my head, as if it had been clamped in a vice for weeks on end. Until then, I hadn’t appreciated the level of oppression; for all its beauty and isolation, the Berghof was an effective jail, and not just for me.

  We spiralled steadily down the road, and Daniel began to talk. He was an amiable man, middle-aged and content, grateful it seemed for the stability he had been given in this wartime of horrors. His son was in the Wehrmacht, and he hinted at the scars war had inflicted. I wondered how much this unreal world on the mountain could mask what was happening, although in the last month or so, I had been as oblivious as any. We drove through the town of Berchtesgaden and I eyed the shops covetously. It had been at least two years since I had browsed in a boutique, bought groceries, or even handled money for that matter. Just the chance to sit in a cafe and watch the world go by seemed like an unobtainable luxury.

  We moved through the well-to-do neighbourhood of the Berchtesgaden middle classes, comfortable behind thick fences of yew and pine. Christa was waiting as we swept up the Goebbels’ driveway and I was relieved an audience with the mistress wasn’t required. She hopped into the car eagerly and we made our escape.

  ‘Christa!’ I hugged her like a long-lost friend.

  ‘Fräulein Hoff, you look well!’ She beamed. ‘I’m so pleased to see you again. And they are clearly taking care of you.’

  She sat back and surveyed my form, which had filled out since I had seen her last. It wasn’t only my cheeks that had grown in the past months – my body had none of the natural curves it’d had in Berlin, but the rich food and lack of exercise and work meant I no longer looked a complete waif.

  ‘I know. I’m spending too much time sitting and not enough time doing,’ I said.

  ‘I thought there might be some change,’ she said, nodding towards the large bag sitting beside her. ‘I’ve been clearing out some more clothes, and I’ve brought needles and thread – I thought we might have some waiting time to adjust a few things for you.’

  We settled on benign conversation – I was desperate to know about the direction of the war, but Daniel’s allegiances were unknown, and like most chauffeurs I had encountered, he appeared to have acute hearing. We drove on through open countryside, seeing little evidence of troops or conflict, only the odd army truck here and there. Life seemed virtually unchanged down here too.

  Eventually, we came to a small village, turned off the main road running through it, and then into a short drive. The house was less grand than the Goebbels’, but still substantial, solid and detached, and banked on all three sides by a large, well-kept garden, which was in turn bordered by well-established trees. Two children were playing in the garden, along with a young woman, not obviously pregnant.

  A maid met us at the door and showed us to a room on the ground floor, then up to the bedroom of the mistress. I was surprised – no one had told me she was unwell and bed-bound, and I began to wonder what scenario I would be faced with. Frau Schmidt had been crying, that much was obvious. Her eyes were reddened bruises, sunken and dried out, and she barely lifted her head as we came into the room. The curtains were drawn and the air heavy with sorrow.

  It took only a few words to discover her distress; Sonia Schmidt was grieving. On the expected day of her baby’s birth, she had received the telegram all loved ones dread – her husband of ten years killed in North Africa. Bravely, and with honours, but nonetheless dead. Faced with the prospect of him not only missing the arrival, but now the rest of the baby’s life as well, her body had shut down and labour was postponed. Her family had urged her into hospital, feeling sure the doctors could easily induce a third baby. But she was virtually catatonic, almost unable to function, and they had also withdrawn, mistaking her genuine sadness for difficult behaviour.

  ‘The children don’t know yet,’ she sobbed, ‘and I don’t know how I can tell them their papa will never be home. What will I tell this baby?’

  I felt nothing for her general predicament – her life seemed more than comfortable – but what she was enduring there and then would have been painful for any woman, any human, whatever her husband might have been capable of.

  The baby’s heartbeat was normal, it was moving well and deeply engaged in the pelvis. Sonia was also tightening; her abdomen hardened like an egg on the merest touch, but she was simply in denial. The physical side of childbirth was a powerful force, but
at times a woman’s psychology – her sheer will – could override even Mother Nature for a time. This mother simply didn’t want to hold her baby, not yet. Its mere presence, a creation of its father, would remind her so acutely of the loss.

  I helped her into the bath, remade her bed with clean sheets, and told her we would simply wait for this baby. There was no hurry: it was healthy and robust, a nice size, and she needed to feel well before she wanted to labour. I did nothing but give her permission to grieve, and then have a baby when she chose.

  ‘Are you sure?’ She looked at me through a mist of disbelief. ‘There’s nothing you need to do?’

  ‘Not right now. I’m sure your baby will come when you are both ready.’

  It took just two days. The wait felt much like a holiday; the weather was chilly but I wrapped myself in the coat Christa had brought for me, and we both walked and talked. There was no visible army presence save for a guard at the gate, and as we moved further from the house, Christa revealed a little of what she knew: information gleaned from talk in the Goebbels’ house, the shops in Berchtesgaden and the letters she received from her father.

  The war was going badly for Germany – the Allies had attacked Italy and were in a strong position, Stalingrad was now in Russian hands, and parts of Germany had been bombed in sustained attacks by British fighters, with huge losses on the ground and in the air. Leipzig had been virtually flattened and Berlin had been targeted many times. I felt so ignorant of what was happening in the real world and angry at our cocooned position up on high. I wondered how much of this was being discussed at the Berghof among the German high command, and how long it could remain a protected fortress. No wonder Fräulein Braun felt ignored. Hitler had an entire war on his mind, a war that we – Germany – might be losing.

  At the Schmidt house, the maids kept the two of us fed and comfortable, but their time was taken up with the children and the young governess. Christa’s adept hands fitted me out with several new dresses, and we revelled in the freedom of being able to talk, the ears of the Goebbels and the Berghof loyalists far away. We even dared to talk of life after the war, what we might do as women in perhaps a stronger position, who we might marry, and what our children could look like. Christa was so full of life – when the war began she’d been about to leave her job and become a student of fashion. Yet we both seemed to sense it would depend on our timing – when to climb down and away from that mountain and to safety.