The Edelweiss Sisters: An epic, heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 novel

by Kate Hewitt

  It was strange not to feel it, like an emptiness inside her. She watched the Aufseherinnen screaming at them in the morning, spittle flying from their mouths, eyes bulging with fury, and thought, quite suddenly, I pity you.

  How utterly novel, how completely odd, to feel this way, after being bitter for so long, after letting anger be the fuel that fired her soul. And yet how freeing. It was as if a weight Birgit hadn’t even realized she’d been carrying fell away completely; as if the blindfold she hadn’t known she’d been wearing had disappeared, and she could see the world through an entirely different lens.

  She looked at the guards who patrolled the camps, who hefted their rifles and stood in their watchtowers, and thought, you are doing such evil, and that will leave scars far greater than the ones my own body bears.

  She thought of Betsie’s house, and she wished once again that she’d lived to inhabit it, make her dream a reality. Perhaps her sister Corrie still would.

  In February whispers started round the camp that some of the other camps in the east had already been liberated; there were rumors of marches being made, hundreds of kilometers through the snow, in order to flee the oncoming Soviets. Most of the prisoners had died along the way.

  “Is that what will happen to us?” Birgit wondered aloud one evening, as she and Lotte sat together.

  “Only God knows,” Lotte replied. “And I am content to leave it to Him.”

  “Perhaps your guard will save you,” Birgit said, with hope rather than accusation. She knew Lotte was still making visits to the guard who had, in his selfish way, saved both of their lives. She also knew her sister had no real choice in the matter. She only hoped Lotte was not being too damaged by it.

  “I don’t think so,” Lotte replied, her gaze downcast.

  “Do you…” Birgit hesitated. “Do you care for him, Lotte?”

  Lotte had looked up quickly, her expression wary before she realized Birgit meant the question honestly. Some women had become attached to their SS lovers, in spite of everything. She wouldn’t blame Lotte if she had. Perhaps he was kind to her, or at least kinder than some.

  “I care for him as I care for any human being,” Lotte replied slowly. “And I pity him, as one who is so broken and desperate.”

  “But no more?”

  “I do not love him the way a woman might love a man,” Lotte had said, and there was a flatness to her voice that Birgit had not heard before. “No, not that.” She paused to draw a breath. “But neither do I despise him. There is no room in my heart for anger any more.”

  “You sound just like Betsie,” Birgit said, experiencing a pang of grief that still took her by surprise. She’d barely known the woman, and yet she’d made such a difference.

  Lotte had smiled, for she’d come to know Betsie through the knitting brigade. “I’m glad of that,” she said simply, and they both smiled.

  In retrospect, Birgit thought she should have realized sooner. She spent her day next to Lotte knitting, her evenings pressed up next to her for warmth, huddled under a couple of thin blankets. Of course she should have realized, all things considered; other women in their barracks had probably realized before she had, because she simply hadn’t wanted to.

  It was one afternoon when they had finished their quota of socks—socks Birgit wondered if soldiers would ever even wear, considering the state of the war—that the realization came so suddenly and certainly upon her.

  Lotte had taken some scraps of wool and fashioned a little knitted edelweiss for each of them—khaki green for the stem, and white and mustard yellow for the flowers. The colors were slightly off, but Birgit recognized it all the same.

  “Do you remember?” Lotte asked with a faint smile as she twirled one of the little flowers between her fingers.

  “Of course I do.”

  “The Edelweiss Sisters. It seems such an age ago.” She rested one hand on her middle for a moment, and that was when Birgit noticed the swelling bump outlined by the coarse fabric of her dress that she should have seen long ago. Lotte was so painfully thin that it was glaringly obvious, and yet the baggy shapelessness of her dress had disguised it, at least a little. Birgit’s willful blindness had done the rest.

  “Lotte…” Something in her voice made her sister straighten and drop her hand. She’d given Birgit a small, sad smile before she looked away. “Does he know?” Birgit asked, still reeling.

  “No, although if he looked at me properly, I suppose he would be able to tell.” She spoke quietly, a simple, bleak statement of fact.

  “Mother of God.” Birgit shook her head slowly, dropping her voice to a whisper. “What will you… how can you…” A few women had had babies while in the camp, and they were always taken away from them immediately after birth. Some—usually the children of Jews or gypsies—were drowned in a barrel of water right outside the barracks; others, if blond and Aryan enough, were allowed to live, taken away to be adopted by “racially pure” couples.

  “I don’t know,” Lotte said simply. “I leave it to God.” She paused, giving Birgit a beseeching look. “This child is innocent, Birgit. Don’t blame him—or her—for anything.”

  “I don’t,” Birgit replied truthfully, and yet she was terrified for her sister. The war was nearly over, but the future remained so very uncertain. How could Lotte possibly give birth, have a baby, in a place like this? Would they even let her keep it? Or would they toss it aside like so much rubbish, because everyone was in a panic about the way the war would end? “How… how far along—”

  “I don’t know. My monthly courses had already stopped.” She let out a little laugh, the sound sorrowful. “It is a miracle that I was able to get in this state at all. But I’ve been able to feel her kick for a while now.” She gave Birgit an almost defiant look. “I know it’s a girl.”

  “Lotte, you must tell him,” Birgit urged, leaning forward as she spoke in a whisper. She still didn’t know the name of Lotte’s guard, had never wanted to know. “He may be able to help you, help the child. You must tell him, for your own life, for hers—”

  “And what if he doesn’t want to know?” Lotte countered. “What if he doesn’t want to help? It might make him angry.” She put a hand on her middle again, the gesture protective. “I won’t risk my child’s life, Birgit, not for my own comfort.”

  “But what about hers—”

  Lotte simply shook her head, and Birgit sat back, defeated and still incredulous. Oh God, she thought, why now? Why this? “You won’t be able to hide it from him for much longer,” she warned her. “I’m amazed he hasn’t already realized, considering—”

  Lotte shook her head again. “Sometimes I think he doesn’t see me at all. I’m just… a cipher to him. And, God willing, it won’t be much longer before the war ends, and then I won’t see him.”

  Yes, Birgit thought with growing despair, but what will happen then?

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Lotte

  April 1945

  The world was on fire. Lotte had thought that before—when Kristallnacht had burned her city, when Hitler had declared war on Poland, when she’d been bundled in the back of a truck to be taken to God only knew where, but now it really felt true; she could see—and feel—the flames.

  The world was on fire, and much of it was already crumbling to ash all around her. She felt as if she were in a burning building, the timbers cracking and falling around her, everything smoke and flame, and she had no way out.

  The guards of Ravensbrück were in a complete and violent panic. As she’d gone about the camp, trying to stay out of the way, she’d seen them running here and there, burying evidence, burning files, faces full of fear and fury. The Soviets were coming, and they were trying to hide the evidence of their evil, but there was too much, and it was too late.

  They’d also begun transporting prisoners; every day numbers were called out, and women clambered on to trucks. No one knew where they went, what happened to them.

  “Most likely to other camp
s,” Birgit had said. “Although who knows? Maybe they just shoot them in a field.”

  The world was on fire, and no one knew what to do but let it burn.

  “What will you do, when the war is over?” Oskar asked her one evening in early April. It was still frigid out, but a hint of spring taunted the air, the breath of a world to come, a warmth Lotte could not yet trust.

  Oskar had started talking to her more, after those first few hurried and awful encounters, when he’d flung her away from him as if disgusted. Lotte suspected he was—but with himself. He couldn’t bear his own actions, or the reminder she was of them. It made her pity him all the more, even as her body ached and throbbed from his treatment of it.

  Now he sat sideways on the bed, his back propped against the wall, studying the cigarette he smoked rather than her.

  Lotte pulled down her dress—he never asked her to take it off any more—to hide her shape. She had to be at least six months gone, although the baby seemed small. It amazed her that he hadn’t realized, when Birgit and so many others had. The women in her barracks had been, in turns, condemning and compassionate. Lotte recalled the times she’d been beaten without any real resentment; she understood their anger, the tangled mix of envy and derision.

  The first time had been after her third summons, and she’d returned to the barracks, exhausted, aching, only to have Marta, a woman from Dresden who had been sent to Ravensbrück for stealing ration cards, pounce on her.

  “You filthy slut! You lying whore!” she’d screamed as she’d gone at Lotte with her fists and nails. Lotte hadn’t even shielded herself; she’d been too tired, and she’d felt there was some weight to Marta’s accusations. Not every woman in the camp agreed to sleep with a guard, even those who had been propositioned. Did she think it was somehow nobler, that she did it for Birgit?

  Eventually the other women had pulled Marta off, and Lotte had lain on the floor, bleeding and bruised, while the Aufseherin had looked on, indifferent, even amused.

  “Never mind her,” Magda had whispered, as she’d used what she could to bandage Lotte’s cuts. “She’s just jealous.”

  “Jealous!” Lotte had shaken her head in disbelief at such a notion.

  “Don’t you think she’d sleep with a guard if one wanted her? Too bad she’s got a face like a prune.” Magda had smiled, but Lotte hadn’t been able to smile back. She’d felt sorry for Marta, just as she did for every other miserable unfortunate there.

  “If we fight each other, we’ll never survive,” she’d said wearily, and Magda nodded in understanding.

  “It’s not long now. We have to keep strong.”

  “Yes.” Although Lotte had been hearing that it wouldn’t be long for months already. How long would it really be?

  Now, as she regarded Oskar warily, she knew those words for truth. It wouldn’t be long at all; days, maybe weeks, and yet she still couldn’t imagine life after Ravensbrück, after war. “I don’t know what I will do after the war,” she answered him cautiously. “I suppose I can’t think that far ahead. I cannot imagine it.”

  “It won’t be long now, you know.”

  Lotte remained silent, knowing anything she said could make him angry. His emotions were like fireworks; the sudden explosion causing her to recoil in shock and pain. “I’ll most likely be arrested, you know. Maybe even killed. If the Soviets…” He let out a shuddering breath. “We were the heroes, at the start of this. Everyone cheered for us.” He shook his head in memory.

  “You were never heroes,” Lotte replied quietly, because she could not keep herself from it, and he looked up at her, his eyes blazing for one furious second. He raised his hand, and she braced herself for him to strike her, but then he dropped it suddenly and shook his head.

  “No, we weren’t,” he admitted on a sigh of defeat, and Lotte exhaled. He drew deeply on his cigarette. “I told you I was a bookkeeper before, didn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was going to train as an accountant. I joined the SS to organize their damned files. I wasn’t transferred here until ’43.”

  Around the same time she’d come, then. Lotte said nothing.

  “This isn’t who I am,” he said, looking up at her, his tone almost pleading, as if seeking some sort of absolution, and while Lotte knew she was willing to give it, she also knew it was not her forgiveness he needed. “When I first saw the gas chamber, I told my superior it wasn’t right,” he continued, his tone turning strident, almost petulant. “I told them if you’re going to do the thing, at least do it humanely.” He let out a sound like a groan. “I tried…” Still Lotte didn’t speak. There was nothing she could say to absolve his actions. If he wanted absolution, it had to come with true repentance.

  He ground out his cigarette. “What was I supposed to do?” he demanded, angry now, the shifts in mood like streaks of lightning. “Once you’re part of it, what do you do? You’re trapped. I didn’t know what they were capable of till I came here. I had no idea! No one did. Who could have imagined…?” He shook his head. “I was just a cog, a useless cog, no one told me anything. And when I discovered—tell me, what I should have done.” He glared at her in challenge, and Lotte gazed back evenly.

  “You tell me,” she said at last, and Oskar let out another groan as he dropped his head into his hands.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” he half moaned. “I admit, I never cared much about the Jews—greedy bastards, the lot of them—but I didn’t expect this.” He looked up at her through his fingers, his face stricken. “They’ll paint me as evil. Someone sadistic, someone who enjoyed this, who plotted it, but I wasn’t.” Still she said nothing. As far as guards went, he certainly wasn’t the worst. Did that absolve him? Forgiveness came freely with repentance, but there were still consequences on this earth. She did not know what his would be.

  He reached for another cigarette, his fingers trembling as he lit it. “Never mind,” he said as he drew deeply on it. “I suppose I deserve everything I’ll get.” He glanced at her now almost indifferently, the desperate anguish he’d felt before already hardening into something weary and resigned. “They are going to evacuate the camp soon, perhaps in another week or two. Only the ill ones will be left. The rest will march toward Mecklenburg.”

  Lotte was silent, absorbing the information. It really was almost over, then. “Mecklenburg,” she repeated slowly. She did not know where it was.

  “Away from Berlin and the Soviets. It’s about a hundred kilometers northwest of here.”

  “But no one will be able to walk that far. We’re all so weak.”

  He shrugged. “It’s either that or be left to your fate with the Soviets. Have you heard about what they’ve done in East Prussia? The women will never be the same.” He shook his head, his mouth twisting in condemnation of his enemy.

  The irony of this man talking to her of the horror of Soviets raping women was not lost on Lotte, yet it hardly mattered now. She hesitated, knowing she was balancing on a precipice, the abyss yawning far below her. She had no idea how Oskar would react to the most innocuous statements, never mind something of true import. And yet Birgit was right. For the sake of her child, she had to take the risk.

  “What will you do?” she asked after a moment.

  He shrugged again. “Get out. Go west. I’d rather surrender to the Americans than the Soviets, that much I know.”

  Save himself, then. She was not surprised, of course she wasn’t, yet she still felt strangely hurt, a disappointment that felt stupidly personal. “I’m pregnant,” she stated, feeling lightheaded with the risk of the admission.

  Oskar’s gaze narrowed, his cigarette clamped between two fingers. “You aren’t.”

  In answer Lotte stood up, smoothing the dress over her now-sizeable bump. The fact that he hadn’t noticed was, she knew, a sign of his utter and callous disregard for her, nothing else. Why had she told him? Yet she knew she’d had to take the chance.

  He was silent for a long moment, his face dang
erously expressionless, and after a few seconds Lotte sat down again, perched on the edge of a chair, faint with trepidation.

  “What do you want me to do?” he finally asked, and he sounded only weary.

  “Help me somehow,” Lotte answered honestly. “For the sake of your child.”

  He was silent for a long moment, staring at his cigarette once more. “You said you were a nun, before,” he remarked finally. “Where?”

  “Salzburg, in Austria. Nonnberg Abbey.”

  “And your family?”

  “My father was a clockmaker. He had a shop on Getreidegasse.” Not that he would know the place, but just saying the words out loud made longing ripple through her for the home and family she’d once known, the easy simplicity of the life she’d once had. It was all gone. Even if everyone in her family survived the war, it would never be the same.

  “My father was a day laborer from Breslau.” Oskar looked up with the glimmer of a wry smile, although his tone was strangely regretful. “If we’d met before the war, you would have been too good for me.”

  Lotte had nothing to say to that. She could not imagine meeting him in any other circumstances than they had. What had he been like before the war, before the atrocities here had twisted and corrupted him? The question alone saddened her. Perhaps, without the war, he would have been a decent man, a clerk for some innocuous firm. He would have married a local girl, had children, gone to the cinema, taken them for walks. For a few seconds she could imagine it all—a simple life, never lived.

  “I’ll do what I can,” he said at last, but she knew such a careless sentiment wasn’t enough.

  “There is my sister, too,” she told him. “The one you helped. We must stay together. We can’t lose each other now—”

  Irritation crossed his features, and he drew on his cigarette. “I told you, I’ll do what I can.”

  Lotte found out what that meant a week later, when, early one morning, the prisoners were called out, barracks by barracks, and told to form a single column heading towards the gates of the camp.