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

by Kate Hewitt

  “Hello, Papa,” she whispered. He stirred, opening his eyes, but there was no recognition there, no spark of life or remembrance. No wry glint, no rueful smile. Johanna sank onto the side of the bed, her head bowed as she clasped his thin, withered hand.

  Later, she and her mother drank bitter chicory coffee as they sat in the kitchen. The silence was unnerving—no planes, no bombs, no shouting, no more fear. Salzburg’s old town may have escaped the worst of the bombing, but much of the outskirts was nothing but a ruin, just like the rest of the country, the whole Reich. Millions of people were without food or homes, wandering about with dazed expressions on their faces. The war was finally over, but no one knew yet what, if anything, would take its place, or what to do now that it was.

  “You have no news of Birgit or Lotte?” Johanna asked. Her mother shook her head.

  “There has been nothing, all these years.”

  “And nothing of Franz or Werner.” Johanna choked down a swallow of the bitter coffee. “There’s no use hoping, I suppose.”

  “Nonsense, Johanna.” Her mother’s voice sounded strong. “Hope is all we have now. Hope and faith.”

  Johanna shook her head, fighting a weary despair that threatened to descend on her like a fog. “Can you really have faith, Mama? After all this?”

  “Of course.” Although her mother was old and haggard, her hair entirely gray, her face scored with lines, a strength shone out of her eyes. “There is nothing else. Surely this wretched war has shown us that.”

  “And if no one else comes back alive?”

  “So be it.” Hedwig squared her shoulders. “That does not change anything, in my mind.”

  “But…” Johanna let the word trail away like a breath. Perhaps her mother was right. Perhaps faith was what they needed, amidst all this brokenness. But Franz, oh Franz, and Lotte and Birgit and even Werner…

  What had happened to them all?

  Every day for the next few weeks Johanna went out looking for answers. The city was in tatters, everything confusion and chaos, but in the midst of it order was slowly, painstakingly being restored. Offices were set up to deal with accommodation, with displaced persons, with all that had been lost and needed to be found. But no matter which weary bureaucrat Johanna turned to, American or German, no one had any information about the people she loved. She put names on lists and looked at other ones—lists of those who had died, who were missing, who had been imprisoned, but she never came across the names of those she loved. Where were they?

  By early June she was feeling despondent. Her father continued to lie in bed as still as a corpse, and her mother continued to peel potatoes and cook with whatever meager ingredients she had, as if life could march on regardless, housework taking precedence. Together they’d tidied up the shop, boarded the windows as there was no glass to be had. And silently hoped.

  As much as Johanna told herself, with a harsh resolve, that Franz, Birgit, Lotte, and Werner were surely all dead, she still wanted answers. Proof. Perhaps then she could put her frail, determined hopes to rest.

  And then, in early June, a knock sounded at the side door. Johanna went downstairs, thinking it must be another beggar—there were so many these days—when she opened the door to a woman she recognized—but only just.

  “Birgit!”

  A smile split her skeletal face. “Yes, it’s me.”

  Her sister swayed on her feet as Johanna clasped her in her arms. She wore a motley mismatch of shabby clothes, a pair of men’s shoes, one sole flapping free. Her hair stuck out around her face in a ragged, tangled halo. Gently Johanna held her, gazing down into her face.

  “Lotte?” she asked, her voice breaking, and Birgit shook her head.

  “I don’t know. We were separated, right at the end. I had to march to Mecklenburg, and she was set free.”

  “Why?”

  “It doesn’t matter. When peace was declared, I was put into a camp for displaced persons. More camps! You’d think someone would realize that was the last thing we wanted.” Birgit let out a weary laugh. “Eventually I was able to speak to someone who gave me permission to return here. Everywhere I go I have always asked about Lotte, but everything is chaos. I’ve never heard a word.”

  “Perhaps, like you, she was put in one of these camps.” Now that Birgit was here, right in her arms, hope flared high and hot inside her. If Birgit, why not Lotte? Why not Franz and Werner, as well? She felt generous now, wanting everyone to survive. To live.

  “Johanna,” Birgit said quietly, stepping away from her embrace, “Lotte… she was expecting. She might have had the baby by now.”

  “Expecting?” Johanna drew back, shocked into silence, while Birgit explained how it had come to pass. Afterward, Johanna could only shake her head.

  “Poor, poor Lotte.”

  “She was so strong the whole time, Johanna.” Tears clung to Birgit’s lashes as she blinked them back. “Her faith was so strong. Have you asked up at the abbey about her?”

  “No, I didn’t even think to.” The abbey, on its lofty perch above the city, had not entered Johanna’s consciousness, strangely enough. Perhaps she had chosen not to think of it, the place that had, in its own way, taken the people she’d loved and offered them up like sacrifices. “What would they know?”

  “Who knows? We can hope it is something.”

  Slowly Johanna nodded. “I shall go there,” she promised, “but first you must see Mama.”

  Birgit’s face tensed. “And Papa?”

  “He’s… he’s still alive,” Johanna said, and her sister’s face fell.

  “Still?”

  “Come upstairs,” she urged. “You can see him as well as Mama. She will be so happy to see you.”

  Johanna didn’t manage to visit the abbey until the following week, in part because she doubted they would know anything. How could they? Besides, if Lotte were alive, she would come to Getreidegasse, or, if for some reason she didn’t or couldn’t, the abbey would send word, surely.

  In any case, there had been so much else to do—forms to be filled in, administrators to see, rations to queue for. Life was slowly stumbling back to at least a shadow of what it once had been, although Austria was as good as divided into two, with the Red Army having taken control of Vienna, and the British and American Allies controlling the western part of the country.

  A week after Birgit had knocked on the door of the house on Getreidegasse, she and Johanna walked up the Nonnbergstiege toward the abbey. It was a beautiful summer’s day, the sky a bright blue studded with fleecy clouds like cotton wool, the air warm and drowsy. A day, Johanna thought, for wandering along the Salzach or sipping a mélange coffee at a sidewalk café, soaking up the sunshine. Yet here they were, knocking on the old, weathered door of the abbey, searching yet again for news.

  Neither of them recognized the young, smiling nun who greeted them, and then left them to wait by the porter’s lodge.

  “The Mother Abbess will see you,” she said upon her return, and filled with a sudden trepidation, the sisters exchanged glances before they followed the young nun to the Mother Abbess’s study.

  She rose as they came into the room, her expression grave even though she smiled. She looked the same—a bit older, perhaps, but still serene.

  “I have no news of Sister Maria Josef,” she said without preamble. “That is, your sister, Lotte Eder. But—” She paused, and Birgit took a step forward, eager, urgent.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “A few weeks ago a child was left on our doorstep. A baby girl, only a few weeks old, by my reckoning, although I am not well versed in infants.” She smiled, although sorrow darkened her eyes. “She had nothing but a blanket to cover her, laid in a wooden crate. But someone had tucked a sprig of edelweiss, knit from wool, inside the blanket.” Birgit let out a small cry as the Mother Abbess opened a drawer and took out the knitted sprig. “Do you recognize this?”

  “Lotte knitted it,” Birgit said. Her voice sounded strangely distant
as she stared at the frayed and stained wool in disbelief. “At Ravensbrück. And she was… she was expecting a child. It wasn’t her fault—”

  The Mother Abbess held up one hand. “I am not here to blame. You believe this child to be your sister’s?”

  “It… it must be… but why… why didn’t she come to Getreidegasse?” A silence followed as they all acknowledged the truth. “She must be dead,” Birgit stated hollowly. “And someone else brought the baby here. She must have told them. Asked them to.”

  “May we see the child?” Johanna asked, her tone assiduously formal to hide her grief. She felt it like an incoming tide, stormy and wild, threatening to overwhelm her. Lotte, gone. And yet, her child. The Mother Abbess nodded and rang a bell.

  A few minutes later the young nun who had greeted them at the door entered the room, carrying a blanketed bundle. Johanna stared at it dumbly but Birgit ran to the nun and snatched the baby from her.

  “Johanna… Johanna, look, she’s just like Lotte!”

  Still dumbfounded, Johanna gazed down at the tiny, wizened face with the rosebud lips of her sister and the dark eyes of a stranger.

  “We should have taken her to the orphanage right away,” the Mother Abbess said. “But I was hoping someone might claim her.”

  “You thought she might be Lotte’s?” Johanna demanded, anger taking the place of the grief she was afraid to feel. “Why didn’t you write to us? Tell us—”

  “It was a suspicion only. And, in truth, there have been many other pressing needs to deal with.” The Mother Abbess gave the bundled baby in Birgit’s arms a tender, careworn smile. “If you are willing to take and care for her, then I am more than glad.”

  “Of course we will,” Birgit said fiercely, even as Johanna wondered how they would manage to care for a baby. They had nothing prepared, hardly any money, barely any food. And yet, of course there was no question of doing otherwise.

  “We have a few clothes and things we were able to provide for her,” the Mother Abbess said. “Sister Theresa will gather them together.”

  The next few weeks were ones of both joy and grief, as they made space in the house on Getreidegasse for its newest member. Hedwig was thrilled by the presence of her granddaughter, even as she accepted, with her usual stoic silence, the fact of her youngest daughter’s death. They named the baby Charlotte Maria, after Lotte, but somehow, after only a few days, they started calling her Mimi. It felt right, especially when she gave them her first gummy smile.

  As the weeks passed, fear coalesced into certainty. Franz had to be dead, and Werner, as well. Johanna had told Birgit about seeing Werner at Mauthausen, and she had wept, smiling through her tears.

  “I always knew he was a good man.”

  As the summer drew to a close, reality set in, new and strange as it was. They needed jobs; Johanna had started looking for a secretarial position, and was soon hired by the occupying American forces to type letters for the endless bureaucracy that now ruled the war-torn world.

  Then, in September, Birgit surprised them all by announcing she was traveling all the way to the Netherlands, to work with a woman she’d known through Ravensbrück, Corrie ten Boom. Both Hedwig and Johanna had stared at her in shock, while Birgit had smiled a bit apologetically, although her expression remained resolute.

  “I know it is a surprise, but her sister Betsie was kind to me at Ravensbrück, and the truth is she… she changed me. Corrie ten Boom is setting up a rehabilitation centre for survivors—not just prisoners, but guards, as well, and those who have been named as collaborators. So many people have been damaged by this war. I want to help.” Her expression firmed. “I’m going to help.”

  “But all that way—” Hedwig said faintly.

  “The center is in Bloemendaal. It won’t be forever. Betsie had a dream about a house where people could grow flowers—I know it sounds silly, but her sister Corrie has found the house, right down to the statues in the walls and the staircase! A miracle, truly. I’ve written her, and she’s written back. It is all arranged.” She laid a hand on top of her mother’s. “It won’t be forever, but this is what I need to do now. I want to help heal… everyone. Knit this country and this world back together, through love.”

  “What about Werner?” Johanna asked shakily. “If he comes back—”

  “He won’t come back,” Birgit stated quietly. She touched her chest. “I feel it in here. I know.”

  “Don’t say that.” If Werner wasn’t coming back, there surely wasn’t any hope for Franz, as a Jew. And yet still, despite everything, despite telling herself so many times he had to be dead, Johanna knew she still hoped. She had to.

  A week later Johanna accompanied Birgit to the train station. Hedwig had stayed home with Manfred and Mimi, but they’d said their farewells already, embracing tightly.

  “I’ll be back, Mama, I promise.”

  “And so you’d better,” Hedwig answered with an attempt at a smile.

  As Johanna waved her sister off onto the train, a fresh sorrow twisted inside her. Birgit had something to look forward to, to live for, but what about her? As thankful as she was for little Mimi’s presence in their lives, everything else felt like an ending. Her father’s health was continuing to fail, and her mother, despite her stolid strength, was, in some ways, a broken woman. Johanna’s job working for the occupying forces wouldn’t last forever, and what then? How would this world go on, change and grow and strengthen? What future could she look forward to, or offer to Mimi?

  These questions were still circling Johanna’s mind as she walked slowly back towards home, her steps slowing as she walked down Getreidegasse, as familiar as ever, devoid of the swastika banners that had bedecked it for seven years. She had taken the afternoon off from work to say goodbye to Birgit, but right then she almost wanted the busyness of typing and filing to distract her from this new, unwelcome grief and uncertainty. What could the future hold for any of them now? She had to believe something could be built out of the ruin, but she did not know what it was.

  Then, a voice, both ragged and sure.

  “Johanna.”

  She stilled, the hope that had continued to smolder like an ember in the ashes of her heart flaring suddenly and hotly to life. It couldn’t be… she was dreaming, fantasizing, and yet… It had to be…

  She looked up, and there he was, standing by the shopfront, under the warped and weathered sign that proclaimed Eder Clockmaking, with its sprig of white-and-yellow edelweiss.

  He was as tall and rangy as ever, although painfully thin. His hair was so short, little more than a stubbly scrub, and now held far more gray than brown. He wore ill-fitting clothes—a ragged peasant’s blouse and loose-fitting trousers tied with a bit of rope—and the gauntness of his face made her want to cry, even as her heart filled with joy.

  Franz.

  Slowly, each step like a dream, she walked towards him. “I thought… I thought you were dead—”

  “Sometimes I felt as if I was.”

  “But it’s been months! Where have you been?” Not that it mattered now, but Johanna’s mind was spinning. She could barely take the sight of him in, the actual reality of his being. He was alive. He was actually alive.

  “I was left in the camp when it was liberated,” Franz explained with a crooked smile she remembered so well. “I was ill… so ill. I couldn’t even walk… I barely knew my own name.” He shook his head, that old wryness glinting in his eyes. “When I was released from hospital, they put me in one of the camps for displaced persons. I’d told them I was from Vienna, but there has been no reliable communication from there, what with the Red Army. Eventually they discovered my family…” He shook his head slowly. “They’re all dead, even my cousins, aunts and uncle. Everyone. In Auschwitz.”

  “Oh, Franz…” She knew there was nothing more she could say.

  He nodded, accepting, stoic in the face of yet more grief. “It took months for them to process the paperwork, and then allow me to leave the camp so I c
ould come here. And so here I am.” He spread his hands wide and with a trembling laugh Johanna rushed into his arms.

  “I can’t believe it…” She felt too dazed either to weep or laugh. Franz’s arms closed around her, sharp and thin and wonderful.

  “I’m not the same,” he said quietly, like a warning, and Johanna pulled back to look fiercely up into his face.

  “Don’t you dare, Franz Weber! Don’t you dare. I won’t listen to any excuses now. I’ve waited and waited for you, and I’m practically an old woman!”

  Franz gave her a small smile, although there was a hauntedness to his gaunt features that she longed to wipe away. Perhaps time could. “You’re only thirty—”

  “Thirty-one. You will marry me as soon as possible,” she informed him with mock sternness, her voice trembling with emotion, “or else!”

  He laughed then, a rusty sound, and gathered her up into his arms. Johanna pressed against him, wrapping her arms even more tightly around him. “If you really do still want me?”

  “Of course I do! What a foolish question to ask.”

  “There are other questions I should have asked before,” Franz said soberly. “What of Birgit? Lotte?”

  Johanna shook her head, and then told him what she knew—Birgit, Lotte, Mimi.

  “A baby,” he marveled. “Something new and good out of all this.”

  “You don’t mind?” Johanna asked. “What with Birgit in Bloemendaal… I thought I—we, now—could raise her as our own.”

  “I’d be honored to.”

  She put her arms around him again, her heart so very full. “A family,” she said softly. Franz nodded, holding her tightly. “And what of Werner?” she asked after a moment, although somehow, like Birgit, she already knew.

  “Shot by a guard in the last days. He was trying to help some of us who were destined for the gas chamber to escape. He gave his life, Johanna. He was a much better and braver man than I ever realized.”