Rose Under Fire

by Elizabeth E. Wein

  I visited Róża in Sweden at the beginning of the summer. She is in good health and so appears much changed from the desperately crippled Rabbit we knew at Ravensbrück. She does not seem to enjoy her work, but she is wholly obsessed with it. She still has not taken her high school diploma, which makes me a little sad as a teacher and her ‘camp mother’ – however, Róża is Róża.

  She says that Irina is an air hostess with Sabena! She married a Danish pilot just after the war ended. I think it was a marriage of convenience – it conveniently prevented her from being sent back to the Soviet Union. I cannot imagine Irina content for long to run up and down the aisle of an aircraft fetching pillows and mineral water for bankers and screen stars when she really ought to be designing aircraft, but at least she is travelling the world and is back in the air.

  I hope you are back in the air too, my dear Rose.

  Your loving friend,

  Lisette

  So it was Lisette who suggested me as a witness – Lisette, who knew better than anyone our duty to the living and the dead. But it was also Lisette who gave me the idea of going to Nuremberg to see Róża instead.

  I squeezed all my end-of-term exams into one week so that I could be in Nuremberg for the second week of the Doctors’ Trial, the week that the Rabbits would be there. The Olympia Review advanced me a small stipend for my hotel stay, the train from Edinburgh to London and the amazing boat-train from London to Paris (it is called the Golden Arrow). My Uncle Roger arranged an onward flight for me from Paris to Nuremberg with the US Air Force – not with Sabena, so I didn’t see Irina on board.

  Maybe you’ve seen the US Air Force moving pictures. Europe is in ruins. It is as visible from the air as it is from the ground. The only difference is that from the air you don’t see the grubby kids playing in the rubble and the old women gathering pieces of furniture to use as firewood and the piles of broken German planes stacked along the roadside waiting to be cleared. But from the air you really get the extent of it. Imagine if you took the train from Philadelphia to Boston, and the whole way, all through New Jersey and through New York City and on up through coastal Connecticut and Rhode Island, all the way to Boston, just imagine if the whole way every city that you went through was smashed to smithereens. That’s what it looks like. The entire East Coast turned into a demolition site.

  Weight, weight – a heavy conscience. We have heaped more destruction on the German cities than they have heaped on us, and that is the truth. Weight. Rubble to clear.

  Nuremberg – it is correctly Nürnberg in German – is one of the cities that we hit hard. But it got chosen for the International Military Tribunal for war crimes because the Palace of Justice is still standing, with a good secure prison still attached to it. And of course it is the symbolic centre for the birth of Nazism, so it seems like a good place to restore things. The IMT earlier this year was run by the Allied powers. The Doctors’ Trial is being run by the Americans – it’s actually called ‘United States of America v. Karl Brandt et al.’. The city of Nuremberg is still a wreck, and I was pretty much forbidden to go out of the hotel alone after I got there. I didn’t see anything of the medieval city the whole time I was there, although I think it would have made me sad if I did – ninety per cent of it is destroyed.

  I got driven to the train station to meet Róża. The GI who did the driving had a gun with him, so I felt pretty safe, but the medical expert from the tribunal, Dr Leo Alexander, came along too.

  ‘I don’t mind going by myself,’ I said.

  ‘Neither do I,’ he said, smiling through his moustache. ‘We’ll be braver together.’

  He’d been very kind to me ever since I arrived – warm but serious, an intense, earnest man impassioned with his job of interviewing and examining the Ravensbrück Rabbits and preparing their statements. That’s the right word for it – impassioned. He was born in Austria and emigrated to the US in 1934, I think because he was Jewish; you could still hear the German accent (or Austrian or whatever it is). He was eager to meet Róża, the first of the Rabbits to arrive. She’d taken the train all the way from Sweden – it crosses the Baltic Sea on a ferry, like the Golden Arrow. As far as I knew, Róża hadn’t been in another airplane since the snowy night in March 1945 when I flew her out of Germany.

  It took us a moment to recognise each other – even though Róża still had to walk with a supporting stick and she still had the crazed gleam in her eyes that Maddie and Bob had agreed on in the Ritz on VE Day. It was over a year and a half later and she still had it.

  She had to switch sides with her cane so she could shake hands.

  ‘I am pleased to meet you, Dr Alexander,’ she said in English.

  ‘The pleasure is mine, Miss Czajkowska,’ he answered.

  Róża held her cane hooked over her left arm, swinging it a little. She turned to me and held out her hand. She didn’t smile or rush to swallow me in a bear hug, but I felt everything in our clasped hands, even through our gloves.

  ‘Hello, Rose Justice,’ she said coolly.

  It’s no wonder I didn’t recognise her. When I’d first met her, when she was seventeen, she’d been so emaciated I’d thought she was about eleven. She wasn’t any taller now, still petite, but so curvy – she wasn’t carrying any extra weight, but there was nothing angular or pointy about her anywhere – all curves. She was incredibly lovely. I’d once seen a glimpse of that, but had never imagined I’d see her in her full glory. Her hair was exactly the colour of caramel, coppery gold and gleaming, not long, but stylishly permed and framing a face like a china doll’s. She had on a camel-hair coat and a grey wool suit, dull but smart – and showing off all the amazing curves.

  ‘Hello, Różyczka,’ I said – little Rosie.

  We were subdued in the car going back to the hotel. The bomb damage isn’t as obvious at night as it is in the daytime, but when you do notice it at night, it’s eerier. A dark row of empty windows with stars shining through them. A big pale heap you think is a snow bank until you get close enough to see it’s a pile of broken marble. A grey shadow like a naked torso crawling through the rubble in a vacant lot. By day you’d just see a scrap of newspaper fluttering aimlessly.

  ‘I didn’t think Germany would look like this,’ Róża said.

  ‘All of Europe looks like this!’ I exclaimed. ‘Haven’t you seen?’

  ‘Sweden doesn’t.’

  Sweden was neutral during the war, of course – no bombs dropped on it.

  Dr Alexander leaned back from the front seat. ‘You won’t mind spending time tomorrow going over your story in my office in the Palace of Justice, will you?’ he asked Róża. ‘I have the daunting task of interviewing all the young ladies appearing as witnesses. I must also make an examination of your injuries. But it would be appropriate to conduct the exam after the other four “Rabbits” arrive tomorrow, when you are all together. In the mean time we have only four days to prepare your statements, so I’d like to begin with yours tomorrow morning.’

  ‘All right,’ she answered softly.

  As we climbed out of the car in front of the hotel, she whispered to me, ‘Are you going to be a witness also, Rose?’

  ‘No, I’m going to be a reporter. I have to write a story for the magazine that published my Ravensbrück poems.’

  It was absolutely freezing – you felt like your breath was turning to ice when you talked. Róża didn’t say anything. And suddenly I felt cold not because of the winter night, but cold inside.

  The Róża I’d known at Ravensbrück had been a live wire of defiance and daring and desperate hope, the girl who taught me to curse like a sailor in five languages, who’d wisecracked instead of sobbed when she was told she was going to be executed the next day. Something was different. She seemed like a person who has been on a tear for a week and now has sobered up again.

  The Grand Hotel in Nuremberg was crawling with reporters and soldiers, but not with young curvy porcelain-complexioned girls, or even tall angular ones. In fact th
ere weren’t very many women there at all, because the US military had a half-hearted rule about not letting spouses come along, though some of the judges’ wives were there helping out. It wasn’t exactly like having French strangers grabbing kisses from any pretty girl on VE Day, but Róża and I caused heads to turn. People smiled and nodded politely and held open doors and grabbed Róża’s bag. People ushered us into the dining room, and though my meals were included in my board, I’d have never had to pay for them even if they weren’t, because people kept offering to buy us drinks and coffee and cigarettes.

  There was a buffet. I carried both our plates so Róża could walk, one hand gripping her cane and the other pointing to what she wanted. We’d hardly said anything to each other since we got out of the car, though we’d smiled and thanked our entourage of helpful suited and uniformed men. But when we sat down across from each other at the little table over steaming plates of bratwurst sausages and potatoes, and another plate piled with a mountain of gingerbread Lebkuchen which Róża had collected without my noticing, we both suddenly started to laugh.

  ‘I eat by myself most nights and everything is still rationed in Britain,’ I said. ‘I have one room and no kitchen, just the coal fire and a gas burner. Cheese on toast and bouillon cubes.’

  ‘I live in a boarding house. I have meals cooked for me!’ Róża said. ‘As good as this, most of the time, but still – here we are! You and me in Germany, eating like kings!’ She paused, and challenged in a low voice, ‘Bless this food, Rose.’

  This was more like the Róża I knew – everything she said heavy with hidden meaning. Lisette had always said a brief grace over our thin prison soup.

  I sat up straight and sang a grace from Girl Scout camp. Not loud, but I sang.

  ‘Evening is come, the board is spread –

  Thanks be to God, who gives us bread.

  Praise God for bread!’

  There was delighted laughter and a scattering of applause from the nearest tables around us. Róża ducked her head demurely, one hand shielding her face beneath the short, shining caramel waves of her permed hair, as though I’d embarrassed her.

  ‘You never taught us that one!’ she accused.

  ‘I forgot about it,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t think I ever felt thankful enough to sing that one. I never really felt thankful to get food there – just relieved.’

  ‘We are both ungrateful wretches,’ Róża said. ‘But praise God for bread anyway. Praise God for gingerbread!’

  It felt so strange to eat with her – to eat a real meal together. We had slept pressed against each other like sardines for six months. We had stood naked in the snow side by side for two hours because one of the female guards had lost a watch or something, and they made our entire barrack line up outside and take all our clothes off so they could hunt for it. But we’d never sat at a table together and eaten a decent meal, not even after we got out. It made us both self-conscious.

  ‘You’re making me think I have to stuff it in before you take it away from me,’ Róża accused.

  ‘I know.’ And of course we’d never stolen food from each other, ever, which made the sensation of covetous greed very weird. We’d both been reasonably well-fed for the past year and a half and now we were in a restaurant in a fancy hotel. It had never occurred to me that simply being with a fellow prisoner would make me feel like I was still in prison.

  We asked the hotel reception to fix it so we could share a room, which they were happy to do, because it freed up another room for the overflowing reporters and trial observers. When we got undressed for bed, Róża proudly showed off to me her Exhibit A legs.

  ‘I broke my right leg in the refugee centre in Belgium. This is the leg they took the bone samples from. It held for two and a half years in their camp and then it broke, just like that, a week after I got out. I wasn’t even doing anything – just carrying your soup across the gym hall for you.’

  I realised, suddenly, the notable difference about her – she’d stopped swearing.

  She peeled her thick wool hose down to her ankles. ‘See? Here, in my shin. The new scar is where they operated on it in Sweden. I have a steel rod in there now, holding everything together. I couldn’t stand up for four months!’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know how I lost you, Róża.’

  ‘Oh, well I do.’ She flung her hose on a chair. ‘You were crazy about that reporter. You forgot us the second you laid eyes on him.’

  ‘I wanted to tell him all your names! I wanted to tell him about the Rabbits, about the experiments! You spent six months drilling everybody’s names into my head – Karolina and Elodie got dragged off to be gassed yelling that we should tell the world about it, that’s what Irina told me, and Bob was the first reporter I ran into! It was like he’d dropped out of the sky. And then I wasn’t brave enough to tell him anything.’

  Róża laughed, not the old raucous cackle, but a soft, regretful sigh of a laugh. The ghost of a laugh. ‘That was us dropping out of the sky, not him. Remember? We’re the ones who crash-landed.’

  ‘I told the American Embassy your names,’ I said defensively.

  We turned out the lights. It was a little room with twin beds. We lay in the dark wide awake with the weight of where we were and what lay ahead of us pressing on us.

  ‘Rose?’ she said softly.

  ‘Yeah?’ I answered.

  ‘It is just as strange to know you are there, and to be warm and comfortable, as it is to eat with you.’

  ‘It really is.’

  ‘Tell me “The Subtle Briar” again,’ she asked.

  She knew I would still know it by heart.

  I whispered to her in the dark.

  ‘When you cut down the hybrid rose,

  its blackened stump below the graft

  spreads furtive fingers in the dirt.

  It claws at life, weaving a raft

  of suckering roots to pierce the earth.

  The first thin shoot is fierce and green,

  a pliant whip of furious briar

  splitting the soil, gulping the light.

  You hack it down. It skulks between

  the flagstones of the garden path

  to nurse a hungry spur in shade

  against the porch. With iron spade

  you dig and drag it from the gravel

  and toss it living on the fire.

  ‘It claws up towards the light again

  hidden from view, avoiding battle

  beyond the fence. Unnoticed, then,

  unloved, unfed, it clings and grows

  in the wild hedge. The subtle briar

  armours itself with desperate thorns

  and stubborn leaves – and struggling higher,

  unquenchable, it now adorns

  itself with blossom, till the stalk

  is crowned with beauty, papery white

  fine petals thin as chips of chalk

  or shaven bone, drinking the light.

  ‘Izabela, Aniela, Alicia, Eugenia,

  Stefania, Rozalia, Pelagia, Irena,

  Alfreda, Apolonia, Janina, Leonarda,

  Czeslava, Stanislava, Vladyslava, Barbara,

  Veronika, Vaclava, Bogumila, Anna,

  Genovefa, Helena, Jadviga, Joanna,

  Kazimiera, Ursula, Vojcziecha, Maria,

  Wanda, Leokadia, Krystyna, Zofia.

  ‘When you cut down the hybrid rose

  to cull and plough its tender bed,

  trust there is life beneath your blade:

  the suckering briar below the graft,

  the wildflower stock of strength and thorn

  whose subtle roots are never dead.’

  Róża gave a long sigh. Then she whispered, ‘Rose, I really miss you.’

  Róża spent most of Sunday telling her story to Dr Leo Alexander – we had supper with him that night afterwards, before the other Ravensbrück witnesses arrived. Everyone I met who was involved in the trial was friendly and straightforward, as though
we were at a conference. This was not quite what I was expecting, but I think it is a result of everything being pulled together at the last minute. And although I wasn’t one of Dr Alexander’s witnesses he was interested in me, because I am a writer and a medical student, which is a less advanced version of what he is.

  Róża told him at supper, ‘Rose could be a witness here. She has scars too.’

  He looked at me with sudden intense interest. ‘You do? An American witness?’

  I shook my head violently. ‘I wasn’t operated on. I was just thrashed because I wouldn’t work. So was everybody who didn’t work, or who did anything else they didn’t like. We’re a dime a dozen and nothing to do with a trial for medical staff.’

  ‘I hate to say it, but you’re right,’ Alexander agreed. ‘I’ll admit I’ve already rejected several so-called witnesses exactly like you.’ He turned his mild, smart gaze back to Róża. ‘You will likely have heard of the concept of genocide, a term coined by your countryman Raphael Lemkin, which the IMT used as a basis for their charges against the Nazi leaders? We are using a parallel concept in this trial: thanatology, the science of producing death. These men are being charged with murder. The charge is that their experimentation was designed to discover not how to heal, but ways to kill. Simply put, you’re a survivor of attempted murder. A punitive lashing, however ugly the scars may be, is, unfortunately, irrelevant.’

  ‘I couldn’t show off my scars anyway!’ I protested, taking refuge in being ridiculous to hide my cowardice. ‘What would I do, step on to the witness stand in a bathing suit? A two-piece!’

  ‘It would be sensational,’ Róża exclaimed.