Rose Under Fire

by Elizabeth E. Wein

  How Oberheuser would make the girls stand in line, hopping on one uninjured leg to get the filthy bandages changed on the other leg, and then instead of changing them she’d tell them to come back the next day.

  How sometimes, if you fought, they’d blindfold you for the operation, or wrap your head in a blanket.

  About the woman guard who’d said, ‘They must be made to suffer before they’re executed.’

  Fischer wouldn’t look at Jadviga. He couldn’t look at any of them. He’d done most of the operations himself, under Gebhardt’s instruction.

  By the time little Maria finished her testimony at the end of the day, it sounded like there wasn’t anyone breathing anywhere in the crowded, wire-webbed room. Maria is only a couple of years older than me. She’d had muscle peeled away from her leg right down to the bone – half her leg was gone. She looked very vulnerable up on the raised platform with her back to the court, in a stylish new dress but holding her skirt bunched up around her thighs, barefoot, barelegged. Dr Alexander did a juggling act with his notes and his microphone while he pointed out how they’d torn apart her leg, but all I could do was stare at the tendrils of hair curling at the nape of Maria’s bare neck, escaping from where her hair was elegantly pinned up.

  No wonder Róża’s backed out of this, was all I could think. Next to me, Róża didn’t stop gripping the sides of her chair.

  I followed her gaze to the defendants, tied up in their telephone wires. Only Fischer looked remotely unhappy, his forehead resting against his fist. The others just sat staring straight ahead as though they were made of stone.

  Then I looked around the room below us. There really weren’t very many women at all, and when I found one in the crowd, I’d stare at her for a moment, wondering who she was – someone’s secretary? A German doctor’s wife? A reporter or photographer?

  In front of us, a girl with straight dark hair clipped back in a flat pony tail with a metal barrette was looking back at me – waiting for me to meet her cool green gaze. Hers was the only face turned upwards towards the gallery and not towards the witness stand. It was Anna.

  She’d seen me and remembered me. She didn’t smile – it would have been weird for anyone to be smiling at that point, even in greeting. She gave me a brief, curt nod.

  I nodded back.

  She hesitated a moment. Then she rubbed her hands together deliberately, turning her palms over each other and rubbing the backs of her knuckles, briefly miming washing her hands. Just for a second. I knew exactly what she meant.

  Meet me in the washroom.

  When the day’s session was over, the last session before the Christmas recess, we gathered in one of the vast ornate lobbies, shaking hands with people and congratulating Dr Alexander on his moving presentation. Vladyslava and Jadviga and Maria and the other Maria got their photographs taken. Some of the photographers wanted to include me and Róża too, but I refused because I wasn’t a Rabbit. When Vladyslava insisted Róża join them, it was the perfect time for me to disappear for a few minutes.

  ‘Powder room,’ I told Róża. ‘Back in a minute! You all look beautiful – I hope they slap you on the front page of the New York Times!’

  Anna was waiting for me, leaning against the sink and smoking – exactly the way I’d left her in the Revier in Ravensbrück not quite two years ago.

  ‘Häftling Einundfünfzigtausendvierhundertachtundneunzig!’ she rapped out. Prisoner 51498!

  I don’t think I’ve ever been hit so hard by a handful of words.

  It was probably the first thing that came into her head when she saw me – an exclamation of surprise, not a command. She usually did call me by my number because she was supposed to. But to hear my number barked at me in German like that was more than my brain could react to sensibly. I snapped to attention, head up and staring straight ahead, arms straight at my sides.

  There was another woman in the room, an old woman sitting in the corner with a bundle of knitting, who stood up in alarm when I made my dramatic entrance. I realised she was the attendant for the ladies’ restroom, and I relaxed and kind of melted against the door frame, hanging on to it with one shaking hand as though I had missed my footing. The way a cat washes itself when you catch it doing something clumsy, pretending you never saw that.

  I recovered myself and startled Anna back by throwing my arms round her. She held the cigarette away and stiffly returned my ridiculously enthusiastic embrace with her other arm.

  ‘Calm down, kid. Sorry! It slipped out – like being slapped in the face, isn’t it? Gives you power.’

  She was still fluent enough in American slang to sound like a gangster. I guess she’d been chatting a lot with the soldiers. The attendant sat down and picked up her knitting again with a hmph, ignoring us now that we seemed to be friends.

  ‘Oh, Anna!’ I felt tearful. I’d really thought she was dead. She was playing her part in the trial with complete calm though, so I tried to keep my voice from shaking too. ‘What are you doing here, Anna?’

  ‘I’m a witness. You know what I did at Ravensbrück. I’m a good witness, because I’ve been on both sides of the fence. But I guess they won’t get to me till after Christmas now – it would spoil the show after those other girls.’

  She held out a packet of cigarettes to offer me one – Lucky Strike. She’d definitely been making friends with the American soldiers.

  ‘How long are you here?’ she asked casually.

  ‘Just this week. I go home on Sunday.’

  ‘To Pennsylvania?’

  ‘No, I live in Scotland. I’m in my second year at the University of Edinburgh.’

  ‘Studying what?’

  ‘Medicine.’

  Anna smiled, and sighed. ‘Well, good for you, Rose,’ she said. ‘Except for these trials I’m not really going anywhere with my life. I guess you noticed the guards.’ She nodded at the attendant. ‘I’m a witness here in Nuremberg, but at the Ravensbrück trial in Hamburg I’ll be one of the accused. The Americans are just borrowing me here. When they’re done with me, I get handed into the custody of the English.’

  ‘Anna!’ I exclaimed. ‘What are you accused of?’

  ‘Angel of Sleep, remember? Anaesthetising those kids before their terrible operations? And I knew what I was doing too. I knew. I didn’t have to do it. I made a lot of choices – good, bad, bad, good.’

  She struck a match and held it out to me. I leaned in to light my cigarette, then stood up straight and took a deep breath.

  ‘What will happen to you?’ I asked.

  She let out a puff of smoke before she answered. Finally she said slowly, ‘I’m not a murderer, but . . . you never know. This new “Crimes against Humanity” covers a lot of ground. And the British are running the Ravensbrück trial. Four of their special agents were murdered at Ravensbrück – you know, the spies, the ones everybody called the Parachutists. Some of the British prosecution team is here now, interviewing the Ravensbrück defendants.’ She gave me a curious look. ‘Aren’t you involved in the Ravensbrück trial too?’

  I shook my head.

  Anna shrugged. ‘Well, I’m expecting about ten years in prison. It’ll be interesting to see what Oberheuser gets. She was a witness at the International Military Tribunal before being put on trial here, so I feel like we have a lot in common.’

  ‘I guess it’d be good for you if she got acquitted.’

  Anna laughed bitterly. ‘I damn well hope she doesn’t get acquitted! Evil bitch.’ She took a long drag on her cigarette. ‘Nice to share with you, Rose. Seems a little strange.’

  Words cannot describe how strange it seemed. I just said, ‘I know. I have the same feeling eating dinner with Róża.’

  ‘She’s one of the Rabbits? Which one?’

  ‘The one who looks like a little china doll. The one who didn’t testify.’

  ‘You were pretty lucky to have the Rabbits taking care of you at Ravensbrück, you know.’

  ‘I know it,’ I said with my t
eeth clenched together, because I was in danger of bursting into tears if I tried to talk normally. ‘My whole transport was gassed. The Rabbits hid me.’

  ‘Oh –’ Anna closed her eyes for a moment. ‘What, all the French girls on our work crew?’ She was silent for a moment. ‘God. Those poor kids.’

  When she opened her eyes again I tried to shrug offhandedly, the way she had about going to prison, and couldn’t do it. I looked away, blinking. The attendant was knitting peacefully, oblivious to the intense conversation we were having – I suddenly realised that we were speaking English so she probably couldn’t understand us anyway.

  ‘How’d you get out, Anna?’ I asked.

  ‘I swapped my number for a dead woman’s – a Jehovah’s Witness. Lavender triangle, nobody ever pesters them. And I just kept moving from block to block. No one tries to count you when they think you’re dead! I was still there when the Russians turned up. I walked back to Berlin.’ Anna let out a long, smoke-filled breath. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to picture her anywhere but leaning against a porcelain washbasin and smoking.

  ‘Must be nice to be back in school,’ she went on. ‘I spent a year struggling to feed my miserable mother and my grandmother in one room, with no heat, and then the Yanks arrested me. It was kind of a relief. Mama’s having to pull her own weight now, and it’s about time too. Poor Mama.’ Another long drag. ‘Everybody got raped when the Soviets took Germany. Everybody. I turned up in Berlin not long after they got there, and Mama had stopped going out. She was letting her mother forage for both of them – this seventy-three-year-old woman out on the streets in the rubble, selling herself to Russian soldiers in exchange for bread. Gott im Himmel.’ Anna took a deep, shaking breath. ‘Makes Ravensbrück look civilised. I put a stop to that. Found work for Mama too, a good office job, work I should have taken, keeping accounts for a small building company that’s been taken over by the Soviets. I guess she’s all right now because she sends me packages.’

  ‘My gosh, Anna.’

  ‘I wonder what those American judges think,’ Anna said fiercely. ‘What are they thinking when those girls get up and tell them about what happened to them? The soldier boys are OK. They’ve seen things. They have some idea. But sometimes I really feel like everything is so fucking unfair. What gives those old men the right to guess what I’ve seen – what I’ve had to do? The right to judge me?’

  She stubbed out her cigarette in the sink. The attendant sighed, tutted and put down her knitting. She heaved herself to her feet again and pushed the ashtray that was sitting on the little dressing table right next to her a little closer to Anna, then turned on the tap and swooshed out the sink. Anna lit another cigarette.

  ‘How’d you make your mother go to work, when she was too scared to leave the house?’ I asked.

  ‘Forced her,’ Anna said. ‘I mean, I really forced her. Pulled her out the door, pushed her down the stairs. I’m a Kolonka – green triangle, red armband, I know how to bully people, remember?’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Every morning for a month, till she started coming along without a fight. I fought her and fought for her too. I wouldn’t let anyone touch her. She’s better now – she made friends with the woman who runs the canteen where she works, and they visit each other – you know, play cards, darn socks, gossip about their terrible daughters. She gets up and eats every day. And you have to, you know? You can’t just sit in a corner weeping or you’ll die.’

  She looked over at me suddenly. ‘You know, Rose. You’ve seen people do it. You’ve seen what happens.’

  I have seen it.

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ Anna shook her head. ‘Maybe I did the wrong thing. Maybe I was too hard on her. But I had to do something. I had to get her going.’

  ‘Anna – is there anything I can send you? Anything I can do for you?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Her face hardened in its cynical frown. ‘Bah. Bribe the judges?’ Then she smiled a little, hesitantly, like it was something she wasn’t used to doing. ‘Look, if I ever get out of prison, and we’re ever in the same place at the same time again, I wish you’d take me flying.’

  I stubbed out my own cigarette in the ashtray and held out my hand. She took it.

  ‘Deal,’ I said forcefully. ‘Scout’s honour. I will take you flying.’

  ‘I am looking forward to it already,’ Anna said warmly.

  4. Thrust

  There’s got to be power somewhere. The engine has to turn the propeller, and something has to start the engine. Someone has to lift the kite, maybe run with it. A bird has to beat its wings. Things don’t magically take off and fly just because it’s a little windy.

  I spent twenty minutes on the telephone at the reception desk in the hotel, driving everybody crazy because I had to make someone translate for me whenever an operator came on. But I finally got through to the Operations hut at the temporary European Air Transport airfield where I’d landed nearly a week ago. I knew they were doing supply runs all the time, keeping Nuremberg stocked for the lawyers and soldiers and newspapermen.

  ‘Yes, I know they’re not supposed to take me back to Paris till Monday, but is anyone going anywhere tomorrow? Anywhere? Taking reconnaissance pictures or something? I just wanted to come along for the flight. We don’t need to land –’

  ‘Let me put you on the line with a pilot, honey,’ the disembodied, gum-cracking American voice said kindly. ‘You’re Roger Justice’s niece, right? Yeah, we heard all about you. How’s the trial going?’ She laughed. Fortunately she didn’t give me time to try to answer – I think she was just being polite and didn’t really want to know. ‘I got somebody here you can talk to –’

  ‘Hello?’

  She’d handed the phone over. The voice was gruff.

  ‘Can’t get enough of joyriding in the C-47s, huh?’

  It was Chuck Brewster, who’d flown the plane from Paris. I’d told him my story about buzzing the Eiffel Tower on VE Day and I’m not sure he believed me – I’m sure he didn’t believe I’d been flying longer than he had, which is also true. He was a serious guy – neither one of us suggested he let me take over the controls for the fun of it – but we got along all right.

  ‘Well, you’re in luck, Miss Justice, because I’m doing a run down to Ronchi dei Legionari in Italy tomorrow morning to pick up Christmas dinner for this outfit.’

  I laughed. ‘Christmas dinner?’

  ‘Yep, a couple of hundred frozen turkeys straight from a farm in Connecticut, plus, would you believe it, a dozen Christmas trees and all the trimmings, waiting at the docks at Monfalcone for the GIs camping out here over the holidays. You can come along if you want – it’s about an hour and a half down, another hour and a half back. Plus a few hours there while they load her up. You can go to the beach!’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Nah, I’m serious! We’ll get someone to run you to the beach while we pack up. Right on the Adriatic Sea.’

  For a moment I couldn’t talk – I could hardly breathe.

  In my head I heard the voice of my murdered friend Karolina, whispering an impossible fantasy in my ear as we lay clutching each other for warmth on the filthy wooden bunks of Ravensbrück: Let’s go to the beach on the beautiful Adriatic Sea.

  ‘Hello? Hello?’ came Chuck’s voice. ‘You still there, Miss Justice? Bet you weren’t expecting to spend the first day of winter on the Adriatic, were you?’

  I let out my breath in a gasp. I didn’t cry.

  Instead I asked brazenly, ‘Can I bring a friend?’

  I shamed Róża into coming with me to the airfield.

  ‘You know the story I used to tell about how my boyfriend Nick was going to come and rescue us in a little plane – he’d land in the middle of the Lagerstrasse and we’d all fly away to the beach? You and I are going to fly to the beach today.’

  ‘It’s December!’

  ‘OK, no red bathing suits this time. That’ll have to wait till I can take you to the Conewago Grove Lake. Anyway, it d
oesn’t matter. We have to do it for Karolina.’

  I was brutal. I didn’t hit Róża. I didn’t touch her. But I was brutal.

  ‘Karolina was gassed instead of me, she took my place, she took my number, but she didn’t do it for me, Różyczka, and you know it. She did it for you. She did it so I could get you out of Ravensbrück and you could tell the world what they did to you – what they did to Karolina. She wasn’t as permanently damaged as you, but she still got a paper cone full of bacteria sewn into her leg and ended up so swollen with infection she couldn’t walk for eight months –’

  Róża was clenching her fists.

  ‘I know what they did to Karolina,’ I went on mercilessly. ‘I know exactly what they did to every single one of the Rabbits. It’s all been recorded by the people you work for, and maybe you haven’t read the specific reports, but I have, because they’re all part of Dr Alexander’s evidence. Karolina could have told the world herself. She’d be making newsreels about it – people would be using her work as evidence too! She could have left me to be gassed with the rest of my transport, and she’d have stood up there in front of that tribunal and showed everybody what happened. But you didn’t. And I’m not blaming you for that, but you are darned well flying to the beach with me. Because Karolina was going to and she’s dead and you’re coming along in her place.’

  By the time I’d finished, Róża was crouched in a heap on the floor of our room, bent over her knees with her face in her hands. All I could see of her were her round shoulders in their sensible grey wool and the short, fluffy waves of caramel-gold perm. But she wasn’t crying; her shoulders weren’t shaking. She was thinking.

  After a few seconds, when she was pretty sure I’d finished, she sat up and looked me in the eye.

  ‘The Ravensbrück trial in Hamburg’s not over yet,’ she said. ‘Tell the world yourself, Rose Justice! I know, you’ve got all these poems published and you’re doing a story for your magazine, big damn deal. You sit in your room all alone at your typewriter, with no one watching if it makes you cry, and you take it to the post office and no one even knows what you’re sending. How hard is that to do? I could do that. I’ve done that. My written testimony is part of the Lund files too, you know. NO. If you want me to go flying with you for Karolina, you will damn well go to Hamburg for Karolina.’