“Were all UNRRA’s files sent to the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen after it closed?” Slim said.
“Yes, but that’s not the issue,” Gitta said, thoughtfully.
“What’s the issue then? Can’t I just compare the photo and birth certificate of the boy I’m trying to find against the information in the files?” Slim knew she sounded hopelessly naive, but she had to start at the most straightforward solution and then work from there. After all, she had dealt with the International Tracing Service during her stint at the Red Cross. They had records on almost all the missing and displaced.
“Besides the fact there were 200,000 children taken, not all were placed for adoption. The ones who didn’t cut it were sent to Auschwitz; others used for experiments. Others were kidnapped off the trains to the death camps by Polish railway workers. Finding him will be like finding a needle in a haystack,” Gitta said as she crossed her legs and stared out the window at the spires of Notre Dame Cathedral.
“But, you found Johann and Marie,” Slim persisted.
“They were an anomaly because they were twins. Anything could have happened to your boy. Perhaps, I should hook you up with my friend who was a translator for the RuSHA trial.”
“RuSHA trial? What was that?”
“It was the eighth of the twelve Nuremberg trials. The RuSHA trial dealt with the Nazi policies of systematic genocide. RuSHA was the Nazis’ race and resettlement office. The part of the trial you should look at is the one that dealt with the Lebensborn Society. That’s where you should start.”
“Lebensborn? What’s that?” Slim seemed awash in a mass of terms and acronyms.
“Lebensborn started as a Nazi baby farm where SS officers would impregnate willing Aryan maidens.” Seeing Slim’s look, Gitta added archly, “I kid you not. When you have thousands of men dying every day on the battlefield you need to replenish the stock. All the babies born from these unions had Heinrich Himmler as their godfather and were placed into the homes of fanatical Nazis.”
“What does the Lebensborn Society have to do with the kidnapped children from the East?” Slim asked, confused.
“They warehoused the children there until they were placed in their adoptive homes. A lot of the Lebensborn part of the trial dealt with the stolen children. My friend who was a translator on the trial might be of some help to you, but she’s in England,” Gitta said.
“This is turning into much more than I bargained for.” Slim yawned, “Sorry, I was up a bit last night with the baby.”
“You want my advice?” Gitta asked while writing down the name and phone number of her friend.
“Sure.”
“Let sleeping dogs lie. Odds are, and I hate to say it, the child is dead. If the child is not dead, he might be better off where he is now.”
Don Honeyman came in and handed Slim back a sleeping Tiny. “She’s like a little doll,” he said. Slim looked down at Tiny whose tiny lips were sucking the air. She needed to try at least to find out what happened to Karol. As a mother now, she couldn’t imagine what she’d do if her child were taken.
When Slim got home, she found Lena and Remy waiting for her. She put Tiny down for a nap in her bassinet and then motioned for them both to sit down. Lena started speaking at once while Remy struggled to translate. Since Remy's first language was German, then Romani, then Polish and then French, Slim often wondered in which language she processed thoughts. Each tongue had been learned out of necessity. German had been her mother tongue. She learned Romani after she married into a Gypsy clan, then Polish in Auschwitz and French in a displaced person camp. Her Polish was sufficient at best, but not exactly fluent. Seeing her frustration at trying to keep up, Slim touched Lena’s hands and then said, “Remy, tell Lena to slow down.”
Lena nodded and then started again.
“She says, her tickets for Chicago have finally come. She is leaving in exactly one month.”
“I thought Lena said she was leaving in six weeks.”
“Apparently, it was moved up,” Remy said, shrugging. “The visas came through more quickly than expected.”
Slim nodded and then said, “Tell Lena that I have a question about Karol’s birth certificate.” As Remy translated, she saw Lena’s face become guarded.
“Ask her where on the certificate does it say who Karol’s father is.” Slim handed Lena the birth certificate. Lena stared blankly at it. Slim was getting impatient. How was she going to find Karol if she didn’t know his origins? She was about to tell Lena that she needed to let go of the case when the woman looked up at Slim and spoke.
“Lena says Karol has no father,” Remy said.
The story came out piecemeal. Karol was a product of rape by a farmhand.
✽✽✽
1942 — Farm outside of Zwierzyniec
Lena looked around for her father, who had disappeared, and started to panic. Karol was beside her, wide-eyed. She had bundled him up in a coat, two sweaters, his cap and two pairs of knitted socks, which cramped his feet inside his small boots. It was too warm for all those clothes, but Lena did not know where their destination was going to be. Further east, they would need the warm clothes.
She gripped two bundles she had packed days before. One contained only food: dried sausage, cheese, water, and bread, the other contained clothing. As they walked through the village, Lena searched for her father while Karol ran behind her clutching her coat, scared to let his mother go in the chaos. Men and women were running and yelling. They had been given only thirty minutes to gather their things and pack. Ethnic Germans who moved in days later would find half-eaten dinners on kitchen tables and dried spilled milk, the remnants of the people who once lived there.
“Tata! Tata!” Lena called.
Karol shook. The German soldiers frightened him. He watched as they shouted, kicked and jammed rifle butts into his neighbors. His mother had roughly yanked him away from the window when he first saw the fires. Still asleep, he tried to push her off. She lifted him up and began to dress him while he cried. She threw layer upon layer on him. At first, he tried to bat her away. She grabbed his fists together, looking him in the eyes. He saw her pleading look of fear, then he capitulated.
“We are going on a trip, an adventure, Karol,” she began.
“Where Mama? Will Grandfather come too?” He rubbed his eyes and looked around for his grandfather.
“We must stay together. Whatever happens, we must stay together. Promise me, Karol.” Lena took his chin in her hands and kissed him quickly.
“I promise Mama.” Karol dropped his soldier.
✽✽✽
1950 — Paris
Slim looked at Lena who folded the birth certificate and handed it back to her. “So what happened next? How were you separated?”
“We were brought to the square in Zwierzyniec, and there he was taken from me,” Lena said to Remy.
“Who took him from you?” Slim persisted.
“The Germans took all the children. They sorted them.” Remy stumbled over the word sorted.
“What does she mean, ‘sorted’?” Slim could not understand what Lena was telling her.
Remy relayed this and then clarified, “The children who were blonde and blue-eyed were put in a camp in Zwierzyniec.”
“What happened to the others?” Slim asked.
Lena looked away and then whispered to Remy, “They were put on trains to Auschwitz.”
“Is she sure of his placement in the camp in Zwierzyniec?” Slim was growing tired and, if she continued with this case, she needed something concrete to prove that Karol did not wind up gassed.
“A nurse told her that Karol was going to a children’s home and then would be adopted by a German family,” Remy replied.
“Why would the nurse tell her that?” Why would a German nurse reveal to Lena where Karol was going? It made no sense to Slim.
“Lena gave her a watch, a gold one.” Lena looked down.
Slim pointed to the torn photo
Lena had given her and asked, “This watch on this woman’s wrist was yours?”
Lena nodded. Slim paused and took stock of her client. Lena looked to be in her late twenties; her white blonde hair styled in a short bob. Her clothes were nondescript: a black dress with a white collar. The sleeves were too long. Slim figured it was to hide the numbers tattooed on her forearm. Survivors were sometimes looked on suspiciously by those who had been immune to the camps. Those people wondered why the Jews and others had been led like lambs to the slaughter and didn’t fight back. Others wondered what the survivors had done to stay alive. Lena obviously didn’t want to call attention to herself and kept herself covered.
Her shoes, while polished, were worn. Lena, a farmer’s daughter, conceived a child from rape; her life had been anything but smooth. So where did she get a gold watch to trade for information?
“Ask Lena where she got the gold watch from,” Slim said sharply to Remy. Nothing was adding up here.
Lena met Slim’s eyes and began to speak, “It was given to her by a woman for whom she worked. She was a maid for a Jewish family in Zwierzyniec from the time she was thirteen, the Rosenbergs.”
Was it stolen, Slim wondered. Lena seemed to know what Slim was thinking.
“She says she didn’t steal it; it was given to her.”
Slim was not so sure about that, but how Lena had gotten the watch did not matter. What mattered was that Lena had used the watch to bribe a nurse who may have worked for the Lebensborn homes and now Slim her first real clue in the case. To find out more about Lebensborn, she needed to go to England to speak with Gitta’s friend, the translator for the RuSHA Nuremburg Trial. Lena looked at Slim expectantly who said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
Slim found Marlene Dietrich at the bar that night. Her latest film, Stage Fright, directed by none other than Alfred Hitchcock, had opened to mixed reviews. Marlene had been spared the worst of the swipes from the critics, who considered the film’s patchwork story confusing at best. Still, Marlene wasn’t happy.
“I told Hitch the story made no sense,” she muttered to Françoise, who was trying to open the bar without Remy’s help.
“I didn’t think it was so bad, Marlene. You were positively over the top,” Slim said, giving her father’s old mistress (and her stand-in mother figure) a peck on the cheek.
“How is my goddaughter?” Marlene asked, brightening at the thought of Tiny.
Françoise gave Slim a look of surprise, “You made Marlene godmother, not me?”
“I didn’t make anyone godmother,” Slim said exasperatedly.
“If your father were alive he’d want me to be godmother,” Marlene grumbled as she held up her cigarette for her old lover, Françoise, to light.
Slim could never figure out if the two had stopped sleeping together. They seemed both entwined, and yet entirely separate.
“Where is Tiny?” Slim asked.
“Remy took her upstairs for her nap,” Françoise said.
“Look, Slim,” Françoise began and Slim knew what was coming.
“I know what you’re going to say, Françoise, and you’re right. I need a nanny.” Slim had been dreading this conversation with Françoise.
“It’s just that I need Remy to help me run the bar.”
Slim looked around at the space. It was hard to believe they packed in over a hundred women on some nights.
“I could be the nanny. My film career is over. I could be a hausfrau and take care of the baby,” Marlene said dramatically.
Slim looked at Marlene, clad in her red Cristobal Balenciaga dress, and tried to suppress a smile.
“What? I was a mother! In fact, I was a better mother to you than…” Marlene stopped when she saw Slim’s face fall. “Mausi, I didn’t mean…”
“It’s okay,” Slim said, “I wish my mother were around to help me, but the truth is she’s not. You’re my family, and I’m going to need all your help raising Tiny.”
“Okay, but who the hell is Tiny?” Marlene said, while Françoise reached over and hugged Slim.
“Of course, we’ll help you, but I need Remy back. Can you please find a nanny for Tiny?” Françoise pleaded.
“Did you name my goddaughter Tiny?” Marlene asked incredulously.
“No, Jack Warner’s daughter, Barbara, nicknamed her Tiny,” Slim said, grinning.
“You let a twelve-year-old name your daughter?” Marlene asked, rolling her eyes.
“It’s not her name; it’s a nickname. I’m waiting for Daniel to come back to name her,” Slim responded.
Françoise snickered, “Good luck with that.”
“Okay, enough! I just asked for some support here, not judgment.” Slim was ready to kill both of them.
“You could call her Marlene. That would make your father very happy.”
“Marlene, nothing is going to make my father happy. My father is dead. He drank himself to death.”
“Details, petty little details,” Marlene scoffed. “He once said to me, ‘If Slim ever has a daughter, give her your name, Marlene because you have been like a mother to her.’”
“Marlene, my father did not say that and you know it.” Slim could not help grinning.
“You could name her Françoise. That’s a good name,” Françoise said thoughtfully.
“No!” Marlene slammed her fist on the bar shouting, “Your father on his deathbed said to me, ‘If Slim has a little girl, I’d like her to be named MARLENE DIETRICH MORAN!’”
“Marlene, if you had given the performance you just did right now in Stage Fright, maybe you would’ve gotten better reviews,” Slim shouted back.
Françoise started howling with laughter. Just then Remy came down with Tiny and handed her to Slim.
“Why is everyone laughing?” she asked, puzzled.
Françoise gave her a towel and said, “Never you mind. Get cleaning. Juliette Greco is singing tonight.”
Chapter Three
1950 - London
Slim decided to take a ferry to England, mostly because she was unsure how Tiny would react to air travel. She was worried about the noise from the engines, and if the altitude could damage Tiny’s eardrums in some way.
The recent crash of a British Airways flight due to fog on the runway, which killed eighty out of eighty-three passengers, made her nervous as well.
Remy offered to come along to help Slim, but Slim knew Françoise had spared Remy as much as she could. So she decided to go it alone. It was time to get a proper nanny for the child instead of the piecemeal babysitting Slim had managed to sew together. Tiny needed a schedule and Slim needed to work.
Her grandmother’s chauffeur-cum-butler, Barnaby, picked her up in a 1929 Daimler Landaulette. The British government had finally stopped rationing petrol and clothes, but meat, sugar, and butter were still being doled out in limited quantities. Britain might have won the war, but its citizens were still paying for it.
The last time Slim had seen Barnaby, he showed his age. Gaunt with shaking hands, she had worried about him. Especially since her grandmother seemed so dependent upon him. He was the only man her grandmother had ever depended upon. Lady Johnson had been a bride during the last century and had lost her husband to tuberculosis two years after her marriage. She never remarried. No one in her estimation could hold a torch to Lord Hugh Johnson, who had died so young. In Lady Johnson’s mind, however, if her husband had lived, her life would have been different and perhaps her only child would not have tried to end her life.
Barnaby looked better than he had in years. His gray pallor was replaced by an almost healthy glow. He seemed to have a spring in his step when he got out of the automobile to open the door and help Slim with Tiny and her bags. Usually a man of limited expression, he smiled broadly when he saw Tiny.
“Welcome, Madame Cohen,” Barnaby said as he opened the door for both of them.
“What’s in the back seat, Barnaby?” Slim asked curiously, looking at a bassinet attached to the seat.
“Lady Johnson ordered a safety seat for the baby. You are supposed to strap her in, Madame Cohen,” he announced, looking skeptically at the yellow flowered bassinet in the back seat. He took the suitcases from the porter and placed them in the boot of the car.
After some wrangling with straps, they were on their way, although not very fast. Barnaby was under strict instructions from his employer to stay below the speed limit.
No sooner did they reach the stately townhouse in Kensington, then the door flung open and Lady Johnson bounded down the steps with great excitement.
“Let me have my great-granddaughter! Did you use the automobile safety seat? Did Barnaby drive recklessly? Where is she?”
Slim carefully took Tiny out of the bassinet and handed the just waking infant to her great-grandmother.
“Here you go, Gran. This is your great-granddaughter. Tiny meet your Gran,” Slim said, smiling at the two of them.
“Tiny? Her name is Tiny?” Lady Johnson asked incredulously.
Slim laughed, “No, I haven’t come up with a name for her yet.”
“Good Lord, then I’m naming her.” Lady Johnson walked into the house, leaving Slim behind.
The two of them had had a tempestuous relationship for years. Mostly because during Slim’s yearly visits to see her grandmother, Slim’s mother, ‘the drooling halfwit’ as her father had referred to her, was wheeled out to spend time with her. Slim hated those hours she had to spend with her uncommunicative mother, and her resentment grew over the years towards this silent figure slumped in a wheelchair. She was a constant reminder that Slim did not have a mother, and she grew angrier at her grandmother for continuing this farce. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, Slim had confronted her grandmother the previous year. There had been an understanding reached. If Slim wanted to visit her mother she could, but visits would no longer be forced upon her.
Slim’s relationship with Lady Johnson healed enough for her grandmother to come to the wedding and take a regular part in Slim’s life. She even accepted Slim marrying someone of the Jewish faith. Like most of her generation Lady Johnson was anti-Semitic, but after seeing the newsreels of the concentration camps, she did an abrupt turnabout. It had taken years for Slim to let her grandmother in. Seeing the joy in the grand dame’s face, it was worth it.
The Lost Boy Page 4