Lilac Girls (27 page)

L
IFE WENT ON AS USUAL
after our release from the
Revier
—the brutal waking, the endless hours of
Appell,
and the most terrible gnawing hunger, our bosom companion. The only thing that interrupted this pattern was the terror that accompanied our
Blockova
reading the names of those in our block to be executed.

The procedure seldom varied. It was preceded by warnings from the prisoner-workers in the front office that the courier had arrived from Berlin with an order of execution and that the male guards who served as executioners had been approved for extra schnapps rations. Then Binz would order certain blocks locked down. Once the noon soup was delivered but before it was served, the
Blockova
would read the numbers of “the pieces to be called.” The unlucky ones prepared their things, and Binz and friends came to get them shortly. My reaction seldom varied either: The cold fear my name would be called out. The relief it was not. The terrible stabs of sadness watching a blockmate go through her final ritual.

The day the first executions of Rabbits were announced we waited, barely breathing, on the benches of the dining table, packed tight—Zuzanna on my right, Regina to my left. Those of us who'd been operated on had just graduated to eating at table, a big event, for it meant our soup no longer had to be brought to our bunks. There were many rumors that the commandant would schedule the Rabbits for execution, liquidate us to eliminate the evidence of the crime, but could we believe rumors? There was always a new one, like that the Americans were on their way to save us or that there would be steak in the soup.

“Attention,” Marzenka said as two Russian girls struggled the soup boiler into the block. “
Häftlings
with numbers called up will finish here, collect their things, and await further instruction.”

Marzenka pulled a square of paper from her jacket pocket and unfolded it, the crinkling of it the only sound in the room.

“Number 7649.”

To my left, Regina stiffened.

Marzenka read the names of three other Rabbits, all still recovering in the
Revier.

“No,” Zuzanna said. “There must be a mistake.”

I wrapped one arm around Regina.

“No hysterics,” Marzenka said.

How could this be happening?

I whispered in her ear, “We can fight this, Regina.”

She didn't answer, just placed her spoon in her bowl and handed it to Zuzanna. “I'd like you to have this,” she said.

Zuzanna took the bowl, water shining in her eyes. Such a gift!

Regina stood. “Janina, would you fix my hair?”

Janina nodded and we followed Regina to the bunk room, bringing her full bowl with us, since left unattended it could be stolen in seconds.

“Do you know the first thing Spartans condemned to death did before their executions?” Regina asked. “Had their hair styled.”

Janina pulled Regina's dirty kerchief off. Ordinarily, fixing one's hair was a punishable offense. The rule was hair must be kept back, tied with a regulation kerchief, but Binz relaxed the rules when a prisoner was about to die. Regina's hair had grown longish when she was recovering from her operation, thick and dark. Janina swept it back in the prettiest French twist. Someone from a top bunk handed down a hairpin she'd probably traded a bread ration for.

“Kasia, I want you to have my English phrase book,” Regina said. “Homework tonight is prepositions. And if you could get my
Troilus and Cressida
to my Freddie once all this is over…”

I nodded.

“I'm going to refuse the drink,” Regina said. We all knew a sedative drink was offered to those taken to the wall to make things easier for all. “Do you think I'll be brave enough to shout ‘Long live Poland'?”

I held her hand. “It doesn't matter—”

“It does, Kasia. You know they hate that.”

Prisoners faced death in different ways. Some cried and raged. Others grew quiet or prayed. Regina stood near her bunk and read us her favorite lines from
Troilus and Cressida,
rushing to fit in as much as possible before Binz arrived:

O brave Troilus! Look well upon him, niece: look you how his sword is bloodied, and his helm more hacked than Hector's, and how he looks, and how he goes! O admirable youth! He ne'er saw three and twenty.

As Regina read, we pinched her cheeks to bring color to them. A girl who worked in the kitchen had some beet juice, and Janina smoothed a bit of it on Regina's lips.

It wasn't five minutes before Binz and her guards burst into the block. Regina leaned close to me, book clutched at her chest.

“Tell everyone this happened,” she said.

“Hand it over,” Binz said. She snatched the book. “What are you so worried about? The commandant himself has said you are to be freed.”

Was that possible? Surely it was another lie.

Janina untied the string from her own waist and cinched it around Regina's, making her uniform look more like a real dress.

“Out, out,”
Binz said, jabbing at Regina with her rubber stick.

Regina limped to the door, her leg not yet fully healed. At the door, she handed her reading glasses to Zuzanna and turned to smile at us. She'd taken on a radiance, a new sort of glow, and there was high color in her cheeks.

Binz tossed the book to an
Aufseherin
and pushed Regina out to the road. Not one prisoner who watched Regina go could keep from crying. How brave she was. The name Regina means “queen,” and this was fitting, for she looked regal that day. If not for her uneven way of walking, Regina could have been a movie star or fashion model, standing tall and proud on her way down Beauty Road.

With heavy hearts, Zuzanna and I shared Regina's soup with Janina. How guilty we felt eating that, but she'd not meant for it to go to waste. We split the sweet little carrot, such a delicacy. I would get strong on Regina's soup and live to tell the world about it all.

Soon Zuzanna and I reported to the
Strickerei
to knit, but we listened all afternoon, hoping not to hear the shots. Maybe Binz was right, and the girls were being released? Sent to a subcamp?

Later that day we heard a truck drive toward the lake and four muffled shots, one after the other, and we prayed silently to ourselves, for praying was a punishable offense. Later, Anise told me she'd heard from the girls working in the kitchen, which was adjacent to the shooting wall, that Binz had taken all four of the Rabbits there for execution. One had to be carried, her wounds not healed enough for her leg to support her.

“We wept,” they told her, “when all four of them cried, ‘Long live Poland!' at the end.”

After that, I could no longer just be angry and not act. Would we be the next to go to the wall? Who would be left to tell the world? Even if it got me killed, I would launch my plan.

T
HAT
S
UNDAY, WHILE
Z
UZANNA
slept trying to shake a nasty case of dysentery, I loosened the boards above an upper bunk and shimmied up into what we called the Annex, an attic of sorts, where girls went to smoke cigarettes sometimes. With my bad leg, just getting up into the Annex was an ordeal. There was little light up there to see, and my eyes adjusted to the dark as I assembled my tools for the secret mission.

My first tries left puddles on the page, but I soon grew better at writing between the lines and wrote of the operations and the names of the Rabbits who'd been executed. Regina first, then Romana Sekula, Irena Poborcówna, Henryka Dembowska. It felt good to tell Papa about the firing squads and the operations and ask him to send word to everyone he could. By then seventy of us had been operated on. It would take many more letters to get Papa all the names. I asked him to send back a spool of red thread as a signal he had received and understood our secret letter.

T
HE NEXT MORNING WE WOKE
to a cold drizzle and lined up ten abreast at
Appell,
waiting for letter collection before we went to the
Strickerei
for work. I kept my letter dry under the sleeve of my jacket. As Marzenka came down my row to collect letters, I took it out and ran my finger over it. It was just a bit warped from where urine met paper. Would Marzenka see? The censors?

Marzenka stepped closer and stretched out her arm, her palm up. My hand shook as I placed the letter on her palm. A gasp caught in my throat as the letter slid off and fluttered toward the ground.

“Clumsy,” she said.

I lunged to catch it as it fell, but it ended up on its back in the mud.

“I'm not touching that,” Marzenka said.

I picked the letter up and wiped the mud off with the hem of my dress and handed it to her. “Please, Madame
Blockova.
”

She took it with two fingers and squinted one eye. “Why so worried about one little letter?” She held the letter up to the spotlight overhead.

I could barely breathe.

She handed it back. “You addressed it to the Lublin post office. Take it back—”

I kept my hands clasped behind me. “In care of Adalbert Kuzmerick. My father works there, Madame
Blockova.
”

“Oh,” Marzenka said. She slapped it onto her pile and moved on.

I wished that letter safe travels on its way.
Be careful with it, Marzenka. It's our only chance.

C
ome Christmas of 1943, morale among Ravensbrück staff hit a new low. Earlier that year German troops had fought hard at Stalingrad, despite being underclothed and underarmed, but in the end capitulated. We also faced increased Allied bombing in Berlin, but our troops retaliated in Great Britain, and we seized control of northern Italy and rescued Mussolini, who'd been arrested by the Italian military. So there were still things to celebrate.

As the war dragged on, though, life at Ravensbrück grew more difficult. Fresh transports arrived around the clock, loaded with infected prisoners from the Führer's conquered territories.

Without Halina the
Revier
was a madhouse, teeming with disease carriers from every country. There was little time to spend missing Fritz or Mutti
.
I stayed in my office most days, but the place had to be managed. The camp doctors in particular needed a break, and we received one in the form of an especially fine Yuletide celebration. Across Germany, citizens suffered with reduced rations, but the camp staff still enjoyed real coffee, salami, Polish vodka, and good champagne.

Our party began with a pageant. Binz and her guards shuffled into the canteen dressed as angels, in white satin robes tied at the waist with golden ropes. She'd even convinced me to wear one such outfit, which was good, because the bell sleeves covered the few cuts on my arms and helped me avoid embarrassing stares and questions. This cutting of mine was a phase, a typical tensional outlet, not surprising given the stress of my duties.

Binz and each angel on her staff wore a foil headpiece with a cross rising from the forehead and carried a tall pole topped with a gold-painted swastika that almost scraped the low ceiling. As they filed in, each lit a candle on the tree in the corner, which was fitted with candles on every branch and strewn with the usual silver tinsel threads. Then SS men entered, dressed as shepherds in costumes of robes and long headpieces made of shimmering blue material. Bringing up the rear of the procession was Commandant Suhren, our Father Christmas on stilts. He wore a long red felt robe trimmed with white fur and carried a rod in one hand. He tipped his pointy cap forward to enter the doorway.

“Who's been naughty or disobedient?” he shouted, a twinkle in his eye.

Soon Father Christmas threw down the rod and opened his sack of sweets. Where was he getting such treats in wartime? Beer, the chosen beverage of the group, flowed freely. Even Father Christmas had a mug.

When the new religion ushered in by national socialism first appeared, it had seemed strange, but one adjusted. According to the Führer, one could be a German or a Christian but not both. He suggested we be Christ
ourselves,
which seemed a practical solution.

Many German people resisted this change, but all members of the SS converted to this new religion. Gradually, religious aspects of Christmas were replaced with symbols of nationalistic pride, and we celebrated the winter solstice instead of Christ's birth. Soon even Father Christmas was replaced by Odin the Solstice Man. Mutti chafed at all this, for she was raised a devout Protestant and my father a Catholic, but eventually even Mutti had both a “People's Tree” topped with a Germanic sun wheel and a traditional Christmas tree. This new religion suited me, for it freed me from troublesome theological issues.

I sat alone and watched the angels and shepherds enjoy their dancing.

Commandant Suhren approached my table, his Kris Kringle pillow belly bouncing as he walked. “You're not eating, Fräulein Oberheuser.”

He slid his plate of meat and buttered potatoes onto the table.

I turned my face away from the smell of the bloody beef. “It's ‘doctor,' Herr Commandant.”

“You must keep your strength up. Meat has protein and iron, you know.” Why did it never occur to him not to lecture a doctor on nutrition?

“We're counting on you. I know it isn't easy with Fritz gone and Dr. Gebhardt off lecturing so much. And with the incident—”

Why did everyone refer to what happened with Halina as “the incident”? “I'm fine, Herr Commandant.” It was true. Chronic insomnia was common among concentration camp staffers.

As Suhren shook at least a jigger of salt onto his potatoes, Binz and her boyfriend Edmund kissed in the corner. It looked like an angel giving a shepherd mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Binz, recently promoted to deputy chief wardress at the camp, was not letting her new position disrupt her love life.

“I'd be better if we could manage the situation of the Rabbits, Commandant,” I said.

“I have a lot to deal with right now. Seventy subcamps, all with their own problems. Siemens complaining the prisoners are dying at their benches. Besides, my hands are tied on the Rabbits situation, Fräulein. Since Berlin slapped my wrist, I don't even receive reports about what's happening at my own camp. And Gebhardt doesn't communicate.”

Suhren had protested the sulfa operations, claiming he needed the Polish girls as workers. Gebhardt appealed to his friends in high places, and Suhren was overruled. He was forced to apologize to Gebhardt face-to-face, a humiliating blow to his ego by all indications.

“So what is the latest?” Suhren asked, rolling a potato with his fork. He'd seen it all from his office no doubt. Why did he need my version?

“Well, after the Rabbits marched in protest—”

“Marched? Half of them can't walk.”

“They were carried to the square and demanded to see Binz.”

“I heard some of this part.”

“They handed her their manifesto, demanded
in writing
a halt to future operations.”

“You're lucky it didn't incite a scuffle. So you operated anyway?”

“In the bunker this time. Couldn't use anesthesia down there but we needed the extra security. The whole camp has become very protective of them.”

“How can I help?”

“Berlin heard about the protest, and they are reviewing the situation. Gebhardt says there'll be no more Rabbits at the shooting wall until further notice.”

“So?”

Suhren watched Binz and Edmund in their corner. I was losing him.

“If we can't make the results of this experiment go away, we may be the ones left holding the sack. Fritz is gone. Gebhardt's traveling.”

That got his attention. “I can't overrule Gebhardt, I'm afraid. He speaks to Himmler himself every day.”

“Well, something must be done soon. If this leaks…”

Suhren waved that thought away. “Our security is near perfect. Only three escapes, and two of the escapees apprehended. Himmler himself complimented our censors. They do not allow leaks.”

This was a blatant falsehood. I'd heard all sorts of things got through our censors. Binz found evidence of this daily. A bottle of hair dye in a box of rolled oats. Antibiotics in a toothpaste tube.

“Besides, the surgeries were performed in secret with the patients blindfolded. None of them can identify you.”

“But—”

“Patience, my dear. I'll see to it the problem is addressed. Leave this to me.”

Suhren wandered off leaving his napkin wadded up on his plate, beef blood seeping into the linen. As Binz's chorus of misshapen angels gathered to sing a medley of German folk songs, I felt my first shiver of fear about it all. I knew too well that loose ends tend to unravel.