Magda's Daughter (27 page)

‘Who told you I was a doctor?' Ned asked him.

 ‘I did.' Helena shuddered when Ned applied a second coating of the cold antiseptic.

‘Why? We agreed –'

‘Josef is hardly going to ask you to practise brain surgery. And this really is nothing,' Helena snapped irritably as the wound stung painfully to life.

‘It's bruised, but it's a scrape more than a cut. It's not deep enough to need stitching,' Ned announced authoritatively.

‘It's bleeding a lot for a scrape,' Josef observed.

‘Any injury to the head will bleed profusely,' Ned said. ‘Pass me another pad of cotton wool and two plasters.'

Josef did as he asked. ‘Helena should sleep. I'll help you to get her upstairs.'

‘We can manage without your help, thank you.' Ned said managing to make it sound like an insult. ‘And Helena needs to rest, not sleep. She could have a mild concussion.'

‘I'm fine, really.' Helena looked at Anna, switching to Polish. ‘Thank you for saying what you did to my uncle.'

Anna sniffed. ‘If I were in your shoes I'd be only too happy to disown him.'

‘I rather think he has disowned me. But all the same, thank you.'

‘I would have said it to any man who was abusing a young girl in my house. I'll make you some mint tea. It's good for shock.' Anna went into the house.

Josef repacked the first aid kit. ‘I have to go to the bar. Anna's brother can't be trusted to manage things there for long.'

‘Josef, about my mother …' Helena began.

‘We'll talk later,' he said firmly, then disappeared into the bar.

‘The slightest dizziness, you tell me at once,' Ned instructed Helena.

‘How many times do I have to tell you that I really am fine?'

‘Two dozen more before I'll believe you. Come on, I'll help you up to our room. We'll take the chairs out on the landing. You can sit in the fresh air and drink the tea Anna is making.'

She remained where she was. ‘You didn't understand what my uncle said.'

‘No, I didn't,' Ned conceded, ‘but I know a drunk when I see one. He wasn't aware of his own name, let alone what he was shouting.'

‘He called Mama a whore.'

‘You and I both know that's ridiculous,' Ned countered. ‘Magdalena Janek was the most respectable, religious woman I've ever met.'

‘He also said I wasn't my mother's daughter.'

‘What?' Ned stood stock-still.

‘He told me to go and look in the mirror. It could be true, Ned. Mama and I were nothing alike …'

‘To say that you're not Magda's daughter is as ludicrous as calling your mother a whore,' Ned said. ‘Why would a woman, a slave labourer, struggle to keep a child that wasn't hers in wartime? And afterwards in the Displaced Persons' camp, where conditions were appalling. We both heard Magda talk about what it was like there. How hard it was to survive between food shortages, bombings …'

‘Perhaps she found me and couldn't bring herself to abandon me. Perhaps there weren't any orphanages …'

‘Remember what Bob Parsons told us? He said that his mother wouldn't have had any objections to him marrying Magda if she hadn't already had a child. Think about it, Helena. I can't come up with one good reason why Magda would have brought you up if you were someone else's.'

‘My mother had lost everyone she loved and everything she owned – husband, daughter, home, friends, country. She had nothing. Perhaps she just saw me lying on a bombsite, picked me up …'

‘People don't pick up children and adopt them the way they do stray dogs. Not in wartime,' Ned argued.

‘Yes they do.' A slim, silver-haired woman walked through the arch and joined them in the yard. ‘And if you'd lived through a war as I had, young man, you would know that some people do exactly that. Anna, for example.'

A loud crash from the doorway of the house made them all jump. Anna had dropped the tray carrying the mint tea. Teapot, cups, saucers and sugar bowl lay smashed on the ground in a welter of broken china, hot water and scattered leaves.

Ned rushed over and helped her pile the broken crockery back on to the tray.

‘I forbid you to talk to this woman,' Anna said sharply to Helena.

‘What did I ever do to you, Anna, to make you so angry with me, even after all these years?' the woman said.

‘You know what people around here think of you,' Anna replied.

‘Considering what happened to me after the war, how could I forget?' The woman calmly pulled out a stool and sat down.

‘I couldn't believe it when I saw you standing in the churchyard. I never thought you'd find the courage to come here again, not after all the trouble after the war.' Anna snatched the tray from Ned.

‘The trouble after the war was none of my making, Anna.'

‘What do you want here?'

‘To talk to Magda's daughter.' She smiled at Helena. ‘I knew you when you were a toddler. But I doubt you remember me, child.'

‘I don't,' Helena said in bewilderment.

‘You can have nothing to say to Helena or Ned John,' Anna declared.

‘Oh, but I do, Anna. Private things that were known only to Magda and me.'

‘Made-up things,' Anna said.

‘Not lies, Anna.' The woman kept her voice low and even. ‘Some people like to keep all the doings in this village secret, but I hear things, even in town. And when someone told me that Magdalena Janek had died and her daughter had brought her ashes back to the village to be buried with Adam, I wanted to pay my respects. Magda was a good friend to me. At one time, my only friend. I knew some people in the village wouldn't want me here, but I have as much right as anyone to mourn her, if not more.'

‘That doesn't mean that you are welcome in my house.' Anna gripped the tray so hard her knuckles turned white.

‘This is a public bar.'

‘Not this courtyard. It is part of my house. And the bar is men only.'

‘I don't need to be reminded that this house is now yours or that the bar is men only.' The woman opened her handbag and took out a pack of cigarettes.

‘What's going on?' Ned asked, regretting his lack of Polish more than ever.

Helena ignored him. ‘If you knew my mother, I would like to talk to you,' she said, taking advantage of the silence that had fallen between the two women.

‘I knew your mother, child. And if you want to talk to me, then we'll talk.' She glanced at Anna as though daring her to object. ‘But perhaps not here.'

‘I will talk to you first. Privately.' Anna carried the tray back into the house, and the woman followed her.

‘Helena –'

‘Quiet, Ned. They could return at any moment.'

They waited in silence for the women to re-emerge. It was the longest ten minutes of Helena's life. She hadn't known what to expect, but Anna was tight-lipped when she returned to the yard.

‘You can talk to this woman, but not in the courtyard,' Anna announced. ‘Take her up to your room. No one can see her there. And you?' she glared at the visitor. ‘You will remember what I said.'

‘I will, Anna.'

Ned carried the two comfortable chairs in their room out on to the landing. He gave one to the woman, the other to Helena, and sat on the doorstep between them.

‘Your English is very good,' he complimented the visitor, who had still made no attempt to introduce herself.

‘Like Magda, I was a slave labourer in Germany during the war. Afterwards I worked as a Russian-Polish-German interpreter. I couldn't speak English when the war ended but I soon learned. The Americans and the British had more black-market goods to offer than any of the other Allied soldiers.'

Anna walked up the stairs with another tray of tea. She set it on the floor next to Helena's chair.

‘That is for Helena,' she said. ‘She needs a hot drink.'

‘I can see that she has hurt herself,' the visitor replied in Polish.

‘She didn't hurt herself; Wiktor Niklas hit her.'

‘Then he hasn't changed.'

‘If by that you mean he still drinks, he does.'

‘Won't you sit with us, Anna?' the woman asked.

‘I have a bar to run.' But Anna hesitated.

‘As I said, I can only talk about how Magda and I were sent into Germany to work.'

‘You call what you did work?' Anna sneered.

‘What Anna doesn't want me to tell you,' the visitor said to Helena, ‘is the kind of work the Germans made me do during the war.' She watched Anna intently. ‘Magda and I were marched out of this village together and shipped out of Poland to Germany on the same train, but we ended up in different places. I was sent to an army brothel –'

‘And my mother?' Helena began to tremble. Whatever her mother had done during the war she'd had no choice. She was certain of that much.

‘Was sent to work in a children's home.'

‘You're sure?' Helena weakened in relief.

‘Absolutely certain. I was in the Displaced Persons' camp at the end of the war when the Americans brought in your mother, together with half-a-dozen other women and eighty children they'd found in the home.'

‘I'm sorry, I interrupted you,' Helena apologised.

‘It's understandable if Magda didn't tell you much about what had happened to her during the war.' The woman continued to watch Anna, who was lingering at the top of the stairs.

‘She told me hardly anything. Whenever she talked about the past it was usually about the good times here, in this village.'

‘The good times.' The woman shook her head sadly.

‘I'm sorry, you must have suffered dreadfully during the war,' Helena said sympathetically.

‘And not just during the war,' the woman answered. ‘When I saw what kind of place the Germans had put me in I tried to fight. For that, I was beaten and starved. After a month of fighting – and starving – I learned to do as I was told because I wanted to survive. After the war I lived in a Displaced Persons' camp for six months because I had no papers and no relatives left in Poland who would vouch for my identity. My friends didn't even answer the letters I sent them. I wouldn't be here now if one of my High School teachers who'd fought with the Free Polish Army hadn't recognised me. He organised papers, so I could return here, to my home village. I had hoped to be welcomed. But someone knew where I had been and how I had been used. My friends and such family as I had left, not blood relations, thought that I would have been better dead than disgraced.' She paused. ‘So-called friends slammed their doors in my face. I left and went into town. People there were kinder. I was able to find a job and a room.'

‘I didn't refuse to allow you into this house,' Anna protested.

‘Then we have different memories, Anna. You told me there was no room here for me.'

‘There wasn't.'

‘Not even a space on the floor where I could have slept on a blanket?' The landlady didn't answer. ‘When I was driven out of this village, you didn't lift a finger to help me, Anna.'

‘Weronika –'

‘Now that you have told these two young people my Christian name, would you like to tell them my surname?' She looked at Helena. ‘I am Weronika Janek. Adam Janek was my brother. Magda, Anna and I were close friends once.' Then she repeated it in English, for Ned's benefit.

Anna looked at Weronika for a moment before turning and walking down the stairs. Weronika's use of the past tense wasn't lost on anyone.

Chapter Fifteen

The metal ‘savers' on Anna's shoes rang on the wooden treads of the staircase. Helena followed the sound of her footfalls as she crossed to the back door of the bar, and started when she slammed it shut behind her.

Weronika sat back in her chair, tapped a cigarette from the pack she was holding, then held it up. ‘Do you mind?' she said in English.

‘No, please go ahead.' Helena took the tea Ned had poured for her, grateful that he hadn't pressed her for a translation of the conversation.

He handed a cup to Weronika, but she waved it aside. ‘No, thank you. Anna would choke if she knew that I was drinking her tea.'

‘I didn't know Adam Janek had a sister. My mother never mentioned you,' Helena said.

‘She made a new life for herself, so she had no reason to tell you about me. We can't always be looking to the past. And I came here to talk about Magda, not myself.' She took a lighter from her handbag and lit her cigarette. ‘As you are here, Magda obviously told you about this village. Did she also tell you about the massacre?'

‘Yes. And I have seen the memorial to the people who were killed. Mama told me that I was Adam Janek's daughter. But after seeing the inscription to Helena Janek on his grave I now know that he couldn't have been my father. What I don't know is who my father was, or why my mother gave me the identity of her dead daughter.'

Weronika gave her a sad smile. ‘I wish you were the first Helena Janek. It would be wonderful to have one relative alive in the world, especially a niece. Adam and I were very close. There were only fifteen months between us.'

‘Were you younger or older than him?'

‘Younger. He was the best big brother anyone could have had.' Weronika smiled at a happy memory, which she didn't share. ‘I wrote to Magda after I left the Displaced Persons' camp and returned here. She replied to my letters until she left for Britain to marry Bobby Parsons. I only received one letter from her afterwards. It was about three years later. She said that you were both doing well. She told me that she was managing a shop and had been able to rent a fine apartment from her employer. She also said that the schooling and opportunities for you were good. I hoped that she'd continued to do well for herself. I was fond of my sister-in-law and would have liked to have kept in touch with her. But she simply stopped answering my letters.' She flicked the ash from her cigarette into the ashtray Ned had fetched from the room. ‘I think there were too many unhappy memories between us for her to want to keep in contact.'

‘You're not the only one who hasn't any relatives. And it's hard to accept that I'm not Adam Janek's daughter after believing it for so long.' Helena's hand shook as she lifted the teacup to her lips, and Ned knew that cold logic and hard fact hadn't entirely persuaded her to relinquish the father her mother had given her.

‘I thought Magda would go crazy with grief after seeing Adam and Helena killed. But instead of being moved by your mother's tears, the soldiers beat her and me, forced us into the line of people they had chosen, then marched us out. On the road we met people who had been taken from other villages. There were a lot of young men and women our age. I suppose I might have been thought pretty at the time.' There wasn't a hint of boastfulness in the remark, only an underlying sadness.

‘Mama told me that it took two days for you to walk to the railway station in the town.'

‘It did, and your mother was in agony. We all thought that she was dying. She couldn't move her arm, she was dizzy, sick, and her head was bleeding. When she complained of headaches to the doctor in the Displaced Persons' camp, he told her that it was because her skull had been fractured. I think it probably happened when the soldiers beat her at the time they took us, although Magda told me that she was often whipped after we were separated.'

Helena dug her nails into the palm of her hand to stop herself from crying. She simply couldn't bear the thought of her mother defenceless and mistreated.

‘We slept in ditches at the side of the road the first night, and the station platform the second, before being loaded on to cattle wagons. We weren't given any food or water. All we'd had to drink was what we'd been able to scavenge from puddles. The children were screaming –'

‘Children?' Ned interrupted. ‘You had children with you?'

Weronika looked at Ned in surprise. ‘Didn't you know? That's why they took Magda. The Nazis saw the damp patches on her blouse, realised she'd been breast-feeding Helena, and made her feed the younger babies on the journey. Not that she refused. It was hard enough to march without suffering from engorged breasts and milk fever. She told me after the war that they sent her on to a children's home and used her as a wet-nurse.'

‘A wet-nurse?' Helena repeated in bewilderment. ‘I can understand the Germans taking people for slave labour, but why would they take children?'

‘We didn't know, not then. But no blonde, blue-eyed child was safe from the Nazis. Women in brown uniforms used to travel around the towns and villages. The Germans called them the Brown Sisters, but there was nothing sisterly about them. Sometimes, when soldiers came into a village, like they did here on the day of the massacre, the Brown Sisters would come with them. They would wait while the soldiers assembled the people, then they would examine the children and take the fair-haired ones.'

‘And the parents?' Ned asked, horrified by the thought of such wholesale kidnapping.

‘If they objected, they were shot, as Adam was when he refused to hand over Helena. His daughter followed him in looks. She was fair-haired and fair-skinned, unlike Magda.'

‘So you were the second fair-haired child your mother gave birth to,' Ned commented, in an effort to reassure Helena that Magda had been her mother.

‘But why did the Nazis take Polish children?' Helena persisted.

‘For Himmler's Lebensborn project.'

Josef climbed the stairs and joined them. ‘Anna sent me to ask if you want anything.'

‘You mean she sent you here to spy on us and listen to what I'm telling Helena.' Weronika corrected him. ‘You are Josef Dobrow?'

‘Yes.'

‘I knew your mother.'

‘You also know Anna and her penchant for wanting to know everyone's business.' Not in the least embarrassed at being found out, Josef sat on the top step.

‘Anna told you about me?' Weronika asked Josef.

‘Yes. I am pleased to meet you and sorry for the reception you received here at the end of the war.'

‘And you were how old?'

‘Six.'

‘I forgive you for not championing me.'

‘Lebensborn?' Ned said thoughtfully. ‘Life fountain – spring of life?'

‘You haven't heard of it?' Josef looked incredulous.

‘No,' Ned replied frankly.

‘As your country won the war, I thought you would have. There were many articles printed about it in the newspapers here after the war. But Poland was badly affected by what happened. And not just Poland. Norway, France, Ukraine – all the countries the Germans occupied. Himmler established the Lebensborn Foundation to safeguard, promote and protect what he called pure German blood. ‘

‘The mythical blond, blue-eyed Aryan, the master race,' Ned mused.

‘I researched the project,' Josef explained. ‘Initially, all Himmler did was set up luxury maternity hospitals for SS officers' wives. Later, he opened children's homes for the illegitimate offspring of the SS. If the mother or father didn't want them after they were born, they were put up for adoption by Party members, or brought up in one of the Lebensborn boarding schools or orphanages.

‘But the project didn't result in as many children as Himmler wanted, so he ordered the kidnap of “AryanË® children from countries occupied by the Nazis. He decreed that fair-haired children were throwbacks to their German ancestors who had been driven from their lands. The children were examined by Lebensborn doctors. If their Aryan credentials were medically established, they were given to Nazi Party members to bring up, or sent to Lebensborn institutions where they were trained to become active and useful Party members.

‘I discovered the kidnapped children were first taken to holding centres where they were examined by Nazi doctors. Their skulls, noses and bones were measured, to ensure they complied with the Aryan ideal. Their eyes were tested for colour – blue and green being the two most acceptable. Then, if they passed all the tests, they were sent to the Lebensborn homes. There, the older ones were taught German and Nazi doctrine before being placed in boarding schools or offered for adoption. The babies who were too young to know what was going on were passed on right away. The original identities of all the kidnapped children in the project were erased before they were given to their new families, so they became German in every way.'

‘Were there any children who didn't pass the racial tests?' Ned asked.

‘Our government believes thousands, but as there are so few records, and the ones that do exist have been doctored, it's impossible to verify the actual number,' Josef answered.

‘They were returned to their parents?' Helena said hopefully.

‘They were sent to concentration camps. There are eye-witness accounts of hundreds of them being gassed on arrival.' Josef spoke as though he were quoting from a textbook, but his eyes betrayed his pain.

‘And after the war?' Ned asked. ‘Were the ones who had been adopted returned?'

‘A few,' Josef answered. ‘Perhaps twenty thousand out of those who were taken. No one is really sure of the numbers. The government estimates that three hundred thousand children were taken. But as so many came from villages where all the adults were killed and the buildings burned to the ground, it's impossible to tell.'

‘That doesn't make it any less of a tragedy for every family who lost a child.' Weronika stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. ‘The ones that found their way back to Poland after the war were mainly the older children. There were a few in the Displaced Persons' camp with Magda and me. The Nazis stole children up to fifteen years of age if they thought they possessed the right mix of Aryan blood.'

‘But there must be records …' Helena began.

‘I told you, the children's original identities were erased.' Josef was uncharacteristically abrupt. ‘If they were babies when they were taken, they would look on their adoptive parents as their own. If they were old enough to have memories of their real families, they were told that their parents had died or abandoned them.'

Weronika took another cigarette from the pack. ‘One of the boys in the camp was twelve when he was taken from his mother. When he refused to memorise his new name or speak German, he was beaten and sent to a labour camp. I am surprised Magda didn't tell you any of this.'

‘She never mentioned it.' Helena returned her cup to the tray.

‘She didn't tell you the Germans had made her work in a Lebensborn home?'

‘No.' Helena shook her head.

‘It was a Lebensborn home?' Josef checked.

‘A big one outside Munich,' Weronika said. ‘Most of the staff fled when the Americans drew close. Magda and some of the other women who worked there didn't fear the Allies, and they absolutely refused to leave the children, so they stayed. When the Americans liberated the home, there were about 300 children there, aged from six months to six years old. But that was just one home. The babies were sent to orphanages, the older ones to the camp with Magda and the other women.'

‘The British and the Russians found others.' Josef leaned back against the outside wall of the house. ‘But before they reached them, the Germans burned what few records of the children's origins they'd made.'

‘You seem to know a lot about these homes,' Ned commented.

‘I've made it my business to study them,' Josef said.

‘I can guess why. You never found him?' Weronika lit her cigarette.

Josef shook his head. ‘No, I didn't. Did you or Magdalena Janek see him on the journey?'

‘He was still on the train when I was taken off it with most of the other girls.'

‘And Magda?'

‘Was ordered to stay on the train with the children.'

Helena and Ned listened intently, trying to follow the conversation.

‘Did Magda ever mention him when you met up with her at the end of the war?'

‘She talked about three of the children who had been taken from this village.'

‘They stayed with Magda.'

‘Yes,' Weronika confirmed. ‘Magda said she saw them in the home she worked in, but only for the first few months. Then they were taken away for adoption. They never returned.'

‘You have been looking for someone who was taken that day?' Helena asked Josef.

‘My brother, Leon. He was six months old.' Josef turned to Weronika. ‘Was he one of the babies Magda saw in the home?'

Weronika shook her head. ‘If he was, Josef, she never mentioned his name, but then she wouldn't have called him by his Polish name if he had been in the home for any length of time. She, like the children, would have been punished for clinging to the past and her language.'

‘So much tragedy,' Ned murmured when Josef left them to return to the bar.

‘Sad times, sad country,' Weronika agreed. She glanced at her watch. ‘A friend had business this way. He brought me here and arranged to pick me up in the square. I mustn't keep him waiting.'

‘Do you have to go right away?' Helena looked at Ned. ‘The photographs …'

‘I'll get them.' He disappeared into the room and returned with Helena's box.

‘You brought photographs of your mother?'

‘And one that was taken on her wedding day to your brother.'

‘I remember seeing it.' Weronika took the frame Ned handed her and gently stroked her brother's outline. ‘Adam looks so young, so handsome …'