Secrets She Kept (31 page)

The long, sweeping arc of the searchlight continually scraped high walls and the barbed wire, three rolls thick, that ran along their tops, reminded us of the futility of hope or escape.

Marched down the wide avenue between barracks, we filed into Barracks 28 and were assigned to beds already packed with women. They must have expected new recruits, for many grumbled and some swore, but all shifted sideways, and we lay like spoons in a drawer until morning.

Mutter Kirchmann tucked me on the inside and took the colder outside shift on the bunk first, the thin blanket not even covering her. I should not have let her do this. I should have been the one to protect her, but I didn’t.

I lay awake until the sirens wailed long before dawn.

It was still pitch black when the guard threw open the door, shouting, blowing a whistle, ordering everyone outside for roll call. With barely enough time to shake the sloth from our limbs we hurried to the parade ground to stand in new formations
 
—ten wide and ten deep.

Roll call began at four-thirty. We no longer bore names, but were assigned numbers by the woman guard bellowing over the list on her clipboard
 
—numbers we quickly memorized, numbers called over and over again in roll calls. That morning, someone
 
—a number
 
—was missing. The guard made us run through roll call three times before she determined the person was indeed not there.

Ten minutes later we heard a gunshot from the direction of our barracks. Mutter Kirchmann looked at me and I at her. We would never sleep late. We would never be too sick to stand in formation.

HANNAH STERLING

APRIL 1973

Carl traced the next two families on the ledger’s list to America
 
—one now living in Brooklyn, New York, and the son of another on the list living in a little town called Woodbine, New Jersey. He traced a third name to a daughter living in a kibbutz in Israel. I wrote to Ward Beecham, asking him to follow any lines of inquiry at his disposal in order to locate the U.S. émigrés. I didn’t explain the situation fully, only said in general terms that I needed to talk to them about something I’d discovered from WWII. I warned him that I wasn’t sure how I’d proceed if he found them; I could only follow the trail as it unfolded.

The fourth and sixth and seventh and eighth had perished in concentration camps across Germany and Poland. There was no one to contact
 
—no one I could trace. But the fifth name on the list lived in
an institution for older men in Hamburg. His name sounded distinctly Jewish, so I knew he was not hiding that fact from anyone.

Carl’s employer hesitated to send a car all the way to Hamburg, but I paid handsomely, as long as Carl drove. I couldn’t imagine making the trip without him.

Beyond the reception desk of the institution in Hamburg, we faced sterile white walls and floors polished to a sheen so high I feared slipping and skidding to the end of the hallway. Rooms, sealed off from one another, seemed more like a series of apartments than those of a nursing home.

We waited for Mr. Horowitz in a large common dining room, emptied in the early afternoon. An orderly wheeled him in, set the brakes on his wheelchair, and promised to return after his late lunch break. He wished us all a good visit.

“Mr. Horowitz, thank you for seeing us.” I stood and extended my hand but he didn’t take it. I thought perhaps he didn’t speak English, so I turned to Carl.

“Herr Horowitz,
danke schön
 
—”

“I understood the American. But I do not know why you are here.”

“Oh, I’m glad you speak English. It makes everything so much easier,” I bubbled, smiling, desperate to brighten the mood, desperate to make him like me.

He didn’t smile in return.

“My name is Hannah Sterling.” I moistened my lips. “I’m visiting from America. I wanted to talk to you about something that happened during the war.”

I reached for the chair across from him, but Mr. Horowitz’s eyes glazed abruptly
 
—as if hoarfrost suddenly settled over a summer field. “Orderly! Orderly!” he called after the man who’d wheeled him in. But the young man was long gone.

“What is it? Can I help you?” Carl asked. “I will go for the orderly if you like, but he said he would return after luncheon.”

Herr Horowitz’s stubbled chin trembled in indecision and frustration. Finally he spat, “He will not come until he has finished eating.”

“Herr Horowitz, we don’t wish to upset you, but we
 
—”

“Then why do you come? Why do you torment me?” he demanded. “Can you not leave an old man in peace?”

“You’ve misunderstood; we’re not here to torment you at all, but to help you. In fact, we
 
—”

“Journalists
 
—American journalists digging up the horrors of the past. Again and again you come, writing stories and making your movies. You think the Shoah was an amusement ride for your readers.”

“
Nein
, Herr Horowitz,” Carl assured him. “Fräulein Sterling is nothing of the sort. I swear it. She wants to return something to you
 
—something of great value that she believes once belonged to you.”

The old man’s wary eyes searched my frame.

On Carl’s cue, I rushed in, “Long ago, in the early years of the war, you lived on Wilhelm Strasse, in Berlin; isn’t that right?”

He glanced away. He didn’t nod, but his jaw muscles tightened, a shadow of remembrance sweeping his face.

“There came a day, I believe, when you tried to get new identity papers, or perhaps you tried to leave the country.”

His breathing changed, grew more shallow, but I pressed on.

“A man offered to provide those papers
 
—or promised you something
 
—for these.” I pulled a small velvet pouch from my purse and opened its drawstring. I lifted his hand and, before his widening eyes, poured into his palm three gold rings, two filigreed and encrusted with diamonds and the third a perfect circle of emeralds. “Are they yours?”

His breathing labored, he fingered the rings in wonder. “Where did you find them? Where did you get them?”

“You recognize them, then?”

“My Rebecca’s wedding ring . . . her mother’s emerald anniversary
 
—where did you get them?” he gasped.

I glanced at Carl for support. “I found them among the possessions of someone whom I think you might have known
 
—the person you gave them to. I want to return them, to say I’m so very sorry that he took them, and that
 
—”

“He sold us out!” Any spirit of dread or defeat died away, and Herr Horowitz’s eyes blazed in a sudden fury. “He promised me freedom
 
—papers, new identities, for all of us!”

“Can you tell me what happened? How did you find this man? How did he find you?”

Herr Horowitz slumped back in his chair, stone-faced. A full minute passed before he spoke. “Wolfgang Sommer.” The name sounded vile in his mouth and horrific in my ears. “A clerk in the municipal office, a nobody. I was his superior until all Jews were ‘relieved of their duties for the greater good of the Fatherland.’ Civil service positions closed to the children of Abraham. Consequently, those Aryans already on staff . . . some moved up the ladder, prematurely promoted. Not always in the best interests of the work at hand.”

“He took over your position?”

“The one below mine. I barely knew the man. But I learned, months after dismissal
 
—from our rabbi
 
—that Sommer’s daughter was active in the black market. When authorities cut the rations of Jews so severely
 
—too severely to survive, especially for the children
 
—we approached her.”

“You met . . . Fräulein Sommer?”

“My wife met her. All their transactions were carried on behind the butcher’s shop.”

“Was she fair in her dealings?” I held my breath. Carl nudged me, but I needed to know this.

Herr Horowitz shrugged. “We believed her at the time. As fair as anybody. More than most, even generous
 
—at first. This is why I trusted her Vater, why I believed him. It was, perhaps, a long ruse they developed, a way to build trust.”

“No, please. I don’t believe that. Perhaps Fräulein Sommer’s father followed her or tricked her. Maybe she
 
—did you ever meet her?”

“Only my wife. Why do you care? How did you come
 
—”

“Please. Please tell me what happened. What did you mean that he sold you out? I’ll explain everything as best I can, but it’s very important that you tell me.”

“What difference it makes now
 
—to you
 
—I do not understand.”

“Please.”

He stared beyond me. “After the letter came . . .”

“The letter?”

“Ordering us to report to the collection point. We knew what it would mean, that we would be held and then deported
 
—sent away in the rail cars to the camps. Everyone knew by that time.” He grunted. “Early on we didn’t know so much about the camps . . . mostly that no one came back.”

“How did you make contact with . . . with the man who promised to help you?”

“Wolfgang Sommer came to me. He said he was the father of . . . I do not remember her name. The girl who supplied my wife with food. He claimed that he knew people, people who could get us out of Germany
 
—all of us. My wife, my two sons, my daughter
 
—so little.” Herr Horowitz’s voice caught.

“And you paid him with these?”

He nodded, hatred in his eyes. “With these and the lives of my family.”

I held my breath.

“The night we were to meet him . . . beneath the bridge beside the Spree nearest our home, at ten
 
—after the curfew. We waited there from seven o’clock to make certain we were there, and ready, no delay.”

“He never came?”

“The Gestapo came, driving us into their trucks. My wife tripped, tearing her stockings, cutting her leg badly. But they did not care. They shouted at my wife
 
—my gentle Rebecca who spoke all her life just above a whisper
 
—and threatened to shoot her if she did not hurry.”

“So, you all got into the truck?”

“
Ja
, but Wilhelm, my youngest son . . . so spry . . . such a runner.” Memories filled his eyes. “Always a thing of beauty to see him throw back his head and run like the wind
 
—run for the joy of being alive and in the day, in that one moment.” Herr Horowitz stopped.

“And then?”

He sighed. “Wilhelm climbed into the truck last, after his older brother. We were driven to the outskirts of Berlin. Already we knew we were betrayed, but had no idea where they were taking us. And then the truck stopped at a roadblock
 
—too dark to see more than your hand in front of your face. The guard jumped from the back and was gone
 
—only a moment.

“Wilhelm slipped from the truck and ran. He ran so quickly I imagined for a moment that he would be free
 
—at least one of us would go free. But the guard at the roadblock lifted his machine gun and opened fire into the night. So many rounds! Such noise
 
—and Rebecca screaming, screaming as I never heard her.”

“Did he get away?”

“They shot him like a dog in the dirt.”

My heart stopped. In my mind I saw the child running, running, stop short, hang motionless, suspended in midair, and fall, blood trickling from his neck in the moonlight. I’m convinced we all saw him again in that moment. “I’m so sorry. So very, very sorry.”

A minute may have passed while Herr Horowitz worked his jaw, trying to control the emotion that spilled from the corners of his eyes.

“Dachau. Two years. Rebecca was herded
 
—like cattle
 
—with the women, and Benjamin with me. Our daughter taken away with other small children and those too old to work. We never saw either of them again. I do not know how long my wife lived, what happened to her, if she was shot and buried in a mass grave or burned in the ovens.” He closed his eyes. “The little children and elderly
 
—killed right away.”

“I’m so very sorry.”

“You said that. What difference does it make
 
—you coming here, you being sorry?” He pushed the wheels of his chair and came close to
me, close enough to spit in my face if he’d wanted. “They shaved us and examined us, laughing at any infirmity, shooting or gassing immediately those who were weak. We worked as slaves, our tormentors standing over us with whips and riding crops and clubs, nine hours each day. At noon we stopped for half an hour
 
—no food, only a brief rest in the hot sun. At night we were given a cup of rutabaga soup. A dirty broth with barely a vegetable.

“Eighteen months Benjamin lived. He was taller than me and heavier when we walked through those gates of hell. When he died in my arms, he weighed nothing
 
—almost nothing.”

I looked away. I couldn’t listen to any more.

“Do you see the color of my skin, eh?” He pushed his arm beneath my nose and pinched his skin, pulling it from the bone. “For three years after liberation it was the color of ash. Stained from the grime. It took so long to grow new skin. For those two years in Dachau I never washed
 
—not but once was there a shower in all that time. One and a half seconds we had for the toilet and to wash, if we’d been able. Hundreds of men in four minutes. That was it.

“Covered with lice, we slept front to back, desperate to keep warm. And if you slept near a broken window, too bad
 
—you were frozen dead in the morning and piled in stacks, like wood, outside the door, waiting for the burial detail.”

“Please, I don’t want to hear any more.” I couldn’t stop my tears.

“You don’t want to hear any more? You say you don’t want to hear any more? Do you see the snow outside
 
—the snow that is beginning to fall?”

“Herr Horowitz,” Carl cautioned, “please calm yourself. Lower your voice.”

“Yes,” I breathed, relieved for a new turn of conversation, relieved for the late snow in April. “I see it.”

“I thought for the first month that it snowed every day in Dachau
 
—even in summer. But it was the crematorium, running day and night, seven days a week. The ashes of the dead so thick it looked like snow on
the trucks that drove in, like snow against the windows of the barracks, like snow on our faces as we turned out and stood for hours in roll call. It could have been the ashes of my wife! Do not tell me, Fräulein, that you do not want to hear any more. You have heard nothing! You have endured nothing!”

I bent over, holding my sides. I could not stop the tears streaming down my face.

“You cry like a child, as if your sorrow, your pity, will bring back my Rebecca or Sarah, my Benjamin or little Wilhelm. As if you have lost someone! You bring me these trinkets, now, when I am an old man and have no son and no daughter to give them as a remembrance or even an inheritance from their family. What do you expect me to do with these? Eh, what do you expect?”

“I
 
—I don’t know. I thought only to offer them as a
 
—a peace offering, a kind of atonement.”

“These baubles? Atonement for the lives of my wife, my children?” Herr Horowitz nearly stood from his wheeled chair. He flung the rings across the room.
Ping! Ping!
They bounced off the radiator. “Blood money! You offer me blood money. Such cruelty I have not seen, not even in the SS!”