The Plum Tree (37 page)

Cooking and cleaning inside the
Lagerkommandant
’s house, she tried to pretend that she was leading a normal life. It was the only way she could survive each hour. But the reverie disappeared when she had to go out to the garden, where the crematorium was in full horrifying view.

When the
Lagerkommandant
left scraps on his plate, she ate them. She helped herself to small portions of the food she served him, but he’d warned her not to take food out of the house. Once every evening, the prisoners were fed a watery soup made from rotting vegetables and gristly tendons of meat, along with a few ounces of stale bread. Sometimes Christine was back in time for dinner; sometimes she wasn’t. When she was, she always gave her portion to Hanna. And nearly every day, when she thought she could get away with it, she stole slices of bread, a rind of cheese, or a scrap of meat to give to Hanna or one of the other women when the
Blockältester
wasn’t looking. The only places she had to hide anything were her shoes or her mouth. There were no pockets in her uniform, and she was naked beneath it.

One day, when she had a crust of bread hidden in each cheek, a guard stopped her on her way back to the barracks.

“What are you doing out here?” he demanded. Christine pointed toward the barracks and started walking again. He blocked her way, lifting his rifle. “Halt! What do you have in your mouth?” She tried to chew and swallow, but the bread was too dry. “Spit it out!” he shouted. She did as she was told, nearly choking in the process. He pointed his firearm at her head, taking aim, and she felt her bowels turn to water.

“I’m not Jewish!” she said. “Ask the
Lagerkommandant!
He will tell you!”

He lowered his rifle, eyeing her. “You’re coming from the
Lagerkommandant
’s house?”

She nodded.

“So you’re the sweet little
Fräulein
he tells us about.” He put a hand on her thigh, lifting the hem of her uniform. “Does he know you’re stealing food?”

“Herr Lagerkommandant says I’m to tell him if anyone touches what’s his. And I’m an expert at remembering faces.”

With that, the guard stepped back, motioning for her to be on her way. Christine hurried on, her arms over her middle, trying to keep her heart and lungs from exploding, ripping through the thin skin of her abdomen, and spilling out into a bloody pile at her feet.

So far, Dachau had not been bombed. The thump of bombs could be heard nearly every night, but they sounded far away. Christine wondered how long it would be until the Allies bombed the nearby armaments factory, or the factory used for building parts for planes. Because when they did, the camp could be next.

She’d been imprisoned in Dachau five weeks when she found the
Lagerkommandant
drunk at the dinner table. She’d come into the dining room carrying a platter of
Ente mit Sauerkraut auf Nürn-berger Art,
duck with sauerkraut, apples, and grapes, and found him sitting there, a bottle of cognac in one hand, a snifter in the other. He’d brought the grapes, the duck, and the cognac back from Berlin, and she’d worried that the duck was a test, to see if she knew how to prepare it. Now, he was too intoxicated to notice that she’d spent hours getting it just right. When he saw her, he raised his glass in the air.

“To Hitler!” he said. “May he outlive us all!” His eyes were heavy and bloodshot, his lips wet. He threw back his head and drained the glass, setting it on the table with a bang. Then he picked up the cognac with an unsteady hand and refilled the snifter. Christine set the serving platter on the table and reached for his plate.

“Let me fix your plate for you, Herr Lagerkommandant,” she said. “You should eat something.” Using silver serving tongs, she dished a perfectly browned duck breast over the SS insignia in the center of the china, spooning the apple and grape mixture over top. When she reached for the sauerkraut, he touched her wrist and she jumped.

“Have a drink with me, Chriztine,” he said, his words slurring. To her relief, he took his hand off her arm and reached for his empty wineglass. He knocked it over. “Shit.”

Christine set the wineglass upright and placed his dinner in front of him, her heart pounding. She took a step back from the table and waited. The
Lagerkommandant
pushed the plate away and picked up his water tumbler. He drank the water, letting it run down his chin, then refilled the glass with cognac. “Here,” he said, offering it to her. “Sit down.”

“
Nein danke,
Herr Lagerkommandant. If you don’t need anything else right now, I’ve got work to do in the kitchen.”

“Bitte,”
he said. “Sit with me, just for a little while.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Herr Lagerkommandant.”

“I think you should do as I say, Chriztine. I hold the power of life and death in my hands, remember?”

Christine pulled a chair away from the table and did as she was told, her hands folded in her lap.

“Danke,”
he said. “That’s not so bad, is it?” He blinked several times, as if falling asleep, then took another swallow of brandy. “I’m sorry. I just want to talk.”

“
Ja,
Herr Lagerkommandant.” Despite herself, her mouth watered as she stared at the crispy duck covered with brown sauce and shiny purple grape halves.

“Ja, essen,”
he said, motioning toward the food. “Don’t be afraid.”

He picked up the plate of food, set it in front of her, and pushed his knife and fork in her direction, his thick fingers fumbling across the tablecloth. Christine kept her hands in her lap, unwilling to eat at the table with her captor. The
Lagerkommandant
didn’t seem to notice. Instead he slouched back in his chair, the cognac sloshing inside his glass and spilling out over his fingers. “They failed,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Herr Lagerkommandant,” she said. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Stauffenburg, Haeften, Olbricht, and Mertz!” he shouted, his face growing red. “Senior officers, all of them! And still they botched the plan! They should have made the bomb big enough to blow up a house! That would have killed the bastard!”

“Killed who, Herr Lagerkommandant?”

“Hitler! And it’s not the first time someone tried!”

Christine’s breath caught in her throat.
Hitler’s own men were trying to kill him?
she thought, confused and elated at the same time.
Could this nightmare finally be coming to an end?

“Will they try again?” she asked.

“Nein,”
he said, shaking his head. “Hitler had them executed. Lined up and shot.” Christine’s shoulders dropped. The
Lagerkommandant
took another swig. “You see? That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. No one is safe. The involved officers’ entire families, including pregnant wives and small children, have all been arrested.” He fell back in his chair, as if exhausted. After brooding in silence for a moment, he sighed and said, “Did I ever tell you how I came to be here?”

“
Nein,
Herr Lagerkommandant.”

He looked at her with watery eyes. “I joined the Nazi Party in 1933, but I was expelled for being critical of their methods. Five years later, I was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a labor camp.” Christine’s eyes went wide, and he shook his head in agreement, as if he was just as surprised. “
Ja!
I was arrested! Can you believe it? And now I’m in charge!”

Christine reached for the water jug. “May I?” she asked, her throat suddenly dry.

“
Ja, ja.
But if you’re not going to drink this . . .” He finished the last mouthful of liquor in the brandy snifter, squeezing his eyes shut as he swallowed, then reached for the cognac he’d poured for her. “In 1940, I reapplied to the SS in order to infiltrate the Third Reich and gather information. Do you know why I did that?”

“
Nein,
Herr Lagerkommandant.”

“I did it because the Bishop of Stuttgart told me that mentally ill patients were being killed at Hadamar and Grafeneck. In 1941, my own sister died mysteriously at Hadamar. After that, I was determined to find out the truth.” He slammed a hand on the table. “They didn’t even ask questions about my past! In 1941, I was admitted to the Waffen-SS. After that, I was sent on a mission to introduce Zyklon-B into the camps in Poland.”

She set down her glass and looked at him. “There are other camps? Camps like this one?”

“Ja! Ja!”
he said, nodding vigorously. “Auschwitz! Treblinka! Buchenwald! Ravensbrück! Mauthausen! I could go on and on. Auschwitz is the worst. But not all of them are extermination camps. Not all of them use gas. The Nazis said the Jews were getting
Sonderbehandlung,
or “special treatment,” which is Nazi code for murder. I was shocked and disgusted, but I forced myself to watch, so I could tell the world.”

Christine sat back in her chair, her hunger gone, replaced by something hard and vile. “What are you waiting for?”

“I’ve told people,” he said. “I’ve risked my life to let everyone know what the Nazis are doing. I’ve told the press attaché at the Swiss Legation in Berlin, the coadjutor of the Catholic Bishop of Berlin. I’ve told several doctors and the Dutch underground. But nothing has happened. Just this morning, on the train back from Berlin, I ran into the Secretary to the Swedish Legation in Berlin. We talked for hours. I begged him to tell his government about the atrocities.”

Christine remained silent, trying to decide if he was telling the truth, trying to decide if the pained look on his face was from sorrow or guilt.

“I don’t think he believed me,” the
Lagerkommandant
said. “I sobbed like a child in front of the man. I pleaded for him to make it known to the Allies. He kept telling me to keep my voice down. I’m sure he thinks me mad.” He closed his eyes, the empty glass teetering to one side in his hand. “I don’t know what else to do.”

Christine stared at the wineglass on the linen tablecloth, pinpoints of light from the chandelier above the table reflecting off the crystal. She thought about what this scene would look like to an outsider: her sitting with an SS officer in her dirty uniform and shorn head, dirt and grime caked to her thin legs, the room filled with expensive paintings, Persian rugs, and cherry furniture, a plate of duck on the table in front of her. She felt like she’d gone mad.

“May I be excused, Herr Lagerkommandant?” she said in a weak voice. He didn’t answer. She stood and reached for the glass in his hand. He sat forward and grabbed her wrist.

“I’m telling you this for a reason!” he said, the veins on his forehead bulging. “
Bitte,
sit down! Just let me get this off my chest!” Christine did as she was told, sitting on the edge of the chair, and he let go. He took a deep breath and smoothed the front of his uniform. “Will
you
at least listen to me?
Bitte?
”

“
Ja,
Herr Lagerkommandant.”

“If you survive this, you’re a witness too. Tell them that not everyone agreed with what was being done here. There are men here who have been turned by the evil that surrounds them. Their hearts have been plowed open to reveal the rotten soil of their souls. On the other hand, I have guards asking to be transferred to the Russian front, where they know they would die, but they would choose that, rather than assist the insanity within these walls.” He pressed his palms to his temples, as if his thoughts were already driving him insane. “It’s amazing what some will do just to stay alive. I have prisoners willing to save themselves by shoving the dead bodies of their fellow Jews into the fires.”

She wanted to escape into the kitchen. He looked at her, a man condemned to hell on earth, his face pleading with her to understand. Earlier, she’d placed an open bottle of red wine on the table, unaware that he’d intended on drinking the cognac. Now, he reached for it, his cheeks and forehead crimson, and filled his glass.

“For some who are committing these evil crimes, and for those of us who allow it to happen, the reality of what we are doing is obscured by the furious turnings of war.” He set down the bottle and drank the wine from the glass. “It will be later, when this war has ended, when we go home, when we sit at the dinner table in our comfortable houses, after we kiss our wives good night, it will be then that we will dread the night. We know what visions will rise from the depths of our guilty minds. It will haunt us until the end of our days, and we’ll surely be spending eternity at Hitler’s side in hell. All of Germany will pay for our sins. You wait and see. Yet brutal actions become war crimes only if you lose.”

Christine stared at him, speechless. He refilled his glass and sighed. “There. I’ve said my piece.” He motioned toward the plate of food in front of her. “You must eat.”

“I . . . I’d rather not.”

“As you wish. Eat it later, then. In the kitchen.”

Christine stood.

He got to his feet, swaying and hunched over like an old man. When he teetered, Christine caught him by the arm, helped him back into his chair, and took the wineglass.

“I guess I can’t drink like I used to,” he said.

“You drank the entire bottle of cognac, Herr Lagerkommandant.”

He looked toward the table with unfocused eyes. “So I did,” he said. “Fetch me a cigar, would you?” Christine went to the buffet, opened the wooden humidor, picked out a cigar, and put it in his hand. She retrieved matches and lit it for him. Stale smoke filled the room. He watched her clear the table, his eyelids heavy. When she came back from the kitchen a third time to pick up the glasses and silverware, he was half asleep in his chair. She took the cigar and put it out in an ashtray. He startled her by speaking.

“Will you do something for me?”

“What is it, Herr Lagerkommandant?”

“If something happens to me, will you promise to remember my name? Will you let everyone know that I tried to stop it?”

Christine thought for a minute, then decided to risk it. “I’ll do that for you if you do something for me.”