Wildflowers of Terezin (43 page)

THERESIENSTADT

SUNDAY, 15 APRIL 1945

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

—THEODOR GEISEL

H
anne knew only one way to stay alive after the blow she'd been dealt. Though it was actually more like a sedative—like morphine for the emotional pain. Not an actual drug, of course. But for Hanne, plunging back into her work during the weeks after she heard of Steffen's death and caring for the remaining children of Terezin was really the only way she knew to cope. It was either that or remain curled up in the closet.

"There, good as new." She patted a little girl on the head as she finished cleaning a nasty scrape on the chin. Funny how kids always fell chin-first. The girl looked up at her with puppy-dog eyes and nodded seriously as Dr. Janecek came sweeping through the clinic. He paused next to them, clipboard in hand.

"I know some young children who are going to miss you," he said. "Not to mention the rest of us."

"I'm not going," she said quietly as she helped the little girl down from the table.

"What? That's absurd. Of course you're going. You heard the announcement. The Red Cross will be bringing in buses to evacuate all Danish Jews, and that includes you. There can be no exceptions. You're required to go."

Hanne straightened up and looked Dr. Janecek in the eye. Dear, sweet Dr. Janecek. She did not mean to defy him, but her mind had been made up the moment she heard the announcement this morning.

"You said yourself I was brought here for a reason, doctor.Do you remember you said that? I still may not understand the reason fully, but I do know my place is here for as long as there are children here. So I am staying. I am not going with the others. That is my choice."

She parked her hands on her hips, waiting for him to respond. Finally he rubbed his chin and nodded.

"You're a stubborn young woman, Hanne Abrahamsen. I don't know anyone else who would choose to stay in a prison camp when she was offered freedom. But you offer a good
mitzvah,
and I will bring the matter before the Jewish Council.Perhaps they can make arrangements for you to stay."

She smiled her thanks, but he raised a finger of warning.

"But let me say this. It's going to get worse before it gets better. Do you hear me? The rumor is that before this war is over, we're going to see thousands of Jews come here from some of the other camps. And if they do, they're not going to be in good health, let me tell you that. We can expect all kinds of diseases. Typhus, too, perhaps. So I still think you should go now, while you have the chance. You may regret this decision."

"Thank you for your concern. How could I regret staying here with you? You've been like a father to me."

He smiled sadly and patted her on the cheek.

"I'm afraid you don't need a father, my dear."

She squeezed his arm for a moment, wishing he wasn't right.

"But come, then," he said, serious once again. "Perhaps I can still convince you to change your mind and get on one of those buses. In the meantime, we have a patient over here who needs our help."

As it turned out, Hanne did experience a moment of doubt as she stood in the shadows between two buildings and watched the last Red Cross bus fill with excited Danish Jews, just nine days after the Red Cross inspection.

There was a time when I would have been first in line to get on that bus,
she thought.
But now?

She dabbed at her eye with a handkerchief while some of the people sang the old folksong
"I Danmark er Jeg Født"
as they climbed aboard, "In Danmark I Am Born," while others waved to the onlookers who had gathered around the whitepainted buses with the red cross on the side. And she couldn't help singing along, quietly.

"In Danmark I am born, that's where my home is. It's there I have my roots, from where my world begins. You Danish tongue, you are my mother's voice—so sweetly blessing, as you touch my heart."

Naturally she knew the words by heart; didn't every Danish schoolchild? Though she had not sung them for years, perhaps, they tugged now at her own broken heart as she watched Bela's mother climb aboard, her toddler in tow. For a moment the other woman noticed Hanne where she stood, and she paused for a moment before waving. Hanne returned the wave as the rest of the line pushed aboard and the door closed.

A minute later the bus pulled away, turning toward home.And the last words to the song drifted back through the city gates as the bus disappeared from view:

"I love you, I love you—Danmark, my homeland!"

Hanne didn't notice at first when a couple of the usual gendarmes passed by on the sidewalk in front of her. But then she recognized the younger one who pulled his partner to a stop.

"Say, you!" He looked up the street where the bus had just disappeared, then over at her. "Aren't you Danish, as well?"

"Danish?" She hesitated a moment, the words of the song still on her lips, before finally answering back in German. "I'm a nurse."

Henning paused in the shade at the
Assistens
Cemetery, scanning the surrounding park to make sure no one saw him standing with a bouquet of flowers next to his brother's grave marker. Though he would not have admitted it in public, he wished he didn't have to spend quite so much money on the flowers. Twelve kroner; what were they thinking? He could have enjoyed several beers for that amount.

Somehow it seemed quite appropriate, though—the prominent København pastor laid to rest in the same cemetery as Hans Christian Andersen and Søren Kierkegaard. Yes, it was appropriate. And so was the simple inscription he'd ordered, which he paused for a moment to read once more:

Steffen Arne Petersen, 1910–1945.

He read the rest of the plaque, a short Bible verse he had heard his brother quote more than once. So even on a gravestone, Steffen had something to say, did he not? Henning allowed himself a little smile and, with one last look around, he set his flowers on the side of the freshly placed marker.

SOUTHERN GERMANY

MONDAY MORNING, 14 MAJ 1945

Just living is not enough . . .

one must have sunshine, freedom and a small flower.

—HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

I
n some ways, the chaos that had spread across Germany after the official surrender 7 May made it almost easier to travel. Well, in some ways. Steffen found that by simply flashing his official Red Cross identity card, he could usually board any train he wanted. The trick was finding a train that was actually going somewhere, and that would continue on schedule toward its destination. Because with Russian and American troops scrambling for position all across the German countryside, as well as the defeated and dispirited German soldiers trying to get home, there was no telling how the chessboard had been scrambled. Not to mention all the bombed-out rail lines that made travel all the more difficult.

None of the celebrations back in Sweden mattered to him.None of the cheers or the spontaneous parties at the end of the war, none of the parades or flag waving. The only thing that mattered to him lay to the south. Or so he hoped. So he continued on as best he could, from Magdeburg to Leipzig, with a stopover in Zwickau, where he slept on the hard wooden bench in the waiting area of the
hauptbahnhof
for a couple of hours before catching another train to
Chemnitz,
almost to the Czech border.

Will she still be there? Is she still alive?

In all the confusion he had no way to know. All he knew for certain was that she had probably not received the last four or five letters he'd tried to send with the Red Cross packages, since all indications were that the packages had never made it to their intended destination. More than likely they'd been pilfered or stolen along the way.

Henning! His fists tightened and he wished all over again that he could strangle his younger brother. Yes, the elaborate ruse had worked, just as he'd said it would. For that he was grateful, though he'd wondered why they'd had to go to such lengths. Could they not just have brought him to Sweden, and left it at that? But Henning knew what he was doing, and at the time Steffen had been in no condition to argue.The Germans would not pursue an enemy of the Reich whom they thought had died. And in truth, he nearly had, there in a Swedish clinic. Even so, Steffen thought they could have done without all the drama.

My parish, they all think I've died! And Pastor Viggo, even!

He would set things right as soon as he returned home.Though he might still be a little weak after his last bout with the fever, he would make it home. But he had another, more important task to tend to first. And in this he took a small measure of comfort: At least the news of his so-called death would not have reached Hanne in Theresienstadt. Just think if it had!

Only, why had she not been on the Red Cross bus? That's the part he still couldn't understand. Her name had been on the roster, of course, but she was one of only two who had not reported for their seat, and the other had apparently died months earlier.

Hanne, where are you?
He stared out the window at the vaguely familiar Czech countryside at sunset, trying to get his bearings. Seventy kilometers to go, perhaps? Fifty? He wondered as the train screeched to yet another stop, and he got up to investigate.

"What's happened?" he called out to a conductor, who rushed by him on the way forward. By that time other curious passengers had stepped outside into the warm early evening, as well, only to see a collection of trucks clustered on the tracks ahead.

"It's another broken stretch of track," said an older man, and Steffen feared he was right. They might be here all night.But when a headlight flashed on the adjacent road, he wasted no time jumping back inside and grabbing his bag. A moment later he had flagged down the farmer's truck and jumped into the back.

"Red Cross!" he told the farmer, who smiled back at him with a toothless grin. "Are you going anywhere near Theresienstadt? Terezin?"

"Terezin.
Ano! Bude to napravo."

Except for "Terezin" Steffen had no idea what any of the Czech words meant, but the old man said them with such warmth that he let it go at that and settled in between a roll of wire fencing and a pile of obviously salvaged spare parts, perhaps off a German vehicle, as it seemed anything German was being stripped to the bone, like vultures picking carrion.

Never mind. If the junk man was going in the direction of Theresienstadt, he would make it, too. A bit jostled and scratched up, but he would make it. So he held on, tried to keep his teeth from chattering, and prayed Hanne would still be there when—and if—he arrived.

By ten that evening Hanne was ready to collapse, and her legs throbbed after being on her feet for the past, well, perhaps fifteen or sixteen hours. She looked over at Dr. Janecek, who was still examining one of the newcomers streaming in from the eastern camps ahead of the advancing Russians.Many of them looked barely alive, shrunken skin on bones, walking ghosts. She rubbed her forehead with the back of her arm, trying to focus.

"You must be exhausted," the doctor told her. "Please. Why don't you quit for the night?"

"Not until you do."

"As I have said many times, Hanne Abrahamsen. You are Terezin's wildflower, and you are one stubborn Danish woman."

"And aren't you glad of that?"

They both managed tired smiles. But she shook her head as she looked around the room where several patients still huddled, waiting. Children from the camp had also found their way into the clinic, as they had the past few days.

"What did I tell you about staying here?" She walked over to where a small group of younger orphans had curled up in the far corner of the room, under one of the exam tables."You need to be staying in your own barracks."

"But there's no room." A small girl of perhaps eight years looked up at her. The sadness in her eyes made her look eighty. "All the new people need a bed. The hungry ones.So we thought perhaps if we came here, you might tell us a story."

"A story?" Hanne sat down on the floor beside them. "I told you this morning, I don't know any stories. And it's late, don't you know?"

"Then how about your poem?" The little girl persisted."The one about the flowers!"

Speaking of stubborn . . . The others chimed in, and they would not stop until she held up her hand and nodded.

"All right, then," she agreed. "But then we'll find you blankets, and you're all going to bed."

They seemed satisfied enough with that, so she recited for them the lovely poem from Steffen's book, telling it like a bedtime story. Though from Danish to German it lost a bit of its rhythm and rhyme, the kids didn't seem to mind, and would not recognize the difference.

"What is this, that's happening?" she recited for them, snuggling in and slipping her arms around their shoulders."My stony winter-heart melts, this first day of spring."

They smiled at her words as she leaned a little closer.

"It poked its head through dark black earth, an azure blossom now gave forth . . . the hint of Heaven's call. That tiny blue anemone, I planted it last fall."

She paused at a tap on her shoulder, and turned to see yet another little one, holding out a small but beautiful bouquet of wildflowers and dandelions. A little wilted, perhaps, but still lovely.

"For me? You are so sweet," she said, smiling broadly.Perhaps in all the ugliness and sickness and death of this place, this
HaShem—
Steffen's God—had a touch of consolation for her, after all. But the little boy shook his head.

"It's not from me," he told her, pointing at a slip of paper tucked between two delicate purple blooms. "He said to read the note."

"He?" Now Hanne had no idea what was going on, but she unfolded the note... and nearly fainted.

"Thou little anemone," it read, "how great is our Creator! Love from Steffen."

Her confused mind spun until she looked up toward the clinic entrance, where a wonderful apparition stood framed in the sunlight, leaning against the doorway and smiling in the most pleasant sort of way. But it couldn't be.

It absolutely could not be.

"You, you . . ." She wasn't sure the words would come."You're not dead!"

"Dead?" He looked startled as he hurried toward her. "Oh, no. Then you did hear. Oh, no! I can explain. Truly. That was Henning's idea; I had nothing whatever to do with my death. But Hanne! You're here!"

He looked wonderful—absolutely wonderful. A bit gaunt, perhaps, and nearly as pale as her latest patients. But she was certainly used to that. All she saw now were those wonderful gleaming eyes and the smile that she'd remembered each day for the past 581 days. Right now, though, it didn't seem to matter.

"I'm here?" she replied, allowing the children to help her to her feet and Steffen to scoop her up in his arms. "Ja, I suppose I am."

"Look," she said, pointing at the grave marker. "Someone actually left flowers on your grave."