The Girl Who Survived: Based on a true story, an utterly unputdownable and heart-wrenching World War 2 page-turner

by Ellie Midwood

  Weizmann would make frequent appearances now, which invariably led to hour-long breaks during which Otto – as he insisted I should call him (I never did, much like I never called Schultz, Willy) – instead of listening to Schultz’s instructions would rummage through his friend’s cupboard, hunting for a bottle of cognac and make the two of us drink along with him and laugh at the stories of his exploits. It was an odd and almost surrealistic situation, my sticking out between the two uniformed comrades like a sore thumb and toasting along with them to their victories – well, Weizmann’s victories and Willy’s brains, as Otto had wittily put it once.

  I soon learned why the two were such tight friends; Weizmann, much like Schultz, didn’t have a mean bone in his body and despite his having to set off on his deadly sorties on a weekly basis, he appeared to pity each and every one of his victims, genuinely. Poor devil, he didn’t have a chance against me. The fellow couldn’t even turn his fighter properly; what sort of dogfight are we talking about? Seventy-two training hours behind him and years behind me in experience. Blast it all… killed someone’s son. Teufel, pour me another one, Schultz. Sad business this war. They’re good lads, too. Their cause is righteous, as Comrade Molotov had so correctly stated. And ours… He’d sigh and throw a sidelong glance in my direction, invariably in tandem with a shake of his head. He looked at me with infinite sorrow, a constant reminder of a future world he was fighting for. He didn’t like what he saw. Neither did Schultz, yet none of them could change a damned thing.

  “He’s a communist, you know,” Schultz suddenly announced after one such visit.

  I looked at the door, behind which Weizmann had disappeared, in stunned silence.

  “In his heart, not officially,” Schultz explained with a sly grin. “He’s not that stupid. Was never caught at any meetings, nothing of that sort. All very clandestine and hush-hush. Reads books a German ace shouldn’t be reading and listens to the radio waves he shouldn’t be listening to… Thinks of bolting across the enemy lines, if I’m entirely honest.”

  “You shouldn’t be telling me all this,” I said quietly.

  “It’s all right. I trust you. Besides, didn’t you tell me about Boris? It’s only fair if I share my secrets with you now.”

  My chest felt instantly warm – from his words, not the brandy this time.

  “Still, Herr Leutnant. In the ghetto, people from the underground trusted each other too. And no one would ever sell anyone out, willingly, but it so happened that someone got caught and the Gestapo are famous for untying tongues.”

  “You’re just an ordinary girl. No one would suspect you of any underground activity.”

  “They kill women, too.” Rivka’s image floated in front of my face, together with her Yasha. “And children.”

  “Yes.” He gave me an odd look. “And that’s precisely why you’re here.”

  He was afraid that I would die; I suddenly understood it.

  It appeared amazing to me, at that moment, that women in motion pictures which I had seen in some obscure past life of mine, wished to hear the confessions of love and assurances of passion from their suitors. How absurd, how insignificant and superficial such worthless words now seemed. It’s good to know that one loves you, I suppose but how much more powerful and tremendous it is to realize that someone is mortally afraid that you will die.

  My nervous fingers toyed with the tassels on the tablecloth. He was gazing at me but I couldn’t look at him for some reason. I suddenly couldn’t imagine this room without him in it. He was still here but already gone and I was suddenly all alone in the entire world and the very thought of it terrified me to the marrow of my bones. I wanted to fall on my knees before him and implore him not to leave and I knew it in my heart that he wouldn’t, if I only said the word and for that very reason I remained stubbornly silent. He didn’t belong to me. I had no right to ask him anything.

  An open suitcase lay on top of his bedcovers. The second set of his freshly cleaned uniform and a few changes of shirts, just delivered this morning by a Byelorussian washerwoman, lay neatly, in stacks, next to the suitcase, yet for some reason Schultz found reason after reason to delay the process of packing it. Now, he was staring at it oddly once again, almost with hatred in his eyes.

  “Do you want me to help you with that, Herr Leutnant?”

  He looked at me as though at a loss and shook his head slowly. “No. Later. I’ll do it in the evening. I still have plenty of time.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Better, talk to me. Tell me something about your childhood, or about your parachute factory – anything you like. It’ll give me something to think about while I travel.” He was suddenly on his feet. “Wait right here! I’m such a blockhead, I swear! How did I not think about it earlier?” He disappeared into his office and soon returned with a Leica in his hands. “Please, type something and I’ll take a picture of you if you don’t mind. I would so love to have a photo of you, Ilse! It’ll keep me company while I’m away.”

  A glance passed between us where no words are spoken yet everything is understood. I turned away and set to typing but the connection didn’t break; it was still there, the invisible force that ties a man to a woman once and for all. The thought of it terrified me, not because I was afraid to be mistaken but because I knew for certain that I wasn’t and the gravity of that unspoken oath nearly crushed me, for I knew that from now on we could only exist as a single entity, something that wouldn’t stand separation.

  He snapped a picture of me, then another one, a few more, from different angles as though wishing to create a multidimensional black-and-white ghost of the girl, who could have possibly been dead by the time he returned. He lowered into his chair with a heavy sigh and examined the camera in his hands, his face a mask of melancholy.

  “Is the lighting bad?” I asked him sympathetically. I sat against the setting sun.

  “No, it’s a good camera. The light will be all right. It’s just…” It’s not the same thing, his face said it all.

  I rose from my chair and walked over to him, sat at his feet and took his hands into mine. “Don’t be upset now, Herr Leutnant. Think about how happy everyone will be to see you at home. Your children…”

  “I don’t have any.”

  I started for a second but then smiled again, for him, not because I wanted to. “Your wife then.”

  “Hedwig,” he pronounced the name slowly, as though trying to conjure the right image out of the depths of his memory.

  I wondered how long he hadn’t seen her.

  “Yes, Hedwig. I’m sure she misses you terribly.”

  He didn’t react in any way.

  “Your sisters,” I tried again.

  This time he smiled and brought my hands up to his lips to kiss them.

  “You’re so kind to me, Ilse.”

  “No, it’s you who’s the main benefactor here, Herr Leutnant, not me.”

  “How many times have I asked you to stop calling me Herr Leutnant?”

  “Not enough,” I tried to joke in spite of my swimming eyes. “Please, let me help you pack. We’ll type the rest of the documents later.”

  Neither of us heard the knock on the door – if there was one, that is; only intentional shuffling in the passage. I leaped to my feet at once. Schultz turned in his chair in visible annoyance. A young officer with a sharp, handsome face stood leaning on the door frame with his arms crossed over his chest, an SD diamond visible on his left sleeve. The thought of how long he had been standing there turned me cold with horror. God knows what he imagined himself from our conversation.

  “The oddest habit you have, Herr Untersturmführer, bursting into people’s living quarters without knocking.”

  The officer chuckled in apparent amusement and smoothed his light blond hair with his hands. “The nature of our department, I’m afraid, Herr Leutnant. Besides, I did knock. But, I see, you were busy.”

  I didn’t like one bit the wry look he threw my way.


  “Now that the courtesies are out of the way, is there anything specific that I can do for you or have you just stopped by to wish me a safe trip?”

  The officer advanced into the room and roved the gaze of a professional around it, taking in the desk, the table with an open bottle of cognac and three glasses on it, the bed. “Leaving tomorrow morning?”

  “Your office stamped my papers.” Schultz gave him a pointed look. Why ask me then?

  “So, it did.” Another inquisitive gaze in my direction, followed by meaningful silence.

  “It’s Fräulein Stein, Weizmann’s secretary. I told your commanding officer, Sturmbannführer Bröger, about her. He said it was all right.”

  “Herr Sturmbannführer thinks a lot of things to be all right when he drinks. And you happen to have some good, French-imported Hennessy.”

  “The nature of the department,” Schultz supplied with a malicious triumph in his eyes. “Anything else I can do for you? If not, I’m afraid I will have to ask you to leave. I have a lot of work to finish and a suitcase to pack.”

  Never before had I seen that side of him. Just now I did recall Liza’s first words that I heard about him. Efficient and superficially polite, like the rest of them, but nice? No. He was clearly annoyed with the intruder and it showed, in his narrowed eyes suddenly hard as granite, in the contemptuous curve of his tightly pressed lips and in the purposely adopted posture – legs thrown impudently on the table, blocking the SD man’s way to me.

  The officer, unimpressed, perched on the side of the table as though such situations were nothing new to him.

  “Will she have access to all the documentation then, as long as Weizmann substitutes you?”

  He made a point of not calling me by my name, just she. A Jew. Why bother remembering their names? We’ll kill them all regardless.

  “That is correct,” Schultz replied icily.

  The officer made a face. “And you’re quite sure she’s not in any way connected to those underground types?”

  Schultz looked at him as though the man had just said something incredibly idiotic. “Fräulein Stein is a German. Those underground types of yours, as you call them, are all local communists. She doesn’t even understand their language.”

  “A lot of them speak Yiddish. It’s not the same as German but makes it quite possible for them to understand each other. I, for one, understand it too. I’m sure, so do you. You somehow communicate with that other Jew who comes in here to clean, Elizaveta Gutkovich if I’m not mistaken? Now, Gutkovich is actually a communist. Her name was on the Party list when we had just begun going over the documentation left by the local politruks last June.”

  Schultz was visibly growing annoyed. “Gutkovich only cleans the room and leaves. She doesn’t see any documents. Besides, I’m always here with her.”

  “You never know. These two are said to be good friends.” He plucked an invisible hair off his uniform sleeve.

  “Again, to bring to your attention if you missed it the first time; your superior officer, Sturmbannführer Bröger, permitted Fräulein Stein’s working here. If you have any problem with it, why don’t you tell him about your concerns directly?”

  The officer laughed, positively delighted. “Ach no, why such drastic measures? You two are such good friends; he’ll take your side and we both know it. Instead, I’ll tell you a little story and I’ll leave you two to it.”

  Schultz let the insinuation pass.

  “There was a Jew in the Soviet part of the ghetto, a sculptor, who once drew a portrait of one of the Wehrmacht soldiers, just for fun. The soldier found it marvelous and went to his superior to boast about it. The superior was amazed at the Jew’s talent and summoned him to his office to draw his portrait. The Jew goes out of his way and it’s even better than the first; such a remarkable likeness, such vivid colors – that second officer even got him an actual easel and brushes, the whole business as it should be. In no time, the Jew was drawing portraits of the entire officers’ mess while they were drinking, talking, generally, having a good time. And what do you know? Soon, each operation they planned and discussed, each planned trip to the forest to clean out that partisan filth, they get beaten and shot as though someone is supplying those damned partisans with information. The file had the fortune to land on my desk and after long hours of interviews and even suspicion of our own officers tipping the enemy off – not that there was never a precedent, right? – I finally put two and two together for those morons in the Wehrmacht. The sculptor confessed on the fifth day but refused to give the names of his accomplices. I have just hanged him, just this morning, with these very hands.” His light-gray eyes fastened with a somewhat awed expression on his own palms.

  “What do I have to do with the Wehrmacht and your sculptor?” Schultz pretended not to understand the moral of the story.

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I just thought it was quite an anecdote and wanted to share it,” the SD officer replied with a wolfish grin. “Well, have a safe trip and enjoy your leave, Leutnant Schultz. I’ll keep an eye on your little Jewess for you.”

  He sauntered out of the room, leaving the air charged with tension. Schultz drove the heels of his palms into his eyes and cursed under his breath.

  “Do you know him?” I finally found my voice despite my heart still beating in my throat, one hundred beats per second.

  “We’re old enemies. That bastard would hang his own mother on orders.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “Don’t be afraid of him. He won’t do anything to you.” He somehow didn’t sound convinced by his own words.

  The day was ruined. I helped him pack in silence. When it was time for me to leave, he pulled me close and held me tight against his chest until Liza’s tentative knock on the door brought him out of his reverie.

  “Just one more minute, Liza,” he called out to her through the door.

  “You’ll have to let me go at some point, Herr Leutnant.” I knew that my smile came out weak and pitiful but it was the best I could do at that moment.

  He nodded but only seized me tighter instead.

  “If we’re late for the line-up,” I began, lifting my face to his. “The SS will beat us.”

  Another nod. He kissed me on my forehead, with infinite tenderness. “Yes, go. I’ll see you very soon. I’ll bring you something nice from Germany. What would you like?”

  “Nothing. Just hurry up and come back, please.”

  He kissed me on my mouth this time and I readily opened my lips for him so he wouldn’t forget me in those infinitely long three weeks. For some reason, I couldn’t stand the thought of parting with him any longer.

  Liza was knocking again, her voice urgent, apologetic and pleading. “Herr Leutnant, we really must be going now!”

  With great reluctance, he let go of me.

  “Goodbye, Herr Leutnant.”

  “Not even now?”

  I wiped a nuisance of a tear off my cheek and smiled at him. “Goodbye, Willy.”

  From him, a bright answering smile. “I’ll see you soon, Ilse.”

  The following morning, I knocked at the door as it was my habit and stood in silent stupefaction when it was him who’d opened it.

  “Surprise!” he announced, by way of greeting.

  “What happened? Did you miss your train? Did you oversleep? Did they cancel your leave at the last minute?”

  “I’ve never missed a train in my life and no, they didn’t cancel it. I canceled it.”

  He didn’t explain anything but I saw it all written in his infinitely blue eyes; the SD man, the hanged sculptor, and the three weeks during which we would have been apart from each other.

  Chapter Fourteen

  May blossomed outside, the purple May with its incessant thunderstorms; the green-gray May, with summer uniforms; the red May, but not with May Day banners this time. Out of the window of Schultz’s private quarters, I watched a group of soldiers hammering away at their grisly task. By lunchtime, the
gallows stood in the center of the square with two SS men guarding it as though it was an ancient idol. Perhaps, to them it was; their God demanded bloody offerings to sustain its hateful being. Their God’s name was War, and it had the face of a skull, with empty eye sockets, wickedly grinning. To justify their actions, they had to invent their own religion. They wouldn’t get too far with any other, pacifistic God.

  I pulled the blackout curtains closed and turned the lamp on to type the rest of the paperwork.

  After the incident with Untersturmführer Schönfeld – I finally learned his name – Schultz (Willy, I mentally corrected myself) positively refused to allow my resuming my work along with the brigade. I never found out how much exactly he paid his “friend” from the SS but it must have been enough for that “friend” to concede that Leutnant Schultz indeed couldn’t do without a secretary. In addition to my new office-worker position, Willy managed to bribe him for an Ausweis that allowed me to walk freely through the streets of Minsk running whatever errands he invented for me.

  “This folder needs to be delivered to the field post office. Actually, it’s only a five-minute walk from here but take Sovietskaya Street down to Komsomolskaya and turn onto Internatsionalnaya after that; it’s beautiful out, take a nice walk. If anyone stops you, show your Ausweis and tell them you got lost.”

  Hardly anyone ever stopped me. Around the same time he’d gotten me this Ausweis, he managed to persuade his comrade from the SS that his brigade needn’t wear yellow stars on our clothes since the risk that we would run away was minimal. And where will they go and how they will get there? They don’t speak Russian. Fat chance the locals will help anyone who speaks German. I truly hate to see those yellow patches on our compatriots, don’t you? That logic, washed down by some fine Hennessy, French-imported of course, somehow found the needed response in the SS official; we were permitted to part with our yellow stars.