Chasing Shadows

by Lynn Austin

  “That’s yours. Stay here until someone comes for you tomorrow.”

  She climbed up, clutching her suitcase.

  “Why did they bring you here?” a voice from the bed below hers asked.

  “I-I was playing my violin . . .”

  “That was you?” another voice asked. “It was beautiful.”

  “Thank you.” Miriam had never imagined that the sound would carry so far. She pulled the thin blanket around her to warm up, but her shivering stemmed as much from fear as the cold. She would have the long night to worry about what would happen to her in the morning.

  A sense of doom and foreboding filled the entire barracks the next day, and Miriam quickly remembered why. The deportation train arrived today. A hush fell over the women as the head of the barracks stood in the doorway to read the list of names. Miriam sagged with relief when her name wasn’t on it. But she still didn’t know what punishment she faced.

  “Get ready for the journey,” the matron told the people on the list. The same scene was playing out in the other barracks, with children crying and people weeping as they bid each other goodbye. Those whose names hadn’t been called were ordered to remain inside until the train departed. The women on the bunks surrounding Miriam’s sat with heads bowed. She sensed their relief. Miriam stood by the window to get a better glimpse of the fate she would one day face, watching the turmoil outside as hundreds of deportees assembled in the square with their suitcases. She tried to see if Klara and Tina were among them, but there were too many people. They formed lines after roll call, and the camp police marched them to the waiting train. Miriam was stunned to see that it wasn’t a passenger train.

  “Those are boxcars!” she said aloud. The wide doors on the windowless cars stood open, and she watched in horror as people of all ages were herded inside. She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until a woman watching alongside her spoke.

  “One of the men I work with saw inside those boxcars. There’s no place to sit down except the bare floor. There’s one barrel for a toilet and another for water. No food, no heat, and no air in the summer.”

  “They’ll ride like that all the way to Poland?”

  “Yes, and who knows what they’ll find there.” The woman looked at her. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

  “I arrived two days ago.”

  “Well, let me tell you about this place. Every week that your name isn’t called gives you one more week to hope that you won’t end up in those cars. But the hope doesn’t last very long. As soon as this train leaves, the agony over who will be next begins all over again.” How could people endure this unrelenting suspense, their fate hanging in the balance week after week? It might drive sane people mad.

  “Perhaps it would be better to have your name called and get it over with,” Miriam said.

  “I’ve been here for two months,” the woman said. “I’ve watched this horror show eight times now. It never gets any easier.”

  Miriam had to turn away as parents with small children and babies climbed into the railcars. She shuddered, thanking God that she hadn’t kept Elisheva with her. Letting her go had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done, but enduring this with her now-three-year-old daughter would have broken Miriam’s heart.

  By eleven o’clock, the doors to the boxcars had been slammed shut and locked. The train departed into the unknown, and prisoners were allowed to go to their work assignments. Miriam sat alone in the barracks, her stomach churning as she waited to see what would happen to her. She hadn’t eaten breakfast, fearing it wouldn’t stay down.

  An hour later, a man in his fifties knocked on the barracks door, then let himself inside. He wasn’t wearing a guard’s uniform but appeared to be a fellow prisoner. “Are you the one who was playing the violin last night?” he asked. He spoke Dutch with a German accent.

  “Yes.” Miriam’s heart raced wildly.

  “My name is Ernst Lubbers,” he said, offering his hand. “And you are . . . ?”

  She hesitated, unsure whether to give her real name or her false one. But Herr Lubbers had a kind face and was clearly Jewish with his dark, curly hair and beard. “I’m Miriam Leopold.” It felt good to say her real name.

  “You’ve had professional training, I could tell,” he said, switching to German. “You performed with sensitivity and skill. Where are you from?”

  “Cologne. My mother and uncle and some of my other family members are musicians.”

  “We need you for our orchestra.”

  Miriam blinked. “Your orchestra?” She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d said they needed her for the zoo.

  “The camp Kommandant decided that the prisoners would be much happier here if he organized some entertainment for us in the evenings. He ordered all of the musicians to form an orchestra. We now perform a variety of music—everything from cabaret to classical pieces. Even a ballet. We could use another violinist.”

  Miriam could only stare at him in amazement. She wasn’t going to be punished. She was being invited to perform with other musicians.

  “I’m the manager and conductor,” Herr Lubbers continued. “If you decide to join us, you’ll be given a regular work assignment like the rest of us, but also time off for rehearsals when we have an event coming up.” When she still couldn’t reply, he added, “I understand you were in the punishment block?”

  “Yes, the Nazis found me in hiding.”

  “Well, you’re out of there now. You’ll live in this barracks with some of the other musicians. And you’ll be exempt from deportation for the time being. So what do you say? Would you like to join us?”

  “Yes! Thank you!” The tears she’d held back all morning rolled down her face.

  “We have a rehearsal this evening after supper. I’ll see you then.”

  When he was gone, Miriam sank down on the nearest bunk, weak with wonder and relief. Music had been part of her life for as long as she could remember, bringing her joy, challenging her, giving her a purpose. She had brought her violin with her when she’d fled Germany because she couldn’t imagine her life without it. Then, miraculously, her music had drawn Avi to her. It had soothed baby Elisheva to sleep. And it had provided a way for Miriam to express all of her sorrow and fear and grief. And now, most assuredly, her music had saved her life.

  CHAPTER 52

  Boots tramped down the prison corridor. Ans and the other women in her cell went still when the steps halted outside their door. The key rattled in the lock. The door was solid wood, so there was no way to know who the guard was coming for until it opened.

  “Bernandina Kamp,” he said.

  Ans went cold as she struggled to her feet. The fox-faced Gestapo officer stood beside the guard, his brass buttons and belt buckle gleaming. It was the first time she had been out of her cell in Kasteel van Woerden in two days. A tremor of fear shivered through her as she walked the long corridor and up a flight of stairs to the windowless room where the officer had interrogated her before. This time he made her stand in front of him.

  Lord, help me . . . Please help me . . .

  “Look at me, Bernandina.” His voice could have turned water into ice. Ans forced herself to meet his gaze, determined not to let it waver. It was all right to let her fear show, she told herself. An innocent dairymaid would naturally be terrified. His narrowed eyes bored into hers. “We know you work as a courier for the Resistance, so do not deny it.” Ans shook her head, her throat too tight to speak. Did he really know or was he bluffing? “It will be much better for you if you tell me everything. I really do not want to hurt you.”

  “But I am telling you the truth.” Before she could blink, the officer lifted his hand and slapped her face.

  “Don’t lie to me!” She staggered backwards, clutching her stinging cheek. He pushed her hand down and forced her to look at him again. “You won’t like the prison camp at Vught. You’ll suffer there. Perhaps you’ll even die. Do you want to die, Bernandina?”

&nbs
p; “No.”

  Terror flooded through her. Then, unbidden, the words Ans had been made to memorize in catechism class swirled softly through her mind: “I am not my own, but I belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. . . .”

  “I can arrange favored treatment for you in prison—better food, a warm blanket, special favors from the guards. Favored prisoners do not die.”

  “. . . He watches over me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head . . .”

  “Tell me the truth right now, Bernandina, and I’ll make certain you are favored.”

  She swallowed. “I am telling the truth.”

  “. . . He also assures me of eternal life and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto Him. . . .”

  “I don’t believe you.” He lifted his hand as if he might slap her again, and she flinched. A tear rolled down Ans’s cheek.

  “Why won’t you believe me?”

  He glared at her for a long moment before saying, “I have a few questions about your home in Java.” Ans’s stomach rolled, and she looked down at the floor. He reached to lift her chin. “You will look at me when you answer.” Someone must have coached him, because his questions poked at details about her home and her family as if seeking a thread he could pull to unravel her lies. Ans stared into his lean face as she described everything Erik had told her, adding as much detail as she could recall. His expression gave nothing away. Ans had no idea if he was finding errors in her stories or not. The interrogation seemed to last for hours until her legs grew weary and her fear overflowed in tears.

  At last he paused, bending until his face was very close to hers. “Do you hope to return to Bandung one day? To your family?”

  “Yes . . . but I haven’t heard from them since the Japanese overran the island.”

  “Well, if you wish to see your home and your family, then you will need to think harder about cooperating with me. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, not daring to move away from him. Her heart beat faster when he yanked open the door and called for a guard.

  Please, Lord . . .

  She was very surprised when the guard led her back to her cell and pushed her inside. She slumped onto the floor, covering her face with her hands, weeping with relief. She silently thanked God for the memorized words that had come to mind, giving her peace when she’d needed it. Erik had saved her life again, this time with stories of his homeland.

  “What happened? Did they rough you up?”

  Ans looked up to see who’d spoken. A new woman her own age had been assigned to the overcrowded cell while she’d been gone, replacing the middle-aged woman accused of selling meat on the black market.

  “I haven’t had my hearing yet,” the stranger said. “Tell me what they did so I can be ready for them.”

  “They accused me of lying, but I’m telling the truth. My bicycle was stolen and I was late for curfew—that’s all!”

  The young woman sat down beside her as if they were old friends. “I hear they torture you until you tell the truth.”

  “It is the truth!” Ans had been warned back in Leiden not to befriend anyone if she was ever arrested because the Nazis often planted spies in prison cells. This friendly woman’s abrupt arrival made Ans suspicious. She’d spoken only superficially with the other women sharing her cell, but they all had a core of tensely coiled fear that this talkative one lacked.

  “My name’s Trix. What’s yours?”

  “Bernandina . . . but if you don’t mind, I don’t feel much like talking right now.”

  “You might feel better if you told me all your troubles and had a good cry—”

  “Shut up and leave her alone,” one of the others said. Ans looked up at her gratefully. The nosy cellmate retreated.

  The guard returned for Ans the next day, leading her through the labyrinthine hallways until she stood before a Nazi judge for her hearing. The fox-faced Gestapo officer was her accuser. “This is your last chance to tell the truth so I can help you,” he told Ans.

  “But I did tell you the truth.”

  The judge beckoned for the officer to come forward to speak privately in German. “I think she’s a courier for the Resistance, but I have no proof,” the officer told the judge. “She claims to be a farm maid, but she seems too bright and well-spoken.”

  “Does she have the hands of a farm maid? Tell her to show me her hands.” The Gestapo officer ordered Ans to hold out her hands. She pretended to be baffled and held them up as if in surrender. The officer yanked them down and pushed them in front of the judge so he could examine them. For the first time in her life, Ans was grateful for red-chapped washerwoman’s hands.

  “They’re the hands of a maid,” the judge said. “Was she carrying contraband?”

  “No, but she admitted that she’d been to Bodegraven, so she might have delivered it before her bicycle was commandeered.” Ans objected to the word commandeered. Her bike had been stolen, plain and simple. But she didn’t dare react.

  “Ask her how to milk a cow,” the judge said. Again, the Gestapo officer translated the request into Dutch, and again Ans tried to appear baffled, as if there were no mystery to milking a cow. She described the process, including a warning to watch out for the cow’s rear hooves.

  “You have to squeeze and pull . . . Here, I’ll show you.” She grabbed her accuser’s hand, using his fingers as teats to demonstrate the gentle squeeze-pull motion that drew out the milk.

  “Such a clever girl,” he muttered in German, his fox eyes narrowed. “A little too clever for a dairymaid, I think.”

  “I only learned how to milk after I came to this country,” she told the judge. “I wanted to be a housemaid, but the only work I could find was on a farm.” The Gestapo officer didn’t translate what she’d said.

  “She appears genuine, then?” the judge asked in German. The officer shrugged as if reluctant to give up. Ans stared at the floor, unwilling to let them see her relief. She jumped when the judge slammed down his gavel.

  “Bernandina Kamp, I find you guilty of breaking curfew and sentence you to a term in the prison camp in Vught.”

  “What did he say?” Ans asked her accuser. He didn’t reply.

  They made Ans change back into her own clothes and drove her to the prison in Vught that night, stuffed in the back of a canvas-covered truck with two dozen other female prisoners. She recognized her former cellmate accused of black marketeering, but Trix, the talkative one, wasn’t there. It was still dark, with just a sliver of light in the east, when the truck halted on a narrow, rutted road in the woods. The guards ordered the women to get out, and for a horrifying moment, Ans wondered if they were going to be executed in this lonely, deserted place. She’d heard rumors of such things happening. But the soldiers told the women to start walking, prodded forward by bayonets. Anyone who stumbled in the darkness was struck by a rifle butt until she stood again.

  At last Ans saw guard towers ahead, silhouetted against the slowly brightening sky. Spiky rows of barbed wire stretched between them. Dogs barked and snarled in the distance. The prison camp looked enormous, sprawled across a flat, sandy area and surrounded by woods. “At least they didn’t send us to Germany,” the woman beside Ans whispered.

  They were marched through two sets of gates and into a windowless reception hall. “Undress! Undress!” someone shouted. Ans removed her clothes, dropping them to the floor to stand naked and shivering with the other women while prison guards and laughing soldiers watched. “Do not think of escaping,” the women were told. “The fences have electricity. The guards in the towers have machine guns. And beyond the fence is a minefield.” They let Ans keep her underwear and sweater and issued her a striped prison gown.

  Guards called out their names and assigned each woman to a barracks and a work detail. “Bernandina Kamp, since you are a scrub maid, you will clean the latrine floor every day, then proceed to the camp laun
dry to wash the guards’ clothing.” It was a special punishment from the Gestapo officer. He’d had the final laugh.

  CHAPTER 53

  It was Tuesday morning again. The lists of names would be read today. Despairing souls would assemble in the camp square in the cold, drizzling rain, then shuffle to the railcars. The train would depart as it did every week. Miriam had been assured that she was exempt. Yet she’d awakened this morning with the same sickening dread she’d felt every week since arriving at Westerbork, wondering which people from her barracks or from the camp kitchen where she worked would be missing after today.

  She stood in the barracks doorway after the names were read, forcing herself to watch the painful ordeal in the camp square, silently reciting the psalm that had become her unending refrain: “Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.” Then she closed her eyes against the sight of children clinging to their parents and elderly couples holding each other’s hands as the roll call was taken. She prayed for God to have mercy on the souls who would leave here today.

  Miriam had returned to the punishment block to search for her friends Klara and Tina from Meijers House, but no one seemed to know or remember them. She’d asked several of her fellow musicians from the orchestra if they’d ever met Avraham Leopold—or Andries Bakker, his false identity. No one had. Nor did they remember her father or Mrs. Spielman. Miriam understood the reluctance most people felt to befriend their fellow prisoners. It made the endless, seemingly random goodbyes too painful.

  She often thought about the women from the Mulders’ farm—Lies and her daughters, Julie and Betsie, and the rabbi’s daughter, Alie—wondering if they were still safe in their dark, cramped chicken coop. She grieved over the unknown fate of Miss Hannie, Miss Willy, and Frits. So many good Dutch people like the sisters and the Ver Beeks and the Mulders and Dr. Elzinga and Eloise and Ans had risked their lives for her and her fellow Jews.