Lilac Girls

by Martha Hall Kelly

  “Oh no. Select camp staff as well.”

  “Does that include me?”

  Vilmer shrugged. “We all have a job to do.”

  “So everything I say will be recorded and fed to Suhren?”

  “I report to Berlin.”

  “Did they tell you to evaluate me?”

  “You are one of many, Herta. The camp doctors are especially at risk. As a group, you show a deep respect for authority. You accept, even crave, the status quo.”

  “I can’t live in a place so dirty as this.” I brushed more cinders off my coat. “What does my file say?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I’m sure the whole incident with the Pole is in there.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What is there to tell? I found a prisoner, a former nurse, who helped me transform the Revier, and Nurse Marschall became jealous and put an end to it. Marschall. There’s one to study.”

  “Do you know why they have you playing chess with Dr. Winkelmann?”

  “We don’t exactly chat about it, Vilmer.”

  Though I had at first railed against the forced visits with my rotund colleague Winkelmann, I had come to find them oddly relaxing. I dabbed mentholated jelly under my nose to fight his body odor and watched him eat an endless queue of fish sandwiches as he lectured me on the benefits of fish as brain food. I’d had worse dates.

  “I assume they suspect I became overly close with another woman and would benefit from male company.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “It is not my job to feel.”

  “Internalizing your emotions won’t help you, Herta.”

  Vilmer was so soft, with his sad brown cow eyes. Never the sharpest student, medical school had been wasted on him.

  “I was simply sad about it all. She was a hard worker and a good person.”

  “My notes say you took to your bed for several days. Acute anxiety.”

  “I got over it.” Anything can be overcome with hard work and discipline. Why was he making such a production out of it all?

  “You seem upset that your jacket is becoming dirtied by the Krema cinders. Care to talk about it?”

  “I happen to prefer wearing a clean white coat, Vilmer. Is that a violation of some behavioral rule?”

  “No need to raise your voice, Herta. Have the episodes become more frequent?”

  How much more did I have to take?

  “How are you sleeping?”

  Suddenly it felt hot like hell standing out there in the sun. “Not well, Vilmer. Might have something to do with the four A.M. siren. Not that anyone cares if I sleep.”

  “You feel like no one cares?” Vilmer asked.

  “Would you stop asking me about feelings? Mein Gott, Vilmer. What good does that do? How do I feel? How do I feel?”

  My raised voice attracted the attention of an Aufseherin. That was all I needed—more reports in my file.

  “Look, this is not an easy place to call home,” Vilmer said. “Your chart indicates your camp responsibilities. You can’t possibly be indifferent to it all. It’s not in your nature to end lives, Herta. You’re no doubt experiencing psychic numbing.”

  “I do my job,” I said, pulling the sleeves of my dress down over my wrists.

  “Any more cutting?”

  What if there was? I could handle it.

  “No, of course not,” I said. “No cutting.”

  Vilmer put a cigarette to his lips and flicked open his lighter, the glint of sun on the aluminum case blinding me for a moment. “You can’t have it both ways, Herta. Kill and still be seen as a healer. It takes a toll.”

  “On my time off, I think of other things.”

  “That’s doubling, you know. It’s unhealthy.”

  “So is smoking.”

  Vilmer winced and tossed his cigarette away, causing a scuffle among the Häftlings. “Look, a certain amount of compartmentalizing is healthy, but you might be better off with a change of pace.”

  “You are transferring me?”

  “I think you could do with a change, yes. At this point, there isn’t a lot you can do to help the Reich.”

  “So you’ll stick me in some small-town hospital ward with a tongue depressor and a bottle of aspirin? You may not have taken your medical education seriously, but I have worked hard to get where I am.”

  “No need for hostility, Herta.”

  My dress was like a furnace, causing perspiration to roll down my back.

  “So now I am hostile? Please. Have you ever done something so well you think you are destined to do great things? No, don’t write ‘suffering from grandiosity’ on my chart. This is real. I am a medical doctor, Vilmer. It is my oxygen. Please don’t let them send me away.”

  “This mess is not ending well for Germany, Herta. You must see that. You will be in line for the gallows.”

  I started back to the Wagen. “Suhren is managing things.”

  Vilmer followed. “You think Suhren will protect you? He will make a run for Munich. Or Austria. Gebhardt is already lobbying to have himself made president of the Red Cross, as if that will absolve him. Why don’t you just take a leave of absence?”

  It was sickening. Such weakness. Had all Germans turned to jelly overnight?

  “I will leave you to your research.” I stepped back into the Wagen and tossed him the bag of sandwiches we’d brought. “I can handle this, Vilmer. I have come this far. Please don’t take it all away.”

  As I drove out of the Uckermark gates, a truck passed me in the opposite direction, coming to pick up a special-handling transport. I found Vilmer in my rearview mirror, squatting near the tent, talking with some Hungarian Jews. Chatting with them about their feelings, no doubt. As if that would help the Reich.

  —

  A FEW MONTHS LATER Suhren called me to his office, his face earthworm gray.

  “Our sources tell me news of Gebhardt’s Rabbits has leaked. Berlin intercepted a Swit broadcast from the Polish government-in-exile in London that gave details of the Rabbits. Called it vivisection and mentioned me by name. Binz too. Said our crimes will be avenged with a red-hot poker.”

  “Any doctors mentioned?”

  “Just Gebhardt. They said a Catholic mission in Fribourg sent word to the Vatican.”

  “I told you, Commandant.”

  He paced. “How did word leak? We were so careful. I suppose we need to make sure those Rabbits are well tended then.”

  “No, Commandant. Just the opposite. As we discussed—”

  “The security office says the Polish government-in-exile has condemned Gebhardt to death, you know. This is international opinion we are dealing with. Must be handled carefully. It can make a difference once things are, well, over.”

  “It’s better if the Rabbits are never found. Hard for public opinion to comment on something that never existed.”

  “But Himmler is talking to Sweden about transporting Häftlings out of here. To Sweden in Red Cross buses. Thinks it might encourage leniency. Perhaps this will help us. I hope it is well noted that I objected to the operations.”

  How could Suhren be so naïve? There would be no leniency. If Germany lost the war, the victors would not exactly be lining up asking who had objected to what. Suhren would head straight for the gallows.

  “Do you think the world will look kindly on that walking evidence of what went on here? Commandant, you will be held responsible no matter what you say. Me too.”

  Suhren looked out his window over the camp below.

  “How do we find them? Häftlings are not going by their real numbers anymore.” His eyes were bloodshot. Had he been drinking? “At Appell, they just slip away. They exchange numbers with the dead.”

  I stepped closer to him. “Most should be in Block 31—or hiding underneath. With the new facility—”

  “Please, Oberheuser…”

  Suhren didn’t like to talk about the new facility, and certainly no one spoke the word gas. His new staff memb
ers, just arrived from Auschwitz, had helped him cobble together a makeshift facility in an old painter’s shed next to the Krema. Not fine workmanship but it would make the whole business of silencing the Rabbits much simpler.

  “I will have Binz secure that block and then call Appell,” said Suhren. “You will personally see to it that each Rabbit is caught.”

  It was about time.

  “Are you giving me permission to—”

  “Do what you need to, Doctor. Just make sure no trace of them is found.”

  1944–1945

  On August 25, Roger phoned me up at The Hay and said the Free French and American troops were at the outskirts of Paris.

  We were back in business.

  It was a Saturday, so traffic was light as I drove into the city with the gas pedal to the floor, screeching by cars on the Taconic Parkway, until I saw blue flashing lights in my rearview mirror. Once I told the baby-faced officer the circumstances, he turned on his flashing lights and escorted me to the consulate.

  In Roger’s office, we grabbed information from every source we could. We read telegrams and cables and listened to the radio all at once. When our troops made it to the Arc de Triomphe, we were overcome with joy and on the phone with Bordeaux and London. The U.S. troops, accompanied by General De Gaulle and the Free French army, marched into Paris from the south, along the Champs-Elysées in jeeps and on foot. Hordes of Parisians surged into the streets shouting, “Vive la France!” People streamed out of their homes, frantic with the joy of liberation, even while German snipers and tanks still fired here and there. Soon the Germans waved white flags of surrender from behind their bunkers, restaurateurs brought their last few bottles of champagne out of the cellars, and Paris went mad with happiness.

  Later that day we watched from Roger’s office as Lily Pons, the Metropolitan Opera star, sang “La Marseillaise” to thirty thousand people gathered below us on Rockefeller Plaza to celebrate the victory.

  We all agreed it was just a matter of time before Hitler capitulated and Berlin fell. The Allies would liberate all of the concentration camps. I sent telegrams and letters to possible repatriation centers across France inquiring about Paul. How would he get back to Paris?

  —

  THOUGH FRANCE HAD BEEN LIBERATED, the war dragged on. I sat at the dining room table up at The Hay the following April, still in my pajamas, writing a press release for orphans in freed France: These common things are most urgently needed in France TODAY: Rice. Sweetened cocoa. Powdered whole milk. Dried fruits. Tea and coffee for older children are next in importance….

  How long had it been since I’d had that first letter from Paul? None of my inquiries had borne fruit. One last snowstorm had hit Bethlehem, but even winter was tired of winter, and quiet flakes covered the crusty snow in the yard like white flannel. Terrible snowball snow, Father would have called it.

  Serge threw the mail he’d picked up from the post office onto the half-moon table near the front door with a thump and went about shoveling the front walk.

  I made tea in the kitchen as the afternoon grew dark. On my way back to the dining room, I flipped through the mail stack. I found the usual envelopes. A flyer for Mother’s annual spring Bethlehem Horse Show, held on Ferriday Field behind our house to benefit the library. The monthly Elmwood Farm milk bill. An invitation to a handbell concert at the grange.

  One envelope stopped me in my tracks. It was ecru just like the others he had sent, addressed in Paul’s handwriting—somewhat less crisp and strong, but unmistakably his. The return address read, Hôtel Lutetia, 45, boulevard Raspail.

  My hands shook as I ripped the side of the envelope and read the letter’s contents.

  I grabbed my boots from the kitchen, threw Mother’s coat on over my pajamas, and ran across the front yard to Merrill Brothers General Store, cracking through the top crusty layer of snow with each step. I bounded up the stairs and found Mother standing near a wall of shelves with Mr. Merrill, a clear bottle of witch hazel in her hand. They separated, startled.

  Mr. Merrill smiled when I entered, a porcupine of keys at his waist.

  “Caroline. How’ve you been—”

  “Not now, Mr. Merrill,” I said, grabbing the doorjamb as I tried to catch my breath. Though generally a concise man, handsome Mr. Merrill would discuss the pros and cons of the paper grocery bag ad infinitum if even slightly encouraged.

  Mother turned. “Good Lord, what is it, dear?”

  Unable to catch my breath, I waved the envelope.

  Mother stepped to the door. “Close this, Caroline. For goodness sakes, what is wrong with you?”

  “It’s from Paul. He’s at…”

  “At where, dear?”

  “The Hôtel Lutetia.”

  “Why didn’t you say so, Caroline?” she said, handing the witch hazel back to Mr. Merrill. “We’ll go tomorrow.”

  After all, our bags had been packed for months.

  1945

  Beauty Road was no longer beautiful come February 1945. The Germans used the window boxes and many of the linden trees for firewood. The road’s black slag was covered with frozen slush, and snow was still piled high about the camp, a layer of ash collected atop it—fallout from the furnaces. The cage of exotic animals was long gone.

  I dodged groups of women out braving the cold, some in gangs, some wandering alone. On Sundays, Beauty Road teemed with a rowdy jumble of women of all nationalities, some carrying a rinsed pair of bloomers or a uniform shift between them, airing it out to dry. The camp had become impossibly crowded as the Red Army pushed west across Poland and transports of prisoners the Germans evacuated from concentration camps like Auschwitz and Majdanek arrived hourly. We soon had prisoners from twenty-two countries. Poles were still by far the largest group, but we now had among us British prisoners, Chinese, Americans. Everyone knew Himmler kept many of his Prominente, special prisoners, in the bunker, including an American pilot who’d been found near Ravensbrück, having parachuted from his failing plane.

  Though most of us wore the same blue and gray striped uniforms, we could guess a prisoner’s nationality by the way she wore hers. You could always tell a French girl. Each tied her kerchief in a unique, charming way, and they all sewed chic little bags called bautli from organized scraps to hold their mess kits. Some even stitched little white collars onto their uniform shifts and made lovely bows from rags. The Russian prisoners, many of them Red Army nurses and doctors captured on the battlefield, were unmistakable as well. They were a disciplined group and all wore their camp uniforms in exactly the same way. Each had kept her Russian-issued leather army boots and wore the camp head scarf tied in a perfect square knot at the nape of her neck.

  It was easy to recognize newly arrived prisoners to the camp. Once camp authorities ran out of uniforms, new prisoners wore a crazy assortment of mismatched clothing taken from the booty piles. They looked like exotic birds in their parrot frocks, as we called them, a gaudy mix of ruffled skirts and bright blouses. Some were lucky enough to find warm men’s jackets, all chalked by camp staff with a big white Saint Andrew’s cross across the back in case the wearer escaped.

  Two Russian girls stood at their makeshift store between Blocks 29 and 31, where one could buy a sweater or stockings or a comb, for the price of a bread ration. Their lookout stood close by, alert for signs of Binz.

  Rumor was, Gemma La Guardia Gluck, sister of New York City’s Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was our fellow prisoner. A group of female British paratroopers captured by the SS in France too. Charles de Gaulle’s niece Geneviève. And everyone knew Himmler’s own sister had been a Ravensbrück prisoner, arrested for race defilement—relations with a Polish man. The girls in the front office said even she was not spared the twenty-five lashes that came with her sentence.

  Binz turned up the music that was playing throughout the camp even higher and pelted us with war songs and marches. I looked to the sky as three planes flew overhead—German. I could tell by the sound of the engines an
d the lack of an air-raid siren.

  The previous summer we’d heard about the Normandy invasion thanks to Herr Fenstermacher, but no one needed to tell us Germany was rapidly losing the war. The signs were everywhere. Daily air raids. Shorter Appells. Fewer work details.

  The Nazis were giving up.

  They did not give up killing us, though. The windowless black transport buses came to the blocks with new urgency. Fat Dr. Winkelmann in his long leather coat and his partner old Nurse Marschall prowled the camp, looking for sick prisoners to mark down for the buses.

  Sick women hid everywhere to escape: under the blocks, above the ceilings, behind the coal bins. Zuzanna invented a method of scraping the arms of women arriving from evacuated Auschwitz to cause their tattooed skin to appear infected to hide their blue numbers. Everyone in the camp continued to hide the Rabbits when roll call came. Some even traded numbers with us at great peril to themselves.

  Rumors flew. A prisoner-nurse told Zuzanna that out at the former youth camp, the Jugendlager, not ten minutes away from camp by truck, they were sending in older women restricted from work. The food was more filling, and there was no roll call. Could it be true?

  Early that evening I was given permission to go to the administration building and collect a package addressed to me. I left the block, happy I could finally walk without my crutch, but before long, Karol, a Jules from the Netherlands, caught me by the arm and pulled me into the shadows.

  My heart contracted. I was wary of most every Jules, for this was a new sort of character that emerged in the last year of the camp. Usually a German prisoner with a green or black triangle, a Jules would gather a man’s sport coat, trousers, and even men’s underpants from the booty piles, cut her hair in a masculine way, and swagger about the camp with a cigarette and a nasty attitude. Some would use a blade to carve an X, called a “cow’s cross,” into the forehead of a girl they liked, marking her as theirs. The Jules were not all bad. I knew several nice ones, and it was often an advantage for a girl to go steady with a Jules, for it meant protection and food, but the objects of their affections were powerless to refuse since a Jules always had connections in high places. They could starve a girl if she did not cooperate.