by Alex Grecian
May 8—Went to the fair in Hutch. R very pleased with all. H won a stuffed yellow bird and gave it to R. R ate a funnel cake and enjoyed, but later sick.
Skottie assumed R was Rachel. And H might be Rachel’s father.
July 12—Back from SD. R went to zoo with H, but I stayed at the hotel. Did not feel well until almost time to leave. What a shame!
Maybe SD stood for South Dakota. Or San Diego. A family vacation?
November 2—H in his usual mood today. Took R for ice cream to get out of house.
The diary skipped whole months, maybe even years, at a time. Apparently Ruth Elder had only recorded the most significant or troubling episodes of her long life and had left out the mundane details of her everyday routine in a small Kansas town. Skimming through the diary, Skottie found very little that might indicate whether Ruth had been happy. There was almost nothing about her feelings or thoughts, even as the person she referred to as H seemed to slide downhill, becoming more withdrawn or maybe abusive. It was impossible to tell. The entries were like notations on a calendar: just the facts, none of the color. Skottie found herself wondering what kind of woman the diary had belonged to. Had she felt suffocated, or had she loved her husband and child? Had she lived with guilt her entire life, unable to escape the shadow of wartime Europe, or had she buried her memories and never thought about her previous life again until she had spotted a Nazi across a crowded room?
“I think I found something!” Rachel scurried into the room holding a third black book. She looked at the notebooks they were holding and a sad smile flitted across her face. “Mother liked to buy everything in bulk.” She handed the notebook to Travis. Skottie moved so she could see it over his shoulder.
There was a notation on the inside cover that read For Rachel. Please think kindly of me. The opposite page, the first page of the notebook, was filled from top to bottom with odd symbols, all written in the same scratchy hand as the final few entries of Ruth’s diary. Travis turned the page, then riffled through the entire book and made a short sharp noise that wasn’t a gasp and wasn’t quite a sigh. The symbols marched across every page, filling the entire book from top to bottom and into the margins on either side. It was a code of some sort, Skottie thought.
“Unreadable,” Travis said.
“It’s shorthand,” Rachel said.
“This isn’t like any shorthand I’ve seen,” Skottie said.
“Because it’s in German,” Rachel said. “Mother taught it to me when I was little. We would pass notes to each other.”
“So you can read it? What does it say?”
Rachel took the book from Travis and turned back to the first page.
“It says … She says, ‘Please forgive me, Rachel …’ ” Rachel broke off and looked up at them. Her eyes were watery. “I don’t know what I’m going to be reading here,” she said. “Maybe …”
Travis produced a dazzling white handkerchief and handed it across the table to Rachel. “It will be all right,” he said. “I am here for only one reason, and it does not involve judging you or your mother. If you would like us to, my associate …” He looked at Skottie and pursed his lips as if he had just told a mild joke. “My associate and I will leave you for a time so that you may read this privately.”
Skottie sat still and waited as Rachel looked from Travis to her, then again at Travis. “But you’d come back?”
“I need information,” he said. The low murmur of his voice was gentle and soothing. “The things your mother says in that journal, the things that are meant for you to read alone, those are not things I need to hear. But if there is anything in this book that can help me …”
Rachel nodded. “It’s okay,” she said. “Mother left this for me to find. She knew I would be the one to read it.”
“Why use a code like this?”
“Maybe she was afraid of the Nazi. If your people could find her, he might find her, too. I’m the only person who could read it. The only person around here, but I really think she wrote it for you. For someone like you. She wanted this person, this horrible old man, she wanted you to catch him. I don’t mean you specifically, you know?”
“I know.” Travis took out his phone, and Skottie could see over his shoulder that he pulled up a voice memo app. He turned the phone toward Rachel, who nodded her assent, and Travis hit the record button.
“Okay. Here goes.” Rachel shifted in her chair and put her head down and started reading again. “ ‘I saw Rudolph Bormann today,’ it says, ‘and I know that it was him. Even though he has changed, I know him. I know him as if the war ended yesterday. It is Rudolph Bormann and he is alive.’ ”
Rachel went on, reading to them in a soft halting voice while Skottie watched the timer on Travis’s phone and sipped her lukewarm coffee. After fifteen minutes, Rachel stopped and closed the book. She stood up, the journal held tight in her clasped hands, and Travis stood up, too. Skottie stepped around the table and gave Rachel a short and awkward embrace. But Rachel did not appear to want comfort or company and pulled away from Skottie after a few seconds.
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said. “This is … I never imagined any of this had ever …”
“It is quite understandable,” Travis said. He picked up his phone and switched it off, slipped it into his breast pocket. “Your mother was very good to leave this behind for us.”
“Can you give me … I think I’d like to read the rest of this by myself, if that’s okay.”
“Of course,” Travis said. “I apologize. I should not have rushed you today.”
“That man, that monster she saw, he’s not getting any younger, is he?” Rachel tried to smile, but suddenly burst into tears. This time she accepted Skottie’s hug.
Travis waited until Rachel had composed herself, then thanked her and promised to look in on her the next morning. Bear followed him to the door and out. Skottie left with them, grabbing her purse off the floor, abandoning her coffee cup on the table.
Travis stopped on the sidewalk outside. “Perhaps we might talk later about this,” he said. “I would not mind hearing your impressions. I have the facts.” He tapped his pocket. “But there are things about this I find puzzling.”
“Like what?”
“Small things.”
“What kind of ‘small things’? We need to start looking for this guy.”
“I need to gather my thoughts first. Will I see you again?”
“Definitely. I’m not just walking away from this, and you need help. I don’t start my next shift for another day and a half.” She looked away and ran a hand over her hair. “I’m not sure any of this is in my job description.”
“Yes. That is how I usually feel.” He nodded as if they had just agreed to something and led Bear away to the Jeep at the curb.
Skottie was left standing on an empty street in Phillipsburg, with no real idea why she was there.
If there was really a Nazi somewhere nearby, Skottie knew she had to help find him. She had told Travis that this wasn’t her job, but she knew she could not pass this along to another department until she absolutely had to. Kansas was her home, and her responsibility.
2
After she had collected Maddy from school and helped her with homework, after she had made dinner and cleaned up and tucked her daughter in and turned out the lights, Skottie poured herself a glass of white wine, checked her phone, and found that Travis Roan had sent her a file: the recording he had made of Rachel Bloom.
Skottie stared at the icon on her phone, wondering why Roan was including her in his hunt, why he had referred to her as his “associate.” Was he as open and cooperative as he seemed or was he playing some sort of game with her? Either way, she needed to keep herself involved until the investigation became official and she could turn it over to someone in authority.
She topped off her wineglass, sat at the desk in the kitchen where she normally paid bills, and played back Ruth Elder’s wartime account.
Rachel Bloom’s voic
e was halting and her emotions were audible. Skottie had seen the tension in Rachel’s face as she had read her mother’s diary, and she could almost imagine how Ruth Elder must have felt while writing it. Skottie was touched by the bravery both women had shown.
Rachel paused frequently as she read, searching for the right words. Skottie knew that Rachel was not representing her mother perfectly, but was pulling from her own vocabulary. Shorthand, whether English or German, was not an exact science.
When she had finished listening to the recording, Skottie played it back again, this time transcribing it to her laptop, easing over the pauses and some of the awkward phrasing in Rachel’s interpretation. It took her more than an hour, stopping occasionally to play certain passages back again and to add a handful of her own notes and questions. When she was done she took her personal translation of Ruth Elder’s story to bed with her and read it until she fell asleep.
3
A Personal Account
By Ruth Elder
Translated from (German) shorthand by Rachel Bloom and recorded by Dr. Travis Roan
Transcribed by Officer Skottie Foster (KHP)
Please forgive me, Rachel.
I saw Rudolph Bormann today and I know that it was him. Even though he has changed, I know him. I know him as if the war ended yesterday. It is Rudolph Bormann, and he is alive. You will remember that you and I were at the café [query Mrs. Bloom for specific café] last Friday with Peggy [Peggy who?]. Bormann entered and passed by our table without noticing or recognizing me. He sat down four tables away from us where a younger man was eating. He was facing me and sitting very close, and I knew right away that it was him. I remembered everything then. Things I had not thought of since before you were born. Things from a different life that I once lived. And I had to leave the café. I know that you were confused, Rachel, and maybe you were frightened when you followed me outside. You seemed even more frightened when I told you what I had seen and what it meant. And now you will know after you read this that I have not always been a very good person. I do not know whether we will talk about this or even if I will be able to talk about it, so I am writing it down in our secret language from when you were a child. I hope that you remember how to read this shorthand. Do you remember how we used to pass notes to each other? Notes that your father could not read? I hope that you do.
Rachel, I was never a Nazi. I promise you that.
I had a husband, a long time before I came to America and met your father, and of course long before you were born. I was young and in love. His name was Dierk and he died in the war. When we met, he was a clerk in a bank and I was a nurse. When he was taken from me, we had been married only three months. I had left the hospital and we had taken a loan from the government that was available to all newlyweds at that time. It was called the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage, and it was one of Herr Hitler’s ideas for making new soldiers. He had many ideas. Dierk and I were able to borrow enough money to start a good life together. The plan was that for each child we produced, the government would consider a quarter of our loan to be paid. If we had four children, our loan would be forgiven completely. It was a way to ensure more citizens, more soldiers, more Nazis. But Dierk and I were going to have twenty children. A hundred children. So we did not care about owing money. It made life easier, and we did not think we would ever need to pay it back.
But we had no children after all, and Dierk was dead before I ever really knew him. I think that now. We didn’t have enough time.
I was a widow and I owed the government a great deal of money.
I am getting to the time I met Rudolph Bormann.
In that time and that place, it was no shame to have a child out of wedlock. If a single woman got pregnant by a good Aryan soldier, it was considered a boon to the state. We were encouraged to associate with the soldiers when they were on leave. One evening I was invited to dinner by a friend. I thought she was a friend. But there was a young man there on a three-day furlough from the Wehrmacht, and it became clear during dinner what was expected of me. I was even shown a room with a bed at the back of my friend’s apartment. It had all been planned for me without my knowledge or consent.
I fled.
Things were not easy for me after that.
In retrospect, I think I should have taken that young soldier to the bedroom and then got on with my life. I might have avoided many painful things that came after. But I loved Dierk still. I was young.
I was visited one day shortly after that evening by a man who represented the party. Women were being taught shorthand so they could take notes for generals. These women were expected to perform certain easy tasks for the Wehrmacht and to assist in the war effort. My loan would be forgiven if I went with them and did these things. If I did not, my debt would come due immediately and, since I was unable to pay it, I would be imprisoned.
And so I did what they asked. But I did not join the party. I was always a civilian and was able to prove it later, after the war. It’s why I was allowed to come to America.
But before that, long before America and long before you, I learned shorthand, which is how I am writing this now. And, much later, when you came into my life and were old enough to learn, I taught this to you, dear Rachel. How I hope you remember it.
I did not tell the men I worked for that I was a trained nurse. I could not bear anymore to see men who were wounded and dying. I feared I would see Dierk when I looked at an injured soldier. But I did well in my secretarial duties and was put into the guard training program at Ravensbrück, in the north of Germany. I did not know what that place was when I was assigned there, but I soon discovered what kind of camp it was.
The prisoners were almost all women, and so the guards were women, too. The administrators were all men, of course, but interactions with prisoners were mostly left to us. There were female guards at other camps, but all of us went first to Ravensbrück. We were shown how to subjugate and terrify. We were given dogs and taught the commands that would make our dogs attack prisoners.
We were not taught any command to make the dogs stop attacking.
Many of the women who entered training with me went on to other camps. I never knew what happened to them. A few of us remained at Ravensbrück. It was very hard work, which I would rather not write about. The conditions were not good for us, but they were much worse for the prisoners, so I never complained. I did what I could to get extra food and privileges for the women in my charge, but there was little I could do and there were many injustices.
That is all I will say on that subject.
I had been at Ravensbrück for nearly a year when it was decided that brothels were to be opened at some of the other camps. The men in charge of those camps thought it would boost morale. They sent for women from Ravensbrück, for prisoners, for these new facilities.
I was ordered to accompany four women by train to one of these facilities at Mauthausen-Gusen in Austria. I was to hand the women over to the staff there and then return to Ravensbrück by the same train.
But there was much snow [A blizzard? Worth checking weather reports for that region? What year would it have been?] and the train was unable to return that night. I was shown to my quarters within the camp, a small shack that I was told to share with two other women, new guards assigned to Mauthausen-Gusen to supervise the new workers. Our dogs were caged behind our quarters, outside in the snow. At dinner, a man came for me. One of the camp administrators was curious to meet a woman guard. I had not brought with me any clothes that would be proper for dinner, but one of my new roommates lent me a dress. She would not look at me. I understood what was to happen and understood, too, that I was not the first to have it happen in that camp. But I had experienced much in my months at Ravensbrück, and now my time with Dierk seemed like a life that had been led by someone else.
I was escorted to the main building and that is where I met Rudolph Bormann. He was called “the Wolf” because of the way he looked at the women and
girls who arrived on the train.
I was surprised to see that a meal had been laid out on the table in a long dining room that was lined with tapestries and framed photographs of party officials. Candles were lit and the curtains were drawn so that it seemed almost civilized, and I think I even relaxed, but only a little bit. Herr Bormann was polite. He was not old or ugly, and this surprised me, too.
Herr Bormann welcomed me and pulled out a chair for me. He opened a bottle of wine and poured a glass for me before going to the other side of the table and sitting. I remember all these details, even though it has been a very long time. I wish that I did not remember them.
A chef entered the room and set a large plate on the table, then removed the cover [Mrs. Bloom asks for the proper word here and Dr. Roan tells her it’s called a cloche], and I saw and smelled a roast pig, which was better than anything I had seen or smelled since before Dierk died. The chef carved the pig and put some meat on my plate, along with small potatoes and greens, then left the room so that Herr Bormann and I were alone. This is when he revealed to me that he knew I was a nurse. How he discovered this, I do not know. He told me that he was studying to be a doctor before the war began and he had continued his education there at the camp. He had a laboratory in one of the outbuildings, where the guards were not allowed to go and where he could carry out his anatomical studies. He wanted me to assist him. All the nurses, you see, were with the medical units and the hospitals. They were helping real doctors. There was no one left to help Herr Bormann. He was very charming, but I was not fooled. Such a man in such a place? I knew the kind of research he must be doing, and I understood where he must have gotten his subjects.
I should have been careful about my response to him. I should have agreed in the moment and then made my escape the next day when the train returned. But I was tired and frightened and I thoughtlessly refused to cooperate with him. He first tried to persuade me, but I could see that he had no regard for human beings. People were commodities to be bought, sold, and butchered at his whim.
