Broken Angels

by Gemma Liviero

  Luise looks confused, and Jacek explains again our plans to her in Polish.

  “Yes, I can find my way home from there,” she says, but I know this isn’t true. Not even Jacek and I know how to find our way home.

  I hope that more children come by the time we go so that Juliane is not left alone.

  But worse is the thought that we will be caught and I will be put permanently in the tiny, cold, bolted house, away from everyone and alone with the spirits who whisper to me through the gaps in the walls.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ELSI

  There are heavy footsteps on the creaking stairs. Then come the knocks on the door. They are not the same knocks that we have heard before: they are more urgent and angry. Before we have had a chance to get out of bed, the door is kicked and swings back violently. Two members of the Gestapo burst in, and the room explodes with light.

  “Get up!” The voice that speaks is harsh and screechy, and it jolts us all to a standing position, except for Rada, who is slow to sit up, as if she is sleepwalking. She stands, turning her eyes downward and then to the wall. She is looking for something to hold, something that will support her. She looks sideways at her husband, avoiding the eyes of the police.

  “What is it?” asks Mama, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders modestly to cover the top of her nightdress.

  One of the Gestapo steps toward me and pulls me by the arm toward the door. Mama tries to push him away, her shawl dropping to the floor, but she is grabbed around the throat by the other.

  “Mama!” I say, fearing that she is about to be killed.

  “Elsi,” says Leah. Whimpering, she rushes forward to throw her arms around my waist. We are quickly torn apart.

  The policeman releases Mama, who then reaches for Leah to pull her close. I am suddenly unreachable behind the guns and the uniforms and the badges.

  “What are you doing?” says Mama.

  Behind the Gestapo members, an officer appears. He wears a badge of seniority. We are becoming more familiar with badges.

  The officer pulls up a chair, and Mama looks close to collapse. There are red marks on her face and neck.

  The officer looks around the apartment. It is dingy, one of the bad ones but certainly not the worst. It is tidy, things put away or folded, but there is also an odor of mold and something rotting that the neatness cannot mask. He probably smelled it as he came up the stairs. The look on his face says that this is the most disgusting part of his job, having to mix with Jews, having to smell their apartments, having to step over bodies in the street, having to wipe the thick soot off his boots. There is no coal burning, and the room is cold.

  “I will make this quick,” he says to no one in particular. “To be honest, I have had enough of hunting and killing and interrogating the last couple of days. I am tired. This should be the last one, and then we can go home.” Then he speaks to Mama directly. “Do you know what your daughter has been doing, Frau Skovsgaard?”

  Mama shakes her head and raises her eyes briefly to catch the fear in mine, the acknowledgment that what I have done might be beyond resurrection.

  “Your daughter has committed the worst of crimes in the ghetto. She has been helping people escape, even though she clearly knew the rules. Your daughter will be executed, and you will also be punished.”

  “My mother knew nothing!”

  Mama looks at me with eyes that are as lifeless as fields of dry earth. She opens her mouth to say something, but no sound emerges. Her mouth works hard to find her voice before stammering out the words, “I’m sure she did not mean to disrespect the rules. Perhaps she doesn’t fully understand them . . . she tends to act spontaneously.”

  The officer twists his mouth into a small smile. He appears to enjoy Mama’s distress.

  “Frau Skovsgaard, as true as that might be, if we made such generalizations and moved the rules left and right, up and down, side to side, there wouldn’t be any point in having them. Do you understand?”

  Mama does not acknowledge his words.

  “Did you hear me? Do you understand?” he says.

  “I understand the rules, but I think that she probably didn’t understand what she was doing, that she can learn from this . . . and perhaps any others—”

  “Oh, it is far too late for the others. Most of them have been shot. However, we believe that your daughter and her young lover should be hung, to make an example of them.”

  My knees weaken, and I start to shake. Mama convulses slightly as if she has been charged with electricity; her shoulders drop by inches, and a small whine escapes. The officer watches her change and reshape into something stricken, ugly. Leah is shaking uncontrollably, her eyes wide and bulging.

  “Can you please give her one more chance?” Mama beseeches. “We can work harder in the ghetto. Please give her another chance . . . I will work for you for free.”

  “You already do. That’s like asking for something you already have.”

  “Please . . . she has learnt. I can see it in her face!”

  The officer takes his hat off and scratches his head.

  “You had better not give me lice. I have a young son, you know. I only hope that the smells and infestations of this apartment don’t follow me home.”

  No doubt his son has a bed that is unsoiled, with hair shining and smelling like clean mountain air.

  The officer sighs deeply before addressing Mama again.

  “You have shown rebellious behavior, after we have fed you and given you a place to sleep. For spitting in the faces of ordinary Germans, you and your younger daughter will be deported to the camps.” On cue, one of the policemen steps forward and stamps the back of Mama’s hand and then Leah’s.

  “No! Please!” says Mama.

  “Shut up, or I will hit your young daughter. Is that what you want? You want to hurt your children?”

  I screw up my eyes so I cannot see his hateful face. I am pushed to one side by one of the Gestapo and collapse against the other. This one pushes me roughly upright again before commencing to drag me out of the apartment. I reach out for my mother.

  “Please don’t hurt them,” I beg the officer.

  “Elsi,” pleads Mama.

  The policeman and I are nearly beyond the door.

  “Wait!” says Mama. “I know someone. He is a friend of mine. He will not like to learn that I am leaving. He would not like to hear what is happening here.”

  “There is no one who can help you, Frau Skovsgaard.”

  “Herr Manz!”

  The officer laughs. “I doubt that. He couldn’t care less about you. I have seen him strangle a Jew to death with his bare hands.”

  “He will speak for us,” says Mama.

  “He would toss you in a ditch himself if he could. So why would he have anything to do with you?”

  “He knows me,” says Mama. “I have done his colleagues many favors. My friend Lilli will tell you this, also. Perhaps you know her.”

  The officer wears a scowl as he looks across at me, then back at Mama. But he is thinking about this, and perhaps wondering if he has missed something about us.

  “How well do you know Lilli?” he asks my mother.

  “We are very close.”

  The officer curls one hand into a fist while he thinks. He was expecting this night to be over with by now.

  “Stay by the door,” he says tersely to one of his men, and turns to Mama. “If you are lying, Herr Manz will be angrier than he was before. He wants this night finished. He was the one who ordered the execution of anyone implicated.”

  He leaves with one of the Gestapo.

  Mama and Leah sit on one bed, Rada and Yuri on another. I am told by the remaining policeman to stand by him near the door, to not say anything.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” Mama says to Rada. “You have been watching her, and you sold her out for a few measly coupons.”

  Rada looks shocked. “Never!”

  “Hannah,” says Yuri, “I kno
w my wife. For all her complaints, she is not so heartless.”

  “I would say you know nothing about her,” says Mama in a vicious tone.

  “Hannah,” says Yuri, “please . . .”

  He looks at me, and I do not know what to believe. Rada has been trouble from the start. She is selfish. She would do anything for food.

  It seems well over an hour before Herr Manz arrives. His face is red with anger.

  “I have been woken for matters, Hannah, that I should not be attending to personally. What special treatment are you asking for, that you believe you deserve, that should interrupt my sleep?”

  “I’m sorry . . . it’s just . . .”

  He waves for her to be quiet. “It matters not what you think,” he says, and turns to look around the room, his expression of distaste at his surrounds as evident as with the first officer. “I know all about the arrest, and I know why I’m here now. Normally I wouldn’t bother, but I think that you still offer some value to the ghetto. You please several of my men. However, your daughter is troubled, Frau Skovsgaard. There is very little I can do for her.”

  Mama opens her mouth to protest.

  “Shh! No more groveling! I understand that she has not been a member of this group for long, and I have to admit I was quite surprised when I learnt of her involvement. Just before I came here, I stopped to question the ringleader to discover that your daughter has blindly and stupidly followed her heart for a boy who had no interest in her, other than to use her in his designs for trouble.”

  I wonder what has been done to Simon to make him say this.

  “You were used, dear Fraulein Jew,” he says, spitefully. “He said he saw you at the factory and knew he could convince you to help him break in. He has freely admitted it. And now, unfortunately for you, stupidity cannot go unpunished.”

  He turns to Mama.

  “She will be taken to the ghetto prison, where she will remain indefinitely. First, though, she will stay in a different cell tonight and watch her boyfriend endure the consequences of his actions before she watches his execution tomorrow.”

  Leah is crying uncontrollably.

  “As for you and your other daughter, you will not be deported. I will see to that! But you must have no contact with your oldest daughter from this point on. If you do, you will be executed.”

  “But my daughter is innocent—”

  Herr Manz strikes Mama across the face, and the blow twists her head to one side. Yuri stands up to protest, but the other senior officer points a gun at his head.

  “I think a simple thank-you would have been more appropriate,” says Herr Manz to Mama. Then he turns to lead the others through the door. The policeman pushes me to follow.

  “Officer,” I hear Yuri say to the senior official who first broke into our apartment, “perhaps you can take the smells with you when you go this time. A present for your son.”

  I am already on the stairs, so I do not see Yuri being punched repeatedly, only hear his groans and Rada screaming over and over again as I am dragged down the stairs.

  I am taken to a small cell manned by the Gestapo. There is no bed, just a blanket on the floor. I wrap this around me, rest my back to the wall, and look out through the bars into a dimly lit prison.

  Simon is strapped to a chair across from me in another cell. Blood streams down his face. I do not believe he is aware that I am in here. I do not dare run to the bars to talk to him for fear that any contact will make matters worse for him. Despite our shared history, we are suddenly strangers, and the short distance between us is an ocean too wide to cross.

  They beat him over several hours. I close my eyes, but I am unable to shut out the sounds of the beating, of his cries.

  At dawn, as light comes in through the window, I drift into sleep.

  I am shaken roughly awake and led to a cart wheeled by other Jews. Simon and another boy I don’t know are propped up in the back of the cart. My arms are burning, and my wrists sting from being bound tightly behind my back. I am lifted into the cart and left lying on my side.

  Blood has dried and caked in places on Simon’s torn and battered face. In other parts, his wounds are fresh, the skin split apart, and thick red blood oozes through. One eye is swollen, unseeing, and his arm hangs limply at his side, perhaps broken.

  “Simon,” I whisper, but he does not attempt to look at me. The other younger boy hangs his head, half-asleep, his body half-destroyed.

  We stop at a public square where many public executions have been held. Only a handful of people are nearby to watch—others recognizing that such proximity to the Gestapo is unsafe. Any one of the residents might be taken next. But Mama is there in the small crowd. She sees me restrained, and carted like livestock, and fights the urge to run to me.

  Simon and the boy are dragged so roughly off the cart that they fall hard to the ground. They are kicked until they stand and then walk to the scaffold erected in the center of the courtyard. They drag their weary legs up a set of stairs.

  I sit up to watch Simon stand to face his accusers, not buckling like me but strong. He turns to look at me, finally, but the wounds and blood hide his expression. I know that he is sorry that he has led me here, that he involved me. I am nearly blinded by my tears. Simon turns to the other boy who is also to be executed. The other boy is visibly trembling and muttering something that could be a prayer.

  The boy is executed first, and Simon does not watch. The boy does not die straight away, kicking at the air, and then he stops, body swinging. The rope is lowered and the body removed and carried back to the cart I am sitting on. Then it is Simon’s turn to die. I want to look away, but I feel I must be with him to the end so that he is not alone.

  I watch life leave his body, the body I once held on a cold night. And when the swinging stops, I close my eyes and pray that his spirit will live on peacefully.

  The cart begins to move again, and Mama suddenly appears out of the crowd, rushing after me. Our hands meet briefly, and then we are parted. I love you, she mouths, and then I lie back on the cart and stare at the sky full of souls. It is a bright and clear day, something I would not usually pause to notice.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  WILLEM

  Lena was buried in Munich at the beginning of the year in the same graveyard as her grandparents. Friends and colleagues came, but not my father. I asked him that no officials from Berlin be there, and he gladly saw that this request was honored. For obvious reasons, my father did not want to be there either. Lena’s parents wanted a Catholic service and burial, presided over by a priest who is on the Nazi dissident watch list. After he had personally seen to the transportation of Lena’s body from Poland, my father sent condolences to Lena’s parents along with his regrets, citing war commitments as his reason for not attending.

  At the funeral, many tears were shed for Lena by family, past friends, and colleagues. I held Lena’s mother briefly, though the embrace did not feel sincere. Although we had met several times before, we were never able to form a close bond. Lena’s parents had seemed fearful of me, even though Lena’s words about me were always kind. But it was mostly my father who had been an invisible barrier between us. Their fear of him and his high connections was far greater than their fear of me.

  I had felt disconnected from everyone who was there, perhaps because at that moment—and from the moment I had learned the news of Lena’s death—I had felt disconnected even from myself. I was numb. I was someone I didn’t want to know.

  “I know you loved her and she loved you,” said Lena’s mother. “I hope you will remember her compassion and tender ways, and these memories bring you comfort in the years ahead.”

  “Thank you,” I said, then moved away, not wanting to be reminded that Lena loved me. This made our separation more painful.

  “You will move on in time,” said Mary Anne, my aunt. She made the trip from Berlin even though her brother couldn’t. She has remained loyal and kind to both my father and me.

&n
bsp; “Yes, I will.”

  “I know you loved her. Your mother would have loved her, too.”

  “I don’t want to talk about my mother.”

  I did not want her to be brought up at this time. It was Lena who brought her to life for me. My mother was something sacred between us—something that I believe no one else should share. Mary Anne studied my face.

  “I know that words are futile oftentimes. But you must know that I was very close to your mother, also.”

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Mary,” I said. “I did not mean to sound so callous.” I took her hand, fearing that I had offended someone who had cared for me unconditionally—who never once failed to acknowledge my birthday, my achievements, and other significant events and milestones in my life. How inconsiderate I had been toward her at the time.

  “I understand that you are hurting,” she said. “Your mother was decent and kind, Willem, and I saw early that you carried those same traits. I know that you adored Lena, and she resurrected that sweet, thoughtful boy I will forever hold dear to my heart. Your father did his best, as he saw it, but he cannot change the person you were born to be. He saw the same things in you that I did, and perhaps he was fearful that your mother’s soft heart would not serve you well, and he sought to change it. Go with your instincts and your heart now, Willem. Raise yourself above those barriers that were imposed on you from an early age.”

  I held her close to me, touched by the selflessness she had shown me over time.

  “Thank you, Aunt Mary,” I said, wishing I had noticed her kindness long before now.

  After Munich, I stayed in my apartment in Berlin to settle some property and financial affairs before my return to Lodz to pack up my belongings. But before leaving Germany, my father asked me to visit a private sanatorium in Lychen, where the SS are treated after battle and where Father conducts his wound bacterial experiments on women incarcerated in a prison nearby. The sanatorium is located in a beautiful area, away from large towns and cities, and surrounded by pines and acres of green lawns, housing prestigious offices and the best medical equipment and facilities. It is where the elite sporting stars were once cared for, and it looks more like a chalet resort than a treatment center.