“Willem,” I whisper, “please come back . . .”
One of the officers grips Willem by the shoulder, forcibly pulling him toward their vehicle, but he stops when Miriam shouts and points toward me. Both officers turn to look in my direction.
My eyes are drawn back to the handcuffs that have tightly fused Willem’s wrists. I see the tip of something in Willem’s sleeve, something wooden perhaps, a stick or baton, something the others can’t see. The fingers of Willem’s other hand tug at his sleeve, and I catch a flash of something silver, also.
Willem then twists his body away from his captor so that he is almost facing me.
“Run!” he screams.
This sudden, loud command shocks me briefly into stillness, as I absorb the enormity of what is about to happen. He screams again, and I turn to run in the opposite direction. The noise from the explosion is deafening. I feel the rush of hot air behind me. I fall forward, my ears buzzing. A small piece of car metal crashes several feet in front of me.
I lie there for several seconds before someone from the town lifts me halfway up by the shoulders and puts his face close to mine. It looks as though he is asking if I’m all right, perhaps shouting the question, though his voice is dulled in my ears, which feel stuffed with cloth. I nod and stand, and the man moves away. Sound returns partially, the volume slowly rising as if a dial has been turned on the radio, but not all the way. I am glad I cannot hear the crackle of the fire behind me or the utterances people will make when they discover the burning remains.
Several people rush past me toward the pyre. Engines sound in the distance. I do not turn around.
I walk forward, away from the carnage, forcing my legs to bend, to walk and then run, my tears merging with the rain, but my legs do not hold me for long. My knees buckle, and I collapse to the ground. Another man stops to speak to me, but I ignore him and he is quickly gone.
More people rush past. They do not stop. There are greater things to see than a woman crouching on the ground. I stand, disoriented at first, grasping the reality of it, searching for reasons to go back to the Center, then searching for reasons to hope.
There are none.
I force myself to walk in the direction of home, only turning to look back once I am far enough away not to see. It is better that I do not see.
I breathe his name. But I know he is no longer here to answer. He will not walk through the front door, take my hand, and tell me everything will be good for us.
Our time together is dispersing with the smoke now in the sky.
It was a sunny day, I was carrying a child in a long white dress to be christened. The path to the church led up a steep slope, but I held the child in my arms firmly and without faltering. Then suddenly my footing gave way . . . I had enough time to put the child down before plunging into the abyss. The child is our idea. In spite of all obstacles it will prevail.
—Sophie Scholl (1921–1943), German student executed for her involvement in the nonviolent anti-Nazi resistance group the White Rose
1948
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
GILDA
The Agency vehicle taps noisily along the narrow street bordered by gabled brick homes painted white, starkly beautiful under a light-gray sky. Through my open window comes the smell of freshly cut grass and gardens filled with fragrant flowers that tilt their pretty heads toward me, suggesting that life here has continued curiously untouched. It is as if the people who migrated to this city toward the end of the war possessed a gifted foresight that led them to a place where they would not only survive but prevail as before. The circle of life perhaps was never really broken here. Yet I know that behind the pretty curtains, people like me wear the scars of guilt; that somehow, through all the destruction, we arrived on the other side of war unscarred, our beds still covered with fresh sheets and our cupboards never empty of food, harboring a knowledge—and at times wondering at the luck of it—that whether we won the war, our houses remain sacred, our lives blessed.
I check the street numbers and park on the side of the road several houses before my destination. The file on the seat beside me lies open, and I look inside it at the small, grainy black-and-white photo of a group of children playing on swings in the backyard of a large property. One of the faces in the photo is circled, though the features are unclear, the face in profile, the girl unaware perhaps that a photo was being taken five years ago. It is little to go on, for all the children in the image look similar, Aryan in appearance. I think about taking the file with me on this visit but know that insubstantial evidence will add little weight to the argument that might ensue. I leave the paperwork behind and exit the car.
I walk past several houses, over a thick, damp, grassy footpath, and step toward a front door. I knock and take a deep breath. A raven flies up to the roof above and peers down at me. This closeness unsettles me, perhaps because the bird is associated with bad omens. I look at the sharpness of its gaze and the shining blue-black feathers that are the color of our deepest fears, and wonder what the creature sees and how much it knows. Whether it carries stories and secrets that humans will never learn, whether it sees more than any of us.
Without any warning of movement from within, the front door opens, and the raven takes rapid flight. A woman—taller than I am, composed—fills the narrow gap of the open door, concealing any view to inside. A small crease between her brows and a rigid gaze suggest that she has already sensed I am not here for a friendly visit.
“Elsi Winthur?”
There is some hesitation on her face, as if the name is not something she has adjusted to hearing. She looks beyond me to the street to see if I am alone, then to my hands, hoping to learn something more from what I carry. Though she appears calm, I can tell that she is suddenly wary. When you have been doing this job for a while, suspicion is the first thing you notice when you confirm their name with them. It either means they have something to hide or something to fear.
“My name is Gilda Janz,” I say. “I work for an international agency that finds missing children.”
“Why are you here?”
“We believe that one of the children adopted from a Lebensborn center is here—Matilda.” I am not allowed to say the surname.
“My daughter’s name is Matilda Winthur, Fraulein Janz. I can assure you that she is my daughter. There is no need for further confirmation.”
“Her mother and brothers have been searching for her. They applied to our agency for help.”
“Fraulein Janz, I’m sorry that you have wasted your time coming here. Please leave now. I will have to call the police if you don’t.”
“Please do. An issue of stealing children should certainly involve them, and then at least we can quickly prove that the Agency claim is valid and my purpose here is authorized.”
“Her biological parents are dead,” says Elsi Winthur.
“I can assure you that our process is thorough, that the claim is valid.”
“How can I be sure that it is not false? That you are who you say you are?”
I wear an agency card around my neck, which she has also already seen, but I suspect that having lived through this war, she knows too well that forgery and false identities are commonly used ruses.
“Frau Winthur, I can easily prove my identity, but I must ask the same of you. The child was adopted to a Willem and Elsi Gerhardt. If you can’t prove that you are Elsi Gerhardt, and if indeed you have the child I am searching for, then that alone is cause for a separate investigation into why you have a child who does not belong to you by any legal measure, Nazi or otherwise. Unless of course you have a certificate to prove the child is yours in another name.”
She meets my stare with her own steely gaze.
“If you are honest with me, then I can make this as painless as possible,” I say directly. “I am from the Agency, as I said. We are not looking for criminals. We are not prosecutors. We are simply looking for missing children. And if I do not succeed today, I will be back tomorrow an
d every day after that. I believe you are Elsi Gerhardt. I do not want to make this a police matter.”
She hesitates in the doorway, holding the door partway closed. She is weighing options. She is wondering if she should close the door and run. It is important that we are prepared for this. I have noted the address of the local police station should there be a need.
The woman bites her lip, and her eyes finally release their hold on mine. She takes a deep breath.
“Winthur was the only way we could remain safe from being taken by the Germans. As you can imagine, any reference to Gerhardt had to be destroyed. It was in the child’s best interest.”
There is a bigger story here, yet at least I am close now. She has given me something: an admission that there is a child who may not belong to her.
“Frau Winthur,” I say, “this is not easy on anyone, but I must ask for cooperation. Herr Gerhardt”—I do not say ‘husband’ because I have found no record of the marriage—“took the child. This might have been acceptable in extremely oppressive situations, but today it is considered illegal. We are just as thorough in investigating those who apply to find missing persons as we are in finding those who have them. I can assure you that Matilda’s biological mother is very much alive.”
Her face gives away nothing at first, and then she puts a hand to her mouth, and sadness washes over her.
As an employee of the international agency to find missing children, I have investigated hundreds of cases. Thousands of pieces of information have passed across my desk, and those of my colleagues, and I have sifted through these one by one. Handwritten descriptions of missing children, letters, photos, sometimes locks of hair, sheets torn from ledgers, camp numbers—every traceable element I can find.
Like a jigsaw, we piece together families, first by timelines and Nazi trails of destruction: towns they conquered. Then come the names from orphanages and Lebensborn programs. Though it is at most times an unrewarding job. The names of many of the children admitted into the centers were either changed or misspelled, or possibly never even accepted, the children sent elsewhere. It is a difficult, laborious process—frustrating, fruitless sometimes.
Making connections does not always mean success. Many times I have reported back to a parent or relative or friend that the missing person has been recorded as dead. Many families I cannot connect at all, sometimes getting so close to the truth before the trail finally peters out to nothing.
And, finally, the ones I do find: the most difficult task of all. Retrieving children from parents they have bonded to and delivering them home to parents they can’t remember.
In the two years I have done this job, I have connected but a handful of children to their parents, and each time I question whether I can do it again.
“How did you find me?” says Elsi.
“It was lengthy. Can I come in?”
She does not answer me but opens the door wider and steps aside to allow me through. As I walk inside, she turns her head away from me. This tells me she is resentful, but not hostile, which can be another hazard of this job at times.
The house is quaint and well furnished, with several rooms leading off from a hall. There are bay windows overlooking the side of the house where a bicycle stands against a fence. There is a smell of herbs and coffee. Embroidered miniatures line the walls, though there is an absence of photos: items that usually give something away. She has been expecting this, I think. Perhaps she has always stayed prepared.
Certificates line the walls, academic and music. A newspaper article on the wall details the winner of a writing prize at the local school, the photo perhaps cut from the top of the article. First ribbons are pinned for long-distance running and other events. A violin sits in the corner in an open case. From descriptions supplied of a spirited, imaginative child, there is little doubt I have the right Matilda.
Elsi follows my eyes.
“My daughter is always in a rush to make it to the next activity in time.”
She leads me to the middle of the kitchen, to a table built on wide timber legs. Everything is put away carefully, the house clean, the kitchen filled with color and light, bright plates and tea sets. Elsi’s kitchen is perhaps her center, the place where she feels she has some control.
“You kept her true name,” I say.
“Everything else had been taken from her. She had that at least.”
I do not have to see Matilda to know that this woman has taken good care of her.
“So you are here to take her!”
“Yes.”
“I see,” says Elsi Winthur, though she does not look at my eyes. She is fair with a long neck, slender physique, and striking blue eyes that are large and round. Her connection to Willem Gerhardt is the final piece of this puzzle. She has not denied the adoption.
“A missing person’s application was placed on Matilda,” I tell her. “As you can imagine, there are thousands. We tracked Matilda through the German centers first. Our records suggest that the officer who took her brought many children to Lebensborn houses in the north. But there was no record in Germany that matched her name and approximate birth date. We even went to the centers outside Germany.
“Then, oddly, while scrolling through news records, we came across evidence of another center that had been temporarily closed at the end of 1943 due to a fire and never reopened. This led us to documents showing that in 1943 orders had been sent from Berlin for the Center to stay closed, and not be rebuilt. This was ordered by Heinrich Himmler himself, and any records recovered were to be sent to Anton Gerhardt. I found these records in the Berlin archives, records that held the names of all staff employed there.
“We tracked down and interviewed those we could find: mostly tutors, academic and physical educators who had little knowledge of the operations there beyond their own roles. Miriam Haus, of course, died in an explosion. The nurse, however, seems to have just vanished; perhaps she died during the Allied raids or changed her name. Fortunately, we located the cook, Hetty Gerva.
“And it was through Fraulein Gerva that we learnt something of the commander, and ultimately the trail that led here to you. She said that the Center was a different place from the first day Willem Gerhardt took over the commanding position. Not only was it more efficient; the children were happier. She admitted that the nurse was very afraid of Miriam Haus and, under threat, had reported to her the results of Gerhardt’s Aryan tests, supporting Frau Haus’s suspicion that half of them had been falsified by the commander. Fraulein Gerva suspected this, too, though she did not speak of this to anyone, especially to Miriam, whom she despised.”
“I believe Hetty was a good woman,” says Elsi. “I believe she lived in fear like the rest of us . . . she kept the children’s files, didn’t she?”
“Yes, she did. I don’t believe she ever planned to do anything with them. She had simply put them in a box in her attic and had not looked at them again.
“She said that the last time she spoke with Commander Gerhardt—someone she admired despite the information that has since come to light about his crimes at Auschwitz concentration camp—he gave her the key to his cabinet so she could take the files. She said that when she heard the explosion, she knew instantly that something had happened to him, and she retrieved the files during the chaos. Fraulein Gerva also told of the beatings that children received prior to Commander Gerhardt’s arrival. She resigned from the Center immediately after the incident. I, too, believe she was indeed a good woman, Frau Winthur.
“The discovery of these files was the break I was looking for. They contained the names and addresses of some parents whose children were taken and then, unbeknownst to Berlin, were returned again. Were you aware that Herr Gerhardt was giving the children back to their families?”
“I knew of one or two.”
“He returned four, using fake adoption papers and the names and addresses of fake German candidates. We recovered a letter Frau Haus wrote to authorities citing her suspicions o
f Willem Gerhardt’s anti-Nazi activities, in particular his acceptance of children who did not pass the Aryan testing.
“Using the information from these files, we visited the reunited families, mostly in Poland, until we came upon a boy, Jacek, who remembered Matilda very well.”
Her expression doesn’t change. She is as still as marble. Venus de Milo, I think to myself.
“He told us that Commander Gerhardt and his wife had adopted Matilda. He remembered your name, Elsi, even described your appearance. Though curiously, we have records showing that Gerhardt’s wife died before he arrived to work at the Center, and they also show she had a different first name. So your role in all this is still a mystery here. I asked myself, why would he blow himself up with a grenade, along with Miriam Haus and the officers who had come to take him? I believe they had come to arrest him, and he died to protect someone—Matilda, perhaps, or even you. Would that be fair to say, Frau Winthur? And his death also meant that all the missing children were potentially safe from recapture, their whereabouts going with him.”
I see a slight flinch, fine and unnoticeable to anyone who is not watching as closely as I am.
“Given the other information that came to light since his death, it has been difficult to understand exactly which side he was on. Had he lived, he would have been tried and likely executed like his father, Anton Gerhardt, for war crimes—experimentation on human subjects. Did you know about his war crimes?”
“Not until after . . .” She does not need to finish. What she has to say is written on her face: after Willem died. I suspect she read about it in the newspaper for months, years, like all of us.
“But there is also a report that was filed, which we found in Anton Gerhardt’s possessions, that suggested malpractice by his son. A report filed by a Nazi officer whose wife had died from poisoning. Anton Gerhardt had somehow retrieved this report and hidden it, perhaps to protect himself or his son.
“Furthermore, we checked the history of Willem Gerhardt’s property ownership and found that his primary place of residence had been an apartment in Berlin, but Fraulein Gerva said that she thought he had taken residence nearby. We found no such property leased in his name. He was clearly a careful man.
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