by Kathy Kacer
Seventeen
SARA AND PETER stood facing the International Tracing Service building in the middle of Bad Arolsen. It was a solid and impressive-looking brick building encircled by an iron fence. The fence was intimidating enough. The added problem was the security men who stood guard in front, one at the gate and another farther down the walkway, at the front door of the building. The men wore uniforms, though neither Peter nor Sara could identify what they were. German police? Private security? International inspectors? It didn’t matter. The men were there to keep visitors like Sara out.
“Why does it look so much like a prison?” Sara asked.
Peter began to explain. “Under Adolf Hitler, the Nazis kept detailed records about their own activities—who they rounded up and killed, where it happened and how. All of that information has been brought here. But I guess this country is not yet ready for the world to see any of it. So they keep it locked up—tightly!”
The two of them continued to stare at the guards.
“What do you think we should do?” Peter finally asked.
Sara had been hatching a plan and decided that now was the time to put it into action. She turned to Peter. “Put your arm around my waist and follow my lead,” she directed. Peter was taken aback and looked confused. “Don’t ask any questions,” she said. “Just follow me.”
With only the briefest hesitation, Peter hooked his arm around Sara’s waist, and together they began to move toward the iron gate and the first guard. As they drew closer, Sara suddenly slumped against Peter’s body and hung her head on his shoulder.
“Halt!” the guard ordered as they approached. The man had a thick neck, and his hands were folded across a uniform that stretched across an overly ample belly. His head was the shape of a full moon, and his jaw jutted out as if someone were pulling on the bottom half of his face.
“Please,” Sara gasped. “I need to use the bathroom!” She doubled over, coughing and pretending to retch into her hand.
“Das ist verboten!” The guard took a menacing step toward Sara.
She could make out a word that sounded like “forbidden” in what he had just growled at them. “I’m going to throw up,” she tried again, grabbing her stomach and contorting her face.
That’s when Peter took up the script. “You’ve got to let us in,” he pleaded. “She’s going to be sick right here.”
As if to prove his point, Sara coughed again, gagging violently. The guard hesitated. Sara coughed louder, lifting her face directly into his.
“Please,” Peter begged. “Before it’s too late.”
At that, the guard stepped back and quickly moved to open the gate. He grabbed his walkie-talkie to signal to his colleague at the front door of the building. Peter and Sara picked up their pace, lurching through the set of gates, up to the front door and past the second, startled security guard who had opened it and stood aside.
“Toilet?” Peter asked.
The guard at the front door pointed down the hallway and stood back, covering his own mouth with a handkerchief as Sara heaved once more.
“That was brilliant,” Peter said once they had turned a corner. He held his arm around her waist for a moment longer, until Sara moved away from him and smiled.
“I’ve lived in an orphanage all my life. You’d be surprised at how many ways there are to get around doing chores or get out of trouble.” This had been almost too simple. “You were pretty good yourself,” she added.
“Just following your lead,” he replied. “But what do we do if we run into another guard?”
Sara took a deep breath. “One obstacle at a time.”
The two of them surveyed the signs that dotted the hallway. They were written in German and meant nothing to Sara, but Peter investigated them closely. “There,” he said, pointing to one of the arrows. “I think the records of those who were in the DP camps will be in that room.” He indicated a door that was just meters from where they stood.
Through the square glass pane, they could see a middle-aged woman seated at a desk in front of a stack of files and papers. Her short dark hair was brushed neatly behind her ears, and her glasses were perched precariously on the end of her nose as she worked over her files.
Once more, Peter turned to Sara. “You’re the one who seems to know how to get around these obstacles. Any ideas?”
Sara surveyed the situation and then made a decision. Enough pretending, she thought. It was time to take her chances on being completely honest. She grabbed Peter by the arm, and together they opened the door of the records room and walked inside.
The woman behind the desk looked up, startled, as the two young people entered her office. “Was machen Sie hier?” She stood quickly, nearly losing the glasses off her nose. Sara did not need an interpreter to understand that the woman was asking what they were doing there. The rectangular nameplate at the front of her desk was engraved with the name Hedda Kaufmann.
Peter began to respond, but Sara reached out and put her hand on his arm. “Let me,” she said and turned to the woman. “Do you speak English?” she asked.
The startled woman nodded. “Yes, of course. Who are you, and how did you get in here? Where are the security guards?” She reached for the telephone on her desk, but Sara placed her hand on top of the woman’s.
“Before you call anyone, please let me tell you what this is all about.”
She began to talk, explaining that she had lived in an orphanage in Canada up until the day that a fire had burned her home to the ground. She described Mrs. Hazelton and the other six girls, and the journeys that each of them was taking to find out who they were and where they had come from. Finally, she talked about the discovery that her mother was Jewish, had survived a concentration camp and had given birth to her in the Föhrenwald displaced persons camp. The woman remained standing throughout Sara’s speech. Her face was expressionless, and Sara had no idea what she was thinking. “I’m staying at the Landhaus Inn in Wolfratshausen—with Frau Klein. I have less than a week to find information about my mother and father—who they were and what happened to them. Please don’t turn me away.” Sara glanced at the nameplate on the desk. “Frau Kaufmann?” Her voice was pleading. “You’re pretty much my last hope.”
With that, she stood silently in front of the woman. Seconds passed while Hedda Kaufmann eyed Sara up and down. Sara could almost see the debate going on inside the woman’s head while she pondered what Sara had said and decided whether to help. Finally, she gestured toward Peter. “And who is this young man? Is he searching for someone too?”
Sara let out the breath she had been holding. She detected that the harshness had gone out of Frau Kaufmann’s voice. “Peter is my friend. He’s been helping me.”
Frau Kaufmann hesitated. “I shouldn’t be doing this…” she said, while Sara stood facing her, hope and expectation written across her face. “All right,” the woman finally said, moving out from behind her desk. “Come with me.”
Eighteen
SARA’S HEART WAS jumping, her pulse racing. She could barely contain her excitement as she and Peter followed Frau Kaufmann into a back room. Metal filing cabinets filled the space, lined up side by side to create a maze of narrow passageways. Frau Kaufmann walked up and down the aisles, checking the nameplates on several of the cabinets, searching for something. Sara didn’t know what. Finally, Frau Kaufmann came to a stop in front of a row of filing cabinets at the back of the room. “Ah, here they are.” She turned to face Peter and Sara, who had followed silently behind her. “The records of those who were in Föhrenwald are here in these cabinets.” She glanced down the aisle, to the door leading back to her front office. “You have about twenty minutes. I can’t allow you any more time than that.” And with that she turned and walked away.
Sara wasted no time. She surveyed the cabinet drawers, searching for the nameplate with the letters closest to her mother’s last name—Frankel. It did not take long for her to find the right one. She pulled the drawer open
, flipped through the records contained inside and finally withdrew a single slim file folder. The label read Frankel, Karen. Glancing at Peter, Sara moved to a small table next to the cabinets. She sat down and steadied herself. Here it was. Her journey had led her to this place, this moment, and to the information she was about to uncover inside these pages. Why the hesitation in opening the file? she asked herself. What was she going to find? And how would it change her life or her future?
“Are you going to open it or just stare at it?” Peter asked.
Sara laughed nervously. “I’m suddenly so scared,” she replied.
Peter took a step closer to the table and placed his hand on Sara’s shoulder. “Open it,” he said. “It’s what you’ve come for.”
Sara nodded, exhaled loudly and flipped open the file. There was hardly anything inside, just a couple of documents and letters with a bit of information about the brief life of Karen Frankel.
“There’s so little here,” said Sara, shaking her head.
“I can’t imagine someone’s life reduced to a few sheets of paper.” Peter was peering over Sara’s shoulder at the information.
Everything had gone a little blurry in front of Sara’s eyes. Yes, her mother’s whole life was here in this thin file. But then again, Sara’s life had also been reduced to two documents and a gold necklace. She fingered the Star of David around her neck as her vision came back into focus. “Peter, you have to read this for me.”
Peter nodded and exchanged places with Sara. He began to read aloud, translating as he went. “It says here that your mother was imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp. It says that she was there for six months.”
“I can’t even imagine what her life must have been like there,” Sara interrupted. She knew that Jewish prisoners were starved, tortured and killed in that awful place. She shook her head, trying to push the images away, and turned back to Peter. “Keep going.”
“She went to Föhrenwald in June 1945, just after Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army.”
“She must have been pregnant with me when she arrived.” Sara was doing a quick mental calculation. The medical certificate that she had, signed by Dr. Pearlman, said that she had been born in December 1945, six months after her mother arrived in Föhrenwald. “What about my father? Is there anything in there about him?”
Peter flipped to another sheet of paper. He scanned the document and then lifted his face to Sara. “I found his name. Simon Frankel.”
The information was right in front of Sara. Her father and her mother—Simon and Karen Frankel.
“They married just months before their deportation together to Auschwitz. It appears that they had survived up until that time with false papers that identified them as Christians.” Peter looked up. “Most German Jews were deported to the concentration camps early on in the war. It’s pretty miraculous that your parents were able to hide for so long.”
“It didn’t do them much good in the end,” Sara said bitterly.
Peter returned to the document. “It says here that your father survived in Auschwitz for the first few months after they arrived. They were separated from each other, but both were alive. And then…” Peter paused. “He was killed a few months later. Your father died in the gas chambers.” These last words were said in barely more than a whisper.
Sara cleared her throat. “I figured that much. Even though my mother survived until the end of the war, I know that she was really sick by then—with tuberculosis—TB. I contracted it from her.” She stared at Peter.
“It doesn’t say anything about you in here.”
“I can only imagine that my mother tried to hide her pregnancy while she was in the concentration camp. Is there anything else?” asked Sara.
Peter continued reading and then stopped.
“What is it?”
“It says that eventually your mother was transported for treatment to a hospital in Gauting—about ten miles from Föhrenwald. She died there.”
Neither one of them spoke. So there it was—the answer to Sara’s questions about her background. Her parents were both dead. Not that she was really surprised to learn that; it was what she had expected, despite the shards of hope that had slipped in and out of her imagination. Yet strangely, even though all the information had just been confirmed, Sara did not feel resolved about her past. She just felt sad.
“I’m sorry,” Peter began.
Sara shook her head. “At least I know what happened, and why I was given up for adoption. There was no one to take care of me after both of them died. I guess I’m lucky that Dr. Pearlman cleared the way for me to go to Canada.” She began to gather the papers back into the file. Just as she was about to replace it in the cabinet, a single black-and-white photograph slipped out from between the sheets and fell to the ground. Sara bent to pick it up. There was a young girl standing in the picture. Her long curly hair was held off her face with two clips. She was straddling a bicycle and staring, without smiling, into the camera. Sara knew instantly that this was her mother—a reflection of her own face was gazing back at her. She was staring at the photo when Hedda Kaufmann re-entered the file room.
“I’m afraid it’s time,” Frau Kaufmann said. “I’ve allowed you to stay in here for as long as possible.” She saw Sara staring at the photograph and approached her. As she peered over Sara’s shoulder, Frau Kaufmann gasped out loud. “Karen!” she said.
“What?” Sara, startled out of her sadness, looked up at Frau Kaufmann.
“It’s Karen Frankel. Is she the one you were looking for? Was she your mother?”
“Did you know her?”
“Yes, she was my friend,” replied Frau Kaufmann, reaching for the photo and holding it tenderly in her hands. “We were in the same barrack in Auschwitz and then together again in Föhrenwald. I’m also a survivor of the Holocaust. I had no idea that you were looking for Karen.”
They stared at one another, Frau Kaufmann taking in Sara’s long dark hair and piercing blue eyes. And then she gasped again. “Of course, you must be the child!”
“Please,” begged Sara, “you have to tell me what you know about my mother. What was she like? Was she kind? Was she funny?” It felt to her as if she had suddenly been thrown a lifeline—the opportunity to learn some details about her mother that might connect her to Sara’s life in a meaningful way—not just facts documented in a file, but real and personal information.
Frau Kaufmann stuttered and stammered and looked away.
Sara was confused by her reaction. “Is something wrong?”
“It’s too terrible,” Frau Kaufmann replied. “I can’t possibly tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“The guards, they treated us so badly there. So many of us were beaten and tortured.”
“Yes, I can’t even begin to imagine how you must have suffered. But is there something that you know about my mother?” Sara felt that recognizable dread rise up in her like an unwanted visitor.
“One guard in particular,” Frau Kaufmann continued, breathless now and with eyes closed. “He had it in for the young women. He singled out your mother. She had no way to fend him off.”
A belt was beginning to tighten around Sara’s chest, crushing the air out of her lungs. She fought to breath, forcing air into her lungs. “What are you trying to say?”
“But perhaps killing her would have been better than…”
“Than what?”
“It’s too terrible,” Frau Kaufmann whispered again.
“Stop saying that, Frau Kaufmann! Please! You’ve got to tell me what it is!” Sara gulped. “It’s about my mother. It’s about my life.”
The room felt as if it had gone icy cold, like a winter day back in Hope. The hairs on Sara’s arms stood straight up as she faced Frau Kaufmann, impatient yet fearful of what was coming next. And then, finally, Frau Kaufmann spoke. Sara had to lean in to hear what she said.
“There is no other way to tell you this except to be honest
with you. Your mother was raped in the final days of the war. The man who raped her was the Nazi concentration-camp guard. She was pregnant with you when she arrived in Föhrenwald.”
Nineteen
PETER WAS MOUTHING something, but the thumping in Sara’s chest had risen up to her ears, pounding and drowning out all other sounds. Peter, Frau Kaufmann, the records room—all of it fell away. A voice screamed inside Sara’s head—perhaps she even screamed it aloud—“No, no, no!” And then Sara fled from the room. She could hear Frau Kaufmann behind her, calling out to her.
“Wait! Please stop! You mustn’t leave like this.”
Sara ignored her cries. She ran down the hallway of the building, out the front door and toward the front gates, where the beefy guard was still standing. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her heart was beating so wildly that she had to place her hands on either side of her chest, as if to keep it from breaking through her ribs. The guard took one look at her and rushed to unlock the gates. This time, Sara thought she might really be sick.
Her mind was in overdrive. The last words from Frau Kaufmann’s mouth rewound through her brain like a broken record. The man who raped your mother was the Nazi concentration-camp guard. How was that possible? How was it that she had traveled all this way to find out about her family only to discover that her father—her father—was a Nazi guard? What did that even mean? Was she also part Nazi? And what part had come from him? The anger? The irritation? The blue eyes? It was almost too much to imagine.
Sara ran toward the train station. The tears were streaming from her eyes so hard and fast that she could barely see where she was going. Her hands were clasped and grinding furiously against one another as if she could somehow erase the moment if she rubbed hard enough. Everything was coming apart. It was like pulling a thread on the hem of a skirt that she had sewn and watching as it unraveled.
