Saving Amelie

by Cathy Gohlke

Chief Schrade waved a merry good-bye to the troops and was gone.

  Two more checkpoints brought them to the base of the mountain. Chief Schrade pulled his horse off the road and through the field.

  “We’re leaving the road?” Rachel felt her panic rising.

  “Ja, it’s better this way—just to reach the road beyond the wood. We want them to think we drove on, beyond Ettal. I don’t want them to think we took to the mountains.”

  “What about our tracks?”

  “Can’t you smell? Rain is coming. By the time they’ve figured out we’re gone—if they realize you existed at all—our tracks will be washed clean.”

  Rachel prayed it would be so.

  The moon swept between clouds. The horse emerged at last onto a mountain road. Up, up, and around they went, the horse going slower the higher they climbed.

  “Will he be able to make it to the top?” Rivka peeked from beneath the sack.

  “Nein,” Chief Schrade replied. “It’s much too steep . . . but you will.”

  “What?” Rachel could not imagine walking the mountain in the dark.

  The man nodded. “Sit back. Enjoy the ride, for we’ll all be walking soon.”

  Less than twenty minutes later, true to his word, Forestry Chief Schrade pulled the wagon off the road and through a grove of trees. A faint light broke the darkness. By the time they’d come within close view, Rachel realized there was a cabin. The door opened. A woman, silhouetted against a softly burning lamp, beckoned them inside.

  But Chief Schrade refused, calling instead for the woman’s husband. “Danke, but we must be on our way. I’ll be back tomorrow for the horse and wagon.”

  “I’ll take good care of him,” the farmer replied, stepping around his wife. “He’ll be ready for you.”

  Rachel had hoped they could stop for a cup of something resembling coffee, or anything at all to steady her nerves. But Chief Schrade helped her down, uncovered Rivka from the straw, and urged them to follow him quickly into the dark forest. He handed each a length of rope to keep connected. But neither woman was used to strenuous hiking these last months, and they stumbled in tandem.

  “Can we slow down a little?” Rachel called.

  “You must keep up,” Chief Schrade hissed. “You must keep up or you risk being shot!” Rachel didn’t waste her shortened breath on another word, but bent her head into the climb.

  Up, up, and up—forever they climbed, until Rivka slowed and Rachel felt her legs would break.

  At last the terrain leveled and they stepped onto a crooked path, descending into a small glen. Rachel prayed they would not have to climb back out.

  The trees thickened so they could barely see one another through the darkness and branches. One moment Rachel was holding the rope and following Rivka, and the next minute she stood alone, empty-handed. “Rivka! Rivka!” she called.

  “Silence!” Chief Schrade whispered fiercely. “We’re nearly there. Stay close to one another.”

  Rachel groped silently in the dark until Rivka grabbed her hand. Rachel breathed deeply, relieved but tense, and followed her friend.

  A small clearing opened and something tall and dark loomed before them. At first Rachel thought it was another copse of trees. But Forestry Chief Schrade reached the darkness first, and she heard the thumping of shoes against a door.

  “Thank you!” she whispered.

  “Come in, come in,” Chief Schrade urged. “We rest for one hour, and then go. We must meet our contact before midnight.” He struck a match, and the lamp’s sudden flare hurt Rachel’s eyes. But she was grateful for the shattered darkness, even for the crazy shadows that danced upon the walls, across the broad tables and chairs.

  “What is this place?” whispered Rivka.

  “A lodge—used by hunters in times gone by. Since the war, the Nazis use it as training barracks for the mountaineers.”

  “Do you think—?”

  “Nein, nein. No one will come up here tonight—they’ll all be celebrating till dawn. The Sturmbannführer doesn’t even know of this place.”

  “What about Maximillion?” Shivers ran the length of Rachel’s spine.

  “Ja, he knows, and he knows whom to tell. Let’s hope he’s not that smart.” He handed them a lamp. “Do not worry. Before it crosses their minds you’ll both be safely on your way to Lisbon.”

  “I pray you’re right.” Rachel had done more praying, more almost believing, that night than she’d done in her life.

  Chief Schrade nodded. “We’ll all pray, Fräulein Kramer.”

  It was so strange to hear her own name; to think she would soon hear it every day seemed a miracle. If only she could hear Jason say it—aloud—once more. All the way up the mountain she’d wished she could have spoken with him, said good-bye. To see him in the audience, unable to smile at or acknowledge him, seeing the hurt and betrayal in his eyes when she’d brazenly flirted with Schlick from across the room—it seemed too cruel an ending, and one Jason didn’t deserve after all he’d done to help. Surely Lea would explain that it was safer he not know their exact plans ahead of time, so he could better act as surprised as everyone else.

  By the time they’d bedded down, Rachel could barely keep her eyes open. She and Rivka shared a sofa, and Chief Schrade kept watch by the window. Rachel was nearly asleep when Rivka whispered, “Oma and Amelie and Lea and Friederich will be safe now—won’t they? And we’ll be all right?”

  Rachel forced her voice to smile in the darkness. She pressed her new younger sister’s hand. “More than all right. Everything will be wonderful—for all of us. You’ll see.”

  Rivka squeezed her hand in return.

  Rachel closed her eyes. Let it be true.

  68

  RACHEL DIDN’T WANT to wake when Forestry Chief Schrade touched her shoulder; she wanted to finish her dream. And all her bones ached from the evening climb.

  But he shook her, insisting that she waken. He shook Rivka. “We must be on our way. I have rolls for you. But hurry! We must make it look as if no one has been here.”

  “Coffee?” Rivka yawned.

  “No fire—no smoke,” he ordered. “Hurry!”

  Rachel pulled herself together. There was no way to change her clothes or do more than wipe the worst of the homemade stage makeup from her face. But at least the face that peered back at her from the cracked mirror over the washbowl was her own—a little bleary, a little older and more careworn than the young woman who’d come to Germany the year before, but her own.

  Soon she would be free to be herself, would not need to pretend to be Lea Hartman or her grandmother’s relative visiting from Stelle. She wondered for a moment what that would be like, who she would be now that she’d lived this other life, now that she’d learned all her life before had been a lie.

  Rachel and Rivka took the rolls Chief Schrade handed them and stuffed them into their pockets to eat along the way. They wrapped their jackets tight against the cold mountain air and followed him into the night.

  They climbed and climbed, for an hour or more.

  “It’s not far now—not far at all,” Chief Schrade whispered, hoarse.

  Suddenly the trees stopped, the mountain dropped, and the moonlit path swerved almost back upon itself through a sharp cleft.

  “A pass!” Rivka called behind her. “A pass! The going will be easier.”

  “Thank you!” Rachel whispered to the night. Her calf and thigh muscles strained to the breaking point.

  Hidden at the base of the pass was what looked like the outline of a building. Chief Schrade motioned for the girls to stop, to wait. Rachel caught up to Rivka, and they stood close in the shadows of the trees. Chief Schrade continued down the path, disappearing inside what looked like nothing but a makeshift hut, a shack. Sounds of two men, maybe three, talking, possibly arguing, floated toward them.

  Three minutes must have passed before a man started up the shadowed path toward them. But it wasn’t the shape of Chief Schrade. They couldn’t see h
is face as it bent toward the climb, but he scrambled up and up. Rachel was ready to turn, to pull Rivka back through the trees the way they’d come, to stumble down the mountain. Perhaps they could make it back to the lodge, lose the man, make it to Ettal or even Oma’s attic.

  “Rachel! Rachel!” the man called.

  The swimming, swirling fears in Rachel’s head stopped short. “Jason?” She gasped, trying to escape hallucination. “What are you doing here? How did you—?”

  “I couldn’t let you go . . . without seeing you.” He reached them, panting. “Rivka . . . good to see you again.”

  “And you, boss.”

  “How did you get here ahead of us? It took us all night to get this far—we only rested an hour.”

  “Schellenberg was grateful for good press and offered me a ride with his motorcade. I picked the nearest ski lodge—told him I’d been assigned to do a story on Bavaria’s ski resorts, reasons the world might still like to visit Germany this autumn. The last hour I took on foot.”

  “What about Gerhardt?”

  “I believe our good Brigadeführer’s going to keep Schlick very busy coordinating concentration camps deep in Poland for some time.” He stepped closer. “Lea told me where to find you. We don’t have much time.”

  Rivka squeezed Rachel’s hand, said, “See you later,” and continued down the path toward the shack.

  “How long do we have?” Rachel didn’t want to think of Gerhardt Schlick again, didn’t want to miss this moment.

  “Five minutes. Just enough time for the two of you to drink something hot and change clothes. You can wear a set of mine—with suspenders.” He grinned. “Your contact’s ready to go—got to get you through the pass and to the other side before daylight.” He wrapped an arm around her back. “Chicory’s on. I want you warmed through. You’ve got a long road ahead.”

  But she needed to stop time. It had all been such a rush, such high risk, and now there was no more time. “Jason. When will I see you?” She knew she should thank him for all he’d done—for saving Amelie, for saving her from a father who would have sold her to the Nazis, for helping her find her real family, for saving Rivka, for introducing her to Bonhoeffer and, more importantly, to Jesus—his Jesus and perhaps, one day, her Jesus—someone she needed to know better. She should say a thousand different things. But just now, this was all that mattered. “Tell me.”

  He cupped her face in his hands and turned it to the night sky. “Do you see that half moon?”

  She sniffed, unable to keep the twisted knot from rising in her throat.

  “Each night I want you to look at that moon, and know that I’m looking at it, thinking of you, counting its cycles until I see you again—in New York.”

  “And what will happen when you reach New York?” She could barely breathe.

  He turned her face back to his. “I’ll be looking up Miss Rachel Kramer. I’ll be asking her to meet me for coffee that very day, then lunch, and dinner.”

  “Dinner? Isn’t that pretty serious?” she whispered.

  He pulled her closer. “Very serious. For the rest of my life.”

  “And mine,” she promised.

  “Mrs. Jason Young—has a nice ring.”

  “Rachel Young,” she countered.

  “Rachel Young,” he agreed, then kissed her boldly, fully, warmly on the mouth.

  The heat that rose from the tips of her toes traveled up her legs and into her torso, filling her heart, rushing to her head. She couldn’t think, couldn’t reason, didn’t care to, but pushed her fingers through his hair, letting his hat fall to the ground, and returned his promise tenfold.

  Epilogue

  IN 1950, the people of Oberammergau pooled their resources and committed to their first Passion Play season since 1934, hoping to show the world a more Christian and temperate side of Germany. General Eisenhower planned to attend with his wife, Mamie. Jason figured that was a sure sign that it was time—it was safe, at last—for his Rachel to return home to her family.

  The Youngs flew first by way of Israel and spent five days with a radiant Rivka, RN, and her new husband, Dr. David Schechem, recently settled in a fledgling kibbutz. The Schechems had opened the kibbutz’s first medical clinic, joining other Hebrew believers in building a community, and hoping to welcome many more.

  For years from the time that they’d learned of the murder of Rivka’s parents and brother, Jason, Rachel, and Rivka had donated money to help build the new state of Israel, to plant trees and vineyards, praying with Rivka that their efforts would help to save the Jewish remnant surviving the Holocaust.

  “And here we are!” Rivka exulted. “It is a beginning.”

  “A wondrous beginning.” Rachel embraced her little sister, who’d grown beyond her now, anticipating a life, a family, a community of her own.

  Walking onto the plane, waving good-bye to the sister she’d come to love just as much as her birth sister, was harder than Rachel had imagined. Rivka had hidden in Oma’s attic with her and witnessed the biggest transformations in Rachel’s life. She’d trekked over the Alps and skied into Switzerland with her. She’d begged and bargained by her side for two seats on a weekly, rickety, packed bus through unoccupied France to Barcelona, hopped a moving train with her from Barcelona into Madrid and finally Lisbon. Together, they’d miraculously sailed from Lisbon to New York and battled immigration.

  In a story stranger than fiction, Rivka was the sister who’d wrestled and journeyed beside her for five years to the heart of Jesus—Yeshua, the Messiah. A journey neither had imagined in their younger lives, and a journey that had changed them both forever.

  When their feet finally stood on German soil in Munich, Rachel trembled, but Jason stood close, his hand on her spine.

  The train ride to Oberammergau brought a rush of memories and no small amount of trepidation. What will it be like, seeing Amelie again? Will she remember me?

  They’d received no word from Oma, Lea, or Friederich until six months after the war ended in Europe. Jason and Rachel, reunited and finally able to marry, had immediately sent relief packages. Each month’s package contained a tin of coffee, a tin of tea, and four bars of chocolate, wrapped in clothing or shoes for one family member or another. Sometimes the packages made it through.

  Oma wrote most recently that Amelie had grown into a beautiful and capable young woman, one of Oberammergau’s finest up-and-coming dressmakers. So changed was she from the picture of the little boy in the “Bavarian Madonna and Child” that she was certain Rachel would not recognize her. No one in the village questioned her origins—no one except Heinrich Helphman, Friederich’s woodcarving apprentice, who was smitten from the moment he’d seen Amelie as a child in need of a protector.

  Years of fierce bombing had made deafness and hearing difficulties common—a casualty of war. Oma’s story to all who asked was that the little girl had been orphaned. The child’s grandmother was a relative of Oma’s from Stelle, who had disappeared during the bombing. How natural for Lea and Friederich Hartman to adopt her.

  Rachel knew that, in walking German soil again, the unsettling ghosts of the past were not hers alone. She’d sensed the tension in Jason’s posture, in the grim set of his mouth, in the grip of his hand.

  Jason had left Berlin in 1941, having been reassigned to London until the end of the war. He never saw or heard from Dietrich Bonhoeffer again, but learned from colleagues that his friend was arrested in 1943 and charged with conspiracy when his part in the failed plot to assassinate Hitler was discovered. After months of interrogation, and shortly before the end of the war, Dietrich was moved from Buchenwald to Schönberg. The Sunday after Easter, just after leading a service for inmates in his prison cell, Bonhoeffer was taken by Gestapo agents to Flossenbürg. He was hanged at dawn two days later. Among his last known words were, “This is the end—for me the beginning of life.”

  Nearly a year after the war, Jason learned through the Red Cross that Curate Bauer had been sentenced to hard l
abor in Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp on the outskirts of Oranienburg. On Christmas Day, 1942, he’d insisted on taking the place of a young Jew condemned to death for stealing a ration of bread. The curate stood before the firing squad, without blindfold, praying aloud for the soldiers who raised their guns to kill him. The Jewish boy was shot anyway.

  So many losses, so much pain. Rachel didn’t know if she was strong enough to face a Germany with such sadness. At least she’d put the ghost of her father to rest, and she no longer feared the Institute or Gerhardt Schlick.

  Six months after the war, a new secretary at the Cold Spring Harbor Institute had mistakenly forwarded a letter to Dr. Kramer’s former address. The letter, to the Institute, from the office of Dr. Verschuer of Berlin, made its way to Rachel. Dr. Verschuer regretted to inform the Institute that Sturmbannführer Gerhardt Schlick had fallen ill during the last month of the war and died in Poland. Miss Rachel Kramer’s participation in their mutual experiment was no longer of interest.

  Incriminating files disappeared near the end of the war; Dr. Verschuer was not tried for war crimes, but continued to conduct research in the related field of genetics. His assistant, Dr. Josef Mengele, better known as the “Angel of Death” for his horrific human experiments at Auschwitz, had escaped to South America in 1949 with the help of his family.

  How can we make peace with such a past as this? How can we move into a future, build a home, a family born of so much pain?

  But when Jason traced her arm and fingered her wedding ring, Rachel knew. I am not alone. We are not alone.

  Rachel breathed deeply as the train neared the station. What will Lea think when she sees me? What does she look like now? Do we still look the same? Rachel sighed, rubbing her stomach, which seemed to grow larger by the day. She knew they no longer looked anything alike, and that might be the greatest hurt of all for her sister.

  She turned to Jason and whispered, “Maybe we should have told her before we came. Maybe this is a bad idea.”

  Jason pushed his fedora back on his head and whispered in Rachel’s ear, “Did I ever tell you that you don’t look much like that old woman I kissed on her way out of Germany all those years ago?”