In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer

by Irene Opdyke; Jennifer Armstrong

  The others had dropped their work. In the silence that followed Steiner's remark, we could hear soap bubbles popping faintly in the washtub, and then the whine of a truck racing its engine across the compound.

  Clara Bauer was pressing her hands together. Her cheeks were red. “Maybe God meant it to do us some good. Do you think we could hide there?”

  “I'm sure of it,” I said. “Once the work is completed, I'll find a way to smuggle you all into it. It will be a week or two before the house is ready, though. That will give us time to plan.”

  “We've been praying for something like this,” Ida said. “God has heard us.”

  We were all silent again. Perhaps we were all thinking what I was thinking—that God had been deaf to so many already. But now the opportunity was here; I did not intend to wait for a second one.

  In the meantime, however, I could not forget that Rokita's fatal work was speeding up. In town, behind a small shrine to the Virgin Mary, I left a note for Helen to wait for me there in two days’ time. We had agreed on this system for communicating; neither of us trusted the phone lines. When, at the end of the week, I returned to the shrine with a small offering of daisies, Helen was there, her head bent in prayer.

  “We have to spread the word as quickly as we can,” I whispered as I knelt to place my flowers. “The SS are going to wipe out the ghetto and ship everyone out of the Arbeits-lager by the end of the month.”

  “I think it must be because of the Russians,” Helen replied, crossing herself, her eyes on the Virgin's statue. “If they begin to advance this way, the Germans will not want the Jews to be liberated.”

  I folded my hands and closed my eyes as though praying. “How can we spread the word? It will be hard to get all over town.”

  “I can lend you my bicycle. Will that help?”

  “Yes. Can you bring it tomorrow?”

  “Yes. I'll warn people in the countryside as much as I can. I'll use the wagon.”

  Footsteps passed behind us, and Helen crossed herself again and walked away. Neither of us had looked at the other through this conversation. I stayed a few more minutes, then returned to HKP.

  As I passed the guardhouse and entered the compound, I saw Major Rügemer driving out. He waved when he saw me, and I stood watching his car turn the corner and go out of sight. I glanced at the guard. He was smirking at me.

  “How do you like aged German sausage?” he asked me.

  When I looked at him blankly, he gave me a broad, lascivious wink and jerked his hips forward, and my face instantly blazed. I scurried away, hearing his mocking laughter follow me. So, it was assumed that I was the major's mistress. I should have expected this, but still, I almost wept with humiliation. I rounded the corner of a building and leaned back against the brick wall to compose myself. The sun beat down on me, adding its heat to my flushed face. A pair of sparrows was taking a dust bath at the foot of the flagpole, throwing tiny sprays of grit and dirt up into the air. I watched them for a moment, letting my thoughts settle.

  If I was assumed to be the major's girlfriend, then it would cause no comment to find me in his office. If I was assumed to be the major's girlfriend, there was no place at HKP that I could not go. I pushed myself away from the wall, almost wanting to thumb my nose at the guard back at the gate.

  As if I had a perfectly natural reason to do so, I entered the factory and went to the major's office. It was empty. His last secretary had returned to Berlin only a week or two previously, and no one had yet taken her place. I opened the right-hand drawer of the major's desk. In it, just as I remembered, were passes signed by both him and Rokita. I grabbed several and stuffed them in my apron pocket. They would come in handy, I was sure.

  And they did. For the next several days, I rode around town on Helen's bicycle, and every time I passed a man or woman wearing the yellow star, I mumbled a quick warning: Hide, run away, the liquidation is coming soon. If a guard stopped me, I had only to flash one of my passes, smile sweetly, and push off on my bicycle in the sunshine. Getting away from HKP for my “fresh air” was never hard. Schulz always gave me permission, never looking directly at me when he told me I could have an hour off. Sometimes I wanted to grab his arms and make him face me, and ask him to admit that he knew what I was doing. But I did not, and he did not. He waved me out, and never asked me how my rides were.

  And I checked on the villa almost every day. The two families had been given some time to make other arrangements, and had until almost the end of the month, but I was anxious to hurry them along. Rokita's prolonged absences from HKP told me we were running out of time, and I often envisioned myself running a race with the Sturmbannführer. I had to get the families out, the painters in, and my friends hidden before the race was over.

  And then the fifteenth of July came. Rokita turned up at dinnertime, smiling and joking with the other officers, and drinking a toast to the Führer at the bar before taking a seat at Major Rügemer's table. The windows were open to the evening air, letting in the scent of grass and diesel fuel. Someone had turned on the gramophone, and at one of the tables, the men were celebrating the birth of a baby boy to an officer's wife back in Düsseldorf. The officer himself was already drunk, and making sloppy speeches to his friends. They howled with laughter and plied him with more wine, thumping him on the back and shoulders.

  Rokita shook out his napkin and nodded toward the revelers. “We'll all be celebrating, soon,” he announced to the major.

  I was unloading a tray at the table, setting down the bread basket, a dish of beet salad, and some spaetzle. The major took a piece of bread and tore it apart absently, wincing as the laughter crescendoed.

  “Why is that?” he asked Rokita, a bit tiredly.

  Rokita grinned. “Because, my dear major, by the twenty-second of this month, Ternopol will be judenrein. Won't that be wonderful?”

  I picked up my tray and began walking away. My head was light, and my vision was closing in on me. I banged through the kitchen door and let the empty tray clang onto a table before throwing myself against the sink. I was afraid I would be sick. I retched, but nothing came up, only the sour sting of bile.

  Schulz turned the water on and patted some onto my cheeks. “Irene? What is it?”

  I could not speak. I had the strangest sensation, as though I must shake myself out of my own skin, as though my body were a terrible burden that could not exist in the same space as my emotions. I wanted to sit down, but I was like a pillar of salt.

  “Irene?”

  I wiped my mouth with a shaking hand and reached for the towel he held out to me. For a moment, our eyes met, and then he turned away without asking again.

  “Go get some fresh air,” he said quietly.

  I stumbled out the back door. The last streaks of bloody color were scratched against the sky. Across the compound, the door of the laundry room faced me like the door of a tomb.

  The next morning was the sixteenth. The villa that was my friends’ only hope was not ready; not only had it not been painted, it hadn't even been vacated yet. As I dressed I tried to decide if I should tell them what I knew, that we had only six days left. They would be devastated. There were six workers left in the laundry room: Ida and Lazar Haller, Clara and Thomas Bauer, Moses Steiner, and Fanka Silberman. Six of them, and six days to go. I sat for fifteen minutes on the edge of my bed, staring at a patch of sunlight on the bare floor, trying to know what I should do. In the end, I decided I must be honest. Perhaps together we could find our way to a solution.

  “We'll never make it,” Steiner announced when I told them.

  Fanka let out a small cry, which she bit off the moment it passed her lips, and Ida put her arms around the girl. “Hush, Steiner. Shame on you for having no hope.”

  “It's time to make a run for it,” Thomas Bauer said. “Take our chances in the forest.”

  “No, wait,” I pleaded. “I don't know if I'll be able to take you, and it's too dangerous otherwise. Don't run. We can—” I pac
ed the laundry room, feeling them watching me. “Don't go back to the camp on the twenty-first. Stay here. I'll lock you all in for the night. By the next day, the house should be vacant and somehow—”

  “Somehow, Irene?” Lazar asked heavily.

  “Somehow! Somehow I'll get you into the villa!” I promised.

  Clara glanced at her husband. Her face was deathly pale. “Irene, you'll be caught. We'll all be caught. They'll take us all. Let us go and take our chances on our own. At least you will be safe.”

  I was growing frantic. I clutched at her. “Please! Please don't run! I can do this!”

  Steiner shook his head and turned away.

  “We are in God's hands,” Lazar said. “And in Irene's.” He managed to smile. To comfort me! Me! Their faith put me to shame. How could I presume to be their savior?

  And yet I had promised. I had to do it.

  The next five days were a nightmare. Each time I went to the laundry room—and I had to, I had to continue my normal routine, in spite of the bitter urgency—I saw the question in my friends’ eyes, and I had to reassure them that all would be well. Each time I left them I had to fight tears.

  The twenty-first of July: Helen sent word that she was waiting for me at the guardhouse. I met her there and brought her back to my little bedroom, where she promptly broke down. Henry had been ordered to report back to the ghetto from Rokita's quarters at the end of the day.

  “What will I do, Irene?” she groaned, banging her forehead with her closed fists as the tears spilled down her face. “I can't hide him, there's no room! He'll be discovered!”

  I slid close to her, and spoke into her ear, my skin crawling at the thought of German officers passing in the hall. “Helen, try to stay calm. I have a house. By tomorrow evening, it will be safe for Henry to go there. He must hide tonight and tomorrow, and then when it is dark, he must go through the coal chute. Can you get to him to tell him?”

  She turned to stare at me, her eyes blank. “What? How did you—”

  “Do you understand me?” I hissed.

  Silently, she nodded her head. “Yes.”

  I whispered the address to her as I pulled her to her feet. “Go now. Tell him.”

  She nearly ran down the hall. I watched her go, and then prepared to spend the day pretending that nothing was wrong.

  By late afternoon, I was jumping at every noise. I crammed some dirty towels into a laundry basket and crossed the compound. Jewish workers from the factory were being loaded into trucks to return to the Arbeitslager. One truck had already passed the gate and was shifting gears to turn onto the street. I went into the laundry room.

  My six friends faced me. Lazar was standing by the wall of jerry-rigged shelves.

  “Now,” I said.

  Without a word, Thomas joined Lazar, and they began pulling away the two shelves that hid the opening. Ida pushed Fanka in before her, then crawled into the space. Clara followed, and then Steiner and Thomas. Beyond the door, we heard more trucks arriving. Lazar looked at me and then ducked to squirm his way in behind the shelves. I heard distant shouts as I replaced the two boards and arranged boxes and bottles on them. A casual glance would find nothing wrong, but the hiding place would never foil a determined search. For the time being, there was nothing more I could do. My hands shook slightly as I locked the door from the outside and stood watching the trucks—and the poor people climbing into them.

  Two more trucks drove away. I tried to pray, but the words in my head did not fit together in the right order. I wanted to say “Holy Father,” but I could not. I thought He must have gone far away, taking His name with Him.

  Then, a flash of reflected light caught my eyes. I looked up and saw a window in the secretaries’ wing of the hotel open outward. A woman leaned over the sill, watching the trucks leave and tapping the ash off a cigarette. She was laughing at something—perhaps another woman in the room behind her had made a joke. Then she turned away. She hadn't a care in the world. I could happily have shot her.

  I hurried to the dining room to begin setting the tables for dinner. Schulz was stocking the bar, and several of the officers were having drinks at a far table.

  “Oh, Irene,” Schulz said when I joined him, “I forgot to tell you. We won't be serving dinner tonight. There's a concert in town, and then a party. Nearly everyone from the plant is going.”

  I found myself looking at the giant picture of Hitler on the far wall. “Oh. I didn't know.”

  One of the secretaries came in, the same woman I had seen just minutes before.

  “Herr Schulz, a bottle of wine and some glasses, please, for me to take up to our room as we get dressed,” she said, ignoring me.

  “Of course, Fräulein.”

  While Schulz busied himself with a corkscrew, one of the younger officers strolled over. “Getting yourselves all fancy for the SS boys, are you?”

  She gave him a flirtatious look. “Oh, we're expecting SS?”

  “They'll be coming tomorrow to search for Jews. So many have gone missing in the last few days—there's probably one hiding under your bed right now. Shall I come take a look?”

  She uttered a mock scream, and grabbed the wine bottle from Schulz's hand. “No, thank you. I'll bash him over the head with this, if I find one!” she said, and flounced away.

  The officers laughed, and Schulz managed a weak chuckle. “Perhaps if you were SS, she would have said yes,” he offered.

  A soldier stuck his head through the door. “Herr Schulz. Your workers, have they gone yet? We're loading the last truck.”

  Before Schulz could speak, I stepped forward. “They went earlier. I've already locked up the laundry.”

  The soldier glanced from me to Schulz and back again. “Yes?”

  I made myself nod. “Yes. Would you like to take a look?”

  “I'll check—that way I can be sure,” the soldier said uncertainly.

  I made myself nod again, as automatic as a puppet. “This way.”

  Schulz followed. I could not look at him as we left the hotel and crossed the compound, but I began an almost hysterical chatter, hoping my voice would alert my friends to the danger.

  “We really must complain about the soap they've been sending us from Berlin, Herr Schulz. I don't think it cleans very well. What do you suppose it's made of? All the whites seem very dingy to me. When I was a girl, we always laid our whites on the grass in the sunshine to get them extra white, and it made them smell so good, too, but of course, the ground here is too dirty—” I rattled my keys as I put them to the door. “Here we are!”

  I pushed the door open and hit the light switch, my heart cannonading in my chest. Schulz ushered the guard inside. The man took a couple of steps in and turned around. The room was not large, and there were no closets, only the wall of shelves. He shrugged and stepped outside. I jammed my key into the lock and secured the door again.

  “They left earlier, as I told you,” I said.

  The soldier shrugged again, and then made his way to the row of trucks. Schulz headed back to the kitchen without a word to me.

  By six o'clock, most of the officers and secretaries had left, crowding themselves in laughing piles in the backseats of cars. Even Schulz had gone off to the festivities. Only two officers remained, groaning in their beds with head colds. The hotel, warm with the lingering summer heat, was filled with an unfamiliar silence. Soon, I did not know when, the SS teams would arrive. I had to think of a new hiding place for six people before then.

  To keep myself busy, I went up to Major Rügemer's suite. I often tidied his rooms when he went down for drinks before dinner. If he had taken a bath, there would be damp towels to collect, and fresh towels to place on the rack. I opened the door to his bathroom.

  A glimmering wash of light was coming through the pebbled-glass window and lighting the far wall, and because there was a leafy branch outside the window, the light dappled back and forth with the movement of the leaves. I stood looking at it, sinking for one mom
ent into a place where there was no fear, no racing time, only the gentle sparkle like the light off a lake. Through an open window in the hall, I heard a dove murmuring.

  Then I noticed, high on the wall above the toilet, a grating. I had never taken note of it before, but the play of light had drawn my eyes there. I tipped my head to the side, studying it. The grate in the wall was perhaps one yard square.

  Curious, I stood on the toilet seat and threaded my fingers through the screen. It resisted slightly, but then came out as I tugged. With my hands on the ledge, I stood on tiptoe to look inside. It was a tunnel, an air duct perhaps, and it stretched backward into darkness. I fished in my apron pocket and found a loose button I had picked up off the laundry-room floor. When I tossed it in, it slid for several feet before hitting a wall. The duct was big enough for six people. It had to be. I would not find a better place than the commanding officer's bathroom.

  Now I cursed the late-summer light that still spangled the wall. I would have to wait for darkness, and hope I could smuggle my friends in before the Germans returned from their party and the search teams arrived.

  Aktion

  Early in the evening, I took hot tea to the two sick officers, and fussed over them and urged them to take their medicine with liberal doses of brandy, which I had thoughtfully brought them from the bar. By nine-thirty, the hotel was mine.

  I stepped from one shadow to another as I made my way across the compound to the laundry building. There was only a faint moon, and the plant was dark and silent. At the main gate, a guard stood facing the street with his back to the complex, whistling a dance tune. Making no noise, I unlocked the laundry room door and slipped inside. I did not turn on the light.

  I scratched on the shelves, and then whispered the news about the air duct. Lazar and Thomas offered to go investigate it. In the darkness, I saw their shapes wriggling out from under the shelves. We paused at the door, then darted the thirty meters to the hotel entrance. Two lights burned by the front door at the opposite end of the hall from where we stood. Some of the partygoers would return by that door. I looked at Lazar and Thomas and pointed up the stairs, and then beckoned them to follow me to the third floor.