The Child of Auschwitz: Absolutely heartbreaking World War 2 historical fiction

by Lily Graham

  ‘She wanted you to raise her child, you can’t do that if you’re dead,’ pointed out Helga in a huff by the door, Naděje in the old woman’s arms. Her skin had started to turn brown, and there was a bit more flesh on her bones. Her hair was almost completely white, yet she looked healthier than she had in years.

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ said Eva.

  Helga rolled her eyes, patting the baby’s back, as she shook her head at Eva. ‘You always say that, Kritzelei, and then you never are,’ she huffed.

  The child’s arms reached out for her mother who snuggled her close to her chest, breathing in her warm, clean scent, marvelling once again at the joy she could bring to her broken heart.

  Eva looked over her child’s dark head: her hair was starting to grow, and it was beginning to curl, as she’d suspected it would, like her father’s. She couldn’t deny that. ‘This time though, I think it’s true.’

  Eva had resisted at first, but had eventually given in to Helga and Kaja’s argument that if she insisted on going to Austria now, it would be prudent to leave Naděje with them.

  ‘She will be better off here with us. Who knows how long it will take to find him? It might be weeks, if not months. With a baby to worry about, there’s a danger you could get ill again,’ said Helga, her dark eyes firm. ‘You’re not fully recovered even now, no matter how much you insist.’

  With trembling lips, she kissed Naděje goodbye. ‘I’m going to fetch your brother,’ she promised her. ‘After that we can begin properly to be a family.’ She looked up at the two older women, her adopted mothers, and smiled. ‘We will need a boy around the house.’

  Kaja smiled. ‘That would be nice. I hope you find him, dítě.’

  All Eva had to go on was the name of the town, on the westernmost point of Austria, Bregenz. A beautiful town, nestled between Lake Constance and the foothills of the Alps. Even here, so far out, in this wonderful spot, it was clear to see that the ravages of war had left their mark, as many of the homes had been destroyed by bombs.

  It had taken several weeks to get to this point. With thousands of people leaving their homes, and immigrating to what they hoped would be more welcoming pockets of the world, travel was harder than ever, and getting the necessary documentation had proved a bothersome delay. But at last, Eva was here now. Every time she saw a woman with long, dark blonde hair, she felt as if she saw the ghost of her friend’s smile, her determined stride, only to have the image vanish in an instant and a stranger look at her as if she were mad. She supposed, a few months out of Auschwitz, it still showed.

  She found accommodation in a small hotel, and set about trying to locate Lotte’s home. Here she discovered, like so many other towns, that all the Jews had been forcefully removed, and no neighbours could offer any advice or assistance. An old woman, who was walking alongside the bombed-out wreckage of her garage, hissed at her. ‘I don’t have anything for you, I have my own troubles,’ she snapped, before going into the house and slamming the door behind her, mistakenly thinking that Eva was asking for a hand-out.

  She’d tried the local Catholic church but had been turned away, there were no children there, and never had been, so they said.

  She would need to look into nearby orphanages. But several of them had moved during the war.

  She was fortunate enough to pass a local postman on his rounds, who recognised the name of the woman who’d helped deliver Tomas, Liesl, supplying her with a surname too. ‘Must be the Streimers, she’s the closest midwife,’ he’d said when she asked. Hope blossomed in her chest. It felt like a real lead at last. Sofie had suggested it was possible that Liesl might know something about where Lotte had taken her son.

  Eva found the house, down a dirt track, that had views of the lake. It was somewhat ramshackle, but pretty, and there were several children running in the yard, a tangle of limbs as they raced an old dog with caramel-coloured fur.

  Eva paused as she saw one of the children, a little boy, with dirty blond hair, look back at her. She couldn’t see his face clearly from where he stood. But there was something about the way he tilted his neck, his long limbs, that seemed familiar. He wasn’t running with the others, or playing, he hung back then turned around and headed in the opposite direction, alone.

  Eva stared. It couldn’t be him, could it? After this long journey, she was sure she was just seeing Sofie’s face in everyone.

  There was a sound behind her, and Eva turned to find a plump woman with curly black hair standing by the front door. She was wearing an apron and a wary expression. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, not unkindly. ‘I don’t have much – but there is some fresh bread and cheese I can offer you.’

  Eva shook her head. ‘No, thank you, that’s kind. I’m here to see someone – Liesl?’

  ‘That’s me,’ nodded the woman, her eyes narrowing. A practised eye fell on Eva’s body, as if looking for a sign of pregnancy.

  ‘You delivered my friend’s child, Sofie.’

  ‘I’ve helped deliver many children.’

  Eva nodded. It figured she wouldn’t make it easy. ‘Her name was Sofie Weis.’

  Liesl’s eyes clouded, and she closed them for a moment, noting the past tense. ‘Tomas’s mother.’

  Eva nodded. ‘I need to find him.’

  Liesl stared at her for a long moment and said, ‘You’d better come inside.’

  Liesl offered her a cup of tea, but she was too anxious for anything besides water. She waited as the other woman prepared a mug for herself, her hands busy as she put a kettle on the stove. The two little girls and the dog she’d seen outside raced indoors wanting to know who the skinny lady was, and Liesl shooed them out, with biscuits pressed into their palms, admonishing them for their rudeness.

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ she said, taking a seat across from her at the worn kitchen table, which was covered in bread flour. ‘And for earlier – I thought you were one of the others, you know…’

  ‘Others?’

  ‘They’re calling them displaced persons – refugees, the ones who have lost their homes – the government have set up a small area for them, they don’t have anywhere else to go for now. Sometimes we find some of them, thin and half-starved, looking for food.’

  Eva nodded. She didn’t feel much different to them, not really. She’d been just the same only a few short weeks ago.

  Eva was impatient for news. If Liesl didn’t know anything, then she would need to keep going. Begin the long task of knocking down every orphanage or nunnery door in the area in her search.

  ‘As I said, I’m looking for my friend’s son. Tomas. Her cousin, Lotte, gave him away when she was sent to Westerbork.’

  ‘Yes, I know. She took him to the orphanage just outside of the Vorarlberg province, run by nuns. She told them to keep him until she could return when the war was over.’

  Eva made to stand up. ‘Thank you.’

  Liesl held up a hand. ‘There was a problem though. The Nazis were on the warpath for any Jewish children, and they tore through the towns to round them all up.’

  Eva gasped. She’d heard about the children that had been sent to Auschwitz, she’d seen some of them at the camp, not many of them made it.

  ‘They took him?’ she asked, not wanting to hear it, needing to anyway.

  Liesl’s eyes were dark. ‘The nuns were scared. Tomas had been with them for three years but they didn’t want to risk his life if the Nazis found him. Lotte had told me what she’d done, in case I would need to intervene – she didn’t know what would happen to her after everything that occurred at the border. She knew that I could be trusted, and take the child to a home where he could pass as a gentile. There are many families who were willing to look the other way, families who wanted a child.’

  ‘You sent him away?’

  Liesl shook her head. ‘I went to fetch him last year, when they called me.’

  Eva looked at her, there was a sound as the other child she’d seen walked into the house. His eyes were
dark, and solemn, wary. He was dressed in thin slacks and a frayed shirt. He looked at them for a moment, his expression wary, and turned and left as quickly as he’d arrived.

  Eva felt her heart began to pound. It was like staring at a ghost. Sofie was there in every single feature. Her dark eyes, the shape of her lips.

  ‘He looks just like her,’ she breathed. Tears pricked at her eyes, and her hands started to shake.

  She looked at Liesl and took a deep breath. ‘Thank you for looking after him. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you went to fetch him. I know it doesn’t look it – from the state of me – but I will provide a good home for him, give him the love he deserves.’

  Liesl stared at her in shock. Then she shook her head, her face a mixture of pity and disbelief. ‘I’m sorry. I cannot just let you take him. I don’t even know who you are!’

  Eva considered the woman before her. ‘No, you don’t but I am not leaving Austria without him.’

  Liesl stood up. ‘I think you should go.’

  Eva stared at the woman before her, and made no move to stand. She told herself to keep calm. A scene now would not help her. She had stared down worse, and survived. She would not leave this town without Sofie’s son. ‘Please, sit down. I don’t mean right this minute. I’m a stranger. I can understand how you would feel that way about me – why you wouldn’t want to give him to someone off the street.’

  The light flaring in Liesl’s eyes seemed to dissipate briefly. She nodded. ‘Yes.’ She studied Eva for a long moment, then reluctantly sat down. Perhaps she trusted that the strange woman in her kitchen wouldn’t snatch Tomas away, not yet anyway.

  ‘Thank you,’ acknowledged Eva. ‘You see, I am the boy’s guardian. It was his mother’s last wish that I raise him.’

  Liesl shook her head, vehemently. She made a snort of disbelief. ‘I don’t know who you are, I can’t just give him to you.’

  Eva ran a hand through her short hair, and sighed. ‘I will take that tea, if you’re still offering.’

  At Liesl’s frown, she added, ‘And I will tell you about who I am – and who Sofie was, and by the end of it, you will know what you need to do.’

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Liesl stared at her for a long moment, as if she still wanted to insist that she leave. After some time she sighed, and got up to make the tea. She could listen. If nothing else. The firm press to her lips and the stiff set of her shoulders said enough though, she wouldn’t make any promises that it would change her mind.

  Eva spoke for close to two hours. She described the horrors of Auschwitz, the joy of making a friend like Sofie, who had saved her life. She kept some things back, but told her everything that might help. If she was going to fight for the right to adopt her best friend’s son, she would bare her soul, and she did. By the end of it, the afternoon had turned from peach to magenta, and they had drunk several cups of tea and moved on to a bottle of apple schnapps, which was the only alcohol Liesl had in her home. It was the first alcoholic drink Eva had had in years, and she sipped sparingly, even as Liesl poured herself another, tears streaming down her face. ‘That poor child,’ she said, meaning Sofie, swiping a hand across her nose. ‘I had no idea what it was like.’

  Eva nodded. No one did. What had happened was unimaginable.

  ‘The thing is,’ said Liesl, ‘even if I agreed, it’s Tomas. He’s fragile – he’s been through so much. The nuns took too long to call me, and he spent half his life learning how to hide from the Nazis. Can you imagine? He’s only five years old, but if he hears the sound of boots, he runs and hides. There was no playing, no laughter. He’s come a little out of his shell in the past few months – he comes out to the garden and sits near my girls, which he wouldn’t do in the beginning. I don’t know what another change would do to him. I haven’t been able to really connect with him as much as I’d like,’ she admitted.

  Eva looked at her. ‘Let me try. I can get to know him. Take it slowly. I can find a place nearby.’

  ‘You’d do that?’ asked Liesl.

  She nodded. ‘Of course.’

  Liesl looked at the ground, and up at the ceiling. There were tears in her eyes. ‘I’ve raised him as my own. I know it hasn’t been long, but in my mind he is mine now, with the war being over and no one coming. I can’t promise that I will be able to let him go.’

  Eva looked at her. ‘But you will try?’

  ‘I can do that,’ she agreed. ‘If,’ she stressed, ‘I feel it will be better for him.’

  Eva nodded. Legally she had no right to Tomas, there was no formal documentation that gave Sofie’s son to her care. She would have to convince a child who’d been scarred by the war that she should take him from the only home he’d ever known. It seemed, perhaps, an impossible task.

  Eva negotiated a fee with the small local hotel in exchange for some light cleaning work, helping to make the beds and clean the rooms every morning. She suspected the owner had taken pity on her more than anything. With her short hair and tiny frame, it would be some time before she didn’t look like a refugee. She missed her daughter so much it felt like there was an aching wound in her chest each time she pictured her little face, so similar to her husband’s.

  She was grateful for the hotel’s hospitality, and happy to do the work, which kept her mind occupied from all her fears and worries over how to get through to Tomas. She felt torn in two, on one hand desperate to get to know Tomas more, on the other aching to get back to her child. Sleep didn’t come easily, and when it did, her dreams tormented her further.

  Liesl hadn’t downplayed his reticence. The first time they’d spoken hadn’t gone well at all.

  ‘Tomas?’ Liesl had called, and the young child had come quickly from his small room just off the kitchen, where he’d been sitting with the small caramel-coloured dog.

  ‘This is a friend of your mother’s,’ she’d said. ‘She’d very much like to meet you.’

  Eva stood up to greet him, and he’d taken a step back, his hands buried in the dog’s wiry fur.

  ‘Hello, Tomas,’ said Eva.

  He looked up at her warily, and she squatted down to his level, smiling gently. ‘So you like animals, hmm?’

  He nodded, and took a small step towards her. ‘Your mother used to love them too. When she was a young girl, she used to keep a lot of them. Did you know that?’

  He shook his head, his dark eyes wide. He looked down at the floor, then frowned. He opened and closed his mouth, then dared to ask, very quietly, ‘Is – is she coming for me?’

  Eva blinked, she and Liesl darted a look between them.

  ‘No, darling,’ began Eva. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He stared at her, then looked at the floor. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’

  Eva swallowed. ‘Yes.’

  He expelled a big breath, and Eva realised that he’d been waiting all this time for her return. Maybe in his own heart he’d clung to the hope that someday she would come get him, even though it was doubtful he remembered her at all.

  ‘I knew it,’ he said, his face turning dark and sad.

  His foot kicked the side of the skirting board, and he left just as quickly as he’d arrived, the dog following closely as his heels. When they called he didn’t respond, and they didn’t find him for hours.

  When Eva was getting ready to leave, Liesl said, ‘I told you he hides. I think he thought she was going to come for him someday.’

  Eva nodded, closing her eyes in pain. She straightened and then looked at Liesl who started to speak at the same time as her, ‘Well, as you can—’

  ‘I’ll come back tomorrow.’

  Liesl blinked, and Eva shook her head. ‘I don’t give up easily.’

  The other woman nodded. She could see that, and respected it.

  As the days passed, Eva visited Tomas every chance she got. He was quiet, shy and withdrawn. The only time she got through to him was when they took the dog for a walk by the lake. He liked the water, and kept trying to skim ro
cks against the surface. ‘Let me show you,’ said Eva, picking up a flat rock, and shaking it in her hand, till it went bounding against the lake making several dips before it finally sunk some distance away.

  ‘How did you do that?’ he said in surprise, and she was able for a moment to see the child beneath the solemn mask.

  ‘It’s all about the wrist,’ she said, teaching him how to throw it.

  ‘Did my mother show you that?’ he asked. It was one of the first times he’d asked her a question about her.

  Eva shook her head. ‘My uncle Bedrich,’ she responded. As she said his name aloud, his beloved craggy face peered in her mind’s eye, doffing his grey hat at her, before he left with a wink. She felt tears prickle her eyes: what had happened to him? Was he alive? Were her parents? She had to draw in a deep breath as Tomas peered up at her waiting, shaking off the dark pull of her thoughts. ‘We have a summer house, it’s also near a lake – much smaller than this one, but it’s private, amongst the mountains. There are otters,’ she said with a smile. ‘I learnt to skim rocks there.’

  Her heart burst when he gave her a tentative smile in return.

  Once they headed back to the house, after their walks he would become quiet again, not saying much.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Tomas,’ she said, before he disappeared.

  He turned back to look at her, nodded once, then left.

  As the weeks passed, Tomas opened up to her more. He wanted to know about Sofie and she was happy to tell him. He liked to hear about Naděje too. ‘She’s broken?’ he said, when she’d tried to explain about her weak state.

  ‘She’s fragile,’ said Eva. ‘She’s been through a lot. If you meet her you’ll have to be gentle.’

  ‘I can do that,’ he said with a solemn look. Then he admitted, ‘I feel broken sometimes too.’

  Eva had to breathe deeply to keep herself from crying. She nodded, ‘Me too.’