Just then, Juliette Greco came out in a flamboyant black Crêpe De Chine evening gown. She rolled her eyes and said, “I’d rather be in slacks and a black turtleneck.”
Slim caught her eye and smiled. Françoise poked her head in, “Slim, Herr Wiesenthal is on the line. He says it’s urgent.”
“Come at noon. Bring the baby.” Honeyman went back to shooting Juliette.
Slim walked into her office and picked up the phone, “Herr Weisenthal?”
“Madame Cohen, how are you? How is the baby?” Simon Wiesenthal sounded anxious. Slim had met Wiesenthal and his wife when they had come into the Red Cross Displaced Persons Center where she worked. They had survived an assortment of brutal concentration camps. Emaciated, and frantic, they were desperate to find out what happened to their relatives. Fifty-seven had perished. Already drawing up lists of Nazi guards for the Allies after liberation, Wiesenthal had one thing on his mind: bring the perpetrators of the worst crimes against humanity to justice. In 1947, Wiesenthal founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Linz, Austria, to hunt these criminals. They had reconnected last year when Slim found out that he and her husband, Daniel, were chasing Klaus Barbie.
“We’re good; not great, but good. Did you find out what happened to Daniel?” Soon after Daniel disappeared on their wedding day, Slim had called Wiesenthal because she hoped he could help.
“Sadly, I am at a dead end. The French know the Americans have Barbie. I heard from my contact in de Gaulle’s government that France formally asked for his whereabouts last month.”
“And? What did the Americans say?” Slim asked.
“The Americans said they don’t have him. My contact said they think the French government is infiltrated with communists, so they don’t want to hand him over because it will compromise their intelligence.”
“What do you think?”
“I think the only way you’ll find out if Barbie has Daniel is to go to your government and ask. Do you know anyone who can help you?”
Slim thought for a minute and then said, “Maybe.”
“I’m sorry I don’t have better news for you,” Wiesenthal sighed.
“Do you think Barbie’s still in Europe?” Slim asked.
“If he is it’s not long before they get him out through the rat line,” Wiesenthal said, referencing the system of escape lines for wanted Nazis running to South America. “He’s becoming too hot for them to handle,” Wiesenthal sighed.
“Barbie wanted Daniel.” Slim said, “He must either have him or….” She stopped before she said what she most feared.
“Let me see what else I can come up with on my end. Madame Cohen, is there anything I can do for you and the baby?” Wiesenthal said soothingly.
“I have plenty of help, but we need Daniel back home. He hasn’t met his daughter. I want him to see her.” Slim began to weep. She had tried to rein it in, but it was too much.
“Madame Cohen, you must be strong for your daughter. I know how…” he paused and then stopped.
“Thank you for helping me, Herr Weisenthal,” Slim said breaking the painful silence between the two of them.
“I will find out everything I can. Take care of that little girl. She is what is left of the Cohen family.” Slim was reminded that Tiny was not just any baby, she was a symbol of a family that had been burned to ashes, only to rise once more.
A box came later that morning containing the layette Anne Warner had picked out at Galeries Lafayette. As Slim pulled out the tiny cotton dresses and blankets, she realized that she hadn’t shopped for Tiny at all. Her grandmother had sent the pram; Remy crocheted the blankets and Françoise threw together the essentials. Marlene Dietrich had sent a bassinet. Other than that Tiny had nothing. It made Slim realize that it was time to take charge of her daughter and make Tiny’s care less haphazard. Remy could not take care of the baby forever, Françoise needed her help in the bar. Slim must get this baby organized.
She called Jack Warner to thank him and his wife for the layette. Before she hung up the phone she said, “Uncle Jack, do you remember when Da got into trouble with that girl in Los Angeles?”
A showgirl had gone missing, and she had last been seen with Tyrone Moran leaving his house. She had been found dead, and for a week it was assumed that Warner’s prize leading man was somehow responsible. Tyrone may have been a nonstop womanizer, but he was not a murderer. Too drunk to remember what happened that night, he knew unless someone could help him, he would be facing the death penalty. Jack Warner called his old friend, the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, who opened the case. The FBI found the showgirl’s enraged husband. He admitted to stalking and killing his wife.
“That wasn’t the only time, but let’s not go into it. Why are you bringing up all that mishegoss?” Warner asked, using the Yiddish word for craziness.
“I told you that I think Klaus Barbie might have taken my husband, Daniel.”
“Yes,” Warner said skeptically.
“Do you know the Nazi Hunter, Simon Wiesenthal?”
“I've heard of him, why?"
“Herr Wiesenthal told me that the French asked the Americans for Barbie and they’re refusing to acknowledge they have him. He thinks the United States is finished with Barbie and they are going to ship him off to South America very soon. I need J. Edgar Hoover to find out if Barbie knows where Daniel is.”
“I’ll ask him, but I can’t promise anything. I'll let you know. Now did you decide about taking on the case for that young Polish woman?” Warner asked, shifting gears.
“I’m taking it on,” Slim replied.
“Good, I’ll let you know what I find out from Hoover. We’re off to Switzerland tomorrow to drop Barbara off at school.”
“Tell her the name Tiny stuck and she also loves the little horse Barbara gave her.”
“I will. Barbara thinks you should name the baby after her and call her Basha.” Warner said, laughing.
“Tell her one Barbara Warner in the world is enough,” Slim said, laughing too.
“I will. Now listen, take care of that baby, and as soon as I find out anything, I’ll let you know.”
Slim hung up and went into the next room. Remy was holding Tiny, trying to soothe her.
“Here, let me try.” Slim took her daughter and then pointed to the chair next to her. “Remy, sit down, I want to talk to you.”
“I’m sorry about the photo shoot, Madame Daniel. I should never have let that woman hold the baby,” Remy said, looking nervous to the point of almost being distraught.
“It’s not about the photo shoot. It’s about Tiny — yes, she has a nickname now. You’ve been wonderful, but Françoise needs your help in the bar. I can get someone else to help her and you can take care of Tiny, but the decision is up to you.”
“Mademoiselle Françoise needs me, but you need me too,” Remy said, hesitating. “I like working in the bar. I love the baby, but….” Remy looked down at Tiny and then back at Slim, “She reminds me of my babies and….” Bringing up someone else’s baby after losing her own was going to be too hard.
“I promise I’ll be fine,” Slim said as she squeezed Remy’s hand. She peered down at the baby who blinked and yawned. Would she be a better mother than her own? Her mother had shot herself after finding out Slim’s father was cheating on her. Instead of dying, the spoiled debutante lived as a drooling version of her former self. Her father wasn’t much better, but he knew enough to ship Slim off to the Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York City. The nuns provided her with the security she needed. Slim then went to Trinity College, where she majored in French.
In a lot of ways, her father had shielded her from the train wreck of his life. The truth was she had not been parented. Slim had no idea what she was doing with this baby, but she had brought this child into the world. If Tiny was going to have a fighting chance, she needed to be the best mother she could be.
Chapter Two
The next day, Slim took the baby to Don Honeyman
’s apartment in the Saint Germain des Prés section of Paris. He had warned her that he lived in a walk-up, so Slim carried Tiny in a sling, which Remy had fashioned out of one of Marlene’s old Hermès scarves. In her pocketbook, she had a couple of bottles and some cloth diapers. Remy had given Slim a crash course in diaper changing. This motherhood thing wasn’t going to come naturally to Slim, so she figured she’d approach it methodically, like a case.
Don Honeyman’s wife, Austrian born Gitta Sereny, was squeezing fresh orange juice when Slim arrived. Honeyman came in shortly afterward with hot croissants from la boulangerie. He lit up when he saw Slim and the baby, “Ah, here is my superstar!” He took the baby from his wife. “I told Gitta about your new case.”
“I heard that you worked for UNRRA. I worked for the Red Cross out of the Hotel Lutetia,” Slim said.
“So we’re both out of business,” Gitta said wryly. “I worked in the Child Search Division. My task was to reunite kidnapped children with their natural families.”
“Were there that many?” Slim seemed surprised that there was an actual position dedicated to the lost children.
“It is estimated that the Germans kidnapped 200,000 children,” Gitta said matter of factly.
“200,000 children?” Slim asked incredulously.
“Only a handful were returned to their rightful families. It wasn’t always a happy reunion. One case in particular sticks out to me. They were six-year-old twins.”
✽✽✽
1946 — Bavaria
Thousands of photos were coming in daily to the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen from parents, mostly in Poland, searching for their stolen children. Dressed in her crisp khaki uniform Gitta, at twenty-three, had been working for UNRRA less than nine months. She had yet to repatriate any children to their rightful countries. Poland was unusually determined to get their children back. They had lost six million of their people, three million Polish Christians and three million Polish Jews. They were desperate to reclaim their most valuable and rare commodity, their young.
As a Child Welfare Officer, she had the right to enter any German home where she believed a stolen child might be. She looked up at the Bavarian farmhouse with the brown lattice windows. It looked like something out of a Grimm’s fairy tale. In town, she heard that an older couple had taken in and adopted a boy and girl during the war. After a scouring of the town records, she did indeed locate both their birth certificates and adoption papers.
Gitta came at suppertime in the hopes of catching the family unawares and all together. People hid their adopted children when they heard that the child welfare officers were combing the countryside.
As she came up the dirt path, she saw the lights on in the farmhouse and the family gathered around a table for dinner. Gitta knocked on the door and was let in by an older man, who eyed her suspiciously. From the corner of her eye she could see two small blonde children, a boy, and a girl, looking at her quizzically. A couple in their fifties looked up at her with fear.
“What do you want?” the old man asked, cutting to the chase.
“Just to talk with you,” Gitta tried to sound casual. The little girl looked at her and smiled. Her freshly washed hair was plaited in two braids. The boy hid in his father’s arms. Gitta held out two chocolate bars. The children looked at their mother, who nodded, and shyly took the bars.
“Off to bed,” their father said gruffly. Both children kissed their parents and were lead off by the grandfather.
“Now, what is it you want?” The woman asked bluntly.
Gitta handed her orders from UNRRA, which stated that as a Child Welfare Officer she was authorized to remove an Allied unaccompanied child.
Gitta further translated into German. “Any person who willfully delays or obstructs a Child Welfare Investigating Officer in the exercise of any power... or who fails to give such information or to produce such documents or records as aforesaid… or conceals or prevents any persons from appearing before or being examined by a Child Welfare Investigating Officer shall, upon conviction by a Military Government Court, suffer such punishment as the Court may determine.”
The man looked at the paper, handed it back to Gitta and said, “What does this have to do with us?”
“During the war, children were brought into Germany from countries that the Germans occupied. Those countries want their children back. We have reason to suspect that your two children might be kidnapped.”
The woman looked at the man nervously and said, “Our boy died in Stalingrad, and our daughter…”
The man cleared his throat, “There was a bus accident.” The woman showed them a framed photo of a teenage girl in her Bund Deutsche Madel uniform, which was the Hitler Youth for girls. “Irmi was on an outing with thirty-five girls. The brakes on the bus failed and they went skidding off a mountain road. 18 girls died.”
“I’m sorry,” Gitta said.
“Our son had been accepted to a school, one of the special ones for the Hitler Youth,” the man said, with some pride.
“I wanted him to come home after Irmi’s death, but…he couldn’t.”
“I am very sorry to hear that,” Gitta said. “Is that why you adopted,” she looked down other papers, “Johann and Marie?”
“It was 1939. We tried to have another baby, but my wife miscarried. The doctor said that because of her years she couldn’t have any more and maybe we should think about adopting,” the man added.
“We heard that German children were turning up in Polish orphanages with German birth certificates,” the wife continued. “We said that since our daughter had died and our son was in the Wehrmacht by now, we would take two, a boy and girl.”
That’s when they came to us. They were found in the eastern territories, but they were German orphans,” the man said.
“I know you love Johann and Marie very much and it certainly looks as though they love you, but it’s imperative that you tell me everything you know. Do you know anything about their biological parents?” Gitta asked.
“They’re dead,” the woman said defensively.
“Who told you they were dead?”
“We were told that by the agency,” the man offered.
Gitta decided to be blunt. “The reason that I am here is that thousands of people in the East are looking for their children.”
“The East?” The grandfather had come back into the room after putting the children to bed. “Our children have nothing to do with the East. They are German, German orphans. You need to only look at them.”
Gitta bit her tongue. She knew what they were saying. Told for years that the Poles were Untermenschen, subhumans, an inferior race good for only slave labor; Gitta's implication that the children were perhaps Poles was an insult not only to them but also to their adopted children.
“None of us wants to hurt the children. I’m just here to find out about their origins.” Gitta tried her best to reassure them, but she also wanted to keep the conversation going. “How old are they now?”
“Six,” the man said.
“How were they when they first came? Were they shy? Did they speak?” she asked.
“They’re happy now. Look at the children. Marie, at first, needed to be near me constantly. Johann was tougher, he didn’t speak as much,” the woman said.
“But, he doesn’t shut up now!” the grandfather laughed.
“Is that a photograph of when they arrived?” Gitta pointed to another framed photo next to one of a young man in a soldier’s uniform.
The woman took the photo down and handed it to Gitta. “Here, do you want it? Perhaps, you can use it to prove they are ours, that they are German orphans. Look at them.”
Gitta examined the photo and noticed a birthmark on the girl’s knee, “They are so small and cute. She’s got a birthmark the size of a thumbprint on her right leg.”
“Yes, we tell her it is God’s thumbprint.” For the first time, the woman laughed.
“Is there anything else
you need? What can we tell you? Anything?” The man’s tone had changed. He had relaxed. Gitta admiring the children was enough for him to break down his defensiveness.
“No, I think that’s everything. Sorry to stay so late.” Gitta got up and shook everyone’s hands and left. She walked down the dirt path in the dark. She knew the children were deeply loved by this couple whose own were lost in the war. She also knew that three sets of boy-girl twins had been reported missing in Poland. The identifying mark on one set was a birthmark the size of an adult thumbprint on the little girl. The children were stolen.
✽✽✽
1950 — Paris
“What happened?” Slim asked with a chill running down her spine.
“Four months later they were removed from the home by someone else, not me.” Gitta poured them each more freshly squeezed orange juice.
“Did you ever see them again?” Slim asked.
Gitta sighed, “Yes. I had to go to the children’s center in Ebensee to drop off some paperwork and I saw them. Johann recognized me and attacked me with his fists and legs until he was restrained by one of the staff. His sister was hunched under a table rocking back and forth, expressionless.”
“Oh, God, that’s awful,” Slim said, imagining the terrible image of the distraught twins.
“It made me question whether what we were doing was right. The children had been ripped from their homes once, placed with unwitting parents, most of whom loved them deeply. Now they were to be ripped away again to be sent to parents they didn’t know and to a country whose language they’d forgotten.”
“But, what about their biological parents? Surely, they must have a right to get them back?” Slim persisted.
“I don’t know what the answer is. After seeing Johann and Marie, I wonder how their life is now in Poland. Have they been accepted back into their previous family? Are they considered Germans now and despised by their classmates?” Gitta drained the juice from her glass.
The Lost Boy Page 3
