Liberation

by Ellie Midwood

  “Yes, yes, we heard. We have a friend who’s a gendarme… They’ll be taking the foreign ones only. We’re safe here, but thank you for the warning nevertheless.”

  “Empty gossip. There won’t be any roundups. They’re just trying to scare us all so that we’ll run and they won’t see our faces in the streets. The Boches want us to do their job for them. Don’t worry; they’re too busy with the Russkies to worry about us Jews.”

  “What? A rafle? No, no, monsieur, you’re mistaken. They already took everyone they wanted to in ’41. We’re all exempt. They told us that in the Union.”

  Union Générale des Israélites de France – the organization which the Germans had set up for Jews to list and govern themselves until they killed them all. Philippe brooded, walking out into the dark street after Augustine. It was past curfew time, and they should have been home long ago, with their false papers, even more so.

  “But they just don’t listen, Philippe!” Augustine made a desperate gesture with her arms.

  Philippe studied the pack of wet cigarettes in his hands, sighed, craving a smoke like never before, and put the pack back into the pocket of his trousers. He’d dry them later, lay them out one by one on the windowsill. Cigarettes, just like shoes, have long become one of the luxuries of French life.

  “We did what we could.”

  “You’re just going to leave it alone then?”

  “What are you proposing to do? Start dragging them out into the street and forcing them into the province?”

  Augustine puffed out her cheeks, looking around at a loss as though in search of a solution.

  “Let’s go home,” Philippe softened his voice a bit, suddenly remembering that she was Jewish and for her, the matter was a personal one. “Maybe my comrades were more successful. Or, maybe they listened to the sympathetic gendarmes. One of them, from whom I obtained all these lists with addresses, told me that he would go out and warn them too. Not all of them, but the ones he knew.”

  “Nice to know that at least some of the gendarmes still have a conscience left,” Augustine muttered.

  “You know my sentiments concerning our police,” Philippe said, pulling Augustine after himself into a dark side street, away from the headlights of the car which had just turned the corner. At this hour, only the Gestapo was out, patrolling their blacked-out kingdom. “I never fancied them, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t understand that they’re working people too and in order to keep their job and the food on their table for their families, they’ll do the Boches’ bidding. They might not like it either; they might even resent or hate the Boches, but they’re powerless against them as of now. Anyone who refuses to acknowledge this simple truth of life is a fool.”

  “Why don’t they run, though?” Augustine repeated quietly in the darkness, her soft steps echoing Philippe’s steady ones. “I ran, as soon as Kamille’s German warned me of the lists. And there weren’t even any rafles then!”

  “You knew what they did to your husband, and therefore knew what to expect of them. These people don’t. They haven’t seen anything worse than the Yellow Star law. They don’t believe that the Germans, whom they constantly see smiling and joking in the streets, can line them up and shoot them. The Germans are quite good at what they do, don’t you think? They’ve pulled a veil over the whole nation’s face. Even persuaded Laval that the Jews will be sent for resettlement in Eastern Europe, and not murdered in cold blood. And Laval went and coughed up a few thousand of them to the Germans’ delight.”

  Planes flew over their heads, their rumbling high and habitual. Luftwaffe.

  “Will you walk me home, Philippe? I’m afraid to go alone.”

  “Of course I will.”

  “What a miserable day.”

  “Every day is miserable nowadays.” They both sighed, a feeling of immense sadness descending over them.

  Behind closed doors and tightly drawn drapes, wives argued with their husbands, pacing the rooms and drawing lists of people who could take them in. Others slept soundly, shoving the strange couple’s words into the furthest corners of their minds. Some had started packing suitcases, silently admitting their own defeat, succumbing to suspicions and rumors, the sheer amount of which couldn’t signify anything good. More planes headed north, air raid sirens remaining quiet. Luftwaffe, again. They were still the masters here, and they could still do harm.

  7

  Paris, July 1942

  Kamille was dreaming about Jochen again. She dreamt that she was already in Germany, standing beside the gallows above which a bitter wind thrashed through the bloody swastika banners. Jochen stood on the gallows in full dress uniform, observing the crowd below him with anxious sorrow. Kamille looked on, her heart beating itself to death in her ribcage; unsure if he was the executioner or the victim. His gaze roamed about from under his scowl until he saw her. He smiled, as though in great relief, held out his arms to her and helped her up. The crowd watched on in somber silence as he said something reassuring to her. Then, he took his gun out and, still smiling, shot her through the chest.

  Kamille woke up with a start, her hands clutching at her nightgown wildly, searching for the wound. She stared out into the night, still trying to sort out her dream from reality. She could only make out faint voices far away up the street, the noise of an engine, coughing itself to life, then – nothing. Kamille tip-toed to Violette’s room to check on her daughter, following an inexplicable maternal instinct.

  On the bedside table, the lamp was still on. The girl was sleeping soundly, her hand under her cheek, her dark hair forming a halo around her pretty face. Kamille picked up a book from the floor – Violette must have been reading it late into the night and fallen asleep before she could put it away. Kamille leafed through it; a German literature textbook, only under Die Lorelei, which Kamille loved so much as a young girl, instead of Heinrich Heine, a new, “correct” signature, Unbekannter Dichter was used – unknown poet. Even renowned German writers had seemed to have lost their rights to their own names solely because they were Jewish. Kamille put the book down, switched the lamp off and returned to her room.

  She overslept that morning, quickly made some sandwiches for Violette and herself, got dressed in great haste and ran out to the street. On her way to the Métro, she passed a small crowd that had gathered near the house of one of her neighbors, Monsieur Epstein. He was a man of sixty or so, charming and cultivated, one of those who aged gracefully and with the elegance of a former senior military officer. He invariably walked around with a cane and the Legion of Honor pinned to the lapel of his jacket.

  “He shot himself when they came for him.”

  Kamille slowed her pace, listening to the whispers.

  “Weren’t former war veterans exempt?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Was it Germans?”

  “I only saw our gendarmes.”

  “A shame.”

  Kamille hesitated, but then quickened her step, reminding herself that she was late for work.

  In the train car, a blond Wehrmacht officer offered her his seat and started talking to her at once. He resembled Jochen in his smart uniform, and Kamille was glad that he took her mind off things she didn’t wish to think about. She told him about going to Germany to find her husband. He kissed the back of her hand when she got up for her stop and wished her the best of luck.

  At the doors of the hospital, she had to step aside to let through a small group of nurses on their way out, Augustine among them. Kamille quickly fell into step with her and caught her sleeve.

  “There was a roundup last night,” Augustine explained to her in a quiet, cool voice before Kamille had a chance to ask her what was happening. “Several thousand Jews were dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night, put on buses and taken to Vél D’Hiv – the stadium where they used to hold winter bicycle races.”

  “The Germans?” Kamille whispered back, covering her mouth, the reason of which she couldn’t explain even
to herself.

  “No.” Augustine shook her head, looking straight ahead. “Our gendarmes. But your Germans are the ones who are guarding them now in the stadium. I suppose you don’t want to come and help the sick and disabled, do you?”

  Kamille faltered but then, instead of turning back to the hospital, continued walking to the Red Cross truck that was awaiting them across the street. There were only ten volunteers out of the whole hospital staff.

  The air inside the stadium, where the nurses were admitted after a thorough paper check, didn’t circulate at all, gathering heat under the glass roof, painted blue for the sake of camouflage; first, keeping it safe from the Luftwaffe attacks and now, from the rare allied ones. Kamille felt a thin film of sweat breaking out on her face as soon as they made their way in, walking among the live sea of people, shifting, moaning, stirring and begging for help, food, and water. Even though only a few hours had passed since the gendarmes herded them inside, the odor inside the covered stadium was already insufferable. Kamille instinctively brought the hem of her apron to her face, which was immediately met with a reproachful glare from her friend. Augustine was already hands-on, walking around with a notepad and taking down requests from the distressed crowd. Most only asked for water.

  They were catching Kamille’s sleeve as well, circling her, speaking all at once, the anxious faces and the smell of fear that their bodies seemed to emanate making Kamille feel even more claustrophobic than she already was.

  “My daughter has a fever and severe stomach cramps! Could you take a look at her? It looks like appendicitis, doesn’t it? Will they let us go to the hospital if it is?”

  “Nurse, could you ask them on account of the toilets, please? They locked more than half of them; what’s left is not enough to accommodate us all…”

  “The gendarmes promised us that they’d feed us here. But the Germans only shout at us when we ask them for food. Could you find out when we’re going to be fed, please?”

  “My husband has diabetes and needs his medicine, nurse…”

  “Please, tell them about my wife. She’s in the family way and shouldn’t be here. There must have been some mistake! She won’t be able to work when they take us to Germany…”

  Kamille kept nodding automatically, with a frantic desire hammering inside her brain; I need to get out of here. I can’t stand this crowd, the screams, the stench… I shouldn’t have come here at all. I’m not Augustine. I’m not one of them, a resistance fighter. I’m just a weak woman; I can’t handle all this…

  A child was calling for his mother, lost. A young man, in a suit and tie despite the stifling temperature inside, was arguing about something with two German sentries, a woman cowering behind his back. One of the Germans suddenly hit the man with a rifle butt in the face, breaking his nose, before grabbing the screaming woman’s hand and dragging her towards the exit, his comrade following him. A shot was fired somewhere on the other side, followed by more screams and muffled crying. Kamille stood in the middle of the chaos, unable to move or speak, her eyes shifting once again to the young man in the suit, who was now sitting and crying softly, wiping the blood away with a perfectly white handkerchief. As though in a dream, Kamille approached him and lowered to the ground next to him.

  “Do you need medical help?” she asked him, just now realizing the absurdity of her question.

  He only cried harder. Someone picked up his broken glasses, framed in thin metal, from the ground and handed them to him. After he didn’t make a motion to take them, Kamille did it for him, thanking the stranger in passing and looking at the broken glasses at a loss.

  “I’m sorry…” She didn’t know what else to say.

  “They took my Céleste!” His words came out in ragged breaths, and a new wave of grief seemed to overcome him, bending him in half.

  “I’ll go and ask them about her,” Kamille promised, getting up to her feet. She felt a bit more confident, seemingly finding purpose in this utter mayhem.

  However, when she approached one of the SS sentries who stood guard at the door, with his submachine gun flung over his shoulder and his hand resting on top of it leisurely, he only laughed at her and told her to get on with her “nurse business.”

  “That woman won’t be coming back anytime soon,” he added, much to his comrades’ delight, who immediately burst into guffaws, nudging each other with elbows and exchanging remarks in German.

  Kamille stood there, helplessly watching several other women being led away in the same manner. Some were screaming and rooting their heels to the ground, only to get a few hard slaps in return; some walked calmly next to their uniformed captors, their faces ghostly white and withdrawn, seemingly resigned to their fate.

  “Help me, will you?”

  Augustine’s voice and her firm grip on Kamille’s arm jolted her back to reality.

  “Where are they taking all those women?” Kamille asked, trailing after her friend through the countless human bodies, sitting and laying on the floor.

  “Where do you think?” Augustine barked back in a sarcastic tone. “To have a good time with them before they ship them to wherever they’re going to ship them.”

  “No, they wouldn’t—” Kamille started to say but caught such a look from her friend that she bit her tongue at once.

  “Open your eyes, Kamille! For once, open your eyes. Just because you were lucky to encounter – and marry – one good German, it doesn’t mean that they’re all saints. Look at how they’re treating all these people! Just look around, for God’s sake! Look, where we stand! Purgatory, no less! And they’re the ones who are behind all this!”

  Kamille did look around, as though prompted by Augustine’s words. It was indeed a veritable purgatory, and she started trembling despite the heat, which gathered above the blue dome, obscuring the very sky from them. Augustine regarded her with sympathy for the first time.

  “All these people I started gathering over there shouldn’t be on the lists,” Augustine spoke in a softer voice, motioning Kamille to the small group. “There are pregnant women there, some children and elderly. Go talk to that officer; I think he’s in charge here, judging by the way he carries himself. Try to explain to him that these people need to be released. Tell him that you’re married to one of his compatriots; mention some names. Surely, he’ll be more sympathetic to your words than mine.”

  She subtly nudged Kamille in the direction of a tall man with a long, sullen face, who was making unhurried rounds throughout the human sea, opening before his polished black boots.

  Kamille approached him and delivered Augustine’s requests, even though her voice shook, betraying her nervous state. The SS officer tilted his head to one side, offered her his belated congratulations on the wedding and made a joke to the effect that at least some French women knew where the best men came from.

  “What are you doing here, Madame Hartmann?” he inquired in the same pleasant tone. “Go back to the hospital and tend to our wounded soldiers. You have no business with these Jews anyway. What would your husband say, if he learned that you choose to waste your precious talents on them, and not his fellow army folk? Tsk, tsk, I don’t think he would approve.”

  Something shifted inside Kamille at those words, some strange emotion that she realized she had been desperately trying to silence until that moment. Her small hands tightened into balls at this man’s mention – and tarnish – of her good husband’s name with his allegations. Unlike him, Jochen would never say anything against her helping these people. Unlike him, Jochen risked being court-martialed together with his adjutant when he helped Kamille hide Augustine and her daughter. Unlike him, Jochen was a decent human being, and not some hateful connard, who was a shame to the uniform he was wearing. But, unlike him, Jochen was a Wehrmacht officer, not an SS one. The SS were all the same in her eyes. She still remembered Giselle’s lover Wünsche well enough. Giselle had recognized his true nature and killed him, and good for her. One less bastard walking the earth.


  Kamille suddenly stepped forward and started insisting, then demanding, then threatening in the Major’s name, ire shining in her blue eyes. The SS officer looked at her with distant curiosity, as though finding this little woman threatening him rather amusing.

  “Those people?” He grinned, at last, something sinister appearing in his gaze as he outstretched his arm towards the group, near which Augustine stood, her brows drawn tightly together. “You want me to free them?”

  He said something to one of his SS men, who readily walked over to the group and motioned for Augustine to step aside. As soon as she did, he withdrew his gun from his holster and shot everyone indiscriminately. This time, not a cry, not a gasp, rose from the terrified flock. They refused to even look at the appalling, heinous scene. Instead, they turned away in stunned silence, thoroughly persuading themselves that the atrocity hadn’t just happened before their very eyes. Only the children stared wide-eyed at the Germans. As for the Germans themselves, they had long sold their souls to the madman with piercing blue eyes.

  “Very well, Madame. They’re all free now. Anything else I can do for you?” The officer turned to Kamille once again with a most obliging look on his long, cruel face.

  White as a sheet, Kamille swayed slightly on her feet until Augustine caught her by the elbow and led her aside.

  “I have to stay here and do what I can,” Augustine spoke to her quietly, sitting her down on one of the benches. “You go home as soon as you feel better. I shouldn’t have asked you to come. You won’t be able to stand all this.”

  Kamille clutched Augustine's rolled sleeve with a deadly grip before the woman turned to take her leave.

  “I’ll help you,” she said in a quiet, but firm voice. “What you asked me to do for you in Germany. I’ll do it. I’ll help you with what I can. You can count on me. I’ll be strong. And I’ll stay here with you tonight, and tomorrow too, as long as you need me to.”

  Augustine pressed her hands with the warmest smile and kissed her on the cheek in a sudden outburst of emotion.