by Joan M. Wolf
Elsbeth took my hand. "I have something to show you." She grinned mischievously.
"What?" I asked.
"It's a secret. You have to promise not to tell." She was whispering, and her eyes darted from side to side as if she was a spy checking for enemies.
"Of course," I promised.
She started skipping, making wide swoops around the woods. Kaiser followed, barking and leaping into the air. Laughing, I walked behind as Elsbeth left the path and made her way into a clearing. It was small, no bigger than our informal dining room. Three large oaks grew next to each other, a painted red bull's-eye resting in the middle of each trunk.
"Vater thinks I don't know. He thinks I am stupid. Well..." Elsbeth spread her arms and looked around the clearing.
"What? What is this?" I whispered, feeling a little frightened.
"This, my dear Eva"—she puffed out her chest and deepened her voice—"is where the men get to be men." She looked ridiculous strutting around the circle, her thin stomach extended to imitate her father's protruding belly. "I am Herr Werner, and this is my kingdom."
I laughed. It was a good imitation of her father.
She stopped, suddenly serious, and looked at me. "This is where Vater brings Peter to practice his shooting."
"Oh, a target range."
"And here," Elsbeth whispered, "is the best part." She walked behind one of the trees and tipped a boulder onto its side. In a shallow hole beneath it lay a small pistol and a large stock of ammunition.
"I have been doing my own practicing," Elsbeth said, her words quick with excitement. "I followed Peter and Vater here once and watched. They don't even know I have this. Here." She picked up the pistol and dropped it into my hand. "Have you ever shot a gun?"
I shook my head, even as I curled my fingers around the gun. It felt cool and light and was small enough to fit neatly into my palm, although the slender barrel stuck out far from my fingers. I remembered the times I had been at the other end of a gun, and a thrill of power swept through me. This time I was the one holding the weapon.
"Where did you get it?" I asked, turning the gun over in my hand.
"Vater accidentally left his office unlocked one day." Elsbeth spoke in a rush, her voice high and eager. "You should see what is there, Eva. Someday we will sneak in. There are official documents and maps and all sorts of things. And so many guns. He won't miss this little one. Let me show you how to load it." She took the gun and put bullets into its chamber.
Carefully Elsbeth showed me how to position my arm, where to look, and how to aim at the bull's-eye. In everything she did, Elsbeth was patient and a good teacher. She showed me how to shoot at the unmarked trees on the opposite side of the clearing so there wouldn't be any evidence that we had been there.
I caught on quickly. It took only a few tries before I could hit the trunks. By the time we finished, I was trembling with excitement. Elsbeth took the gun and shot several times. Her aim was perfect, and I could tell she was a natural marksman.
"Are you hungry?" she asked after her fifth shot.
"Starving," I said.
"I've got the perfect spot for a picnic."
We gathered the spent shells and the gun and safely tucked them into their hiding place beneath the boulder. Then we headed deeper into the woods.
Elsbeth's spot was nearly perfect. It was another small, secluded clearing with just enough room for a picnic. But the smell was stronger at this clearing than it had been at the other. I tried my best to ignore it as we laid the thick blanket on top of the fallen leaves and unpacked our lunch. Despite the smell, the sandwiches tasted hearty and fresh in the cool air. As we ate, Elsbeth gossiped about her friends.
"So then Lotte went right up and asked him to dance. Can you believe it?" Elsbeth exclaimed between bites. She was absorbed in a story about a Hitler Youth dance she had attended the year before with Lotte and Willa. Kaiser dozed on the ground near us. The exhilaration from learning to shoot was still with me.
"Really?"I asked.
"And then he said yes, and then they danced. I wish I could be so bold!"
I nodded. My experience with boys had been limited.
"I can't wait until this year's dance. We can go together, Eva, and maybe I will ask a boy to dance!"
"Maybe," I answered.
"It's getting late. We'd better go back. I don't think Vater would like it if he knew Mutter had allowed us an afternoon away from our lessons. We should be home before he arrives from work." We finished the rest of our picnic, and Elsbeth gathered up the blanket.
We stood and began walking back the way we had come. Elsbeth started humming the German national anthem. I hung back a bit and closed my eyes, lifting my face to the sun, not wanting our time in the woods to end. I let the warmth touch my cheeks and listened to Elsbeth's singing.
Suddenly, I heard a song coming from someone other than Elsbeth.
Where is my home? Where is my home?
Where brooks rumble through the meadow...
I opened my eyes again, not sure if I had really heard something or imagined it. The words were familiar and sweet, yet strange at the same time.
Elsbeth continued ahead of me, humming and putting her arm up in the Nazi salute. I squinted, trying to listen more carefully for what I had heard.
Pines murmur over the mountainside,
All the orchards are in bloom.
The words touched my ears a second time. They were the sounds of my Czech language! I stopped. Had I heard those words out loud? Elsbeth started imitating the Nazi march as more words came, this time even more clearly.
What an earthly paradise in view,
This is the beautiful land,
The land of Czechs, home of mine.
This time there was no mistake. Someone was singing in Czech, clear and beautiful. Singing just for me.
I started running—past Elsbeth, past Kaiser, past the trees and the war and the confusion, heading in the direction of those words.
The song grew louder and clearer as I stumbled off the path and tore through the brush. Faster and faster I ran, getting closer and closer to the words, until suddenly I was stopped by a barbed-wire fence. I looked around, breathing heavily. I was at the edge of an immense clearing. The smell here was very strong, bitter and heavy. It was almost overpowering.
"Eva!" Elsbeth caught up with me and grasped my shoulder, out of breath from running. "Eva. What are you doing?"
About fifty feet away, on the other side of the barbed wire, women were breaking huge stones with large metal hammers and singing in time to their hammering.
Singing in Czech.
The language I'd thought I had lost forever shimmered, alive and real, in front of me. Even though I had forgotten the words, I could still recognize them as having once been mine.
And with its sounds came the realization that Mama and Papa could be here in this place right now. Waiting all this time for me to find them.
"I...," I called out hoarsely to the women in German, my throat dry from running.
The women were horribly thin and hollow, with hair that was ragged and short. Each wore a striped dress marked with a red upside-down triangular patch. Inside the triangle was a large T. Hardly any of the women wore stockings, even though the autumn breeze was cool.
The women sang slowly, in time to their swings.
"I...,"I began again, unable to piece together what I wanted to say in Czech. I desperately needed to communicate, to discover how they had come to this place and to find out if Mama and Grandmother were with them or if the women knew anything of my village, my home.
"Eva!" Elsbeth turned me toward her.
"What is this place?" I gasped. "Who are these women?"
"This is Ravensbrück women's camp, Eva. This is the prison camp where Vater is commandant. These are his prisoners, very bad people. Many of them are Jews. We shouldn't be here. It is not allowed."
"No." I turned back toward the women and tried again to get my tong
ue to speak Czech, but no words would come. The women ignored me, continuing to strike the rocks at their feet.
I felt something breaking inside me, and I pounded my hands against the barbed-wire fence.
"Eva!" Elsbeth grabbed me and dragged me back into the forest.
"No!" I screamed again, feeling helpless and desperate and trying to reach for the women. Instead, I felt myself being pulled away from the beautiful sounds of the Czech words.
When Elsbeth finally let me go, we were back on the path in the woods. I looked at my hands and saw small lines of blood running down each palm like tiny rivers.
Elsbeth pulled a napkin from the picnic basket and dabbed at my hands. "You mustn't let Mutter see this, Eva. We will both be in trouble. Say nothing of this." Her voice was harsh and high-pitched. She pressed the napkin into my hand without looking at me and continued. "Do not ever come to this place again. You will get us both in trouble. It is a bad place, Eva. Do you understand? A very bad place."
We walked for a long time without talking. Questions and feelings tumbled around inside me. What exactly had I found, and what did it mean?
My hands were throbbing angrily but had stopped bleeding by the time we reached the backyard. Kaiser followed behind, whining softly, as if he sensed that something was not right. The breeze blew restlessly through the trees, carrying the camp, the song, and the women farther and farther away.
***
Inside the house I went straight to my room, unable to look at or speak to either Mutter or Elsbeth. I needed to be alone. As I passed Elsbeth's room, I noticed the scarf she had been knitting the night before. I stopped and looked at it. A scarf for a German soldier. While all this time my own people were cold, starving, and imprisoned in the woods behind the house.
In my own room I stood before the mirror and took in the reflection of the Aryan German girl staring back. I touched the blond hair and looked deep into the blue eyes, trying to see if there was any Czech girl left inside at all.
Who had I become? A German girl who gives the Hitler salute at dinner without thinking? I looked at my long plaid skirt, my well-fed body, and my rosy cheeks that were flushed from the warmth of the house.
How different from Franziska was I after all?
I stared for a moment longer as a dull ache spread through my stomach. Then I turned abruptly to get away from the mirror and the questions. I spent the rest of that day in a fog, knowing I had somehow found myself again but unsure what that truly meant.
***
Strange images and words haunted my dreams that night, and I awoke suddenly, only a few hours after falling asleep. I sat up in bed, thinking about something real that I might have lost.
Grandmother's star pin.
How long had it been since I had touched or worn it? How could I have forgotten it? I pulled back the covers and crept out of bed. As quietly as I could, I opened the top drawer of my bureau and felt for the handkerchief. It was safe, exactly where I had left it months before. I hugged it tightly to my chest and got back into bed. With trembling hands I unwrapped the handkerchief. The pin was just as I remembered it. Gently I took it out and followed the outline of its star shape with my fingers. Then I touched each little garnet. Tears of relief came to my eyes as I reclaimed a tiny, but very real, part of my life.
I tried to picture Mama and Papa, my grandmother and Anechka, and my big brother, Jaro. How long had it been since I had thought of them? I pinned the little star into the folds of my nightdress so it would be next to me, and thought of the women in the camp. I traced the shape of their words in my mind, trying to whisper into the night in their language and trying to understand what the discovery of the camp meant.
Twelve
Winter–Spring 1945: Fürstenberg, Germany
AS fall and then winter continued, the sky turned into a constant battleground. Plane engines droned, night and day, and were interrupted only by bursts of artillery fire. The tension outside had begun to seep inside the house as well, like a poisonous gas. It became clear that our resources were dwindling. The reality of war was creeping in.
Peter cried loudly when Mutter told Cook she would have to leave. "No, no!" he wailed, pulling at Cook's skirt. "She's my favorite, Mutter, my favorite!"
"Peter, this is how it must be," Mutter replied. But she too had tears in her eyes when she said good-bye.
Erich and Helga and the rest of the help were also let go. Mutter refused to give a reason when we asked why, but Elsbeth said it was because Herr Werner could no longer afford to pay them. We were running low not only of money but of food as well. Sugar and flour and meat had become scarce. Peter often begged for more helpings at dinner, but there were none. My own stomach too had begun to rumble and complain with the soft gnaw of hunger.
"What about the food downstairs, the food that's stored in the shelter?" Elsbeth asked Mutter once, after another meal with little to eat.
"Nein!" Mutter snapped. "We don't need it. We are fine. Fine. No one is going hungry." She was spending all her time now hovering over Elsbeth and me, or sitting near the radio, working her needlepoint. Her eyes had grown puffy and tired looking.
Herr Werner stayed at work for days at a time. When he was home, he walked around frowning and mumbling to himself. His clothes were rumpled and dirty, and his mustache and beard went unshaved, growing ever wilder to match the crazed look that had come to rest in his eyes.
Elsbeth's and my lessons were forgotten, and we spent all our time together in either her bedroom or mine. Peter no longer attended school, and he stayed inside all day bothering us. No one, except Mutter and Herr Werner, was allowed to leave the house.
Things in Germany were changing.
I knew that things had changed within myself as well. I walked around aware of the war, and of the tension and fear in the house, but I was unsure what it all meant for me. Would I be taken away again? Would Mama and Papa find me at last? Or were they truly gone, as Fräulein Krüger had said? Were the Werners my only family now? I thought often of the women in the camp, and as I lay in bed at night, tracing Grandmother's pin, I wondered what was going to happen to all of us.
***
I awoke late one night to loud, angry sounds coming from Mutter and Herr Werner's room. Drawers banged open and shut. A glass broke. Harsh, angry words punctured the stillness of the house.
"Absolutely not! Hans! I don't know what you are thinking. Hans! Put your travel bag away."
"Trude, listen. The decision has been made. And not by me. I have no choice. What is important is—"
"What is important, Hans, is your family. You will leave us here alone? How will we know where you are? How will we know what to do? At least take us with you."
"You know that is not possible. Enough of this! You are acting foolish!"
"Hans!"
"Enough! I said enough!" There was the crack of a slap and then only the sound of banging drawers.
Quietly, I got out of bed and pulled my robe around my shoulders, then walked down the hall to Elsbeth's room. Peter was asleep in her bed, and she had her arm wrapped protectively around him. I could hear the sounds of bombs exploding in the distance.
"Did you hear them arguing?" I whispered. She nodded and motioned for me to sit on her bed.
"They are arguing about the war," she whispered back. "Vater has said Berlin may fall to the Americans and the Russians. They will be looking for all Nazis, especially important ones. Vater is afraid he will be arrested ... or worse. That is what they are arguing about." She turned and looked down at Peter, gently smoothing his bangs away from his face. "Go back to bed, Eva. There is nothing you can do." I opened my mouth to say something, but she waved me away.
I tiptoed back to my room and got into bed, but I lay staring up at the ceiling. Only after many hours did I fall into a restless sleep.
The next morning I awoke to find the house quiet. Too quiet. There were no sounds of Peter or Elsbeth or anyone else moving about. I got out of bed and went down
stairs, to find Mutter sitting near the kitchen window, sipping tea.
"Mutter?" I touched her arm.
She looked up at me and blinked. A red mark brightened one cheek.
"Mutter? Where is everyone?"
"Elsbeth is still sleeping, so be quiet, Eva. I don't want to wake her. Your vater has gone into hiding. The Russian troops are looking for Nazi officers. When it is safe, he will come for us. He promised."
"Peter?" My stomach lurched as I asked the question. "Where is Peter?"
"He and his dog are with your vater. They will come back for us." She grabbed my wrist, searching my eyes with hers. "He promised."
Elsbeth appeared in the doorway, still wearing her nightdress. Her eyes had dark circles under them, and her hair was uncombed and tangled.
"They are not coming back, Mutter," she said. "They are gone. And we need to leave too. It is not safe. Not safe at all."
"Nein." Mutter stood, knocking her teacup to the floor. "Nein!" She began pacing the floor of the kitchen, screaming. "This is my house. This is my family. We will not leave. Never! Hitler will keep us safe. We will wait until your vater returns for us. Heil Hitler!" She gave a weak Nazi salute.
Elsbeth turned and disappeared upstairs. I stood, unsure what to do and feeling completely helpless.
When Elsbeth came back, she carried the blankets and sheets from her bed. She dropped them into my arms. "Help me, Eva," she said briskly. Her tone with her mother was more gentle. "Sit down, Mutter. Have some tea." Mutter opened her mouth, then sat back down again, ignoring the broken cup that lay on the floor.
Elsbeth and I spent the rest of that day moving things into the shelter. It was much larger than I remembered from when Elsbeth had shown it to me shortly after my arrival. Tucked away in an earthen corner of the basement, the shelter actually had two rooms, one larger than the other, and a small wash room and toilet off to the side. In the smaller room was a mattress on a wooden platform that folded into the wall when it wasn't being used.
