Black Cross

15

A woman was speaking Yiddish in the darkness. She spoke with the guttural inflections of Eastern Europe, but Rachel Jansen had no trouble understanding her. She would have understood even if she had not known Yiddish. Despair needs no translation.

Every woman in the block had gathered in a tight circle around a guttering candle hooded by a tin can. They sat on the floor with their knees under them, listening like mourners in a dark temple. The candlelight did little to smooth their stark, prematurely old faces, and it absolutely died in the hollows of their eyes. All but Frau Hagan wore the yellow triangle on their shifts.

Rachel had never seen or imagined anything like this ritual. The women called it der Ring — the Circle. Each night they gathered in this way and spoke by turns, emptying their memories. Children were banished from the block during the Circle, and Rachel soon learned why. The stories told here would have plunged children’s minds into black depression and nightmares, scarring them forever. They were difficult enough for adults to endure. But every woman in the room already bore indelible scars. What could it hurt to hear others reveal their own? At least they could share their misery.

But sharing misery was not the purpose of the Circle. Its purpose was to record. A woman called the Scribe wrote down in shorthand everything that was said, paying particular attention to names, dates, and places. Each night the Scribe’s annotated record was hidden in a space behind the wall where insulation would be, had insulation been provided for the barracks, which it had not. After hearing a single night’s entries into that record, Rachel had known she would never have the courage to read the full text. It was no less than a testament of the unwillingness — or perhaps worse, the inability — of God to protect his servants.

With great effort she managed to block out the speaker’s voice. She admired the purpose of the Circle, but for the past four nights she had used this time to digest whatever she had learned during the day, and to try to apply that knowledge to her family’s survival. Unlike the other new widows, who walked through the camp in various states of lethargy, Rachel strained to catch every conversation, sifting each for some scrap of information that might help protect her children.

Already she had experienced extremes of hope and despair. First she had learned that if she and her family had been captured a few months earlier, her children would never have been picked out of the line at Auschwitz, but sent directly to its gas chambers. But with international pressure building against the rumors of Nazi death camps, the SS had decided to create special “family sections” inside certain camps. Red Cross inspectors would be allowed admittance at the front gate, then steered down prepared routes to areas where they would witness scenes of family life not so different from that outside the camp fence, albeit with fewer material comforts. They would leave confident that the grisly rumors were the exaggerations of frightened Jews.

Frau Hagan told Rachel that when Reichsführer Himmler mentioned this program to Herr Doktor Brandt, Brandt had jumped at the chance. And the system had brought certain benefits. A few families were spared the agony of forced separation, which Frau Hagan claimed was worse than death for some, as she had seen such separations drive mothers to suicide. But the odd thing was, since the adoption of the family camp system, not one Red Cross inspector had ever been granted admittance to Totenhausen.

It was not until yesterday that Rachel learned why, and the answer had left her in a permanent state of terror. It seemed that, until recently, Klaus Brandt’s talents were not sufficiently taxed by his poison gas experiments on behalf of Reichsführer Himmler. As a hobby he had taken up private researches into the etiology of spinal meningitis. Some said he had done this with an eye toward developing patentable medicines with which he could make a fortune after the war. In any case, Brandt’s research used up children at a staggering rate, as his normal method was to inject meningococcus bacteria into healthy spines, then chart the effectiveness or failure of various compounds against the infection. Brandt’s adoption of the family camp system insured a constant flow of children for his experiments.

Frau Hagan claimed the meningitis research had slowed considerably in recent weeks, but Rachel was not comforted. The thought that Jan or Hannah could be plucked from the Appellplatz at any moment and taken to the “hospital” to have deadly bacteria injected into their bodies was simply too horrifying to shut out. The thought that any children were at risk of this — that some in fact were dying in agony in the hospital on this very night — kept her in a constant state of near panic. She now devoted every waking moment to discovering some way to have her children exempted from these experiments.

A sudden sob from the Circle broke her train of thought. A listener had been moved to tears by the speaker’s words. Rachel found herself drawn into the narrative by morbid fascination. The speaker’s story was so much more harrowing than her own. It made her nervous to think what she would say when her turn came.

“The trucks were in the square,” the woman said, determinedly focusing her eyes on the bare floorboards, as if her old village were standing there in miniature. “The SS beat everyone out of their homes. Those who were too slow about it, who stayed behind to pack some valuables or necessities, they died first. I had believed the worst rumors on the day before. I’d already packed a bag. There were rifle shots from every direction. They caused panic at first, but most of us hurried toward the trucks. We were like cattle. No one wanted to know what the shots meant. Mothers shouting to their children, children alone screaming. The men calling to each other, asking what they should do. What could they do? The SS had already shot the mayor and the police chief.

“From the bed of the truck we saw the worst of it. The children . . . the poor babies. On Praga Street the Germans were killing the babies outright. Smashing their heads with rifle butts, swinging them by the heels against walls. I myself saw an SS grab an infant from Hannah Karpik and dash its head against the street cobbles. Hannah went mad, tearing out her hair and beating her fists against the SS. After a few seconds he took out his pistol and shot her in the stomach, then left her for dead.” The woman shrugged. “That was the Germans in Damosc.”

“In Lodz, too,” echoed a woman from the outer edge of the Circle. “The same, but worse. While we stood in lines in the square, the SS backed a flat truck up to the hospital wall. We could not understand what they were doing. Someone opened a third floor window. Then small packages began flying out of the window. When the second package landed in the bed of the truck, we realized what it was. They were throwing the newborn babies down from the nursery. Three floors. They laughed while they did it.”

“Like barbarians from the Dark Ages,” said the first woman. “Our rabbi was crying out to God to deliver us, while a young man cursed God in a voice twice as loud. On that night I felt the boy was right. How could God watch that slaughter and not be moved to act?”

“It’s always the same,” said another woman, a voice much older and cracked with phlegm. “Why write them down? The same story told a hundred times. A thousand times. No one cares.”

“That is why we must write them all,” Frau Hagan said forcefully. “To show what the Hun is really doing. Good men sometimes do bad things in war. But with the SS it is the rule. It is policy. Our stories, piled on other stories, each one documented, can prove this madness. Only then will it be impossible for them to deny it later.”

“Later,” scoffed a disembodied voice. “What is later? Who will be left to dig up our papers? Our stories. Who will be left to listen? Soon the Germans will own the world.”

“Cover your stupid mouth,” said Frau Hagan. “There is always a reckoning. The Red Army is coming to set us free. Stalin will crush Hitler into the ice of Russia, drown his tanks in the Pripet Marshes. We must be ready when the soldiers arrive. We must point out the butchers to them.”

“Stalin won’t come. Hitler almost took Moscow in ’forty-one. Anyway, Stalin hates Jews as much as Hitler. It doesn’t matter. The streets of Moscow will soon have German names.”

“Liar!” Frau Hagan snapped. “Empty-headed fool! Ask the Dutch girl. She came from Amsterdam. She had a radio. Ask her about Stalin. Ask her about the Red Army.”

All eyes turned to Rachel. “Tell them,” urged Frau Hagan.

“It’s true,” Rachel confirmed. “The Russians began a winter offensive in December. Only days before I was captured, I heard that they had advanced into Poland.”

“As I told you!” Frau Hagan said triumphantly.

“I heard also on the BBC that they were driving the Germans back across the Ukraine.”

Nearly fifty faces turned to Rachel and fired questions at her in a jumble of languages. What was happening in Estonia? In Warsaw? Italy? What about the Americans? The English?

“I’m afraid I don’t know much,” she apologized. “There are rumors of an invasion this year.”

“They say that every year,” said a disparaging voice. “They will not come. They don’t care about us.”

A long shriek suddenly pierced the night. The women in the Circle fell silent. Rachel had heard screaming earlier, like several women shouting for help, but it had come from farther away, from the direction of the SS barracks, and she had been unable to make Frau Hagan take notice of it. But when the second shriek sounded — this one obviously from close by — Frau Hagan’s face told Rachel she sensed real danger.

“I may have to speak to Frau Komorowski,” the Block Leader said.

“Don’t risk it,” said a woman. “Let them solve their own problems.”

Frau Hagan ruminated. “I’ll wait a few minutes. Finish the story, Brana.”

“Should I hide the papers?” asked the Scribe. “What if the screams make them search?”

“Finish the story.”

The woman called Brana resumed her narrative, telling of the open trucks driving through the winter blast to meet a prison train at an empty stretch of track. Of families loaded into unheated cattle cars, as Rachel’s had been, without food, water, or toilets. Rachel found herself unwillingly reliving her own nightmare journey from Westerbork when something raised the hairs on her upper arms.

“Quiet!” she warned in a sharp voice.

Frau Hagan glared at her. “What is it, Dutch girl?”

“There is someone outside. Hide your papers.”

Frau Hagan looked skeptical. “Heinke is listening at the door. She has heard nothing.”

“Hide the papers, I tell you!”

Frau Hagan snatched the papers from the Scribe and stuffed them under her shift. Her eyes went to the woman called Heinke at the door. “Anything?”

The guard shook her head. Frau Hagan curled her upper lip at Rachel.

“SS!” Heinke hissed suddenly. “Into the bunks!”

The hooded candle was instantly extinguished. A wild scramble ensued as the women found their allotted places in the tiered bunks. Rachel realized then that they had practiced this maneuver a thousand times. The only sounds she heard were the grunts and curses of the new women as they stubbed toes and barked shins in their inexperienced haste. She admired the old-timers. Walking quickly without sound was a skill she had mastered long ago, in Amsterdam, and not an easy one.

Holding her breath in her own bunk, she waited for the slamming door and pounding boots of an SS search team. Instead she heard a furtive knock. Then the door cracked open and a shadow slipped through.

“Hagan?” whispered the shadow.

“Irina? Is that you?”

“Da.”

“Everyone stay in your bunks,” ordered Frau Hagan.

Rachel heard the muted thud of the heavy Pole’s feet hitting the floor. Frau Hagan crossed the room in total darkness and held a whispered conversation with the kapo of the Christian Women’s Block. In less than a minute the door opened and closed again.

“Another child has gone missing,” Frau Hagan announced to the room. “A gypsy child.”

There was a heavy silence.

“A boy child?” asked a quiet voice.

“Yes. Eight years old.”

Rachel heard a whimper in the darkness.

“That was his mother we heard screaming. Frau Komorowski ordered her gagged and tied to her bunk. For her own protection. The gypsy had told them she was going to Doktor Brandt’s quarters to get her son back.”

“She named the right place,” said a voice.

“God help the boy,” said another. “It is unspeakable.”

“Was it the same as before?”

Frau Hagan answered wearily. “A Latvian political saw Ariel Weitz talking to this gypsy boy earlier today.”

Rachel heard spitting and cursing in the darkness, then voices that changed almost too rapidly to follow.

“Devil!” hissed one woman.

“One of the men should squash that worm.”

“We should kill him ourselves.”

“Don’t talk madness,” said Frau Hagan. “Kill Weitz and we all die. He serves Brandt, so Brandt protects him. Sturm protects him. Even Schörner protects Weitz, and Schörner despises him.”

“Schörner uses him too,” said a knowing voice. “Weitz informs for Schörner.”

“To think he was born a Jew,” mused another. “Weitz is worse than the SS. A thousand times worse.”

“The shoemaker is also a Jew,” observed Frau Hagan.

“The shoemaker makes shoes. Weitz summons children to be violated, then killed.”

“What about the last boy?”

“Probably gassed with the men,” someone speculated.

“No,” said Frau Hagan. “He was shot last week. At the pit.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” asked a dismayed voice.

“What could you have done, Yascha?”

Rachel realized then that Frau Hagan could recognize people by the timbre of their whispers.

“Enough talk,” the Pole said conclusively. After a brief silence, she said, “You have good ears, Dutch girl. Irina flattened herself against the outside wall to avoid the searchlight. Is that what you heard?”

Rachel swallowed. “I heard something. I lived in hiding for three years in Amsterdam. Above a shop. There were customers in and out all day. The slightest noise meant danger.”

“You learned well. From now on, you will guard the door.”

Rachel closed her eyes. Was that a good thing, to be guard? If it kept her in Frau Hagan’s good graces, it probably was. But would the woman called Heinke become her enemy now?

“Did you hear me, Dutch girl?” Frau Hagan asked.

“Tomorrow I guard the door.”

“Yes. Now sleep. Everyone.”

Rachel heard the creak of brittle wood as the Block Leader climbed into her bunk. Since her second day in camp, Rachel had watched the men with pink badges — and every other man — like a mother hen, but so far had detected no sign of impropriety toward Jan. Could the commandant of Totenhausen be the danger Frau Hagan had warned her about? Could there be two kinds of selection that had to be avoided to survive? If so, how could she protect her son? The Herr Doktor held absolute power of life and death over every inmate. He had already ordered the death of her husband. If Klaus Brandt wanted to abuse her Jan, she was helpless to stop him.

With a shiver of loathing, Rachel remembered Ariel Weitz. If Weitz was Brandt’s procurer, perhaps he could be bribed to leave Jan alone. She had the five diamonds. Yet even if Weitz could be bought, would it help? Brandt probably chose his victims while walking through the camp in his white coat, pretending to be a healer. It was unspeakable. Yet it was reality. She could not fly back to Holland with her children beneath her wings. She would have to think of something.

Where could help lie? The shoemaker had proved he had compassion, but Rachel had hardly seen the man in the past four days. And what of Anna Kaas? The young nurse obviously felt some sympathy for the prisoners. Could she suggest some way to keep Jan out of harm’s way? Rachel thought of Jan and Hannah lying in the Jewish Children’s Block just meters away. A Sephardic Jewess from Salonica had the job of sleeping in the children’s block to keep order. At supper Rachel had given her half of her own bread ration in exchange for a promise that Jan and Hannah would be allowed to sleep side by side. She’d considered offering the woman a full week’s ration in exchange for her job, but finally decided against it. A week without bread would set her on the road to starvation, and while she would be closer to her children, she would be farther from the adult women who knew the rules of survival, particularly Frau Hagan. As a German shepherd howled on the camp perimeter, Rachel decided that the Block Leader was her tether to life, her bridge to survival. Whatever Frau Hagan needed, she would get from Rachel Jansen.

Guarding the door would be only the beginning.