The following summer I traveled to Poland and Germany. With my seventeen-year-old son as my videographer, we landed in Warsaw on July 25, 2010, and set out for Lublin with Anna Sachanowicz, our lovely interpreter, a schoolteacher from a Warsaw suburb.
As we walked through Lublin seeing the places the survivors referenced in their memoirs, the story came alive. We walked through massive Lublin Castle, where the Ravensbrück Ladies were first imprisoned, and spent an afternoon at the incredible Museum “Under the Clock,” which still houses the cells where many Polish underground operatives were tortured and where you can see one of the secret letters the girls used to tell the world of the operations. I walked through Crakow Gate, which withstood Nazi bombs, and through the vast plaza at the foot of Lublin Castle where the Jewish ghetto once stood. It gave me new resolve to make sure the world remembered. Everywhere we went, Lubliners told us of their own experiences in the war years and about the Katyn Forest Massacre, the Stalinist years, and what life had been like behind the Iron Curtain.
In Warsaw I was lucky enough to interview a Ravensbrück survivor, Alicja Kubacka. Her story of her imprisonment at Ravensbrück provided incredible historical details, but her attitude of forgiveness toward her captors turned everything on its head. How could she not resent, even hate, the German people? How could she not only forgive them but also visit Germany every year at their request to aid in the healing?
My son and I decided to take a train route similar to that which the Rabbits took on the terrible day they were transported, in September 1941. Riding from Warsaw to Berlin, we watched the simple train stations of Poland give way to more modern Bahnhofs of Germany. By the time we reached the sleek Berlin Hauptbahnhof, a sophisticated marvel of engineering, it was clear Poland had been kept back by its years behind the Iron Curtain.
Once we stepped off the train at Fürstenberg onto the same platform the Ravensbrück Ladies had stepped onto, it was a surreal moment. As my son and I walked the same walk the prisoners were forced to take, the camp came into view, the metal gate at the camp entrance and rows of barracks gone but the massive wall still standing. The crematorium still stands today and the place where the gas chamber, a repurposed painter’s shed, now demolished, once stood is still there. So is the shooting wall. The lake into which the prisoners’ ashes were thrown. The commandant’s house still overlooks the camp and the tailor’s workshop, the massive complex of buildings where the Nazis sorted their plunder, remains as well.
Once back in the States, I wrote for more than three years, breaking to travel to Paris to sift through Caroline’s archives at Nanterre. There, I sat with a French translator who read me every one of Caroline’s letters, many between her and Anise Postel-Vinay, one of her partners in what she saw as a life dedicated to justice. Each night after riding back on the Métro from Nanterre, I returned to the grand H?tel Lutetia and slept in one of the rooms that once served as a hospital room for those returning from the camps.
That same year I also spent time at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where Caroline left her third archive, her papers devoted not only to her work with the Rabbits but also to her later work with her French friends in the ADIR, a French organization dedicated to the care of returning concentration camp deportees, helping them pursue Klaus Barbie.
My goal with all this research was to write a fictionalized account of the events that took place at Ravensbrück, to take readers to the places that the people involved in the story of the Rabbits passed through, and perhaps give some insight into what they might have been feeling in order to breathe new life into a story that had fallen from public view.
When I tell people the story of the Rabbits, many wonder what ultimately happened to Herta Oberheuser. She and Fritz Fischer escaped the hangman at Nuremberg. She was sentenced to twenty years in prison, but after five years was quietly released in 1952, her sentence commuted by the American government, perhaps to curry favor with the Germans as a result of pressure from the Cold War. She resumed the practice of medicine in Stocksee in northern Germany as a family doctor. Once Herta was recognized by a Ravensbrück survivor, Caroline and Anise Postel-Vinay urged a group of British doctors to pressure the German government to revoke Herta’s license to practice medicine. Herta fought back with powerful friends of her own, but Caroline took to her typewriter, lobbying the press in America, Great Britain, and Germany, and in 1960 Herta’s license was revoked, and Herta was forced to permanently close her doctor’s surgery.
After a successful lobbying campaign by Caroline, together with Norman Cousins, Dr. Hitzig, and lawyer Benjamin Ferencz, on behalf of the Ravensbrück Ladies, the West German government finally granted the women reparations in 1964. It was one of Caroline’s greatest triumphs, for it was a particularly harrowing process, since Poland was under Russian control and Bonn refused to recognize it as a country.
Through the years that followed, Caroline stayed in close touch with many of the Rabbits. She hosted them often at her home, and they came to see her as their godmother, often using that term as a salutation in their letters to her. She wrote that they felt like daughters to her.
One notable departure from real events is Caroline’s relationship with Paul Rodierre, a character sprung from my imagination. I gave Caroline this relationship to give her more of a personal connection to France and to dramatize the events happening there. I like to think she wouldn’t be too cross with me for giving her such a handsome literary partner.
Caroline died in 1990 and left her treasured home in the care of Connecticut Landmarks, which has kept it in lovely condition, just as Caroline wished. It is well worth a visit at any time, but in late May when the lilacs are blooming, you will understand why Caroline and her mother could not be away from their beloved garden for too long.
If my version of the story has inspired you to learn more about the events surrounding Lilac Girls and you would like to continue reading, there are many fine works of historical fiction and memoir that deal with the same topics, including Women in the Resistance and in the Holocaust, edited and with an introduction by Vera Laska; The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, by Rochelle G. Saidel; and Ravensbrück, by Sarah Helm.
Enjoy the journey. With any luck it will take you places you never dreamed possible.
To my husband, Michael, who still makes my compact go click.
Many thanks to those who made writing Lilac Girls such a joy: My husband, Michael Kelly, who happily read every draft, shared my dream of telling Caroline Ferriday’s story, and never doubted this day would come.
My daughter Katherine, for her supreme wisdom, her encouragement, and for being the model for Kasia’s resourcefulness and intuition.
My daughter Mary, for her splendid editorial suggestions, cheerful, unflagging support, and for inspiring the character Zuzanna.
My son, Michael, for traveling with me to Poland, for discussing infinite plot variations as we drove to and from high school each day, and for his lightning in the sand.
Kara Cesare at Ballantine Bantam Dell, the most caring, talented editor a person could wish for, who understood and embraced Caroline’s story like no one else.
Nina Arazoza and the whole team at Ballantine Bantam Dell for their seamless collaboration and enthusiasm: Debbie Aroff, Barbara Bachman, Susan Corcoran, Melanie DeNardo, Katie Herman, Kim Hovey, and Paolo Pepe to name a few.
My amazing agent, Alexandra Machinist, who plucked me from the slush pile, insisted this story needed to be told, and made it happen.
Betty Kelly Sargent for her early encouragement and expertise, and who said, “All I need is a chapter.”