Zuzanna laughed. “Last time I heard, there was no law saying Z’s is off-limits. Though there’s a law about everything else these days…”
I checked the line outside again. The woman nodded and raised a finger in the direction of the ticket booth door. My whole body went cold.
“He’s asking them about me,” I said, a giant drain sucking me down. “They’re telling him I’m here.”
My heart contracted with what I saw next: Matka, at the far end of the line, shouldering her way through the crowd toward us, basket in hand.
Zuzanna pulled the shade from my hand. “Keep looking guilty and you will be in trouble.”
I could barely breathe.
Don’t come, Matka. Turn back now, before it’s too late.
1940
Fritz was late picking me up at Fürstenberg Station, a fine way for me to start my first day as a camp doctor at Ravensbrück. Would he recognize me? This was doubtful. At university, he’d always had some pretty nursing student on his arm.
The compact train station was built in the Bavarian style, and I had ample time to admire it, left standing on the platform for five minutes. Would I receive important assignments? Make good friends? It was warm for fall, and my wool dress irritated my skin. I couldn’t wait to slip into a lighter dress and a cool, smooth lab coat.
Fritz finally came along in a Kübelwagen-82, top down, a green bathtub for four, the Ravensbrück utility vehicle. He stopped, one arm slung over the passenger seatback.
“You’re late,” I said. “I meet the commandant at quarter past ten.”
He came to the platform and took my bag. “No handshake, Herta? I’ve gone a whole year without seeing you.”
He remembered me.
I stole a glance at him as we drove. He still had the good looks every female at the university had noted. Tall, with well-behaved black hair and Prussian blue eyes. Refined features that reflected his aristocratic parentage. He looked tired, though, especially around the eyes. How stressful could it be to work at a women’s reeducation camp?
The wind in my short hair felt good as we set off down Fritz-Reuter-Strasse, through the small town of Fürstenberg, where sod-roofed cottages flanked the street. Very old Germany. Like a scene from a Black Forest box.
“Sometimes Himmler stays here in Fürstenberg when he’s in town, which is often. He sold the Reich the land on which they built Ravensbrück, you know. Made a fortune. Can you see the camp over there across Lake Schwedt? It’s brand-new— Are you crying, Herta?”
“Just the wind in my eyes,” I said, though he was perceptive. It was hard not to become emotional driving through Fürstenberg, for I’d visited a similar town with my parents as a child, for fishing. This was the essence of Germany, so beautiful and unspoiled. What we were fighting for.
“What time is it, Fritz?” I said, drying my eyes. Just what I needed, the commandant pegging me as a crier. “I can’t be late.”
Fritz accelerated and raised his voice over the engine. “Koegel is not a bad sort. He owned a souvenir shop in Munich before this.”
A dust cloud followed the Kübelwagen as we raced down the road, along the lake toward camp. As we rounded the bend, I looked back across the lake and admired the distant silhouette of the town of Fürstenberg where we’d just come from, with its tall church spire.
“You’ll have your pick of the doctors here,” Fritz said. “Dr. Rosenthal loves blondes.”
“I am not blond,” I said, though I was happy he thought so. My mood improved riding with Fritz, about to embark on a new adventure.
“Close enough. A clean German girl is a rare thing here. They’ve had their fill of Slavs.”
“I love my men with syphilis.”
“Just doing my part to repopulate Germany,” Fritz said with a smile.
“Is this how you woo the girls?”
He cast a glance at me and lingered a second too long, betraying his carefree tone. How lucky I was to be one of the few female doctors under Hitler. It put me in a whole different class. Fritz Fischer would never flirt like this with a Düsseldorf Hausfrau. Maybe I’d grow my hair long again. No doubt he would be impressed once I became the most accomplished doctor there.
We sped by a crew of gaunt women in striped dresses, in the advanced stages of muscular atrophy, leaning their full weight against the metal harness of a massive concrete roller like sick oxen. A female guard in a gray wool uniform restrained a lunging Alsatian. Fritz waved to the guard and she scowled as we passed.
“They love me here,” Fritz said.
“Looks like it,” I said.
We stopped in a cloud of dust at the brick administration building, the first thing one saw of the camp, at the end of the road. I exited the Wagen, brushed the dust off my dress, and examined the surroundings. My first impression was of quality. The lawn grew lush and green, and red flowers rose up along the base of the building. To the left, high on a ridge overlooking the camp, sat four leader houses built in Heimatschutzstil, homeland-preserving style, with natural stone columns and half-timbered balconies. A mix of Nordic and German styles, pleasing to the eye. This was a place of superior value—high-class, one might even call it.
“Up on the ridge, the one overlooking the camp is the commandant’s house,” Fritz said.
If not for the glimpse of high stone walls topped with barbed wire behind the administration building, one might have mistaken the camp for a convalescent home, not a reeducation camp for prisoners. I was determined to like Commandant Koegel. Those of superior rank can always tell if a subordinate does not like them, and this can be fatal to a career.
Just inside the camp gates, a caged aviary, which held monkeys and parrots and other exotic birds, stood off to the side of the road, the only incongruous element. Animals reduce stress, certainly, but what was the purpose of such a collection?
“You waiting for the butler, Herta?” Fritz called to me from the doorway.
A secretary ushered me across parqueted floors, upstairs and into the commandant’s office, where Koegel sat at his desk, under a rectangular mirror, which reflected the man-sized potted plant in the corner. It was hard not to be intimidated by the grandeur of his office. The wall-to-wall carpeting, the expensive-looking draperies, and the chandelier. He even had his own porcelain sink. All at once I wished I’d shined my shoes.
Koegel stood, and we exchanged the German salute.
“You’re late, Dr. Oberheuser,” he said.
The Black Forest clock on his wall chimed the half hour. Dirndled and lederhosened dancers twirled out of their arched doorways to “Der fr?hliche Wanderer,” celebrating my tardiness.
“Dr. Fischer—” I began.
“Do you always blame others for your mistakes?”
“I am sorry to be late, Herr Commandant.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “How was your trip?” He was a fleshy sort, something I ordinarily dislike in a person, but I forced a smile.
Koegel’s second-floor view offered a wide expanse of the camp and overlooked a vast yard where women prisoners stood at attention, five abreast. A road bisected the camp, covered with black slag, which glittered in the sun. Neat rows of barracks stood perpendicular to this road and extended into the distance. How nice to see immature linden trees, the hallowed “tree of lovers” in German folklore, planted at regular intervals along the road.
“It was a comfortable trip, Commandant,” I said, doing my best to lose my Rhineland accent. “Thank you for the first-class ticket.”
“Comfort is important to you?” Koegel asked.
The commandant was a stern man with stumpy legs and a sour disposition. Perhaps his unpleasant demeanor was due in part to his regulation brown shirt collar and tie, so tight they squeezed the adipose tissue up around his neck, making it look like a lardy muffler. The friction had produced a bumper crop of skin tags, which hung flaccid along the edges of his collar. He wore a cluster of medals at his chest. At least he was a patriot.
“Not really, Commandant. I—”