“I am afraid there has been a mix-up,” he said with a wave of his hand. “We cannot accommodate you here.”
“But I received a letter from Berlin—”
“You will be the only woman doctor here. That presents problems.”
“I didn’t think—”
“This is a work camp, Doctor. No fancy beauty salons, no coffee klatches. How will men feel about you eating in the officers’ canteen? One woman among so many men spells trouble.”
I felt the salary floating away as he spoke. Would Fritz take me to the next train back to Berlin? Mutti would have to work full-time again.
“I am used to living simply, Herr Commandant.”
I released my clenched fists and saw I’d dug my fingernails into my palms. They left a row of little red smiles, mocking me. I deserved this. When would I learn not to be overconfident? “I assure you I will be fine in any living situation. The Führer himself says simple living is best.”
Koegel took in my short haircut. Was he weakening?
“They sent me a dermatologist? That is no use to us here.”
“And infectious diseases, Commandant.” He mulled that over, one hand on his belly.
“I see,” he said. He turned to the window and surveyed the camp. “Well, we do sensitive work here, Doctor.”
As he spoke, the sound of a whip drew my attention to the square below. A female guard lashed one of several prisoners gathered there with a horsewhip.
“We require complete confidentiality here, Doctor. Are you willing to sign a statement? You can confide in no one. Not even your mother or girlfriends.”
Nothing to worry about there. I had no girlfriends.
“Any breach of security, and you’ll face your family’s imprisonment and a possible death penalty for you.”
“I keep to myself, Herr Commandant.”
“This work is, well, not for the squeamish. Our medical setup is adequate at best—in a terrible state.”
Koegel ignored the spectacle below his window. As the prisoner fell to the ground, her hands folded across the top of her head, the guard intensified the punishment. A second guard held back a leashed Alsatian as it sprang forward, teeth bared.
“Well, it would make Berlin happy,” Koegel said.
“What will my role in reeducation be, Herr Commandant?”
The guard in the courtyard kicked the woman in the midsection with her boot, the woman’s screams hard to ignore. This was a violent form of reeducation.
“You are joining an elite group. You’ll work with some of the best doctors in Germany to accommodate the medical needs of the camp staff and their families and of the women who have been resettled here to do the Führer’s work. Dr. Gebhardt has several projects as well.”
In the courtyard, the guard rewound her whip and two prisoners dragged their bloodied companion off as the rest stood at attention. “After your three-month training period, a resignation will not be accepted under any circumstances.”
“I understand, Commandant.”
Koegel walked back to his desk. “You will share a house with Dorothea Binz, our head of female security personnel. Our hair salon is not fancy but quite good. Right downstairs. The Bible girls operate it. Jehovah’s Witnesses. They’ve dedicated themselves to making my life a living hell, but you can trust them with scissors.”
“I will keep it in mind, Herr Commandant,” I said and excused myself with a German salute.
I left Koegel’s office happy he’d relented but unsure I wanted to stay at Ravensbrück. A vague unsettled feeling came over me. What if I just got back on the train for home? I could work three jobs if I had to.
—
I WAS ASTOUNDED TO SEE my room in the newly built high-ranking wardresses’ cottage just steps from the entry gate. It was bigger than our whole apartment at home, outfitted with a shared bath complete with shower and tub, a comfortable bed with white eiderdown, and a vanity table. I wore no makeup, per regulations, but the table would make a nice desk. Best of all, the cottage was centrally heated. Such clean, elegant quarters with my own balcony. Mutti would just shake her head in wonder to see me in such a place.
I walked into the main camp for lunch, through the personnel entrance, and found the officers’ dining hall. The noise level was high, for the small building was packed with SS doctors and guards, including many of the fifty SS doctors assigned to Ravensbrück, all male and all enjoying a lunch of pork roast, buttered potatoes, and various cuts of beef. I hoped to become acquainted with the top-flight doctors Koegel had promised. Though I was in no hurry, the male-female physician ratio was a promising forty-nine to one.
As I stepped closer to the table where Fritz held court, groups of men stopped their conversations and stared as I passed. I was used to being among men from medical school, but one woman colleague would have been nice. I found Fritz and his three companions sitting, bellies extended, sharing what seemed like postcoital cigarettes.
“Ah, Herta,” Fritz said. “Care for lunch?” He motioned to a plate piled with fatty pork chops, and I stemmed a wave of nausea.
“I am vegetarian,” I said.
The man next to him stifled a laugh.
Fritz stood. “Where are my manners? Let me introduce you. At the end of the table there, we have Dr. Martin Hellinger, toast of the SS dental world.”
Dr. Hellinger was a beetle-browed fellow, with wire-rimmed glasses and an endomorphic body type whose blood sugar had apparently dipped so low he could barely acknowledge me. He penciled in answers to a crossword puzzle from a newspaper.
“Next, Dr. Adolf Winkelmann, visiting from Auschwitz.”
Winkelmann sat in his chair as if poured there. He was rotund, with skin like wormholed wood.
“And this is the famous Rolf Rosenthal,” Fritz said, indicating the weaselly, dark-haired fellow sprawled out in the chair at his left. “Former navy surgeon and our gynecological wunderkind.” Rosenthal leaned forward into his cigarette and looked at me as a cow merchant considers a purchase.
The slam of a screen door caused the doctors to turn, and the blond guard I’d seen from Koegel’s window stepped into the dining hall. She was taller than she’d appeared from above. Finally, a fellow female.
She ambled over to our table, her steps heavy on the wooden floor, riding crop tucked in one boot, cap off, hair rolled up off her forehead per the fashion of the time. Though a young woman, nineteen years old or so, her complexion already hosted a colony of sunspots and freckles. Perhaps the result of farm labor?
Fritz draped one arm over the back of his chair.
“If it isn’t the lovely Fr?ulein Binz. Pride of the Ravensbrück charm school.”
Fritz did not stand to greet her and the other doctors shifted in their chairs as if suffering a cold wind.
“Hello, Fritz,” Binz said.
“Don’t you know you’re not allowed in the officers’ canteen without permission?” Fritz said. He lit a cigarette with a gold lighter, his hands white and almost incandescent, as if dipped in milk. Hands you might expect to see on a famous pianist. Hands that had never touched a spade.
“Koegel wants me to get your medical staff and my girls together.”
“Not another picnic,” Rosenthal said.
“He suggested a dance…” Binz said.
A dance? A great fan of dancing, I was interested in that.
Rosenthal groaned.
“Only if Koegel throws in a case of French claret,” Fritz said. “And only if you staff it with some attractive Poles. Those Bible girls barely speak.”
“And only bring the Aufseherinnen under one hundred kilos,” Rosenthal said.
“You will come, Fritz?” Binz lit a cigarette.
Fritz waved one hand in my direction. “Binz, say hello to your new roommate. Dr. Herta Oberheuser, may I present Dorothea Binz, head of the punishment bunker. Also trains most of the Aufseherinnen for the entire Reich right here.”
“Woman doctor?” Binz said. She sucked her cigarette and looked me over. “That’s a new one. Happy to meet you, Doctor. Good luck with this group.”
She addressed me informally, using the word du instead of Sie, which struck me as inappropriate, but no one else noted this.