1941
I stayed at Ravensbrück.
Once I received word my father had died and Mutti would need rehabilitative care for her back, my salary became more important.
It was lonely there with only male doctors for company, so I kept to my office when Fritz was not available and worked on my scrapbooks. I pasted in a photo that Fritz had asked a waiter to snap of us lunching in Fürstenberg, matchbooks, and other souvenirs. So many newspaper clippings. German infantry had just invaded the Soviet Union with great success, so there were many positive articles to save.
I wrote back and told Mutti how hard I was working to get the Revier cleaned up and running efficiently. How I expected the commandant would notice my hard work if I somehow brought a sense of order to that place.
On my way back to my cottage one night after my daily duties concluded, I noticed a light on in the bookbindery and stopped, hoping to find someone there to talk with. Binz sat on a low stool, back straight, in full uniform, her chin high. A prisoner with a red badge sat in a chair nearby sketching her. It was a Pole I’d seen in processing, the one with the ring Binz had spat on to pull off. There was a pale band of white skin on her finger where the ring had once been.
Binz waved me into the room, a compact space devoted to the production of the Reich’s educational materials. Stacks of pamphlets and books sat on a long table along one wall. “Come in, Doctor. I’m just having my portrait drawn.”
“Please be still, Madame Overseer,” said the prisoner. “I can’t draw if you are talking.”
A prisoner giving Binz orders? Even stranger, Binz was obeying them.
“Halina here is our resident master artist,” Binz said. “You should see the portrait Koegel commissioned. You’d swear the medals are real.”
The prisoner stopped sketching. “Should I come back another time, Madame Overseer?”
Anyone would notice that the bookbindery, once a mess of paper, ink, and supplies, had become vastly more organized.
“Commissioned?” I said to the prisoner. “How are you paid?”
“In bread, Madame Doctor,” she said.
“She gives it away to the other Poles,” said Binz. “Crazy in the head.”
It was soothing, almost hypnotic, to watch her sketch, the pencil tapping out rough little lines on the paper.
“You are Polish? Your German is good.”
“Fooled me too,” Binz said.
“My mother was German,” the prisoner said as she sketched, her eyes trained on Binz. “Grew up on an estate not far from Osnabrück.”
“And your father?”
“Born in Cologne, where his mother was raised. His father was Polish.”
“So you are group three on the Deutsche Volksliste,” Binz said. The German People’s List categorized Poles into four categories. Group three consisted of persons of mostly German stock who had become Polonized.
“As close to German as you can get,” I said.
“If you say so, Madame Doctor.”
I smiled. “If a chicken lays an egg in a pigsty, does that make the chick a piglet?”
“No, Madame Doctor.”
I walked behind the prisoner and watched her finish the shading on Binz’s chin. The portrait was remarkable. It captured Binz’s strength and complex personality along with her likeness.
“I’m giving this portrait to Edmund for his birthday,” Binz said. “I wanted a nude version, but she isn’t good at those.”
Halina colored slightly but kept her eyes focused on her pad.
“You should commission a portrait, Doctor,” Binz said. “Your mother would like it.”
Would my mother care about a portrait of me now that Father had died and she was busy with her new life?
Binz smiled. “All it will cost you is bread.”
The prisoner put down her pencil.
“I really should get back for Appell.”
“Halina, I’ll fix it with your Blockova,” Binz said. “Sit down, Doctor. What else are you doing tonight?”
Binz walked around the prisoner to look at the finished product and clapped her hands together like a delighted child.
“I’m giving this to Edmund tonight. Make sure you turn the light out, and Halina, I’ll tell your Blockova you’ll be in by nine. I will send a white loaf tomorrow for this.”
I took Binz’s place on the stool. Halina turned to a fresh piece of paper and began sketching, taking a peek at me now and then.
“Why were you sent here?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Madame Doctor.”
“How can you not know? You were arrested?”
“My daughters were arrested, and I tried to keep them from taking them.”
“Arrested for what?”
“I don’t know.”
Probably the underground.
“What did you do when you went to Osnabrück?”
“We visited my grandparents’ country house,” said the prisoner in excellent German. “He was a judge. My grandmother was Judi Schneider.”
“The painter? The Führer collects her paintings.” The prisoner had the same talent the Führer admired so much in her grandmother. “And where in Poland are you from?”
“Lublin, Madame Doctor.”
“There is a well-known medical school there,” I said.
“Yes, I completed my nursing certificate there.”
“You are a nurse?” How nice it would be to have someone cultured and bright to talk medicine with.
“Yes. Was. I illustrated children’s books before…”
“We could use you in the Revier.”
“I haven’t been a practicing nurse in ten years, Madame Doctor.”
“Nonsense. I will have Binz reassign you immediately. What block did you end up in?”
“Thirty-two, Madame Doctor.”
“You will be a Lagerprominent and move to Block One.”
“Please, I would like to stay—”
“The Revier prisoner staff lives in Block One. You will not only be treating prisoners but the SS staff and their families. You will find clean bed linens in Block One and not a single louse.”
“Yes, Madame Doctor. Could my daughters come with me?”
She said this nonchalantly, as if she did not care. This was out of the question, of course. Block One was reserved for Class I workers only.
“Maybe later. The food is fresh, and you receive double rations.” I didn’t mention that the food in the elite barracks did not contain the drug they put in the regular soup to kill the prisoners’ sex drive and cease menses.
After two more sessions, Halina completed my portrait, covered it with translucent white paper, and left it for me in my office. I lifted the paper and was taken aback. The level of detail was astonishing. No one had captured me so perfectly before, a woman doctor of the Reich in my lab coat, strong and focused. Mutti would frame it.
It took a few days to get Halina transferred from the bookbindery to the Revier. The infirmary was technically not an SS operation but an offshoot, so bureaucratic matters took extra time.
Jowly, square-jawed Nurse Marschall was the only one not happy with the arrangement. She lumbered to my office, where she squawked like a goose the day we moved her out of her seat at the Revier front desk and replaced her with Halina. I transferred Nurse Marschall to a perfectly good office in the rear of the building, a former supply closet.
From the first hour Halina took charge, the Revier improved. The patients responded to her efficient manner, no doubt a result of her German ancestry. By the end of the day, most beds were emptied, the work-shy back at work, and the entire building disinfected. There was no need to babysit Halina, since her decision-making skills were almost equal to mine, and this allowed me to tackle my backlog of paperwork. Finally I had a partner I could rely on. The commandant would surely notice the change in no time.
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