The Nazi Officer's Wife (14 page)

Pepi told me that his aunt Susie, the wife of his father’s brother, had been deported; and that Wolfgang’s parents, Herr and Frau Roemer, were also being sent east.

In Aschersleben, the attrition continued. Berta, whose boyfriend
had walked so far to see her, went out without her star and was immediately arrested and sent to a concentration camp.

We heard that girls who had left to get married were being deported with their husbands. A girl who had a love affair with a French prisoner was sent to a concentration camp, and the Frenchman was executed.

Our old friend Zich was killed on the Western front.

Then a package that Mina had sent to her family came back. She was told that her mother and father and her brothers and sisters were being deported and she had to join them.

We knitted her a sweater from scraps of wool in various colors. I worked on one sleeve; Trude knitted the other.

The day Mina left, the last light at Bestehorn went out for me. I wrote asking my mother to take care of her; I pleaded with Pepi to see if something could be done to keep her in Vienna. But what could be done, really? A few days before she went away with her family, Mina wrote to me that she had visited my mama and Anneliese’s father too, and both of them had given her something for the journey.

“Don’t lose touch with Auntie,” she wrote, meaning Maria Niederall, her former boss. “Don’t be sad, dear girl; there is still the possibility that everything will turn out well, so don’t give up hope. Don’t take Aschersleben too seriously. Of course, I will write to you when I can, but don’t worry if you don’t hear from me. Remember that I am always thinking of you with love. Your Mina.”

I had no way of knowing that Hitler had ordered all Jewish workers to be sent to concentration camps, that we were all to be replaced by slave laborers from conquered countries. But I felt the darkness closing in. I felt ignorant of what was happening and terrified of what lay ahead.

I burned all of Pepi’s letters except one. It was dated May 26, 1942, and I think I kept it because, with its boundless sympathy, it kept me: “My dearest little mouse! Be courageous and believe as strongly in the future as you have believed so far. My poor child, if I could only assuage your hunger! Please be kissed a thousand times and embraced by your Pepi.”

M
AMA SENT ME TELEGRAMS
: “
I WILL HAVE TO GO SOON
.
COME QUICKLY
.
COME RIGHT AWAY
.”

In Aschersleben, I went to the police. “My mother is leaving! I must go with her!”

They gave me no answer.

I pleaded with the supervisor to send me home. I went to Frau Reineke. “My mother cannot go without me,” I wept. “She is old; I am her only child—please.”

I
N
V
IENNA
, M
AMA
begged the Gestapo to let her stay until I arrived.

“How old is your daughter?”

“She is twenty-eight.”

“Then she is old enough to travel by herself after you.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“Please, sir!”

“No.”

I
WENT BACK
to the police. But they would not give me the papers I needed to travel with, and Jews were no longer permitted
to travel without special papers. I felt the door closing between my mother and me, and I was the one locked out.

S
HE LEFT LETTERS
for me with Pepi. “Tell Edith I tried my hardest. I hope she isn’t too dejected. She will come on the next train. God will help her and me so we can be together again.”

And then she wrote: “The Jewish community here tells me to leave Edith where she is. Maybe it is better that way. She must stay, even though it is dreadful for me.”

H
ER LAST LETTER
: “It is 12:30 at night,” she wrote to Pepi. “We are waiting for the SS. You can imagine what I feel like. Herr Hausner is still packing for me, because at the moment I am just not capable of doing anything. Please, please help Edith do her packing. Please look after my last few things that I have left. There is a suitcase to be collected from Herr Weiss, who is being left here because he is seventy-five years old. It is full of things Edith will have to take with her. May you stay well. May we meet again in health and happiness.

“Oh, my dear Pepi, I am so sad. I want to live. Please don’t forget us.

“Kisses again. Klothilde Hahn.”

M
Y MOTHER WAS
deported on June 9, 1942.

The Gestapo in Aschersleben refused to let me travel to Vienna until June 21.

S
EVEN

Transformation in Vienna

S
IX OF US
were leaving Aschersleben for Vienna. Our travel permission stipulated that we must report to a certain place on a certain day for
Umsiedlung
—“relocation”—in the east. But every rumor we had heard suggested that we should not keep this appointment.

“But how?” asked a girl named Hermi Schwarz, as we packed for the journey. “They’ll see the yellow star and grab us right away.”

“I’m not wearing mine,” I whispered. “If I wear the star, I’ll never have a chance to see my cousin Jultschi and to hear how Mama was before she left. I won’t be able to spend any time with my friend Christl or with Pepi.” I was imagining the warmth of their welcome, a few days of love.

“But we can’t even get on the train without the star,” Hermi said.

“True,” I answered. “But we can get off the train without it.”

We met in the dark of the early morning, the last Jewish slave girls of Aschersleben. We embraced and whispered good-bye and, so as not to attract attention, agreed to travel in groups of two, each pair in a different compartment. Hermi and I rode together. It was a pleasant train, full of families on vacation. For a people at war, I thought, the Germans seemed awfully carefree. In my isolation, I had not yet learned that they had been winning victory after victory and, in June 1942, fully expected to conquer all of Europe.

About an hour into the journey I made my way down the train corridor to the lavatory. I shimmed past chatting policemen, murmuring “Excuse me.” I held my coat over my arm and my handbag over the place where the star was sewn. Once inside the lavatory, I tore the loose stitches and dropped the star into my handbag. On the way back, I met Hermi in the corridor. She was on her way to the bathroom to do exactly the same thing.

You will ask why we did not think of Berta, our friend who had been sent to a concentration camp for doing this. I will tell you that we thought of nothing but Berta, that every uniformed man who passed the window of our compartment filled us with terror. But we tried to appear calm, and we exchanged pleasantries with the other passengers. One of them said she was going to Vienna to visit her daughter. I wished her a happy visit. I turned my face away so she would not see that I was fighting back tears, thinking of Mama.

At the station, my dear friends melted into the Austrians the way flesh melts into dust. Does anyone remember them? Did anyone see them at the end?

I stood absolutely still. I had a sense that the holes where I had sewn the star onto my coat were forming a vivid Jewish outline for everyone to see. I expected the Gestapo to spot me and arrest me.

Pepi came out of nowhere, took me in his arms, and kissed me. For a split second, I lost myself in love again and believed he would save me. And then I saw his mother—the penciled eyebrows, the jowls, the double chin. She charged at me, grabbed my arm, and held me tightly, walking fast, hissing into my ear: “Ah, thank God you didn’t wear the star, Edith; we wouldn’t even have been able to say hello to you if you had been wearing the star. You must go directly to your cousin, take a nap, have a meal, then go tomorrow as soon as you can to Prinz Eugenstrasse because they are waiting for you. So is your mother—for sure, she is in the Vartegau in Poland. She wants you to join her for sure.”

“She wrote to you! Mama!”

“Well, not since she’s been gone, no, but I am absolutely sure she’s there. You must join her right away. Don’t even think of not reporting to school because they will hunt you down and find you, and your mother will be punished, and so will all the other people you know. You wouldn’t want to put people you love in mortal danger, would you, Edith? Look at you—you’re so thin! Make sure your cousin gives you a nice hearty meal.”

Pepi finally pried her off my arm. He was white with anger. She hung back, frightened by his fierce glare. He walked beside me, carrying my bag in one hand, holding my hand in the other. Our shoulders touched. Pepi Rosenfeld had always been the perfect size for me. Anna hustled after us, torn between trying to hear what we were saying and not wanting to walk on the same street with a Jew.

We went to Jultschi’s building. She was sitting on the steps with
her little boy, Otto, an adorable child with huge, tender, dark eyes and big ears just like his father. With a cry of happiness, I started to scoop him up. I wanted to throw myself into Jultschi’s arms.

“Ah, come in, Fräulein Ondrej,” Jultschi said politely, shaking my hand. “How nice to see you again.” One of her neighbors came down the steps. “This is my husband’s cousin from Sudentenland,” she said.

The neighbor smiled warmly.

“Welcome to Vienna. Heil Hitler!”

I had heard the phrase before, but only now did I realize that it had become a common greeting among ordinary people.

“Tomorrow five P.M., at the Belvedere,” Pepi whispered. “I love you. I will always love you.”

His mother pulled him away.

I sat down in Jultschi’s kitchen. She was making tea and talking the way she always had—an outpouring, an explosion. I fell asleep at the table.

L
ITTLE
O
TTO TODDLED
about with a smelly diaper and sticky fingers. I washed him in the sink and played the game of stealing his nose and then putting it back, making him howl with laughter. He seemed to me the most beautiful, angelic little child in the world. Jultschi sat at her machine and sewed. The covering noise of the machine made it possible to talk, she said. You couldn’t be too careful. People listened and denounced. Their neighbors disappeared.

“Every week the Nazis bring me pieces of wooden cases that I must glue together. I think they hold medals or revolvers. I have a quota. I live on Otto’s pension, which is not so bad. But of course, I am a Jew and so my little Otti is considered a Jew as well.
According to the Nuremberg Laws he would have to wear the yellow star, but he is under five years old so they don’t bother him yet. Pepi has helped me with the application to have him declared a
Mischling
—that’s what they call an officially recognized mixed-race person. Then they may give him more to eat and let him go to school and let me go on living here outside the ghetto. They leave a small remnant of us here, so our neighbors will see us and not be bothered about the deportations. How long do you think you’ll stay? Two days? Three?”

“Actually, I thought I would stay for the rest of the war,” I said, tickling Otti’s toes.

Jultschi uttered a little scream. I laughed.

“Don’t be funny, Edith. There’s a time to be funny, and this is not it.”

“Tell me about Mama. And her Herr Hausner.”

“He’s a darling man. His first wife died. They sent him to an
Arbeitslager
at the beginning, then they let him out so he could go to Poland. You know, back in February, we heard they took twelve thousand Jews out of the German factories and sent them east because there were so many prisoners from occupied countries to replace them. Oh, Edith, this
Blitzkrieg
makes me so nervous; nobody else in Europe seems to have an army—only Germany. What’s going to happen when they conquer England?”

“They won’t conquer England.”

“How do you know?”

“Now that our little Hansi has joined the Jewish Brigade, the British army is invincible.”

She laughed at last. She made her sewing machine roar.

“Now, remember, you mustn’t talk about the Jews, Edith. Nobody speaks about them anymore. You mustn’t say the word. People hate to hear it.”

At the back of the Jewish ration station, Liesel waited for me, all confidence and smiles as always. She gave me rations for bread, meat, coffee, cooking oil.

“If you give me your rations, how will you eat?”

“There’s food here. I take enough. Give the coupons to your cousin and Pepi. Let them buy for you. Come back every day. I will always have something for you to eat. But don’t come at the same time two days in a row. And change the way you look. Keep changing.”

I did not dare walk in my old neighborhood—someone there might recognize me. So I wandered through the Kohlmarkt, past Papa’s old restaurant, past the place where I had first heard the radio, which was now being used to destroy my world. I sought a feeling of nostalgia. But toward Vienna, at that moment, I felt only rage. In this, my own city, I had become a hunted fugitive. If I was seen by someone who knew me, I might be denounced. If I did not go to the people who knew me, I would starve.

Pepi met me the next day in the park. He brought with him the things my mother had left for me: a suitcase with six summer dresses, and a little leather packet of jewelry that included my father’s gold watch chain. He gave me a pawn ticket which my mother had received when she pawned her old fur coat.

“Do we have to meet here?” I asked. “I thought I could go back to your house.”

“No, that’s impossible,” he answered. “Mama always prepares lunch for me and then I have to have my nap in the afternoon; otherwise I am no good for anything. I’ll always meet you late in the day and we’ll eat supper here together.”

He reached for me. I pulled away.

“Are you completely without feeling?” I cried. “How could
you fail to know that I was expecting to stay with you? Why do you think I defied the Gestapo and became a fugitive? So we could have supper in the park?”

He started to say something. I slapped him in the mouth.