Lilac Girls (24 page)

The bedsores were awful, but they were nothing compared to the deep pain of the incisions.

One day Anise Postel-Vinay, Zuzanna's French friend whom she worked with at the booty piles, tossed a gift she'd organized from the SS kitchen through our high window. It all showered down around me on my bed. Two carrots and an apple. A square of cheese and a sugar cube. Such heavenly rain.

“That is for the Rabbits,” she said just loud enough for us to hear. She would go to the bunker for sure if she was caught.

I'd wrapped a note for Matka
,
written on paper Regina supplied me with, around my soup spoon and tossed it out the window.

“Can you get that to my mother?”

“I'll try,” came Anise's reply.

The spoon came flying back into the room, relieved of its letter, and safely landed on my bed.

“They've banned many of the prisoner-nurses from the
Revier
since the operations,” Anise said.

Such news! So that was why Matka could not come.

“Thank you, Anise,” I said. How wonderful to be able to tell Matka we missed her, even by means of a note.

After that, the name Rabbits stuck, and everyone at the camp called us this.
Króliki
in Polish. Medical guinea pigs.
Lapins
in French. Even Dr. Oberheuser called us her
Versuchskaninchen.
Experimental rabbits.

F
OR WEEKS AFTER THAT,
all of us with plaster casts had a terrible time using the bedpans, and the itching from my wound drove me crazy. When I woke from it at night, I lay there feverish, unable to get back to sleep, worrying about Luiza. What would I tell Pietrik? His parents? They would never recover after losing their Lou.

One day I pulled a long piece of bent wire from the metal frame of my bed and pushed it down inside my cast to scratch the incision.

That helped.

We composed a hymn to bread pudding. Regina read to us from her English book and told us stories about her young son, Freddie, who had just started to walk when she was arrested. I spent hours watching the bird Luiza and I had seen making its nest on the day we came to the
Revier.
It was charming until I realized the little wren was feathering her new home with fluffy bits of human hair, blond, auburn, and chestnut, woven in with her reeds.

One morning the nurses came to get the girls with plasters.

“It is time to remove your casts,” Nurse Gerda said, as if it were Christmas morning.

They took me first, and I was overjoyed we would finally be released. A nurse helped me onto a gurney, put a towel over my face, and took me to the operating room. I could hear several people in there, men and women, including Dr. Oberheuser and Nurse Gerda.

I lay on the gurney, gripping the sheet beneath me, glad I had a towel over my face. Did I even want to see my leg? I prayed I would be able to walk and dance again. Would Pietrik think me hideous? Maybe my leg wouldn't be so bad once the cast was removed.

“I will do the honors,” a male voice said, as if he were opening a bottle of fancy champagne. Was that Dr. Gebhardt?

I felt cold metal run up the side of my leg as some sort of scissors cut through the cast. Air rushed to my skin as the two pieces of the plaster separated, and someone lifted off the top. The stench reached me under the towel. I sat up, the towel falling away, to see the doctors and nurses recoil. Nurse Gerda gasped.

“God in heaven,” Dr. Gebhardt said.

I tried to support myself on my elbows so I could see my leg, but Gerda stretched the towel back over my face to keep me down. I managed to push her away, sat up, and saw the horror my leg had become.

W
e Germans were optimistic come the spring of 1942.

True, there were rumors that Hitler's two-front war would be our downfall, but every morning at Ravensbrück we woke up to find more good news in
Der Stürmer.
According to the paper, our führer dominated Europe, or at least the parts of it we needed. The war would certainly be over by summer.

The end of the previous year had also brought success for our Japanese ally against the Americans at Pearl Harbor, and we celebrated their continued military advances that spring. A Japanese delegation had toured Ravensbrück and had been impressed with the neatness of the Bible girls' quarters and the window boxes filled with flowers. It was Himmler who'd ordered those window boxes built, since at a show camp such as Ravensbrück, it was essential to make a good impression.

I had an entire scrapbook devoted to Germany's successes in Russia. The capture of Kiev. The advance toward Moscow. True, we'd suffered our first major retreat there just miles from the Kremlin due to the early, cold winter and the fact that our soldiers were fighting in light uniforms. But when the Führer asked the German people to send warm clothes to the boys, we had all sent skiing boots, ear protectors, and half a million fur coats! The paper predicted that, with warmer weather coming, developments would progress rapidly in our favor.

My career at Ravensbrück was progressing rapidly as well. In the summer, Commandant Suhren replaced Koegel, and it was a welcome change. Where Koegel had been corpulent and long-winded, Suhren was trim and concise. He was a charming man who appreciated the hard work I had put into cleaning up the
Revier,
and we got on well from the start.

The commandant threw a welcome party for himself at his home, a snug beige stucco place with an A-line roof and forest-green shutters, high on the ridge overlooking the camp. I left my quarters at five minutes until seven that night and climbed the steep steps to the commandant's residence.

From that perch, Suhren enjoyed a complete view of the whole camp and surrounding area, including Uckermark, the youth camp, and the Siemens subcamp a few kilometers in the distance. As night fell, I could see lines of
Häftlings
returning from work to the main camp, and the powerful camp lights came on, illuminating the blocks below. The siren sounded and
Häftlings
streamed out onto the courtyard for
Appell.

We were doing a test run of the new ovens. Two towering chimneys rising from the new
Krema
sent smoke and fire into the sky. The view of the lake was impressive, the gray water stretching to the shore beyond, to the clusters of brick homes and the church steeple of quaint Fürstenberg. A bank of gray clouds gathered on the horizon.

I stepped to the doorway with several fellow members of the camp staff, and Elfriede Suhren, the commandant's slender, blond-haired wife, waved us in. Unlike her predecessor, Anna Koegel, who shouted at the prisoner hairdressers in the camp beauty salon, Elfriede was a gentle woman, whose chief duty appeared to be rounding up their four children much as a farmer wrangles geese.

I walked through the house, past an old man dressed in a Tyrolean jacket and cap who sat at a piano playing German folk songs and into a small library where Suhren stood in the corner, enjoying beer and cigars with Fritz and Dr. Rosenthal. Hunting trophies cluttered the walls: Deer heads. Taxidermied fish. A Russian boar. Suhren's bookshelf held a vast collection of Hummel figurines, though curiously, only the boy Hummels.

The men were too engrossed in their favorite topic to notice me at first. They were discussing the brothel Suhren was sending Ravensbrück
Häftlings
to at Mauthausen and the details of how the lucky winners would be sterilized before leaving. Fritz caught my eye and winced for my benefit.

Suhren and Rosenthal drifted away and I joined Fritz under the gaping mouth of the decapitated Russian boar, a fake pink tongue lolling out of its mouth.

Things had been going well with Fritz and me. We'd seen a movie together at the camp cinema above the garage complex:
Stukas,
a sentimental story about a German pilot who is cured of his depression by listening to Wagner. Fritz squirmed in his seat throughout the film, saying it was all ridiculous, but it was nice to enjoy an evening together. And Fritz had given me a potted hyacinth. It sat on my desk perfuming the air. How smart he was to choose a potted plant over cut flowers, which died so quickly.

“Suhren has a lovely home,” I said.

Fritz sipped his beer. “Unless you like your animals with a pulse.”

A dog yapped from the kitchen, a small one from the sound of it. The worst kind. At least large breeds had a purpose—to guard against intruders or hunt for food.

We walked to the kitchen, which was clean and modern, with sleek oak cabinets and the latest lighting. Guests helped themselves to cherry-red punch from the cut glass punch bowl on the kitchen table.

“Do you think Gebhardt will send Himmler updates on the sulfonamide trials?” I asked. “Mention our names?”

Fritz held the kitchen door for me as we walked into the dining room. “That's of no concern to me. I'm leaving.”

I stopped short, a little light-headed. How could Fritz just
leave
? He was one of my few allies. Leave me with Binz and Winkelmann?

“Why so suddenly? Maybe think about…”

Fritz finished his beer and placed the empty stein on a glass box containing a stuffed frightened partridge, frozen in midflight.

“I've had enough of Gebhardt, in case you haven't noticed.”

“Stress affects us all differently—”

“You don't know half of what's going on at Hohenlychen. Arm transplant yesterday. Half of Berlin was there at his spa to watch it all, arm courtesy of some poor Gypsy
Häftling.
”

Gebhardt was not only a
Gruppenführer
in the SS and
Generalleutnant
in the Waffen-SS, personal physician to
Reichsführer-SS
Himmler, and Chief Surgeon of the Staff of the Reich Physician SS—he was also chief of staff at Hohenlychen, the sprawling spa-hospital fourteen kilometers from the camp.

“Why was I not invited?”

“Count your blessings, Herta. It's a sideshow. Now, with this sulfa project…”

“At least you get to operate.”

Fritz felt the stubble of his beard. “It's disgusting, doing that to healthy women. It stinks in those recovery rooms.”

“They keep asking for more morphine.”

“So give them more morphine,” Fritz said. “It won't change the results. The whole thing is inhumane.”

“Gebhardt says to keep pain meds to a minimum. Why the change of heart about sacrificing prisoners all of a sudden?”

“I'm tired of it, Herta. The suffering—”

“We have no other option.”

“There are other options, Herta. If we stop operating on them, they'll stop suffering. Gebhardt just uses us to do his dirty work. Don't you see?”

“It can't be helped, Fritz.” How could he let sentimentality interfere with his judgment? The operations were for the greater good of Germany.

“Well, I'll be gone. They need surgeons at the front to stitch up our boys who are dying in a war we can't win.”

“How can you say that? Such a defeatist—”

Fritz pulled me closer. “Before I go I want to tell you: Be careful with your new nurse.”

“Halina?”

“I've heard things—”

“Men are such gossips. What's being said?”

“I don't…”

“Tell me.”

“They say there's something going on with you two.”

“That's the most—”

“Something not in keeping with the Führer's wishes.”

Suhren and Dr. Gebhardt pushed through the crowd and stepped closer to us, all smiles, Suhren tall and trim, redheaded Gebhardt more compact.

Commandant Suhren shook my hand. “Fräulein Oberheuser, I have some good news for you.”

Why did he not address me as doctor?

“I'm happy to say one of my first duties will be to bestow a great honor on you.”

Gebhardt stepped closer. “Not just any honor. You've been recommended for the War Merit Cross.”

The War Merit Cross?
Mutti would have a nervous collapse if I brought that home—the silver cross on a ribbon of red and black. The award was created by the Führer
himself.
I would be among Hitler's chosen few who'd received this honor. Adolf Eichmann and Albert Speer to name just two. Was it for my participation in the sulfa experiments?

I turned to share my excitement with Fritz.

It wasn't until then that I realized he'd gone.

I
WAS THE FIRST DOCTOR
in the OR the next morning, ready for my first day assisting in a new round of sulfonamide operations. I stepped to the sink to scrub up. I removed Halina's ring, the one I'd taken from the files in the
Effektenkammer,
where prisoner property was stored, and secreted it in my pocket. No need for Dr. Gebhardt to see such a fine ring on my finger, since camp guidelines forbade the wearing of any conspicuous jewelry. I would give the ring back to Halina one day. Such a pretty diamond. If I hadn't rescued it, there was no telling where it might have ended up. On the finger of Elfriede Suhren, no doubt.

Nurse Gerda had the patients prepped and sedated. Nurse Marschall had done an adequate job compiling the lists of patients for the experiments. Each lay, covered by a blanket, on a separate gurney. I checked the surgical instruments, opened a box of Evipan vials, and set it on the tray.

We had prepared objects to insert into the wounds to simulate battlefront injuries. Rusty nails, wood and glass splinters, gravel, and a mix of garden soil and a bacterial culture of
Clostridium tetani.
Each patient would have a different infectant introduced into her wound. Dr. Gebhardt arrived from Hohenlychen Sanatorium by private car that morning.

“Glad you are in early, Dr. Oberheuser. Dr. Fischer is not able to join us.”

“Is he ill, Doctor?”

Gebhardt removed his jacket. “Transferred.”

I tried not to let my disappointment show. Fritz really gone?

“If I may ask, where, Doctor?”

“The Tenth SS Division as chief surgeon of a medical company assigned to the Tenth Panzer Regiment on the western front,” Dr. Gebhardt said, his face flushed. “Apparently thinks he can be of more use there…”

How could Fritz leave without a goodbye?

“I understand, Dr. Gebhardt. By the way, prisoner-nurse Gerda Quernheim is on today as well.”

“Good. I have been very impressed with your attention to detail,” Dr. Gebhardt said. “Would you like to take the lead today?”

“Operate, Doctor?”

“Why not? You'd like the practice?”

“Yes, thank you, Doctor,” I said.

Was this really happening?

“Make sure the faces stay covered, Doctor,” Dr. Gebhardt said. “Just a precaution for anonymity. And be aggressive. Jump right in. No need for gentle tissue handling.”

One after the next, Gerda wheeled the patients in, towels across their faces.

We worked well into the evening. I was careful not to rush the closing, crafting my square knot sutures, spiky and black, like tracks of barbed wire guarding each incision.

“I don't compliment often, Dr. Oberheuser, but you have a gift for surgery that cannot be taught. All you need is practice.”

Such praise!

We finished the night with a few sterilizations, a new treatment ordered by Himmler himself. I walked back to my room through the quiet camp and slept soundly thanks to my sleep aid of choice, Luminal, waking only once, to the sounds of Binz and her boyfriend Edmund making love in the bathtub.

I
TOOK MY TIME
getting dressed the next morning, knowing the nurses would record patient vitals and Halina would handle the
Revier
for me, but when I arrived there, things were chaotic. I found a new camp staff nurse sitting in for Halina, and the line of those awaiting medical attention was out the door.