Lilac Girls (43 page)

I thought of our postmaster, Earl Johnson, white as Wonder Bread in his summer pith helmet and khaki shorts, often thrown by a misspelled surname.

“Why, it's first-rate,” I said. “They are inundated with mail every year, since everyone wants the Bethlehem stamp cancellation on their Christmas cards. Our post office can handle this.”

“Bethlehem it is,” Norman said. “Congratulations, Caroline. Let's see if we can bring your Rabbits to America.”

N
ORMAN ENDED UP WRITING
a lovely article about the Rabbits, four pages long.

It began,
As I start to write, I know my greatest difficulty will be to convince people that what is told here is not a glimpse into the bowels of an imaginary hell but part of our world,
and only got better from there, explaining in careful detail the plight of the girls and their grim situation.

After the
Saturday Review
went to print, a few letters trickled in, one asking if the Rabbits needed a theatrical agent, another inquiring whether the ladies could perform at a 4-H club meeting. I faced the reality that America might indeed have charity fatigue.

The following week, on a glorious, warm fall morning so hazy it was like looking at the world through cheesecloth, I finished feeding the horses in the barn and walked to our Bethlehem Post Office to pick up the mail. Our sow, whom Mother had named Lady Chatterley, followed close behind, apparently unable to let me out of her sight.

I passed Mother's Litchfield Garden Club friends assembled in the garden, washing down Serge's coconut washboard cookies with whirligig punch, their crystal cups flashing rainbows as they sipped. Sally Bloss, Mother's lieutenant, still in garden clogs, her bandana tied like a baby's bib, stood at the front of the group lecturing on their topic of the day: wasps, the garden's friend. Slight, dark-haired Nellie Bird Wilson stood adjacent, skinny as a wasp herself, holding a presumably vacant papery nest aloft. Mother's social calendar was much fuller than mine, filled with garden club, charity fetes at her Nutmeg Square and Round Dance Club, and coaching her baseball team.

Once I made it to the post office, just a few steps across the street from The Hay, the American flag above the door waved me in, and I left Lady Chatterley with nose to the screen door. Our little Bethlehem Post Office was a warren of small rooms tucked under the wing of Johnson Brothers Grocery. Johnson Brothers was a town meeting place with our only gas pump and ice cream counter.

I found Earl Johnson in his mailroom, a tight space no bigger than a closet. He sat atop his high stool, a white wall of mail cubbies peppered with envelopes behind him. For his clothes, Earl favored the neutral part of the color wheel, giving the impression that if he stood still long enough he would become indistinguishable from his mail. Beads of perspiration shone on his forehead, no doubt due to that morning's ten minutes of rigorous mail sorting.

Earl leaned toward me through the window and slid a flyer for the upcoming Bethlehem Fair my way.

“Been hot,” Earl said, unable to look me in the eye.

Was I that ferocious?

“It has indeed, Earl.”

“Hope you're not here to see the barber downstairs. He's not workin' today.”

I took the flyer. “Is this the only mail for me?”

Earl stood and sidled out of his mail closet. “Can you help me with something, Miss Ferriday?”

Country life has its charms, but I had a sudden yearning and appreciation for the Manhattan post office at Thirty-fourth Street, that massive, columned complex of efficiency.

“Must we, Earl?”

Earl waved me down the back hallway, and I followed. He lingered next to a closed door.

“Well?” I said. “Open it.”

“Can't,” he said with a shrug.

I fanned myself with the flyer. “Well, get the key, for heaven's sake.”

“It's not locked.”

I took the knob in hand and turned it, then pushed the door with one hip, but it only opened a crack into the darkened room.

“Something's blocking the door, Earl. What do you do here all day? It can't take much to keep things tidy.”

“Clyde!” Earl called at the top of his voice. Mr. Gardener's nephew came running.

“Yes, Earl?” said dear Clyde, who was no thicker than two sheets of paper.

“Get in there for Miss Ferriday,” Earl said.

“Yes, sir,” said Clyde, happy to have a mission that celebrated his size. Clyde slid through the door opening like a stinkbug slipping under a window sash.

I put my lips to the door crack. “Open the door, Clyde.”

“Can't, Miss Ferriday. There's stuff in front of it.”

“Stuff?” Where was Clyde getting his slang? “You really need to clean this place up, Earl.”

Earl toed a knot of wood in the floor.

“Just clear the door, Clyde,” I said. “Open the window shades. Then we can help.”

I heard shuffling, a groan from Clyde, and the snap of an ascendant window shade.

“Almost there, Miss Ferriday,” Clyde said.

Clyde opened the door, and a lovely Steinway smile seized his face, his teeth white and straight as keys.

The room was heaped with canvas bags, each big enough to fit Clyde himself,
U.S. MAIL
stamped in blue letters on all of them. The bags covered the floor and the counter that ran around the room. Some had burst at their rope handles, belching out piles of letters and packages.

I waded in through an avalanche of envelopes.

“It's all addressed to some rabbits, Miss Ferriday,” Clyde said. “Look, one from Hawaii.”

“My God, Earl,” I said, a bit dizzy. “All for us?”

“Got ten more in the truck. Been dumpin' them in here through the windows.”

“Whatever happened to ‘Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,' Earl?”

“Beg pardon, Miss?”

“Why didn't you
tell
me?”

I scooped up a handful of letters with return addresses from Boston, Las Vegas—Mexico?

“At Christmas I have fifteen extra employees,” Earl said. “It's just me here summers. There's more in the basement. So much the barber can't get in there.”

Mr. Gardener led Mother's garden club over with a convoy of wheelbarrows, and we ferried the mail back to The Hay, with Clyde astride one bag, riding it like a pony, Lady Chatterley struggling to keep up. We opened every letter, separated them into piles on the dining room table, and called out their contents.

“
Seventeen
magazine is designing a clothing line for the girls!” Sally Bloss said. “Dr. Jacob Fine at Beth Israel Hospital donating medical care—”

Nellie Bird Wilson waved a piece of Roy Rogers stationery. “Kevin Clausen from Baton Rouge sent his allowance.”

“How lovely,” I said, scribbling it all down.

Mother couldn't rip open envelopes fast enough. “National Jewish Hospital in Denver, Caroline.”

“Wayne State University,” Mr. Gardener said. “Dr. Jerome Krause, dentist.”

Sally held up a letter on blue-castled letterhead. “Disneyland in Anaheim is donating passes…The girls are to be Mr. Disney's honored guests.”

“The Danforth Foundation is forwarding a check, Caroline,” Mother said. “A whopper.”

Nellie fanned herself with an envelope as she read. “The Converse Rubber Company wants to design a collection of footwear for the ladies.”

“Clothes and handbags from Lane Bryant,” Serge said.

We made a pile for the radiologists and osteopaths donating medical care and one for the dentists offering free cleanings. A pile for hospitals offering beds. Families from Bar Harbor to San Diego opening their homes to the girls. By nightfall we added up money and checks totaling over six thousand dollars, more than enough money to support a trip for the girls.

In the next
Saturday Review,
Norman called America “electrifying in its generosity,” and I was numb with happiness.

Our Rabbits were coming to America.

D
r. Hitzig and I arrived in Poland that spring. It was a pleasure to travel with the doctor, for he was blessed with a razor-sharp mind and a gentle way one generally finds only in the Amish. He was our American medical expert in orthopedic surgery, charged with determining which of the Polish ladies were healthy enough to withstand a trip to the United States later that year. I was along to organize the travel documents and smooth the way.

An official delegation met us and whisked us to the Warsaw Orthopedic Clinic by private car. Once we entered the clinic, Polish doctors surrounded Dr. Hitzig. They pumped his hand, patted him on the back, and escorted him to a conference table in front of a makeshift stage. I took a seat next to Dr. Hitzig as twenty-nine other doctors, Polish and Russian, followed. There were also two members of ZBoWiD there, the Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy, an official Polish veterans association, the authority Norman and I worked with to ensure the Rabbits' rights.

The clinic was much like the Bethlehem Grange Hall, wide open and so drafty we felt the breeze from the windows even in the center of the room.

The first three ladies entered the clinic huddled together, clutching their coat collars to their chins. Each wore a cloth purse over one forearm and the strain of the trip on her face, for simple steps appeared to still be painful for all three. Our translator, a severe young man with a Stalin-like head of hair, took a seat next to Dr. Hitzig, and the women walked to the changing screen behind the stage.

The first Rabbit, a pretty woman in her midthirties with short dark hair and dark eyes, emerged wrapped like a Greek goddess in a dull white sheet. She shuffled to the folding chair on the stage, wincing with each step. Once seated, she looked over the audience, her chin high.

The lead doctor, Professor Gruca, an energetic, avuncular man shaped like a fire hydrant, took the stage and read from the document. At seemingly endless intervals, the translator shared the English translation:

“The death of Adolf Hitler's close friend, SS-
Obergruppenführer
Reinhard Heydrich, precipitated the ersatz medical experiments referred to as ‘the sulfonamide operations' at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Dr. Karl Gebhardt, close friend of and personal physician to Heinrich Himmler, was called to treat Heydrich, who'd been critically wounded in an attempted assassination, a car bombing arranged by the Czech underground.”

I kept my eye on the woman onstage. She held her head high as she listened.

“In treating Heydrich, Dr. Gebhardt refused to use sulfa drugs, and chose other treatments instead. Once Heydrich died, Hitler accused Gebhardt of letting his friend die from gas gangrene. As a result, Himmler and Gebhardt planned a way to prove to Hitler the decision not to use sulfa had been correct: a series of experiments, first performed on males at Sachsenhausen and then on female Ravensbrück inmates.”

The woman onstage brushed her hair back from her forehead, her hand shaking.

“Gebhardt and staff performed surgeries on perfectly healthy women, specially chosen for their sound, sturdy legs, to replicate traumatic injuries. They added bacterial cultures to the wounds to produce gas gangrene, then administered sulfa drugs to some. Each sulfa patient that died proved Gebhardt's case. The inmates operated on”—Dr. Gruca indicated the woman in the chair—“included Kasia Bakoski, née Kuzmerick, currently employed as a nurse for the state.”

The doctor pulled back the sheet to reveal the woman's leg. Next to me, Dr. Hitzig took a sharp intake of breath. Her lower leg was shrunken and horribly disfigured, like a gutted fish.

“Mrs. Bakoski was operated on in 1942. She underwent three subsequent surgeries. All Group One: Bacteria, wood, glass, and additional materials were introduced. An incision was made in the left lower extremity and blood vessels on both sides of the wound tied off.”

As the doctor continued, Kasia kept her chin high, but her mouth softened. Her eyes grew glassy.

“Ground silica and wood fragments were introduced, and the wound was stitched up and given plaster dressing,” said the doctor.

Could the doctor not see she was distressed? I stood and walked toward the stage.

“This cast remained in place long enough for gas gangrene and other conditions to develop,” the doctor continued. “Then sulfonamides were introduced.”

The doctors scribbled down notes.

“In addition to severe deformity, which affects the entire skeletal system, patient suffers posttraumatic reactions of the brain, depression—”

“I am sorry, but…” Kasia said. She stood, one hand over her eyes, the other holding the sheet to her chest.

I stepped up onto the stage. “This cannot continue, Doctor.”

“But these women have agreed to this,” Dr. Gruca said. “The doctors have disrupted busy schedules to be here.”

“So have the Rabbits, Doctor. You may continue the examinations in private. You, Dr. Hitzig, and I will be present.”

“This is highly—”

I took Kasia by the hand. “These women were victims once but will not be abused again if I'm here.”

“Let us continue in the smaller examination room,” Dr. Hitzig said.

I helped Kasia off the stage and to the dressing area and did my best to help her dress.

“Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate your help.”

“You speak English so well, dear.”

“Not so much.”

“Certainly better than my Polish.”

“My sister Zuzanna isn't here yet, but she is on the list. She's a doctor. And has beautiful English.”

“I will look for her,” I said.

The exams progressed nicely once they moved to the smaller room, attended only by Dr. Hitzig, Dr. Gruca, and myself. Kasia's sister Zuzanna was the last patient examined. She asked that Kasia be allowed to sit in, and the doctors agreed.

“Zuzanna Kuzmerick,” Dr. Hitzig read. “Forty-three years old. A member of the control group of sulfonamide operations. Injected with staphylococcus and tetanus bacteria. One of the few controls who, given no antibiotics, spontaneously recovered. Currently experiences cross-lateral headaches, occasional dizziness, and gastric upset. Possible gastric ulcer, treated with antacids.” Dr. Hitzig stopped reading.

“Go on, Doctor,” said Zuzanna. “It's fine.”

Dr. Hitzig removed his glasses.

“I don't think it's—”

“I've seen it,” said Zuzanna. “I wrote it, actually. It says I was sterilized at the camp, doesn't it?”

Kasia stood. “Oh no, Zuzanna.”

“It's fine. I wrote the report. Please, Doctor…continue.”

Dr. Hitzig slid his glasses back on. Zuzanna sat straight in her chair as Dr. Hitzig began his examination, feeling the glands on both sides of her neck.

“Is it hard for you as a doctor to suddenly become a patient?” I asked.

“No,” Zuzanna said. “It's important to see both sides. Makes me a better doctor. That is one of the reasons I'd like to come to America. And to take more advanced medical classes and learn as much as I can.”

Zuzanna spoke such good English, with her lovely, lilting Polish accent, it was a pleasure listening to her.

Dr. Hitzig rubbed two fingers on the left side of her neck.

“What is it, Doctor?” Zuzanna asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Dr. Hitzig said. “I think we are done here for now.”

As we cleaned up and the Polish women prepared for the trip home, Dr. Hitzig conferred with his fellow doctors, and I shared the gifts I'd brought from the States.

“Gather round
,
girls,” I said. I held out one of the lovely handbags I'd brought, this one of navy-blue leather. The golden clasp caught the light. “These have been donated by a wonderful American shop called Lane Bryant.”

The Rabbits stood still as if rooted in place. Such a serious group.

“Girls, please don't be shy,” I said, holding the bag out farther still. “They are free. They have been donated. Blue is the big color this year.”

Still not a move. I picked up a Whitman's Sampler box, the name on the package painted in cross-stitch.

“Anyone for chocolates?” Not one moved toward me. “Fig Newtons? They're cookies.”

“Maybe we should take a photograph?” Kasia said, motioning toward my Leica. They gathered for the camera, and the photograph arranged itself, like a bouquet of flowers in a vase.

“What will this trip be like?” asked Kasia.

“So far, the plan is the Rabbits will start in New York City and then fan out to stay in private homes across the country. Then the group will meet up in San Francisco and travel to Los Angeles and then return across the country by bus, visiting Las Vegas, Texas, and ending in Washington, D.C.”

Kasia translated to the others, who gathered close to hear. I expected at least smiles, but the women remained solemn.

“They would like to know where the ship leaves from,” said Kasia.

“Oh, no
ship,
” I said. “Pan American Airways has donated the airfare.”

There was much excited discussion in Polish and plenty of smiles after that.

“Most of us have never been on a plane before,” Kasia said.

Dr. Hitzig stuck his head in the door, and all eyes turned to him.

“We have our final list,” he said. “May I speak to you privately, Miss Ferriday?”

I rushed to join the doctor back in our exam room.

“They are all cleared to go on the trip,” Dr. Hitzig said.

“How wonderful.” I breathed a tremendous sigh.

“Except one. The doctor.”

“Zuzanna? Why, for heaven's sake?”

“Sorry to say, I found a hardened Virchow's node,” he said.

“What?”

“It indicates a cancerous tumor.”

“Can it be treated?”

“Probably not. It is a strong indication of stomach cancer. Her days are numbered, I'm afraid.”

I hurried to the women waiting at the door with their coats on, ready to head home. I asked Zuzanna and her sister, Kasia, to meet with Dr. Hitzig and me privately and ushered them to the exam room. They sat on folding chairs.

“Zuzanna, I'm afraid, well…” Dr. Hitzig said. “The lump I found in your neck is a hardened Virchow's node.”

“The seat of the devil?” said Zuzanna.

“I prefer the name ‘signal node,' ” Dr. Hitzig said.

“It is a symptom of gastric cancer, isn't it?” Zuzanna said.

“I am afraid so, yes.”

“Too bad to have one named after a
German
doctor,” said Zuzanna with a wan smile, eyes bright.

“How can you be sure?” Kasia asked.

“We should do more tests,” Dr. Hitzig said. “But it is the conclusion of the medical group that you are not a candidate for travel to the United States.”

Kasia stood. “What? The whole reason for the trip is to get medical attention not available here. How can you bring us all this way and refuse the person who needs you most? She can have my place.”

“It is not a matter of space, Kasia,” I said.

“You talk about helping us, Miss Ferriday, but you don't really care. You bring us fancy handbags and expect us to snatch them up.”

“I thought you would like—”

“We are
ladies,
Miss Ferriday. Ladies who don't all like being called Rabbits—easily frightened, caged animals. Ladies who live in a country where we cannot accept gifts. Is this not obvious to you? A new handbag from an American? People disappear for a lot less. A Polish journalist accepted chocolates from an American, and no one has heard from her since.”

I felt my cheek grow hot. How could I have been so cavalier?

“Kasia, please,” Zuzanna said.

“You really want to help, Miss Ferriday? Help my sister.”

Kasia walked to Dr. Hitzig. “I will pay you anything to put her on that list.”

“We will know more after the test—” Dr. Hitzig began.