yes. I’m counting months. I was born in Belsen. Born a little prematurely, eight-plus months. But that seemed okay given the situation. I thought my father was someone in the camp, one of the Zionist leaders, at least I hoped so. But … if Michal left the Lebensborn hospital, say, somewhere near the end of March ’45. If I count from there to my birthday on December 26th: nine months exactly.
Ah, I see, she replied. More coffee?
No, thanks.
Leni didn’t make some for herself, the patient told Dr. Schussler, just sat there holding her cup, saying nothing more about my calculations.
So I turned to her and asked, Where do you come in? Where did baby Leni get started?
She kept staring down into the empty cup.
Oh, yes, she said, looking up at me. We now come back to where I was before Michal brought me here.
I waited for her to go on. She said nothing for what seemed a long time. Then finally:
Now let us do my calculations. Michal was taken to the Lebensborn facility in the winter of ’44, in early February, she told me. Then I am born on 15 November of the same year. So now I, too, will count back nine months. Which puts my conception in February.
So you were born—
I was Lebensborn.
We said nothing. I suddenly felt ashamed. For both of us. The shame of where we came from.
Leni took a deep breath.
Michal told me she got pregnant almost immediately. I was born, full-term and fat, as chubby as a cherub, according to Michal. That is all she remembers of me as an infant. They did not even let her nurse me. She gave birth, and I was taken away. Then she did not know what happened to me. None of the women knew what happened to their babies. It was rumored that, after the babies were weaned, they were raised in some special kindergarten facilities, or else were given to the wives of high-up married officers to be raised as their own children.
Leni paused.
Well, she said. That is what happened to me.
What happened to you?
Leni abruptly stood with a screech of her chair. She began pacing: two steps, turn; two steps, turn.
I was given to a Nazi family to be raised, she said.
My God!
Leni stopped pacing.
Yes, to good, devoted members of the National Socialist Party. Not the worst of ogres, mind you. My father was not a guard at a concentration camp. He did not pack Jews into trains. During the war, he was a soldier, an officer. He led a division on the Eastern Front. Which fought bravely, evidently. Hence the reward of me, what they believed was a perfect Aryan child.
My mother was a good Hausfrau, Leni said, pacing again. My German parents—which is how I still think of them, although I haven’t seen them in over twenty years—my German parents were decent-enough people, but very stiff and formal. And of course prejudiced. Your ordinary, everyday anti-Semites, saying the things everyone said: Complaints about being “Jewed,” or “dirty Yids,” and so on. We were rich. There were maids, nannies, tutors. The war itself was never discussed. Vater—my German father—refused to talk about it.
But you said he wasn’t—
No. Not that sort of guilty past. The memory of the horrors of the Eastern Front. Death and gore. And all for nothing, he believed.
So they, your parents, your German parents, knew all about it. About—all that?
They never spoke of my origins. I thought they were my “real” parents, that I was their “real” child. All they told me was that we had an obligation to the lost Reich, to the future of the race. It was a big secret. I was never to tell anyone, now that the “American Jews” were running Germany, they said. I came to awareness with the idea already in my mind, so they must have told me when I was very young, and must have kept telling me. I was conceived as a higher being, and a higher being is what I was supposed to remain. Great achievements were expected of me, superiority in all things.
She looked out the window, at nothing it seemed.
Are you all right? I asked her.
She took a big breath and said: Yes. All right.
I saw her compose herself. Back erect. Shoulders back. But she couldn’t clear her eyes of that vacant stare.
So, Leni continued, half turning to me. I had no idea that my parents—my German parents—were not my real parents. Not until Michal appeared one day