the soldiers accompanied us in an uncovered camion to the train station. The landscape was ravaged, but we were happy to see that the Red Army had already routed the Germans along the way. We were arranged on some good bedding salvaged from the ruins of the German quarters, and we kept each other warm. My soul and spirit had been badly bruised. I had seen so many women die. I had seen some of my friends marched away, and I was certain they would not live. I did not see how any of them could survive the walk to Ravensbrück—eighty kilometers. Even as they left, the last straggling rows were holding each other up. I saw a Polish woman being dragged by her companions, who did not have the strength to lift her. I learned much later that a train had taken them part of the way.
“If I had not connived to stay with my mother, I should have been on that march, since I could walk. But I could not leave her. Never.
“At the end of the train journey, they put us in a charrette, a little wagon, and we arrived at a hospital in Poland. That was the most welcoming place I had ever seen. A group of women in nun’s dress appeared before us, and one of them, Sister Roza—she was so lovely! Our savior! The nurses there wept when they saw us. We held their hands in joy—even my mother, who managed smiles of gratitude to them. She could hardly raise her hand; she could not rise. I had fear that she would die during the journey. She was so weak, and she hardly had the strength to eat, even though we now had food. The dysentery had subsided, but with the typhus she had lost so much blood. Sister Roza bent over her with the most angelic smile. She stroked Maman’s brow and whispered gently to her, and I made her understand that this was my mother, all I had in the world. I held back my tears as this magnificent woman held her and, with the help of another nurse, gently lifted her onto a little rolling bed.
“Maman and I had our own room. The most luxurious chalet at Grenoble would not have surpassed this little room. It was bright and warm and clean. There was warm water. There were towels. We could wash ourselves! There was a little desk with writing materials. Of all the things in the room, that little desk seemed the most civilizing! Possibly we could write letters, I thought wildly. Oh, would the war ever be over?
“The Germans had been living in one wing of this hospital, and when one of them was sick, they called upon the nurses to help them. I thought Sister Roza must have witnessed so many incidents of cruelty that I wondered how close she came to surrendering her faith. The Polish people had seen so much suffering. When the Germans retreated, and our little band of skeletons arrived, she learned that the Nazi barbarity was even more widespread than she had thought. She threw herself into helping us.
“She had fear that my mother would not survive, but she nursed her devotedly. She slept in the basement in a little cell. To have nothing during the war must have seemed natural to convent sisters. I did not see the sisters take much nourishment, but they always brought it to us. There were three sisters, a doctor, and two younger nurses, novices. Me, I had lost my faith, but with the example of Sister Roza I was tempted to try to retrieve it. Then I realized I had faith only in the individual, people like Sister Roza and so many courageous women at Koenigsberg—pulling the plow in the mud, sharing their food, sheltering each other. Some people could do this. Others, as you might expect, reduced themselves—I was going to say they became animals, but that is unfair to animals. Animals don’t share, unless it’s a mother animal with her young, but animals have a great dignity—a sense of self, I want to say. They do not betray their nature. They do not practice self-deceptions. Humans have a great capacity for the diabolical. Oh, Marshall, the Nazis invented so many unimaginable crimes. You see I have had time to think all this through!
“We had to speak German there, but Sister Roza had some notions of French from her school days, and she had a