for her.
The next bundle I unwrapped was a tube of toothpaste. I almost laughed. Our toothbrushes were long gone, but how wonderful it was to see something so familiar from home. I twisted off the cap and breathed in the cool peppermint. I tucked it under our mattress. With proper bartering, such a treasure would trade for a week’s worth of extra bread.
The last bundle was small and wrapped in Matka’s little white kitchen towel, the one she’d cross-stitched with two kissing birds. Just seeing that sent me into choking sobs that delayed my progress, but I finally loosened the little bundle, hands shaking so hard I could barely untie the knot. Once the towel fell open and lay in my lap, all I could do was stare at the contents.
It was a spool of red thread.
“Joy” is an overused word, but that was what I felt there that day, knowing Papa had understood my secret letter. It was all I could do to keep from standing in the middle of the room and calling out with happiness. Instead, I kissed the little wooden spool and slipped it into my sleeping sister’s clasped hands.
That was the best Christmas in my life, for I knew we were no longer alone.
1944
“Vilmer Hartman is here to see you,” Nurse Marschall said with a knowing look. Why did she continue to enter my office without knocking?
I’d woken that morning in a foul mood and with a strange buzzing sound in my head. Maybe it was due to the fact that the camp was bursting at the seams. Ravensbrück had been built for seven thousand prisoners but by that summer held close to forty-five thousand. Maybe it was the constant air-raid sirens or the ominous war news. In early June word reached camp that the Americans had landed in France. Or maybe it was the fact that the camp was overrun with infectious prisoners, and every other week I had to cleanse the Revier completely of patients not fit for work and send them on black transports. Even after a few cuts to relieve the tension, I still couldn’t sleep.
To make it all worse, Suhren had made no headway in the case of the Rabbits. The blocks were so overcrowded and mismanaged it would be impossible to find them without a camp-wide lockdown. Gerda told me their friends exchanged numbers with them and hid them everywhere, even in the TB block.
I was in no mood to visit with old friends.
Vilmer Hartman, a psychologist I had known at medical school, wanted to tour Uckermark, a nearby former youth camp for girls, where Suhren sent prisoner overflow. I knew psychologists did the rounds of the camps checking the mental health of the camp staff—a waste of time when there were so many more important tasks. I hoped to take him to Uckermark, conduct his tour in five minutes or less, and be on my way without complications. I planned on an early evening and a cool tub, for we were in the middle of a heat wave. It was the hottest July on record.
I found Vilmer out in front of the administration building, waiting in the passenger side of a Wagen. I took the wheel, started the engine, and switched on the radio to discourage conversation.
Germany continues to be victorious. Allied supplies continue to dwindle as German troops continue Operation Watch on the Rhine. In other news—
Vilmer switched the radio off. “Victorious? Such lies. How can we delude ourselves? We’ve already lost the war. It was over back in Stalingrad.”
“So what brings you to camp, Vilmer? The last time I saw you was in biology class. You were having a hard time with a fetal pig.”
Vilmer smiled. “That class almost did me in.”
Vilmer was a good-looking man with a slight wave to his blond hair and a gentle way. He wore civilian clothes, I assumed to gain the trust of the patients he spoke with. His expensive-looking pair of cordovan brogues somehow stayed polished even through the dust of the camp.
“The medical doctor path is not for everyone,” I said.
“It certainly pays better,” Vilmer said. “But I’m happy being a psychologist.”
Once we reached Uckermark, I parked and Vilmer, a typical German gentleman, opened the Wagen door for me. We surveyed the three newly built blocks and the enormous canvas army tent set up on the platz, under which hundreds of Häftlings stood and sat, still in their civilian clothes.
Vilmer had excellent manners, typical of a cultured German