But why would Leni talk about it? Say it’s something that happened to Michal?
Well, there is some testimony from women who say they were kept there.
Say?
Most are not believed.
Rain sketched the windows, a soft rush against the panes.
The doctor took another drag on her invisible Viceroy.
The truth is not yet known, she said.
(You must tell her, Dr. Schussler. Tell her, once and for all, about your guilt at being German.)
So you say Michal is lying, said the patient.
As we have discussed, said Dr. Shussler. Michal has … embellished her experiences before.
And Leni? She’s lying too?
She may simply be repeating what Michal told her.
You’re saying everyone is lying! I can’t believe it.
The doctor shifted about in her chair.
There is some hard evidence of Lebensborn, she said. I have heard about an old business registration. With Lebensborn in the name.
From that time? During the war?
Yes.
So something was there, said the patient.
One tattered record, I believe.
Doesn’t that mean it existed but was kept secret?
Well, said the doctor with a laugh. You may say Lebensborn was not there. Or you may say it was there but kept a secret. One cannot prove something with a negative—prove that something existed because we have almost nothing about it.
(Sophistry!)
Why are you doing this? asked the patient. Why are you questioning everything?
The doctor took a deep breath. Please believe this, she said. It is my hope that you will think deeply about what you have learned. And come to know, within yourself, what is true in what your mother and sister have told you. And what may be a kind of truth they have told themselves.
(Was this some kind of excuse? Her German denial? Or had she been doing this from the beginning, asking the patient to question what she had been told?)
I’m completely confused, said the patient. Yes. No. False. True. My truth. Theirs.
I will leave you with this, said Dr. Schussler. The problem with Lebensborn is that there are too many versions. Fair-haired children kidnapped from Poland close to the German border. Orphaned Germans raised to see themselves as specimens of a master race. A maternity hospital that pampered German women, also to preserve the future of the master race. Or maybe just a normal maternity hospital. Or, yes, perhaps a place where women entertained good Aryan men to produce healthy Aryan babies. I am not sure we will ever know.
The patient inhaled deeply.
Why can’t this all be true, she said. Who says Lebensborn has to be only one thing? And about Michal. Maybe she embellished things. Maybe she said a few things she wanted me to hear, or not hear. But it was to protect me, in her mind, from things that were true. But what I don’t understand is why would she talk about Lebensborn if she risked the whole world branding her a liar?
Yes, said the therapist. These are good questions.
122.
I’d like to go on, said the patient. Go on with what Leni told me.
Of course, said the doctor. Please do.
The patient settled into her chair.
So, she said, after the shock about Lebensborn, I got my wits about me. And I asked Leni: Was it some sort of whorehouse?
I was relieved for a minute, when she answered, No, not exactly. The women were “free” to refuse the attentions of this man or that.
Then she went on to say:
But if they did not accept someone eventually, they were sent away, away from the warm beds and good food, so the inducement was there.
And in Michal’s case, the alternative was—
There was no alternative, said Leni. It was Lebensborn or roam around Poland without papers. Or worse. Be sent to a real labor camp. Yes, the women could refuse a man who disgusted them. Not for the woman’s sake. But because the doctors believed the environment of the womb would be disturbed by the mother’s unhappiness. The idea was to create a beautiful environment for the gestation of perfect Aryan children.
But if Michal was safe and warm in this Lebensborn place, what happened that she was sent to Bergen-Belsen?
Ah! said Leni. It happened very abruptly. One of the “visitors” was a relative of her dear father-in-law, Dieter Gerstner. He exposed her, and that very day she was put on a train for Belsen.
Belsen. We sat there thinking of Belsen.
And the rest of the story you know, said her sister.
But let me ask you. Her being discovered, was it right near the end of the war?