Selene looked to me then.
“There was a program in Kentucky for additional training. Military training. For nursing while in flight. She was based first in the Pacific Theater. Then the European, where she met you on a flight to England.”
I could feel Lizzie’s and Emma’s eyes on me, but I could only see Selene now.
“What happened in Germany?” I asked.
Once more, she reached for her purse. Another stack of letters, tied with a string, yellowed with age, bent from time.
She leaned forward and held them out to me. At the familiar sight of my name written in Kate’s penmanship, I sucked in a breath.
“She wrote these to you. A few from her parents’ home in Hamburg, but most were written from the work camp she was sent to after her mother, sister, and her childhood nanny were killed. She never sent them, thus the absence of postage. I imagine she didn’t have a way to. The ones written in Hamburg were returned to her a few months after she arrived back in Manhattan.” She stopped, taking a breath. And then, “The bottom one in the pile, I believe, will answer your question.”
My eyes filled with tears, the weight of the letters in my hand growing, an ache I’d long since buried, building in my chest.
“Dad?” Lizzie said. “What question?”
But I couldn’t answer. Not yet. Instead, I slid the letter at the bottom of the pile free from its binding, stood, and left the room.
42
Lena
Ravensbrück ConcentrationCamp
March 1945
Despite all I’dbeen through, there had been nothing in my life that could’ve prepared me for the scene that greeted me when I exited the military vehicle that brought me from Hamburg to Ravensbrück.
The first thing I noticed when the truck stopped was the stench. I gulped in a breath through my mouth as I stepped carefully to the ground, slipping and nearly falling on a patch of ice. Following the line of women in front of me, I rounded the truck, only to be faced with a large wooden cart filled with dead bodies.
“Oh,” the woman behind me said.
The bodies, their arms and legs spilling over the sides, stared out in all directions with empty eyes, their mouths open as if waiting to inhale a breath that would never again come.
“This way,” a woman in uniform snapped, and we hurried to obey, not wanting to end up like those in the cart.
I’d spent two awful months in a jail in Hamburg before being transferred to Ravensbrück. My crime, per Lieutenant Schmeiden, was theft.
“Caught her in the Holländer estate with another young woman who was carrying a gun. She shot Mrs. Holländer and the maid before I put her down.”
One of the guards had chuckled. “Clearly they didn’t know they were stepping on your turf.”
The lieutenant had smirked in return. “I’m having it cleared out as we speak.”
I didn’t talk to anyone unless spoken to, my mind too full of what had transpired in my mother’s bedroom, my heart broken for all that had been lost in a matter of seconds, my soul empty.
I moved when I was told to move, ate when I was told to eat, and when it was time to go, I didn’t listen to where we were headed, nor did I question it. I just went. It was only through the other women murmuring to one another on the way there that I learned the name of the camp and noticed the scared looks on their faces. I had no idea where their fear stemmed from or if I should feel frightened as well. But even if I’d wanted to, I wasn’t sure I could. The only thing I felt was numb. The only thought I had in my mind was an image of Catrin as she lay lifeless on the floor.
“Cat,” I whispered as I followed behind the others to a long narrow building.
We were marched down several long hallways until we reached a room where we were told to strip down. We were sprayed, made to wash, and sprayed again, holding our hands up to ward off the water coming at our faces and bruising our tender skin. After we’d dried off, we were handed black-and-white striped uniforms. Our belongings were gone through, some items confiscated, others tossed in a bin. I was allowed to keep my journal and the clothes I’d brought. But others cried as small pieces of their lives were found and thrown into a bin like trash before we were then led to another room where different-colored triangle patches were handed to us to be sewn onto our sleeves. Mine was green.
There were twelve barracks for living in and the seven of us that had traveled together were dispersed among them. As I entered my new home and saw the crush of bodies inside, I wondered if I’d ever see the women I’d traveled with again. There were so many of us, I wasn’t sure it was possible to see the same face twice.
“You’re in the back,” a woman with a worn face and shaved head said with a wave of her hand. “Come on.”
I followed, trying not to blanch at the smell. It was hot in here. Humid. And smelled of dirty bodies and dirtier clothes. There were flies in the air and rats on the floor. I tried not to imagine the other things I knew must be there, though I couldn’t see them. Things like disease and lice.
