stepped out twice, once for some air – the chill brought me round a little – and once to visit another hut for non-Jews, where two women had recently given birth. There was little I could do for them post-birth, as I had no equipment or drugs, but I could at least reassure them their blood loss was normal and their bodies recovering. The stronger women in their own hut did the fetching and carrying while they tried in vain to encourage milk into their breasts.
My camp classification as ‘German political’, a red star instead of yellow stitched onto my armband, allowed movement around the huts as a nurse and midwife, since I was happy – as in peacetime – to attend any woman, regardless of culture or creed. The majority of women I cared for would arrive already pregnant, or somehow manifest a pregnancy once imprisoned. It was especially true of Jewish women, even though none of the guards were ever called to account. Rape was simply not in the camp vocabulary. It seemed ironic that a good portion of the babies born were half Aryan, and yet sacrificed in the name of the master race.
Back in Hut 23, unofficially dubbed ‘the maternity hut’ by guards and inmates alike, Irena remained in her bunk by the dying fire for several hours, constantly held by one of the women in the singing circle. I checked her bleeding wasn’t excessive, and she opened her eyes briefly. They were swollen, blackened sacs beneath her wide pupils, crusted and completely wrung-out. She grabbed my hand as I drew it away from her belly.
‘Anke, what was the point?’ she pleaded, inky pupils piercing directly into mine, collapsing back in sobs of dry distress.
I was at a loss to reply because I didn’t know what she meant. The point of what? Of pregnancy, of babies, this life … or life in general? There was simply no answer.
Just the words caused me to shake visibly: ‘The Commandant wants to see you.’ Eyes widened amid the gloom of the hut, and all movement stopped. There was no sound, just a stale breath of fear rising above the stench of humans as animals: urine and excrement, feminine issue, and the shadow smell of birth. My hands were wet with pus, and the trooper looked at them with obvious disgust. I scouted for a cloth not yet sodden, and it took me a moment in the darkness.
‘Hurry!’ he said. ‘Don’t keep him waiting.’
At that point, my thoughts were clear: I am going to die anyway, I might as well not hasten the event. No one was called before the Commandment for a friendly afternoon chat.
Ironically, it was the icy wind whipping through the holes in my dress that stopped me shaking, my body’s remaining muscles tensing to keep in whatever warmth it could. Across the barren yard, more eyes settled on me, their gazes sketching my fate, as I struggled to keep up with the goose-step pace of the trooper. ‘Oh, we remember Anke,’ they would later say, in the dank of their own huts. ‘I remember the day she was called to the Commandant. We never saw her again.’ If lucky, I might be one of many such memories, a story to be told.
The guard led me through the scrub of the sheds, and then up to the gate to the main house, shooing me inside with a gruff: ‘Go, go!’ I had never seen the door to the house, and slowed to marvel at the intricate carvings on the outside, of angels and nymphs, no doubt the work of Ira, the woodcarver and stonemason, who’d died of pneumonia the previous winter. His pride in his work showed through, even at the gates of the enemy, although I glimpsed a tiny gargoyle sandwiched between two roses, a clear image of Nazi evil. His little slice of sedition gave me a hint of courage as I clumped up the steps towards the door.
Inside, my cheeks burned with the sudden heat and my top lip sprouted small beads of moisture, which I licked off, enjoying the tincture of salt. In the wide, wooden-clad hallway, a fire roared in a grate, fuel stacked beside it that would have saved a dozen of the babies I had seen perish over these last months. I was neither surprised nor shocked, and I hated myself for the lack of emotion. We’d become used to rationing feelings to those that could accomplish something; rage was wasted energy, but irritation bred cunning and compromise, and saved lives.
The trooper eyed my skeletal limbs, barking at me to wait by the fire, which I took as a small token of humanity. I stood outwards, letting it burn my bony rump through the threadbare dress, feeling it quickly sear my skin and almost enjoying the near pain. The trooper rapped noisily on a dark wooden door, there was a voice from inside and I was beckoned from the fireside to walk through.
He had his back to me, hair almost white blond – an Aryan poster boy. The trooper clicked his heels like a Spanish dancer, and the head swivelled in his chair, revealing the model man Nazi; sharp cheekbones, taut and healthy, a rich diet colouring his flesh pink, like the tinted flamingos I remembered seeing at Berlin’s zoo with my father. Skin tones in the rest of the camp were variations on grey.
He shuffled some papers and set his eyes on my feet. A sudden, hot shame washed over me at the obvious holes in my boots, then a swift anger at myself for even entertaining such guilt – he and his kind had engineered those holes, and the painful welts on my leathery soles. His gaze flicked upwards, ignoring the wreckage between feet and head.
‘Fräulein Hoff,’ he began. ‘You are well?’
We might as well have been at a tea party, the way he said it, a passing comment to a maiden aunt or a pretty girl. Irritation rose again, and I couldn’t bring myself to answer. Absently, he’d already gone back to his papers, and it was only the silence that caused him to look up again.
I thought: I have nothing to lose. ‘You can see how well I am,’ I said flatly.
Strangely, there was no rage at my dissidence, and I realised then he had a task to carry out, a distasteful but necessary chore.
‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘You act as a camp midwife? Helping the women, all the women?’
He looked at me with deep disdain, at my dark looks, which naturally straddled the German and Jewish worlds.
‘I do,’ I said, with a note of pride.
‘And you worked in the Berlin hospitals before the war? As a midwife?’
‘I did.’
‘Your reputation is a good one, by all accounts,’ he said, reading from sheets in front of him. ‘You were in charge of the labour ward, and rose to the rank of Sister.’
‘I did.’ I was beginning to be slightly bored by his lack of emotion; even anger was absent.
‘And my staff here tell me you have never lost a baby in your care during your time here?’
‘Not at birth,’ I said, this time with defiance. ‘Before and after is common.’
‘Yes, well …’ He skated over death as if waving away the offer of more tea or wine. ‘And your family?’
This was where my pride and bloody-mindedness deserted me, falling to the level of my holey boots. A well of hurt caught deep in my throat and I swallowed it like hot coals.
‘I have a mother, father, sister and brother, possibly in the camps,’ I managed. ‘They may be dead.’
‘Well, I have some news of them,’ he said, accent shorn and clipped. ‘You come from a
