Lilac Girls

  “My friend here at the embassy let me phone. You can’t imagine how crazy things are now. It’s just a matter of time before Hitler’s here.”

  “I can ask Roger to rush the visas.”

  “I don’t know, Caroline. This place is practically shut down.”

  “What else do you need?”

  “I must be quick. I just want you—” I heard a series of clicks on the line. “Caroline? You there?”

  “Paul—I’m here.”

  “Caroline?”

  “Don’t leave me, Paul.”

  The line went dead.

  I listened to the vibration of the dial tone for a moment and then placed the receiver back in the cradle. We all stood there waiting for the phone to ring again. Roger and Pia just stared at me, hands at their sides. I’d seen those looks before. Pity. Like when Father died.

  “I’ll patch him through if he gets a free line again,” Pia said.

  I started back to my office, followed by a terrible feeling that would be the last time I would ever speak to Paul.

  1940–1941

  Before I could even answer Zuzanna, the ticket booth door burst off its hinges, and three SS blackshirts jumped over it into the booth. One grabbed Pietrik off the floor, and the other dragged me by the arms out of the booth, the coins from the cashbox flying everywhere.

  “We were just visiting,” Pietrik said. “This is my girlfriend. There’s been a misunderstanding!”

  Girlfriend? The guards said nothing, just dragged us on. I scanned the crowd for Matka. Where was she?

  “Please, I have money,” Pietrik said.

  The SS guard clubbed him across the cheek. Pietrik! His beautiful face.

  The SS men pulled us past the crowd, and the people in line stared and whispered to one another. I turned and saw the SS man who had followed me, close behind holding Zuzanna and Luiza, each by one arm.

  Matka broke through the ticket line and ran after us. The look on her face scared me as much as anything. I’d only seen that look once before, on the wild-eyed face of a horse hit by a carriage and dying in the street. She clutched the little basket with my sandwich in it close to her chest.

  “Go home, Matka,” I called.

  “No. Please, you have the wrong people,” she said to the guards.

  “Kriminelle,” one woman in line said.

  “They’ve done nothing,” Matka said, appealing to the crowd, her wild horse eyes wide. “This is my daughter. I am a nurse at the clinic.”

  She went on like that, then came running after us, begging the men to release us until one of them said, “If she wants to come so badly, let her join them,” and grabbed Matka as well. He snatched her basket and threw it to one of the German women waiting in the ticket line.

  “But who will sell us tickets?” a Fräulein in line asked the officers.

  “Who needs tickets?” he said. “Just go in. It’s free tonight.”

  The Germans hesitated, confused, and stood where they were as the SS dragged us off into the dark, the trumpets of the “Horst Wessel Song” blaring into the night air.

  —

  THEY SEPARATED MEN FROM women at Lublin Castle and the next day trucked a load of us to the rail station. Many around us shoved letters and bribes at the guards. Matka handed a letter to one of them.

  “Please, I am German. Can you get this to Oberscharführer Lennart Fleischer?” She handed the man some money, and he stuffed both that and the letter in his pocket without even looking at them. They had no time for such things and simply pushed us along. Fleischer was Lennart the Brave’s last name? It means butcher. This was fitting.

  They shoved Matka, Zuzanna, Luiza, and me and at least one hundred other women into what was once the dining car of a train, now with all the tables removed, and locked the door. Metal bars stood affixed to the windows and a tin bucket for our sanitary needs sat in the corner.

  I recognized a few girls from my old Girl Guide troop, including a dazed Janina Grabowski. Had the Gestapo come for her at Lipowa Street? My heart sank when I saw Mrs. Mikelsky was there too, baby daughter in her arms. They’d been arrested when the Gestapo caught Mr. Mikelsky distributing underground newspapers. Their child was almost two years old by then, aptly named Jagoda, for she did look like a blond little berry.

  After a few hours, we stopped in Warsaw, but soon started moving again and picked up speed. Not one of us in that car wept. We were mostly silent, the shame of it all so heavy to bear.

  I made my way to the window as night fell and watched through the iron bars as we passed moonlit fields and dark forests. There was something disturbing about those trees, so close to one another.

  While Mrs. Mikelsky slept, Luiza and I busied ourselves taking turns holding Jagoda. Small for her age, the baby wore only thin cotton pajamas, so we held her close, but even with that task to distract us, Luiza was soon in a state.

  “What will my mother do without me?” she said. “I always help her bake.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll be home before long. This is all temporary.”

  “What about Pietrik?” Luiza said. “Is he on this train?”

  The car lurched right, and the excrement in our toilet bucket spilled over the top, onto two women sitting on the floor, causing them to cry out and jump up.

  “How should I know?” I said. “Keep your voice down. People are sleeping.”

  “Will they let us write letters?”

  “Of course, Luiza. We will probably go to work somewhere. Picking beets or something.”

  “Will they lock us up?” Luiza asked.

  “I don’t know, Lou. You’ll see. It won’t be so bad.”

  Mrs. Mikelsky came to take the baby, and the train rocked like a terrible cradle, lulling most of my fellow travelers to fitful sleep. Luiza rested against me near the window while Matka slept with Zuzanna in a corner on the floor. The two looked beautiful lying there, Zuzanna resting her head on Matka’s shoulder like a baby, her long legs curled up beneath her.

  Luiza traded places with Zuzanna and fell asleep at last and as we sped toward Germany, my own demons crawled out to visit. How could I have gotten us all arrested? It was one thing to suffer myself on account of my own stupidity and quite another to bring everyone I loved down with me. Why had I gone to the theater? My lack of thinking had ruined us all. Would there be a trial? They surely would release the others once they realized they’d done nothing. Only I would be detained.

  Had Pietrik already been shot? They did it in the castle courtyard, we all knew. I trembled all over. Where was Papa? We needed to get off that train right away if we were to have any hope at all. I reached up to the window and unlatched the sash. Though it was night, the shapes of spruce trees sped by. The air was growing colder as we went farther west.

  “It’s time for you to rest,” Zuzanna said.

  “We have to get out of here.”

  “Get a hold of yourself, Kasia.”

  “I can’t stay here,” I said, the anxiety mounting. “Why can’t I breathe?” Something compressed my neck, squeezing.

  “Stop it,” Zuzanna said. “You’ll scare Luiza. She’s already bad enough.”

  I doubled over at the waist. “I’m dying.”

  Zuzanna turned my wrist and fixed the pads of her fingers in a row along the inside of it. “Your pulse is elevated. You are having a panic episode. Breathe. Big breath in. Deep breath out.”

  I filled my lungs as best I could.

  “Look at me, Kasia. Breathe again. Don’t stop. This may take ten minutes to pass.” Having a sister who knew everything about medicine came in handy. It took almost exactly ten minutes for the episode to abate.

  Hours later we passed through Poznan and then veered off northwest. The morning light showed the leaves on the trees, redder and more orange the farther we went. I dozed, cheek against the cool iron bars, and woke once the train slowed.

  Luiza and others came to stand next to me at the window.

  “What is happening???
? she asked.

  The whistle screamed, long and high, as the train slid into a station.

  Matka pushed through the women and stood with me. “What do you see?”

  I held her hand. “Sign says Fürstenberg-Mecklenburg.”

  There were women on the platform, blond giantesses wearing hooded black capes over their gray uniforms. One threw a cigarette down and squashed it with her boot. A few held dark Alsatians at their sides. The dogs seemed to anticipate our arrival, watching the train cars go by much as a pet waits for its owner. Had they done this before?

  “Germany,” a woman behind me said, craning her neck to see.

  Luiza cried out. The train whistle screamed a second time, and my breath again started coming hard.

  Matka held my hand tighter. “Must be a labor camp.”

  “I can see a church steeple,” I said. The thought of the Germans of that town sitting in church on Sundays with their hymnals was comforting.

  “God-fearing people,” said someone.

  “Fürstenberg?” said Mrs. Mikelsky. “I know it. This is a resort town!”

  “As long as we work hard, we will be fine,” Matka said.

  I curled my hands around the iron window bars to steady myself as the train lurched to a stop. “At least they know the commandments,” I said.

  None of us knew how wrong we were that morning as we stepped out of that train and fell headlong into hell.

  1941

  As spring approached, the situation in France grew more desperate. Every morning by ten, the consulate reception area was already jammed and my schedule full. The Nazis stomping all over Paris had thrown those French citizens stranded in New York into the depths of despair and, often, dire financial circumstances, something we were powerless to assuage. Under strict orders from Roger not to offer my own funds, I could provide chocolate bars and a shoulder to cry on but little else.

  One morning I set one of Betty’s shoe boxes on my desk and began assembling an orphan package. There’d been no new word from Paul. I tried to stay occupied to stop the dark thoughts, anything to tamp down the ache in my chest.

  “You’ve got a full schedule,” Pia said, as she dropped a pile of folders on my desk. “First up, your high-society friends who don’t take no for an answer.”

  “That doesn’t narrow it down, Pia.”

  “I don’t know. Pris-something and her mother.”

  It was Priscilla Huff, a leggy blonde who had been a year behind me at Chapin. Flawless in a blue Mainbocher suit, she was uncharacteristically friendly. Electra Huff, an only slightly less trim version of her daughter, followed and shut the door behind her.

  “What a chic little office you have here, Caroline dear,” Mrs. Huff said.

  “I’d like to adopt a French child, Caroline,” Priscilla said, as if ordering Chateaubriand at the Stork Club. “I’ll even take twins.”

  “There’s a waiting list for the few children waiting for adoption, Priscilla, but Pia can help you with the paperwork. You’ll just need your husband’s signature.”

  “How is Roger Fortier?” Mrs. Huff asked. “Such a lovely man, your boss.”

  “Well, that’s the thing, Caroline,” Priscilla said. “I’m not married.”

  “Yet,” Mrs. Huff said, browsing the silver frames on the mantel. “There are two offers pending.”

  I set a clean pair of oatmeal-colored socks into the shoe box. Two offers pending? What was she, a two-acre parcel in Palm Beach with privacy hedge?

  “It takes two parents to adopt, Priscilla.”

  “Mother’s French is excellent. I’m plus que fluent as well.”

  Priscilla had the French language requirement down. She’d beaten me in the French essay contest every year. The fact that their cook prepared an elaborate bûche de Noël for the class each Christmas didn’t hurt, since our French teacher, Miss Bengoyan, the sole judge, had a well-known sweet tooth. Why did I want a cigarette so badly?

  “I understand, Priscilla, but I don’t make the rules. These children come from tragic circumstances, as you can imagine. Even two parents can have a difficult time.”

  “So you send packages to orphaned children but turn down a perfectly good home? I can offer a child the best of everything.”

  Maybe. Until the next bright, shiny object came along.

  “I’m sorry, Priscilla. But I have several appointments this morning.” I walked to my file cabinet.

  “Word is, you are adopting,” Priscilla said.

  “You hear many things these days,” I said.

  “Seems some can go around the regulations,” Mrs. Huff said, adjusting one glove.

  “I lost my father when I was eleven years old, Mrs. Huff. Growing up fatherless is a terrible thing. I wouldn’t do that to a child.”

  “More terrible than no parents at all?” Priscilla said.

  I shut the file drawer. “It is a moot point, I’m afraid. There just are not that many French children to adopt.”

  Priscilla pouted, and I stifled the urge to throttle her.

  “I thought there were ships of orphans arriving daily,” she said.

  “No, very few, actually. After the City of Benares—”

  “City of what?” asked Priscilla.

  Mrs. Huff reached for her bag. “Well, if it’s money you need. I heard you and your mother had to pull out of the Meadow Club…”

  I sat back down in my desk chair. “We sold our Southampton house, Mrs. Huff, and we summer in Connecticut now, so we’ve no need for the club, and no, you can’t just buy a child, Priscilla. If you read a newspaper now and then, you’d know the City of Benares was a British passenger ship, carrying one hundred English children sent by their parents to Canada to escape the London bombings. En route from Liverpool to Halifax, Nova Scotia—”

  Mrs. Huff placed two hands on my desk and leaned in. “We’re interested in a French child, Caroline.”

  “Four days into the journey, the children, ages four to fifteen, were in their pajamas, ready for bed…” I felt the tears coming.

  Priscilla folded her arms across her chest. “What does this have to do with adopting a French—”

  “A German submarine sank the ship, Priscilla. Seventy-seven of the hundred children on board drowned. As a result, all child evacuation programs have been brought to an abrupt halt for now. So I’m terribly sorry that you ladies won’t be buying a child today. And now I must ask you to leave immediately. I’m very busy at the moment, in case you didn’t notice the packed reception area.”

  Priscilla checked her stocking seams. “No need to get snippy, Caroline. We’re only trying to help.”

  Pia knocked, entered in the nick of time, and showed the Huffs out, just missing Roger, who came to stand in my doorway.

  “You’ll be happy to know I’ve granted you a higher security clearance, Caroline.”

  I opened my drawer and arranged a row of new Hershey’s bars, hoping Roger wouldn’t notice my shaking hands. “Whatever for?”

  “We’ve known for a while there are transit camps all over the free zone. They’ve been herding in foreigners. Jews mostly, but not exclusively. Now there are reports of transports out to camps in Poland and other places. I was wondering if you could take it on.”

  I swiveled to face Roger. “Take on what, exactly?”

  “We need to figure out where they’re going. Who. How many. What they’ve been arrested for. I’m tired of telling people I don’t know what’s happened to their families.”

  “Of course I’ll do it, Roger.”

  I would have access to classified information, a ringside seat to the events in Europe. No more having to wait for The New York Times to get the news. Maybe some new intelligence would surface about Paul.

  “It’s hard to ask this of you with no paycheck in return.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Roger. Mother and I are fine.” Truth was, Father had left us comfortable, but we still had to watch our pennies. We had a few income trickles, and a few assets we
could sell. And there was always the silver.

  When we closed for lunch that afternoon, I ran downstairs to the Librairie de France bookstore just off the Channel Gardens, borrowed every atlas they had, went back to my office, and lunged into a whole new world of classified information. British reconnaissance photos. Confidential documents. Pia dumped files on my desk, and I lost myself in research about the camps. Transit camps in the free zone. Gurs. Le Vernet. Argelès-sur-Mer. Agde. Des Milles. The surveillance photos were disturbing, detailed, and voyeuristic, like peering into someone’s backyard.

  I organized the camps into folders and soon discovered a whole new classification in addition to transit camps.

  Concentration camps.

  I taped a map to my office wall and peppered it with pins as we were notified of new camps. Roger fed me the lists, and I kept track. Soon Austria, Poland, and France were dotted with red pins, as if sick with scarlet fever.

  Months went by without another letter from Paul. With the Nazis running roughshod over France, it was hard not to imagine the worst. Roger passed on news from abroad. At first the French had adopted a wait-and-see attitude about the Germans. As Nazi officers requisitioned the best restaurant tables, Parisians did their best to simply ignore them. Paris had been occupied before, after all. They seemed to be hoping it would all go away.

  Never particularly good at taking a hint, the Nazis started requisitioning the best charcuterie and wine for themselves and announced their plan to relocate Paris’s entire fashion industry to Hamburg. After all this, and once the Nazis started rounding up French citizens with no warning, we received reports that said small resistance groups had started to crystallize here and there in Paris and distribute anti-German leaflets, laying the groundwork for an effective intelligence network. Less than a week after we received these first reports, there was a sharp increase in reports of underground activity all over France.

  —

  I HAD MY ORPHAN WORK to keep me busy, and Mother was a tireless partner for the cause. One evening I pulled everything out of the guest-room closets at the apartment searching for garments we could dissect and transform into orphan clothes, while Mother stitched together the few decent pieces of material we had.