Gertruda's Oath: A Child, a Promise, and a Heroic Escape During World War II (10 page)

Helga stood at the window and looked outside gloomily. She hadn’t seen her father smile for a long time.

“Did you hear what your mother said?” he asked.

“I heard.”

“I’m not going,” Mira repeated.

“Mother, Father’s right,” said the girl. “We can’t live here. I want you to come with me.”

“I’m staying, Helga.”

“Then,” Karl pleaded with his daughter, “you’ll have to go alone.”

“I want Mother to come with me,” said the girl tearfully.

“Mother can’t, Helga,” said Karl.

“I don’t know … let me think about it.”

“Think fast,” Karl Rink urged her. “Very soon all the borders will be closed and it will be too late.”

At the Paris railroad station, Jacob Stolowitzky was met by his French sales agent, who drove him to the Ritz Hotel where a suite on the top floor was reserved for him. “The contract is almost done,” said the agent. “There are just a few issues that haven’t yet been agreed upon. I hope we can sign very soon.”

Jacob told him about his gloomy hours in Berlin.

“From the way things are turning out in Germany, I have no doubt that my factory will be closed,” he said. “A lot of money will be lost there.”

“The French are worried about the situation in Germany,” said the agent. “Your factory may not be able to supply the iron tracks. What will happen?”

“I’m in touch with big factories in Britain,” said Stolowitzky. “I can fill every order with them.”

•   •   •

Despite the optimism about finalizing the French contract, the matter took longer than Jacob expected. The thick file included all the work plans, deadlines, details of personnel that would be recruited. Work on that file had taken more than two years. Now, at the last minute, they were worried that Stolowitzky wouldn’t be able to deliver the goods. Within two days, he had gotten commitments from the British plants, met with representatives of the French railroad company, his agent and lawyers who had negotiated contacts with the French from the beginning, and together they went over all the questionable paragraphs. According to the contract, Jacob Stolowitzky was supposed to create railroad tracks to replace old tracks along many hundreds of miles all over France. In exchange for the work, the French promised to pay him an enormous sum.

Jacob Stolowitzky wasn’t happy about the delay in Paris. He wanted to get back home to Warsaw, to his wife and son, to catch up with his business there. But discussions with his French clients were also important. The deal would be one of the biggest he had ever made, and now, after the blow he had suffered in Berlin, it was even more important.

He called Lydia several times and apologized for not being able to come home sooner. She understood. This wasn’t the first time he had been away from home on business for a long time.

“Don’t worry about us,” she said. “Everything’s quiet here and we’re all fine.”

Wolfgang Erst was a dull-witted thug, a former construction worker who rose in the ranks of the SS with wild demonstrations against
Jews and secret murders of opponents of the Nazi regime. He obeyed his superiors blindly and they knew they could count on him not to utter a word about what went on in the inner sancta and torture cells of the organization.

When Reinhard Schreider summoned him to his office, Erst was excited and happy. He had the feeling that his commander would compliment him on his activities and even announce his promotion. But Schreider did neither of those.

He leaned toward the thug and only said: “I’ve got a special assignment for you, Erst.”

“Yes, Commander.”

Schreider pushed a note to him with a name and an address.

“You know who that woman is?” he asked.

“No,” replied Erst.

“Have you heard the name of her husband, Karl Rink?”

“No idea.”

“She’s a Jew married to one of our men. Two weeks ago he promised me to divorce her. I want to find out if he has.”

Erst peeped at the note and gathered it into his hand. For him, such an investigation was no big deal. He had carried out more complicated ones.

“I’ll take care of it right away,” he said. “You can count on me.”

“I know.”

Erst and two of his men set out to find what Reinhard Schreider wanted to know. When Erst returned to Schreider, he told him: “We didn’t find any impression of divorce. Mira and Karl Rink live together as usual. He sleeps and eats at home, and he doesn’t seem to have taken any step toward divorce.”

“Bring the woman to me,” ordered Schreider.

Ever since she was fired from her job, Mira stayed home most of the time. In the morning, after the attack on Helga, she would
walk her to school to protect her, then went grocery shopping and visited her parents once a week. When the time came to pick up her daughter from school, she would leave the house again, come back with Helga, and stay there until the next day.

“Tomorrow, when she goes to the grocery store,” said Erst, “we’ll arrest her without a scandal and we’ll bring her to you.”

Early in the morning, Peter and Maria Babilinska boarded the train from their town. Peter was a farmer who grew cabbage and potatoes and also worked in the post office. His wife made jam, which she sold at markets.

The two of them were tense and worried, eager to get to their daughter in Warsaw. They hadn’t seen her in a few months.

Gertruda was surprised when the maid told her that her parents had arrived. She brought them in and made tea, which her parents didn’t touch.

“How are you?” asked her father.

“Fine.” She wondered why they had come. Ever since she had started working as a nanny, they rarely visited her. She herself had visited them only three times since she had started working in the Stolowitzky house.

“Your mother and I are going through hard times,” sighed the father. “You’ve been here more than a year and …” He fell silent in embarrassment. Gertruda waited for him to go on.

“We have come to take you back home,” said her father, and her mother nodded.

Gertruda looked at her father in amazement.

“You’re not young anymore,” added Peter. “And we’re not getting
any younger either. Our greatest wish is to see you married and to hug the grandchildren you’ll bring us.”

“I feel good here,” she said. “I don’t think I want to get married now.”

“You’re a Christian,” he tried another tack. “You don’t belong in this house.”

“I take care of a child,” she insisted. “He needs me, especially now. His father is away and his mother is alone. I can’t leave.”

“You can, Gertruda.”

A tap was heard at the door and Lydia came in. Gertruda introduced her parents.

“We came to take our daughter home,” said Maria. “The time has come for her to get married and take care of her own children and not those of others.”

Lydia stared at the nanny.

“When are you going?” she asked.

“I’m staying here,” she answered.

Lydia’s lips trembled. “I understand your parents’ concern,” she said. “Maybe you really should go with them.”

Gertruda addressed her parents. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I want to stay here.”

Maria and Peter knew their daughter’s firmness, her stubbornness. They stood up heavily.

“Think about what we said,” said Peter. “We’ll wait for you at home. Come soon.”

“Thanks for coming all the way here,” she replied. “But I don’t intend to change my mind.”

Her mother burst out crying and let the tears roll down her cheeks.

“You see how hard it is for Mother without you,” said her father. “Don’t break her heart.”

Gertruda hugged her mother.

“I love you,” she said. “But I’m an adult. Let me do what my heart commands.”

The mother kissed her, as if they were parting forever.

“Promise you’ll take care of yourself,” she said.

“I promise.”

Dejected and pained, her parents left the room. Lydia said to Gertruda, “I just want you to know that Michael and I are glad you decided to stay with us.”

By the late 1930s, the Nazi Party controlled everything. It sent people to prison and concentration camps who opposed or were likely to oppose its regime; it scattered spies all over the state, passed laws and regulations designed to spew the Jews out of German society and force them to leave the country. The residents of the state quickly got used to the new situation. Most of them still believed firmly in Hitler and his promise of good things to come. For the time being, they turned a blind eye to phenomena they might not have been able to endure in other times. They got used to seeing many difficult scenes: a car stopping at a curb near an apartment house, a few men in black leather coats dashing out of it and pounding up the stairs. A few minutes later, they come down with a frightened prisoner, throw him into the car, take off quickly for an unknown destination, and life goes back to business as usual. This happened to quite a few politicians who opposed the criminal behavior of Hitler and his followers; it happened to writers, artists, intellectuals who criticized the Führer; it happened to many Jews. Mira Rink constituted an explicit stumbling block that had to
be removed. Karl Rink was supposed to divorce her, but he refused and thus sealed his wife’s fate. His bosses decided for him.

In late August 1939, Mira went out to buy food in the grocery store near her house. She stayed there a little while and then made her way home, her mind filled with thoughts about the great problem that endangered her marriage. Her love for Karl was unshakable. He was the first and only man in her life, and it was hard for her to accept the fact that he still believed in the Nazi Party and took part in its activities.

She passed by some Jewish neighbors who cast furious glances at her, not for the first time. Some of them, who had been her close friends in the past, broke off with her as soon as her husband joined the SS. It was hard for her to bear it, but she had to repress her grief.

Before she arrived home, three men in black leather coats blocked her way.

“Frau Rink?” asked one of them.

She nodded. Erst and his two men seized her arms without a word and threw her into a brown car that started moving quickly.

“Who are you?” she shouted, even though she immediately could guess.

They clenched their lips.

“My husband is an SS officer,” she tried to explain, but they looked at her with frozen eyes and were silent. For a moment, she thought of opening the car door and trying to escape, but she understood at once that that was impossible. They wouldn’t let her run away.

At an old stone building in the southern part of the city, the car stopped. Mira Rink looked around and didn’t recognize the place. She had never been there in her life.

The three men pushed her inside the building and led her through narrow corridors to a big room. SS officer Reinhard Schreider looked up at her from his desk.

“Leave her here,” he said, and the three left the room.

He calmly offered her a glass of water, which she refused.

“You know,” he said, slowly and seriously, “that the law forbids marriages of Jews and Aryans?”

“I know.”

“You’re a Jew and your husband is an Aryan, correct?”

“Correct.”

“You understand that in your married life you’re both violating the law?”

“I married him long before the law went into effect. We love each other, and we’ve got a fourteen-year-old daughter.”

“Recently, I agreed with your husband that you’d get divorced.”

She pretended to be surprised.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

“I am obliged to inform you that for the sake of order, every one of us must obey the law. You, Frau Rink, had to get divorced.”

Suddenly, she was filled with fear. There was something cold and alien in the voice of the man facing her. She knew that he expected only one answer from her.

“Absolutely not,” she insisted, nevertheless. “We have no intention of breaking up our marriage.”

His face grew furious.

“That’s very bad, Frau Rink.”

She stood up. “Can I go now?” she asked.

“No,” he raised his voice. “You cannot go now!”

He picked up the phone and issued an order. The three men who had grabbed Mira Rink entered the room.

“Take her to the yard,” he ordered them.

By the time she understood where they were taking her, it was too late. The paved yard was surrounded by a high stone wall. They ordered her to face the wall and emptied the magazines of their guns into her body. The sounds of the shattering were blocked in the stones of the wall and Mira collapsed on the ground. The three of them dragged her body to a nearby pit dug to hold victims like her.

Karl Rink was swept away in the flow of the uniformed men to the big SS assembly hall. Under the gigantic swastika flags fixed on poles along the walls, thousands waited for the Führer’s arrival. He came in an open Mercedes that made its way through the crowd hysterically roaring “Heil Hitler.” He entered the hall and climbed onto the stage. Hitler’s talk was electrifying and Karl was hypnotized. Like all those gathered there, he also saw before him a determined savior, and when Hitler shrieked, “Deutschland über alles,” a tremor of excitement went through him. He felt again like a partner in a glowing political plan, a wonderful vision of the future to march Germany into a period of unprecedented flourishing.

Afterward, he got on his motorcycle and rode home. In recent months, whenever he went home, he felt a heavy oppression. It was hard for him to bear his wife’s suffering, his daughter’s piercing questions, the sense that they didn’t understand him. As he rode, he came up with the idea of mobilizing friends and relatives to try to persuade Mira to stop pressuring him until things settled down.