Chapter 7

The train stopped three times that night to load more men on the train. They kept shouting that they couldn't breathe as the soldiers shoved them in, to bursting point. The doors would close and the train would move on. And it stopped for the fourth time in the morning. The men couldn't see out of the train so they didn't know where they were. The judge who had been on the train with Thomas said he was sure they were near Munich and going to Dachau. It made sense since Dachau was the main concentration camp for political prisoners, which technically Thomas was. His personal form of dissent had been to refuse to euthanize people, particularly those who had nothing wrong with them. It was also the main camp for Christian religious prisoners, which explained the priests on the train. They had admitted during the train ride to preaching against the Führer from the pulpit, and had been reported.

The train was moved to sidetracks to get it out of the way, and when the doors opened it looked like there were several thousand prisoners. Thomas wasn't sure how many, but a lot. When they got out of the freight cars, there were several bodies left on the floor, men who had died on the way, either crushed, or ill, or too old and frail to survive without food or water for several days. Thomas was still shivering in his suit and trying to adjust to the cold. They were forced to march for several miles until they reached the gates of the camp, with the words "Arbeit Macht Frei"—"Work Makes You Free"—on an archway. It was a labor camp, and only the fittest would survive.

There were thirty-two barracks, and several additional buildings, one of them being the infirmary, where Thomas assumed he'd be assigned. There was a prison block and two crematoria, and surrounding the camp a wall, a ditch, an electrified barbed wire fence, and seven guard towers surveying the camp. There was also an area set aside for executions by gallows or firing squad. Dachau was also used as a training center for SS concentration camp guards. It served multiple purposes.

The new arrivals were quickly marched to a barracks where they would surrender their clothes and any valuables and be given the regulation prison pajamas they would wear, which were even thinner than anything they were wearing. They were allowed to keep none of their own clothes, and they were given boots of any random size, whether they fit or not, boots that had been worn by others who might have died in them. Thomas tried not to think about it. They were forced to shower, deloused, had their heads shaved, and were assigned to their barracks. The camp was originally designed for five thousand men. There were more than twenty thousand there now. Bunks were in short supply, latrines and toilet facilities were inadequate. It was a shocking adjustment for those who had been living well and had had seemingly normal lives a few days before. But this was their reality now, for whatever crimes they had committed against the Reich.

After they'd gone through all the steps of the introduction process, they were given lunch, which consisted of a cup of watery soup, and a small ration of water. Thomas's stomach revolted immediately, and he threw up. He was told that breakfast would be watery ersatz coffee, and lunch and dinner were a cup of the soup he'd just thrown up. There was no more substantial food than that. They would have to survive on it, or die, which thousands did.

They received their job assignments after that. The laundry, the kitchen, the construction detail, the rock quarry, the burial detail, the gravel pit, road construction, and the infirmary. Not surprisingly, Thomas was assigned to the infirmary, as was one of the other doctors who had arrived with him. The third one was assigned to road construction. He was older and very slight, and Thomas couldn't help wondering how long he'd survive.

When he saw the infirmary, Thomas was shocked by how inadequate the supplies were: a modest supply of bandages, medicine stores that were more empty than full, some rusty instruments and nowhere to sterilize them, beds without mattresses for the patients. Conditions were unclean, supplies almost nonexistent, and the few men lying on the beds there with a thin blanket over them looked like they were blazing with fever. One of the men showing Thomas around whispered, "They don't come here till they're nearly dead. If they see that you're sick before that, they shoot you, so nobody comes." Thomas nodded and saw the evidence in the men who were there, with glazed eyes and bad coughs. One of them was coughing blood into a filthy towel. It was light-years away from the conditions he was used to, but they would have to use what they had—his knowledge and skill, if nothing else. He was informed by the prisoner in charge of the infirmary that he would be an orderly for the first three months, assigned to cleaning the floors and bed pans, of which they only had two. He would be assigned medical tasks after they saw what he could do. He didn't argue with him. There was no point.

He didn't bother drinking the soup for dinner, and lay on his bunk with the two men he was sharing it with. He was too tired by then to care how cold he was, or how hungry, or how much his ribs hurt. He knew that if he ate now, his stomach would revolt again. He had gone too many days without eating to be able to eat normally all at once, but there was nothing normal to eat anyway. All the real food went to the officers and guards, not the prisoners. Every man he saw there was down to a skeleton weight with deep sunken eyes, and bones that protruded everywhere.

He went to sleep thinking of Sophia that night, and Theresa, when they were younger. He smiled thinking of his two little girls, and how sweet they had been. Thinking of them now would keep him alive, and he was hoping to bring some comfort to the sick, starving men he had seen that day. It was the only consolation for being there, and a useful purpose for his final days, which he suspected now these were.

Once Sophia's father was sent away, Christmas became a nonevent for her. Father Weiss was able to confirm through his sergeant friend, who checked with the records office, that Thomas had been sent to Dachau, near Munich, in southern Germany.

Only a year before, she had celebrated Christmas with Heinrich and Theresa. Their father had been working, as he always did, and Theresa had told her she was pregnant. In the past six months they had fled to Switzerland, their son had been born, Heinrich's parents were in a concentration camp somewhere, if they were even still alive, and her father was in Dachau, his beautiful hospital destroyed, their home burned to the ground. Sophia didn't walk past it anymore. It was too painful for her, the memories too strong, the losses too severe. No one knew why her father had been sent away, only that he had been considered an enemy of the Reich and arrested for treason.

She had lost her entire family except for a sister she might never see again. In a letter she was able to send Sophia, Theresa had sent a photograph of the baby. He looked just like her. And another photograph of the three of them in front of their splendid new home on the lake. Sophia had no home anymore, and everything she owned had burned in the fire set by the SS the day her father was arrested. Her whole life, as she'd known it all her life, had gone up in flames. It strengthened her ties to the Sisters of Mercy. They were the only family she had now.

Mother Regina had continued to turn a blind eye to the meetings Sophia went to. She didn't fully approve, but she knew that Sophia needed them. And she continued to disappear for a day or two here and there, working with Claus to spirit away children who had been hidden now for several years. Some of them had been infants when their parents were deported. They had lost whole families before they ever got to know them. And several times, danger had come too close, and the people who were hiding them had to send them on to someone else, which was where Sophia was useful to Claus. As a nun, she appeared to be innocent and trustworthy, and several times she had nearly gotten caught, and then miraculously the Fates had intervened and she had brought the children he entrusted to her to safety.

A deep friendship had formed between them in the last year. He was still sorry she had become a nun, but he felt like a brother to her. She had lost her sister and both parents, in a practical sense, but Claus was always there. She could rely on him. He admired her strength and her perseverance. Despite everything she had lost, she wasn't bitter, and she worked harder than ever to help others, working long hours at the hospital, like the other nuns, and was fearless and never turned a mission down when he asked her. She poured her heart and soul into everything she did, and never hesitated to risk herself, to the benefit of someone else. She admired Claus for what a good person he was. He never talked about it, but she knew that he had helped hundreds of children and many adults by then, just as he had Heinrich and Theresa.

She invited him to the convent for Sunday dinners, since she knew he had no family either, but he never came to see her anymore in case he was being watched. His missions had become more daring, and he didn't want to bring danger to her door by associating with her, if he ever got caught. Mother Regina thought it sensible of him.

Sophia worked late on Christmas Eve, all through the day on Christmas Day, and late into the night, with a child with pneumonia. His fever finally broke late that night. If she had followed the Health Ministry rules and reported him officially, they would have euthanized him rather than wasting medical treatment on a sick child who might not survive. The Nazis would rather kill him. Sophia had never reported a single patient to the Health Ministry, and all the children she nursed had survived.

She was glad when the holidays were over. They were too bittersweet to think about now. She was glad that the year had ended and a new one was beginning, and hoped that the war would end soon.

In Dachau, Thomas almost forgot that it was Christmas. He worked in the infirmary that night, tending to two men who had pneumonia, although he was only assigned to wash the floors and handle the laundry. They were all suffering from severe malnutrition, and the cold. In their weakened state, it was hard to fight off any disease, and pneumonia was a common cause of death among the prisoners. Thomas could tell that one of the men wouldn't make it through the night, and he sat with him so he wouldn't die alone. He stole some medicine for him that was reserved for the officers, to make him more comfortable. He didn't get caught, so he took some more for the other man. He was younger and stronger and Thomas thought there was a chance that he'd survive.

The sicker one died peacefully in his sleep that night, as Thomas watched him, and kept him warm with two extra blankets, one of them his own. And the younger one woke in the morning, free of fever, and smiled at Thomas. His name was Erik.

"Thank you, I think you saved me."

"No, you're just stronger than the miseries here. You're going to make it through and be free again one day. This won't go on forever," Thomas said, trying to give him hope as well as strength, and Erik's eyes looked bright and alive for a minute.

"Thank you. Are you a doctor?" he whispered, and Thomas nodded. "Mostly a surgeon, but I have nonsurgical patients too. Or I did. I have a hospital in Berlin." He didn't know that it no longer existed. "Where are you from?"

"Hamburg." Thomas didn't ask how he had wound up there. It no longer mattered. They were here.

"You're a good doctor, if you can cure people here."

"I didn't cure you," he said modestly, "I just kept you warm. Your own body broke the fever." Erik was young and wanted to live. Thomas could tell. Once the prisoners lost the will to live, they were dead within days or weeks. They had to be fighters against the forces against them. They had watched the other man carried out that morning, to be buried in a common pit with others who had died in the last few days, over Christmas.

Some of the men in the barracks had sung Christmas carols, and they had heard the guards and officers singing too. It was a strong sound which warmed them and made them sad at the same time. Their homes were so far away, and the war seemed endless, and the conditions they lived in were so cruel.

Erik left the hospital the next day and came back to visit Thomas in the infirmary from time to time, just to talk for a few minutes. He lived in the barracks next door to Thomas's, and sometimes they drank their watery morning coffee together. Erik worked on the construction detail, and was built for it. He was tall with broad shoulders and strong arms, but the rest of him looked like a skeleton. He had begun to lose his teeth from malnutrition. Two cups of thin soup per day was not a diet anyone could live on.

The two men were friends now, and Erik talked to him about things Thomas hadn't thought of in years, like soccer. Erik had a wife and two little girls in hiding in Hamburg. His wife was Jewish, which was how he had come to Dachau. He was arrested for being married to a non-Aryan and helping her escape. They didn't find her or his daughters, but they found him, and deported him, and sent him to Dachau. He said he didn't mind as long as his wife and children were safe. He didn't know if they still were, but he prayed for them every day. And he wanted to stay alive to see them again. Thomas wanted to see Theresa and Sophia, and his new grandson.

Sophia sat staring at the front page of the newspaper she saw at the hospital on New Year's Eve. There had been a huge bombing raid in London, by the Luftwaffe. The Reich was declaring it a major victory, as Sophia stared at a photograph of a mother holding her dead child in the rubble. The German news services had picked it up from the British press, and were bragging about dead children and lost homes. The attack had been brutal, and the article said that the Luftwaffe had brought England to its knees. And to what end? Everyone was suffering and no one was winning. She put the newspaper on the table where she'd found it and went back to work. She had more than enough to do during her long shifts.

Her life was a merry-go-round of activity now, which was a blessing. Her chores at the convent, her nursing work at St. Joseph's, her meetings twice a week, and the occasional missions she did for Claus and his group, escorting a child, or hiding with one for a few hours until the next person could pick them up and get them to safety, until they had to be moved again.

By April, she hadn't heard from her father since he'd been deported. It had been five months, which seemed like an eternity to her. She didn't know if he was dead or alive. The one thing that comforted her was his usefulness as a doctor. It seemed unlikely that they would kill him if he was helpful to them, which he certainly was.

She had had two letters from Theresa, whose pregnancy was going well. She had friends in Zurich now, and loved it and their new home. The baby was due in July. She had been married for two years, with one child and another on the way. Sophia marveled at how normal her sister's life was when she read her letters. It was like there was no war at all. She said she worried about their father too, but Sophia could tell that none of it seemed real to her. In a way, Sophia envied her, but she couldn't see herself living that life, giving dinner parties, and playing with her son, waited on hand and foot, pampered by her husband, feeling safe in their beautiful home, and never doing anything useful for others. It was a very self-indulgent life.

Sophia lived every day hoping she had done enough, wishing she could do more, aching with worry and fear for her father, wishing she could save every child the war and the Nazis had orphaned, wanting to cure all the world's ills, and wishing she could make it a better world, with no idea how. She was twenty-two years old and had the weight of the world on her shoulders. She never got the chance anymore to do what young women did, flirting and wearing makeup and pretty dresses, dancing with a man she loved. That had always been Theresa's life and not hers. She didn't miss it, but she hated feeling so old, and worrying so much about ills she couldn't cure. She had read some of Edith Stein's writing and noticed that she felt the same way. However much of herself she gave, Sophia always felt it wasn't enough, and wished she could give more.

In May she took her vows as a novice. She would still have to take her final vows one day, the ultimate commitment of her life to Christ as a nun. But the novitiate was her first big step into the church as an adult, a grown-up choice she had made and believed in. She wore the full veil of the order with her habit now, over her starched white coif, instead of the shorter veil of a postulant. Her habit reached the floor, and she wore a gold wedding band on her right hand, as a sign of her commitment. She was bursting with excitement and pride at the mass where she and three other postulants became novices. They celebrated at lunch afterward. Mother Regina poured each of the nuns a small glass of wine, and it was very festive.

In May, warmer weather had finally reached southern Germany. Even in the camp, it looked like spring. A team of prisoners had been assigned to plant flowers around the Kommandant's house. There was a vegetable garden, planted for the officers, and the prisoners stole a carrot, an onion, or a tomato, or whatever they could. The penalty for doing so was death, but some risked it anyway, and died with their prize in their hand when they were shot.

Even though the days were sunny, Thomas had been coughing for months. The cough seemed to grow more severe as the weather got warmer and he got thinner. He had been sharing his meager food rations with those he felt needed them more. He was still an orderly in the infirmary, but the other prisoner-doctors asked his advice, and recognized that he was more experienced than they were. He knew a great deal about the diseases that plagued them, although most of them were due to malnutrition, exhaustion, unhealthy conditions, and the severe beatings that the prisoners endured. He had set bones several times, and convinced the guards to let him make casts, saying that the prisoners could still work with a cast on. Their bones had gotten brittle from lack of food. Thomas was known by many of the prisoners, and even respected by the guards. One of them had even consulted him in secret for a problem his wife was having at home. And Thomas's advice, without even examining her, had saved her. He had correctly guessed what the problem was, although her own physician had missed it. She recovered within weeks after Thomas told the guard what medication she should ask for. She did, and it worked. The guard had brought Thomas a piece of meat and a loaf of bread in thanks. Thomas had quietly given them to someone else he thought needed it more.

His cough persisted all through May into June, and he started running a fever at night, but didn't report it to anyone. There was nothing they would do anyway, except shoot him. One prisoner more or less didn't matter to them. At first he thought he might have typhus, which had been epidemic in several other camps, according to the guards. Or maybe tuberculosis. But finally he realized that his body was just giving out. Seven months in Dachau had taken a brutal toll. He began coughing blood and could no longer keep food down. He hid the symptoms from everyone, even his bunkmates. He wanted to write to Sophia and Theresa but knew the letters would never reach them. He loved them so much more than he had ever been able to tell them when he was so busy and had so much to do.

He sat in the sunshine for a few minutes before dinner that night, and a guard hit him with the butt of his rifle and told him to get back to work. He could feel a rib break when the guard hit him. The pain was severe, worse than usual. He gave his ration of soup to someone else and went to bed as soon as it was allowed. He was coughing blood when he fell asleep, and smiled thinking of his daughters. Beautiful Theresa, and so serious Sophia, his two beauties, and Monika. He could feel her beckoning to him, and he wanted to see her again. And with a last cough and a rush of blood onto his bed, he held out a hand to her, and went to join her.

His bunkmates found him an hour later, in a pool of blood in their bed. One of the other doctors suspected that a broken rib had punctured his lung, or maybe he had just died of starvation. Through all seven months in Dachau, Thomas had been kind and generous to everyone, and polite to the guards no matter how badly he was treated. The men in his barracks cried when they saw him, but he looked peaceful. They wrapped him in a blanket one of them gave up for him, and they carried him to the pile of bodies waiting to be buried the next day. He was just one more. Erik stood near, watching him, with tears rolling down his cheeks. "Goodbye, my friend," he said, and walked away.

They reported his death to one of the guards, and he wrote down Thomas's number to report it to the Records Office. They kept thorough notes on all the prisoners who died. Erik and the others knew that he would be remembered for as long as they lived, however long that was, which none of them knew. But at least Thomas was free now.