Chapter 9

They took Sophia to police headquarters for further interrogation, to see what they could get out of her. They questioned her for four hours, relentlessly, with three SS officers facing her, and circling her ominously. Then they tore off her habit, and left her naked in a freezing cold stone cell, with a bucket of urine and excrement in the corner, and on the floor as well. The cell smelled foul and she was shivering. She kept moving to try and stay warm. They had gotten nothing from her. She stuck to her other story that she had gone to see a friend, and turned back when she realized how late it was. Their insistence in questioning her assured her that they knew nothing about her clandestine activities, and they never mentioned Claus. She said repeatedly that she was a real nun, a novice, even though she had broken the rules and gone out late at night to see a friend. They never asked who the friend was, and didn't seem to care. There were no Jews left in the neighborhood. They had combed it thoroughly for the past three years, and they were certain there were none left, even in hiding.

Random searches and tearing the residents' houses apart had exposed everyone concealed in attics and cellars, storage areas, closets and secret rooms and passageways. Whole families had been sheltered by neighbors who had been punished for it, and a team had gone to the convent that afternoon and found nothing. They had searched Sophia's belongings thoroughly. There was no evidence, but their suspicions were strong. She was just the kind of young traitor who would try to undermine them, and they didn't need more than suspicion to incarcerate her and punish her and send her to a labor camp. Her fate was sealed now, and she knew it, but if this was God's plan for her, she was willing to endure it. It was what Edith Stein had said in her writings as well. It was their sacrifice to honor God, and they embraced it willingly, without hesitation.

Sophia said repeatedly in the interrogation by the SS that she had committed no crime. They didn't believe her and tried to trip her up and intimidate her. The more she resisted and refused to be cowed by them, the angrier they got and the hungrier to punish her for whatever she wasn't admitting. They didn't believe in her innocence for a minute—she was too calm, too sure, too brave, especially for such a young woman, unless she was burning for a cause she didn't voice. They could smell a zealot for a holy cause from a mile away, whatever she said. And she would die for it if they chose. It was up to them now.

They sent two soldiers in to beat her and torture her as she waited naked in her cell. Had she been wearing her habit, it might have intimidated them, but naked she was just another woman, another criminal. She wondered if they were going to rape her, and tried to brace herself mentally for it, but they didn't. They slapped her hard and punched her and pulled her hair. They slammed her head into the wall until it bled and punched her in the face and kicked her. She was covered with blood when they left, but she was conscious, and she lay on the cold floor and drifted into unconsciousness, thinking of her father and what he must have endured, and Claus, who must have died quickly when he was shot. He had been willing to die to save others and honor the country he loved, and so was she.

She woke up when she was kicked again, and they threw cold water on her to bring her back to consciousness.

"Get up!" an SS matron said harshly. Sophia had no idea how long she'd been unconscious, and now she was wet as well as cold. The matron threw some clothes at her that they had taken from others when they were arrested, and she told Sophia to put them on. The skirt was too big and too short since she was tall and slim. There was a blouse that was dirty and smelled of sweat, and a pair of shoes that were too big. Sophia had no idea where she was going and didn't ask if she was to be interrogated again, or tortured, or moved to another place. It didn't matter now. Her body belonged to them, but they would never have her mind or her heart or soul. She knew the Sisters of Mercy would be praying for her.

Two matrons escorted her from the room, and she went quietly. She knew her hair was in disarray and caked with blood, but it was short now to wear under her veil. There was blood on her face and on her legs. The water had washed off some of it but not all. They took her to a locked area, and there was a truck standing by, with other women in it and guards standing around. They led her to it and pushed her in. There were a dozen other women in the small police truck, sitting on the floor, in the same condition she was in, some even worse, with teeth missing from the beating, one with a broken nose. Some of them said nothing, but they nodded as she got in. There was no way to tell who or what they were now, or who they had been. They were the victims of the Nazis, at their mercy now. Sophia wondered if they were being taken to one of the killing centers she had heard about. If so, it would be simple and fast, by lethal injection or gas. She knew that some patients from St. Joseph's had been sent there.

They sat in the truck for another hour, and two more women were pushed in, and those already there moved over to make room for them. One of the women had passed out, and another one had vomited. Then finally, the doors were locked, and they drove away. The windows were blackened so the women couldn't see where they were going, and most of them didn't talk. A few whispered to each other. One of them was crying about her children, who had been taken away separately. And one was visibly pregnant.

Sophia sat quietly and could feel all of her wounds and bruises during what she guessed was a two-hour drive, until finally they stopped, the doors were pulled open, and they were told to get out by soldiers training guns on them. They had arrived at an enormous encampment with a staggering number of barracks and buildings. There was a high wall with electrified barbed wire surrounding the whole camp. Other trucks had arrived at the same time, and about a hundred women were pushed toward the reception center, where their heads were shaved and they were showered, deloused, and given the camp pajamas. A colored triangle was roughly sewn onto Sophia's prison pajamas—there were red, purple, green, yellow, and black ones to indicate political prisoners, Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, "asocials," and common criminals who had broken Nazi laws. Sophia was designated in the last category for breaking Nazi laws, so her triangle was green. Others had a letter in the center of their triangle to indicate their nationality. Since she was German, she had no letter in the green triangle. Each nationality had a letter, each category of criminal a different colored triangle. Everything was systematic and relatively well organized, as the women were shuffled from one part of the reception center to another.

"Where are we?" Sophia asked quietly of the female guard who handed her the prison uniform, which were thin pajamas.

"Ravensbrück," she said. "You're here to work. You look strong," she said. Sophia had heard that it was the largest camp for women in the Reich, fifty miles outside Berlin. It had been open for two years, mostly for political prisoners, and they had built a smaller men's camp nearby that year. Sophia learned from the guard who gave her the green triangle that there were ten thousand women there, although it had been built for six. And when they were finally taken to their barracks, she discovered that each barracks had been built to house two hundred and fifty women and now housed close to two thousand. They slept three and four to a bunk, with many on the floor with no bed or blankets at all. There were three toilets for the use of each five hundred women, with no doors on them. The level of humiliation and degradation and overcrowding was so great that no one seemed to care about doors on the latrines. The day began with roll call at four A.M. Weak ersatz coffee followed, and then work, with no breakfast. Lunch was watery soup served at noon in the barracks, and dinner was the same soup again. Sunday was their day off from hard labor. Some of the women were assigned to factories with barracks onsite, but most worked at the camp. Beatings were used as punishment and there was a prison block for those who resisted or didn't comply. The guards used dogs to attack the prisoners when they felt like it. Disease was rampant, often from the water, which another prisoner told Sophia to beware of. There was a camp doctor whom the prisoners never saw until they were nearly dead. And another prisoner whispered to her, when she saw the pregnant young woman among the new arrivals, that babies born there were killed at birth, or shortly after. It was another vision of hell.

Sophia was assigned to a bunk with three women already in it. They had just returned from work and were crowded together on the thin mattress talking softly. One of them smiled when Sophia approached.

"Welcome to the Ritz," a redheaded woman with a French accent said. "Don't worry, we'll make room. You don't get fat here. We all fit, and we get more blankets like this, with four to a bed." She seemed good-humored and Sophia guessed that she was pretty when she was clean, had had enough to eat, and hadn't lost several teeth. She guessed her to be about forty. She learned later that she was twenty-three, a year older than Sophia.

The other two were German women. All were categorized as common criminals according to Nazi law, having committed minor offenses. The Frenchwoman had been married to a Jewish musician. She was a singer and had come from France to marry him, her only crime. He was in Auschwitz, and her name was Josephine, Jo. The other two were Hedwig, called Hedi, a dark-haired thirty-year-old artist from Berlin who had been making and distributing posters maligning Hitler and the Reich, and Brigitte, a pretty blonde of twenty-five who had been a model, accused of prostitution for sleeping with a Jewish doctor. Tamar, on the bunk below, was a college professor from Cologne, accused of treason for not following the teachings of the Reich. None were criminals any more than Sophia was, but all were accused of anti-Nazi crimes. Tamar was older than the others, who were in their twenties but looked much older now. She had snow-white hair, was forty-four, a widow, and had a son who had been in law school when she was arrested. He had been arrested too, and she didn't know where he was now, another camp, possibly Dachau, but she wasn't sure. There was no news or correspondence between camps, only word of mouth from new prisoners arriving from other camps, often the bearers of bad news. But so far, Tamar thought her son was still alive. He was young and strong. Sophia thought she didn't look well, and she had a noticeable wracking cough that was echoed by others in the barracks. The other women were skeletons, but their spirits seemed hardy, given the circumstances. It was what kept them alive, despite malnutrition, hardship, and disease.

"And you?" Hedi asked her. They were curious about new arrivals.

"My father is a doctor, he was arrested for treason, his hospital destroyed, and sent to Dachau. My sister fled to Switzerland with her husband, who is a quarter Jewish. And I was out late at night a few days ago, and they think I was doing something I shouldn't, but they haven't said what. I'm a nurse." She hesitated for a beat and then added, "And a nun."

"You're a nun?" Jo said, shocked. She had freckles which stood out on her face now, she was so pale. "And they put you in here?"

"Yes. Guilt by association, as the daughter of a traitor."

"Your sister is lucky she got out," Brigitte said. She was the model accused of prostitution for her affair with a Jewish doctor. "How did she get to Switzerland?"

"She walked, six and a half months pregnant. I went with her to the border, but I came back. I didn't want to leave my father alone. That was before he got arrested. So I went back to Berlin, and then I entered the convent."

The others were intrigued by Sophia and the fact that her religious status hadn't protected her.

"There are a lot of religious prisoners here," Tamar said, and then had a coughing fit. It sounded like bronchitis to Sophia. A lot of people around them were coughing.

"I would hate to be a nun. No makeup, no high heels, no men, no dancing," Jo said, and they all laughed.

"I was out without my habit, which made it worse. I'm still a novice, I haven't taken my final vows. I've been in the order for a year and a half."

"And you like it?" Hedi asked her. All of them were talkative and intrigued by her. Tamar was a little less so because she seemed sick.

"I do. It's the right choice for me. I like living in community with other women."

"Then you'll love it here," Jo said. "It's just like the convent, except for the beatings and the dogs. Be careful of the dogs. They use them to terrify us. I hate dogs."

Sophia had missed dinner by the time she arrived, but the warm welcome she got from her bunkmates and Tamar on the bunk below made it less terrifying, and they gave her all the information they could about what to be careful of, which guards were the most dangerous, and which the most lenient, how to get to the toilets before everyone else, which meant giving up an hour's sleep and getting on line at three instead of four A.M. They tried to guess what jobs she'd be assigned to. Tamar had a lucky job, doing office work, entering information about the inmates in ledgers. Jo was on a construction crew, paving roads with twelve other women. Hedwig worked in the laundry, and Brigitte cleaned latrines.

"Maybe you'll get an office job," Brigitte said hopefully, trying to encourage her. She had no job to go back to if they survived. To get her to give up her Jewish doctor boyfriend, they had burned her face with cigarettes to torture her, and left scars, which ended her career as a model. But so had the lack of food, harsh treatment, and diseases that were rampant in the camp. Sophia could see on their faces and in their eyes what they had been through, and was stunned by the strength of their spirit, and their support of each other. And right from her first day there, Sophia had four friends.

The days were as long and hard as her bunkmates had warned her, and as she had expected. Their shared information made life easier, but the hardships were as severe as they and others told her. Sophia was assigned to the tailor shop, which made the prison uniforms, and uniforms for the SS. Ravensbrück also received most of the confiscated luxury items, like fur coats and fancy clothes confiscated from Jews in Berlin and neighboring towns, which were then passed on to officers' wives if they wished them. They had to be checked and repaired if necessary, before being sent back to Berlin.

Sophia had no great needlework skills, and making the SS officers' uniforms was painstaking work. She worked a fourteen- or fifteen-hour day and often missed her evening meal of soup, while she tried to finish a uniform in fabrics that were stiff and hard to work with. And her supervisors were exacting and demanding and critical, and often made her start again.

Other women were lent to factories who hired slave labor from the camp. They frequently lived in barracks outside the camp near the factories, but punishments were harsher there to prevent escapes. One of the factories made electrical components for rockets. And some of the older women knitted sweaters and warm scarves for the army. Everyone had a job, and everyone worked hard with no gratitude or praise. Brigitte was elated when she got transferred to a job in the kitchen washing dishes after a year of cleaning latrines.

As hard as they were, their jobs helped pass the time from one day to the next. They had Sunday off, which most of them spent lying on their bunks, getting ready for another week of forced labor, and some of them slept all day, and didn't have the strength to do anything else.

Sophia had just finished an SS uniform with relief after three unsuccessful attempts, for an officer in the records office where Tamar worked. He had come for a fitting, and it still hadn't fit him properly the last time he tried it, and she hoped it would this time. She had pricked her fingers dozens of times, and the sewing machines they used were antiquated. It was the week before Christmas, and she knew he needed it for the Officers' Dinner in two days.

He arrived to pick it up at the end of the day, and she knew she'd miss the evening meal of watery soup if she stayed, but she had to know if she got it right this time, or if she'd have to work all night to correct it. So she waited, and he showed up minutes before the tailor shop closed. His name was Hans Mahler, and he was a young lieutenant who looked like a poster for Nazi Youth. He was tall, blond, and would have been movie-star handsome if he hadn't been a Nazi. Knowing what he represented and the punishments he undoubtedly delivered, Sophia was disgusted by him. But she was unfailingly respectful when she saw him.

"Good evening," he said politely, "I'm sorry I'm late. My commanding officer kept me at the office too long, and I couldn't leave." It was the kind of thing you'd say to a friend, not a slave.

"It's fine," she said. She always had the feeling that he was checking her over, and his deep blue eyes bore through her. She kept her gaze down and handed him the uniform on a hanger. "I hope I got it right this time."

"I'm sure you did, Fr?ulein." The courteous greeting surprised her.

"I'm not much of a seamstress," she admitted with a smile intended to apologize for her clumsiness, not to woo him.

"Should I try it?" he asked, and she nodded.

"I think you'd better, to make sure it fits." She had made the shoulders too tight the first time, and the pants too big and too short the second. Making a uniform was not simple.

She pointed to a little curtained-off area where he could put it on, and he took it with him, and then pulled back the curtain with a broad smile after he tried it.

"It's perfect! Even the pants are right this time." And she could see it herself. He looked strikingly handsome, and the uniform made him look even more so, much as she hated to admit it. It fit him perfectly, and he approached her with a grateful look and lowered his voice. "I look better than Hitler!" he said, and she laughed and meant it.

"That's not hard. You look better than a movie star. Your commanding officer will be impressed."

"He's a beast," he lowered his voice further. "He treats me like one of the prisoners," he said, and she wondered if he actually knew what that felt like, between the dogs and the beatings and no solid food.

"I hope not," she said to be kind. "I'm sure he'll give you a promotion when he sees the suit."

"He doesn't like me," he shared with her. "He's kind of bad-looking, and he has a bad scar on his face from the last war. He hates anyone younger and better-looking than he is." The lieutenant seemed very young and innocent as he confided in her.

"Just be nice to him, even if he's not. And compliment him on something, how well he does his job, or something you like about him." She was speaking to him as a nun, not an inmate, and for a minute the roles were reversed, and without meaning to be, she was in control of the exchange.

He smiled gratefully at her and signed off on the suit.

"I think you're right. I never thought of him that way. No one likes him, not even his dog. It bit him last week," he said and laughed, and so did Sophia. She loved the idea of one of the guards being attacked by his dog. It served him right. "I don't like the dogs either," he confessed, "they're hard to manage, and they get out of control easily. I have a German shepherd I love at home, but I don't like the dogs here." He suddenly sounded almost human to her, which was an eerie feeling, given their respective roles at the camp, he as an officer and she as an inmate. And she looked like any other woman to him, not a nun. Her hair had grown since she'd been there and came to her jawline now. And the hardships of the camp hadn't ravaged her looks yet. Her friends had been there longer and it had taken a toll, particularly their grossly inadequate diet of watered-down soup. She offered up her constant hunger to God, and found it helped.

"Thank you for the excellent uniform," he said to her before he left. He lingered for a moment and then came back to where she was sitting, tidying up her worktable before leaving for the night. He came very close to her and frightened her for a minute, and then slipped a hand into the pocket of her prison uniform and left something in it. She reached in to see what it was, and found a full-sized bar of chocolate. She looked up at him, stunned, and afraid too.

"I can't take this," she said, her hand shaking as she held the tantalizing chocolate. It even had nuts in it, she could almost taste it, just looking at it. "They'll kill me for this if they find it, or if the dogs smell it on my way to the barracks."

"The dogs don't want to eat chocolate. They want to eat you," he said. "It's to thank you for doing such a good job, being so kind and working so hard on it. I know it wasn't easy. What job did you do before you came here?"

"I'm a nurse," she said shyly. It was the longest conversation she'd had with a man in years, other than her brother-in-law or her father or Claus.

"And probably a very good one. They should use you in the infirmary, but they won't. The job assignments are always crazy here."

"I've never been very good at sewing," she admitted, still worried about the chocolate.

"Well, you are now. You can get a job as a seamstress after this. Keep the chocolate, you've probably missed your dinner by now," he said guiltily. She took it out and looked at it again, and thanked him with starving eyes. "Goodnight, Fr?ulein, and thank you," he said, and carrying his new uniform, he left. Sophia hurriedly put the chocolate bar on her lap and broke it into five equal parts. She was going to share it with her bunkmates and Tamar. There was a nice-sized piece for each of them. These were riches beyond belief. She knew she shouldn't accept it, but she couldn't resist. Even if they killed her for it, it was worth it.

She put it back in her pocket, divided now, and still in the wrapper, which she'd have to find a way to dispose of later, without getting caught. She turned off the lights in the sewing room and hurried back to her barracks. Jo, Hedi, and Brigitte were curled up on the bunk. Others were talking, or already asleep early after a hard day's work. The lights in the barracks were dim, and Tamar was lying on her bunk with her eyes closed. Her bunkmates were lined up for the latrine, which would take a long time.

Sophia was smiling when she joined them.

"Where were you?" Hedi asked her. "You missed dinner, if you can call it that."

"I had to wait for a uniform to get picked up," she said, and hopped onto the bunk with them, and cuddled up close. She slipped her hand in her pocket then, took out the first piece, and slipped it into Hedi's hand, then did the same with Jo and Brigitte. Their eyes grew wide when they realized what it was. And then she leaned down and slipped the fourth piece into Tamar's hands. She put it straight in her mouth with a look of amazement, and Sophia ate hers. All five of them were silent as they let the chocolate melt in their mouths with an ecstatic expression, and Jo whispered to her.

"Where did you get it?"

"It was my tip for the uniform I got right on the third try."

"Jesus, it's fantastic," Brigitte said.

"If you weren't a nun, I'd be suspicious of what you had to do to get that," Jo said, and they laughed.

"Only sewing, I promise," Sophia said. It was like a Christmas present from another world. "I was afraid the dogs would tear me apart if they smelled it on my way back."

"It would have been worth it," Jo confirmed, and Tamar looked up from her lower bunk and gave them the high sign. They had a secret and could have been punished severely for it, but nothing had gone wrong, nothing had happened. Sophia viewed it as a minor miracle, and a gift from God. The others just hoped it would happen again one day.