With Felice’s deed of donation in hand, Lilly tried to collect Felice’s belongings with a zeal that startled and disconcerted Gregor and Felice’s friends. Lilly’s mother and Lola, who was in the last term of her pregnancy, set out to ascertain Luise Selbach’s whereabouts, and to collect Felice’s things from her friends. They were told that, except for the youngest daughter, Olga, who had been drafted into labor service in the East, the family had been picked up and taken away, and that six crates had been removed from the house at the same time. Felice’s grandmother’s coat reportedly was not included. “You’ll never see the Selbachs again!” said Mutti’s acquaintance, the market woman Roese, triumphantly, reporting that Mutti and her husband had slit their wrists and been taken to the hospital in Hirschberg. Lola, for her part, heard that Mutti had had nothing good to say about Lilly. Felice was a nice girl, Mutti had said, and had sunk so low only because of “that Wust”; Felice had ignored Frau Selbach’s many requests to come to the “Forst,” but had she accepted the invitation she also would have had to change her behavior.
“‘That Wust’ is obviously unaware of the fact that deeds of donation from Jews are null and void,” Roese said, rejecting Lola’s demand that she return the Persian lamb coat, which Lola guessed she had in her possession.
“I’ll make a note of that statement for later,” Lilly noted in her diary.
The truth behind Lilly’s diary entry was this: On September 14, 1944, the Gestapo arrived at the “Forst” and arrested Olga’s sisters.
“Get yourselves ready, we’re coming back,” they said to Herr and Frau Selbach as they led off the two daughters, still wearing their summer dresses. Mutti and her husband locked the dog in the house and went up to the forest preserve, where the forest was most dense. Once there they took sleeping pills and cut open their wrists. Despite the considerable distance to the nearest farm, the neighbors must nevertheless have heard the dog howling. When they broke down the door the dog shot out like an arrow and led them to the Selbachs. They were carried to the sitting room, where the doctor said they would have died from the strong sleeping pills before they would have bled to death. Then they were taken to the hospital in Hirschberg. After they had partially recovered, the Aryan husband was put in jail and his Jewish wife incarcerated with penal servitude. Herr Selbach was released shortly after Christmas 1944. Mutti and one of their daughters were supposed to be deported to Bergen-Belsen, but by then it was too late. The machinery of destruction was already being dismantled.
On February 1, 1945, Lilly tried equally unsuccessfully to collect Felice’s linens from Christine Friedrichs’s mother. “That doesn’t concern you,” she was brusquely informed over the telephone. “What makes you think these are your linens? Felice Schragenheim entrusted them to me. They belong to Fräulein Schragenheim and not to you.” And Lilly noted in her diary: “She told me to my face that I only wanted to enrich myself with your belongings. Dearest, she said that to me! I could just have smashed everything. I was even angry at you, at your judgment of human nature. Otherwise I wouldn’t have found myself at these people’s mercy. Must I endure that?”
Elenai Pollak:
Felice’s belongings were incredible treasures to Lilly, which was due to some degree to the trend during that period of appropriating Jewish property. They stole it; they denounced people to get at their possessions. Almost everyone participated in this theft, from the little people on up. This country was one single land of thieves. And this of course was passed on to the Nazi women, this greed: Let’s get our hands on it before someone else does. Lilly merely projected her own wishes onto Frau Selbach, accusing her of practically everything Lilly herself wanted. I can still remember precisely this disgusting situation, Felice hinted at it again and again. She was always on the go because of these things, which they didn’t even need. They had enough linens. But they didn’t have a fur coat. And anyway, Lilly already had a whole pile of things from Felice. She was always wearing Felice’s clothes and took over everything Felice owned. She had already seen to it earlier that she got several things. Right at the beginning she put pressure on Felice to come over and pick up the bookcase and books that she had stored at my place.
“I have come up with a plan. Dear God, help me!” Lilly mysteriously confided to her diary for the second time, on September 25. That was the day the “German Volkssturm” was proclaimed, conscripting all men between the ages of sixteen and sixty who were able to bear arms.
Lola had an idea.
On the twenty-sixth of September Lilly and Lola made the rounds of agencies, with Lola pretending that she had to go to her mother’s in the Sudetenland, to give birth to her child. Their efforts resulted in a pale green travel permit, which stated that Eleonora Sturm was allowed to travel to the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
Lilly wanted to go to Theresienstadt.
Elenai Pollak:
I was fairly horrified, first of all because I had heard reports from others that you couldn’t get into this ghetto. So I was greatly worried, also by the fact that she wouldn’t wait and think about it first. Why at that point, when, in terms of the potential for horror, things were going more or less better than expected in Theresienstadt—why did she have to go there? It was understandable that she wanted to get food to Felice. But what I didn’t understand was that she had to deliver it herself. I talked to Gregor about it, and he was just as horrified as I: “What does she think she’s doing, is she not all there?” We were also surprised that she would do something like this in a situation where we assumed she was endangering herself as well. After all, it was known that she had harbored a Jew. We couldn’t understand that, matter-of-factly and without reflecting on the danger involved, she would just go there as if she were visiting a health resort. We told her that right off, and when that didn’t work, we pointed out that it could do Felice harm. That under the circumstances, she could be the cause of something totally unforeseeable. But she didn’t care. It was as if she were possessed. She wanted to go and wouldn’t listen to anything we had to say. We could say what we wanted, nothing got through to her. So there was nothing left to do but withdraw and say, whatever happens, happens, and hopefully it won’t be the worst.
Shortly after 8 p.m. on September 27 Lilly arrived at the Anhalter Station to board an empty compartment of the Prague-Brünn-Vienna train. She carried with her a suitcase full of food and warm clothing, and Lola’s pass was in her suit pocket. At the Lovosice border, when she was asked for her pale green travel permit, the Sudeten guard did not notice that Lilly was not Lola. In Lovosice Lilly waited for the second train to Bauschowitz-Theresienstadt [Terezín], so that she would not arrive too early. She nevertheless got off the train at the Bohusovice station at 5 a.m. The two-hour wait there was anything but pleasant, for the non-German-speaking native population reacted toward her with hatred. At 7 a.m. Lilly picked up her heavy bag and bulging briefcase and set off in the direction of Theresienstadt, the Czechs giving her directions only begrudgingly. On leaving the village of Bauschowitz she encountered a troop of “volunteer workers” who were wearing the yellow star and were guarded by soldiers.
When she reached the outskirts of Terezín she asked a man on a bicycle the way to the ghetto.
“What do you think you do?” he replied excitedly in broken German. “Yes, you know an official, then can do something. You know no one, then has no use. What do you think you do? They won’t let you through. What do you think you do?”
Lilly decided it would be better to leave the suitcase at an inn close to the SS military hospital. There she met the first person on her journey who was friendly to her, a peasant woman who advised her to ask for the German headquarters. As she talked to Lilly the woman continually looked around her in fear. Her husband was Czech, she told Lilly, she herself was Yugoslavian, and their seventeen-year-old son was doing forced labor. Her husband delivered the mail to Theresienstadt, and that is how she knew that packages usually reached their addressees. Anyone who wasn’t receiving packages would starve. The woman begged Lilly not to tell anyone of their conversation.
Suddenly there was a barrier blocking the road. Lilly showed her Maternal Cross certificate and in a firm voice asked to be directed to German headquarters. She soon came to a guardhouse, and a second barrier blocking the cross street that actually led to the camp. It was a lovely road lined with chestnut trees, and Lilly bent down and tucked three chestnuts into her pocket as a memento. In front of her was the first line of fortifications: three or four embankments of warm red brick, crowned and surrounded by soft green grass—gently rolling hills in which people were housed. She passed a guard every fifty meters, repeating each time that she wished to go to headquarters. After one final turn she saw before her the buildings of Terezín, one-and two-story houses painted in the imperial yellow of Austria, each with a high red roof. From that point on she was accompanied by a Czech gendarme, a brightly uniformed Četník. The clean but dusty street led to a large square with shops. There were many people on the streets, too many people, dragging themselves along, yellow stars the only touch of color in a sea of dismal gray. Lilly glanced at a man in nickel-plated glasses who was sweeping the street with a birch broom, his face deathly pale. When she sought out his eyes they were empty, as if he were no longer among the living. She looked through the ground-floor windows of the overflowing Ubikationen (barracks): beds, mattresses, rags, pots, plates, clothing—there was scarcely any room left for people. The streets ran in perfectly straight lines that crossed at right angles. The buildings were identified by black letters and numbers painted on their corners.
At the junction of Lange Strasse and Neue Gasse, Lilly and her Četník escort arrived at the commandant’s office. Lilly mounted the few steps to find herself standing before the omnipotent SS-Oberscharführer Rudolf Heindl seated at his desk and talking with a young married couple who was visiting him.
“What do you want?” he barked at her, his guttural pronunciation betraying a Viennese struggling with High German. Lilly handed him her Maternal Cross certificate.
“I’m passing through on my way to Brünn, and wanted to ask you if I may deliver something to my friend, Felice Schragenheim. I know she is here.”
“You want what?” Heindl repeated in disbelief, turning a bright purple.
“I brought my friend food every day when she was still at the Jewish collection camp on Schulstrasse. I had no difficulties in doing so, and as I happened to be passing through here, I took the opportunity to bring her something again. Please, I beg of you!”
Heindl was shocked into silence for a moment at Lilly’s audacity. Then he screamed at her: “What can you be thinking of? I’ve never seen anything like this! Travels right into the protectorate, where no one is supposed to be traveling at all, pushes in here and demands permission to give food to Jews. I’ll be looking into this! Tell me, how is it that you came to be friends with a Jew? Do you have other such girlfriends? And where did you get that food? Give it to your children instead.”
“I came to know—and to love—my friend as a person,” Lilly replied calmly. “I found out only later that she is Jewish. There is no one who can convince me that I should just strike her from my memory. My children love her dearly.”
“Your friend the Jew,” Heindl screamed, glancing at his visitors in a play for approval. “I forbid it. And you, a German woman? Aren’t you at all ashamed of yourself? Have you no racial pride?”
Lilly silently congratulated herself on having decided to leave the suitcase at the inn.
“But don’t you worry—I’ll report you to Berlin. There must be some strange things going on there. Now get out, and don’t show your face here again!”
He gave one final imperious gesture, and Lilly found herself outside at the guard station. She then retraced her path: Czech headquarters, line of fortification, chestnut trees, road barrier. When she picked up her suitcase it seemed heavier. There were Jews at the train station loading mail and packages for Terezín. Lilly sat down on her suitcase to wait for the train to Berlin. A freight train being shunted to one side slowly rolled past Lilly as it switched to another track. She watched in horror as a cattle car passed by, the people inside it staring out at her through the tiny, barred windows. Lilly lowered her eyes in shame and then began to sob loudly at the inconceivable thought that her dark-haired, sweet-scented girl might be among them. People stared at her in astonishment and the thought ran through her head that perhaps she was being observed. But nothing mattered to Aimée anymore. She had been to Theresienstadt and could not see Jaguar.
For hours until it reached Leuna the train to Berlin crossed through a fiery hell.
Arriving at home Lilly found three faded brown postal confirmations, signed by Felice and stating that she had received the five packages Lilly had sent to her at Theresienstadt. She also discovered Jaguar’s address: Bahnhofstrasse 6. “Had I only known it beforehand,” she wrote in her diary. “But I was happy, in spite of the torment: your handwriting, my beloved. I carry the cards with me always.”
Elenai Pollak:
I can still remember how triumphant she was when she returned. “I did it, I got in! I spoke with the head Nazi! I was thrown out, it’s true, but I showed them!” She gave not a thought to what might happen to Felice, she was thinking of herself again. I was constantly troubled and confused by all of these many contradictions.
Several days later Ludwig Neustadt delivered to Lilly a postcard that Felice had sent to his address.
September 14, 1944
My Dears,
Many, many thanks for the bread, rice and sandwich spread! Postal regulations here are such that I can write only once every eight weeks, and each addressee may write to me only once every four weeks, and only in care of the Reich Agency. But there is no limit on the number of packages I may receive, and they can be addressed to me directly, as before. They cannot include any written messages and are distributed daily. I’ll confirm the arrival of each with a preprinted card!
Today is the second anniversary of Grandmother’s death. I am healthy and hope that all of you are doing fine as well. My warmest wishes and kisses from your
Felice Schragenheim
It was in this way that Lilly found out that Felice’s grandmother, Hulda Karewski, had died at Theresienstadt on September 14, 1942.
Lilly sent Felice two small packages almost daily, with sugar, sausages, noodles, bread, meal, butter, cookies, fruit, potatoes, saccharine, dried vegetables and onions, as well as gauze, kneesocks, darning yarn, rubber bands, toothpaste and cellulose cotton.
On October 9 Lilly took a highly pregnant Lola to the train station. Lola had gotten it into her head that she wanted to go to a maternity home in Sommerfeld to deliver her baby. Lola hadn’t felt well all day, and Lilly had tried without success to convince her not to go. A major air raid alarm went off as Lola’s train was departing, and she went into labor shortly after passing through Frankfurt/Oder. YOUNG MOTHER SURPRISED BY STORK ON TRAIN, a newspaper later reported.
Lola Sturmova:
It started on the train. It was a hospital train that was also carrying soldiers on leave from the front. And I had only a blanket and a cushion, and then they made a kind of carrier for me. My doctor said: You have time yet, and then suddenly my water broke. They had to go around collecting water so that he could wash the baby a little. They heated the water by putting it in a helmet and holding it over a candle. What is it? I asked. A boy, he said. So, I said, you’ll have to remove something, I wanted a girl. Give him to me then, he said. His name was Captain Rockowski, he was from Radibor, and his wife couldn’t have children. No, I said, you can’t have him. I wanted a child, I was just disappointed that it was a boy. And the Russians kept flying over outside. . . . The last car had to be uncoupled, the Russians were firing on it so heavily. And that’s how I got to Sommerfeld.
On the same day that Lola Sturm from Sudetenland brought her son Thomas into the world on a train, Jewess Felice Schragenheim was underway as well—in a cattle car, transport number Ep–342, destination Auschwitz.
On October 11, 1944, a woman unknown to Lilly and her friends sent a postcard from Theresienstadt addressed to “M. Zivier”:
Dear M—,
I am fine, thanks. Hope you are too. Have heard nothing from Felice. Hope she’s healthy and happy. My best, and greetings to everyone.
Beate Mohr
It was four weeks before news of this card reached Lilly.
Lilly’s diary, October 16, 1944:
Dearest, it is eight weeks today since they took you away, an eternity. I am so terribly unhappy. I’m alive, but the way I live! The children are here. I go into the city. I shop. I get together with Gregor. I do this and that every day. But the pain eats away at me constantly. It is my constant companion. Tell me that you love me. I love you. You probably will never know just how much.
On October 30 Ludwig Neustadt called and Lilly met him at a restaurant near the collection camp. With him he brought a postcard from Felice, which he let Lilly read.
Lilly’s diary, October 30, 1944:
My beloved. Ten weeks without you. I cry and cry, and stare blankly into space for hours, worn out by the pain, love, happy memories, darkened hopes for the future. I groan in the face of my powerlessness. Before, I loved you because you loved me. Today I love you regardless, and more than I ever expected. My diary is one long love letter to you. Do you know where I am writing this? At the Mecklenburger Restaurant. I came back here again after the air raid alarm because I hadn’t paid my check. I’ve met three women here. They’re all between the ages of forty and fifty, and my assumption about them turned out to be correct. Actually I was interested in only one of them. But Aimée, I can almost hear you say. The little dark-haired reticent one is very interesting. But Aimée!
They are total intellectuals and enormously clever. Conversing with them is a joy. They know all about foreign literature. I had the Well of Loneliness with me, and they knew the book well. We had a very nice evening last Wednesday, but today, unfortunately, they aren’t here. Are you jealous now, my sweet?
Ludwig called this morning. Finally. And then he called again. I met him in a restaurant on Schulstrasse, across from the camp, and read your postcard. What am I to write now? I want to die. Oh, I no longer want to live.
On November 1 Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler ordered all gassings at Auschwitz to cease and all traces of them to be destroyed.
On November 8 Ludwig Neustadt called to tell Lilly that Felice was no longer at Theresienstadt, but had been taken to a camp near Breslau.
On November 14 Lilly’s parents received a letter from Felice postmarked Trachenberg, known today as Zmigród, located on the road between Wrocław and Rawicz:
November 3, 1944
Dear Parents,
I have not written for a long time, but I think I have a sufficient excuse. I also secretly suspect that you have long since forgotten me and are busy trying to get your daughter, my Aimée, married off to some gentleman—for four hundred Reichsmarks. Yes, well, I almost found myself in the position of never again being able to worry about it. But only almost, for the gods were otherwise disposed and put me in a proper hospital bed with a light case of scarlet fever, where I hope to remain until December 9. In addition, they sent me a good person, a man who is the janitor here and who is determined to help me whenever he can. I have requested that our former middleman send a package from Lilly to me in care of him. I didn’t write to her myself, nor shall I, for I am afraid I will infect the children. (Though my skin is not peeling and I don’t have a fever.) And secondly, I’m not sure where Lilly is. On October 9 an Obersturmführer in Theresienstadt asked me if I knew why she . . . etc., etc. They showed a great interest in her, and she may not know this. I’m asking you, dear parents, to give her the enclosed letter if possible, or to write to me (with no return address and indeterminate salutation) and tell me what is going on. I am understandably greatly concerned about wife and child—don’t grin, Papa! I hope you both are well. Don’t mention this letter to anyone but Lilly.
With Best Wishes and a Thousand Greetings! F—
November 3, 1944
My adorable kitten,
Barely does the Jaguar turn his back before you’re up to such wild things that the evil hunter has already been asking Jaguar about you, and poor Jaguar can no longer sleep at night. He’s had a very hard time of it, the noble Jaguar, and lost much of his beauty. You must have a new bracelet made for him from Grandmother’s watch chain, and keep it for him until he returns! How good that pants, jackets, and curls have been recorded in photographs. Now sit down and write Jaguar a long and loving kitty letter. Without return address and in such a way that should someone else read it, he wouldn’t be able to figure out who you and I are. Josef doesn’t read the letters, the good man, so write a very, very sweet letter, do you hear? And tell no one that you have heard from me. Do you still love me now that my ears stick out and I have lung troubles? I’m so worried about you. That’s the worst thing about all of this. Write a long letter! Kiss the children. A hug for you and “199,000” kisses from
Your Jaguar
Return add.: Josef Golombek, Municipal Hospital, Trachenberg, Silesia.
P.S. Even if you can’t write more often, I hope to be able to. Please include a few stamps.
Lilly had to smile. Felice with her ears sticking out! Felice was always trying to hide her large and very pale ears behind her hair, which was not exactly thick. It did not take long for Lilly to discover this sensitive point. She had only to tuck Felice’s hair behind her ears and say, “Grandmother?” and she could be sure that the “little stick” would follow. Around New Year’s, when the needles had begun to drop off the Christmas tree, Lilly had cut off the branches in order to burn them, with Albrecht’s enthusiastic assistance. But the trunk had been too large to break into smaller pieces, so it had remained behind the stove as a memento of Christmas.
“Albrecht, go get ‘little stick,’” Felice would call when she and Lilly had a fight. Lilly would take off screaming and barricade herself in the bedroom.
Several days after this first letter arrived from Silesia, Lilly received another long letter, which had been written in several installments in pencil on the lined squares of notepad paper.
November 7, 1944
Dear Aimée,
Surely your long letter will arrive today—it seems that Josef delivers the mail around noon—and then I will send this off later this evening. Yesterday the packages arrived and I was so happy—about the letter, the one postmark, and of course about the contents. The baked goods are so wonderful! And your knitting as well! And you packed it all so beautifully. And on the blue jacket—for which, if I am correct, I must thank Lola, and for a pair of socks as well—I found a red hair! I’ll wrap it around my brown comb right away. Besides my toothbrush it is the only thing I have managed to save. The lock of hair I had wrapped around it before got lost when I was carrying the comb in the lining of my sleeve. When one is as poor as we, without even pockets on our coats, we stick our few possessions in our sleeves! My kitten, surely you sat up for many nights preparing all of this for me. And now I am sitting here wrapped in my checkered blanket, wearing my blue jacket, which smells wonderful, looking like “high up on the pasture where there is no sin,” and I’m overjoyed at each new item! But I already have written all of this in the letter Ludwig will bring you, which certainly you will receive before this one. And now I am waiting for mail from you. Afterward, if something comes, I will continue this letter.
November 8, 1944
Nothing arrived yesterday. And today? Today for certain: There’s so much I want to write you, my Eve Dolorosa. Are you indeed that, without me? But I don’t know where to begin. My temperature has stayed above 101 for a few days now and I feel a bit funny in the head. I think about you constantly and worry about you. Are you doing all right with money? And nothing happens to you when the sirens go off? Are you eating properly? Are the children healthy? Have there—most importantly—been any unpleasant incidents, as it seems they aren’t letting you out of their sight? I had no idea that one could think the same thoughts over and over again, day and night, month after month, recalling each little detail, isn’t that so? Do you remember how nice it was in Caputh the first time, and how wonderfully silly we were, and how happy! And that evening in the hospital when your roommate was fast asleep and we didn’t know it. And, and, and. Do you still say “mein liebes Herzchen?” How I would love to have some of those horrible, horrible herbs to eat that you put in the potato soup! Sometimes I think I never shall again. The chances are so slim. And I spend my sleepless nights reproaching myself for having gotten you mixed up with such an uncertain existence as mine. When I return I’ll be arriving with a considerably advanced case of tuberculosis. Please, my kitten, please, should someone come along who is nice and wants to marry you, accept him. It has nothing to do with our love, which shall remain no matter what. After all, you have four small human beings depending on you, and your husband would surely allow you to take a trip with me now and then. My Aimée, don’t be angry that I am writing this, but I can’t sleep, I’m so busy thinking. You needn’t be sad for me right now. I am doing excellently here. Everyone is nice, something we no longer were accustomed to, and we’ll stay here until the ninth of December for sure. If I continue to have a temperature, perhaps it will be for even longer. I watch my temperature chart with dread every day now, hoping time will rush by and nothing will happen. Josef brings the mail in the evening, and then he always takes our letters away with him. Have I remembered to tell you that I love you? Yes, and I want you so. I wish you could take me in your arms and hold me tight and comfort me, and then everything would be all right. I want to be able to say “Sweetie-Pie” to you again. And Albrecht is three now. Has he finally been housebroken? You once listed Bernd as the sender of a package to me. I took that to mean that you have him at home again, and Lola’s child as well. My poor dear. But you’ll write me all about it, won’t you? Is Gregor taking care of you? Not too well, hopefully! And what is Elenai up to? I want to know everything, but most of all how you are, and be honest, don’t gloss over anything because you’re afraid that I’ll worry. For I worry anyway, my dear. Say hello to Madame Kummer for me! But don’t mention me to anyone else, everyone should continue to think that I’m just not around anymore. I’ve decided to send this letter this evening no matter what, and to write another tomorrow in answer to yours. I embrace you and give you a thousand kisses.
Your True, Noble, Wounded Jaguar
When you get my next letter, answer it too, all right? Enclose photos of all of you. Have you developed the film from August 21? Hopefully your letter will arrive today.
November 9
No letter arrived! Today perhaps? I don’t want to send this one until I’ve received yours. I’m not doing too well today. Perhaps I’ll get my period one of these days; I haven’t had it since Berlin. But it’s the same with everyone; it’s a symptom of detention. The bra fits wonderfully, it’s only a bit large. A.S. [Aimée Schragenheim], my beloved. I don’t feel like writing much today, I’d rather be answering your letter! You understand, don’t you, that I am sharing the things you send with my friend? I understood that to be the reason you marked some things and not others. She’s nice and has had a much harder time of it than I, for in B–, or A–[Birkenau or Auschwitz], it’s the same thing. She was separated from her husband and doesn’t even know if he’s still alive. And she has no home anymore—she’s from Amsterdam—and no one else in the world. It took great effort to convince Josef to accept three cookies and two pieces of cake, because he’s always bringing us something. He says it’s his duty to help us, he says he must and that he simply cannot accept anything for it. And now we eat all the time, and I’m terribly proud when the Dutchwoman, who is quite fussy, praises your creations. And they taste so-o-o good.
November 10
Yesterday nothing arrived from you in the mail. And today is almost over. We just got the results of our second swab test: negative. We’ll have one more taken and if it too is negative then they’ll send us away. So I was wrong about the six weeks, and I’m truly afraid that I’ll be sent back to the camp. I feel like someone who has just managed to get his head above icy water only to be pushed back down into it again. But I’ll only say that to you, for only my kitten may know that the brave Jaguar is afraid. Pray for him, all right?
November 11
No mail yesterday either! I no longer know what that means. Did your parents not receive my letter? If not—I’ll mail this one today—write me a long, long letter right away, with pictures (and list the sender again as A. Karsten).
1069389056 kisses
from Jaguar
Your letter just arrived!!!
Lilly’s answer to this letter never reached Felice. It was written in Felice’s green ink on Felice’s brown stationery, with the initials “F.S.” printed at a slant at the top of the sheet. Lilly made a copy of it before taking it to the post office:
My Jaguar—do you recognize the stationery?
Well, I’m completely and totally Eve-Dolorosa without you; Eve has almost disappeared, only Dolorosa remains. Oh, my dearest, without you, every day without you! How many weeks is it now! I cannot live without love, of course, it is the essence of my life. There is room for nothing else in my thoughts. From morning to evening I live only with the hope of seeing you again. God cannot punish us in this way, we haven’t even truly been given the chance to have a life yet, and we must be given that chance. Dear God, protect my love! It is unbearable; I tell you I won’t survive it! I cannot live without you, I cannot G. probably will not return either. Am I—I know it shows a lack of character to say so—to go through life suffering? That is why I am pleading with you: Do not lose courage. I beg of you a million times: Keep alive the hope that we will see each other again. It’s the only thing that makes life bearable for us. I know only too well that I am asking the near-impossible of you—I could scream, scream for hours and blame mankind—what it is doing to you drives me to despair. But please, please, you who are so passionately loved, you must hope, hope, hope. . . . I am praying for you, for us all, with each breath I take! My heart has been reduced to a trembling mass. How I wept at your letter, dearest, I cannot read it without tears. If only I could hold you in my arms, stroke you, kiss you! Things are so terribly hard without having you near to keep me calm.
L. is at home, what do you say to that? Her mother fetched her from the maternity home—she wasn’t doing well there, so now she’s home—with her baby. It was so sudden! . . . I have decided to give up another room. I won’t make hardly anything from it, but I won’t have to starve, and I can’t go to work. Nor do I welcome the idea, for I’m not well. Yes, my dear, physically I’m doing very, very poorly, and would collapse for sure before two weeks went by. You needn’t worry about me, I’m not nearly as ill as you, not nearly. And if the two of us survive we’ll have to nurse each other back to health, isn’t that so? We’ll have so much to make up for. Dearest, we must have hope, my sweet! You should not have me on your conscience, you silly thing you. Without you I would never have known what love is, what love is capable of. How happy we were, how happy! Do you remember how I rushed to meet you each time! Do you remember how your arm never went numb? Do you remember how, when we were first together, I always traced your mouth with my finger? Do you remember when and where I wore the yellow scarf on my head for the first time? That I always walked to meet you at the train station at night, and happily fell into your arms? Dear God, all of that cannot have ended, it cannot have! Remember how we lay around on Sunday mornings? Oh, I must love you, and only you, for eternity. It is my fate, a fate I gladly accept. And you—only me? You will love only me? I felt it that time at the hospital, when you came through the door and I said to you, “I’m so sick.”
The jacket and socks are from E., not from L. Did you really not receive any of my cards? L. had a boy! N. could be healthier, why didn’t she just stay there! E. is now a great comfort to me, I’ve gotten closer to her, you’d be surprised. But she is truly the only one who cares about me. She is a great comrade and more dependable to me in my sorrow than I ever could have imagined. I. is almost always in L., at a factory, and still terribly cheeky. E. always has a clear head, and I need that more than ever. . . . My parents say hello, and to keep your chin up. God, what do they know, they have no concept of what your life is like, or that of your friends. My God, how will I face Irene? But I won’t do it without you. K. sends delightful cards, but unfortunately she misunderstood me, and wrote concerning some “Christmas family portrait” she wanted. I thought my heart would jump out of my chest when I read that yesterday. Our good Lu. didn’t give me your letter, on top of which he maintained that you asked him to tear it up immediately. He calls faithfully, but I don’t think he’s completely honest with me. He truly wants the best for you. Am I really to blame for your present situation? I cannot believe that, even though my conscience troubles me constantly. If I didn’t believe that you still need me I would have put an end to it all long ago. You can ask anyone who knows me, I was tired to death. But you still need me and I will be there for you to the end. We must have hope, for God’s sake, we must hope and—pray. Don’t lose courage; I will lose it with you if you do. Look, we’ve always said we belong among those people who somehow survive even the most horrible things. And we want to hold on to that belief, my beloved. At Lu.’s suggestion I’m sending you another package today. He shall too. J. should not be mad, but understand. Please do me the favor of eating everything right away. You don’t know if you will still be there tomorrow, and then you will at least have something in your stomach. Divide it with your friend and give the unfortunate woman my best wishes. I could put my arms around J., even though he is a man. I agree with him completely, it is his duty! This time the torte I baked doesn’t have a filling, but a lot of butter instead. I hope it tastes good! Please eat the sausage and the butter as quickly as possible, don’t save anything, and ask J. if I can send something again. Hopefully! Nothing tastes good to me here if I think you are doing without. There’s also a body-warmer in the package. You’ll recognize what it’s made of. I cut up the green pullover, it’s so wonderfully warm; from the lower part I made the body-warmer, and from the sleeves I made the gloves. Aren’t I clever? I did a lot of darning on them so no one could see how nice they are. You can undo it and then you’ll have something to darn with. Anyone who takes a close look at them (and the colorful jacket!) will know that they’re perfectly all right. But I was afraid they would take things away from you that didn’t look mended. So wear them as they are, they’ll be even warmer if you do. And write if there’s anything you need. Oh, I do hope you’ll be there for a long, long time. If only I could help, my darling! I’m so powerless! Please, please, write as much as you can. Am I permitted to write again? I want to just hide away on my birthday; it could have been so different. Oh, I can’t think about it, thinking is so terribly painful. Are you allowed to keep the pictures? And which should I send? I carry the film and the briefcase (with everything of value to me in it—it’s as full as it was in your best of times) with me always. I haven’t developed the film yet, I’m afraid we’ll be bombed out and they’re so precious to me; will it hurt the film if it just lies around? Gregor is sweet, and Dörthe as well. Sometimes he’s too sweet and then he gets mad because I’m so indisputably loyal to you. It’s true, isn’t it my love, that loyal people are necessary, too, to body and soul!
I live from one mail delivery to the next. If it’s at all possible, write again very, very soon and tell me that you love me. Put your arms around me, and I will do the same, and remain
Your Beloved
and Eternal Kitten
Trachenberg Hospital, November 12, 1944
Dear Parents,
Many thanks for your nice letter. I hope that my request met with success and that I will now get news of everything, also of you. I’m doing very well. I no longer have a fever, only the skin on my fingers is peeling, and food tastes good again. It’s just that everything moves so slowly. But I mustn’t be impatient. Nevertheless, I was so sure I’d be returning by the twenty-fourth of November. And it doesn’t look as if that will happen. That’s terribly sad, don’t you think? Be well and accept my best wishes and kisses!
F.
November 12, 1944
My Aimée,
Your letter arrived yesterday, it had been opened by the censor! But the censor probably thought: That is a truly fortunate man, to be so loved! Du, your letter is so wonderful. But please, please answer all of my questions. It’s all right to be cautious, but not that cautious! No, I want to know whom you have rented which room to, what you do all day, whether Gregor comes by often, whom else you talk to, what Madame Kummer has to say in her letters, what the children and our parents are doing, whether Lola had a girl, what you did about Mutti and the coat, and everything, everything else. I want to know everything, do you hear! And while we’re at it, why the big bad wolf attacked Little Red Riding Hood, and then wanted to ask me so many questions.
If you aren’t using it for something, please send Inge’s blue wool dress, all right? It could be sent as a sixty-pfennig letter, surely. And from now on always give a return address, as you did on your recent package. And then please, please, a few photos, and answer all my questions.
By the way, Josef spoke with the head nurse, and she says we will stay here for six weeks, we’ve been granted a temporary reprieve, that is, until December 9. So I’ll be writing often. As my skin is peeling I prefer not to send the letters directly to you. That worked before. Be brave, my sweet. Then you’ll get a long kiss, and can give the children some of it,
from Jaguar
If it’s not too much trouble, and if you have any, could you send a little sausage or cheese? I’m shameless, aren’t I?
On November 14 or 15, 1944, Felice found just enough time to write a few words on a scrap of paper in a shaky hand before she was taken away:
My Beloved,
The nurse just came in and said we’re being taken away. Pray for me and keep your fingers crossed!
Always, Your
F—
Lilly’s diary, November 17, 1944:
It wasn’t supposed to happen: You’re back in the camp. My poor, poor dear. You can’t have recuperated fully. When I received your second long letter of November 14 I cried all day long. I am terribly, profoundly afraid. You must not lose courage, my beloved. You must have hope, I’m praying for you day and night. . . . If only this were a dream. Where are you now? What are they doing to you again? And when will I have news from you? How awful that you didn’t receive my second package. I was so looking forward to knowing that you finally had enough to eat. Is there a God?
Two letters that Lilly wrote to Josef Golombek on November 14 and 18 came back to Berlin covered with stamps. “Acceptance Refused” was written in thick blue letters on one of the two envelopes. As Lilly listed neither her real name nor address on the envelope, the letters were sent back and forth across Berlin for a while until, in mid-December, they finally landed poste restante in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, with the notice: Forwarding address unknown.