‘Why, yes,’ Lili had replied. ‘How did you know?’
Every so often the talking would stop, for a reason Lili could not
divine. Anneliese would turn her back on her sisters and whimper.
Hannelore would comfort her. Charlotte would stare into the mid-
dle distance and Magda, grey lines framing her eyes, would sigh.
In the afternoon, perhaps after a bowl of thin soup, they would
be allowed out to walk around the building. They walked in a yard
bordered on one side by a blank windowless wall and on the other
three by uncultivated scrubland. They were somewhere outside the
city, yet it did not seem to Lili as if they were in the country. Tall fences topped by three long coils of barbed wire marked the
boundary.
During the evening they talked again, always in undertones as if
they might disturb someone, or quietly played the childish games
they had made up. They never spoke of Albert Schröder, and some-
thing inside Lili told her not to ask Magda about her father. At a
certain point, never predictable, the light would cut out abruptly
and it was time to try to find sleep.
5
They heard nothing about the proceedings against their father. Their life consisted of waiting, for invisible processes to be completed and decisions to be taken. That much seemed to be tacit between her
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mother and the people who oversaw their detention, ordinary people
for the most part, with haunted and harried looks on their faces. Or possibly this was a complexion Lili later placed on them.
The next phase was managed with characteristic precision by the
authorities, and a little finesse. Magda was called to the facility manager’s office on the floor below to discuss certain legal matters. She followed the burly supervisor obediently, head down; she had
already been conditioned in the way of things.
‘We’ll practise some French when I get back,’ she said. They had
taken to lessons together, with no books and relying on Magda’s and the other girls’ own knowledge. It was a way of passing the time.
A few minutes later the supervisor returned. She said brightly,
‘Showers. They’ve fixed the boiler at last. You girls will be the first to use them. Your mother will have a chance when she gets back.’
She handed over thin, stiff towels, the colour washed out, threads
hanging from them, but laundered at least, leaving one on the bed
for Magda. The girls filed along the long linoleum corridor and into a suite of rooms they had never seen before, better maintained than the rest of the accommodation.
‘New clothes as well,’ said the supervisor. ‘And a medical check-
up. I’ll leave you to get ready for the showers. They’re just through there. Leave your dirty clothes in a pile in the corner.’
They undressed and looked at the new underwear, trousers and
tunics that lay on the benches. Hannelore folded and stacked the
clothes they had taken off and, carrying their towels, they walked
through.
It was a communal shower, with more than enough space for
them all to stand together. Charlotte found the tap and they watched as the powerful flow became warmer. Eventually it was steaming
hot and they walked under the healing waters. Lili realized that no one had spoken since their mother had left their room but now they
were giggling and whispering.
It felt like a rebirth, the warm water cascading down on them.
There was even soap. Grey runnels of grime drained down the
sluices below their feet. Finally, the supervisor called from the adja-cent room, ‘Time’s up.’
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Buoyed, they dried themselves by the benches and pulled on the
clean clothes. Charlotte made a neat pile of the towels.
The supervisor carried a clipboard. ‘Medicals now,’ she said, ‘and
then please, straight back to your room.’ She opened the connect-
ing door to another room, in which, Lili could see, a bespectacled
woman in a white coat stood waiting.
‘Schröder, Hannelore,’ announced the supervisor, and Hannelore
walked with her into the room.
‘Until later,’ she said, smiling.
three girls were excited.
‘It must have been sorted out. Perhaps that’s what Mama is talk-
ing about with the manager,’ said Anneliese.
‘We’ll soon be home,’ said Lili.
‘I’m going to put on my best clothes and dance in the ballroom,’
said Charlotte, ‘on my own.’
It was only a few minutes before the door opened again. Han-
nelore did not come back.
‘She’s back in your room,’ said the supervisor, smiling in reassur-
ance. ‘Now, Schröder, Charlotte.’
Charlotte walked into the room, giving a little wave as she went.
A small patch of darkness crossed Lili’s consciousness but it was
soon gone as Anneliese took up the commentary on what she
planned to do when they arrived home. After a short time she too
was gone.
Left on her own, Lili began to think. Their mother had told the
other girls that if they were ever separated one of them should
always stay with her. But there was no need to worry. They were on
their way home. Or at worst, they had had showers and would be
back together in the room in a few minutes.
It seemed only seconds before the door opened again.
‘Schröder, Elisabeth,’ the supervisor said.
‘But it’s not been long enough.’ said Lili.
‘Of course it has. You must have been daydreaming, my girl.
Now come along.’
Lili stood up.
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6
Even as she stepped through the door she sensed what was happen-
ing. There was no particular pretence. She had no idea what
subterfuge had taken Hannelore, Charlotte and Anneliese from
here. By the time Lili was called forward, there was no need. As a
child, she was manageable.
She followed the supervisor meekly along the corridor, down the
stairs, through the metal rear door of the building and on to the
waiting transport. At the age of ten, she had already begun to know the trade- offs and the parameters of her new existence. Together
with her intelligence and alertness, this knowledge would be crucial to her survival. She did not struggle or resist.
Years later she spent a semester as a visiting professor at one of
the Ivy League colleges and made the mistake of agreeing to stand
in for an absent colleague to deliver one undergraduate lecture of a series on the Holocaust. Clearly the administrators had not known
of her own life, simply that she was an expert on twentieth- century European history and politics. Her experiences were not among the
few details about herself she had chosen to share, so the college
staff were not to be blamed.
During questions, a pretty young female student in the third row,
who had been gratifyingly attentive throughout the lecture, said of those who had been through the camps, ‘Gee, so brave. That pain,
that suffering.’
This met with murmurs of approbation, but one young man
who had spent the whole hour fidgeting and scribbling intently on
his pad raised his pencil.
‘I don’t know,’ he said in a whining drawl that she found irritat-
ing, ‘these people weren’t brave. They had no choice. They were
just in that situation. And,’ he said, waving the pencil more vigorously, ‘they didn’t resist. Why was that?’
She could not recall her reply but could vaguely remember the
ruckus in the lecture room. Strangely enough, though, she agreed
with him in a way. She was no hero. It was simply survival, and she 228
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would have betrayed any of her fellow captives for an extra crust of bread each week. She would have welcomed any of the guards
between her legs if it would have staved off death. There was noth-
ing noble about her life in the camps.
After the war, once she was safe, she would periodically try to
recall those years. But, especially in the comfort of their farmhouse in the Scottish Borders, memory failed. The reconciliation between
the Lili who had undergone all of that and the present Elisabeth was impossible. The cord between them was broken. It had been a different person, in a different world. The parties in the Tiergarten
villa and those dull hours waiting in the detention centre with her sisters and her mother were far more vivid in her memory. As was
the image of Hans Taub as he rammed his fingers inside her, bold,
blond and blue- eyed; vicious and demonic.
The filth and the pain and the fear and the despair in the camps
were unimaginable to her afterwards. Not only could she not recall
events, she could not summon up inside herself the odour of her
feelings. As she sought adequate description, the words themselves
brought distance and an antiseptic, anaesthetizing effect. Whatever the documentary evidence, including the number tattooed on her
forearm, it was impossible to believe that this body, these hands and this mind had burrowed through all this and emerged. She did not
suffer from nightmares and reasoned that she was unable to equate
what had happened with the person she now was. No doubt a pro-
fessional psychologist would say otherwise. She must be in denial,
with suppressed memories that at some point would return to harm
her. But she had no appetite to revisit the past. She had survived and that was sufficient.
She did so by becoming as insignificant as she could. She later
discovered that a clerical error had consigned her to the concentration camp when she should have been fostered. This at least was
what the record reflected; it could just as easily have been the result of some undefined personal animus towards a traitor’s family on
the part of an anonymous, powerful official.
At first, emerging from the cattle truck in her rough uniform and
edging uneasily into the sunlight, she had been adopted by a kindly 229
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elderly Jewish couple. She was quickly regarded as their grandchild and became embedded in the community of the camp. She could
not later remember what they looked like or their names. There
was a vague recollection of the woman’s warm embrace and the
man’s smile, unconnected with any facial features. At some point
they became separated. Whether they were removed or died on
work detail, she could not remember or never knew. Like so many
others, they ceased to exist, and she was simply carried on the sea of squalor, thrown here and there by the waves, just trying to be a
speck in the centre of it all.
She too was moved, not selected individually but simply as part
of a tranche of livestock herded on to a train and transported elsewhere. She did not know where she came from or her destination.
It happened three times. Each camp had its own unique properties
and topography to which she had to habituate herself; each was uni-
form in its destruction of the soul. Away from the dull gaze of the guards, personality still existed, to be sure, but it was being system-atically crushed. Her existence became a continuum of work,
hunger and a desperate effort to avoid sickness and disease.
She could recall well, however, the days leading up to their liber-
ation. Suddenly – it seemed to her suddenly – there was a buzz in the camp. The guards had in previous months worked them even harder
and food had become still shorter in supply. The numbers of people
daily taken from work details and sent to the looming grey building with the four chimneys increased. And then things slowed down and
the guards seemed to adopt a kind of grimacing lassitude.
Their numbers gradually dwindled until in the middle of one
night the camp was alive with the sound of starting motors and
businesslike shouts. The inmates watched as the commandant and
final guards drove off into the dark forest that surrounded the
barbed wire.
Still they did nothing but wait. There was no food but no one
broke into the kitchen compound or the barracks that the guards
had inhabited. They were accustomed to days without food.
It was three days before the first British jeep drove by, its
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occupants seemingly so stunned that they simply sat in their seats, then drove away quickly. Later that day salvation, or as close to it as can be achieved in this world, came to them. Elisabeth would later
remember the waiting more than the days after the British opened
the gates.
She was fortunate enough to have contracted typhus. When they
were liberated, the British brought bread and cheese and meat,
plundered from the nearest town. They knew no better, and nor did
the prisoners as they gorged on the rich food. Several died as their digestive systems failed to cope with the abundant proteins and fats that now filled their bellies. Elisabeth, on the other hand, had no appetite.
It was not, for her at least, a joyous time. She could remember a
deep depression falling on her during the time she spent in the military hospital. This was release, then; but she was so numbed that
she could not feel happy. Nor could she feel sad. The weight of
events and the inhumanity she had witnessed crushed her.
It was several months before she discovered, at first tentatively
and then with more certainty, the fates of her parents and sisters.
Albert Schröder had been found guilty of treason. Magda was con-
victed as his accomplice. Both were executed. This much was on
record. What had happened to her sisters was never firmly estab-
lished. The records were not clear on events immediately after
the detention centre and subsequent traces were fragmentary. She
knew beyond doubt that at some stage they had perished in
the camps, a fact established by omission. They were not among
the survivors whose identities were carefully logged by the Allies.
Elisabeth had retained only slight hope that they might still be
alive. When she discovered the likelihood was negligible she found
it impossible to grieve. To all intents and purposes they had died the moment she was parted from them and their corpses had been
added to the towering pile she had witnessed. She did no
t feel shame at her coldness. She felt the coldness.
In May 1946 she left the displaced persons camp near Hannover,
boarded a train that took her to Ostend and then took a boat across 231
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the Channel. She was being sent to England and as she boarded the
vessel in a warm spring breeze she felt excitement, and no guilt.
7
Elisabeth Schröder was of an awkward age, no longer a child but
not yet an adult. She was placed in the care of John Barber, a don
who had recently arrived back at Pembroke College in Oxford after
his war service, and his wife, Eleanor. In flowing white nightdresses and dressing gowns, her long grey hair hanging loose and free, Eleanor haunted the corridors of the large Jacobean house day and night like a thin silver wraith. She was a kindly woman, but shortly after Elisabeth had joined the Barbers Eleanor was diagnosed with ovar-ian cancer. It was clear that death was upon her. Elisabeth felt no embarrassment at its presence and the Barbers were gently candid.
This did not prevent John Barber from pacing the rooms of the
house in soft despair, as if somewhere he could find the solution to all this, an expression of puzzlement and distraction on his plump, florid face. He tried to do his crying in private, though more than once Elisabeth found him in the library or the boot room, lost,
weeping as he stared through the mullioned windows.
John and Eleanor Barber were childless, unaccustomed to the
presence of young people in their home. This suited Elisabeth, who
did not want to be treated as anything other than a stranger. The
draughty old house was large enough for the three of them to pass
a day without meeting one another. As she recovered her sense of
self, this was what Elisabeth needed.
The intention had been that the Barbers should familiarize her
with life in England. She had not a word of English, so the place-
ment with an academic who specialized in the German Romantic
novel would be advantageous. The middle- aged couple would teach
her, care for her and help build her confidence.
In the event it was she who cared for them as they stared at the
vortex of what was to come and took their first tentative steps into it. Eleanor’s condition became rapidly worse. It did not minutely
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