Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(7)
Sachsenhausen.
The dreaded concentration camp twenty-two miles north of Berlin.
And below it, even if read imperfectly, she nevertheless knew well from nearly five years before the infamous slogan: Arbeit Macht Frei – ‘Work makes you free.’
Once before, she had escaped the Nazi butchers. Could she escape them once and for all?
The Emerald Isle with its holy mountain Croagh-Patrick for sinners like herself and the comfortable familiarity of her Irish Travelers clan never beckoned her more. With luck, she would pass as Aryan, as occasionally could even light-skinned Roma.
With renowned work diligence, a male kapo, the prisoner assigned supervisory tasks, quickly processed Romy and the other female gypsies into a portion of the prison containing only female inmates and guarded by female SS staff.
Naturally, the other female prisoners were filled with trepidation and communicated sotto voce among themselves. But she was terrified beyond functioning. Because she knew what they did not.
“What is it?” Florika asked. They sat on backless wooden benches. Row after row of benches in a starkly sparse room as large as a warehouse. “You, who are not afraid of Beelzebub himself, tremble.”
Romy only shook her head. A head that had felt the cold metal of scissors and her hair slowly falling along with her tears and human dignity.
One by one, the SS processed its latest internees. Perspiration mottled her temples and clotted the hair beneath her arm pits.
An hour and a half later, the name of Irina Klockner was called.
Romy could have led the SS guard to the final processing room, where prisoners were assigned to barracks and given coarse, striped clothing and wooden-sole shoes, so familiar was she with the routine – but she would have been in error.
Instead, the strapping female kapo shuttled her along a different tunnel-like hallway that connected with another building. She wasn’t being processed for internment!
Her spirits soared. As the Brits would say, she had hit a homerun out of the ball park. Clearly, the Nazi authorities realized their mistake. An Olympic gold medal winner didn’t belong in a prison. Now she had only to carry off her charade as that Olympic figure skater, Irina Klockner.
Romy had performed at carnivals and fairs and street venues. Now was the time for her grand performance. And if she failed . . . how long before the German Reich’s meticulous record keeping revealed she was the much-desired other half to the results of their experimentation five years earlier?
The kapo shooed her into a small office occupied by two soldiers at attention and an officer, scribbling behind a metal desk. Not a calendar or clock on the wall. Not a colorful world map. Not a photo on the desk.
Her lusty spirit cringed at the bland, barren room. A strip of lavender paint bordering where the wall met the ceiling would be nice. Mayhap some pale pink fluffy clouds on the ceiling or a rainbow arcing two of the walls . . .
Well, it was show time.
The presence of a high-ranking officer most likely meant that Irina’s athletic achievements commanded respectful attention. Wrong. When the officer looked up from the papers he studied, Romy instantly knew the Tower Card had been a warning for her, not the smooth-talking Gunter.
Blinding, intense fear electrified her.
Five years had not changed Colonel Klauffen. Hauptmann – captain – he had been then. If Dr. Pfister was the Angel of Death, Colonel Klauffen was the Angel of the Apocalypse. He still had the same lean ascetic look of a Spanish Inquisitioner. Narrow face, narrow nose, narrow eyes. Or rather narrow eye. The other was covered by a black eyepatch.
“Have a seat, Fraulein Klockner. I have just a few questions for you.”
Then he did not remember her – remember setting loose his dogs to chase down her and Luca at the street fair. From somewhere behind the desk, came a low, canine growl. Did that mean one of his favored dogs recognized her scent – even after all this time?
With every scrap of will power she could summon against cowering, she sat prim and proper, as she would imagine Irina would and with a slightly haughty tilt to her chin. Her hands with their unkempt nails she kept clutched around Irina’s immaculately white suede purse, out of Klauffen’s scrutinizing sight.
She mimicked the language of her betters. Well, at least, they thought so. “Ya, Herr Colonel – and I have a few questions, as well, myself. Most importantly, how could your goons possibly have mistaken me for one of those filthy gypsies? I was merely in their camp having my fortune – ”
“Fraulein Klockner!” Klauffen leaned forward, his skeletal hands locked, that cycloptic eye fixed on her. “I am more interested, not in what you were doing in the gypsy relocation camp, but what you were doing at the German Embassy in Warsaw the same day that our legation councilor was assassinated? And, more importantly, as you put it – and as a Jewess – just how deeply are you involved in the Resistance attack?”
Scheiss!
“I might warn you, Fraulein Klockner, that your fiancé – ”
“My fiancé?”
“Do not try to pretend ignorance or innocence with us. The lawyer, Gunter Wagner. He has also been apprehended. He may have quite brilliantly represented certain members of the Reich’s military and ministry in court, but he is still suspect as far as I am concerned. Your versions of your Warsaw itinerary had better match minute by minute.”
Irina Klockner, a Jewess? By Aryan standards, the only thing worse than a Gypsy was a Jew. Romy gulped. The Tarot’s Fool card had gone from the frying pan into the fire.