All God's Children (34 page)

With tears running down his cheeks, he embraced Josef, and Beth heard him murmur, “I am so very proud to call you my son, Josef Buch. Your courage and, yes, your patriotism put me to shame.”

The two men stepped apart as the presiding judge’s clerk entered the courtroom and called for court to resume. Herr Buch returned to his place next to his wife as the lawyer sitting with them indicated that Beth and Josef should stand and face the judge.

“Josef Buch, I hereby sentence you to be stripped of your rank and citizenship and all privileges attendant to that and to spend the rest of your natural life imprisoned at SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor.”

Behind them Beth heard Frau Buch break down in sobs—whether relief that her son’s life had been saved or despair that he would spend the rest of his days in prison, Beth could not have said.

“Frau Elizabeth Buch,” the judge said in a singsong teasing way that made her blood run cold. “You may or may not know that a countrywoman of yours was convicted as a spy recently and hanged.” He deliberately paused to take a long drink of water. “Still your plea that you should share in your husband’s fate has moved me. Therefore, I sentence you to spend your life in SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor as well.”

“Thank you,” Beth blurted and immediately realized how foolish that must sound.

The judge looked down at her, and a hint of sadness colored his gaze. “Oh, do not thank me. In time you may both well wish that I had given you the easier way out—that I had sentenced you to die.”

F
EBRUARY
—D
ECEMBER
1943

    CHAPTER 19    

T
he trip from Munich across much of Poland seemed endless and still was over far too soon. The judge had ordered them transported by truck rather than train because the trip would take less time. Beth had heard Josef’s father say that the judge was having second thoughts about his unorthodox decision and wanted to get them to their assigned prison as soon as possible. Trains routinely were sidetracked for hours or even days while troop trains took precedence.

Behind them lay a situation they knew and could possibly navigate. There were people—like Josef’s parents—who might be able to keep them safe even if they spent the rest of the war serving a prison term. There was always the possibility that the war would end sooner rather than later, that the Allies would come marching into Munich and they would be free.

Just a month earlier, Hans Scholl had assured Beth that the Americans would take Munich by the end of February 1943, and now Beth wished his optimism were warranted. She comforted herself on the trip by closing her eyes and imagining American soldiers stopping the transport truck in which she and Josef were riding and declaring them free to go wherever they pleased.

What lay ahead was a complete mystery—one where the clues were nothing more than gossip overheard through the years about a series of forced labor camps built by the Nazis in Poland for the purpose of using prisoners to produce whatever supplies might be needed for the war effort.

“Sobibor?” The guard escorting them had raised his eyebrows and exchanged a look with his companion. He had studied first her and then Josef closely. “You don’t look Jewish.”

“That’s because I am German,” Josef had snapped irritably and earned for himself a slap from the guard.

But Beth had thought about the guard’s comment long after they had climbed into the rear of the transport with half-a-dozen other prisoners and Josef had fallen asleep next to her. The way the man had said those words:
You don’t look Jewish
.

It was widely known that the Jews were being rounded up along with others—clergy and professors who dared to speak out, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses. But it was the Jews who seemed to bear the brunt of Hitler’s anger toward any group he deemed to be “subhuman.” It was also widely rumored—though Beth had no actual proof—that Jews and others were being sent to special extermination camps in eastern Poland. The label assigned to such facilities told the story of their fate.

The sun was high as they approached the camp. The day was unusually warm for late February. Through a slit in the canvas that covered the truck, Beth saw that they were in a rural area, and she could hear a train approaching across the fields. She closed her eyes and called to mind a summer’s day when she had gone to the foothills of the Alps for a day in the country with her aunt and uncle and Liesl. They had picnicked in the meadows and hiked the trails, singing Bavarian folk songs as they climbed. They had gathered wildflowers, and Aunt Ilse had made flower crowns for Liesl and Beth. But that had been years earlier when Liesl was still a toddler and Uncle Franz carried her easily on his back or shoulders as they climbed.

Where were Aunt Ilse and Uncle Franz and Liesl now? Beth couldn’t help but wonder. She prayed that they were safe. Perhaps they had managed to cross those mountains into Switzerland. Perhaps they were even now sitting at a café, enjoying a cup of real coffee with Marta and her family.
Please hold them in Your light
, she prayed silently as the truck rocked from side to side, throwing her against Josef on her right and an older man on her left.

Throughout the entire journey, Josef had said nothing. Instead he either slept or sat with his arm around her shoulders, his feet planted resolutely on the littered floor of the truck, his eyes closed.

Finally the truck rumbled to a stop. A man wearing the uniform of the SS stepped forward and spoke to the driver. Behind him near a railway siding that ran directly into the camp stood several more soldiers with guns, some of them also restraining snarling dogs. Nearest to the track stood men in dark blue coveralls wearing caps with the “BK” insignia for the railroad station detachment or
Bahnhofkommando
. In the distance the train whistle sounded.

“They leave nothing to chance,” Josef murmured as they waited their turn to leap from the truck to the ground. “Keep your eyes lowered,” he added as they inched forward toward the opening. “If you look ahead, you will be looking into the sun, and if you raise an arm to shield your eyes the dogs might attack.”

He was right, and Beth could not help but wonder how he knew. As she leapt from the truck, she heard a man cry out as a dog charged him and was barely held in check by its master. Slowly her eyes became accustomed to the light, and she cautiously took stock of her surroundings. They were just inside what she assumed were the main gates to the compound surrounded by a barbed-wire fence at least nine or ten feet tall. A very tall watchtower stood opposite a building marked
A
DMINISTRATION.
Shorter watchtowers were arranged around the perimeter of the camp, and in each of them stood guards with guns, including machine guns.

Beth and Josef were standing in the midst of a cluster of buildings— most of them arranged in a square in one corner of the compound. She was able to identify some of the buildings as barracks, a garage, a barbershop, and a kitchen. There was one villa amongst those buildings that bore the sign Schwalbenest—Swallow’s Nest. Closer to where she and Josef and the others waited was a two-story villa—a simple country home down to the early spring flowers some prisoners were tending in the front yard. Over the front door hung a sign—H
APPY
F
LEA.

Strange.

Her eyes fully used to the bright sunlight, she realized that there was not just one barbed-wire fence but three of them—one within the other. Between the one nearest her and the middle one, guards patrolled the perimeter. The outermost fence was entwined with evergreen branches. But if their wardens thought this touch would make the place seem less intimidating, they were wrong as far as Beth was concerned.

Through her work with the White Rose, Beth was well aware that as early as 1940, the Nazis began establishing forced-labor camps in the Lublin district of Poland. Most were set up in existing structures such as schools or factories, but not the Sobibor extermination camp. Beth had overheard the two guards driving the transport talking and learned that this camp had been built by Jews taken from ghettos in the area. The guard had also told his partner that rumor had it that as soon as construction was completed, the laborers were shot.

“Stand here,” a guard said and led them to a spot off to one side of a platform where the SS officer who had met their truck now conferred with another man—the man in charge by the looks of things. Then another soldier turned on a phonograph, and the music of a Strauss waltz sounded throughout the compound.

The train huffed its way slowly along the siding, stopping in front of a barricade that marked the end of the track. The railway detail that had stood at attention facing the track now went into action, unlatching and sliding open the doors to five cattle cars. Beth watched in horror as dozens of men, women, and children pressed forward, squinting into the sunlight and accepting the helping hands of the BK as they leapt to the ground. Some of the men wore business suits. Some of the women wore coats trimmed in fur and hats with feathers or in one case a fashionable half veil. Some adults carried or held hands with a child.

They all spoke at once, calling out to one another as families separated during the journey were reunited. They were told to leave their luggage where it was—it would be delivered later. Immediately they were herded away from the train to an open assembly area outside the administration building. The soldier guarding Beth and Josef and those they had arrived with indicated that they should follow.

They wound their way through a barracks where they were told to deposit any hand luggage, purses, wallets, or papers that they might be carrying. At first the order was delivered as a polite request, but when a few resisted or questioned, they were pulled from the line and struck by a guard’s fists or the handle of a whip.

Outside they came to another open area where an SS officer stood on a balcony above one of the buildings. The music had stopped. The man stepped to a microphone and called for silence.

He seemed genial enough. He even smiled as he addressed the new arrivals. “Wilkommen,” he shouted, and the din quieted as all eyes turned to him. “I am SS-Oberscharführer Hermann Michel, and I wish to apologize for any inconvenience you may have suffered in your journey. I assure you that it is our intent to see that you get the rest you have earned as quickly as possible.”

He appeared to be sincerely concerned for their welfare, and around her Beth saw several people visibly relax. She wondered at her inability to trust this man who certainly looked and sounded like someone who had their best interests at heart.

“However, I regret to inform you that there has been an outbreak of typhus recently in the area, and since your new home here was constructed on what was originally a swamp, we cannot take chances. For this reason we have asked you to abandon your belongings, but be assured that the porters will take care of delivering them to you after you have showered and been properly disinfected.”

Murmurs through the crowd. A baby howled. The officer frowned. “Please, be quiet so that we can get this done in as orderly a manner as possible. The way to freedom lies in your ability to follow orders and work hard. If you do that, you will live in peace with your families until the war is won.”

Next he asked them to separate into two groups—women and children on one side and men and boys over the age of fourteen on the other. Beth saw some of the men from the railroad detail pushing a couple of large wooden luggage carts through the compound. The guards began selecting people who were elderly or disabled or just unable to walk and helping them onto the carts. She saw one old woman gently pat the cheek of her helper. The guard brushed her hand away and turned to help the next person.

It broke Beth’s heart to see the way people clung to family members as next the guards stepped in and began shoving and prodding and shouting at them to follow the officer’s order.

“Excellent,” the man standing on the roof said once the new arrivals stood in separate areas. “Now before you go, we need some volunteers for special assignments. Seamstresses, tailors, shoemakers, goldsmiths, mechanics?”