Epilogue

June - August 1975

I looked down at the letter in my hand. It invited me, Frida Schmidt (née Karpinski), to attend the rededication of the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp memorial. I watched, detached, as the letter wobbled, exaggerating my trembling hand.

Seeking the chair, I groped behind me and fell onto the seat.

As a nearly sixteen-year-old, I had run from those gates into the cold spring of 1945. The SS guards inexplicably herded several thousand German nationals from the camp. I’d never returned; nor did I wish to. I knew too well its miasma of suffering, cruelty and evil. The camps had drained the life from my mother through a decade of imprisonment, forced labour and starvation as she struggled to keep me alive.

I dropped the letter on my desk; the memories spread the trembling across my body.

Breathe, Frida, the way Col does.

They moved us to Ravensbrück from the Lichtenburg prison in May 1939. My mother and I were amongst the first prisoners to walk through the gates into the camp. We’d been imprisoned since May 1935 when the Nazis arrested my parents, members of the communist party. I learned after the war they executed my father within days of his arrest. There is no grave to visit and I have only shadowy memories of him – no face, but a smiling voice heard by a young child’s ears through decades of distance.

When they opened the Ravensbrück gates and pushed us towards them, we ran, terrified, into the woods. We expected to be shot down as escapees – but there was no gunfire. After two days in the woods moving further north, away from Ravensbrück, a Soviet unit scouting ahead of the main advance found me. I was lucky not to be shot out of hand, but the unit commander was NKVD. They had briefed him about the camp and recognised the red triangle on my ‘striped pyjamas’ as signifying a political prisoner. Some weeks later, I ended up in my hometown of Leipzig, a city I barely recalled. It was now shattered beyond recognition in heaps of charred rubble.

Much has happened since. I married unwisely, but was gifted a beautiful daughter. She gave me the strength that enabled our incredible journey: defecting to the UK, hiding from the Stasi in Australia and, when the Eastern Bloc collapsed in 1968, our return to a re-unified Germany.

I folded the letter into the envelope, placing it on my desk – time to think about this after the weekend. Nothing must dampen the joy of the next few days: Colette, Willi and their three-year-old daughter, Liliana, were visiting from Leipzig, with some news. I knew they were expecting another child in October. It wasn’t that...

Time to clean and prepare their rooms.

That first evening once we had bathed Lili, read to her – in English today as her parents were intent on raising a multilingual child – Col sat beside me.

For several long seconds, we sat in silence, eyes engaged. “Well, Mutti, are you going?”

I gave her my best blank look – to no avail; we knew one another too well.

She took my hand, stroking it in loving support. “To the Ravensbrück rededication?”

“How did you find out about that?” I sent a sharp look in her direction and tried to jerk my hand away, but she held on.

“I wasn’t snooping, Mutti. Lili poked about in your desk and she dropped the letter on the floor.”

“Why would I want to return to that terrible place? It robbed me of my childhood and my mother – the grandmother you never knew.”

Col’s eyes echoed my pain. “I understand. I do.” She stopped, worried eyes staring across the room. “No-one would want to visit such a place. But ... perhaps you need to?” Her eyes returned to mine. “Perhaps ... we all need to.”

I flushed with shame. I’d been thinking only of myself – I’d not thought about her needs ... or Willi’s. Ravensbrück was an important part of this family’s history.

She looked across the room at Willi, who had his head in an engineering journal. “Willi ... Willi?”

He looked up, dragging himself from the technical paper he had disappeared into once he’d settled Lili.

“Please, would you come with us to Ravensbrück? There’s a rededication of the memorial and a new museum. They have invited Mutti to attend.”

Willi’s eyes moved between us, shining with his deep love for both of us. “Of course.”

Over the rest of the weekend, somewhat mysteriously, my return to Ravensbrück became a thing, despite my never actually agreeing to it.

And their news?

Col had decided how to use Aunt Anastasia’s money. This had increased significantly from inspired investment decisions Col and Willi made together. Willi had convinced her that the world was heading for serious climate problems; the increasing amount of carbon dioxide dumped in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels would warm the climate. Col was creating a foundation to support renewable energy. It would invest in companies with promising renewable technologies. Willi would provide the needed science oversight.

We walked to Ravensbrück from the village, Lili sometimes pattering along, holding tight to Willi, Col or me. Mostly, she rode in her pusher, looking around, smiling and chattering about everything she saw. She remained oblivious to the infectious silence that spread from me to Col and on to Willi. At the gates, grasping memories locked my feet to the ground ... until Lili’s bright voice freed them. I presented my letter of invitation and they gave me a name badge. We walked into the camp, the summer sun glinting off the nearby lake, mocking my grim memories.

Throughout the brief ceremony of rededication, Col and Willi stood close on either side of me, each providing strength, clasping of my hands. At three-years-old, Lili sensed her grandmother’s deep emotion and the solemnity of the occasion, if she could not yet understand the reason. With the speeches finished, she saw the tears on my face and hugged my legs. Willi reached down and picked her up, settling her on his hip. The four of us melted into one, sharing our breath and love in this place of evil.

Lili stared at me from Willi’s arms. “Why are you crying?”

I brushed her cheek with a finger. “I’m crying because this place has many sad memories.”

Lili’s eyes moved between the three of us. “Why did we come to a sad place?”

My smile was watery. “Even sad places are important, Lili.”

Lili remained silent, unconvinced.

With the formalities at an end, Col turned to me. “Please, take us where you need to go.”

I knew my mother, like everyone else who died here, had no grave. With my family, I tried to find the place where our barracks had stood – but much had changed during the Soviet occupation and I was uncertain of its exact location. Disappointed and drawn inexorably towards its evil, I turned towards the Kommandantur. It held the cells I had slopped-out for over a year; the place where Vogel had pinned me to the wall minutes after he had executed my English friend Colette.

The hatred I had been fighting for years welled up, closing my throat.

Col heard me struggling to breathe and pulled me to her. “We can go as soon as you want to, Mutti. Don’t punish yourself.”

I swallowed. My throat relaxed enough for a shuddering breath. Others followed. Unable to speak, I set off towards the brooding structure. Inside, my feet knew the way, turning me down the corridor until I stood before Colette’s cell. The cell from which they took my English friend to her execution that November morning some thirty years ago. The door was closed and I sank to my knees, trying to open the hatch through which we had talked. But my fingers scrabbled without success.

“Please, don’t try to open that.”

I looked up to see a museum guide.

She saw the badge that identified me as a former inmate. Embarrassment and confusion stopped her for a moment. “I’m sorry, but we have not yet had time to prepare any of the cells for public viewing.” Her eyes widened. “Were you imprisoned in this cell?”

My forehead pressed against the cell door. “No, not me ... an English girl started teaching me English through this meal hatch ... before they took her through the door down there one morning for execution.” I gestured without looking towards the door at the end of the corridor.

Willi leant down, offering a hand to help me up, speaking German. “This was Colette’s cell?”

I blinked, stifling the tears and the jagged, ripping memories of that morning.

“Excuse me ... did you mention ... Colette?” An English voice came from the small group that had coalesced near us.

I turned, scanning the faces. “Who asked about Colette?” I asked in English, with a touch of possession.

She is my Colette.

A tall, grey-haired man blinked in surprise at my switch from German to English. “Umm ... that was me. Did you know Colette – an English Special Operations Executive girl?”

I was unsure how to handle this, jealous of my memories of Colette. “Please forgive me, but who are you to be asking about Colette?”

The woman on the man’s arm drew herself up. “We are Colette Roberts’ parents.” She returned my suspicious look. “Who are you?”