became fixed on one particularly dirty, bearded old individual who wept and cried aloud in anguish.
She felt David’s hand lead her away. “He is just an old man,” David said. “He is telling God that he has lived a life of faith … he has kept God’s laws, cherished the Holy Torah, and kept the covenants in face of unbelievable hardships. He asks God to kindly deliver him for ‘being a good man.”
“The old men in there,” Ari said, “don’t quite realize that the only Messiah that will deliver them is a bayonet on the end of a rifle.”
Kitty looked at Ari. There was something deadly about this man.
Ari felt Kitty’s disdain. His hands grabbed her arms. “Do you know what a Sonderkommando is?” “Ari, please …” David said.
“A Sonderkommando is one who was forced by the Germans to work inside of their crematoriums. I’d like to show you another old man here. He took the bones of his grandchildren out of a crematorium in Buchenwald and carted them off in a wheelbarrow. Tell me, Mrs. Fremont, did you see one better than that at the Cook County Hospital?”
Kitty felt her stomach turn over. Then resentment took over and she fired back, eyes watering with anger. “You’ll stop at nothing.”
“I’ll stop at nothing to show you how desperate we are.” They glared at each other wordlessly. “Do you wish to see the children’s compound or not?” he said at last. “Let’s get it over with,” Kitty answered. The three crossed the bridge over the barbed-wire wall into the children’s compound and looked upon war’s merciless harvest. She went through the hospital building past the long row of tuberculars and into the other wards of bones bent with rickets and skins yellow of jaundice and festering sores of poisoned blood. She went through a locked ward filled with youngsters who had the hollow blank stares of the insane.
They walked along the tents of the graduation class of 1940-45. The matriculants of the ghettos, the concentration camp students, scholars of rubble. Motherless, fatherless, homeless. Shaved heads of the deloused, ragged clothing. Terror-filled faces, bed wetters, night shriekers. Howling infants, and scowling juveniles who had stayed alive only through cunning. They finished the inspection.
“You have an excellent staff of medical people,” Kitty said, “and this children’s compound is getting the best of the supplies.”
“The British have given us none of it,” Ari snapped. “It has come as gifts from our own people.”
“You made the point right there,” Kitty said. “I don’t care if your facilities are manna from heaven. I came at the request of my American conscience. It has been satisfied. I’d like to go.”
“Mrs. Fremont …” David Ben Ami said. “David! Don’t argue. Some people find just the sight of us repulsive. Show Mrs. Fremont out.”
David and Kitty walked along a tent street. She turned slightly and saw Ari staring at her back. She wanted to get out as quickly as possible. She wanted to return to Mark and forget the whole wretched business.
A sound of uninhibited laughter burst from a large tent near her. It was the laughter of happy children and it sounded out of place at Caraolos. Kitty stopped in curiosity before the tent and listened. A girl was reading a story. She had a beautiful voice.
“That is an exceptional girl,” David said. “She does fantastic work with these children.”
Again laughter erupted from the children. Kitty stepped to the tent flap and drew it open. The girl had her back to Kitty. She sat on a wooden box, bent close to a kerosene lamp. Circling her sat twenty wide-eyed children. They looked up as Kitty and David entered.
The girl stopped reading and turned around and arose to greet the newcomers. The lamp flickered from a gust of air that swept in from the open flap and cast a dancing shadow of children’s silhouettes.
Kitty and the girl stood face to face. Kitty’s eyes opened wide, registering shock.
She walked out of the tent quickly, then stopped and turned
and stared through the flap at the astonished girl. Several
times she started to speak and lapsed into bewildered silence.
“I want to see that girl … alone,” she finally said in a
hushed voice.
Ari had come up to them. He nodded to David. “Bring the child to the school building. We will wait there.”
Ari lit the lantern in the schoolroom and closed the door behind them. Kitty had remained wordless and her face was pale.
“That girl reminds you of someone,” Ari said abruptly. She did not answer. He looked through the window and saw the shadows of David and the girl crossing the compound. He glanced at Kitty again and walked from the room.
As he left, Kitty shook her head. It was mad. Why did she
come? Why did she come? She fought to get herself under command-to brace herself to look at that girl again.
The door opened and Kitty tensed. The girl stepped slowly into the room. She studied the girl’s face, fighting off the urge to clutch the child in her arms.
The girl looked at her curiously, but she seemed to understand something and her gaze conveyed pity. ’
“My name … is Katherine Fremont,” Kitty said unevenly. “Do you speak English?”
“Yes.”
What a lovely child she was! Her eyes sparkled and she smiled now and held out her hand to Kitty.
Kitty touched the girl’s cheek-then she dropped her hand.
“I … I am a nurse. I wanted to meet you. What is your name?”
“My name is Karen,” the girl said, “Karen Hansen Clement.”
Kitty sat on the cot and asked the girl to sit down, too.
“How old are you?”
“I’m sixteen now, Mrs. Fremont.”
“Please call me Kitty.”
“All right, Kitty.”
“I hear that … you work with the children.”
The girl nodded.
“That’s wonderful. You see … I … I may be coming to work here and … and, well … I’d like to know all about you. Would you mind telling me?”
Karen smiled. Already she liked Kitty and she knew instinctively that Kitty wanted-needed-to be liked.
“Originally,” Karen said, “I came from Germany … Cologne, Germany. But that was a long time ago …”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
COLOGNE, GERMANY, 1938
Life is quite wonderful if you are a young lady of seven and your daddy is the famous Professor Johann Clement and it is carnival time in Cologne. Many things are extra special around carnival time, but something that is always extra special is taking a walk with Daddy. You can walk under the linden trees along the banks of the Rhine or you can walk through the zoo that has the most magnificent monkey cages in the entire world or you can walk past the big cathedral and stare up at those twin towers over five hundred feet high that seem to push right through the sky. Best of all is walking through the municipal forest very early in the morning with Daddy and Maximilian. Maximilian is the most remarkable dog in Cologne, even though he looks kind of funny. Of course, Maximilian isn’t allowed in the zoo.
Sometimes you take Hans along on your walks, too, but little brothers can be a nuisance.
If you are such a little girl you love your mommy, too,, and wish she would come along with you and Daddy and Hans and Maximilian, but she is pregnant again and feeling rather grumpy these days. It would be nice if the new baby is a sister because one brother is just about as much as a girl can bear.
On Sunday everyone, except poor Maximilian, who has to watch the house, gets into the auto and Daddy drives along the Rhine River to Grandma’s house in Bonn. Many of the aunts and uncles and bratty cousins gather every Sunday and Grandma has baked a hundred cookies, or maybe even more.
Soon, when summer comes, there will be a wonderful trip along the coast up north and through the Black Forest or to Brenner’s Park Hotel at the springs at Baden-Baden. What a funny name—Baden-Baden.