For a while, she lay still, and then, slowly, she resumed.
‘It was ten below zero that night. It is hard now to remember how cold it was. I wore my sweater and my mother’s coat and a shawl someone loaned me, and I went with Frau Hencke and the guards-the ground was like iron and there were icicles from all the barracks buildings-and I thought we were going to the Revier, the huts that were our hospital, but we went past it, and on and on, until we came to a small brick building I had never seen, and Frau Hencke said this was the science experiment building and infirmary.
‘When we came near the entrance, I heard, over the wind, a man crying-it is wrenching to hear the sound of a man crying-and then a physician met us-Dr. Voegler, the assistant medical officer to Dr. Schidlausky-and he said that he would show me the experiment. They led me around the building to the side, and the man’s crying was louder. Do you know what they showed me? A young Polish prisoner-a thin Jewish boy with curly black hair. He was on a stretcher on the hard ground, and he was all naked-and it was ten below zero.
‘I wanted to run. I had never seen a grown man all naked, that was one thing, but the main thing was the bestiality-his wrists and ankles tied-helpless and naked on a stretcher. And then in front of me a guard poured a pail of ice water over him-and he screamed and cried. Dr. Voegler and Frau Hencke took me inside the infirmary and said that this was their freezing experiment, and it would be followed by a warming experiment. The idea was to see how frozen a subject could become and still be saved. They told me they must learn how they could save the glorious aviators of the Luftwaffe who went down in the Channel. And now they said I had been chosen to help them prove that someone frozen like that boy could be saved. I remember I said, “I will do anything to help that poor boy live.” And the doctor said, “I am glad you are co-operative. You will have your chance in a few hours.”
‘Frau Hencke took me into an empty room-it had windows around like a hospital nursery, but they were draped. There was nothing in the room but a double bed and a chair. Frau Hencke was friendly and said she would get me hot milk and rolls-I had not had such luxury in two years-and then I must nap, and they would wake me when it was time to work. I took my milk and rolls, and then took off my shoes and rested on the bed, with the lights off, but I couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking of that poor freezing Jewish boy on the stretcher in that weather. Maybe I dozed off. I can no longer remember. But I suppose some hours passed, and suddenly the lights in the room were on and I was sitting up, and Dr. Voegler and Frau Hencke were standing there.
‘Dr. Voegler said, “Fräulein Stratman, now it is time. Our heating experiment begins. We are bringing in the test person-the boy you want to help-and now we want to find out if he can be unfrozen and warmed up with animal heat-the heat of the human body.” I had no idea what he was talking about. “Take off your clothes, Fräulein,” he commanded. I wanted to know how much to take off, and he said every stitch, and I was not yet fifteen and ashamed of the size of my breasts, and how I was a woman, and I refused. The doctor then said the experiment could only be made by two people, one cold like the boy, and one warm like myself, and I was to nestle close to him, embrace him on the bed, to transmit my heat to him and see if it would bring him back to normal. I screamed that I couldn’t, and then the doctor said that if I would not co-operate, they would go and bring my mother in my place, and I would watch. And so then I did not resist. Frau Hencke took off my patched sweater and the wool skirt, and she took off my cotton brassière and pulled down my pants, and I was naked, and I did what they told me. I stretched out on the bed, with one hand trying to cover my breasts and the other hand below. Then Dr. Voegler and Frau Hencke went out, and they carried in the poor, naked Jewish boy, unconscious, numbed like metal by the cold, and they threw him on the bed next to me. They left on one light in the room, and parted the drapes of a window halfway. The doctor demanded that I take the boy in my arms and hug him, and press him against my breasts and belly, and caress him, to see if this would revive him. The doctor said the boy’s life was in my hands. And they would be watching, with others, from the window to see that I did what I must do.
‘At first, alone with the boy, I was repelled-remember my age. I had never touched a man or seen one like this-but then I kept seeing they were watching me, and I looked at the boy, so unconscious, so suffering, and he was alive, I could tell, and then I didn’t care, I only wanted him to live. I turned him sideways towards me-and pressed against his limp icy body-and I hugged him and stroked him. How can I tell you the rest? The witnesses knew it would happen-they had done this for weeks before-but I did not know. In an hour he was conscious, the boy, but weak, not knowing where he was or what was going on-and then Dr. Voegler came in and took his temperature, and it was eighty-four degrees-and then the doctor left, and the boy began to revive as I hugged him and ran my hands over him. And then he opened his eyes and kept looking at me, at my breasts, and suddenly-I can’t tell you-he had an erection-and he was between my legs before I could prevent it, he was like some alley dog, and he broke my virginity and I was bleeding, and he sobbed that he was sorry, sorry, but he couldn’t control himself, and he kept on until it was over, and then he fell back and slept. I had never known such a thing and was sickened, but Dr. Voegler and two other physicians and Frau Hencke came in and examined him and then congratulated me. They said his temperature had jumped to normal in coitus, faster than by any other means known except a hot bath, and that I would be rewarded with a fine breakfast, and he would live. I couldn’t eat the breakfast, I had lost everything, but I told myself at least this was for something-to save a poor Polish boy’s life.
‘In the morning, I told my mother a lie about clerical work, and tried to live with myself, and a few days later, I found it was all a waste anyway. They had taken the same boy from his barracks and put him in a vat of ice water outside the infirmary, when it snowed, and then carried him in and put him between two naked French-women, but he died there between them.’
She lay inert, gazing off, still not meeting his eyes.
He wanted to touch her. He wanted to take her to him and make her forget all that was dead in the past but so alive in her. But he knew that he could not.
He said, ‘And that was what happened in Ravensbruck?’
‘The beginning,’ she said, ‘only the beginning, I told you. I will make less of the rest that followed, because that was the most of it. A week after the experiment-’
She faltered, briefly.
‘Emily,’ he said, ‘I-’
‘A week after,’ she persisted, ‘Frau Hencke, the woman supervisor, sent for me in her private quarters. It was dark, before dinner. I rapped on her door, and she called to come in. She was lying on the sofa of her small living room, covered to the neck with a blanket. She was a husky woman, not stout but big-boned, a woman of maybe thirty-five, with a deep voice that frightened all the inmates. She was a power in the camp. She told me to lock the door, and I did, and she told me to come to her, and I did. She asked me how old I was, and I said fifteen in a few weeks. She said she had been impressed with my behaviour and courage the night of the experiment, and she had thought about me every day since. “When I undressed you,” she said, “I must admit I never saw a girl with a more wonderful figure.” I was scared, but I thanked her. She said she had suffered to see me on the bed letting that Jewish boy make love to me. If it had been in her hands, she would not have allowed any man to despoil such a lovely virgin. “But we will forget that,” she said “because I have good news for you.” She told me that, aside from Colonel Schneider, she was the most important person in Ravensbruck. She was in a position to save lives, make life agreeable with comforts. She was prepared now to do this for my mother and myself. She would take me under her wing. I would be her protégée. But in a week I had become older, and I was suspicious. “Why do you do this?” I wanted to know. And she said, “Because Emily, I am a foolish woman to have fallen in love with you.” ’