Chapter 27
Mornings at the orphanage were busy and always passed quickly.
The duties assigned to Lizzie varied and kept it interesting.
That morning the weather was dry, and Lizzie bundled up her group of children in their coats, and they played games in the courtyard.
Seven-year-old Liesel’s cheeks were pink from the wind and her red coat was torn at the hem.
Lizzie made a mental note to repair it during their next sewing session.
It was a good way of teaching the children skills, whilst also accomplishing something useful.
When the sister in charge asked for a list of skills that might help when she was volunteering, she included sewing and knitting.
Her sewing had much improved thanks to her youngest sister, Evie, who had shown her some tricks when she worked with the sewing circle in London before she enlisted for nurse training.
In times like these, when shopping for new clothes was a distant memory, the ability to repair what you had went a long way.
Liesel’s brown eyes glowed as she leapt to catch the ball, and she giggled when Lizzie threw it back to her. Mother Clara watched them on her rounds, as she often did.
‘Good morning, Anna. How are you settling in?’
Lizzie replied she was enjoying her time with the children very much and found it comforting to be useful.
‘Dear Liesel has taken to you. That’s the first time I’ve seen her laugh like that since she arrived.’
The mother superior’s words tugged at her heart. Liesel had begun following her around during her first week, and now she was like her little shadow.
‘She is a sweet child,’ Lizzie said, dropping her voice so the girl wouldn’t overhear as she dashed about with the ball, dodging the other children. ‘I understand she has no family left?’
Mother Clara nodded, her eyes sad. ‘That’s correct. Like so many of the children who come to us.’
‘What will happen to her?’ Lizzie asked. ‘I’m guessing there is a limit to how many you can house.’
‘Unfortunately, that is the case. As the war continues, we struggle to keep up with the placements and may soon have to turn some away.’
‘It’s so sad,’ Lizzie said, swallowing the rising emotions threatening to engulf her. The thought of more orphans like little Liesel having no place at the orphanage was a dreadful one. ‘Is there anything more I can do to help?’
Mother Clara trained her sympathetic eyes on Lizzie. ‘I wish there were. I pray this war ends soon or there will be many more young orphans. As it is, the children who meet the SS criteria are given up for adoption. The SS Race and Settlement Office has to sign off on which children go where.’
Lizzie shuddered as a vicious thought struck her. A loyal Nazi family might adopt Liesel. ‘What do you mean by the SS criteria?’ she asked, lowering her voice even further. These were dangerous questions, and she was pushing her luck by asking them, but Liesel’s wellbeing overrode her caution.
Mother Clara cleared her throat and looked around before replying. ‘The rules are we must place the children who pass the racial purity tests only with approved families.’
‘And will Liesel pass the tests even though her colouring is darker than some of the others?’ Lizzie asked, an overwhelming feeling of dread gripping her.
‘The policy is not as strict as for the Lebensborn programme, where they have been distributing racially valuable children from Poland to party-approved families. Here they already come to us with the correct papers to show they are proven Aryan children. It’s more about their identity papers and hereditary background. ’
Lizzie stared at Mother Clara, her heart drumming ever faster as Liesel ran to her side and slid her small, cold fingers into her hand.
The thought of this innocent child being raised by a family loyal to the Nazis was too great to bear, but what could she do?
The orphanage wouldn’t keep children indefinitely, so where could they go if they weren’t adopted?
The mother superior’s tone when she said the words, “racially valuable,” conveyed to Lizzie that she was uncomfortable with the term, but she brushed over it and moved away to check on the other children before Lizzie could ask any further questions.
Lizzie held Liesel’s hand and asked her if she was ready for lunch. The little girl stared up at her with loving eyes. ‘Yes, please, Frau Weber. May I sit next to you today?’
Lizzie squeezed the child’s hand. ‘Of course you may.’ She enjoyed the lunchtime routine, which she usually stayed for before leaving for the afternoon to run errands or simply to walk around the city to observe whatever she could to pass back to the SOE.
This was a rare opportunity to be in the heart of Hitler’s capital city, and she couldn’t afford to waste it.
The bell rang, and the children removed their coats and washed their hands before filing onto the benches in the dining hall.
A sister readied the children to recite grace, their hands in the prayer position and their eyes closed.
They usually recited the blessing in unison, but before Lizzie closed her eyes, she heard Liesel muttering a foreign word she didn’t recognise.
Lizzie touched her hand sharply to warn her, and Liesel looked like she might cry, but then snapped into reciting the grace like the others.
When they finished, Lizzie squeezed her shoulder, and tears welled in the little girl’s eyes.
They sat down, and a simple meal was served. Lizzie was troubled by the girl so obviously being upset and tried to distract her by asking how long she had been at the convent.
In between spoonfuls of thin soup, Liesel raised her dark eyes to the high ceiling as if she were trying to find the correct answer. ‘I came here a few months ago after my family died in the war,’ she said. ‘I’m Catholic and very grateful to live with the sisters.’
When Lizzie walked back to the boarding house that afternoon, the exchange niggled at her.
Something wasn’t quite right, both with the little girl’s behaviour during grace and also her stilted response about her background.
It was almost as though she had been schooled on what to say.
Lizzie brushed off the thought that things weren’t as they originally seemed, but it wouldn’t leave her.
That night in the attic, Lizzie told Hannah about her day, as she always did when they got ready for bed. When she mentioned the incident with Liesel, Hannah’s head jerked up from the basin. She patted her face dry with the small towel. ‘What word did she say exactly?’
Lizzie furrowed her brow. ‘Something beginning with a baru sound. I can’t remember what the rest was now. I warned her immediately. Even French isn’t allowed, so I thought I had better stop her before one of the other children overheard.’
‘Was it, Baruch?’ Hannah whispered, mouthing the unfamiliar word.
Lizzie said slowly. ‘That sounds right, yes. Is it Polish or something? God help her if she’s not who they say she is. I read a report in London that the Nazis have been kidnapping children who pass their Aryan tests in other countries and placing them with German families to be raised as Nazis.’
‘Nothing they do would shock me,’ Hannah said, her blue eyes like pools of pain. ‘But no, it’s not Polish.’
‘What then?’ Lizzie probed as they each climbed into their beds.
‘It means blessed in Hebrew. It’s how we start our prayers. Not that I pray anymore.’
Lizzie stared at Hannah as the truth hit her. She shook her head. ‘Oh, dear God, no.’
‘Oh yes,’ Hannah said. ‘Someone must have hidden a little Jewish girl at the convent. No one else would say that word. The question is who is protecting her and how long can they keep her safe?’
Hannah and Lizzie whispered about Liesel and the possibilities of how she had been taken in by the convent.
‘Someone knows who she really is. She must have forged papers, or they wouldn’t have been able to accept her in the first place,’ Hannah said. ‘I don’t need to tell you how rigid they are about identity papers.’
It wasn’t long before Lizzie heard Hannah’s soft, rhythmic breathing. She had demanding days at the ministry, doing the endless work given to her by the supervisor whilst operating under the stress of maintaining her cover and watching Ingrid.
Lizzie sighed as she tried to get comfortable in the hard bed.
It was going to be another restless night.
Images of Jewish parents and their children being herded into the Paris Vélodrome haunted her.
Jack had told her about the mass arrests after the intelligence reports came in.
Thirteen thousand deported in a single operation.
Men, women, and children. The numbers were too large to fully comprehend.
Lizzie had cried at the injustice of it all, but after many long talks with Jack about how the British borders were closed to Jewish immigration, she realised there was nothing she could do.
It was too terrible to contemplate, and memories of the Jewish family she and Hannah had helped escape from Paris floated back to her.
In Toulouse, Hannah had got a Jewish doctor and his family out too when Lizzie was there.
But that was working with the Resistance in France, not the British authorities in London.
It had weighed heavily on Lizzie, and now it all came rushing back as she worried about Liesel’s fate if the wrong person discovered she was Jewish, not Catholic.
Bit by systematic bit, the Nazis were arresting the Jews who were still clinging on in France and deporting them east. The official term was that they were being deported for resettlement.
But when she asked Jack what he thought really awaited them in the east, he lapsed into silence for several minutes and then lit a cigarette.
‘It seems the work camps are not what we initially thought,’ he said finally, forming smoke rings in the air.
Now a vision of seven-year-old sweet Liesel ripped away from the sisters and deported on a train to a camp in the east, terrorised Lizzie as she lay in bed.
Thoughts of how to save the child flashed into her mind, but each one led to a dead end. She wasn’t here to rescue Jewish children. Her mission was to do what she’d come to do and to get out of Germany as quickly as possible.
Becoming more involved with Liesel would complicate everything, and Jack’s voice rose in her mind. ‘Don’t get emotionally involved. It’s easier said than done, but when you do, it compromises your mission and can lead to disaster for you and for all those involved.’
It was too late. She was already emotionally involved and felt sick to the stomach when she thought of the innocent little girl who had lost her family and was in much greater danger than she had realised.
She wished she were in the flat in London with Jack.
He would make her a cup of tea and stroke her hand whilst they chatted, like he always did when she got worked up and couldn’t sleep.
He was so good at calming her down, and the pain of missing him rolled over her to add to her torment.
There was nowhere for her to go at this hour, so she tossed and turned until the grey-yellow light of a wintery dawn seeped through the blackout blinds, and she fell into an uneasy sleep.