brave, they had shortened the war, and they had saved lives; but it was too much to expect the defeated German people to see things that way. Their courage would remain forever secret.
While Carla waited her turn at the tap, a Hitler Youth tank-hunting squad went past, heading east, towards the fighting. There were two men in their fifties and a dozen teenage boys, all on bicycles. Strapped to the front of each bicycle were two of the new one-shot anti-tank weapons called
They were going to die.
Carla looked away as they passed: she did not want to remember their faces.
As she was filling her bucket, the woman behind her in line, Frau Reichs, spoke to her quietly, so that no one else could hear: ‘You’re a friend of the doctor’s wife, aren’t you?’
Carla tensed. Frau Reichs was obviously talking about Hannelore Rothmann. The doctor had disappeared along with the mental patients from the Jewish Hospital. Hannelore’s son, Rudi, had thrown away his yellow star and joined those Jews living clandestinely, called U-boats in Berlin slang. But Hannelore, not herself Jewish, was still at the old house.
For twelve years a question such as the one just asked – are you a friend of a Jew’s wife? – had been an accusation. What was it today? Carla did not know. Frau Reichs was only a nodding acquaintance: she could not be trusted.
Carla turned off the tap. ‘Dr Rothmann was our family physician when I was a child,’ she said guardedly. ‘Why?’
The other woman took her place at the standpipe and began to fill a large can that had once held cooking oil. ‘Frau Rothmann has been taken away,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d like to know.’
It was commonplace. People were ‘taken away’ all the time. But when it happened to someone close to you it came as a blow to the heart.
There was no point in trying to find out what had happened to them – in fact, it was downright dangerous: people who inquired about disappearances tended to disappear themselves. All the same, Carla had to ask. ‘Do you know where they took her?’
This time there was an answer. ‘The Schulstrasse transit camp.’ Carla felt hopeful. ‘It’s in the old Jewish Hospital, in Wedding. Do you know it?’
‘Yes, I do.’ Carla sometimes worked at the hospital, unofficially and illegally, so she knew that the government had taken over one of the hospital buildings, the pathology lab, and surrounded it with barbed wire.
‘I hope she’s all right,’ said the other woman. ‘She was good to me when my Steffi was ill.’ She turned off the tap and walked away with her can of water.
Carla hurried away in the opposite direction, heading for home.
She had to do something about Hannelore. It had always been nearly impossible to get anyone out of a camp, but now that everything was breaking down perhaps there might be a way.
She took the bucket into the house and gave it to Ada.
Maud had gone to queue for food rations. Carla changed into her nurse’s uniform, thinking it might help. She explained to Ada where she was going and left again.
She had to walk to Wedding. It was two or three miles. She wondered if it was worth it. Even if she found Hannelore, she probably would not be able to help her. But then she thought of Eva in London and Rudi in hiding somewhere here in Berlin: how terrible it would be if they lost their mother in the last hours of the war. She had to try.
The military police were on the streets, stopping people and demanding papers. They worked in threes, forming summary courts, and were mainly interested in men of fighting age. They did not bother Carla in her nurse’s uniform.
It was strange that in this blasted cityscape the apple and cherry trees were gorgeous with white and pink blossoms, and that in the quiet moments between explosions she could hear the birds singing as optimistically as they did every spring.
To her horror she saw several men hanged from lamp posts, some in uniform. Most of the bodies had a card hanging around the neck saying ‘Coward’ or ‘Deserter’. These had been found guilty by those three-man street courts, she knew. Was there not already enough killing to satisfy the Nazis? It made her want to weep.
She was forced to take shelter from artillery bombardments three times. On the last occasion, when she was only a few hundred yards from the hospital, the Soviets and the Germans seemed to be fighting only a few streets away. The shooting was so heavy that Carla was tempted to turn back. Hannelore was probably doomed, and might already be dead: why should Carla add her own life to the toll? But she went on anyway.
It was evening when she reached her destination. The hospital was in Iranische Strasse, on the corner of Schul Strasse. The trees lining the streets were in new leaf. The laboratory building, which had been turned into a transit camp, was guarded. Carla considered going up to the guard and explaining her mission, but it seemed an unpromising strategy. She wondered if she might slip inside from the tunnel system.
She went into the main building. The hospital was functioning. All the patients had been moved into the basements and tunnels. The staff were working by the light of oil lamps. Carla could tell by the smell that the toilets were not flushing. Water was being carried in buckets from an old well in the garden.
Surprisingly, soldiers were bringing wounded comrades in for help. Suddenly they did not care that the doctors and nurses might be Jewish.
She followed a tunnel under the garden to the basement of the laboratory. As she expected, the door was
