Irma Fuchs: If Lies Be The Truth of Men

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Irma could only guess at how long she had been kept on the train. It felt like months but was probably about two weeks. Sometimes the transport would stop and not start again for hours, all those suffering in the carts with no knowledge of why or when they might roll again. With nothing to pass the time the stops proved more torturous than the motion.

Amazed she had actually survived the journey she stepped into the light of a Siberian wasteland, that suggesting an escape might prove improbable. It was then among the thinned ranks twenty cars up she saw Marta. Irma leapt into the air waving her arms trying to attract the woman’s attention. That sighting lifted her heart, but as she came back down a rifle butt struck her in the stomach. She doubled and a second hit her on the back of the head. Irma’s lights went out.

She awoke some hours later, partly from being knocked unconscious, partly from a mix of malnutrition, dehydration and exhaustion. Faces surrounded her, people she didn’t recognise. One sat on her bed and rang a cloth dripping water onto her parched lips. “German?” the woman asked.

Irma nodded.

“Welcome to hell,” she said softly.

Another came close and peering at Irma said. “You’re pretty. They will like you. Especially as you still have some flesh on your bones. The captain likes his women meaty.”

Struggling to sit Irma asked. “I don’t expect to be liked. That’s not why I am here.”

“What’s the uniform,” another inquired.

“German army,” Irma replied in an attempt to keep her true vocation secret.

“Yes, but what branch?”

“Anti-aircraft,” she lied.

“And the war? It is over?” yet another asked hopeful.

“It’s over. Germany lost.”

“Win or lose wouldn’t make any difference to me.” the woman replied down hearted.

“It’s retribution all the way. Have any of you actually been told why you are here?”

Not one said yes.

“Where are we? In Siberia I mean?”

They shrugged as one.

“Does anyone ever try to escape?”

They shook heads as one.

An elderly stalwart who intellectually stood head and shoulders above the rest spoke from her bunk, slats of wood on a wooden frame with no blanket or place to rest the head. “In the summer we endure a searing heat. In the winter this is a frozen wasteland. It is likely a hundred miles or so to the nearest civilisation. No one escapes this. No one tries.”

“If you do run and are caught they will shoot you,” the woman continued.

“I take it this is a work camp? Slave labour.”

“It is. We log in the forests.”

“When do you work?”

“Tomorrow. For some reason the guards brought us back early today.”

“Inspection,” sounded from further up the room.

“What is there to inspect?” Irma asked puzzled.

“You would be surprised,” the elderly woman replied, she seeming to be the voice of the barrack room.

“I am Gelda by the way,” she lied deciding to keep up with the ruse. “Surprised? How?”

“They like to catch us out and inflict punishments,” she explained.

The revelation was like a bolt to the brain, how many times had she done the same?

“That’s a reasonably good uniform you have there,” the woman observed without moving. “Take it off and you will lose it. No matter where you are. If you are in a sweat over the trunks then tie it around your waist. Don’t hang it up.”

“What about showers?” Irma suggested.

“Showers! Good grief Gelda where do you think you are? Holiday camp? You will get filthy and stink like the rest of us. Unless of course you want to entertain the troops?”

“By entertain you mean f**k with.”

“They will ask and then they will take. I will give you two days before one drags you off into the woods.”

“Something to look forward to I suppose.”

“They like rough s*x,” the one sat on her bed told Irma.

“So do I.”

“You would be better off hiding your assets,” the elderly woman Nadia advised. “Dump the bra and try and flatten your tits.”

Yula, the girl sat on her bed added. “Get your head shaved or the lice will have a field day. Same with your underarms and pubic hair.”

That struck horror in the otherwise hard-nosed Irma. “Lice!”

“An army of them. Surprised you aren’t feeling their presence already. And there are bed bugs that sneak up and suck your blood when you are asleep. We have some of the biggest mosquitoes anywhere too.”

“Christ! That f*****g Anatoly knew what he was doing.”

“Anatoly?” Yula questioned.

“The Red that arrested me. I might have been shot had it not been for him.”

“Is that better?”

“It’s looking that way. Sounds like after I’m starved, I will be eaten alive.”

“That’s about it. But on the good side there are those that survive and get to be released,” Nadia pointed out.

“What happens if I resist a guard’s advances?”

Nadia finally left her bunk and settled her butt on Irma’s. “You must learn how to handle the pests, including the guards. Accept they are not fussy. Not that you aren’t attractive. But they will take your cunt through the filth and stink of your unwashed body. Even the vaginal pox doesn’t seem to put them off. And if you catch it off of one of them there is no medication. We have a camp doctor who tries, but he has little to work with. A word of advice. Don’t complain and don’t argue. Keep your head down and mind your own business.”

“What does dinner consist of? She dared to ask.

“There is no such thing as dinner. Not as you are probably used to anyway. “It is broth without the vegetables and a hunk of rock hard bread.”

“Hot water and stale bread you mean?”

“Something like that. Except the soup is never hot. Have you a bowl?”

“I have nothing except what I am wearing.”

“We’ll find you one. The dead don’t take their possessions to the grave. And there are no kin to claim them.”

“The camp provides nothing then?”

“The captain will give you a whipping if he sees fit. He’s a sadist. Barely a week goes by without some poor b***h being strung up outside his office. He likes to carry out his so called punishment on trumped up charges in public. He usually selects the victim from the newer intakes as the women are in better condition. It’s a s****l thing you see.”

“You’re saying I might get picked?”

“You’re German, young, pretty and still have flesh on your bones, so the odds are against you.”

“Being shot for running sounds better by the minute.”

The Russian was right about the inspection. A well fed pompous arsehole called Motya Berezin arrived preceded by a non-commissioned officer who shouted everybody to attention. Stood by their beds they waited.

The camp commandant had close set eyes and a long nose which he peered down as he ‘inspected’ the barracks, a matter of wiping a white gloved finger along a few surfaces. He stopped before Irma, staring intently. “Name!” he snapped.

“Gelda Schulze,” she replied.

An eyebrow lifted. “I know that name. You will come with me.” His grasp of German proved adequate.

Maybe, entered her thoughts, her grip on possibility. Maybe they wanted her to take up her kidnapped profession as nurse. Nurse to aid the doctor. Surely that would proffer better conditions than knocking down trees?

She stood to attention before the commandant’s paper littered desk heart hopeful, a lick of nerves affecting her gut.

“You are Gelda Schulze?”

“Yes sir.”

“Nurse stationed at Brockhorst Concentration Camp?”

“Yes. That is me, sir.”

“I have received a dossier on you from Colonel Anatoly Kuznetsov. You know this man?”

Dossier! Hope began to fade. “I know Colonel Anatoly Kuznetsov. He was temporary camp commander Brockhorst.”

“After you were transported the Colonel made enquiries among the wretches you had overseen on a medical basis. It doesn’t speak well of you.”

Heads you lose, tails you lose went through her mind.

“The treatment you levied could be in many cases deemed as torture. And your association with the camp doctor Karl Franz Gebhardt is condemnation in itself. Have you any defence?”

‘The b***h!’ she cursed mentally. ‘Miss bloody goody two shoes! Telling everyone she was an angel. Yeah an angel of f*****g death!’

She offered nothing. No words or defence could save her. She knew then where she was headed, and it wasn’t the forest cutting trees. Irma or Greta, it didn’t really matter. She had played her hand and lost.

“Probably best you say nothing,” the Captain, Pavel Milavitska, told her. “Until your hearing you will be kept in solitary. Have you any questions?”

“On what charge?”

“Crimes against humanity.”

“And if I am found guilty?”

“Which I suspect you will be. You will be hung.”

He waited for the statement to settle and then informed her. “The detention cell is here in this building.

With nothing more to be said he led her to an eight by six cell in the wooden building, the door more solid than the walls. Within she had a sink and tap, a bucket and the usual wooden slatted bed. She viewed the sink and tap in awe. A quick test proved it actually worked, for the condemned woman maybe.

She didn’t wait. Screwing a stocking into a ball she rammed it into the plughole as the plug was missing. Then she filled the sink, leaning from time to time to drink to assuage a desperate thirst. Stripped to the waist she used her other stocking as a facecloth, the feel of cool water on her sweat soaked torso pure heaven. She was naked by the time she heard a key turn in the door. Covering herself occurred, but she chose to brazen it out and remain as she was, with no attempt to cover her nudity.

The arrival transpired to be a guard with a food tray. For a moment he stared in disbelief, and then gazed in pure lust.

“Tebe nravitsya to, chto ty vidish’?” she asked. (Do you like what you see?)

The soldier smiled and nodded.

Irma laid a hand to her pubic bush and said. “Mne nuzhno mylo.” (I need soap.)

He shrugged.

She continued in Russian. “What do you use to shave?”

His finger and thumb indicated he had a small piece. “That is all I have. It’s because of the war. There is not much of anything.”

“Are you my guard?”

He nodded.

“All the time?”

“Yes.”

She moved closer deliberately jiggling her breasts. Perusing the food she criticised. “Not much for a growing girl is it?”

“It is the agreed amount.”

“Agreed by who? Not me that’s for sure. Not by the Red Cross either I shouldn’t wonder. I shall probably hang in a few weeks, so aren’t I entitled to a decent meal before I dangle?”

“Eat.” He thrust the tray at her, turned and left, locking the door behind.

“Well that went bloody well didn’t it Irma?”

Sat twiddling her thumbs day in day out she could hear much of what went on in the commandant’s office. It was about her only interest apart from swatting mosquitoes.

With an adequate understanding of Russian she was able to eavesdrop on Pavel’s conversations and phone calls. After a few days it became obvious that the man was a scoundrel, using a beleaguered system to his own ends. Supplies were being sold and dropped at his contacts warehouses while Pavel wailed about the regime’s shortages. All down to the Germans he would say, trying to push guilt onto the majority of prisoners to prevent comebacks, though any would be unlikely.

Kept for just over a month and without any notice, two guards came for her one Friday morning. Pavel curtly informed her that she had been tried and found guilty. There could be no defence, so giving her the opportunity to tell her side was pointless. She had been sentenced to hang at ten a.m. that day. She glanced at the clock on the wall and noted she had about fifteen minutes.

A guard tied her hands behind her back and then led her out into a yard in full view of the camp inmates. There had been built a crude gallows, a long pole ten feet off the ground and supported by two crossed poles at either end. Five ropes with nooses dangled from the pole, and five stools awaited the condemned.

A chill crept through her, the realisation with no friendly faces, settled. It was the end of her. Would it be eternal hell or an endless nothing, the latter being preferable?

A door on the opposite side of the compound opened and one by one her friends stepped into the light, hence the five stools. It was a time of uncertainty, a moment to crap oneself. A nudge from behind forced her forward. “Well,” she whispered to herself, at least I won’t have to wake up in this shithole again.”

Legs beyond control Irma stepped onto a stool, the piece at least having four legs avoiding a premature throttling. Her ashen faced colleagues took their places, Marta physically throwing up. She recovered and said so all could hear. “Well I don’t know where that came from. I haven’t had a decent meal since these retarded f***s locked me up.”

Grins broke the solemnity, Irma shouting. “That’s it Marta you tell these mongol cunts how it is.” She then repeated her words in Russian so everybody understood. “Vot i Marta, ty etim mongol’skim pizdyam rasskazhi, kak eto.”

“Trust you to show off Irma,” the woman replied.

Pavel stared at them. “What did you call this woman?” he demanded pointing at Irma.

“Irma. She is Irma Fuchs.”

“Not Gelda Schulze?”

“Nein,” Marta confirmed.

The man was confused. He had no file on an Irma Fuchs, and feared hanging someone without evidence to convict. “Take her down!” he barked. “And carry out the sentence on the rest.”

So as Irma stepped down. She witnessed her colleagues take the final trip, Marta winking at her seconds before her fall. The woman was a stranger to tears, but they welled nonetheless as she watched her friends pay the final debt. Irma was then hustled back to her cell, while Pavel made urgent inquiries.

Still expecting to be executed for her crimes, she looked upon the recess as temporary and Pavel would still have her hauled out to the compound where her friends still swung. When he did appear it was with uncertain news.

“You are pardoned today. But you will remain in this cell. Someone will come for you in a few days.” He offered nothing else and ignored Irma’s sarcastic remark as he left.

“I still haven’t had my condemned prisoner’s last meal.”

The door slammed as she shouted. “Sausage, egg and bacon would be just dandy.”

The watery gruel persisted as she waited bemused as to what they were up to. Whatever Gelda was guilty of she had not been far off, so why did fate keep dangling the carrot? Was it a matter of psychological punishment, or piss poor management? Finally she decided she was alive and that was all that mattered.

At the stage where she just wanted to bash her head against a wall through sheer boredom her saviour arrived. She heard his voice in Pavel’s office, her heart lifting. After an interminable length of time the guard let her out. Not wanting to appear eager she took her time shuffling to Pavel’s arena.

There he stood, tall, rakish and handsome with a heart-warming smile, a face that came close to familiar.

Irma accepted her place assuming it to be Anatoly that saved her from the noose. Or did he still play f**k your mind games? She said nothing, merely tendering a what happens now expression.

“Yes Captain, that is the woman I have come to take back. One Irma Fuchs.”

“And you are sure she killed Gelda Schulze?”

“There is a witness. She strangled the b***h with her bare hands.”

The revelations flew over Irma’s head. What was happening? Was she being hailed a heroine for a totally selfish act? “Actually,” she corrected. “I throttled miss loathsome with a piece of rope.”

“Speak when spoken to,” Pavel barked. “You were still a camp guard and that yet has to be investigated. As far as I am concerned you were part of a heinous crime and should be either shot or hung. End of.”

She bit back. “I am glad you are not my judge and jury then.”

“Damned insolent…”

Anatoly spoke. “No Captain Milavitska, that is fire in the belly. One that no one will put out.”

“You sound like you respect this piece of s**t Colonel Kuznetsov.”

“That is beginning to sound like insolence Captain.”

“I beg your pardon. That was not my intention. I apologise.”

“Good. We understand one another then.”

“We do.”

About to leave Irma cast a glance back across the compound, the rough gallows waiting on the next customers. About to turn she caught sight of Marta the woman stood ghostly by the stool she had died on. The spectre smiled and winked and was gone. A shiver ran the length of Irma’s spine. She hovered a short while then slipped into the passenger seat of Anatoly’s car, herself a ghostly white.