Daria Ravenclaw Highland November 1987
It was now mid-November. Quinn's seventh birthday was coming up soon, and Quinn was already deep into the planning process of how she wanted to celebrate it. She would have liked to have gone to Six Flags, but both Helen and Jake vetoed the long drive to the Arlington, Texas amusement park; Quinn would have to celebrate her birthday in Highland. Despite the setback, Quinn had already made ambitious plans featuring games and a clown and a list of guests that not only included her friends, but also people she wanted to impress.
Daria stayed out of the party planning process. She and her middle sister were already learning that they had different tastes when it came to music and clothes. As far as she was concerned, this was her sister's birthday party, and Quinn could do most of the planning and what footwork primary schoolers could do beforehand. She did make one promise to herself; as irritating as Quinn could sometimes be, there wasn't going to be a repeat of Nancy Carrew's antics this time. She'd grit her teeth and help stand watch.
As the countdown to Quinn's party continued, Daria occasionally noticed that she had a more time on her hands than she did last year, despite her friendships with Gail and Farrah. It took little thought to remember why; there were no more ballet classes. The Art Council made a couple of attempts to attract a new dance teacher, but gave up after they found no takers: the handful of candidates either decided that Highland was too small or too remote, or that the salary the council offered was too low.
Quinn's birthday party went off about ten days later. Daria thought that the house was crowded when she had her birthday party back in April. Quinn's party wasn't just crowded, but packed. Quinn's friends had almost all shown up, as did many of the people she wanted to impress. Quinn moved through the crowd of admirers like a butterfly fluttering through a garden of spring flowers, usually spending just enough time to greet the people who came through the door and to thank them for coming.
Of course Quinn's party featured music. Daria had to grudgingly give Sis credit; there was some kid rock mixed in with the regular pop music, but it was better-quality kid rock music. She learned later that her subconscious mind had been sufficiently impressed that she found herself humming a couple of the tunes a couple of days later while she was running chores.
Quinn's party had a clown instead of croquet for entertainment. Most of his jokes were lame, but Daria had to admit that a couple of his routines weren't bad. The clown had also borrowed from stage magicians and successfully convinced Quinn's guests that he'd found eggs hidden behind their ears, mended cut scarves, and could identify which playing cards the small girls could pick out of his giant card deck. It almost made up for his squirting her with water from the oversized flower he'd pinned to his lapel.
After the clown's performance, Quinn's friends gathered around as Quinn's birthday cake was brought out and Quinn prepared to blow out the candles.
"Make a wish, Quinn!" chorused her friends.
"Money!" said Annette.
"More clothes!" said Juliette.
What I'd really like for my birthday is my own room, thought Quinn. She wanted to shout it out to her party crowd, but her friend Marti had told her that it was bad luck to do so unless she blew out all the candles on her cake.
Quinn took a deep breath. She then tried to blow out the candles on her cake, but a couple lit up again, forcing her to make two more tries. Daria thought that it might be more weird stuff, but didn't learn until later that someone had set non-magical trick candles in Quinn's cake.
The party ended late in the afternoon and the exhausted guests went home. Daria stayed behind to help with the clean-up. As annoying as Quinn could be, Quinn's party went off well without any accidents or any incidents, and Daria was happy for her sister. At bed time, Daria was feeling mellow enough to say "Happy Birthday, Sis," before she went off to sleep.
A couple of days later, Helen called a family meeting to discuss what they'd do for Thanksgiving, which was coming up in less than ten days. Helen had a conference and wasn't sure she'd be able to put in the time to make a proper Thanksgiving dinner. Jake was none too sure he could, either, but he did have a suggestion.
"The Temple is having a potluck Thanksgiving dinner," said Jake. "We could go to that."
Helen thought it over. She wasn't Jewish, her daughters had been baptized, but the idea of attending services at a synagogue didn't bother her. She felt she was open-minded and besides even long-ago Sunday school teachers had told her that Jesus had started preaching in synagogues when he was a boy.
"Why not?" she said.
On Thanksgiving morning, Jake, Helen, and all three Morgendorffer girls found themselves at the front door of the synagogue. Jake introduced Helen and his daughters to the rabbi, David Tallman.
"And this is my wife Helen, and my daughters Daria, Quinn, and Veronica," he said.
The Morgendorffers then found seats in the pews and sat down. Daria looked around and recognized some of the kids in school. They looked more surprised to see her and her family in temple than she was to see them. Except for Jake, none of the Morgendorffers were particularly religious, and even Jake wasn't hard-core.
Helen found the service different from the religious services she usually went to, but it didn't bother her. The rabbi gave a sermon on Thanksgiving and reasons for Thanksgiving in their lives. Despite the fact that he and his congregation were Jews, he did mention the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving, but also discussed both the return of the Jews from captivity in Babylon and also how so many Jews came to America and found refuge from the bigotry and persecution they'd endured in the Old World. He then went on to talk about reasons for thanksgiving in their personal lives and made a prayer of thanksgiving for the following year.
After the service was over and Helen made a hasty trip to her car to retrieve her family's contribution to the potluck, the Morgendorffers joined the rabbi and the congregation over at the meeting hall where supper was going to be served. After the rabbi made another prayer, both Temple regulars and guests sat down to eat.
Helen had brought a vegetable casserole. Normally she didn't cook, but Mrs. Collins caught her coming down off some stress at work and told her to find something relaxing to do. Helen remembered that in the brief time she'd been flirting with the idea of moving to the Iowa commune, she'd found preparing some of her dishes could take a little of the edge off. She'd taken a half-day off and spent part of it preparing her old vegetable casserole recipe.
To her relief, the vegetable casserole went over well. The people at the synagogue liked it, and at least one of the other wives complimented her on her cooking. She did say that she had been thinking about bringing a Thanksgiving ham. Helen was surprised by the dead silence that followed.
Wondering what she'd just done, Helen stood there in embarrassment. Fortunately, Mrs. Felder gently took her aside and quietly told her about the basics of what animals were considered kosher and which ones weren't. Helen gave herself a mental smack. She'd completely forgotten dietary laws. Despite the fact that the local Temple was Reform and not Conservative, many members still balked at eating pork and shellfish. Helen told herself to check on dietary restrictions the next time.
After supper was over, the rabbi told them that there would be a talk on the following Thursday. Else Kaplan, a survivor of the Holocaust, was going to talk about her experiences in the Holocaust and asked her if she wanted to attend. Helen said that she might be interested, but while Daria might also be interested in coming, Quinn was a little young, and little Veronica was definitely too young. Rabbi Tallman didn't press her, but said that she was welcome to come if she wanted to.
On Thursday, only Jake and Daria drove to the synagogue. When Quinn said that she really didn't want to go, Helen balked at forcing her, telling Jake that while she wouldn't let Quinn opt out if she was older, but she was only seven, and that the Holocaust was the stuff of nightmares even for adults, let alone children. Daria could go. Helen thought she was more emotionally mature than Quinn, despite the fact that Daria was only nineteen months older than her middle sister.
Rabbi Tallman introduced the speaker: Else Kaplan, a gray haired woman in her late sixties . Daria knew that almost all the Jews that had died in the Holocaust had been living in Europe and expected Mrs. Kaplan to have some sort of accent. Else Kaplan spoke like someone who'd been living in the US for a very long time. The audience sat respectfully quiet as she began her talk.
Else Kaplan had been born in Germany in 1928 as Else Hoffman. The Hoffmans had lived in Germany for centuries and had culturally assimilated. They thought of themselves as Germans, or they did until 1933, when the Nazis took power and began using the power of the state to persecure Jews. By 1938, Nazi persecution had become intolerable and the Hoffmans fled to the Netherlands, thinking that Dutch neutrality would keep them safe from Nazi Germany's anti-Semitic policies. Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman thought that even Holland wasn't safe enough; they'd tried to take their family to the Americas, but the US denied them permission, as did the Republic of Cuba, their second choice. They were still in Holland when the Nazis attacked Poland in September 1939.
"War broke out in 1939 and the Nazis overran the Netherlands less than a year later," said Mrs. Kaplan. "We spent three years in hiding in Holland, only to be betrayed and taken prisoners by the Nazis. We were then put on a train and sent to Dachau.
"My parents and I had heard about death camps and assumed that we'd probably die there. My mother, my sister, and I were separated from my father. The women from our train were sorted again and I was sent to the left while my mother and my sister were sent to the right. I never saw either of them again. I can only assume that they were murdered shortly after they arrived."
"I was not. The SS officer looking over the line of women and girls waiting to enter the camp pointed at me and I was taken aside. I was taken to a small room along with other young men and women and was told to sit on a bench. I sat there waiting with a crowd of bewildered, frightened woman and girls and waited for what happened next.
"After what seemed like forever, SS guards came in and we were ordered out of the room marched out to a parking lot. A couple of women protested and asked to be re-united with their families.. A guard drew his pistol and shot both of them. No one protested after that."
"From Dachau, we were put onto a bus and taken away. This was no ordinary bus. The windows were covered with black paint and the bus had wire mesh over the windows and barred doors inside so no one could escape. The paint not only prevented people from seeing in but prevented us from seeing out, so we had no idea as to where we would be taken. The bus drove for hours and eventually stopped. When it stopped, the door opened and we realized that we had arrived at another Nazi facility."
"This one was much nicer. It was set in the hills, a long distance from anyone, and had open meadows and a small wood not far away. It was much like a sanitarium, with plastered brick buildings, white-painted walls, with clean rooms and floors. The grounds were landscaped. We weren't beaten or tortured, at least if we complied. We were even fed, although not as well as the guards or staff."
"There were differences. The camp had fences and barbed wire, as well as armed guard and attack dogs. There was a cordoned area inside the fences and we were told that if we entered that cordon we would be shot dead. We then learned that it was a center for medical experiments. We were lined up in formation and were greeted by the head of the medical section, and also the head of the facility."
Daria sat in her seat, silent and horrified. She'd already seen a couple of pictures taken during the Holocaust, and despite the fact that the medical facility was much nicer than the pictures she'd seen from Dachau and other camps, this was still the stuff of nightmares.
"The head of the medical section was a Doctor Saunders. He was tall and dark-haired, with cold gray eyes. He said he was a doctor, although I never saw him examine or heal anyone. I suspected that he wasn't a real doctor, but some sort of, of quack. He would come in every now and then and look us over. He looked down on us prisoners as if we were vermin, less, even than chickens or goats. Sometimes he looked at the guards the same way. I still remember his gaze; it was cold, cold and indifferent as death."
"The strange thing about Doctor Saunders was that I don't think was German; he spoke with an English accent and he acted less like a German than an Englishman. He spoke German fluently enough, fluently enough to have the guards and workers obey him, but his accent was strange. I have no idea as to what the guards really thought of him, but when he gave orders, they obeyed just as if he'd been a German born in the Fatherland. "
"Doctor Saunders told us that this was a medical facility and that were there as test subjects. The experiments performed here would be for the common good. We were never told what sorts of medical experiments that Doctor Saunders and his people would perform on us. We were fed. Periodically a doctor or a couple of nurses would examine us to see if we remained healthy, but generally were left alone to wait. At night we were locked into our barracks and were told that we would be severely punished or even killed if we were found outside them after curfew."
"Every now and again, Doctor Saunders or his nurses would come around and perform examinations. He would then choose one or two of us for his medical experiments. Those of us selected for medical experiments were taken to a building at the far end of the facility. Nobody who ever went in there ever came back.
Daria sat quietly in her seat and listened. She felt a chill as Mrs. Kaplan continued her story. Mrs. Kaplan's story was scary. It was something she'd never read or heard before; a story that got scarier as it went along. She shivered as Mrs. Kaplan described how one by one, and occasionally two by two, the people already at the facility or the people who arrived with her disappeared, never to be seen again."
"Over time other people from other countries were brought to the facility," Mrs. Kaplan continued. "They, too, began to be selected and taken away to the buildings at the far end of the facility."
"Some people resisted. Several women said that they thought that what Doctor Saunders was doing was so horrible that they'd rather die than become experiments and committed suicide. Others attempted to starve themselves to death. Their efforts would last at most a week or two, but they'd then be taken aside by one of the nurses, then resumed eating again. When questioned about their wanting to starve themselves, they said that they now believed that Doctor Saunders cared for them and that they'd never kill themselves. I don't know what Doctor Saunders or the nurses did to those women, and I hope I never find out."
"The end of the facility came in early 1944 By then there were less than three dozen of us left. None of the women and girls who had been at the facility when we arrived were still alive. Greta and I were the only ones left from our transport. One night we heard the sounds of shouting, crashing buildings, loud explosions and occasional gunshots. My friend Greta thought it might be the Allies coming, although I knew they were still miles and miles away. I didn't think it was partisans; the facility was deep within Germany and the people in the area were loyal Nazis. I didn't know what happened that night, and I still don't know today."
"In the morning, when we were lined up in formation Doctor Saunders was not there, nor were any of his staff. Some of the guards were missing. Doctor Saunder's laboratory buildings were in ruins. The highest-ranking surviving guard was an Obersturmfuehrer Klein. He announced that since Doctor Saunders and the senior guards were missing, he was now in charge of the camp. We were sent back to our quarters and were locked in."
"A few hours later, we were again assembled into formation. Senior Lieutenant Klein had sent to the nearby village and brought back wheelbarrows, picks, and shovels. He then chose several of us to start clearing out the rubble. I was one of them. The only trace we ever found of Doctor Saunders were some burnt parchments with what looked like runes written on them, a couple of crumpled retorts, and what looked like kettles with legs on them. These frightened the guards even more than they frightened us; they burnt the parchments and told us to put the kettles and the retorts aside. After shoveling the rubble into wheelbarrows, we took it outside of the barbed wire and dumped it outside the barbed wire. The guards then took the kettles and the retorts down to the nearest village, where the Nazis were having a scrap drive for their war effort. We were then locked in our quarters at night just as we had been when Doctor Saunders was in charge."
"This state of affairs lasted for several days. The medical facility was in ruins, Doctor Saunders and his staff were missing, as were some of the senior guards, but Obersturmfuehrer Klein didn't want to appear as a scapegoat."
"One day it all ended. A couple of trucks arrived at the facility. SS guards jumped out of the truck and swarmed over the camp. We thought the end would come, that we would be taken to some nearby ditch, and then be shot."
"That didn't happen. Instead, the Nazis loaded us into a couple of the trucks and took us to a nearby town, one with a railway station where the Nazis had some sort of pen for prisoners. We were then sent on to a Nazi slave labor camp."
"When we arrived, I expected to die there. Instead we became slave laborers. I was sent to work at a textile factory not far from the French border, the other surviving women sent to farms and other places. I learned later than several of us survived the war."
"Over time, I grew hungry, dirty, and thin. I was lucky, I didn't starve to death or die of disease. As horrible as Doctor Saunder's facility was, it allowed me to remain healthy enough to survive the sickness and hunger that killed off so many other Nazi prisoners."
"At some camps, the guards massacred the slave laborers when the Allies approached. That didn't happen with us. Instead, the guards fled in the dark of night, leaving us to await the Allied armies."
Mrs. Kaplan then went on to describe her liberation, being sent to a refugee camp, and only slowly growing healthy enough to travel again. She then started looking for her family, but found no trace of them. They presumably had been murdered. She got a job with the US military government during the occupation. She fell in love with an American soldier named Irwin Kaplan, married him, then moved to the US.
The audience was in a somber mood as she finished her presentation and the applause was muted. Still, the people who'd come to hear her were still curious and wanted to know more. One of them asked her if she'd made any effort to track down Doctor Saunders and bring him to justice. Mrs. Kaplan then said that she reported him to the Allied authorities and tried on her own to see what happened to him and his staff.
"I had no luck," she said. "I never found out. All of the records of that medical facility had been destroyed. Nobody ever found Doctor Saunders. A couple of the guards and clerks were found, but they remembered nothing."
Rabbi Tallman ended the evening with a prayer, and everybody began to go home. Daria went up to Mrs. Kaplan and thanked her for telling her story. She then asked if anyone had ever found Doctor Saunders.
"No," said Mrs. Kaplan. "He might still be out there somewhere. But many of us, the people who were in the camps, the people who survived, even the guards, may God strike them down, are dying off. I think he's dead, but if you ever find out that he's still alive, let me know."
"Yes, ma'am," said Daria.
Daria and Jake got into Jake's truck after the talk. Jake was shaken, and he knew that underneath Daria's calm façade, she was shaken, too. He put his arm around her shoulder and hugged her close.
"I love you, Smidget," he said.
