Page 149 of The German Mother

Later that evening, after their meal of ham and turkey, washed down by American wine, they all gathered in the sitting room. While the children decided what games to play, Peter sat down next to Minki on the sofa. ‘It’s been a wonderful day. I’m so happy to see you,’ he whispered.

‘And I you, Peter. Not least, because… if it wasn’t for you, I might not have found my child.’

‘Well it was Leila who actually found her, but eventually I guess I would have discovered that Irma was Clara.’

‘Why don’t we do the washing-up?’ Minki suggested. ‘Our housekeeper has taken Christmas off, so there’s no one to do it but me.’

‘Sure,’ said Peter, ‘happy to help.’

Leila looked over as the pair stood up to leave the room.

‘Peter and I are just going to tidy up,’ said Minki. ‘You stay here in the warm, and keep my father company.’

In the kitchen, the plates were piled high on the draining board.

‘I’ll wash, and you dry,’ said Minki. ‘Here’s a towel.’

They chatted easily. The twenty-year gap between their first love and now seemed to disappear.

‘I don’t want to dwell on the past,’ Minki ventured at one point, ‘but there are one or two things I still don’t understand about what Clara went through and how she survived.’

‘Go on,’ said Peter.

‘Well, for a start – why wasn’t she killed with the others?’

‘I think perhaps it was luck. She arrived after they had stopped exterminating people on arrival. Then I gather that a member of staff chose to keep her alive – either to protect her or because she was more useful as a slave.’

Minki shuddered slightly. ‘I hate that word…slave.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Peter, putting his arm round her. ‘That was clumsy. Forgive me.’

‘What I still can’t work out,’ she went on, ‘is that when I went to Hadamar they insisted she was dead. Why not admit she was alive and let me take her, there and then?’

‘There could be many reasons. But perhaps they were scared of recriminations – you had mentioned you were a friend of Goebbels’, after all. What you have to remember is that these people had a sense of their own omnipotence. No one ever questioned them. They had free rein to do what they liked.’

‘It just makes me so angry to think of all the years she was trapped there – years of unimaginable suffering and loneliness – years she should have spent at home with us.’ She looked up into Peter’s eyes. ‘I’ll never forgive myself. I should have searched that place from top to bottom. Instead of which, I believed them when they said she was dead. I was completely taken in. At the most important time in my life, when I should have used all my critical faculties, I behaved like a stupid, foolish woman.’

Peter reached out to her and she fell, sobbing, into his arms. ‘No one could ever describe you as either stupid or foolish, Minki darling.’ He held her close and kissed her hair. ‘Don’t punish yourself. This wasn’t your fault. Hundreds, thousands of children were in the same position. Many parents came looking for their kids and were sent away empty-handed. Most of their children were murdered within moments of arriving. Clara, if you like, had a lucky break. She survived. I know you can’t see it like that yet, but that’s how you have to think of it. And don’t forget – you were up against a powerful organisation which held all the cards.’

‘I suppose so.’ She took a handkerchief from her sleeve, blew her nose and wiped her eyes.

‘I’m curious about something,’ said Peter, ‘and please tell me to mind my own business if it upsets you…but did you think of checking to see who was buried in the coffin – the coffin they sent to you?’

Minki nodded. ‘Oh yes. A few days after Clara had been returned, and I had finally come down from my sense of elation, it suddenly struck me that we had buried someone else’s relative. That another family were suffering as we had – not knowing what had happened to a person they loved.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I had the coffin exhumed, of course.’

‘And?’

‘My father was very upset about it – he thought it was sacrilegious. But I had to do it…I had to know who was in there. I’ll never forget that day…the lid was finally heaved off, and I was braced…you know…for a terrible stench, or at least a poor shrivelled body. But there was nothing – it was just full of earth.’

‘That’s unbelievable. They obviously felt they had to send you something. But what a risk they took. I mean, what if you’d opened the coffin sooner, the whole scandal might have come out. I suppose it shows how invincible they felt.’

‘It was a relief in some ways, of course. But then I thought of all the other families who had lost someone at Hadamar, and never found out what had happened. They all deserve justice, Peter.’

‘I agree. I’m doing my best to give that justice to everyone who was killed there. We’re digging up every grave, but it’s a massive, painstaking task.’