The Room on Rue Amélie(87)

There were four women who had babies with them and had been allowed to remain at Fresnes, but still, Ruby hesitated to give up her secret. She didn’t know what the other women had been accused of, but she suspected their alleged transgressions were more minor than hers, for the guards left them alone.

In mid-June, she was moved to the prison at Romainville, on the edge of Paris, which sent chills down her spine. She knew that this was the place where prisoners were taken before being deported to Germany. On the way into the prison, she had to sit down with one of the commanders, a hulking Nazi soldier who looked blank and unsympathetic as he quickly skimmed her file.

“I’m American,” she said, trying to sound confident. “You can’t send me east. I have rights.”

He merely laughed and said, “None of you have rights. Haven’t you worked that out by now?”

For a week and a half, she languished in a cell with nine other women, all of whom were just as worried as she was about what was coming next. Romainville should have seemed a pleasure after Fresnes—after all, they were allowed to socialize with each other, and their cells even had windows, which looked out on the prison yard—but the 4:00 A.M. roll call each day ruined any chance Ruby had at happiness. Every morning, the prisoners were marched into the prison yard, and thirty or forty names were read out. These women were on the list to be deported east, and most of them stepped forward with heads held high. Some shouted “Vive la France!” and others simply smiled bravely and waved good-bye. All of them seemed to be facing the future with courage. Ruby didn’t know how they did it.

And then, on June 25, her name was called. She didn’t dare look back at the others, for fear of crying. She felt so much weaker than they were; she wanted to scream and rage and cry out that this wasn’t fair, that this was France, that the Germans had no right to take her away. But there would be no point in any of that, and she knew it. She was on her own.

Ruby was loaded onto a bus full of other women, all of whom were silent as they made their way through the familiar streets of Paris. Ruby stared out the window and searched the faces of passersby, hoping against hope to see Charlotte or Lucien or even Monsieur Savatier, but of course it was only a sea of strangers, many of them staring with detachment as if the same couldn’t possibly happen to them.

At the Gare de Pantin, on the northeast edge of the city, the SS shoved the women into trains, sixty to a car. There was straw on the floors and very little ventilation from the tiny slit windows above. There was an air of fear as they pulled out of the station, and soon that fear was tinged with the pungent scent of urine from the overflowing tin toilet in the corner.

For the next few days, the train stopped frequently, sometimes for hours at a time, as it chugged slowly east. Twice a day, the prisoners were let out briefly, with armed guards standing by, to relieve themselves in fields. A few tried to flee, but they were shot dead on the spot. Ruby simply tried to blend in with the others, hiding her belly as the transport drew closer to the German border. There were rumors that children and pregnant women were being shot upon arrival at the concentration camps. She didn’t know if this was true, but she couldn’t risk anyone noticing her condition. As long as she was still in France, as long as she could hear bombs dropping in the distance, Ruby held on to the hope that they could be rescued.

Then, on June 30, her mother’s birthday, the train passed through the eastern French city of Nancy and finally, inevitably, into Germany. Once the French border had disappeared behind them, Ruby’s heart sank. They were in Hitler’s land now. And as they rolled farther into Nazi territory, Ruby felt a heavy sense of certainty. There would be no reprieve. She had to do all she could to protect herself and her child until the Allies came.



RAVENSBRüCK—THE CAMP WHERE RUBY AND the other prisoners were taken—was hot. Blisteringly hot. On the day of their arrival, Ruby and the other women were marched through a town called Fürstenberg, some fifty miles north of Berlin, up and down dusty hills and winding roads until they finally reached the enormous green gates of an expansive prison camp. Barracks seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see, and the women who were already imprisoned there walked back and forth, pushing carts and pulling wagons with hollow eyes, sunken cheeks, and emaciated limbs. It was like something out of a Bela Lugosi horror movie, and Ruby had to pinch herself as a reminder that in fact this was real life. Her life. Her stomach lurched, and she had to bite her tongue to avoid vomiting in the dirt.

Ruby was horrified when the arriving prisoners were ordered into a huge building and told to undress. What if someone noticed her belly? But a heavy woman who had been near her on the train moved toward her as they entered the building and took her arm. “You are pregnant?” the woman whispered in French.

Ruby hesitated. “Is it obvious?” Tears clouded her vision. Had she been fooling herself to think she could get away with concealing it?

“Stand behind me,” the woman said firmly. “We will not let them see. We cannot let them see.”

“Thank you,” Ruby whispered. She held her breath as she cowered, naked and terrified, behind the woman.

“I have two daughters of my own,” the woman said softly as they inched forward. “They are around your age. I pray every day for their survival; as a mother, it is the most important thing in the world, is it not?”

“Yes,” Ruby managed. “Yes, it is.”