“I’m here to find an SS officer,” I told the uniformed guard outside the Berlin Archives. “He saved my mother,” I added in German.
The guard handed me a visitor pass and a white plastic bag emblazoned with the German coat of arms – a black eagle with red talons – and directed me to a red brick building across a parade ground where thousands of SS officers once lined up.
I registered inside. I explained to a librarian that I knew the officer was of Ukrainian background, but I did not know his name. I had already contacted archives in Poland, the U.S. and other parts of Germany in hopes of tracking down this man.
Most of what I knew about the SS officer came from my grandmother, who, for much of her life, kept what happened to her during World War II hidden.
I first asked about the blue-green numbers on her arm when I was five, while watching her chop beets and onions for a soup.
“It’s our phone number,” she said. “So I won’t forget it.”
My grandmother continued to deflect my questions until she was in her 80s, when she finally let me interview her. But the gaps in her story alarmed me almost as much as her graphic descriptions, and after she died, I...
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