Mein kleiner Sabine-liebling,
I learned with great joy this afternoon that the expected conference came to a decision in your favor and that you all will get home via the Swedish Red Cross. For me this means that today is a day of greater happiness than I have experienced in the camp or indeed at all over the last eleven years. My angel Sabine is going home and although I deplore the fact, I in no way regret wishing you from the bottom of my heart all the very best for your journey and your arrival in your homeland.
I ask for your forgiveness therefore if you, poor little Sabine, were hungry and the stupid big boy failed at the decisive moment to provide you with anything to eat. I will do my best to deliver something tasty and for the last time look into your lovely eyes.
Gebele was struggling with the idea of losing Sabine so shortly after he had fallen in love with her. He told her he had never loved anyone like he loved her. As soon as possible after the war, he wanted to visit her in Holland and get married. Then he would take mother and daughter to a home of their own. If necessary, he would renounce his nationality and become a Dutch national. He also suggested that, as soon as she was home, she should check the newspapers on the first, tenth and twentieth of the month. He planned to set up a public search message so that they could quickly reestablish contact and “she will have her big boy with her soon enough.” Sabine could count on him to sort out his affairs at home after the end of the war, and within a month, “you will hear from me.”
And now, my Seelchen, please greet your dear mum (although she does not know me), from the bottom of my heart. It will be a great joy for me to be allowed to get to know her and value her and, perhaps, (somewhat too bold and premature) also be allowed to greet her as “Mams.”
It seems Gebele had lost all sense of reality by now. He did not seem to realize that Moeder Bien most likely would not have wanted to meet him at all.
He also informed Sabine that her plaster cast would be removed the next day and that perhaps there would be an opportunity to meet and say a few important words.
He admitted to being so overjoyed that he was struggling to be coherent in this letter and also asked for a small memento of her. A lock of hair, perhaps?
“Concerning your request about your friend from Ravensbrück, I will keep you informed via a messenger.” This referred to Hetty. Sabine must have asked Gebele to put her on the same transport list.
Gebele had managed not only to get Dr. Steijns away from the Wiener Graben, but also to get his name on the evacuation list, while daily hundreds were still being murdered. Dr. Steijns would be put on either her transport or the second one, which would leave for Switzerland on April 15. How Gebele managed this feat is difficult to understand. He was a prisoner himself, although he had an official job and therefore some influence. But did he falsify papers or manage to persuade his superiors, or was some bribery involved?
Dr. Steijns’s health, once removed from the Totenlager and no longer having to work, started to improve slowly under the care of another doctor.
Gebele had taken Dr. Steijns into his confidence about his love for Sabine and even let him read her letters. He apologized, but assured her that the doctor enjoyed their love for each other.
Gebele and Sabine had not seen each other for a few days, but via a third person, Gebele had found out exactly where Sabine’s bed was located. Gebele assured her he would recognize his liebe Sabine Sonnenschein immediately among all the other women.
According to Gebele, his contact with Sabine made him the envy of his superiors. They thought he would have a happy future with her once they were married. “Two honest hearts have found each other,” they said.
By now the situation in the camp was lawless and dangerous, and Gebele warned her that she had to be careful with whom she spent time, especially Germans. There were spies everywhere among the prisoners. He warned her to think about their future.
Some more teasing lines followed, which again suggest an implied threat rather than a joke:
As regards to you: don’t think that you can avoid the punishment I have condemned you to. No, no! Even though you assume I will not kiss you in the presence of the other women, I cannot promise that. You are by now so in arrears of punishments, that I cannot wait any longer. Just you wait, mein liebling...
Dr. Steijns also sent her a letter on that same day. It is an emotional letter in pencil, thanking Sabine for saving his life.
Friday
Dear friend!
Thanks to your kind heart, which did not forget what Dr. S. did for his patients in Vught, and through the influence and power of Mr. Gebele, I was suddenly transferred yesterday from block 4, where I was suffering a very high temperature for the last week (no known cause), to the Haftlings Revier [prisoners’ hospital]. The difference is as night and day. My hope for the future is restored. I am confident I will see my wife and child again and resume my work. I cannot express my feelings enough. Many, many thanks! For the time being I am in room 19, but Mr. G has promised me that from Monday I will be in room 13. Lovely and quiet.
I am ashamed when I think of the conditions you poor women suffer. Mr. G showed me your description of them. How can you survive this? I long for spring, the future, so strongly it is nearly unbearable. I dream of the blossom, the beautiful fields, blue water...
My poor wife who has worked her fingers to the bone in a far too busy practice. And Niekie, my little daughter, who really needs the support of her father. Let us hope and pray that by summer we will be in Holland again and that the world will be free of this inhuman slaughter...
Now the man who was still so young and energetic in Vught has shrunk to a poor old Muselmann, who is ashamed to be seen. [The word Muselmann was Jewish slang used in the camps to refer to inmates who were near death from starvation, exhaustion and despair. A person who had reached this stage had little if any chance of survival.]
I hope when we meet on Monday, that you will have read this and take pity on a once so vain man, whose own wife said that he was the most arrogant man in Utrecht.
You of course have not changed. You were always courageous and tremendously optimistic, but for you too, without doubt, the suffering of others will be the heaviest. What happened in the lager down below, I would not have survived much longer...
Let’s hope that we will both be healthy when we make the return to our lovely kind country together, where you will meet the kindest woman in Utrecht (my wife) and who will receive you like no other has ever been received.
I do not ask you to write to me in return, because I realize this would be difficult for you, but may I write to you again?
Steijns
He later sent her a short note to impress on her to exercise her foot, in view of the expected evacuation.
Dear Sabine,
From your old doctor some good advice: exercise, exercise. Think of all the possibilities. It will be painful, very painful to begin with, but every day is progress and your general state of health is now good enough to be prepared for anything that may happen. Remember and follow my advice, like in the past. Do you promise, my girl?
Bye, your Steijns
Gebele also encouraged Sabine to eat well and exercise her ankle. It seems she was both physically and mentally in a bad place at this stage, still very ill and no doubt feeling very depressed. Perhaps she was not helped by the obsessive and insistent letters from Gebele. Whereas he saw her as a symbol of hope, she perhaps felt despair when seeing him. The end of the war was so near—Sabine knew that too—but every day waiting must have seemed endless.
Gebele, however, was still preoccupied with her well-being, as is obvious from a note he sent her with a parcel of food: semolina, sugar, noodles, sausage, dried onion, margarine, oats, spices and biscuits. For the next day he promised milk, pudding, eggs, flour and raspberry juice, enclosing a note: “I wish you a good appetite. Your Franz.”