A Delayed Life Read online

  In the following days, I was very nervous. I was afraid the man would come to our camp and demand payment for his generosity. It was common in the world of Auschwitz to buy the favor of a woman for bread or a few cigarettes. In my case however, the egg remained a free gift.

  I have never forgotten that in Polish an egg is called jajko.

  * * *

  We were expecting to be sent to the gas chambers in June, six months after our arrival in Auschwitz. Our names were marked 6 SB. That meant Sonderbehandlung after six months: “special treatment,” a euphemism for death by gas.

  But in May the Germans changed their plan. They decided it would be cheaper and more profitable if the prisoners were sent to work in Germany, where they would ultimately die from hunger and exhaustion. Dr. Mengele had to decide which of the prisoners seemed still able to do physical work.

  The selections were held in the Kinderblock, which was vacated for the purpose. Only persons aged sixteen to forty were allowed to undergo the selection, but since no one had any documents, a few managed to cheat. With exposed upper bodies, we had to line up single file along the horizontal chimney, step forward, and say just three words: our number, age, and profession, and Dr. Mengele pointed his finger either left or right.

  Most women named professions that they believed would be needed in Germany, such as gardener, cook, or nurse. When my turn came, I said three things: “73305, sixteen, painter.” In fact, I was just fifteen.

  Instead of pointing his finger, Mengele halted and asked, “Portrait painter or housepainter?”

  “Portrait painter.”

  Mengele: “Could you paint my portrait?”

  My heart stopped, but I managed to answer, “Jawohl.” Yes.

  He smiled with one corner of his mouth and pointed to the group of younger and stronger-looking women.

  Mother’s turn came a few women later. Alas, she was sent to the other group!

  She couldn’t bear to be separated from me, even though we didn’t know for certain which group had the better chance of survival. Imperceptibly she sneaked back to the end of the line, chose two thin elderly women, and stood between them. Mengele never noticed, of course—he didn’t look at the faces—and pointed her to my group.

  My mother, Liesl, and I were among those destined to live. Some fifteen hundred women were sent from Auschwitz to work in Hamburg, Christianstadt, and Stutthof. About seven thousand people, the old, the weak, and all the children who remained, were murdered in July 1944 in the gas chambers.

  The women who were selected for work were kept for a few days in the horrible Frauenlager. Before departure we stood in a queue on the platform to have our hair cut. Two prisoners from the Frauenlager in striped uniforms were performing that chore, while each of us tried to postpone the dreaded ordeal for as long as possible. I sneaked out and rushed to the end of the line several times to avoid the scissors. Suddenly the command was given: “All aboard!” The train was ready to go.

  It was my good fortune, together with a few others, to be left with my hair intact. We received a ration of bread before being shoved into the cattle wagons and dispatched to an unknown destination.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Hamburg

  The ride from Auschwitz to Hamburg lasted several days. The conditions in the boxcars were somewhat better than on our journey from Terezín to Auschwitz. This time there was room enough to sit, even lie down and stretch our legs; the floor was covered with fresh straw; and, most important, the pail that served as our latrine could be emptied during stops.

  Whenever the train halted, the girls near the narrow window slit tried to make out the name of the station, to guess where we were going. But although we understood that we were traveling across Germany, none of the place names were familiar, and so we had no idea what our destination might be. What raised our spirits, however, was the fact that we had received food for the journey. The reasoning was that if the Germans wanted to kill us, it would have been simpler to put us into the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

  When the sliding doors of the boxcars were opened, a most surprising and wondrous sight met our eyes. There was a long row of red-brick warehouses in front of us, and in the windows dozens of young, healthy-looking, dark-haired men peered out eagerly, to see what the train had brought. When they saw us women, they started smiling and waving, calling “bella signorina,” shouting compliments and marriage propositions in Italian. Immediately there was a sense of relief, of hope for some better conditions under which we could survive the imprisonment and the war. Even the most skeptical and cautious among our women agreed that this didn’t seem like a place where they wanted to exterminate us.

  When we got off the train, sentries herded us toward one of the small entrances, making us form the eternal Fünferreihen—columns of five in a row. The guards who had accompanied our train handed us over to a group of elderly men in uniform—not the SS, but we did not know who they were. Later we learned that they were customs clerks who had been recalled from retirement to serve as prison guards, because all the able-bodied men were in the Wehrmacht. They did not get the indoctrination like the SS; therefore, on the whole, they were not sadistic. They treated us rather leniently, but not in front of their commander, whom they feared because he was cruel and aggressive.

  The warehouse buildings were in Freihafen, a section of Hamburg. They formed a row with several entrances—actually a whole street, called Dessauer Ufer. But the street with the rail for the train was actually the back of the warehouses; the front faced the river Elbe and was partly immersed in the water. The narrow stairs to the first floor led into a huge, cavernous hall, with rows upon rows of two-tiered wooden bunks, each with a straw mattress and a blanket.

  But before ascending, at the foot of the stairs there was the distribution of a most sumptuous meal, such as we hadn’t eaten since our deportation from home. To this day I remember the taste of the fried fish and boiled potatoes, which we got on a plate!

  Unfortunately, this wasn’t a foretaste of what the future held in store for us; it was just a one-time bonus, given to us by some error. Starting the next day, our meals consisted of soup, as they had in Auschwitz. At first, however, the soup was quite satisfying, with pieces of vegetables, potatoes, or beans, but in the following weeks it became thinner and more watery, as the raw materials were stolen by the camp commander and his helpers.

  Within a short time new clothes arrived. I mean really new. They were overalls that looked quite smart and had the smell of jute sacks, being made of some paperlike fiber. It was still summer—July—so we didn’t mind the thinness. I was happy to be wearing a new item and not something that had belonged to some unknown person before. Moreover, each of us got an identical light-blue handkerchief—though for wiping one’s nose, it was too nonabsorbing, and it was too small to be tied like a head scarf. But with feminine ingenuity, everyone managed to make some decorative use of it.

  One of our tasks in Freihafen consisted of clearing rubble and debris after the air raids. There were huge oil refineries along the river that were the main target of the Allies’ bombs. They sought to destroy the German fuel reservoirs. We also had to fill the craters made by the bombs. Sometimes we came across one that lay in the ground, unexploded. The Germans exerted great efforts to repair the damage as quickly as possible.

  When we arrived at the work site, groups of ten, fifteen, twenty, each with two or three sentries, or Posten as they were called in German, were directed inside the refinery compound. The refineries had names such as Rhenania-Ossag and Eurotank. A Vorarbeiter (foreman) handed us shovels and pickaxes and showed us what to do. Most of the ground on which we stood was soaked with spilled fuel; some formed large puddles of sticky goo, which exuded a strong smell of tar. To this day when I catch a whiff of tar, at a road or roofing repair, the smell immediately brings up the oppressive memories.

  We had to work without pausing, and when one of us straightened her back for a moment, the Posten would shout, �
�Los, los, arbeiten, sneller, sneller!”1 The only respite was when we had to austreten, usually behind a pile of debris, but never far, always under the watchful eye of the guard. He himself was from time to time replaced by another, since other groups were working nearby and the guards kept contact with one another. At noon we could stop and receive our soup, which arrived in a barrel. We ate sitting on a stone or squatting, holding the tin bowls on our knees with the spoon that each of us kept tucked under a makeshift belt. In some places the conditions were better, and whoever was lucky enough to be assigned there was the subject of our envy. But since the teams were chosen randomly, being counted off from the column every morning, everyone hoped to be fortunate next time. In those more humane workplaces, we women were allowed to get our soup in the workers’ canteen, after the regular workers finished their meal. We sat on benches at proper tables, while the kitchen staff ogled us from a distance.

  A few times, I was one of the fortunate ones. I noticed a tall blond boy, who idled so as to be among the last to leave the canteen and pass near me. He looked at me, and our eyes met. Later he also strolled by close to where I was shoveling sand into a bomb crater. At last he had the courage to leave something for me, motioning with his head discreetly so that our Posten wouldn’t notice. The next girl who went austreten picked it up and brought it to me. It contained his lunch and a small gift, a fake silver ring. I hung it on my neck together with the metal tag with my number, which we all had to wear.

  Both the tag and the ring were still on my neck when I returned to Prague. I have forgotten the name of the boy long ago, or perhaps I never knew it, but I keep his ring as a token, a reminder that there were also decent Germans.

  Among the elderly customs officers was Robert, who was younger than the others. He actually took the youngest girls under his protection and tried to steer us to easier jobs. His unsuitable behavior must have been noticed by the head of the guards, Spiess, because he was soon sent away and the other guards were ordered to be more severe. Spiess, a brawny, large man, was much feared. He always held a short rubber hose, which he let fly frequently, whether it was to make us form the Fünferreihen faster or to get us out of our bunks, not to mention the twenty or twenty-five lashes meted out as punishment to some poor wretch for any transgression. (I am not sure whether Spiess was his name or a word denoting commander or some rank.)

  Another of the sentries was a rather senile old man, who had the puerile habit of barging into the latrine (in some places there was a kind of field latrine) on the pretext that we stayed there too long. No one was afraid of him, and we would shove him out, where he went around the corner to peep at us through the slits in the planks, to watch us at our intimate activities. We mocked him, and he would laugh along with us.

  It was a part of the Germans’ policy not to let the prisoners get used to their guards. Therefore every few months, the whole squad was replaced, and each new contingent was more abusive and merciless.

  It was July 12, a few days after our arrival in Freihafen. I was standing on the deck of the boat, which ferried us to our workplace, crying bitterly.

  One of the guards noticed and asked me, “What happened?”

  “It’s my birthday today,” I said.

  He put his hand in his pocket, handed me a candy wrapped in red paper, and quickly turned away so that no one should notice.

  I remember also another very unusual event from the first weeks in Freihafen.

  We were a group of six or seven girls aged fifteen and sixteen, with Margit; the inseparable friends Dáša and Danka; a Viennese girl by the name of Fini, only fourteen, the youngest in the camp; and one or two others. Thanks to the Posten, Robert, we were allocated that day to the boiler building of one of the refineries. It was a tall, narrow structure, built around the huge three-story-high boiler. Our work was easy, just sweeping the floor, and the Meister, the boiler man, a smallish man of medium age, didn’t press us hard. That day my mother was with us; she had just stood in a row with us girls when we were counted off.

  During the noon break, the boiler man got into conversation with Mother. That was not so simple; his German was the Hamburg dialect, which to our ears sounded like a foreign language. He asked where we came from, for how long we were imprisoned and for what transgression did we have to do slave labor. Many German civilians who saw a gang of prisoner women assumed they must be criminals.2 My mother answered all his questions, and he became more interested and involved. When my mother mentioned our family name, the man was flabbergasted.

  Dita Polach and Margit Barnai, 1945

  “Are you telling me that you are related to Professor Johann Polach, the well-known Social Democratic Party leader?”

  When Mother told him that she was his daughter-in-law, the man was beside himself with concern and pity. It emerged that he himself was a social democrat, a well-read and informed man. Our sentry was sitting in a corner, eating his lunch and not paying attention. Otherwise I am sure such a conversation could never have taken place, since, in the Nazi regime, to be a leftist meant the concentration camp.

  The next day he brought us gifts, things he had taken from his own family, a sweater for each of us, warm socks and some food. We could wear the sweaters only under our overalls of course, so they wouldn’t be noticed. It raised our spirits tremendously. Not so much the gifts as the fact that in his eyes we were now individuals with names and identities. My mother considered the possibility of asking him to send a letter to Prague on our behalf, telling Aunt Manya where we were and perhaps to receive a food parcel. But while she was hesitating, not wanting the man to get into trouble, we were assigned to another workplace, and we never saw him again. We were constantly being rotated from one site to another, following the same policy as with our guards. They also never told us the truth about anything, and we learned always to disbelieve any information they gave us.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Air Raids

  There were air raids both at night and during the day. If the alarm sounded during the day, important targets such as factories or refineries were concealed by an ingenious method. Around these sites were placed huge drums, which created a smoke-like fog, concealing entire factory plants in an impenetrable white cloud. This was called Vernebelung (Nebel in German is fog).

  One late afternoon we were shuffling in our wooden clogs from the Eurotank refinery back to the camp when the sirens started wailing. The fog machines immediately started spouting the white cloud, but we were already some distance from the factory, and there was no shelter anywhere near. The sentries knew that a column of people on a road constituted a target for the bombers, and they rushed us to a little wood nearby, shouting, “Sneller, sneller!”

  We had barely reached the wood when the whine of an approaching plane was heard. It was descending rapidly, having been hit by flak, and was dropping its load of bombs in its path. We had scattered under the trees, several women under each tree, seeking protection. We heard the thud of the impacts, the earth trembling beneath us. Nearer and nearer it came, and then a bomb hit the ground a short distance away on my left. The explosion threw up a mass of soil, which fell in a heap over us. It was fortunate that it was just loose soil and no rocks. We were able to crawl out from under it and shake the earth from our hair, eyes, and nostrils. We looked at one another, and to our relief no one was hurt.

  A few minutes later, however, one of the guards walked toward us, and in his arms was a girl. He had found her wounded under a tree deeper in the wood. Her clothes were torn and hung in strips. But one of the strips was not cloth; it was her leg dangling from her knee by a piece of skin. Her head lolled backward, and terrible groans came out of her throat. The guard, visibly shaken, put her carefully on the ground nearby and went off to search for other victims.

  The dying girl trembled, and her arms twitched, convulsing upward and sideways. She was all bloody but apparently unconscious. I cried, “We must help her, bandage the wound, stop the bleeding!” But the women aroun
d me shook their heads and said, “She can’t be helped any longer.”

  I don’t remember her name; I did not really know her. We were five hundred women and had not been together long enough to know one another. I knew nothing about her, how old she was, where she came from, who were her friends, what were her hopes.

  There were other casualties, other losses. But it is she, the nameless victim, who visits me all these years in my bad dreams.

  * * *

  The nights were the worst. Every night, almost without exception, there were two or three Fliegerangriffe, air raids. The first wave of the British Allied bombers would come after midnight, an hour or two later there was a second wave, and sometimes, just before dawn, there was even a third one.

  The sirens started howling and woke us from our sleep, and the next moment the camp commander, Spiess, burst into the hall, whacking his short rubber hose on the bunks, shouting, “Sweinehunde aufstehen.” The sentries themselves wanted to go into the shelter, and they yelled, “Raus, raus, sneller, sneller!” No lights were allowed, and we stumbled blindly down the narrow stairs. It was not a proper shelter, and neither was it a cellar. Beneath the building was the earthen bank of the river, sloping toward the water. Wide arches at the base of the warehouse allowed access for boats to load and unload cargo. But now, in the war, there were no cargo ships. As the waters rose with the tide, there was progressively less dry ground to sit on, and sometimes we were forced to squeeze, hunched, at the very top, right under the ceiling. When the tide was low, we could look out through the arches and see the streaks of light that illuminated the sky, the so-called Christmas trees, which the bomber planes dropped to pinpoint their targets. The impact of the many bombs made the earth tremble. First you heard the screeching whine of the falling bomb, then a moment’s silence, then came the roar of the explosion accompanied by the tremor, and if the impact was nearby, it was followed by the crash of falling debris. The sentries, who had longer experience of the raids on Hamburg, told us, “When you hear the whistle of the bomb, that’s all right. It’s the one overhead, the one that’s going to hit you, that you cannot hear.”