A Delayed Life Read online

  But the highlight of the evening was Lilly. Lilly belted out “The Donkey Serenade” (by the Czech composer Rudolf Friml for a film with Allan Jones and Jeanette MacDonald) in her deep, strong voice, wearing the brim of an old hat with scraggly strands of straw hanging over her face. It was wonderful! We didn’t stop clapping until she sang it once more. All this, of course, without musical accompaniment, as there were no instruments in the camp.

  We returned to our rooms after midnight. It was a freezing night with the clear sky full of stars. The windowpanes were covered with pretty patterns made by the frost. I was suddenly overcome by a strong conviction that this year—1945—would be the last of our imprisonment. I felt certain that the coming year would bring the end of the war and the end of our suffering.

  Indeed it was the last year of the war, but until our liberation, we had to live through more horrors, worse than all that had already happened to us.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Tiefstack

  In the early spring of 1945, they moved us again to another camp in Tiefstack, a suburb of the city of Hamburg. The camp was located in the compound of a cinder-block factory, where the majority of us worked. We found that the name Tiefstack was quite apt, given our situation: tief means “deep” in German, and stack sounds like the English stuck, and we were truly stuck deep.

  For a time I worked in the factory, actually producing the blocks. This is done as follows: A mixture of wet cement with gravel is poured into a wooden mold with detachable sides and pressed down with force. The heavy mold is then carried out to dry in the yard. In a day or two the blocks are dry. The molds are removed to be reused, and the blocks are stacked into huge cubes, about two meters high. The yard becomes a veritable maze until trucks haul them away. The work was hard and dirty, but the stacking was done by male workers.

  Some women were sent to various other places, mainly to clear the debris of the bombed houses that blocked the streets. Sometimes I too worked outside.

  I remember the bleak gray houses, the empty streets with the bomb craters and no greenery. There was also a high-rise air-raid shelter. Once or twice we were taken into this huge, windowless concrete building during an air raid. They herded us to the top floor, the least safe one, while the civil population used the floors below. Suddenly there was the thud of a bomb landing on top of the shelter. Fortunately, it did not penetrate the flat roof, but the entire building shook like a tree swaying in the wind. Our heroic SS guards had stayed downstairs, of course. They knew there was no way we could have escaped. After the all-clear was sounded, the civilians dispersed, and at last we too were allowed to descend.

  On a certain day, our column of female prisoners was marching, or rather dragging our feet, back to the camp toward evening. As we were walking along a gray wall, which surrounded a huge gasworks, we saw one of our SS guards coming toward us on a bicycle. He had a bloodstained white bandage around his head. He came to tell our guards that the camp had suffered a few direct hits and there were casualties. We were gripped by great anguish; each of us had a friend or sister who worked on another team, and as it was the hour of our return from the various workplaces, they might be among the victims.

  The rest of the way we ran as fast as we could in our clogs, whipped up by our fear. In the camp we found utter chaos and pandemonium. Two of the three wooden barracks had collapsed and turned into heaps of beams, planks, and roof tiles sticking out haphazardly. The women rushed around, screaming and calling the names of their friends. It was getting dark, which made the search even more difficult.

  “Mama, Mama,” I cried, pleading with anyone I saw, “Have you seen my mother?”

  I dashed to the site where our hut had stood. Several women were trying to get under the collapsed woodwork, searching for trapped friends.

  “Your mother is inside.… She is all right,” one of them told me.

  Relieved but not yet quite sure, until I had seen her with my own eyes, I too crawled under the beams. There she was, my mother, on the spot where our bunks had stood, great disappointment showing on her face. She had been looking for the bread we had hidden under her mattress, but it was already gone. Someone quicker had preceded her.

  Saving bread was a constant struggle. We were permanently hungry, in fact starving. The rations were much too small to fill our stomachs. Yet we wanted to have some bread reserved for an emergency. The system was this: When you got your ration, you left a thin slice for the next day. On the morrow, you ate yesterday’s slice and saved a thicker piece. And the next day, again. On the day of the bombing, we had already saved half a loaf. It required enormous self-denial to maintain this regime, and now it had all been in vain.

  * * *

  One of the destroyed barracks was the sick ward, and there were casualties among the patients; even our doctor was injured. Dr. Goldová was one of us but had been allowed to care for the sick. Of course, she enjoyed a privileged status since the guards also made use of her services. She and a few others were sent to a regular hospital in Hamburg. I heard later that she recovered.

  Among the victims of the bombing was one of our guards. His body lay for several hours near the entrance of the last remaining barracks, with his fat belly sticking upward and his rifle beside him. We were obliged to step over him going in and out, which I found both disturbing but also somehow exhilarating.6The day after the raid, no one went to work. It was necessary to find alternative accommodation for the women. One hall of the factory was turned into a sleeping quarter; we carried planks and put them on blocks and spread some straw mattresses over them. In the single remaining barrack more women had to squeeze in.

  While Margit and I were rummaging among the ruins, collecting material for the makeshift beds, she suddenly stopped and stared at the ground. There were three packets of cigarettes half buried in the sand. Since we were on the site of the former sick ward, we concluded they must have belonged to Dr. Goldová. Only she could have owned such a treasure. This was like a miracle. Three packets, that was sixty cigarettes!

  After bread, cigarettes were the most important items in the world of the camps. They actually served as currency. Even among the civilian population of war-torn Europe, cigarettes could buy almost everything. In the camp, the lucky ones who had access to food were always eager to exchange bread or soup for cigarettes. You could approach any Kapo or Blockältester and make a deal. A double ration of soup for one cigarette was the norm, but one could even get triple rations when there was a shortage. Moreover, cigarettes didn’t get stale or moldy like our substandard bread.

  If we keep the cigarettes, it is not really stealing, we reasoned. Our poor doctor was taken away to a hospital; we could not return them to her, could we? No one had seen us, so what? Finders keepers.

  Margit, Mother, and I each wrapped a packet in a rag, tied it around our necks, and hid it under our clothes. We felt that nothing could happen to us; our wealth protected us.

  Who were the rich persons who could afford to give up their bread and soup rations for a cigarette? From the top down: the Blockältester, the labor Kapo, the kitchen staff, and anyone who had access to the provisions—after they had already been raided at the source by the SS men, of course.

  Soon after the air raid we were evacuated from Tiefstack. There was a change in the air; we sensed tension, perhaps fear, among our guards. Several SS women had been added to the guards, who had become a bit relaxed toward us. The SS women were vicious and coarse; they lashed out with their whips to beat us into straight rows, each trying to outdo her colleagues in inventing more cruel punishments.

  It was through an SS woman that I experienced the most degrading and embarrassing humiliation of all my years in the camps. The train that was taking us to an unknown destination often stopped for hours on the tracks. Other trains passed us, some transporting wounded soldiers. We had no idea where we were; hours passed, a day, and another. There was no toilet in the cattle wagons, and we had to relieve ourselves next to the tracks in f
ull view when the train was stalled. As I was squatting to urinate, an SS woman came from behind and kicked me over with her boot, and I fell with my face into the puddle. I can still feel the shame and the rage as I am writing about it. Even animals refrain from attacking their rivals while they are relieving themselves.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Bergen-Belsen, Close to Starvation

  In Bergen-Belsen, unlike Auschwitz, the fences were not electrically charged. The barracks were made of wood, the interior without bunks or any other furniture, just straw mattresses on the concrete floor.

  Register card from Bergen-Belsen, 1945

  In the beginning the routine was a familiar one: Zählappell, the twice-daily counting of prisoners, who had to line up in rows of five, the living standing upright, the dead spread out on the ground. There was food distribution once a day, food consisting of a ladleful of soup.

  In each of the concentration camps I knew, soup was the only cooked food the prisoners received. In some of the camps, there was also a piece of bread, but gradually even that disappeared. In the family camp at Auschwitz, at noontime, a large barrel lugged by two inmates was placed in front of the barracks, and we lined up with our bowls or whatever receptacle we had. Each of us also carried a spoon, either tucked into the string that served as a belt or hidden inside the clothes. Everyone sought to stand toward the end of the queue, but not the very end, because then one could be left without any soup at all, if it ran out before your turn came. Yet being at the beginning was also bad. Then you would get only the liquid from the top, without any solid pieces in it. The inmates who carried the barrel to the barracks were allowed to scrape off the remnants of soup that adhered to the inside of the barrels when they were empty. To do that they laid it on its side and crawled inside with their spoon and mess bowl.

  At Auschwitz, children had received better soup from the Gypsy camp (like us Jews, they were persecuted by the Nazis.) But Fredy forbade the educators to touch it, even if some child wanted to give his teacher a spoonful. The adults and assistants got the soup of the camp.

  You could find all kinds of treasures in your soup. There could be a piece of potato or turnip and here and there even a sliver of stringy meat. A greater part of what was meant for the prisoners went into the bellies of the camp commander and his family, and our guards and their families, and only the rest reached the kitchen. Then there were of course the kitchen staff and their friends, who also skimmed their share. At the end, we, the lowly prisoners, got our daily soup, which became thinner and thinner.

  Margit, Mother, and I still had our secret treasure—cigarettes. We took care that no one should know about them, to make sure not to be robbed in our sleep. The knowledge that we were in possession of such a treasure gave us a feeling of security. We would not suffer hunger; we could always buy another soup. It was as if we had a bank account in Switzerland.

  When we arrived at Bergen-Belsen, we did not immediately make use of our wealth. We asked ourselves if we could bear the hunger yet another day, when the need might become even more acute. After the first two or three days, a strange change came over the camp. The guards stopped counting us, and the watery soup came irregularly. Now Margit and I were in the position to barter.

  Once or twice we were successful and got an additional portion of soup in exchange for a few cigarettes. But then the soup distribution stopped altogether and no one wanted our cigarettes. Everybody was hungry, no one had food, not even the Kapos. The whole structure of camp life was collapsing.

  After several days at Bergen-Belsen, we were commanded to carry things from a supply store to the railway station of the town. Each of us had to shoulder a bundle, but Mother was unable to carry anything and could hardly walk.

  At night we could see bursts of explosions over the horizon and hear the thuds of artillery rockets. They seemed to come nearer; the front was coming closer. We dared not hope that liberation would reach us in time. In the neighboring compounds all around us, the dead lay everywhere.

  I became aware of the imminence of our death when one girl, lying only three paces away from me, couldn’t get up in the morning. Her legs were swollen; we all had edemas, but we were still able to stand up. She lay on her back moaning, her eyes closed, breathing with difficulty. Some of the women gathered around, talking and encouraging her, saying it would pass and she would soon feel better. But I overheard what one of them said out of earshot: “This is the end.”

  So this is the way one dies of hunger, I thought. And I knew that this was what would happen to all of us.

  It wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen dying before. There was a certain point at which the downward slide started. I had seen it in Auschwitz many, many times. It was as if the person suddenly became marked for death. Their eyes became vacant, expressionless. They might still have been functioning, even working, but in a kind of shuffling manner. Their shoulders slumped as if their backbone had been removed. They hardly spoke, took no interest in anything, not even food. At their nose hung a permanent drop, which they never bothered to wipe off. They had given up and stopped fighting for survival. These people always died very quickly.

  Yet now it was happening close to me. Now they were not the old, not even the middle-aged; now they were the young women around me, and soon it would be me. In the camps the concept of age changed. Anyone over forty-five was old. They did not pass the selections of Dr. Mengele in Auschwitz. Women of thirty were the middle-aged. The young ones were eighteen or twenty. I was just short of sixteen and believed that I was among the few with the best chances to remain alive.

  One morning, some four or five days after our arrival in Bergen-Belsen, Mother did not want to get up. She sat on the floor, her face unwashed, her hair uncombed. It made me feel miserable; I wanted to cry. I started pleading with her, coaxing her. “How you look! You haven’t washed your face. Comb your hair, don’t let yourself go like this.” I knew that she was at the point of giving up, and I couldn’t bear it.

  I succeeded that time. She pulled herself together, and with my and Margit’s support, she kept on. For the time being, I felt relieved.

  Then came the morning when there was no Zählappell, no guard was seen, nothing was as usual. Only at the four corners of the compound the soldiers in the watchtowers stood with their machine guns. They were rumored to be Volksdeutsche, recruits from occupied countries who had volunteered to serve in the German army. They were crueler than the Germans themselves.

  At first no one realized what was happening. We thought maybe the SS men would come later. But hours passed, and no guard appeared. It became clear that they had taken to their heels, locked us up and run for their lives. So it was true, the Allies were coming closer. It was now a question of days, perhaps even hours, until they arrived.

  What happened next cannot be described; human words fail to convey such hell. Yet I will try to speak about it because I must.

  On the day the guards left us, the water supply broke down. Whether they had closed the main deliberately I don’t know, but I suspect they did. There was no water at all. Then we noticed that some women were gathered at the latrine, clustering at the entrance, jostling to get in. Someone had discovered a leaking pipe from which water was dripping. The pipe ran along the far wall beyond the pit, which was full of stinking excrement of the camp inmates, who were all suffering from diarrhea. To reach the dripping water, if one was lucky enough to own some vessel in which to collect it, one had to swing a leg over the cesspit, brace it against the wall, and hold the pot for a while to collect a few drops. And so we formed a line and waited for our turn all the hours of the day and night, because we realized that fighting would do no good.

  I don’t know how many people there were in the camp. It was partitioned into several enclosures, with a road running through the middle. In our enclosure there were perhaps eight or ten barracks. When we women arrived from Hamburg, we found in the camp inmates of many nationalities. Our contingent was perhaps the last to be added
.

  One of the prisoners we met there was a Czech girl, Eva Kraus, whose deportation route was different from ours. She had been sent from Prague directly to the Łódź ghetto in Poland. From her we heard what happened to the Czech Jews, who were the first to be transported eastward, back in 1941. Most of them had died. She was also in other camps, tried to escape once but was caught, and ended up in Bergen-Belsen. To her surprise and delight, she found among our women her aunt, Marie Kraus, who by chance was the mother of my future husband.

  * * *

  Again, as always, I find myself digressing, turning away from the sights I don’t want to remember, or rather, something in me, some defense mechanism, diverts my thoughts to other channels. Every time I start speaking of the Holocaust, I seem to be drifting to those postwar experiences. Although they are directly connected to our suffering, they are still peripheral, as if I could relate only to the edges, but not to the wound itself. The more bearable experiences, the humorous incidents and scenes of friendship come to mind, trying to eclipse those that I cannot bear to face. But I feel I must come to grips with them, too. They are also true, those darkest pictures that exist in the hidden crevasses of memory. I must plunge beyond the barrier and bring them into the light of conscious reality.

  * * *

  No water and no food. We were locked in and left to die. Near the fence there was a pile of white turnips, the kind that farmers use to feed their cattle. It must have been there for a long time, because the rotting stench permeated the surrounding area. But there might be some pieces that were still firm. We dared not come nearer because of the guards in the tower. But hunger made the women more daring, and some tried to creep closer. They succeeded in remaining unnoticed and started rummaging in the smelly heap.