What She Lost

by Melissa W Hunter

  “What happened?” I asked. “How did you end up here?”

  “The Germans forced us to leave the camp, to march without food day and night. If anyone stopped, they were beaten and left for dead. After a few days, they stopped us and told us to stand in a line. We were in the woods just off the road and they—they began to shoot us. I ran, Sarah. So many of us did. We ran and didn’t stop. This is the first town I’ve seen. I’m so tired, Sarah.”

  “Come with us,” I said, putting my arm around her, supporting her. She leaned into me. “We are staying at the nearby hotel. There is food. And Helena, there are beds, real beds! You can stay with us.”

  “It’s amazing,” Helena said, shaking her head as we walked, Gutcha on her other side, helping her stay on her feet. “The town appears untouched. So many of the homes and villages I passed were nothing but rubble from the bombings. Some people stopped to scavenge in the ruins, but I didn’t dare.”

  “You’re safe now,” I said, wanting to believe it.

  “I just heard someone say they found a synagogue, and it’s still standing,” Gutcha said.

  “A synagogue?”

  “Yes,” Gutcha nodded. “Not far from here.”

  I shook my head. “How is that possible?” The question remained unanswered as we made our way slowly along the sidewalk. Helena turned to me after a few moments and asked softly, “The rest of your family, Sarah. Do you know what became of them?”

  I swallowed and looked down, shaking my head. I knew what she was really asking. What had become of Jacob? I glanced at her profile and wondered what she had experienced in the years since we’d last seen each other. Did she still love my brother?

  As we turned a corner and saw the hotel ahead of us, we noticed a line of parked vehicles that hadn’t been there before. The front door was open, and a small crowd was assembled in the lobby as we pushed our way in.

  “What’s happening?” Gutcha asked a woman standing near the door.

  “It’s the Russians,” she said in a whisper. “They just arrived.”

  “The Russians?” I asked. We looked cautiously at the soldiers standing near the front desk, sorting through drawers and shelves and cubbies where keys were kept. My stomach dropped a little, and I wondered if we would be kicked out of the hotel. I looked for the familiar, friendly face of the lieutenant, but these were new faces, a new unit that had moved in.

  “Let’s get Helena upstairs,” I whispered to Gutcha, eager to get back to the relative safety of the room we had claimed as our own. The Russians were absorbed in their work as we skirted the crowd in the lobby and made our way up the steps, still supporting Helena. Once in the room, I locked and chained the door. I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath, but when I heard the lock click into place, I exhaled long and loud. I guided Helena to my bed and helped her to lie down. She closed her eyes as her head rested against the pillow and let out a long sigh. I glanced at her bare feet and saw how bloodied they were. Her flesh was shredded. I swallowed and reached for a clean sheet to wrap around them. She flinched and gave a small cry, but when I looked back at her face, she was already asleep.

  Gutcha and I perched on the edge of the neighboring bed. “It’s a wonder she survived,” I whispered, watching Helena sleep.

  “It’s a wonder anyone survived,” Gutcha said.

  “I have to get her food and water.”

  “I hope there’s still some in the kitchen now that the Russians are here.”

  “I’ll go look,” I said, standing up.

  “I’ll go with you,” Gutcha said.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Stay with Helena.”

  I made my way back downstairs, sticking close to the walls, hoping not to be seen. In the short time we had been gone, the Russians had set up a command center in the lobby. A number of lower-ranking officers stood behind the front desk, speaking into radio receivers and barking commands at each other. The small sitting area near the door had been reconfigured to accommodate two senior officers, who sat in the large armchairs, working at portable desks. Papers and maps were spread on most surfaces. Some of the surviving men and women stood in the doorway, looking lost, waiting to be told what to do.

  I ducked behind a pillar and tiptoed into the dining room. Thanking my luck, I saw that the room was empty. A small draft caused the crystals on the overhead chandeliers to tinkle as I dashed into the kitchen. Crumbs dirtied the large island in its center, and the baskets of bread, fruits, and vegetables had been picked over. I grabbed what I could carry and crept back through the lobby to the stairs with my head down. No one stopped me. When I reached the top of the stairs, I ran back to our room.

  “It’s me, Gutcha,” I whispered through the crack between the door and its frame. “Let me in.” Gutcha opened the door, and I slipped inside, spilling the pile of food onto our bed. “Quick, lock the door again.”

  “What did you see downstairs?”

  “I think the Russians are busy setting up offices in the lobby. I’m not sure what they’re doing, but it doesn’t look like they’re leaving anytime soon.”

  “Will we be allowed to stay here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Where else do we have to go?”

  “Sarah,” Gutcha asked softly, “do you want to go home?”

  “Home?” I repeated, the word lingering like a bitter taste in my mouth. I wondered if I even had a home anymore. Was Olkusz still home? Was there anything to return to? My memories of walking through the streets to the ghetto, of the jeering faces and shouted taunts, came back to haunt me. But then I remembered my parents’ faces, heard the echo of the twins’ laughter as they chased after a ball in our yard. Suddenly dizzy, I reached out to steady myself.

  “Are you all right?” Gutcha asked.

  I nodded, although I wasn’t sure if I was all right. “I want to find my family first,” I said. “Then I’ll think about home.”

  Over the next few days, the occupying Russians established bases of operations at the Kaiserhof Hotel and at the neighboring post office and local civic center. The kitchen was no longer ours to raid. We were told to register at the front desk and provide our names and the cities we had called home. We were issued ration cards and told when to report to the dining room for meals. For the most part, the Russians kept to themselves, but I was still wary of their presence. No one told us to leave, so we remained in the upstairs room, which became our own private sanctuary.

  I stayed by Helena’s side, nursing her back to health. I slept next to her, wrapping my arms around her and feeling the fuzz on her head tickle my lips and cheeks. Each morning I woke disoriented and surprisingly sore. My body wasn’t used to the softness of the mattress after sleeping for so long on hard planks of wood. To our delight, the bathroom in the hall had running water. The first time I sat in the bathtub, letting dirt and grime and memories wash off me, I thought only of the sensations. Warmth. Comfort. Things I hadn’t experienced in many lifetimes, or so it seemed.

  When Gutcha and I joined the long line to add our names to the growing census of survivors, I studied the faces around me. I heard a mix of languages: Hungarian, French, German, Polish, Yiddish. Those around me shared the same look: a marriage of anxiety, exhaustion, disbelief, and hope. A committee of former prisoners assisted the Russians with the registry. They spoke kindly to those whose names they took, unlike some of the Russian officers, who sounded short-tempered and overworked. When I reached the front of the line, the Russian officer behind the desk didn’t even look up.

  “Name?” he barked in a crisp voice.

  “Sarah Chaya Waldman.”

  “What city and country are you from?”

  “Olkusz, Poland.”

  “Another Pole,” I heard him murmur under his breath, shaking his head.

  “Can you tell me, has anyone else registered with the name Waldman?” I asked breat
hlessly, almost afraid to hear the answer.

  “I can’t tell you that,” he said, looking up for the first time. “The lists will be posted. You can see for yourself then.”

  In the quiet moments while Helena slept, I watched her, remembering the affectionate way she and Jacob had looked at each other, remembering the stolen, private moments I had witnessed. Against my will, my thoughts turned to Otto, the boy I had met in Klettendorf. I saw again behind my closed lids his green eyes, heard his soft voice. I recalled the way he made me feel, even in the ugliness of the camps. And I silently cried.

  Thirty-One

  Klettendorf Labor Camp, East Prussia, November 1942

  Otto and I met for the first time when I passed him his morning ration of watered-down soup in the food line. I worked in the kitchen, preparing the morning meal and serving the other prisoners. Most mornings, I barely glanced at their gaunt, tired faces, but something in his expression as I handed him the tin bowl caused me to pause and stare after him as he continued down the line. “Oy!” the prisoner behind him huffed, bringing me back to myself. “Hurry up!”

  The next morning, I watched for him. He entered with the other inmates from his bunk, boys as young as thirteen to men as old as fifty. When he was standing before me again, he raised his eyes and met mine. Our eyes locked for a long moment before I ladled the soup into his bowl. The tips of our fingers touched as I passed the bowl to him. We didn’t exchange words, but as he moved away, he glanced at me over his shoulder.

  That was the only time during the day that I saw him. For months, we didn’t speak as I handed him his bowl; we only stared at each other for prolonged moments, allowing our fingers to touch for longer stretches of time. I lay in my bunk at night and imagined his face. I couldn’t understand why he occupied so much of my thoughts. I didn’t even know his name.

  One wet and cold evening before curfew, I slipped outside the bunk, driven by thirst and hunger. This was a regular practice, to search for food scraps or barter with other women for this or that: a scrap of bread for a pilfered sewing needle, a piece of cloth for a bit of salvaged wire to make a comb. The women’s bunks were separated from the men’s by a high barbwire fence. A spotlight washed over the grounds from the high tower where the Nazis patrolled day and night. Sometimes I witnessed men and women meeting furtively at the fence, whispering through the wires before being caught in the spotlight.

  I wandered closer to the fence, throwing my head back and opening my mouth to drink in the clean rain that fell from the sky. Despite the piercing cold, I let the rain wash over me, my feet sinking into icy mud. I saw a rat scurry along the base of the fence and took a step back.

  “You’ll get sick,” I heard someone whisper.

  I quickly lowered my head and glanced at the fence. That’s when I saw him, huddled on the other side, peering at me. “You’re shivering,” he said. “You want to get out of the rain. It’s going to be a hard winter if this weather keeps up. Don’t catch a cold or pneumonia if you want to survive.”

  I nodded hesitantly but didn’t move.

  “My name’s Otto,” he said, moving a little closer to the fence.

  “I’m Sarah,” I said.

  “I’ve noticed you,” he said. “Every morning.”

  “I work in the kitchens,” I said, although that was obvious. “I’ve noticed you too.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Poland. And you?”

  “France.”

  The spotlight caught us, moved over our bodies. Despite the brightness, I felt even colder, exposed. I froze, looking away, terrified of what might happen. Some of the guards didn’t care if the men and women conversed, knowing the fence would keep them apart. Still others barked orders from their stations in the high towers, demanding that the couples separate or else. I’d seen a couple shot at the fence, their bodies falling toward each other, their fingers leaving a trail of blood along the chain link.

  The spotlight moved away, leaving us in darkness. “Here,” he said, crouching in the dirt and opening his hand. I noticed a half-eaten potato in his fist. I knelt in the shadow, and he slipped it through the fence into my hand.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, feeling my stomach growl, backing away quickly.

  “Come back tomorrow night,” he said. “I want to see you again.”

  I nodded as I walked away quickly, concealing the potato in my own fist. “I’ll be here,” I called over my shoulder.

  Otto and I met every night at the fence. We chose a corner where the fence met the wall that enclosed the camp, kneeling in the snow, our feet freezing. We tracked the spotlight, knowing when to move away and when it was safe to be together.

  He shared stories with me about his life in Paris. His family wasn’t as religious as mine. Not only did they live in the heart of the city but his father was a successful doctor and his mother, he said, was a well-known artist. His older sister had been a dancer, performing in the major capitals of Europe, and like his father, he had studied medicine at the university.

  “One day when this is all over, Sarah, I’ll take you to Paris,” he told me one evening. “You’ll see the Eiffel Tower at night. There is no sight more beautiful. Except, perhaps, your face.”

  I blushed and looked down. In those moments, I wanted to forget where I was. I wanted to see the sights he described in so much detail—to walk beneath the glow of gas lamps along the Seine at twilight, to see the elaborate carvings of the Arc de Triomphe, and to stroll on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in the spring. I knew nothing of the metropolitan world he described. It sounded like a fairy tale, so different from the small town of my childhood. And when he told me I was beautiful, I wanted to believe him. I raised my hand self-consciously to my head, to the kerchief tied around my mostly bald scalp, wondering what he saw when he looked at me.

  Our fingers entwined through the fence whenever the spotlight moved away. We were never together longer than a few moments, but in that time, I clung to his every word, falling into eyes darker than any I’d ever seen. He began to grow dark stubble along his olive-colored jawline. He absently stroked it when he talked about his family and his studies, a life he mentioned as though he were only temporarily removed from it.

  “Do you think we’ll get out of here?” I asked one night, my breath rising in a cloud.

  “Of course,” he said, caressing the top of my fingers. His touch was like electricity, sparking feelings I had only experienced once before, with Fryderyk. I felt weak and excited and filled with a sense of longing I didn’t understand. These moments were the only time I felt real or even human. They were the only moments of happiness I knew in the camp. They sustained me through the day and gave me something to look forward to. Otto leaned forward and whispered, “When we are free, I want to marry you, Sarah.”

  My pulse raced as I watched his lips form the words. Marry me, I thought. He wants to marry me.

  “I know this isn’t the right time to say something like this, but I can’t imagine my life without you,” he said. And despite the cold, my heart melted.

  Thirty-Two

  Reichenbach, Germany, late May 1945

  The lists were soon posted on the walls outside the hotel. Crowds of survivors flocked to Kopernika Street to scan them, looking for loved ones who might have survived. Reichenbach was no longer the deserted town we had first stumbled upon; survivors of the majority of camps in Lower Silesia had made their way to Reichenbach. A Jewish community began to flourish, strengthened by a sense of shared experience and suffering.

  The lacerations on Helena’s feet became infected, pus oozing from the wounds, and we took turns washing away the discharge and wrapping the inflamed skin in clean towels from the hotel linen closet. When she no longer flinched and the wounds began to heal, Gutcha and I helped her down the stairs to search for our families’ names on the lists. I studied every face in the crowd, ho
pe fluttering almost painfully in my chest like a living thing trying to escape as I looked for my parents or brothers. I wondered what my parents looked like now, or if I’d recognize the twins. I ran my finger down the lists of names, which had been broken down alphabetically by country of origin, looking for Waldman. My heart sank each time I came to the end.

  “Don’t worry,” Gutcha said, wrapping us in a hug. “People are still arriving. You see the long lines of people still registering? There is still a chance.”

  We held on to that hope. There is still a chance. The words echoed in my mind every night when I lay down, and every morning when I stepped outside to check the lists and search the faces.

  We learned that the town of Reichenbach had been a center of operations for the Nazis. They had built a line of defense both in town and in the mountains to protect their headquarters, which was why the town remained mostly intact and even flourished under the Nazi regime. Some of the evacuated German residents moved back into town to reclaim their property and reopen their businesses. As we walked past small storefronts and local shops, they eyed us cautiously. The proprietor of the store we had looted our first day stood in the town square, yelling “Animals! Thieves!” at everyone who passed. When Gutcha and I passed an older man sweeping his front step, he froze and spit at our heels. “You’re not welcome here,” he shouted, waving his broom at us. I lowered my head and quickened my pace, grabbing Gutcha’s hand to hurry her across the street. My face grew hot as I felt the man’s gaze follow us down the road.

  “Will we ever belong anywhere?” I whispered to Gutcha as we climbed the steps to our room, the only place I truly felt safe. We had passed through a new wave of refugees entering the town, and my eyes were sore from searching their faces.

  “I don’t know,” she said, her voice nearly breaking as she fell on the bed. “I just want to find my mama and papa and Daniel.”