What She Lost

by Melissa W Hunter

“I want to find my family too,” I said. Like a dam breaking open, memories rushed in, my mother screaming, running after the truck that took us away. The twins, clutching her skirt and crying. My father, frail, unable even to stand. I thought I would suffocate. I choked on a sob and felt tears falling down my cheeks. I gave in to a grief unlike any I had ever known. I rocked back and forth on the bed, wanting nothing more than to feel my mother’s arms around me. I didn’t want to think—couldn’t think—that I might never see her again. Where were they? What had happened to them? The unanswered questions resounded in my head, each breath the stab of a knife in my chest. And then I saw the storekeeper spitting at us, his eyes filled with hatred, and I gasped.

  “Sarah!” Gutcha cried, kneeling before me. “Sarah, stop!”

  I was struggling for air. My throat was closing. I didn’t know what was happening. I reached for her. “I can’t,” I choked.

  Faintly, I heard Gutcha call for Helena. She was at my side in an instant, wrapping her arms around me.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Gutcha asked.

  “Sarah,” I heard Helena whisper. “Sarah, you need to calm down.”

  I shook my head, gulping violently.

  “It will be all right, Sarah,” Helena said, stroking my hair. “Just breathe.”

  “I … want … my … mother,” I choked, falling against her.

  “I know, Sarah,” Helena said. “I know.”

  Slowly, as Helena held me, I felt the constriction in my chest ease as my sobbing turned to silent tears. I finally glanced up at Gutcha and Helena and saw that they too were crying. Drawing a shuddering breath, I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. “I’m sorry,” I muttered.

  “Are you all right?” Gutcha asked, sitting on my other side and handing me a glass of water. I sipped and nodded. “I’m sorry,” I whispered again. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “You scared us.”

  I shook my head to clear it, suddenly exhausted. “I think I need to lie down for a little while,” I said.

  “I’ll stay with her,” Helena volunteered. I lay back against the pillows and shut my eyes, my chest sore and my breathing ragged. I only wanted to sleep. Helena moved across the room to pull the curtains closed against the late afternoon sunlight, then I felt the bed sink under me as she lay down beside me, reaching for my hand.

  “Do you feel any better?” she asked.

  “I think so,” I whispered.

  “Don’t despair yet, Sarah,” she said after a moment. “We can’t give up hope. We found each other. We’ll find our families again too.”

  “Helena?” I asked quietly after a moment, floating somewhere between wakefulness and sleep. “If we find Jacob, will you marry him?”

  Helena didn’t answer at first. I opened my eyes to look at her. She was staring at the ceiling thoughtfully. Finally, she turned her head to me and said, “I cared about your brother so much, Sarah. He was—is—kind and gentle. He’ll make a good husband. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world when my parents and your parents arranged the marriage. But I’m a different person now. Everything is different now. I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “I thought I did. But I was so young, how could I know for sure?”

  “Helena,” I asked after a moment, “did you ever meet anyone else? In the camps, I mean?”

  She lifted up on an elbow and eyed me then, eyebrow raised. “No,” she said. “Did you, Sarah?”

  I nodded, my thoughts returning to Otto. “In Klettendorf,” I said. I rolled to face Helena, lowering my voice as I said, “I think I loved him too.”

  Thirty-Three

  Klettendorf Labor Camp, East Prussia, January 1943

  “Look, Sarah, I have something to tell you.”

  I didn’t like the tone of Otto’s voice or the eager glint in his eye as we walked along the fence in the bitterly cold, early twilight. “What is it?” I asked cautiously, turning and gripping the fence. My limbs ached from carrying heavy iron all day, and I longed for the days when I worked in the kitchen. The icy coating on the wire cut into my chapped fingers, but I ignored the pain. Otto leaned closer, placing his hand on mine, and whispered, “A few of us have been watching the guards at night. We know their routine. It’s too cold and dark for them to pay us much attention. They are more concerned with staying warm in their little watchtowers. Chaim thinks he can escape. He has a plan.”

  I suddenly felt breathless and dizzy. My stomach dropped. “What do you mean?” I asked. “No one can escape, Otto.”

  “That’s not true,” he said. “We’ve given this a lot of thought. We plan to help him. If he succeeds, Sarah, you and I can escape next.”

  “B-But,” I stammered, shaking my head. “But what if you get caught?”

  “We won’t.”

  I backed away a step, our fingers parting. I looked at him incredulously. The spotlight was sweeping the far corner of the fence, inching its way in our direction. I heard a small commotion on the men’s side of the fence and turned to look. The Blockführer was walking along one of the barracks, holding a loaf of bread. He was dressed in a long wool coat and tall boots while the rest of us shivered in our rags. He began tearing small pieces from the end of the loaf and throwing them on the ground as though feeding chickens in a coop. The men nearest him crawled on hands and knees in the snow, grabbing ferociously at the bits of bread soaking up mud and slush, fighting with each other for the smallest of morsels. The Blockführer laughed at their efforts, kicking those who got too close to his boot. I turned away, a sick feeling in my stomach.

  “Go back, Sarah,” Otto said. “I’ll meet you here tomorrow.”

  I wanted to grab his hand and not let go, to look up into his dark eyes. I fought the urge, glancing anxiously at the Blockführer as he drew closer to where we stood. I knew it was a matter of time before we were discovered. I held Otto’s gaze for another moment, then turned to leave, but not before pleading in a frightened whisper, “Just don’t do anything foolish.”

  A loud siren woke us a few nights later. I moaned and stirred, the cold burrowing into my limbs as I blinked in the darkness, confused.

  “Get up!” the Kapo shouted at the door to our barrack.

  I shivered as I pushed against the bodies of the other girls huddled next to me. Some slept on, despite the siren. “Move,” I hissed, trying to jump from the upper bunk. I knew the punishment for not obeying the Kapo in a timely fashion. I didn’t know what was happening as I joined the line of girls by the door. Was it morning yet? It was still so dark and cold. And the siren was causing my head to throb.

  We rushed into the yard outside. The Kapo barked at us to line up for roll call. A thin crust of ice splintered under our bare feet as we ran to our places. Dark, heavy clouds obscured the moon overhead, and large flakes of snow fell onto our shoulders and caught in my eyelashes. My body ached with exhaustion. My feet turned numb from the cold. Across the yard, we saw the men lining up outside their own bunks. Guards patrolled both sides of the fence; the sound of their whistles and the barking of dogs added to the commotion and terror I felt in every part of my body.

  “What happened?” the girl next to me whispered fearfully.

  “I don’t know,” I said, but an ominous feeling raised the flesh of my arms. The Kapo strode before us, counting our numbers, wearing a scarf and gloves while our necks and hands were bare. We shivered before her. I noticed a platform the size of a small bench erected on the men’s side of the fence beneath a large tree, and my heart stopped. Three nooses hung from the bare branches, swinging in the cold wind.

  The Kapo approached the fence and spoke to one of the male guards on the other side. He nodded and marched to the center of the fence, where both the women and the men could see him, lifting a megaphone to his lips. “There has been an attempted escape tonight,” he shouted
in a voice that set my teeth on edge. I was breathing fast, my breath rising in white clouds. I scanned the rows of men for Otto’s face.

  “The criminal has been shot, but this act cannot go without further punishment,” he said, emotionless, as he marched casually between us. He relished taking his time as he wiped snow from his brow and kicked it from his boots. We shivered as we waited, terrified.

  “You are here to work for the welfare of the Third Reich. It is important that you understand there is no hope for escape,” he said. “We believe this treasonous act was not orchestrated by just one individual. Our intelligence has provided us with the names of others who helped plan this crime. To set an example to you all, these perpetrators shall be punished as well.”

  I panicked then, my hands clenching into fists. The girl next to me was watching me intently, but I ignored her. I wanted to scream Otto’s name. I wanted to run to the fence to search for him, but fear held me in place.

  The guards began moving toward the men, rifles aimed at the line of shivering bodies. I watched them grab a few of the men roughly from the line and herd them by gunpoint onto the platform. I immediately recognized Otto with a gun in his back, head bent so the dark hair of his neck was exposed, his shoulders hunched. My legs went weak as they turned him to face the yard. He was searching wildly in my direction. Our eyes finally locked. His face was pale, his dark eyes wide. I felt like I was going to fall as the guards placed the nooses around the men’s necks. Otto reached up and grabbed the blue and white cap from his head. He waved it in my direction. “Look away!” he yelled to the yard, but I knew the words were meant for me. I felt tears on my cheeks.

  “Shut up,” one of the guards said, hitting Otto in the stomach with the butt of his gun. I gasped, falling against the girl next to me. She held me upright as I clung to her. Otto doubled over from the blow but quickly straightened again to meet my gaze across the expanse of the yard. “Don’t watch!” he yelled. “I love you—”

  The guards kicked the platform from under their feet.

  I finally looked away.

  Thirty-Four

  Reichenbach, Germany, late May 1945

  It had been nearly a month since we’d arrived in Reichenbach. Gutcha, Helena, and I spent every moment together. Our days became a routine of checking lists, waiting in ration lines for food and other basic necessities, and looking for a way to make money. I was growing stronger. I could feel the waistband of my skirt growing tighter against my middle, and there was finally enough hair growing on my head to brush. Each morning, I tied a large red ribbon in place as a headband to make my hair look fuller. I remembered my mother tying red ribbons around our home to ward off the evil eye and wondered now if my ribbon would protect me against an uncertain future.

  Once, I saw an older woman shuffling through the street with slumped shoulders. Something about her posture was familiar, and I was overwhelmed by a feeling of hope. “Mama!” I cried, running to her and throwing my arms around her. She didn’t speak a word as I held her, but I noticed how still and unmoving she was in my embrace. When I pulled away, I realized my mistake. It wasn’t my mother. The woman stared at me with a dead look in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” I muttered as I turned away.

  I had shut out my memories for so long, living day to day just to survive. Now that there were moments of quiet and time to fill, I couldn’t stop my mind from remembering. Like a floodgate had opened, the memories of my family rushed back, drowning me. It was worse at night, when I lay awake in the stillness. I couldn’t stop the tears from escaping my closed lids so that I finally fell asleep on a damp pillow each night. Some mornings, I lay curled beneath the blankets, unable even to get up. Despite the constant companionship and concern my cousin and Helena showed, I felt more alone than ever.

  I heard the stories of the other camps, the death camps. At one point in my life, I wouldn’t have believed the accounts, thinking them too horrible to be true. But now I knew better. I had witnessed too much. I searched each day for the names of my family on the lists of survivors, but there was still no word of them. It was like they had never existed, like they were no more tangible than the wisps of fog that burned off by midmorning and were forgotten by afternoon. My eyes were ever watchful, scouring every face I passed, blurring from the effort of trying to find someone familiar.

  The first time I saw a clock on the mantel in the hotel lobby, I was mesmerized by the turning of the gears, the slow progression of the hands around the ornate face. I had forgotten about time altogether. It had blurred like an insubstantial thing in the camps. Days, weeks, months, had meant nothing to me. But now time spread before me like a void, each moment an eternity as I learned how to live again.

  The synagogue in town became a center of activity for the Jewish population. We walked there regularly to take part in conversation, hear the latest news, and look for work. A Jewish committee, headed by a man named Jakob Egit, had formed in the hope of creating a Jewish settlement in Reichenbach. The synagogue became their headquarters.

  The first time I saw the two-story building with the large Star of David etched on the window pane above the entrance, I stared in awe. I walked slowly up the path that led to the main door, gazing at the arched windows of the first floor, then up at the towering windows of the second. Two pillars rose to the sky on each side of the square building, topped with ornate metal Jewish stars. The building was imposing, much larger than the small synagogue in Olkusz that my father had attended almost daily, taller than the trees that grew in the yard and garden that surrounded it. I was amazed that, after all the devastation that had destroyed so many places of worship, this building should still stand.

  When I passed through the doors, a sort of peace settled over me, like I had come home. I walked down the main aisle of the two-story sanctuary, staring up at the impossibly high ceiling overhead, sunlight streaming through the engraved star in the round glass window above the altar. The wooden banisters of the second-story balcony were intact, as were the pillars that supported it. The room had been stripped of furniture, so the space was wide open and waiting.

  I was drawn to the synagogue, enjoying the activity, laughter, and even arguments that broke out among the men and women who came daily to gossip or exchange news. The feeling of community was warm and familiar and reminded me of my youth. Unlike the temple in Olkusz, men and women worked together to restore the benches, the floors, the pillars, the windows—though men were the only ones allowed to clean the ark that had once housed the Torah scrolls.

  Every day, Jacob Egit argued for the need to build a Jewish community in Reichenbach. Meetings were held to discuss the future of the town and its new citizens.

  “We can have a life here,” he said to the room at large as we gathered one day in the synagogue. “We can create a community together. We can open schools and hospitals and businesses. We each have something to offer. We carry with us the lessons of the past. Together, we can build a strong foundation for the future. Isn’t that what we all want?”

  “What about returning to our homes?” someone asked.

  “Do you really want to go back?” Mr. Egit countered. “Is there anything to go back to? If you do, then I wish you luck. But if you don’t, start a new life here, with us.”

  I glanced at those nearest me. Each day, this question nagged at me. Do I stay or make my way back to Olkusz? A part of me never wanted to see Olkusz again, yet I wondered endlessly if my family might have returned, waiting for me. The door suddenly opened with a groan, and we turned to see an old man step into the cavernous room. He was stooped and leaned heavily on a cane. He regarded us silently, motionless, as we stared back at him. The room grew quiet.

  “Can I help you?” Mr. Egit asked. The man looked at Jacob where he sat behind a table near the door. He shuffled forward, reached out his arm, and held open his hand. A key was nestled in his palm. “I have finished my task,” he said quietly. “No
w the synagogue is returned to you.”

  Mr. Egit stood and took the key from the man. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “My name is Konrad Springer. I was the caretaker of this synagogue before the war.”

  “How did you end up in possession of the key?” Mr. Egit asked, coming around the table and facing the old man. The man, Konrad, looked uncomfortable. He glanced at his sudden audience awkwardly. I could tell he didn’t like us staring at him. “I purchased the building with the help of the … past members of the synagogue,” he said. “They entrusted it to my care. They gave me money to buy it back from the Germans.”

  We listened to him in silence as he looked at us through heavy-lidded eyes. “I’m sorry to say, it served for a time as headquarters for the Hitler Youth in town.”

  “But it survived,” Mr. Egit said, “and for that we are thankful.”

  Konrad simply nodded and turned to leave.

  “Wait,” Mr. Egit said. “We don’t have any money to reimburse you.”

  Konrad waved a hand irritably as though shooing away a fly. “I don’t need money,” he said. “It’s rightfully yours.”

  We watched as he walked past us to the doors. Mr. Egit raised his arms and said, “This is truly a miracle! A blessing, my friends! A cause for celebration. Soon, the site where we stand will be restored to a true place of worship for the new Jewish community here in Reichenbach!”

  Applause broke out around me. I frowned and backed away from the crowd. I wanted to share in their enthusiasm, their desire to reclaim the freedom to worship and pray, but all I felt was apathy. I glanced at the doors where the old man had disappeared, shocked by the humble kindness he had shown. As I stared, Helena rushed in and waved me over.

  “What is it?” I asked, walking to join her.

  “There’s another group entering town,” she said, grabbing my hand. “I’ve just seen them. I have water and bread. Let’s go.”