“Of course, we’re in the same gang, remember?”
Suddenly a warm feeling surged in her chest and she leaned her head against his shoulder. At least she had him and wasn’t all alone in this world. He might be obnoxious and annoying at times, but he always stuck to her when it counted – just like her brothers. Thinking about them had her bursting into fresh tears.
Fabian came around and noticed her crying. Everyone in the camp knew that bad things happened when one cried, so he tried to cheer her up. “Hey, Mindel, how about we play a game?”
“What game?” she sniffed, hoping it wouldn’t be Jew and SS, because she had no energy to run around.
“Who’s going to die next?” Fabian suggested. It was another favorite game and the winner received a spoonful of soup from everyone else’s bowls when it came true. It was a game that didn’t require energy and they could talk for hours about the pros and cons of each death candidate.
Mindel smiled. “Yeah, that’s a good game. I go first: the old hag in the lower bunk next to the latrines.”
“No, that girl with the loud coughing who shares her bunk with her aunt,” Clara said.
They all took turns guessing, and filled the afternoon with speculation. Once they were done, there was nothing left but to wait until someone died and see who’d gotten it right.
By the end of summer, the strangest thing happened. A long line of shiny black vehicles arrived at the camp, and several SS officers in uniforms adorned with blinking medals disembarked. The members of the gang and some older children crept close enough to watch and eavesdrop, without being seen.
The boss of the new arrivals had so many medals pinned to his chest that Mindel ran out of fingers counting them. After the corpse counting, Laura had taught her to count to twenty without fingers, but in exciting situations like this one, she returned to using her hands.
“Have you seen his medals? He must be someone important,” Mindel whispered, barely able to contain her excitement.
“Shush,” Laura scolded her. “You don’t want them to notice us.”
Moments later Lagerkommandant Adolf Haas stepped up, shot his right arm into the air and barked, “Heil Hitler, Obersturmbannführer Krumey.”
Mindel had always thought this salutation looked ridiculous, but these adults took it very seriously. They even stood motionless for a few seconds, before the hands came down.
The group of men began walking in the direction of the children, who were hiding behind an empty water tank. Mindel’s heart beat so fast, she feared the men would hear it. Thankfully Laszlo’s hand sneaked into hers and his presence gave her the confidence to stay completely still, barely breathing.
Krumey handed a list to the Kommandant. “These are the people selected for the blood-for-goods exchange.”
“Three hundred?”
“Yes, three hundred of these deplorables have been paid for and will be sent to Switzerland.”
Three hundred sounded like many, many people. Definitely more than she could count and probably Laszlo too, who claimed to be able to count to one hundred, although he’d never actually proved it to the other children.
The grapevine in the camp worked fast and Mindel was perplexed when mere minutes later throngs of grown-ups threw themselves at Krumey’s feet, begging him to take them to Switzerland.
“Glückspilze,” sighed Laszlo. “These lucky ones are allowed to leave the camp and go to Switzerland.
Mindel nodded, albeit she had no idea what exactly Switzerland was, but if everyone wanted to go there, she reckoned it was a nice place. “How do you know it’s a good place to go?”
“Switzerland is neutral, which means they are not in this war. And, according to my mom, it’s paradise on earth. Enough food, clothes, a roof over your head, and no persecution. It seems Jews there can live just like anyone else.”
That indeed sounded like a good thing. Maybe living in Switzerland was like living on the farm of her parents, far away from all the horrible things she’d seen since the fatal day Herr Keller had taken her parents. For a moment she considered going to Switzerland, too, but then she remembered her sister.
How would Rachel find her there? No, it was better to stay. With all these people gone, the camp would be all but empty and it would be easy to find her sister. Then a cold shiver ran down her spine. What if Rachel travelled to Switzerland without Mindel? Tears threatened to flow, but she stubbornly wiped them away, whispering to herself, “Rachel would never do that. She’s looking for you the same way you’re looking for her.”
“What’s wrong?” Laszlo asked, apparently noticing her shuddering.
“Nothing.” She would not admit to him or anyone else that she was still crying over her sister. “Do you think Ruth will leave?” Ruth’s father owned a visa to Palestine, and she had often boasted that it was only a matter of time until her family would be released.
“Probably.” Laszlo didn’t seem too interested in speculating, instead, his eyes were riveted to the tumultuous scenes unfolding. The adults begged, pleaded, shoved, pushed, yelled, and cried in an attempt to be added to the transport. Finally, the guards were called and beat everyone with their truncheons until a big enough corridor opened for the Obersturmbannführer to continue his way toward the Lagerkommandant’s office.
“We should go see if he puts us on his list,” Laszlo said, taking her arm and trying to pull her forward.
Mindel shook him off. “No. I don’t want to leave without my sister.”
“You’re stupid!”
His words hurt and Mindel frowned up at him. “And you are mean!”
Laszlo sighed and shook his head. “Look, staying here on the off-chance of finding your sister, instead of trying your luck getting to Switzerland, is plain stupid.”
Maybe he was right, but that didn’t change her mind. She would not go anywhere without Rachel.
He looked at her for a long time and then said, “I’m going to do it! I’ll find a way to sneak onto the transport when it leaves.”
The breath caught in Mindel’s lungs and raw fear attacked her. “You can’t! What if they catch you?”
“They won’t. And once I’m out of this goddamn camp, nobody will care. Please, come with me!”
“That’s crazy. We can’t do that. The guards will see us.”
“Not if we’re careful.”
Mindel shook her head. “This isn’t like sneaking into the kitchen. Don’t you think they will count everyone millions of times like they do during roll call? They will surely find us and then…” Her voice faltered. She didn’t even want to imagine what might happen then. Not the dogs, please.
“If you don’t come with me, I’m doing it alone,” Laszlo said and turned his back on her to watch the crowd.
Mindel’s legs had turned to ice. She had a very bad feeling about what might happen to her best friend.
12
Summer had passed and with it the oppressive heat; the beginning of autumn had turned the leaves golden, red and orange on the trees. Not that Rachel could enjoy the beautiful colors, because it was dark in the morning when she walked to work, and dark in the evening when she returned to the camp. Except for the glimpses through the frosted factory windows, she never saw the sunlight.
The cooler daytime temperatures were a welcome respite from the sweltering heat inside the factory building, but they came accompanied by chilly nights, exchanging one discomfort for another one. On the assembly line she stretched out her limbs, stiff from lying huddled on her bunk, shivering in the wee hours of the morning before the sun woke up and rose in the sky again.
During the past weeks, she’d fallen into a numb mental state, where every thought felt like a viscid puree attempting to cross her brain. Her thinking had become slow and incoherent, before it had stopped altogether and she merely subsisted like the mindless creature the Nazis saw in the likes of her.
On the other hand, her body had gotten used to the tedious work, doing the required movements all on its own like an
automaton. Every day from morning to night she stuffed explosives into casings, never looking left or right, never talking, never dreaming, and never thinking.
All the other women who’d been at the factory longer than a week seemed to be the same. Walking dead, not actual persons anymore, but simply shells that walked, worked, and slept. Even the never-ending roll calls didn’t faze her anymore, since she sincerely did not care, whether she was selected to disappear, be beaten to death or allowed to live another day.
Some days, before wake-up call in the morning, she simply lay on her bunk, waiting for the merciful salvation of death, but it never came. Somehow her body got up, put on her shoes and walked out the hut to form a line for the thin breakfast soup, without her mind being involved.
It was simply a matter of habit. Day in and day out she subsisted side by side with her faithful companions hunger, exhaustion, and pain. Only because of them did she know that she was alive, because supposedly all of this stopped once a person died.
In Tannenberg the women weren’t shorn at regular intervals like in the main camp and one day she ran her hands through her one-inch-long hair. It was a strange feeling, because she’d grown so used to being bald.
She gazed in abstraction at her hand, until she noticed the loose hair between her fingers. Back at home, she’d had long, soft, dark brown hair, but now, the short strands were wiry and stiff, like straw – and orange.
She gasped in shock and cried out, “Good heavens!”
“What’s happened?” the woman working next to her asked.
“My hair is orange!”
The woman snorted. “Have you had a look around?”
For the first time in ages Rachel actually recognized the women around her, and much to her chagrin, every single one of them, save for the new arrivals, had a shock of orange stubble on her head.
She cocked her head to scrutinize her neighbor – the visage drawn and pale, the cheekbones protruding through the parchment-like pallid skin. Dark circles had taken up residence beneath her hollowed-out eyes. But it was the bright, glaring orange hair that stuck out, making her look like some horrific clown.
For lack of a mirror, Rachel assumed she looked the same. She swallowed hard, as fragments of realization permeated the viscosity of her brain. For weeks now, she’d been noticing a yellow hue on her fingernails and clothing. A stain that wouldn’t go away even when rubbing hard. After the first days she’d not given it any more thought and had just accepted it as a delusion of her tired mind.
But now she realized this was no delusion; it was very much reality. Whatever chemicals the women were stuffing into the shells, had taken possession of their bodies and turned them into creatures of horror. Suddenly she wished all of this would end. Soon. She yearned to fall asleep and never wake up again.
But as always when she was truly desolate and ready to give up, Mindel’s smile and the trusting look in her brown eyes spurred her on to stay alive – for Mindel.
“What’s happening to us?” she asked, looking at the other women for answers.
But there were no answers.
A foreman came over and shouted at her, “No dawdling, Jew. Get back to work!”
When finally the horn sounded to mark the end of her shift, she was even more forlorn than usual. Even if this nightmare ended, would she ever be the same person again?
She barely noticed the long walk back to the camp in the darkness, only lit by the torches of the guards. By now, she knew the way by heart and could have walked it with her eyes closed. The shock about her becoming orange sat so deep, she wished she could step out of the poisonous shell her body had turned into and find a new home for her soul.
If she even had a soul left.
At the camp the Kommandant was in a foul mood, letting the women stand still for hours, while doling out punishments for the slightest irregularity. The woman in front of her was sentenced to kneel on a log of wood for the rest of the evening.
Rachel had never done this, but she knew it was a cruel thing. Not many women made it through the torture, because they collapsed from the excruciating pain and were then discarded. Today, she put out of her mind the woman in front of her without the slightest hint of compassion. If she’d had the energy, she would have shrugged and said, “Such is life!”
After hours standing out there, rain began pelting down on the women. Within minutes Rachel felt like a drowned rat and the incoming wind tugged at her clothes, making her shiver.
To add insult to injury, the Lagerkommandant disappeared into his dry, warm office and sent die Schwarze to be in charge. Clad in a long raincoat, a fashionable cap, and with two prisoners in tow holding an umbrella over her, she strode along the rows of miserable women, searching for her next victim.
At last, Rachel felt an emotion well up in her petrified heart. Unadulterated fear. Susanne Hille’s penchant for cruelty was unparalleled. She had a plethora of creative punishments in store, one more atrocious than the next. The sadistic woman bathed in the misery of others and the more pain she inflicted, the happier she seemed to become.
Despite the raging panic in her body, Rachel managed to take on the posture of a rock: immobile, unfazed, eternal. As much as she sometimes longed to perish, she wouldn’t give the Schwarze the satisfaction of doing so at her hands.
The woman standing next to Rachel started coughing, just as Susanne Hille walked past her. The guard froze in her tracks, turned around, and for a moment Rachel could see deep into her cold eyes. She all but recoiled from the impact of getting a glimpse into that soulless monster. If Susanne Hille wasn’t the devil incarnate, then Rachel had no idea what she was.
Not a human, certainly.
A split-second later, the guard lashed out at the coughing prisoner with her truncheon, accidentally scuffing Rachel in the process. Rachel’s skin flared with pain, but she somehow managed to keep her lips pressed together, not uttering a syllable.
To her right, the poor woman who received the full impact of the punch screamed with pain, as the vicious guard struck her again and again. Rachel forced herself to stare straight ahead and keep her horror locked inside, willing her ears to become deaf and her heart to return to numbness.
She hated herself for being so apathetic, but she simply didn’t have the energy to feel compassion for the other woman. She truly had become an animal, exactly the way the Nazis wanted them to be.
Nobody spoke about the incident. Ever. These days the women rarely spoke, because it took up too much energy, but the main reason was that if they didn’t talk about it, they could pretend it never happened and that the nightmare they perpetually endured wasn’t quite as horrible as it really was.
13
Laszlo never managed to get onto the transport. Weeks later, he still moped around about the lost opportunity, especially because Ruth and her parents had been amongst the lucky ones.
Mindel, though, was quite happy to have her friend by her side, although she didn’t say so and pretended to be sad for him.
One day someone came up to her, saying, “Hey, little girl!”
“Are you talking to me?”
“Yes. You asked me about your sister a while ago. Do you remember?”
Mindel didn’t remember, but nodded anyway, since she had probably asked every person in the Star Camp about Rachel.
“Is she your only family member?”
“Yes.” Mindel squeezed Paula close against her chest as a wave of loneliness assailed her. “Just the two of us. I need to find her.”
The woman squinted her eyes. “Who’s taking care of you?”
Mindel shrugged. What kind of question was this?
“Anyone?”
“Laszlo.”
“Is he a relative? A cousin maybe, or an uncle?” The woman frowned.
Mindel shook her head. “Laszlo is my friend.”
A suspicious expression crossed the woman’s face. Mindel knew that look, it was the adult look, meant to let her know that this was all
wrong. “Exactly how old is this Laszlo?”
“He’s seven and he cares for me very well.”
The woman shook her head. “I’m sure he does, but he’s a child himself. The two of you should go to the orphans’ barracks.”
“I’m not an orphan!” Mindel refused to believe the woman might have a point.
“Look, there’s a couple at the far end of the camp taking care of unaccompanied children with the approval of the SS. The woman’s name is Mother Brinkmann. You go and ask her if she’ll take you in, and your friend, too.”
“What did that old broad want?” Laszlo asked as he joined her.
“Did you know there’s an orphans’ barracks in here?”
Laszlo only shrugged and Mindel frowned at him. “I want to go see. Please? Can we at least go see it?”
He shook his head, but after Mindel pestered him for another hour, he finally relented. “Just to go check it out.”
A sudden agitation took over and Mindel couldn’t get to the orphans’ barracks fast enough. The gang rarely ventured there, since they preferred to roam near the kitchen hut and the big courtyard.
Laszlo, though, was dragging his feet and Mindel grew tired of having to wait for him all the time. She turned around, putting her hands akimbo the way she’d seen her mother do it and asked in a stern voice, “Why are you dawdling?”
“I don’t need no adult telling me what to do. I’m just fine without them.”
Mindel admired Laszlo for his wits, his independence and his ability to give the SS the runaround, but she often wished for someone older to be there for her. “Don’t you wish we still had mothers to protect us?”
“I protect you.”
“You do, but you’re not as big as an adult. What if things are better over there?”
“I’ve taken care of myself for a long time now. I’ve taken care of you, haven’t I?”
“Yes, but…” She had no idea what to say, except for her secret yearning to have someone similar to a mother or big sister again. Someone watching over her. “Please, Laszlo, can we go meet Mother Brinkmann? Just to say hello?”
The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII Page 6