Rachel relaxed and nodded. It was a sliver of hope—but no more.
She took the nurse’s advice and slept as much as possible, giving her battered and exhausted body time to recover. Sleep was also a respite from the pain in her hand, since painkillers were a luxury not wasted on the inmates.
On the third day, the nurse brought the encouraging news that a woman knew of a girl called Mindel and would try to locate her. But before the stranger could return, the SS doctor paraded through the infirmary and declared Rachel well enough to return to work.
Less than five minutes later, she was escorted to the Women’s camp past the barbed wire fence separating the two compounds. Rachel almost howled with desperation. She didn’t even have the time to let the friendly nurse know, and could only hope that someone had given Mindel the message that Rachel was still alive and looking for her.
15
One of the perks that came with living in the orphans' barracks was the absence of roll calls. Since the SS hated the disturbance the ever-fidgeting children brought to the roll calls, they had exempted Mother Brinkman and her group from the daily counting. In fact, it didn’t matter to them whether the children were alive or not. They couldn’t be used for work and the probability of one of them trying to escape was zero.
Every morning when Mindel watched the other inmates lining up in the courtyard, while her little group was allowed to stay by their hut, she felt a rush of relief surging through her veins. If for nothing else, not having to stand still for hours each day had been worth being taken under Mother Brinkmann’s wing. Much to her relief, even Laszlo had come around and had reluctantly admitted it hadn’t been such a bad move to come here.
The children were sitting outside to soak up the rare sunshine during this otherwise dark and cold month of November, when hundreds of people marched toward the camp, passing their barracks outside the barbed wire fence.
Mindel distantly remembered that was how she’d come here such a long time ago, walking – or mostly being carried by Rachel – from the train station to the main gate. Curious, the children approached the fence to get a closer look at the newcomers. But the moment Mindel caught a glimpse into the face of the most miserable human being she’d ever seen, she shrieked and jumped backward, straight into another child who began cursing at her. “Hey, watch where you’re going, idiot!”
Mindel did not answer, so severe was the shock from what she’d seen. Nobody in the camp had fat on their bones or looked remotely healthy, but these... creatures…couldn’t be humans. She dared a second glimpse at the ever-growing mass of bodies marching past.
“Are these men or women?” she asked Laszlo, who usually had an answer for everything.
“Dunno. Look like aliens to me.”
“What is an alien?”
“A creature that lives on another planet. They’re not people like us.”
“What is a planet?”
“Stop asking stupid questions,” Laszlo scolded her and she decided it was better not to pester him anymore. She still loved him, but his mood was becoming ever more volatile and he’d yell, shove, or hit her whenever he got angry. Not when Mother Brinkmann was around, because she didn’t tolerate such behavior among her children, but as soon as she was out of sight, the older children began fighting with each other and bossing around the smaller ones.
Mindel turned her attention to the mass of bodies passing by the fence. A while ago there had been newcomers every once in a while, but recently it happened almost every day – although never such frightful creatures as today.
“Children, come inside, it’s getting cold,” Mother Brinkmann called and herded them back into the barracks. Her husband was waiting inside the hut for the daily class.
In the beginning Mindel had enjoyed the classes, because she’d learned to write her name with her finger in the dust. But lessons were so awfully boring and she was always so tired, her head wouldn’t follow Herr Brinkmann’s lessons, and then she got scolded for disrupting the class.
Today, though, she took the opportunity and asked him the question Laszlo hadn’t wanted to answer. “What is a planet?”
Herr Brinkmann smiled and began to explain about the earth circling the sun together with other orbs like Mars or Venus. It didn’t make sense.
“Why do people from other planets come to our camp? Don’t they know how awful it is?” she asked.
“Who told you this?” Herr Brinkmann asked.
“Nobody.” Mindel bit her lower lip and stared at the ground, afraid to make herself look foolish if she said more. But the issue gnawed at her and the next morning she sneaked off to visit Hanneli. The older girl was clever and knew even more than Laszlo did.
“Mindel, what a surprise! How are you?” Hanneli greeted her.
Mindel shrugged. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
While she recounted the happenings from the day before, Laura settled beside them. As Mindel ended her story, both of the girls laughed.
“They are no aliens. Those people come from a camp much worse than this one,” Hanneli said.
“Worse than this?” Mindel didn’t think this was possible, but why would Hanneli lie to her?
“Yes, it’s called Auschwitz, and there, they send people up through the chimney,” Laura said, earning her a stern glare from Hanneli.
Mindel drew her brows together, asking, “What does that mean?”
“Nothing. Laura is just being stupid,” Hanneli said in a tone that brooked no argument. A tone Mindel knew all too well. Grown-ups always used it when they had decided she was too young for something. From experience she knew there was no way of coaxing the older girls into telling her, so she shrugged again and decided to ask around later.
“By the way, yesterday a woman came asking for you,” Hanneli said.
“For me?” Mindel had no idea who’d want something from her.
“Yes, apparently there was a patient in the infirmary who might be your sister.”
“Rachel? Why didn’t you tell me? Can we go see her?” Mindel hopped up and down with excitement.
“We don’t know if the person asking for you really was your sister. Unfortunately, when we went to see her, she’d already been transferred back to the Women’s camp,” Laura said and Mindel broke out in tears, unable to contain her disappointment. She’d been so close to finding Rachel, and now she was gone – again.
“Hey, don’t cry.” Hanneli wrapped an arm around her. “This is good news. Now we know your sister is alive.”
“But…Laura…said…it’s not sure,” Mindel sniffed.
Hanneli glared angrily at Laura and rocked Mindel on her lap. “We are sure. She’s alive, and she’s looking for you. That’s a good sign. As soon as she can, she’ll come looking for you again.”
“Can we send her a message?” Mindel asked on a hopeful note.
“That’s a good idea. The nurse can give your note to a patient from the Women’s camp.” Even though Hanneli made it sound like an easy task, Mindel sensed the hesitation in her voice. But she wouldn’t let this deter her from her plan. “We need pen and paper. And then you write a note for me, will you?”
Hanneli nodded and together they entered the barracks to scrounge for a piece of paper. The camp children collected anything and everything they could get hold of, and they soon found someone willing to exchange a scrap of paper for two rusty nails Mindel carried in her pocket.
“I almost forgot,” Hanneli said. “This Rachel says your last name is Epstein, is this right?”
Mindel furrowed her brows in deep thinking, but as much as she tried, the name didn’t bring up any recognition, so she shrugged. “I really don’t know.”
Hanneli nodded. “It doesn’t matter.” Then she wrote on the scrap of paper:
Rachel Epstein. Your sister Mindel is at the orphans' barracks. Hanneli Goslar.
On her way back Mindel peered through the barbed wire fence into the Women’s camp, hoping to see Ra
chel somewhere, but the only things she saw were hastily erected tents for the thousands upon thousands of women coming from this other camp called Auschwitz.
From then on she walked every day to the fence, hoping to catch a glimpse of her sister. She stayed until some SS guard sent her away, or until the bell for dinner time rang and she had to return to her barracks.
Never once did she see Rachel, but every day there were more tents and more people in the formerly empty courtyard. It was an impossible affair to find her sister there. With sagging shoulders she decided not to return, at least not until she heard back from Hanneli that someone had delivered her note.
That evening dark gray thunderclouds rolled in, covering the entire sky. One of the dimming memories of her days on the farm was how she and Aron had jumped from puddle to puddle, happy at the sensation of rain pelting down on them.
Here, though, she hated the rain. It wetted her dress, and for lack of a change in clothing, she’d spend the rest of the day moist and freezing. No, in the camp bad weather was no fun. Not even jumping puddles was a game the children would play, because with the holes in their shoes, the awful chill would soon numb their feet and then creep up their legs.
She increased her pace, wanting to be in the hut before the skies opened up. Later at night, lightning and thunder shook the barracks as a deluge came down with strong gusts of wind. Mindel huddled closer to Laszlo, shivering each time a squall blew through the cracks in the thin wooden wall. To make matters worse, the wind howled as if ghosts and other creatures were coming to destroy them.
“It’s just the wind, Mindel,” Laszlo consoled her.
“But it’s so loud and scary.”
They kept silent for a while, until he whispered. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Yes.”
“There’s another transport going to Switzerland and I’m going to sneak onto it.”
She gasped. “You can’t. The SS will kill you if they find out.”
“They won’t catch me. I have talked to a man from the repair crew. He knows the people in the Hungarian camp, and he says there’s a foolproof way to get onto the transport.”
“Please don’t go,” Mindel begged him. She was afraid for him, but also for herself. Despite being under Mother Brinkmann’s care, how would she cope without Laszlo? “I will miss you, and Paula will, too.”
“Then come with me.”
“I can’t.” The entire idea seemed much too daunting to even entertain it. As bad as being in the camp was, who could promise her that this Switzerland wouldn’t be worse? No, she’d rather stay with Mother Brinkmann and the other children.
“Think about it, we’d have so much fun in Switzerland. I heard they have loads of chocolate there.”
Chocolate? Mindel’s mouth watered as she thought back to her last birthday, when she’d received two pieces of the rare treat, together with a raspberry cake. It seemed like an awfully long time ago.
16
In the early hours of the morning, the raging storm abated, and the prisoners were called outside for roll call. On the way to the assigned assembly space for her hut, Rachel passed the temporary tent area.
She blinked several times to make sure what she saw wasn’t a hallucination. Where the night before there had been hundreds of tents, now nothing remained but muddy earth, shredded tarpaulin and desperate women. She hadn’t personally spoken to any of the newcomers, but rumor had it they came from a camp ten times worse than Bergen-Belsen.
According to the accounts of the new arrivals, people there, in Auschwitz, were selected straight from the train ramp – one line for those who could work and another line for those who had to die. Even after experiencing unthinkable cruelties at the hands of the Nazis, and the SS especially, she had difficulties wrapping her head around the news.
It seemed too outrageous to be true, but then, what was normal or even decent where the Nazis and their treatment of the Jews was concerned? Rachel shook her head, as if she could shake the horrendous images from her mind. After being kicked out of the camp hospital, she’d been lucky enough to be selected for a work detail inside the camp, which served her just fine in her quest to find Mindel.
That evening after work she returned to her barracks, only to find out that the women from the destroyed tents had been assigned to the already overcrowded barracks. Last night she’d shared her bunk with one other woman, but now she found two more persons in there.
“These are Margot and Anne Frank,” her bunkmate introduced the newcomers with a sour face. “The capo assigned them to our bunk.”
So, there was nothing they could do about it. Rachel didn’t welcome the idea of having to share the small bunk with three other women instead of just one, but she put a good face on the matter and said, “Hello. I’m Rachel.”
Margot and Anne turned out to be about her own age, eighteen and fifteen respectively, and came from the Netherlands. They had quite an odyssey behind them and compared to the physical appearance of the two girls, Rachel and her bunkmate looked in the pink.
Apart from shoving more people into the already overcrowded huts, nothing else changed. There wasn’t more food or other provisions like blankets. The same barrel of soup per hut that had not sufficed to satiate a hundred women was now used to feed three hundred. A gnawing and growling stomach was Rachel’s constant companion, and together with the itching and biting of the lice, fleas and bedbugs, it kept her from sleeping despite her complete exhaustion.
Anne and Margot confirmed the rumors about Auschwitz, and what they recounted seemed to come straight from Dante’s sick mind in his description of the ninth circle of hell. In all of her seventeen years Rachel had never believed that she would witness such evil.
A lifetime ago, Rachel had sneaked Dante’s book from her father’s library and read it hidden beneath her blanket…memories of better times returned and for a moment she allowed her mind the luxury of drifting away and forgetting everything around her. For a short while she wasn’t in Bergen-Belsen, where the stink of human excrement and burned corpses lingered everywhere, but on the farm, inhaling the scent of freshly cut grass, feeling the warm sun on her skin while she milked the cows, tasting ripe, sweet strawberries on her tongue.
“Hey, get out of my way,” someone grunted and elbowed her.
Rachel blinked a few times, but reality had snatched her away from the dream and as much as she tried, she couldn’t get back to that wonderful place she missed so much.
Days in the camp were filled with hunger, pain, and boredom. She wasn’t sure whether she preferred the horrible work in Tannenberg or the equally horrible tedium here. At least in the factory she hadn’t had time to think and worry.
Good news was rare, but the Auschwitz women brought news that the war was as good as lost, and the Red Army had already conquered half of Poland.
17
Laszlo grabbed Mindel’s hand and pulled her behind the kitchen barracks. They hadn’t come here since living with Mother Brinkmann, because she kept a close eye on the older children, always cautioning them to stay away from the guards and outbuildings, lest they get caught in some sort of trouble. But as always, Laszlo paid attention to her only when it suited his plans.
“We need more food,” Laszlo whispered to her.
Mindel agreed, because the rations had gotten smaller with every arriving trainload of prisoners. But she was also scared. There were too many people around, both prisoners and guards. “Let’s not do it today, please. You will get caught.”
“I’m quick. Nobody will even know I was there.” Laszlo puffed out his chest. “You and Tina can keep watch.” He nodded to one of the girls from the orphans’ barracks who had taken to following them both around like a puppy.
“What’s he gonna do?” Tina asked.
“Scrounge food,” Mindel whispered back, watching as Laszlo stood up and walked toward the back of the building. From their position, they couldn’t see the back door, just the corner of the building. Laszlo
turned and waved at her before he disappeared around the side.
The girls waited in the shadows, pretending to be sitting on the ground playing with Mindel’s doll when several SS guards passed them by. Mindel had learned never to look them in the face, because that only seemed to invite their interest and that was the last thing she or Laszlo needed right now.
But she let out a loud whistle the way Laszlo had taught her, as soon as the SS walked down the path toward the kitchen barracks, hoping her friend would be quick enough to disappear before they entered the hut, if they even did. Most of the times they just marched by, looking grim.
Long minutes passed and Laszlo didn’t return. Mindel grew ever more anxious, wanting to go and see what had happened. Only Tina’s small hand on her arm kept her from storming into the kitchen. All of a sudden she heard shouts and a kerfuffle and moments later saw the SS guards coming out of the back of the kitchen.
She gasped with horror when she saw Laszlo dragged behind, covered in blood. They gave him several more knocks with their batons for good measure, before they left him weltering on the ground.
“Oh no,” Tina cried out.
“We have to bring him to Mother Brinkmann,” Mindel whined. She tucked Paula away in her too-small dress and scampered across the open space, stopping just before rounding the corner of the building that housed the kitchens. She swallowed several times and then peeked around, making sure the SS was gone.
“Laszlo!” she screamed and rushed to his side. He was so battered, she stopped her hand midair before touching him, not wanting to hurt him.
“They got me…” he whispered, barely able to keep his eyes open.
“Shush. We’ll get you back to Mother Brinkmann. She’ll know what to do,” Mindel said. Mother Brinkmann always knew what to do; she would be able to fix Laszlo.
“I can’t walk.”
The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII Page 8