by Anna Patrick
Before the evening siren, the original inhabitants came back. Marta heard Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and other languages. There was a lot of staring and ill-tempered muttering about ‘more bloody inmates’ and ‘how many more do they think they can shove in here?’ but nobody blamed them.
During roll call their blokova was efficient and stated all were present and correct.
‘Anybody I need to place on Report?’ asked the crow.
‘No, Frau Aufseherin.’
But Frau Aufseherin was feeling deprived; she wanted to punish somebody and release her pent up aggression; anybody would do, and she walked up and down the ranks slapping someone here, kicking someone there, until satisfied she had stamped her authority on the Schweinehunde.
All of them learnt early on not to react to any punishment, no matter how unwarranted. To moan, or cry out, or remonstrate was to invite more of the same. So they stood, eyes to the front, and took the punches and the kicks and the blows with as little movement as possible and with mouths closed.
The blokova seemed a decent sort stirring the soup before she ladled it out giving everyone scraps of vegetables without favour. After washing their bowls they headed straight for the bunks where the stubova allocated them spaces.
Marta and Danuta found themselves on adjoining bottom tier bunks; both had one other occupant sharing with them.
Marta’s companion was a Polish woman in her early twenties named Renata; she had been at the camp for seven weeks, six in quarantine and one in their shared barrack, and wore a red triangle. She was small and attractive, a black-haired gamine with a retroussé nose. Hair growing back in uneven tufts added to her elfin appearance.
They talked about their crimes: Renata said they’d arrested her, alongside her younger brother, for painting graffiti in their home town of Plonsk.
‘Polska Walczy?’ asked Marta, referring to the anchor symbol of a P with a W underneath, shorthand for ‘Poland Fights’.
‘Yes, we painted three before they caught us. It was only five in the morning and we thought no one would be around. Now I wish we’d just stayed at home. Jurek is only fifteen and I don’t know where they’ve sent him or even if he’s alive.’
‘It was a brave thing to do.’
‘Seems stupid now, landing up here for a bit of paint splashed on a few walls.’
‘No, you mustn’t think like that. People like you and your brother have kept us going. Do you know how inspirational it is to see one of your signs? It lifts your heart and makes you think we can win against these monsters.’
‘Do you think so?’ asked Renata, looking a little less forlorn.
‘Yes, I do. We just have to keep going until the Allies bring this wretched war to an end.’
‘But will they?’
‘They‘ve already landed in France. It can only be a matter of time.’
Renata’s eyes widened, and she hid her face in her hands. The lights went out and one by one the different conversations tailed off.
The sound of Renata sobbing woke Marta in the early hours.
‘What’s the matter?’ she whispered, conscious other inmates still slept.
‘They’ve stolen my bread; the bastards have stolen my bread.’
Between sobs of rage and self-pity, Renata explained how she tried to save her evening bread for the morning when she needed more energy for work, but somebody kept stealing it from her.
‘Oh Renata, maybe you shouldn’t try to save it then. I can’t fault your logic but better to have it at night then go without it altogether.’
‘But how do they do it? It’s so well hidden.’
‘Get up, get up’. One of the stubovas came into their sleeping quarters, banging on the bunks with a wooden club, until everyone shifted. As they made their way to the washroom, Danuta introduced Agnieska to them; an Ukrainian of quiet demeanour and large soulful eyes whose abortion had merited her a green triangle.
‘She’s been here two years and works for a local farmer,’ whispered Danuta.
As they drank their coffee, Marta tore at her portion of bread and gave half to Renata whose eyes softened as she mouthed a silent thank you.
‘Eat it now. I want to see you doing it.’
After morning roll call, Agnieska joined her work crew while the others returned to the barracks; Renata explained they were now ‘availables’ and would fill in wherever there was a shortage of labour.
Marta spent the rest of the day digging sand and loading it onto a hopper car. It wasn’t long before her arms and back ached with the unfamiliar physical work. She set her pace by another inmate who was a regular on the crew. She didn’t want the kolonkova to lash out at her.
When the siren sounded for their midday meal Marta plodded back to the hut. To judge by their drawn faces and expressionless eyes Renata and Danuta had fared no better in the labour stakes. I suppose I must look the same, she thought, as she spooned soup into her mouth and tried to ignore her aching muscles.
The afternoon’s work seemed to last forever. A relentless sun added to their misery and sweat poured off their faces and arms and inside their clothes.
A road building crew passed by and Marta glimpsed Rachel or thought she did. A bruised face and limping figure turned her stomach over and she tried to catch her eye but the woman kept her head down oblivious to her surroundings.
The tedium of roll call came as a blessed relief; she no longer had to dig or lift a spade or push a hopper along the rails and unload its contents somewhere else. Standing upright, eyes front, her mind was already asleep and her limbs, locked into position, at rest.
Irenka continued to update them on camp life.
‘What are you chewing? I swear I can smell garlic.’
‘A tiny sliver of dried sausage.’
‘What? How? Where? Why?’ Danuta spluttered in impotent rage.
‘One of our group received a parcel and shared its contents.’
‘A parcel?’ said Marta, her mind racing back to Montelupich.
‘Yes, they come through from time to time. As you would expect, the SS pilfer them, but if the senders are clever, they make any food as unappetising as possible and so bits get through. It helps if you’ve got contacts in the admin…’
‘Which you have, no doubt,’ said Danuta, cutting her off.
Irenka shrugged her shoulders and departed with a little wave of her hand.
‘I’ll swing for that woman.’
‘But, Danuta, think, we could get parcels too.’ She clutched her friend’s arm. ‘Imagine it: a parcel could save us, stop us feeling so hungry if nothing else.’
Marta’s hope soared like an eagle carrying prey back to its eyrie. She dreamt up endless scenarios of Ludek finding out her destination, putting together the contents with ingenuity and love. But the parcel never materialised, and she puzzled over the situation. Had something happened to Ludek? And Wanda? They must have found out where she was, and they wouldn’t have forgotten about her. Or maybe the parcels had never reached their intended recipient? Perhaps someone had stolen them, perhaps Ludek had been too generous with his contents? Yes, that must be it, he had just cared too much.
Summer turned to autumn turned to winter. They had survived six months at Ravensbrück. Their faces were as grey as the inmates they had seen on arrival; arms and legs as skeletal; eyes haunted by what they had seen and what they had done. Hunger consumed them and mocked their nights with vivid dreams of abundant food.
Marta’s stomach shrivelled and shrunk into a tight, malevolent ball; her guts seeped in daily sabotage; her body had become a treacherous companion in the fight for life. Only her mind pared itself back to an essence, not so much of intelligence, but of instinct. With atavistic precision she knew when to act, when to melt into the background, how to look, when to speak, when to stay silent.
Hatred became her
armour against the random violence and casual cruelty of their lives. Shielded from sight, she spat at the crows, blinded their pitiless eyes, silenced their screeching voices, paralysed their beating wings.
Small differences made the days more bearable: Danuta now had a hessian sack for her goods, a gift from Agnieska who wanted nothing in return except her continued kindness and friendship; Marta had picked up a thin rope on the construction crew and used it as a belt to which she tied her utensils; she also bartered her bread for some paper and a pencil and wrote out Our Lady’s Dream which she kept hidden in a crack in the bunk; Renata found an old tin which someone could use as a cup or bowl and bartered it for a small bag.
The large Polish contingent in the camp organised lectures and educational programmes from language and literature to mathematics and astronomy.
‘Shall we go? I fancy learning about the stars then we could stand at roll call and count the ones we recognise,’ said Renata.
‘You go, then come back and teach us.’
She didn’t want to discourage her friend, but she couldn’t see the point for herself. She had more than enough to think about.
She watched, amazed and humbled, at the gifts friends made for each other. Beautifully embroidered handkerchiefs, crucifixes carved out of sticks, little fabric dolls, cards illustrated with roses. Items stolen from their workplace or bartered for precious bread.
Food rations did not increase in the winter and there were regular fights over bread. When Marta found herself embroiled in a battle, she gave up her ration rather than fight for it; she didn’t have the energy. From time to time she shared her bread with Renata whose instinct was still to hide her evening ration. Nobody fought over the soup.
Roll call now took place in freezing conditions but their dresses and jackets were the same they had worn all summer. As they stood shivering, the well-fed crows emerged in thick capes, warm hats and gloves and seemed to relish the fresh air on their faces; they didn’t appear to be in any hurry to complete the counting and recounting. Roll calls could still last for hours.
‘Have you heard?’
A prisoner from the neighbouring block burst into their hut one Sunday, their only day of rest.
‘There’s been an escape.’
The news galvanised them into whispering cohorts. Who was it? How did they do it? Would they get away with it? Scouts scuttled around the camp to find out whatever they could and by nightfall a dozen different stories were circulating among the prisoners.
The euphoria lasted until roll call. Guards dragged a cowering wreck in front of them and unleashed their dogs. Her bloodied and torn body tossed this way and that in a macabre dance to the music of her screams. Eyes front, hands at their side, nobody moved.
Overcrowding was now so bad they had erected a massive tent between two of the barracks. Inside there was no electricity or plumbing or heating; the women had to use the deep latrines dug outside, and it was a common sight to see one emaciated prisoner clinging onto another to prevent her falling into the pit.
Some prisoners spent a short time in the tent before being sent away to other camps, but the majority stayed and died in conditions which made the other barracks seem like the height of luxury. The tent blokova never stepped inside so there was nobody to organise the distribution of soup or bread. Only the fittest fought their way to the food.
They used the availables twice a day for corpse collection, dragging bodies out of the barracks and placing them on their hand carts; women who had never seen a body before now thought nothing of lifting stiff arms and legs into the cart, ignoring the pain and despair etched into the faces of the dead.
‘What will people say afterwards when we will tell them about the camps?’
‘They won’t believe us.’
‘You seem very sure about that.’
‘Imagine a film crew recording everything we have seen since our arrival. Now imagine your friends and family watching it. They would say the director was mad, that nobody could survive such horrors.’
‘And yet we do survive.’
‘We do, indeed. I don’t know how but we do.’
A new blokova arrived, took a dislike to Danuta and made her life hell. Her button was undone; her bed wasn’t straight; she was looking defiant. The list of petty faults and lies resulted in beatings and then Reports.
Harsh punishments led to three days in the Bunker. They kept her there with no food, in almost total darkness, with no shoes and only a blanket to protect her from the cold. When she emerged, she was a broken woman. Agnieska held her hand and tried to persuade her to eat the bread ration she had saved for her, but Danuta just shook her head.
Marta and Renata were beside themselves with worry and gave her their soup when she refused to collect any for herself. She looked distracted and had a permanent frown; then it disappeared and a smile lit up her face as if she’d solved the problem troubling her.
‘You’ve been the best of friends. I wouldn’t have done any of this without you.’
Agnieska smiled back and embraced her when Danuta chewed on some bread, but Marta remained unconvinced. In the morning she was gone; the sack containing her utensils tucked in beside Agnieska. They found her when the siren screamed for roll call; she was hanging off the electrical fencing.
For days Marta plotted revenge on the green triangle; she was ready to murder her if she could only figure out how to get past the stubovas. Her imagination ran riot with ever more bizarre schemes until Renata, alarmed at her behaviour, touched her forehead.
‘You’re burning up. You must have a temperature of over 40.’
She went in search of the block nurse who came to look at her.
‘Typhus. We should get you to the Revier and have a doctor examine you.’
‘No, it’s not that, nurse,’ said Marta forcing herself to speak. ‘I’m just distraught over the death of my friend so I’ve been tossing and turning all night and it’s left me feverish.’
‘Mm, I’ll talk to the blokova and see what I can do.’
Marta expected nothing from this encounter but going to Revier risked her being placed in the Typhus Block to die with no treatment and even further rationing of food. What she didn’t know was that the nurse was owed a favour by the blokova, and since she had known and liked Danuta, she decided now was the time to call it in.
‘You’re excused roll call and work for the next three days only. I’ll try to get something to help with the symptoms.’
Marta closed her eyes and stretched her limbs. Just knowing she didn’t have to face roll call or work crews, made her better.
Click clack. Click clack. The sound of boots on wooden floors woke her mid-morning. She sank back into the straw, willing herself to disappear. What was he doing here? The SS never entered the barracks leaving prisoner control to the aufseherinen and their chosen blokovas.
Her eyes met his and with one supreme effort she reached for the scrap of paper with Our Lady’s Dream and held it tight in her hand. Minutes passed; there was no movement; there was no sound except her heart slamming against her ears; the officer turned on his heels and left.
She thanked God and slept again. Renata fed her soup at mealtimes and tried to bring down the fever with cold compresses using a clean rag the nurse had brought them, but it was Agnieska who saved the day; she bartered the surplus utensils for enough medicine to put Marta back on her unsteady feet and even got her extra bread.
After three days, the nurse insisted that she needed Marta’s help in the Revier and she spent hours in the warmth rolling up bandages. The following day was a Sunday and there were no work crews which gave further time to recuperate. The nurse continued to provide her with additional jobs until by the end of the week she was fit enough by camp standards. Next day’s roll call turned out to be their last at the camp.
19
It was the blo
kova who told them that two hundred women, including Marta and Renata, were being transferred to one of Ravensbrück’s subcamps.
‘Why? Where are we going?’ The news alarmed them. Nobody had a good word to say for the camp, but they all feared change would mean a change for the worse.
The blokova shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t know their destination and didn’t care.
Guards marched them at the double to the station and loaded them into cattle trucks. Marta fell along the way, but Renata dragged her to her feet and although they both suffered blows and curses, they made it into the wagons.
Marta sat and continued to recover her strength. The next morning they found themselves at Finow, a small camp in the middle of woods surrounded by electric fencing. They saw a smaller Appell-platz, six barracks for the inmates, a kitchen and not much else.
‘The crows look the same,’ whispered Renata, as they stood for roll call.
An SS officer now made his way down the Lagerstrasse accompanied by a tall, grey-haired man in his fifties. They stopped in front of the assembled women and the SS man indicated them with an outstretched arm as if showing off his personal staff. The civilian asked any women who spoke German to step forward. Half a dozen did so, and he questioned their experience and educational achievements.
Marta embellished her qualifications claiming to have done secretarial work for a solicitor in the hope of procuring an office job. She need not have bothered as the man was looking for munition workers.
‘What about these other women?’
Marta pulled Renata forward and said she used to work at a pram manufacturer’s factory in Poland and she was teaching her German.
‘Good,’ said the civilian and walked away to confer with the SS Officer.
‘A pram manufacturer’s factory? What on earth do I know about prams?’
‘It was the first thing that came into my head. They’re not likely to check the information.’
‘I suppose not. How are you feeling now?’
‘Much better and more hopeful. Factory work would be almost as good as being in an office.’