by Anna Patrick
‘You said Rachel, not Rachel Goldstein by any chance?’
‘No, she was Rosenberg by marriage and her maiden name was Jacobson.’
What was she expecting? Coincidences like that only happened in novels. Besides, the last time she had seen Rachel she wouldn’t have given her much chance of surviving another week let alone a year.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I met a Rachel Goldstein when we were both prisoners on our way to Ravensbrück concentration camp. She had been in hiding too but the elderly couple sheltering her left to visit their daughter and never came back. When the food ran out she managed to join a partisan group but they were caught in an ambush.’
‘At least she managed to fight back.’
‘Yes, I hope that gave her some comfort.’
‘None of our family wanted Rachel to go into hiding. They were convinced we should all stick together, but she was right to do it, wasn’t she? All the others are dead now.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
Her sympathy was inadequate and yet she sensed the woman wanted to talk.
‘What are your plans for the future?’
‘Let me see, Monday I’m getting married.’
‘Married? Oh my goodness, many congratulations, I mean mazel tov. What a joy to have a wedding to celebrate.’
‘Thank you. I’ve only known Isaac for a few weeks. We met here in the camp but we’re already very fond of each other and times are so different. It’s not as if I can ask my mother to arrange for a matchmaker.’
‘No, indeed.’
‘And then we’re off to Israel. We want to be among our own people where we don’t have to worry about being Jewish. It’ll be a whole new start in a new country, our country. I can’t wait and then we hope and pray there’ll be more of us.’
She caressed her stomach, a smile playing on her lips.
‘You’re not…?’ asked Marta eyes opening wide in delight even as her guts contracted in a painful reminder of loss.
‘No, not yet, but I’m certain it will happen even though the doctors said we shouldn’t burden our bodies with pregnancies after all the starvation and ill-treatment.’
Marta nodded. She had been told the same thing during her medical shortly after arriving at Wentorf.
‘But God will decide that, not me, and certainly no goyim doctors.’
Marta smiled.
‘I wish you as many healthy, happy children as you wish for yourself and I shall pray that everything goes smoothly for you and Isaac in the years ahead.’
‘Thank you.’
The two women hugged as if they’d known each other for years. Marta watched her walk away and give a little wave.
She moved aside as someone tacked a notice onto the board, offering up a prayer for her new friend. Euphoria surged through her body; she convinced herself the future was bright for all of them but when she remembered her dead son, her elation died as quickly as sea spray hitting sand.
A pin dropped to the ground followed by the soft thud of a folded envelope. Marta picked both up and found a better place to pin them back up more securely. She read the notice: Looking for family and friends from Katowice and surrounding area. Karol Lewandowski, aged 28, Building 4, Wentorf.
Hundreds of notices, thousands of stories, millions dead. It was too much to take in. Easier to write articles, swap clothes, share the few cosmetics that came their way and wait for whatever the future would bring.
She wandered across to the canteen where she had arranged to meet Renata after her class. She was sitting with a group of their friends. Marta collected a plate of food and joined them. She always ate her meals with care and attention, delighted to use a knife and fork again, and make conversation. It was a welcome return to civilised behaviour.
‘Did you hear this morning’s radio report? They say there is widespread malnutrition, even starvation throughout Germany,’ said Pawel who was taking an electrical training course.
‘Good. Let them starve,’ replied his fellow student Antek. ‘What? Why the disapproving faces? Anybody would think I’d dropped a stinker.’
‘How is starving the Germans going to help anyone?’
‘It makes me feel better, for one. Why shouldn’t they starve after what they did to us?’
‘Yes, but it’s always the women and children who suffer the most.’
‘And you think they don’t deserve to? You imagine it was just career Nazis who were responsible for slave labour and all the concentration camps? Well let me tell you they all bloody knew what was going on. Men, women, children, the old, the young, the sick, the fighting fit, everybody realised exactly what they were up to.
‘And I’ll tell you something else. I find it easier to forgive, not that I intend to, a Hitler or a Goering or a Himmler than I do the ordinary people who stood by and watched it happen. They were maniacs, psychopaths, arguably not responsible for their actions, but Mr and Mrs Average? They can burn in hell for their silence and their apathy.’
Antek thrust his chair back and strode out the canteen without a backward glance.
‘Oh dear,’ said Renata as they all sat stunned by the outburst.
‘He has a point, though, don’t you think?’
‘Maybe. But I’d like to believe we could move on from “an eye for an eye” and learn something from the horrors we’ve all been through.’
That night Marta watched as Renata tossed and turned. Sleep eluded her as she remembered the crows and the ordinary German women working in the munitions factory. Were they equally culpable? Moans and muffled words came from the next bed. She forced herself up to comfort Renata but stopped short of her bed, her face crumbling, as she saw the piece of bread clutched in her fisted hand.
Days passed before Renata raised the subject again.
‘Do you still hate them?’
‘Who?’
‘The crows.’
‘No, not really. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want anything to do with them, but hatred is too strong a word. It helped me cope in camp to imagine taking my revenge on them but now I mostly wonder how they could behave like that? What turned them from human beings into… into what? How would you describe what they became?
‘They saw us as vermin but why? We didn’t look any different from them, at least not at first. And what did they see when they looked in a mirror? What do they see now? Did they not realise what they were doing? And if not, what would have opened their eyes?
‘I keep remembering all the things we witnessed, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, depressing and inspiring. How can it be that in the worst place on earth, full of cruelty and bestiality, we also found courage and friendship, generosity and love? What does that make mankind?’
‘Unfathomable, I guess.’
‘I guess.’
‘What about ordinary Germans? Mr and Mrs Average as Antek described them.’
‘I don’t know, Renata. He says they stood by and did nothing. But were we any better when they came for the Jews?’
‘Judge not lest you be judged?’
‘Exactly. Who knows what it was like for ordinary families? What chance do ants have when an anteater visits their nest?’
One Sunday morning the two friends strolled out of the dormitory, arm in arm, and made their way to a favourite bench positioned near a small expanse of lawn. Marta lit up and toyed with the cigarette packet that was never far from her side; Renata leaned back as the late autumnal sun warmed her face and limbs.
‘Do you suppose we’ll ever be normal?’
‘Don’t you feel normal now? Sitting here, enjoying the peace and quiet?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. We seem to do normal things, behave like normal human beings, but I can’t get my head round things. Over a year has gone by since I was arrested and yet it seems like a hundred years and mo
re. One minute I had a life, then a prolonged nightmare and now here I am with no life at all.’
Renata sat upright.
‘What’s brought this on? Of course you have a life. Count up all the food and clothes and comfortable beds and the friends we’ve made since coming here. There is nothing to stop us laughing or crying or shouting or walking out of here any time we want to. If that’s not life then what is?’
‘But it’s not the life I had. Not with my family, my fiancé…’
‘Your what?’
‘My fiancé, Ludek Golab. Well, I say fiancé, it wasn’t official, because of the war and working for the Home Army, but Ludek was the love of my life and I of his. There was never any doubt about that.’
‘I don’t believe this. Do you mean to say you kept me alive with tales of your family and it never once occurred to you to mention your fiancé?’
‘Oh Renata, I couldn’t. He was the reason I ended up in Ravensbrück. The Gestapo caught me carrying a gun for the resistance, but I wasn’t in the Home Army myself, Ludek was. On June the 11th 1944, he woke up with a premonition that something would go wrong. So I persuaded him to let me courier the gun in his place. And he was right. The Gestapo were as good as waiting for me.’
‘Explain to me, Marta, why did you do it? Why put yourself in so much danger?’
‘Love. I did it for love. Ludek would never let his colleagues down and I was convinced I would get away with it, which, in a way, I did. I got through all the interrogations without mentioning his name once and I had to carry on protecting him by keeping him a secret from everyone, even from you.’
‘Did he know you ended up in Ravensbrück?’
‘I’m not sure. But I’ve always wondered why, if he knew, he didn’t send me any parcels there. He did while I was being held at Montelupich Prison in Krakow so it seemed strange that he didn’t continue doing so.’
‘Do you suppose he’s still alive?’
‘Yes, I do. We were so close, Renata, it doesn’t seem possible for him to have died without my sensing it, without my knowing it in here. When the Red Cross came to the camp, I gave them all his details, and I’ve written to him from here, so we’ll just have to wait and see.’
‘Oh, you poor thing, no wonder your mind is in turmoil. What will you do if he is alive?’
‘That’s the only important question. Perhaps that’s why I’m so unsettled all the time. I want to be with him more than anything else in the entire world. And yet the prospect of returning to a Poland that’s no longer free terrifies me.’
‘Yes, I understand that.’
‘It’s not just about the Soviets, though that is bad enough, it’s the notion of being restricted in any way. We were in a prison of our minds as much our bodies…’
‘You don’t need to tell me that. If we hadn’t had our Sunday Escape Committee, I dread to think what would have become of me.’
‘Going back would be like entering another prison, maybe one without walls or barbed wire but still a prison. Look at the way they blame Katyn on the Germans. Imagine going back and not being able to talk about what they did to my father and to all the others. That would be another prison of the mind and I’m not sure I could stand it.’
Renata gave her a hug.
‘I wonder if Irenka survived the camp.’
‘Who?’
‘Irenka. Did you never meet her?’
‘If I did, I don’t remember.’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t have forgotten her. She drove Danuta to distraction. Irenka was a communist and very proud to be one and always boasting how their comradeship would defeat the Nazis and lead to a wonderful new world. She’s probably running Poland as we speak.’
‘Sounds terrifying.’
‘To be fair, she had useful information about how to survive in the camp. While I didn’t like her, she helped us in those early days when we were all shell-shocked.’
‘What made you think of her?’
‘I don’t know… the knowledge of communists being in charge, I suppose.’
Two weeks later the postman did his morning rounds in the canteen, taking the opportunity to pick up a free breakfast, before depositing any unclaimed letters in reception.
‘Letter for Miss Paciorkowska.’
Marta blanched even as she put her hand up to identify herself.
‘Is this it? Is this the information about Ludek?’
The Krakow postmark and the familiar Greek alpha left her in no doubt.
‘It’s from Ludek.’
‘Do you want me to go away?’
‘Yes. No. Yes.’
‘Read the letter and I will wait on the bench outside.’
‘Thanks.’
Marta sat staring at the envelope before taking a deep breath and opening it with her knife. When she pulled out the sheet of paper and started to read, a frown deepened between her eyes.
She took out a cigarette. Minutes passed as she breathed in the nicotine and clenched and unclenched her fist, biting at her fingers, rubbing her forehead.
She re-read the letter and hurried out of the canteen.
‘Marta? Where are you going? Are you all right? What did the letter say?’
Turning she looked at her friend distractedly.
‘I don’t understand it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The letter makes little sense.’
‘How so?’
‘Here, read it yourself.’
Marta stared at the ground, a new cigarette already lit.
‘Ah, I see what you mean.’
‘He says he’s so glad I’m alive because I can help him prove how they betrayed him. The letter is all about him and his betrayal and his theories about how it happened. It reads like garbage, like a stream of invective. I don’t seem to exist except as a means to an end. And he sounds so angry. Look at the way he’s pressed his nib into the paper with such force. I tell you I don’t recognise the man who wrote this letter. This isn’t my Ludek.’
‘Oh Marta, perhaps this is a sudden outpouring of madness: a kind of release of all the tension and guilt he’s built up during the last year. He’s poured it all out like draining an abscess or getting rid of a poison. If you write back to him, ignoring the contents, he’ll reply as a different person.’
Marta considered Renata’s words and nodded.
‘Yes, perhaps you are right, I’ll do what you suggest.’
She sent another letter, full of love and hope, that same day. She didn’t recognise the address Ludek had written on the envelope but imagined he had moved for safety reasons after her arrest.
When she received his reply her disappointment was acute. The new letter still talked of betrayal and conspiracies but now he attacked her, questioned her loyalty, spurned her love, suggested she had something to do with his incarceration. What did he mean? Was he in prison? Had they caught up with him while she was in Ravensbrück? Were these the ramblings of a man broken by torture?
Renata struggled to help her friend in her misery and then succumbed to her own as the Red Cross confirmed her brother had perished in Auschwitz. Of her family in Plonsk there was no news.
Preoccupied by their own thoughts they had little to say to each other in the ensuing weeks and even less when they attended the camp interviews to determine their future, realising the close friendship which had sustained them for so long was coming to an end.
‘What are you planning to do?’ asked Renata, as they watched the sun go down.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ve made my decision.’
‘What is that?’
‘I can’t return home, Marta. Even if my parents are still alive, I am certain they will blame me for Jurek’s death and I have sufficient guilt on that score.’
‘But they will be so glad y
ou survived.’
‘I’m not sure that’s true. I never told you but once my brother was born, I ceased to exist except as a carer or a bodyguard.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It was always “Look after Jurek” or “Make sure Jurek is safe”. They invested all their hope for the future in him. “Jurek will do this” or “Jurek will do that.” If Jurek said something remotely amusing, they fell about laughing. If he made a comment on world affairs, they would nod proudly and repeat his comments to all and sundry. If I did the same, they told me not to show off. If I asked about my future, they just laughed and said “Oh you needn’t worry your pretty little head.” The implication was clear, yet I was the clever one, the one who did well at school, while Jurek just messed about.
‘I loved my brother, truly I did, but it was hard to live life as a second-class citizen just because I was a girl.’
‘I can’t imagine what that would be like. I’ve never seen being a girl as a handicap in any way.’
‘No, your aunt was such a strong role model, not just for you but for all your family.’
‘True, but even without my aunt I don’t imagine anybody in our circle would regard a girl as less important or valuable than a boy.’
‘No? Well my parents did. They will say I failed them and Jurek by not taking better care of him. The irony is that it was all Jurek’s idea to go out painting the walls. I could no more have stopped him than I could have stopped the wind.’
Now she understood her friend’s ambivalence about the notice board.
‘So what will you do?’
‘Well, the next three boats due in port will head for America, Sweden or England. I’ve nobody in any of those countries but, hey, America has Hollywood, and that’s good enough for me.’
‘Yes, I can imagine you in Hollywood. Think of all the costumes you could make with your skills as a tailor. My dearest friend, I shall miss you so much.’
‘I will miss you too.’
‘How long do you have before you leave for America?’
‘Two weeks.’
A few days later Marta received a letter from Ludek’s brother confirming her worst fears. Ludek had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was now living in a mental hospital just outside Krakow.