The Hours After

by Gerda Weissmann Klein

  Where Papa had once been my figure of strength and authority, I now loved to watch how politely yet forcefully Kurt dealt with the nurses in the hospital, how casually he returned the salutes of GIs, how much he teased me, as Artur had. Every time he appeared, it was as if a window opened onto a view suffused with sunshine—and when he touched my hand, an indefinable ecstasy enveloped me, depriving me of all reason. He was the only reality, a bridge of remembered happiness over a river of pain and loss, taking me toward some hitherto unknown shore. But he was bound to leave sooner or later.

  I was convinced that Kurt would visit me on his birthday, July 2. After all, he had promised that we would celebrate it together, and in turn I had assured him I would be sufficiently fit to go for a walk with him by that time. I was diligently practicing my steps, slowly regaining my balance, despite some pain along the way. No question, I was making progress, and could hardly wait for that special day. Thinking about what birthday gift I could give him, I decided to write several essays touching on some childhood and more recent memories.

  All that day I was waiting in great anticipation, groping for a logical reason that would explain his absence, but I could find none. I agonized over that, turning over all possibilities in my mind. A terrifying thought occurred to me that he might have caught my typhoid fever. Was there a way to contact someone to get information about him? Finally I realized that I would have to wait for word from or about him. What it made me fully realize, though, was that he had become everything to me and that I was deeply in love with this handsome young man—only he must never, never know.

  Kurt’s twenty-fifth birthday was almost over. It was evening, and he had not come. Again my eyes went to his photo, as they had throughout the day. Reading his inscription about the start of my new life made me infinitely sad. I was certain now that it was meant to be a message of farewell. Feeling alone and abandoned, I wrote a bitter letter to my uncle in Turkey.

  Volary, July 2, 1945

  My dear ones—my beloved uncle,

  It is in a welter of overwhelming emotions that I write these words to you. The first lines to my nearest relative! Uncle Leo, can you possibly perceive what this means to me? To be able to say, “I have survived the war!” I can’t believe it. It does not ring true that all the suffering is over. Can it be so? Now my thoughts focus on you, my closest family, though you are far away in Turkey. Are you, dear aunt, and the sweet children all right?

  I cannot and will not attempt to convey even a fraction of my experiences—that would take years and reams of paper. Three years of concentration camps and a march on foot of 550 kilometers, starting with 2,000 girls, of whom fewer than 120 survived, I among them. Not even in depictions of medieval torture and horror can one find crimes such as the Nazis committed.

  I don’t know how and why I survived. On May 6 we were liberated by American forces. I was at the end of my strength, physically as well as emotionally, and collapsed. Since then I have been in a makeshift hospital. I was critically ill until two weeks ago. I am feeling better now.

  During that time I have asked several kind people to write to you. I hope that you have gotten news about my survival from several sources—especially from Lt. Kurt Klein, who has become a good friend. I owe him a debt of gratitude, for he helped me regain my mental balance during my most difficult days. Unfortunately he was transferred to a different post after that, but I hope to hear from him again.

  Today’s letter is sent through the kindness of an army chaplain. My beloved uncle, I have tried to put off the question that is burning on my mind since the first line of this writing, but can no longer do so. Although I fear the words, I am compelled to ask them: Oh, God, do you have any news from my beloved parents? I cannot think, cannot conceive that fate would be so cruel to me. Oh, please, God, please. Since the day of our parting, I have heard nothing but rumors of a tragic fate. But I hoped and prayed and believed in miracles. I still do.

  I have not heard from Artur in two years. The last news was that he was in a camp in or near Lemberg [Lvov]. Then all mail ceased, and we were cut off from the rest of the world. We heard of the horrors that took place in those parts. I worry so and tremble at thoughts of the worst, and pray. I am trying to establish contact with Bielsko, hoping to find him there.

  You remember me only as a child, but the past few years have accelerated my transition to adulthood. It was not easy, and I always tried to act in the manner that my beloved parents would have expected of me. Now that I can write freely, I must also tell you the truth. Both Papa and Mama were very ill, at home and in the ghetto. Papa had a heart attack and we had terrible, worrisome days and weeks. Everything we owned was taken from us, everything. My heart breaks at the thought that they might not have survived to experience the beauty of freedom. Why? Why?

  Now I am turning to you, Mama’s beloved only brother. I need your advice for my future. I stand here, alone in a strange world. I want to go home—the dream of going home sustained me—I want to go home to people who are close to me. I yearn for a bit of warmth and calm after three years of hell in the camps. What is going to happen now? That question occupies me day and night.

  I have met some people by the name of Knäbel; they own the factory in which we were locked up the night before liberation. Herr Knäbel claims he knew some associates of Papa. He and his family have been very nice to me. His daughters, who are considerably older than I, have also been very kind.

  Some of my friends are planning to go home when they get well. I want to wait to hear where my family is, for I won’t go back if they are not there. I won’t go back to the ruins of my happy childhood, to the place where we were so brutally separated. My thoughts and emotions are in total turmoil; one moment I want to go back, the next I say: Never! What should I do?

  I am not afraid of hardship or work. I have learned to work hard. Twelve hours a day and many nights we worked on spinning machines and looms. Nothing will be too difficult for me, once I regain my health. I only want peace, quiet, and some kindness. My education is nil. I am twenty-one years old. I want to learn, I want to learn languages, particularly English. I want to understand art, because I always had an interest in it.

  Please forgive this chaotic tone. In this flood of thoughts and words I am trying to convey what has worried me for years and caused so much anguish. I confess my heart is heavy; I can’t lie about that. I am still weak after that long, debilitating illness. I have just learned to walk again. Although everyone is very nice and helpful to me, I am alone; none of my closest friends survived. I am without means and won’t take anything from strangers. There is no one close to me. I am so homesick, so lonely. I want Mama, Papa, Artur—I want to go home.

  [The rest of this letter is missing. I found it among my uncle’s possessions after his death.]

  Although I was in the process of recuperating, my newly won freedom left me feeling isolated from what was going on around me. I could only marvel at some of the other girls’ resourcefulness in taking charge of their lives, hatching plans to return to their former homes, or moving into local quarters, acting totally adult. By comparison I felt inadequate on all fronts. I seemed to have survived by marshaling my imagination and at times through denial. After my separation from my parents, I managed to wipe the three years of anguish and deprivation from my mind. When I thought of home, and that was all the time, I thought of it as it existed before the war, realizing on another level that it could not be so. Nevertheless I lulled myself into a feeling that through the miracle of liberation everything would be restored. It was a crutch that had worked for me, had seen me through those harrowing times. Now the war was over, and what would become of the dreams that had nourished me? What of the reality of the situation? Somehow I had to face at least that of which I was certain. I knew that my parents had been sent to Auschwitz, yet had pretended to myself that they were young and strong and could survive. Now I realized that I had superimposed on their images the ones I remembered from happier ti
mes. I did not want to picture my father as he looked after his heart attack: gaunt, gray, and weak, or my mother as the emaciated, frail, worn-down, aging woman she had become by the time of our separation. In my heart and mind they still lived in the familiar childhood environment, notwithstanding the fact that I had been witness to its destruction.

  When the dreaded notice came for the Jews to leave their homes, we were “allowed” to sell our belongings. My mother was close to a nervous breakdown, and Papa directed me to sell everything. The townspeople, most of whom I didn’t know, descended on us like vultures. One man took a pink goblet from the liqueur set Artur and I had bought for our parents’ twentieth anniversary, in April 1939. He grabbed the slender stem and let it tumble to the floor. “It’s not worth much,” he said. “After all, one glass is missing.” With a smirk he handed me a few dirty, crumbled bills. I would never tell Papa what really had happened, I vowed to myself, swallowing tears of frustration and bitterness and then proceeding to sweep the shards from the bare floor.

  Nothing remained from the home I had once known and loved. It had not been luxurious—far from it—but in its untroubled days it had a nurturing quality about it. It was a warm place in which my mother was born and my grandparents had lived ever since their marriage in the late 1890s. The years had seen it filled with objects of special significance to the family, cherished mementos of a more carefree time. The dream of returning to it had been the crutch to my survival, underpinning my conviction that it would be mine by the very magic of freedom. Now that the walls of brutality had crumbled, I needed to face the reality I had known subconsciously but had managed to push from my mind.

  How I longed for the days when I had been die Kleine, “the little one,” cared-for and protected. Only there had been a role reversal, and it was I who had learned to protect my parents. It was I who would stand in line at the store day after day, clutching our meager ration cards bearing the huge J that identified us as “enemies of the state,” in the hope of getting a little bread or a tiny bit of margarine. I had taken on that task after Mama came home in tears one day, humiliated by the treatment she had received. People she had known all her life either rudely ignored her or at best had whispered a furtive hello. I picked up the net shopping bag, declaring resolutely that I needed some fresh air and from then on would assume that chore every day. It also fell to me to open the door whenever there was an ominous knock and Mama would shepherd Papa toward his hiding place in the wardrobe, initially over his vehement protests.

  If I decided to make it back home, what would I find? Who would live in our house? The garden must be in bloom, and certainly the sign prohibiting Jews from entering must have come down. Would the former neighbors still be there? Frau Prosner, she who brought the first letter from Artur, which he addressed to her, not knowing where we might be. Thinking of Frau Prosner triggered another image, that of a hot summer’s day: I am out in the yard, and through the garden fence branches hang heavy with gooseberries. I go there and pick some, then see little Erwin Prosner. He runs up to me, then toward the house, his piercing shrieks assaulting my senses: “Mutti, the Jewess is devouring our berries. They are only for us Germans! Mutti, come and slap her face.” Frau Prosner comes scurrying out of the house, her face flushed, and quickly yanks him back, his face contorted with hate. She walks up to me and takes my hand. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “You must know, I don’t teach him that. He learns it in kindergarten about people who wear the yellow star. I don’t dare punish him; he would tell his teachers and we would be in trouble. I’m so sorry.”

  What of little Erwin? I used to wheel him carefully in his baby carriage, and one time gave him one of my favorite toys. I see the green pump and how I used to fill it with water, pumping it into a tiny pail, endlessly, over and over. What would little Erwin say if he were to see me entering my garden now? Did I ever want to see him again?

  It was a lovely afternoon, and I was feeling a little better. Looking up from the book I was reading, I saw a woman enter the room, hesitate, question a nurse, then approach my bunk. At first shy and diffident, she inquired, was she intruding? No? Handing me a bouquet of flowers, she ventured that they might cheer me up. She had heard what I and my companions had gone through and explained that she knew what it was to be away from home. Her home was really in Germany, she said, she too was a Flüchtling, a refugee, and knew what it meant to be away from the Heimat. You miss your homeland, especially when you are ill like that. It was hard, she allowed, and that’s why she had decided that the least she could do as a German was to visit someone like me. She let on that her best school friend had been Jewish, although she didn’t know what had happened to her: One day she simply disappeared. Did I have a best friend like that?

  The question she had posed would not go away after the woman left and set me to thinking of my best school friend.

  Gerta! Gerta Teppel! Knit four, purl two . . . five rows, then switch. Heavy white wool . . . knit four, purl two. Gerta Teppel, my best friend, from way back in first grade. We had walked to and from school every day. Gerta and Gerda, the inseparable duo. She had blond hair with bangs that stopped just above her eyebrows. Naturally I had copied her style with my dark bangs. Every morning we would greet each other with “Servus!”* then fall into step and walk to school in animated conversation. Our classroom desks were designed for two, so we sat next to each other throughout the elementary grades. She was very neat and accomplished in so many things I felt inadequate about. That made me want to emulate her in every way possible, and it had gotten to the point where, after considerable effort on my part, it was indeed difficult to tell our handwriting apart. She excelled in music and voice, areas in which I drew an almost complete blank. On the other hand, I compensated for that by getting good marks in language and poetry classes, subjects that were difficult for her. Our respective grade averages were nearly always close.

  Inseparable as we were during school hours, we would rarely meet afterward. Whenever I would broach the subject, she would be noncommittal and make some vague excuse about mysterious-sounding activities that somehow kept her from seeing me. That only heightened my interest in her, and I resolved that there was nothing, but nothing, that I wouldn’t do for her.

  At that time I had a crush on a boy named Henek. He had two younger sisters with whom I was friendly. My idol had the bluest eyes, the darkest hair, and a small, upturned nose. He paid no attention to me whatsoever, until one day, during a table tennis game with his sister Lola, I beat her. “You play well for a girl your age,” he complimented. “Want to play a game with me?” Flustered, I accepted the challenge and promptly missed every ball, dropped my paddle at one point, then stumbled and was forced to crawl under the table to retrieve the ball. I was mortified, and to make matters worse, I hit my head coming out from under the table. That provided an excuse to break into tears. Henek, realizing what was happening, gallantly dismissed the incident. “Oh, too bad you hurt your head. We must play another time.”

  I took my departure through blinding tears and ran home as fast as I could, replaying in my mind all the mistakes I had made and how I could have avoided them. I found Mama in the living room, busily knitting a ski sweater for me, made of heavy, white wool, in an intricate braid design: Knit four, purl two. Four rows, then reverse. It promised to be beautiful.

  Later that afternoon Lola arrived at my house to announce that a group of her friends were going skiing that coming Sunday. Could I come along? she wanted to know. Henek would lead us, take us to one of his favorite spots on the mountain. I could hardly believe the fortuitous turn of events. And better yet, Henek would see me in that fabulous sweater! Could I? Would I? “Mama,” I begged, “could you finish that sweater by Sunday, please, please?” “I think we could give it a try,” she agreed with a smile. After that the needles fairly flew: Knit four, purl two. Wait till I wear that sweater with the navy blue ski pants! And Henek will be there!

  Saturdays meant that school let out at n
oon. Gerta and I were walking home from school. A light snow was falling, the prayed-for powder snow. “You know, I’ve been thinking,” Gerta said, “wouldn’t it be nice to get together tomorrow? We could play Tivoli.” I was thunderstruck: I had tried in vain to get her to come to the house to play that Polish variation of a pinball game. “Sure, why don’t you come over right now. We can have lunch first, then spend the afternoon doing fun things.” “I’m sorry, I can’t make it right now, but I’ll come over tomorrow afternoon. My parents will be at a wedding then, it so happens.”

  For a fleeting moment it occurred to me that she might have heard about our ski plans, but then I remembered that she never went skiing because of a leg injury. The request she had tossed off presented a terrible dilemma. I was dying to go with Henek. He would be impressed with the way I skied, and when I wore that new sweater, he had to notice me, just had to. On the other hand, how selfish of me to want to be on those slopes while my best friend had to stay home alone. No, my sacrifice for her would certainly cement our friendship—or would it? I vacillated, but in the end Gerta won out.

  Sunday came, and the snow had improved overnight. Its crystal grains were glistening in the sun like a coating of sugar. Mama was delighted I had decided against going skiing. She viewed any sport with a great deal of apprehension, fear of accidents being the predominant factor. Mama possessed that rare quality of treating her children’s friends as she would her own special guests. We devoured the marble cake, drank the cocoa, and thus fortified, focused on the intricacies of Tivoli for a while. To my acute disappointment Gerta left much earlier than I had anticipated. Although it had been a nice enough afternoon, I felt that it had not been wholly satisfying. Aimlessly, I went up to my room, lay on my bed in the darkness of the winter afternoon, staring moodily at the barely discernible shape of my white sweater on the dresser.