by Irene Butter
The nurse didn’t flinch. I tried to move, but she held firm. The thought of being alone, even for a short time, was too much. I tried going around her, but her hand stayed on my shoulder and then one grasped my other shoulder. The space between Mutti and me got longer. Mutti and the orderlies were lost in a sea of people and noise. Suddenly weak, I had no energy to fight. Even my head seemed heavy.
Scraps of conversations drifted around me.
“…so…broken.”
“…never seen anything like this…”
“…barely alive…”
“You’ll see them again.”
“What?” I said.
“You’ll see them again,” the nurse repeated.
I surrendered to directions and orders, and got into a line, moving behind a large man to block the wind. We were told that we would be taken to a place to rest and eat. After climbing into the back of yet another large gray truck full of people like me, somebody piped, “Welcome to Switzerland.” With elbows on knees, I let my head droop and roll with the bumps in the road.
“Welcome. Make your bed anywhere along the wall there,” said a guard at the entrance of a huge barn, by a table. He thrust out two neatly folded dark gray blankets sandwiched between his hands. Behind him another soldier was preparing two more blankets, and behind him another was straightening a bench of blankets. I took mine.
The late afternoon sunlight pouring in from high-curved windows striped the inner walls as white as the outside snow. The lower halves of the walls were painted brown, dented and chipped, and the floor was made of packed dirt. All around the walls, a thick layer of hay cushioned the ground. A row of wooden tables ran down the center of the building, end-to-end. Carefully, I watched the guards, their rifles slung across their shoulders and draping down their backs. They were Swiss, I repeated to myself, not German.
“Let me help you with your things,” said a voice behind me as a hand took one of my bags. I dropped my blankets, and grabbed my bag back in one motion.
“Okay, okay,” a guard said, putting his hands in the air, black leather-gloved palms up. He had on a stiff round cap with a black visor, and he wore knee-high boots—the sign of an officer. He had a long face shaped like an inverted triangle. His eyes and mouth were small.
“They looked heavy for such a girl,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
The knapsacks were heavy, but what if he had wanted to scare me? What if this was some kind of trick? I turned, and, with my eyes to the ground and hunching back, I walked away. I found a space near a man who was already asleep, his head on the still folded blankets and his coat over his legs. Gray stubble ran over his chin, up his cheeks, and over his head. His nose and thin mouth reminded me of Pappi.
It was warm for an unheated barn. As we settled in, the guards told us we were not to leave and not to talk with any Swiss people, even if we had friends or relatives in the area. They said it was for our own good that we were being quarantined. We might be infectious and we wouldn’t want to spread disease.
I lay down atop my straw and wool nest and put my pink blanket to my face until we were called to eat. The food arrived in large, perfectly white, heavy, unbroken porcelain bowls with matching saucers. The soup was even better than what we’d had on the train. I drained two bowls of the rich, meat-filled broth, huffing on each spoonful twice before shoveling it in. And then they brought the sandwiches. Dark rye bread with cheese and salami. I stared at the layers and fondled the crust between my thumb and fingers. Two soft, fresh slices all to myself. I ate until I licked my fingers clean.
The food gave me courage. I tracked down the officer in the tall boots and round cap who had tried to help me with my bags, who was watching over people eating. A woman in dark pants and a bulky sweater that was tucked in was talking to him about the need for more food. He nodded as she talked, keeping his eyes on the eaters. She left, adjusting the sweater in her pants.
“My mother and brother,” I said to the officer, “are Gertrude and Werner Hasenberg. They are in the hospital. How can I find out about them and their health?”
“Don’t worry Fraülein, they’ll be fine.”
“I’d like to see them, I mean, I need to see them.”
And then he said a bunch of other stuff like: “They’re being well cared for. A lot of work went into bringing you here. You should be happy to be here at all. We’ll get you in touch with your mother and brother as soon as we can.”
I felt it was a lie. I retreated, scared.
37
St. Gallen, Switzerland
January 26-29, 1945
The next day, I talked to the same officer several times. He told me again and again not to worry, and finally that I needed to stop worrying. That afternoon we were driven back toward the center of town to a school that had been made into a temporary hospital. It was a big building, with many roofs and walls pointing and swooping in all directions, and a little brick entrance that fed into a long hall lined with doors. Beyond each door each room had rows upon rows of thin metal-framed beds, on which the ill, hurt, and weary were tucked under crisp white sheets and smothering blankets. The heads of the beds could move up and down, and most were angled up a little. Everybody looked at us, and we looked at all of them. Hair was combed back, faces clean. We were filthy, with hay in our hair. We were all looking for somebody we knew. At the foot of each bed was a chair for the person’s clothing, with unchipped porcelain bedpans underneath.
Did I hear my name?
“Reni! Reni!”
Werner! I turned to the left and right.
“Over here, near the window.”
His face! I started toward him, bumped into a woman, apologized, and ran to his smile. I squeezed him hard.
“Wow, careful, I’m an invalid!”
I didn’t let go. Oh, how good it felt to see him.
“It’s okay, Reni. What’s wrong?”
I cried from relief, the tears flowing down my face and onto his shirt. He was alive, and I wasn’t alone. I kept his hand in mine while I told him about the barn and my first night alone, ever.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I added feeling ungrateful, “I’m glad we’re here. It just isn’t how I expected.”
“No,” he agreed.
“What about you?” I asked.
“I guess I’ll be okay. I mean, I can’t walk. I might lose the toe, but I’m okay.”
“What about Mutti?” I asked, almost afraid I had.
“She’s in a real hospital, not a makeshift one like this one. I haven’t seen her. Hey, don’t squeeze my hand so hard.”
I heard his heartbeat as I pressed my head against his chest.
“Your hair needs cleaning.”
I ran my hand over my hair and felt the mats in it, then I felt his. “You showered!”
“Yeah, there are showers in the locker rooms.”
“You smell like lavender.”
“No, its edelweiss. The soap is edelweiss.”
He was right.
“Wait, you might lose your toe?”
“It’s okay. Nothing, really, compared to everything else.”
“Like Mutti….” I said. I was going to also say, “and Pappi,” but I couldn’t bring myself to say his name. It would hurt just to say it, so I decided to be more like Heidi and lighten the situation. “Well, if you’re okay with it, I will be too, I guess. I’ll just have to give you a nickname like ‘Old Four-toed Werner.’”
“Nine. Nine-toed Werner.”
Werner was right again.
That night, I had my first hot shower in over a year. It felt like magic. I soaped up and watched the dirt swirl down the drain until I, too, only smelled of edelweiss. Two nurses sandwiched a new bed into the space next to Werner for me. A real bed—right next to Werner’s. Hearing Werner’s familiar noises that night made me feel much better. Before finally falling asleep, I imagined that our family, all four of us, were high in the Alps, at a fancy hotel as upright and clean as everyth
ing else in Switzerland. We went sledding, and even tried skiing. We played until we ate, and we ate until we rested, and started all over again.
The next few days passed in a blur of sleep and warmth and food. One evening, just after wolfing down our dinner, a Swiss official quieted us, getting to his point quickly and loudly.
“Tomorrow, you will leave by train, for the port of Marseilles. In France. From there, ships are heading to the United States and elsewhere. Please pack your bags. We leave by nine a.m.”
“Elsewhere? Where’s that?”
“I don’t know,” Werner said. “Ask.”
Tugging the sleeve of a tall official who walked by, I explained our situation. “Can we stay in Switzerland? It is closer to the Netherlands and our home. And we don’t speak English.”
He looked directly down at me and slowed down his way of speaking German.
“You are displaced persons, and Switzerland is not your country.”
“We are Germans living in Amsterdam. I mean we lived in Amsterdam,” said Werner.
“Both under Nazi control. You can’t go to either place: Germany or Holland.”
“What about Ecuador?” I asked. “We have Ecuadorian passports.”
“Your Ecuadorian passports aren’t valid,” the tall official said. “They got you out of the camps, but they aren’t good for passage to South America.”
“Well, if we don’t have anywhere to go, then I don’t understand why we can’t just stay.”
“Young lady, there are too many refugees, and more are coming. You must go.”
“What about our mother? She’s very sick.”
He told us he would check on her condition. Then he was called away. He didn’t come back. I asked another nurse. She said she would check, though it was getting late. I didn’t see the nurse after that, but a man in wire-rimmed glasses came after the lights were dimmed.
“Your mother is Gertrude Hasenberg?” he asked.
Werner and I nodded.
“She is very sick, and in critical care. That’s all I know. We’ll see in the morning.” He left.
“Too bad we couldn’t just use the Henki Express,” I said. “You could make us tickets to anywhere.”
“Pappi liked the Henki Express,” he said. “He said it was important to get to know other people in other places. That if we do that, it was a sure way to have more friends and fewer enemies. I’m not sure I agree anymore.”
We seemed to have a lot of enemies, and they had looked us right in the face.
“Maybe it’s still true,” I said. “The Nazis never bothered to get to know us.”
“They hated everything they saw.”
“I don’t think they really saw us at all.”
38
St. Gallen, Switzerland
January 30, 1945
In the morning, everyone who could walk was directed outside to a truck. I told Werner I’d see him at the train. The station platform was littered with the displaced, some in stretchers and wheelchairs. The mountain breeze tightened my face. Spirits seemed hopeful—smiles on faces, quickened steps, and hugs and touches between people—yet I couldn’t stop worrying about Mutti. I hoisted the knapsack straps across my shoulders.
After waiting what seemed like too long a time for Mutti and Werner, I decided to search, weaving like a needle through the crowd until I stitched a path from the engine to the rear of the back train, with no luck. Panic pricked at me. I shifted the weight of my knapsack. I scanned the faces of the officials, approaching one with big cheeks and soft eyes who was talking with three people. I waited my turn.
He listened to me and said, “If I were you I’d just stay right here so you can watch for them. When did you lose sight of them?”
When I told him I hadn’t lost sight of them—I hadn’t seen them here at all—he directed me to a man with a clipboard. After letting me spill a few sentences, the clipboard man held up a hand.
“Wait a minute. Name?” he asked a man who approached him.
“Schlamm,” a man said.
He made three check marks on his sheet, and three people boarded. He looked at me.
“Name?”
“Hasenberg,” I said. “Irene. And Gertrude and Werner, my mother and brother. All Hasenbergs.”
He made one check mark. Then a couple came up behind me and pushed forward.
“Name?”
“I just said Hasenberg.”
“No, not you. This couple.”
“Levy,” the man said.
He made two check marks and nodded. “There is only one of you leaving,” he said to me. “Only one Hasenberg: Irene.”
“That’s not right.”
“That’s what I have. Now get on board.”
“Werner isn’t on the list? Gertrude?” I asked. I tried to see the writing on his clipboard.
“No,” he said. “Now….”
“Come on young lady, let’s go,” said a man behind me. He shoved his luggage up into the car just as the train whistled.
“Now go,” said the official. “Your family is right behind you. Not on this train, but on another, I’m sure. Go.”
I couldn’t speak, but my head started shaking slowly back and forth.
“Name?”
“No…no…no, no, NO!” my voice rose. “I can’t leave without them. I can’t! They need me!”
“Calm down….”
“They need me!”
“Calm down.”
“I need to ask my brother something! I need to say good-bye!” I panted. “I need them!”
Voices told me to calm down. I looked along the train, the steam, and the white light glinting off a distant, high window. I needed something to hold my gaze. Everything was a blur. I could barely swallow. I was lifted up and in. Placed on a bench. The train chugged to life. The station rolled away behind us.
My numbness collected in the corners of my eyes, the tears welling and dripping through the day and into the night. Food and drink came, sat uneaten, and was taken away. We travelled west toward France, stretching out the distance between my family and me until I felt I’d snap. I begged anybody who looked important to let me return to my family. One said, “We’ll see what we can do,” but did nothing. They began ignoring me.
My legs twitched so I wandered the train. Families and groups hunkered about. My feet pulled me from car to car. Eventually, I found myself at the very back of the train leaning my forehead against the frigid glass, watching the rails disappear into a point on the horizon. The trees, snow-blotched fields, telephone lines, and red-roofed village buildings passed and changed, but not the rails. They always seemed to converge at the same spot, the places and the people I had left behind.
The Swiss had done what the Nazis hadn’t been able to: tear apart my family. For two years and despite the thickening threat of death, we had stayed together through the camps, although I had heard the terms “concentration” and “extermination” camps now used. The four of us were finally free, but broken apart by death, sickness, and rules.
I looked over a cliff of loneliness that felt emptier than even the hunger I had felt in the camps. I had nothing and no one. I was disowned by my birth country of Germany, and couldn’t return to my adopted country of Holland. I wasn’t even a prisoner anymore. In its own way, Camp Bergen-Belsen had been my last place of belonging for the simple reason it was the last place the four of us had lived together. It was a place of darkness that I was trying to shove into the shadowed corners of my mind, but I could already tell my heart wouldn’t allow it, not fully. I clung to that last memory of home.
39
Train Rails through Switzerland and France
January 30–February 8, 1945
“Hello, are you okay?” came a voice.
I turned around and looked up into a round face grooved with worry: a woman about Mutti’s age, but well-fed and well-dressed. Not fat or fancy, but definitely not from Bergen-Belsen.
“Yes,” I said. She looked kind eno
ugh to ignore. I turned back to watching the railroad ties flash by.
“Mmm. I’m Mrs. Eisenberg. What’s your name?”
“Irene Hasenberg.”
“You’re from Bergen-Belsen.”
I nodded.
“Oh my,” she sighed behind me. “I’m from New York. I’ve spent the last two years trapped in Germany, in Biberach. I do so hope 1945 will be a better year than the ones before it. The month of January always does give one hope. Where’s your family?”
“Not here.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. I mean with so much loss….”
“We left my father, I mean his body, in Biberach….”
“I am so sorry. Where you are headed?”
“Don’t know. My mother is back in Switzerland…she is very sick, she has been sick for so long and nobody really knows what it is; she might die like my father…my brother….”
And then I blurted my story, still unfolding, my words scattering everywhere as if I had spilled something.
“Irene, I’m alone, too,” she said. “I can take care of you.”
My eyes felt very heavy.
“I can take you to America. I promise.”
Taking my hand, she brought me back to her compartment, where she pulled me onto her lap and held me. A knock on the door delivered more Red Cross rations. I pulled aside the strings that held the brown box together. Small tin cans and a small can opener fell out. I opened and ate pudding, rice, and fish. I stared at the chocolate bar. Was the old Droste still hidden atop our cupboard back in Amsterdam, collecting dust? Then I just stared into the corner.
At some point in the afternoon, Mrs. Eisenberg left. She returned after a brief period, dabbing her eyes. She sat down next to me and held both my hands in hers.
“Irene, I am so sorry,” she said. “I can’t take you to America. Without a US passport or other documents, they aren’t letting people in. I should not have promised. I did find out that you are going to Africa.”
The next few days felt torn from somebody else’s tale, and from a book I couldn’t follow because I couldn’t concentrate, my thoughts ricocheting down anguished corridors of dread.