The Sugar Men

by Ray Kingfisher

  Perhaps getting her hair styled like Greta Garbo wasn’t quite so important after all.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The train slowed down and Susannah saw the signs for Westerbork flash past the opposite window. She would very soon find out the reality of her new home – whether it really did have those facilities. As they drew to a halt she gave Franz a tight-lipped smile and stood up. She told him she had to be with her family now, and made her way over to them. Yes, now she had to think of herself and her own family – of her own kind. Westerbork would be good. Not free, but good.

  Through the window she saw more soldiers holding guns and more barking dogs. She was scared, but strangely not as much as she thought she would be – perhaps she was getting used to all this moving around.

  They were all ordered off the train, and although there were more orders, Susannah didn’t listen; she didn’t need to, because for her and the rest it was simply a case of following the herd. Again, steam billowed all around them, heightening her senses, as if something hidden within it was sniffing them out or hunting them down.

  Yes, she felt a little less scared, but somehow different too. Thinking of her own kind; following the herd; being hunted down. Yes, that was it: she was starting to feel like an animal of some sort.

  The thought made her shiver.

  They all queued at the entrance, with guards ever watchful but at the same time never looking directly at them. Susannah stayed close to her father, just like her mother and Jacob did, with Paul and Helena not too far behind. She looked over to the camp itself, her eyes searching for the hospital, the recreation buildings, and especially the hairdresser’s.

  She was still looking when they reached the front of the queue. A wide desk separated them from a uniformed officer with a ream of papers in front of him. Susannah’s father passed the sheet of paper to the officer, who studied it for a second. Then he checked his own lists and his soulless, efficient eyes glanced at the four of them in turn. The corner of his mouth flicked upwards and he gave an almost imperceptible shrug.

  He handed the papers back to Father and said only five words: ‘Hiding. Convict Jews. Punishment block.’

  ‘Punishment?’ Susannah’s father asked, slightly shocked, looking to the sides as if requesting a second opinion. A guard, rifle gripped in fidgety fingers, stepped in front of him, their faces inches apart.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Susannah’s father said, holding both hands up and taking a step back.

  Susannah could remember little else of that introduction to Westerbork.

  But she could recollect the disappointment in her heart on realizing that, for her, there was to be no theatre or sports. And also that within two hours the hair she dreamed of being styled like Greta Garbo’s lay in worthless clumps on the dusty earth.

  By the middle of summer 1944 Susannah had served two months at Westerbork, all of it in the punishment block. Her hair – shaved back to the skull on her first day – had now started to grow back. It seemed as if she was spending every waking hour in the workroom taking apart old batteries, which made her hands weak and left them covered in cuts and patches of skin irritated by the chemicals.

  Like all her fellow inmates, Susannah had blisters and calluses on her feet from the wooden clogs they were made to wear, and her skin had started to turn pale and scaly from the poor diet. She’d lost some body weight – but not as much as Mother and Father, who always gave some of their food to their children. All of their clothes were very dirty by now.

  Animals? They were even starting to smell like them now.

  The saving grace was that they were allowed to stay together at night, all four of them, and more importantly for Susannah they were allowed to talk during the working day as much as they wanted. After the relative solitude of the last few years she thought it almost worth the physical pain to be able to strike up conversations with people outside her family, and she gained something of a reputation for chatting.

  It was during one of those chats with fellow inmates that she learned about the Tuesday transportations – the weekly round-up of inmates who were taken away to other camps. Nobody seemed to know what these other camps were like, but on one occasion an elderly gentleman told her, his whole face quivering with fear, that they were much more severe than Westerbork. When she asked him how he knew this, his mouth clamped shut, his head bowed, and he started prising apart the battery in his hand with the vigour of a man thirty years younger. Susannah didn’t ask further, but wondered whether it was possible for a camp to be worse than this one.

  She made a mental note to ask him again but never got the chance. Just after dawn on the next Tuesday – the day inmates feared as much as death itself – as they were preparing to drag their weary bodies to the workroom, Susannah, Jacob, Mother and Father were told to gather their possessions.

  They were leaving.

  By this time their belongings were little more than the dirty, smelly clothes they stood up in. Mother kept a spare set for each of them, but they were hardly much cleaner. Father kept a packet of playing cards and two books.

  They all had their heads shaved again, and were ordered onto a train and told they were going to a better camp – either Bergen-Belsen or Auschwitz-Birkenau. Susannah asked Father how they decided. He replied that they probably tossed a coin.

  Uncle Paul and Aunt Helena didn’t go with them. Susannah didn’t know whether they were going to one of the same two camps on a later train or staying at Westerbork – and nobody dared ask. Only then, as she sat with her family on the bare wooden floor of the carriage, did Susannah realize how much she was going to miss them. She cried a lot on the journey, as did Mother. Even Jacob could disguise his feelings only for so long, eventually burying his head in the crook of his arm. Father didn’t cry, but he didn’t utter a word for the whole journey either.

  PART THREE

  Terror Through the Fog

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The coach journey from Hamburg to the Bergen-Belsen Memorial took a little more than an hour. At first Susannah enjoyed the scenery – mostly wide expanses of farmland. And yet there was something that unsettled her. She looked at the other passengers; it was no party atmosphere – that was for sure – but they all seemed to be enjoying the views of the pleasant countryside too.

  Only towards the end of the journey did Susannah work out why she wasn’t enjoying it quite as much as the other passengers seemed to be; unlike just about everything else, the views out onto the patchwork fields were much like they’d been all those years ago when she’d seen them through the carriage window. In fact, what she saw was far too similar for comfort, and she felt a seed of panic fall into her mind.

  However, it was only when the coach turned onto the minor road leading to the memorial itself that her palpitations returned. Again, the scenery was too familiar; the road seemed to dive into a forest, which, Susannah felt, signified that her moment of reckoning had come. She would very soon have to step off the coach and face that place – and her worst fears – once more.

  But what would actually be there? What was left of the place? More importantly, how would she react? Would she find what she was looking for, whatever that was? Or would the blind panic take over like a devil sitting on her chest, holding her down?

  The coach pulled into the car park and the heavy scrunch of its tyres on the gravel pulled her away from her fears for a few seconds. She looked around – the place was so nondescript it could have been any car park in the world.

  Perhaps that was the idea.

  She stayed in her seat and took some time to take a few deep, calming breaths while everyone else got off. She looked through the coach window to the edge of the car park.

  Was this really the same place?

  It didn’t look familiar apart from the surrounding pine trees; perhaps there had been a mistake. Then the driver walked along the aisle and said something in German, pointing to the door. Susannah’s German was encrusted in sixty years
of rust, but she understood the words ‘we are here’. She took one last deep gulp of air, got to her feet, and slowly headed in that direction. At the door she gripped her handbag tightly with one hand and the handrail with the other. She wondered why they had to make these steps so large, and then made one final effort to set her foot down onto the gravel.

  It was then that the invigorating fragrance of pine hit her and transported her back to a time when that smell had been the smell of hope and horror all at once.

  Her foot is not that of a woman in her closing years who has spent most of her life in civilized North Carolina, but that of a fifteen-year-old girl who was once full of hope and optimism but is starting to feel numb and worthless. She isn’t getting off a coach in a gravel car park but alighting a train – a train at Bergen-Belsen camp station.

  She smells fresh pine but that delight is soon forgotten. Wherever she looks a fog of steam shrouds the view. Half-hidden dogs bark louder than ever. The guards don’t need to shout – but they do, as if it’s the only way they can possibly communicate.

  All occupants of the train get off with the same bewildered, frightened expressions, and they automatically drift to the gates of the camp as if accepting of their destiny. There are wire fences around the perimeter with lookout towers at intervals. Susannah looks up to one and can make out an armed guard silhouetted against the blue sky beyond. Barbed wire appears to be everywhere – at the top of the fence, at the base of the fence, and in parts making up the fence. As Susannah gets closer a guard shouts out the word ‘Electric!’ and she jumps, then quickly moves back to her family.

  But the shouting doesn’t stop – not for a moment. The guards holler and point in the direction the prisoners are moving anyway, as if they’re shouting for the sake of it. Or for enjoyment. Even the dogs seem to relish the undercurrent of terror they create.

  Susannah sees a scene reminiscent of a cattle market, bodies being shoved and prodded in whatever direction the farmers desire, across a muddy farmyard, penned in by electrified fences, with only the most rudimentary of facilities. But here the bodies do not belong to rotund animals, but scrawny humans, and the ‘farmers’ control their ‘livestock’ with guns and aggressive dogs and very real threats of using both. Susannah realizes quite quickly that there will be no facilities here like there were at Westerbork.

  Father calls Mother, Jacob and Susannah in close and they join the queue, which leads them into the jaws of another building and ends at another desk.

  The man behind the desk snatches the papers from Father, spends only a few seconds reading them, then says, ‘Star Camp,’ and waves them away. A guard leads them to another room and gives each of them two pieces of cloth – one a yellow star badge and one a number. He tells them to sew these into their clothing, and they do as they’re told. The guard notes down the numbers and tells them never to remove them under any circumstances. Then he leads them out of the building. He doesn’t look at them or say anything else, but points to a gate and shoves Father towards it with his rifle.

  Father leads them across to the gate, where they wait with others, standing in the soft mud, moving from foot to foot to dull the ache in their legs. At one point Susannah goes to sit, but Father tells her not to, and after about an hour they’re all let in. Inside, they stumble over yet more rutted muddy earth to join another queue, and again they wait. What seems like another hour passes. Susannah’s feet hurt to the bone, her legs threaten to buckle due to weakness, her back aches. She can tell others feel the same by the way they stand. A woman goes to sit on the floor, but a guard motions to strike her with the butt of his rifle and she gets back up.

  Jacob looks up to Susannah, his face obviously straining to hold back the tears. She puts an arm around his shoulder and squeezes gently. As a glum smile starts to appear on his face he gets pulled away by a guard. Susannah holds onto him for a few seconds and shouts, ‘No!’ – but then a rifle is aimed directly at her and she yelps and releases him.

  She looks to Mother for help but then notices Father being shoved away at gunpoint too. She runs towards him but Mother gets to her before the guards do, and tells her they’re just taking them away to the men’s cabins.

  ‘But when will we see them again?’ Susannah calls out.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mother says, holding her close while watching Father and Jacob leave, the alarm etched on her face too. ‘I just don’t know.’ She turns to another guard and asks whether the males and females mix during the day. He says, ‘Of course,’ and then laughs as he turns away and tells the women to follow.

  After a short walk the guard points to their cabin and then to their toilet block before leaving. Susannah and her mother are both desperate to relieve themselves after their journey and head for the toilet block, rushing inside together. Then it becomes difficult; they both squeeze their noses shut to the stench that seeks to overpower and humiliate them. The building houses long wooden benches on either side, with large holes drilled along their lengths at intervals of about two feet. The raw sewage piles up underneath in two trenches. There’s no paper, but more importantly for Susannah and her mother, there’s no privacy. Mother steps back out, telling Susannah to go first, then she will go afterwards.

  Susannah relieves herself, then comes out to let Mother go in. Their faces are both emotionless but, as soon as Mother leaves, Susannah is on her own, and her face breaks, letting the tears dribble out.

  Then she hears a childlike voice from behind her.

  ‘Are you new here?’

  She turns to see a young girl, much smaller than herself. She has hair flecked with dirt, a body that is plumper than it’s polite to mention, and spindly legs. She bobs up and down with enthusiasm, and Susannah thinks she looks like a wagtail.

  Susannah says nothing at first, then wipes her nose and sniffs a few of the tears back. ‘How do you know I’m new?’

  ‘Because I know everyone around here and I haven’t seen you before.’

  ‘Are you German?’ Susannah asks.

  The girl shakes her head. ‘I’m from Groningen, in the Netherlands, but my parents were from Frankfurt so I speak good German.’ Then she looks to the top of Susannah’s head and giggles, causing Susannah to instinctively cover her prickly close-shaven scalp with her hands.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ Susannah says. ‘I look horrible.’

  ‘No. You look funny.’ The girl clamps a hand over her mouth and her shoulders rise up as she suppresses more laughter. Then, slowly, her joy dissolves and she straightens her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘But hair isn’t important. And it will grow back before the cold months come.’ She lifts the sleeve of her blouse. ‘This will never go away.’

  Susannah looks closely and sees a long number tattooed onto the tender flesh on the inside of the girl’s forearm. ‘That’s terrible. Doesn’t it hurt?’

  The girl shakes her head. ‘Not anymore. I don’t like it but I don’t really care.’ Her eyes have a fresh sparkle that Susannah has not seen for many years. It’s like the eyes are happy, even though they have no right to be.

  ‘Look,’ Susannah says, showing her arms. ‘My family, we didn’t get those.’

  ‘Not everybody does. Some have it on their chests, most on their arms. Some don’t have it at all. It’s probably because you’re German. They make them sew the number into their clothing instead.’

  Susannah shows her the number on her blouse but she prefers to glance at Susannah’s head again and have another giggle. Susannah wonders how another prisoner – a girl at that – can be so cruel about shaven heads and numbers branded on flesh like animals. But then she notices that sparkle again and splutters out a small laugh herself. She realizes how long it’s been since that’s happened; it’s a release of sorts, and it makes her belly feel warm.

  ‘I’m Ester,’ the young girl says. ‘I was twelve last month.’

  Susannah finds that difficult to believe because she’s so small, but nods and likewise introduces herself.r />
  Then Mother comes out of the toilet block.

  ‘I’ll see you later, Susannah,’ Ester says, and scampers away.

  Mother smiles to Susannah, then nods towards the cabin and they go over to it, stepping inside tentatively, as if it’s a dark cave.

  Inside there is indeed very little light, and also the air is heavy with a stale odour – the smell of sickness. The room is crammed full of bunk beds, but also people lie on the floor. A few eyes dart in her direction, but there are no greetings. For the second time in a few minutes Susannah tries not to breathe through her nose, so says nothing and concentrates on suppressing her nausea.

  Their feet pick their way between the bodies until they find a spare bed. Then she talks, whispering for fear of waking the women and girls lying all around them. ‘Mother,’ she says, ‘I don’t want to stay here.’

  Mother sighs. ‘But . . . you have to.’

  ‘I mean, I just can’t.’

  Mother sits down. ‘Susannah. Listen. This isn’t like Westerbork. I don’t see any choices. So please don’t make an example of yourself by saying anything out of turn.’

  ‘But . . .’ Susannah wants to say she can’t bear the idea of sleeping for one night in here no matter what the punishment might be, but she bows her head and sits down next to her mother.

  Mother puts an arm around her and gives her the briefest of embraces. ‘Always remember what your father tells us all,’ she says. ‘One day the country will come to its senses, all of this will be over, and we can return to Berlin.’

  Susannah looks at the rough wooden floor and twirls the tip of her shoe across it. Mother talks some more, but Susannah has already dragged her mind away. She doesn’t focus on her mother’s well-meaning words, or the other women in the cabin, or the tears that are running down her cheeks – but instead stares at the cabin door. Then she jumps off the bed and runs out through the door, almost tripping over the bundles that lie on the floor. Outside she sees Ester, but doesn’t want to talk to stupid, stupid Ester. She turns and runs around to the back of the cabin, then kicks the wooden panels at the bottom. She collapses on the floor and starts weeping uncontrollably.