by Ingrid Pitt
Every two weeks children were selected and left the camp by the wagonloads. Transports arrived each day, the children would be taken to other huts as well as the Kinderschuppen, but they weren’t there for more than two weeks. Then there would be the routine selection and lorries would come and spirit them away. By now, none of my former class-mates was left. I was the runt whom nobody wanted. I should have been happy with that but I was older now, and felt rejected and despised. I never realised how much of my good fortune was due to my mother’s survival antennae. She had become friendly with the illiterate Lithuanian guards. In return for information about selections, she would write gooey, emotional letters to the guards’ loved ones or read their letters from home to them. The Lithuanians were considered the most brutal and dangerous, but their need to be loved provided my mother and me with some degree of security.
When it was time for a selection my mother would hide me in the latrines. Not too many people came there during the day and the guards wouldn’t go near them. Once the lorries had left, she would collect me, scrub me down with ice-cold water and hurriedly take me back to the hut. The next day the Kinderschuppen would have a completely new host of faces, tearful and ready to do anything I told them to do.
Five
Our precarious routine was finally broken by events on the front: the Russian army at last crossed into Poland and approached Stutthof. Suddenly the glorious Nazi war machine was on the back foot fighting to get away. Frightened that the POWs might rise up and join the approaching Russians, the SS men moved in and overnight machine-gunned the lot. The sudden, overt blood bath threw the Lager Häftlinge – camp prisoners – into a frenzy. Everyone rushed around trying to rationalise their position, to convince themselves that the Nazis wouldn’t hurt them. The rising hysteria was cut short by reality. The unmentionable was happening. The SS were closing down the camps – and getting rid of all the incriminating evidence. That didn’t just mean the files they had efficiently kept on ‘the final solution for deportees’ but also the prisoners themselves. Now the Nazis weren’t using euphemisms. Hut after hut was cleared and taken to the gas chamber. As prisoners could no longer believe they would be spared, an unnatural silence descended on the camp. People held on to each other, cuddling, or else hid away, either facing despair or trying to meet the inevitable with dignity.
I was in the Kinderschuppen when Peter Steiner arrived unexpectedly. He grabbed me and took me to my mother’s hut, where he lifted me into her bunk. ‘Stay there!’ he said. ‘Don’t move.’ He had received information that the Kinderschuppen was to be liquidated and all the children taken to the gas chamber, and had risked his life crossing the compound in glaring daylight to fetch me. In silence, the women came back from their work details and went to their bunks. When she reached ours, Mama was bewildered to see me huddling there. She took me in her arms and was very still. She fumbled under her threadbare blanket and put bits of bread in my mouth as she held me and rocked me back and forth.
The emptying of huts progressed through the long afternoon, coming nearer and nearer to the one we were in. The waiting was horrendous. At last the dreaded squad ran up to our door.
It was almost a relief when a sergeant came in and ordered us out. ‘Block 5! Antreten!’ he yelled.
Everybody shuffled out without protest. We all knew what was happening but obeyed the shouted orders as if refusal might bring some punishment. What punishment could be greater than the fate we knew awaited us? I knew things were bad but I don’t think I really comprehended that we were going to die now. The thought of death is a very abstract concept to an eight-year-old.
Shivering in the falling dusk, we waited for the command to move off to the small brick house, the gas chamber. Everyone was silent, contemplating what they believed awaited them. Half a dozen more guards appeared and talked to the ones already in place. No one knew what was said. Then, with the usual shouting and screaming, dogs straining at the leashes, panting and slavering, the order came: ‘Marsch, vorwärts!’ The guards stirred us into movement.
But instead of marching left – to the Death House – the column followed the guards to the main gate of the Lager. My mother squeezed my hand so tight it hurt. We weren’t going to die. A whisper went through the colum, that the gas chamber had broken down.
In a dream the raggedy column of fifty or so women Häftlinge shuffled through the open Lager gate and followed the guards along the road. The euphoria at not being marched off to the gas chamber was replaced by more rational thought. No one knew what would happen but believed we had to be killed. The Nazis would not let us survive to tell our story.
Whispers went through the column:
‘They’ll kill us in the forest.’
‘We’re being spared for the labour battalions.’
‘We’re going to be shot dead as soon as we get into the woods.’
Matka kept pushing me out of sight when guards approached. It was strangely comforting hearing the guards shouting at us, ‘Schneller machen, schneller ihr verdammten Juden Schweine . . . !’ We didn’t care where we were going as long as we were leaving Stutthof concentration camp.
Walking along the dark road in our clogs was agony. We were freezing and hungry. Some of the women collapsed and the guards shot them where they lay. After a few hours we came to a barn. We were marched inside and the doors were locked. Again hysterical suppositions filled the air:
‘Nazi guards don’t want to be seen with concentration camp prisoners. It’s too risky. They have to get rid of us.’
‘They’re going to set fire to the barn and run off.’
But the guards were just tired. They didn’t set the barn on fire. They sat down and ate. We didn’t get anything but no one cared. We smelled the Nazis’ food and were glad and surprised to be alive to sense it.
The cold was less severe in the barn. We climbed into the hay and covered ourselves up. Its fresh smell reminded me of Bialystok. We must have fallen asleep because shots being fired outside woke us up. What was happening? We couldn’t see anything. One of the taller women put me on her shoulders and I was able to look out of a slit high up in the barn. Outside, flashes of light were followed by a bang. The guards were being attacked by partisans! Something hit the side of the barn a few inches above my head and a splinter just missed my right eye. I overbalanced and was caught by my mother who wasn’t happy about me being the look-out.
Meanwhile some of the women were trying with their bare hands to prise away the wooden planks at the back of the building so we could escape while the SS guards were busy fighting. But the planks wouldn’t give without proper tools.
The partisans killed one or two of the guards but then the SS men got the upper hand and the partisans left us to perish.
It was not long before we were once again shuffling along the road like freezing, starving skeletons. The guards, too, were sombre and had stopped shouting.
Suddenly there was a noise in the sky. Looking up we saw aeroplanes, their machine-guns at the ready. We threw ourselves into the ditches at the side of the road, quivering as the planes swooped down and raked us with their guns. Why were they doing this? we wondered. Couldn’t they see we were just a pitiful bunch of skeletons, crawling along the road hoping to live another hour?
When we looked up we saw that the planes had killed some of the guards but more of the prisoners. Matka ripped strips off a dead woman’s shift to wrap around our feet, then, prodded by the guards, we marched on again. We hadn’t gone far when the planes came back. Mascha dived into a ditch, pulling me with her. Gently, she rolled herself on top of me. Once more I heard the guards ordering everyone to march on but my mother stayed motionless on top of me. I feared she was dead. One of the men came to the edge of the ditch and shoved a boot into her still body. Convinced that she’d been hit by the aeroplane fire, he didn’t waste his bullets.
For a long time Matka and I lay in the ditch. Eventually, my mother lifted her head slightly to survey the area. Gingerly,
she raised herself up a bit more to make sure the column had gone and we were safe, then she sat up, dragged me out of the ditch and we slowly walked towards the forest.
When we got into the trees, we sat on a fallen trunk and rested. My mother suddenly pulled me on to her lap and hugged me, and fiercely kissed my face over and over. Then she wept. All the pent-up tears poured out of her big, hollow eyes. ‘This is our lucky day, baby . . .’ she whispered and rocked me back and forth, trying to stop crying. She knew that every day in the last three years had been our lucky day.
We were still a long way from being safe. Partisans – made up of Polish freedom fighters, foreign workers, political refugees, deserters and even bandits, but very few Jews – were all over the forests of Poland. They killed prisoners from the camps.
When Matka had stopped crying, she took my hand and we started off once more. We had to find somewhere to sleep before nightfall. We went deeper into the dark forest. I was mesmerised by the mass of trees. I couldn’t remember ever seeing such big beautiful specimens. But it was hard going, I kept losing my clogs and hardly had the strength to climb over the roots, and through the brambles and underbrush. I was starving and the cold wind whipped viciously through my flimsy shift. At frequent intervals we had to rest. We had no idea where we were going.
Suddenly Matka stopped and listened. We heard twigs breaking. Mama fell to the ground and pulled me down under her but it was too late. We had been spotted. An older man and a boy, a few years older than I and with a gun that was nearly as big as he was, stood right in front of us. The man spoke in Polish and my mother begged him not to hurt us. He wanted to know where we came from. She tried lying but it was no use. The boy said, ‘They’re from the camp, Grandad.’ It was obvious from the tone of his voice that he didn’t think much of us. ‘Let’s go,’ he urged.
‘Please,’ my mother begged, ‘let us go with you. We won’t be any trouble.’
The old man asked if we were from Sztutowie. Mama hesitated. She decided it was useless to deny it. Anyone could tell from our appearance. She slowly nodded her head. The old man looked at her for a moment, then at me. I tried a smile but it only stretched the snot cascading out of my flame-red nose. ‘We’ll see what the others think,’ he said and, trailed closely by his grandson, he plunged off into the trees leaving us to follow as best we could. Now that we had a goal we reached into our small reservoir of strength and kept our saviours in sight.
The partisan camp looked like a palace to me. In reality it was a jumble of make-shift tents and lean-tos grouped around a small decaying Babi Yaga cottage. Old tarpaulins, sacks and rotting pieces of cloth were draped over the shelters in an effort to conserve as much heat as possible. The people in the camp weren’t much to look at either. What rags they hadn’t draped over their accommodation, they were wearing. But they were dressed in proper clothes, no pyjamas. And there were no Kapos, no guards and slavering dogs, no shouting, no stinking stench, no smoking chimney.
The old man talked to two others. They looked at us without a lot of enthusiasm. The boy showed how he felt by walking straight into the cottage without a backward glance. Nobody else seemed interested.
The old man signalled to us and we followed him into the cottage. Inside, we found a small furnitureless room with about a dozen or so men sitting on the floor. They barely looked at us. We went through to a makeshift kitchen. From a heavy bucket sitting on a cut-down oil drum that had been pressed into service as a stove came a delicious smell. A man, evidently the cook, scowled at us and didn’t seem inclined to feed us, but the old man insisted. With bad grace the cook sloshed some soup into a couple of earthenware bowls and practically threw them on the greasy table in front of us. I wanted to snatch up the steaming broth but I wasn’t convinced that it was really for me. I watched Matka reach for her bowl and was about to ask for a spoon, when she scowled at me and put the rim to her mouth. I followed her example. The rich soup tasted even better than it smelled.
After much discussion it was finally decided that we could stay. Eagerly my mother thanked them. Finding somewhere to sleep, however, wasn’t easy. A spot in the cottage was prized above everything and all places were taken and jealously guarded. The alternative was one of the lean-tos. With her usual brio my mama found us a nice dry spot under a bush by a massive oak tree. A woman in a battered Russian uniform, with some skins and a blanket, came up to Mama and squatted down beside us. She told us her name was Tchechia and she had escaped into the forest two years before when the Nazis had come to her village to round everybody up. She was the first woman we had seen in the camp. She was beautiful, with dark curly hair and laughing eyes, and asked my mother a lot of questions about what was happening outside the forest, but, other than the fact that the Russians were getting close, we had nothing to add to what she already knew. She was obviously disappointed in us. She shoved the skins and blanket towards Mascha and left.
As I lay down to sleep, listening to the night sounds of the forest, I thought I was in heaven. The luxury of a little nest far away from the constant fear and threat of death in the camp and a full belly couldn’t be compared with anything I had known before.
Then I spoiled it and threw up all over our blanket.
Six
I woke up with a hacking cough, a nose which felt as if it was on fire and hands and feet swollen to twice their size by chilblains. Although I protested that I liked sleeping beneath the trees, Mascha faced the fact that somehow she had to work up a shelter for us by nightfall. I was no help. I was mesmerised by the boy with the gun and his surly attitude. His name was Yuri and he didn’t think much of girls, especially this skinny one with a snotty nose and a funny accent. I didn’t care. I thought he was wonderful. Yuri got tired of me following him around and kicked me on the leg. I didn’t flinch. He could do no wrong and I wasn’t going to be put out by a little thing like physical violence. But I did have enough savvy to realise that our relationship wouldn’t get better unless he wanted a friend.
As I mooned around, my mother was getting organised. She had insinuated herself into a space between one of the less substantial lean-tos and the chimney. The chimney radiated some warmth but unfortunately it also gave out great billows of suffocating smoke, which was why the spot had remained unoccupied.
Our next-door neighbour was the woman we had talked to the night before, Tchechia. Apart from Mascha, she was the only female in the camp with a child. She took a shine to my mother, probably because she was beset with the same problems. Tchechia’s daughter, Mila, was five months old, a black-eyed little cherub with a mass of black curls. I thought she was wonderful until I found that my freedom was restricted by having to care for her. With ill grace and poorly concealed resentment I humped the poor infant around.
Tchechia was in a privileged position as she was Kuragin’s woman. There was little organisation in the camp, not even a designated site for latrines, but everyone deferred to Kuragin, a big, boisterous Russian. We were told that he was a Russian fighter pilot who had been shot down and captured by the Germans. They’d tortured him but he’d escaped and now was just waiting for his chance to get back at the enemy. It was a comforting story.
Mama was transformed by life in the partisan camp. Tchechia gave her some nice raggedy clothes and Russian boots, and she looked like the other women, big and as tough as a man. Her hardy Stutthof shell crumbled and she became soft and gentle, and cuddled me all the time.
My mother also worked to transform the camp. Within days she had taken over the kitchen. The food improved and our stock went up. Next she had the ‘stove’ moved to a rough shelter at the side of the cottage. That freed up the room in the cottage where the cooking had been done and we moved in. She also tried to get Kuragin to sort out some kind of schedule that would give the men something to do instead of lying around playing cards. He tried but without much enthusiasm. The only positive thing to come out of it was that an area was designated for latrines, pits dug and a tree trunk slung across them
to sit on – luxury!
Burdened by my little charge, Milusia, I was even less cut out to be Bonnie to Yuri’s Clyde. At least I thought that was how it was going to be – except that behind all the macho blustering Yuri was as soft-hearted as the next partisan.
I was sitting on a log amid the birch trees and conifers, looking after the baby, when Yuri turned up and sat at the other end of the tree trunk. We glowered at each other and I made a fuss of little Mila to show I had something important to do. He got up and leaned against a tree, rolling a fag. He lit it and sat back down – a little closer. After a few minutes he asked about the baby and that broke the ice. He told me he was going to look at the traps he had set the night before and asked me if I wanted to come along. When I hesitated he offered to carry the baby. I made sure Mascha was looking the other way, then happily deserted my post.
The traps turned out to be a disappointment, containing nothing for the pot, but Yuri didn’t seem particularly worried. He had another surprise for me. Half an hour from the camp was a ruined castle that had been the family home of the people who owned the land on which the cottage was built. The place had briefly been the barracks for a small garrison of Germans but they’d blown it up when they’d left. Most of the furniture had been taken back to the camp but there was still enough there to make it interesting. My prize find was a box on wheels with a pulling handle, which had probably been used for transporting logs in the old days. It was a most cumbersome contraption but I loved it and bullied Yuri into helping me take it back to the camp. It became a sort of perambulator and shopping trolley. It was daft but it was mine.