Life's a Scream

by Ingrid Pitt

  When we reached the ‘orphanage’ it was dark. My anger at being parted from my parents rose up again. I shouted that I didn’t want to be in any orphanage. I still had my parents! I still had a home! No one took any notice. They had dealt with it all before. A Kapo-type shouted out a string of instructions. We were lined up and an older girl marched us up the stairs to our dormitories, where I crept into a freezing bed covered with only one thin blanket.

  I was calmer now and a little ashamed of my outbursts. I gave myself a good talking to and was determined not to let anyone know how unhappy and scared I was. I tried to take a leaf out of my mother’s book and bear my new tribulations with stoicism. But I was not as strong as my mother. I was cold and lonely – and very, very stubborn. I got up and put all my clothes back on. That felt warmer. When the Kapo woman saw what I was doing she stormed towards me, shouting that I must put my pyjamas back on immediately. It was the regulations. She was not going to let her authority be undermined by an evacuee. For a moment I stood defiantly in front of her but then it was all too much. I put on my PJs and shivered through the rest of the night.

  The next day I wrote a letter to my parents demanding to be brought home as soon as possible. This place was another Lager! It was not long before I was called in to see the headmistress. She asked me if I really wanted to worry my poor parents. I burst into tears and screamed at her at the top of my voice that I wasn’t prepared to have people shout at me like an Untermensch ever again. I was cold and I wanted to go home. I was shaking and couldn’t breathe. My TB had got better at the Krakow hospital but whenever I became upset the breathless attacks would return with a vengeance. Frightened by my attack, the headmistress made some concessions. For the time being I would be allowed an extra blanket, and she would talk to the doctor when he came to check on my state of health. She could see how thin I was and even mentioned the possibility of arranging extra rations.

  The added blanket had hardly any effect so one day I decided to wear my coat to bed. We’d been to football practice. In reality the boys played football and the daft girls walked around the pitch watching. It was freezing and utterly boring. When we got back to the orphanage I refused dinner and went to bed. The Kapo woman stormed up to the dormitory. Defiantly I stared at her and dared her to hit me. I even thought of hitting her. I wanted to be ‘punished’ by being sent home. Unfortunately we both thought better of physical violence, she contented herself with calling me names and I was forced to come down to dinner, where I was at least allowed to sit next to the big vats which pumped out heat.

  When I went back to my bed there was a lump in it. Slightly apprehensive, I slowly rolled back the blanket. Before me lay a big piece of sausage. I ate some at once and wondered who had given it to me. The next day on our daily walk through the countryside a boy sidled up to me and asked if I had liked the sausage. God, I thought, why couldn’t someone like that have looked after my needs in the camp? But he didn’t remind me of Yuri. And if boys didn’t remind me of Yuri they were dead. I was thirteen now and Yuri had become an idealised figure in my mind. Any boy I met paled into insignificance when compared with my idol. I had already decided that I would spend my entire life alone. Or, alternatively, I would become very famous and rich, return to the forest, find Yuri and take him away. Rationally, I knew that Yuri would have left the forest by now but who wants to be rational when day-dreams are better?

  The boy with the sausage said his name was Heinz, which didn’t help his cause. One Heinz had already been too many in my life. The poor guy asked if I wanted more sausage. ‘My father’s a butcher and makes them himself . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’re all butchers!’ and left him standing.

  I never got used to the orphanage. Daily I went to the headmistress to collect letters from my parents and I wrote back to them immediately. I knew the teachers censored my letters so I tried not to complain.

  One day a paediatrician who claimed to be my stepbrother came to visit. My father had asked him to have a look at my heart and lungs. He took me to a hospital and did an X-ray to see if my TB had gone. He told me that I was on the mend but that my heart was still too small. I thought we would go back to the orphanage from the hospital, but instead he took me to his home for the weekend. I didn’t like it there very much. He wasn’t anything like my father and I didn’t acknowledge him as my brother. I couldn’t help wondering what he’d been doing while we’d been going through hell. When he took me back to the orphanage it was all very awkward. He asked me if I would like him to come again. I was fairly non-committal and he said to get in touch if I needed him, kissed me formally on the cheek and left. He did turn up again shortly afterwards and took me to his home for his son’s first birthday party. He had a nice wife and in-laws but I thought I’d get on better on my own. The thought was always there – what did he do in the war? Where was he when our father suffered in Terezina? Had he been a member of the Nazi party?

  As is usual when a lot of children of approximately the same age are together, there was a strict hierarchy in the orphanage. At thirteen I was no longer the runt of the pack. I had breasts growing and had learned a lot about survival. My major problem was the boys. Battling with the pimples of puberty and talking about little other than girls and their fantasies, they loved to display their machismo. I couldn’t let them get away with all the crap they were saying and without thinking demanded to be let into their gang, the Lümmel Pack. They said I could join if I passed the initiation test. I don’t think they really had one before the awful prospect of having a girl on the team reared its ugly head. Why I bothered I don’t know.

  They insisted that I was blindfolded and then led me to the ruins of an old granary, whipped off the bandage and thrust me towards the edge of a bomb-shattered floor. Across a pit of about three yards or so was a narrow metal beam. I didn’t like the look of it and fervently hoped that I might be saved by somebody rushing on to the scene and driving us away.

  The boys were delighted to see my misgivings and rolled around laughing, congratulating themselves on getting one over on the mouthy cow who was always putting them down. If I had been half as confident as I tried to pretend I was I would have laughed and walked away. But I’m not that brave. I stood over the abyss and tried to convince myself that if I got into trouble I could dive for the edge and avert disaster.

  I took off my shoes. The boys were still taunting me, making jibes about girls being wimps compared with boys. That did it. I put my foot on the beam and tested it for stability. No problem there. Gradually I transferred my weight on to that foot. The boys were still at it. They even started throwing small chunks of plaster at me. I tried to ignore them and put the other foot on the beam. I wasn’t going to make it. I stepped back to safety, thought for a moment, then lowered myself on to the beam in a sitting position.

  The boys were quiet for a moment, stunned into silence. Then, angry at having been outwitted, they noisily protested that I had to walk across the beam and in addition introduced a new rule: I had to take off my clothes. I had been around enough to know that was testosterone talking and refused. ‘That’s it,’ they said. ‘You can’t be a member.’ It was my way out but I was too dumb to take it.

  We reached a compromise. I would take off my frock but could keep my vest and knickers on. They eagerly agreed. I think they considered this a major erotic victory. Down to my underclothes, I got back on the beam and swayed dangerously. The boys, giggling and making smart-alec remarks, ran down the stairs to stand below me. I think they had some idea that they might be able to see up my knicker leg or something.

  By this time all sensible thought had been replaced in my brain by the determination to prove to the boys that I was some sort of Brünnhilde. ‘Don’t look down!’ I told myself. Shit! I thought. I’ll never make it!

  As I started walking across, something flew out of a shattered room and swerved across in front of me. That did it. My arms windmilled ineffectually and I knew I was falling and t
hat it was going to hurt. Even the boys were silent as gravity took over and I began to plummet. Plan B came into operation. Without much hope I launched myself towards the far side of the pit – and missed by a mile. The thought crossed my mind that I was a goner, that I’d never see my parents again.

  The fall seemed to take a long time. Luckily I landed in the middle of a large bush, but the jagged end of a branch thrust right up between my legs and buried itself in my vagina. The pain was excruciating. And the blood torrential. The brave boys made themselves scarce, leaving me impaled and screaming.

  I lay there, trying to come to terms with the pain. I wasn’t dead, but was that necessarily a bonus? Every movement increased the torture. Again I contemplated death and hated myself for my stupidity in letting the boys goad me on.

  At last I managed to extract myself from the bush. The bleeding had stopped but the pain was still horrendous and I couldn’t move. I heard someone coming and managed to give a weak cry. It was Heinz, the sausage boy. Part of the gang, he had returned to the orphanage with the others but his conscience had forced him to come back to see how I was. He told me to lean on him and he’d take me back. I would be all right in a day or two, he reassured me. I screamed that I wouldn’t be all right in a day or two. I needed a doctor – immediately! Even the screaming hurt like mad so I lay down and tried to come to terms with the situation. Heinz ran off and after a while one of the nurses from the orphanage came. She also wanted me to walk back to the dormitory so that the doctor could look at me. She gave up that idea when she tried to help me stand and I passed out.

  I woke up in the hospital. The nurse made a joke about going to such extremes to lose my virginity but I didn’t think it was very funny. I had some fancy stitches in very intimate places and they hurt like hell. By the time I got back to the orphanage the whole episode was public knowledge, but nobody talked to me about it. I suppose it was the nature of my injuries. It wasn’t as if they could say, ‘Can I see the scar?’

  This adventure signalled the end for the Lümmel Pack. I was sorry about that. With a bit of luck one of the boys might have done himself a real injury!

  Eleven

  Shortly after my accident I was put on a plane and flown back to Berlin. The Russians were letting the convoys through again and the airlift was over. It was wonderful to be back with my papa and to schmooz with him again. I was still terribly aware that I was neglecting my mother. I sometimes threw my arms round her neck and said I loved her so much, and she would hold me in her arms and pat me comfortingly on the back. Then she would slap my bum and push me off to go to my dad.

  After the airlift, everything got marginally better. Not good, but better. We had become used to the constant sound of bulldozers and the long periods without gas, electricity or water. In fact, we took the periods when any or all three functioned as a bit of a bonus – not to be counted on but wonderful while it lasted. There was still a stigma attached to being a Jew. What Hitler had started, by blaming the economic failure of the Weimar Republic on the Jews, died hard. Most of the Germans still attributed their poverty and hardship to the Jews. But we could cope with that. After Stutthof you could cope with anything.

  The worst thing about returning home was that I had to go back to school. This time I was sent to a girls’ school. Although I learned a lot more and found studying quite interesting, I decided my life lacked excitement and that I should join another gang.

  I’d heard that in the next road was a whore-house, which attracted a lot of American GIs. The GIs seemed never to learn. They would drive up in their jeeps, park, and as soon as the brothel door closed, the local boys would swarm over the car and, quicker than at a Ferrari pit stop, disappear with the wheels. It all seemed like good fun so I started sneaking off and hanging out with the lads. Their den was the ruined house on the corner where they could keep an eye on the bordello for business and make sure there were no ‘Snowdrops’ – as the military police were known because of their white helmets – around to spoil the fun. They’d meet there, hang out and smoke fags, stolen from the GIs’ jeeps. I was still young and pretty skinny, but I was up for anything and could speak English, which was a great asset in post-war Berlin. I’d do my bit with the GIs and they would go through the ‘Have you got an older sister at home?’ routine before giving me chocolate and cigarettes or asking me how old I was, just in case. I was also the cover when the rest were doing their bit of filching. I wasn’t too good at it. I was so focused on what was going on that I didn’t keep a very good look out. One day I was busy watching the boys when they suddenly jumped up and disappeared down the road. Before I could get my brain in gear an enormous black man heaved me into the air by my jacket collar and asked me what I thought I was doing. I lied, said I was just passing and . . . the fact that I was holding several items recently liberated from his jeep was a little awkward to explain. Luckily for me, the GI merely told me to put the wheels back on his jeep. He must have been kidding. I couldn’t lift them let alone get the screws back in. In the end he took pity on me and fixed them himself. He even gave me an orange. It was the first orange I’d ever eaten.

  After this episode I still wanted to hang out with the gang but they had gone cold on me. What’s the good of a look-out who gets caught? My life as a hoodlum was short-lived. I didn’t seem to have what it takes to be a thief.

  Our lives finally began to settle into a routine. Every Sunday after lunch my father would take me to the Gloria Palast, a cinema not far from where we lived. He would make a big production of putting on his suit to take his teenage dotschka to the cinema, which was always teeming with rowdy children. Most of the kids called him grandpa since they all knew him, but by now it was never malicious and it didn’t bother him. He just winked at them. When I took offence on his behalf and wanted to attack them, he’d grip my hand hard so that I’d get control of myself.

  The cinema was the first my father ever took me to. I had never seen a film before, and little did I know that films would become my life. The cinema was a whole new world to me. A world of make believe that I couldn’t imagine existed. (At Stutthof I always tried to close my eyes tight and pretend I was somewhere else. But the sounds would still be there . . .) It was an altogether different world and what an incredible wondrous world it was. There were millions of make-believe lives to be part of: exciting lives and worlds I had never seen. I would ask my father all sorts of questions on the way home. And the following Sunday he had to go through the same thing all over again. I gave him no choice. Our big favourites were The Jungle Book and Elephant Boy starring Sabu, but I also loved Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Johnny Weissmuller.

  Then my father became ill.

  I was desperate and so was my mother. I refused to go to school. He had got uraemia, poisoning of the bladder. It seemed only a moment since we’d got him back – just five lousy short years. Nothing. I’d been without him for the same amount of time. I believed I should never again be able to live without him. He couldn’t die. He meant everything to me. My mother thought she could will him to get better, but he had suffered too much. A lesser man would have been dead already but his athletic life had made him strong and he could bear more than most people.

  Then came the awful day when an ambulance took him away. I cried, wouldn’t let go of his hand. I shouted, ‘No, no, don’t leave me, stay here, Papa, don’t go . . .’ Matka said I was making it worse. When they shoved him inside the dark, black hole of the ambulance he looked towards the garden and said that he knew he would never come back. My mother went with him, but I was not allowed. I was told that I could visit ‘tomorrow’. I hated those people in the white coats.

  My mama came back very late at night with red, swollen eyes. She hadn’t wanted to leave my father on his own in that place without a loving face by his side, but the nurses had forced her to go. She was tormented by the thought that he might die when she wasn’t with him, while she lay sleeping at home. She didn’t sleep all that night and we both got
up at dawn and took the train to the hospital. He stretched out his arms and smiled when we came into his room. ‘I want to come home . . .’ he said. ‘I don’t want to die here. Take me home.’

  The doctor said that although they couldn’t do anything for him he couldn’t leave. I had a fit and they threw me out. Because I couldn’t keep my gob shut my poor mother had to deal with the hospital hierarchy while my father lay dying. In the end they let us into my father’s room again and we stayed there all day. Papa kept mumbling that he had had no right to put us through all the horrors of the camp, that he should have seen it coming earlier, that he should have worked out something to save us . . .

  Mama told him that it didn’t matter now. All that was important was that he had followed his belief and had been proved right. He would have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people if he had given in.

  He cupped my face in his big hands and told me that he would love me for ever. He knew he was dying but he wanted to comfort us. ‘Promise me’, he said, ‘you’ll never be a victim again. Ever! Promise.’ I did, knowing already that it is easier to make a promise than to keep it.

  Around midnight my mother told me to go home to get some sleep. I refused. I’ve always been glad I did although I hadn’t really slept for days and was almost comatose. It was the last night I spent with my father. He died at dawn the next day. My mother held him close and whispered in his ear how much she’d always loved him. We stayed with him until they forced us to leave.

  We came home late that day – 16 July 1953 – and lay together on the bed and cried for a long long time. He was the centre of our lives and now he was gone.

  I sang ‘Ave Maria’ at the funeral or, rather, I was supposed to. But then I had an attack of tears and I couldn’t breathe. I croaked through the song until I completely lost my voice.