A strange sensation came over me. That piece of paper seemed alive. Like Erika’s letter of long ago, it throbbed with suffering. I knew that Arthur was not in a camp like Bolkenhain.
“Arthur,” I whispered, “why were you not spared?”
And there in Bolkenhain on Christmas Day, 1942, when the sun stood high at noon, the snow brilliant at my feet, I heard people outside the gates laughing as they came from church, children jingling gay sleigh bells. And there in the glaring sunlight I suddenly knew that I would never see Arthur again.
Every jingle, every laugh, brought back a picture of my brother to me. Arthur painting, with a green stain on his thumb; Arthur skiing over the brilliant snow, his navy-blue sweater showing his powerful muscles; Arthur the center of a group, laughing, frowning, forehead wrinkled, then a flashing smile; Arthur swimming, his hair wet, sunshine flecking his merry eyes; Arthur kissing Mama’s hand when he left us; Arthur leaving home that morning without looking back. Arthur, my rock of strength! I fumbled for the little sack that I wore around my neck under my blouse. I opened it and looked at the piece of broken glass that we had gathered from the ruins of the temple. Arthur, Arthur … .
Upset and bitter, I wrote to Abek, and poured out my grief to him.
After New Year’s, I got his answer. He could not understand why I carried on so. I knew that he loved me and would willingly have endured hardships for me, yet because he and his immediate family were still safe, he could not comprehend.
He told me that he had been home over Christmas and he described how happy his family had been to be together. He was not callous, he merely shared his experiences with me. But I was jealous of his being home. I was bitter that I could not see Arthur, for I felt that only he could fully understand me. I was hurt by Abek’s letter, sorry that I had not stayed in Sosnowitz, sorry for myself.
A week or two later, I began to feel ill. I went to see Litzi, the nurse. She told me that my temperature was high, but that nothing else seemed wrong. So it went for a week or more, until the nails of my hands and feet became infected and full of pus. My temperature rose again and Litzi said that I had better not go to the factory, but stay in the Krankenrevier. I felt no pain, only terrible fatigue. Yet I could not sleep. I wanted to cry, but no tears came.
I had been in Litzi’s room two days, when in the morning after the girls had marched off to the factory, Frau Kügler hurried in, flushed and excited. There were two other ill girls in the room with me.
“Get dressed,” she said. “Quick, quick!”
“Gerda can’t,” Litzi told her. “Her fever is very high.”
Frau Kügler ignored Litzi and pulled me from my bunk.
“Hurry, hurry!” she urged, and they all helped me dress. Frau Kügler tied my shoes.
My knees trembled. The few feet to the door seemed to be an enormous distance. Cold sweat ran down my forehead as I walked. I felt cold all over.
Frau Kügler led the three of us to the factory. We kept close to the wall as we went. She followed me to my looms and set them in motion.
“Keep going, Gerda,” she muttered under her breath as she turned to go.
I felt as if I had just gotten off a merry-go-round. I could not see the looms. The light fell queerly in ugly yellow stripes. The machines seemed to stand at an angle. At times the looms seemed far away, as if I were looking at them through the wrong end of binoculars. The next instant the threads rushed toward me as if to entangle me. I started forward and then I swayed.
Someone caught me in strong arms, and shouted into my ear, “Pull yourself together, Gerda, it is a matter of life or death!”
As the words reached me I shuddered, almost beyond caring. Then I gripped the beating loom and looked into Frau Kügler’s eyes.
“Pull yourself together,” she repeated, and then vanished. After a few minutes I saw the factory director walking nearby with a tall, stern-looking SS Obersturmführer. I knew he must be Lindner. I had heard in the Dulag that he was the most notorious sadist of them all. Those who were ill he sent directly to Auschwitz. Then I knew why Frau Kügler had hastily led us to the factory. My hands felt steady; when Lindner passed me I stood erect, my looms all in motion. Somehow I lived through that day.
The last thing I remember was the coolness of a sheet against my burning body. When I woke up there was a great stillness that I had not experienced in many months. I sensed that it was late and that I was again in Litzi’s room. Frau Kügler came in. I looked at her, remembering.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“It’s all right.” She touched my hand. “Who knows–?” She broke off there, and as she went out of the door I looked after her in wonder. The German woman who worked for the SS had saved my life.
I got well fast, resumed the old routine. In a way I began to like my work. I found a new security in it, for the intricate process of weaving gave me a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.
Late in January I got another message from Arthur. I was shocked, so sure had I been that the letter I read on Christmas Day was his farewell to me. I hardly recognized his handwriting. The words looked as though his hands were stiff or frozen, or as if he had written in darkness. He just said that I should not worry and that I should be strong. He did not say what he was doing or where he was. Somehow that jumbled little note reassured me; it had some quality of the Arthur I knew and I was calmer after I got it. It proved to be the last message I ever got from my brother. Perhaps he knew or sensed it would be, perhaps he paid for writing it with life itself. His quiet words gave me the strength and trust to go on and face what was to come.
Chapter 6
SEVERAL DAYS LATER ABEK WROTE. THE THING HE HAD HOPED would not happen–had happened. His parents and sisters were gone. The Jews of Sosnowitz had met the same fate as those in Bielitz and elsewhere. He had managed to get to Sosnowitz but by the time he arrived no one was left. Even the young people had been sent to Auschwitz and not to work camps. Abek described what he thought had happened, down to the last cruel, unthinkable detail. He told me that he had seen the large field where his family and thousands of others had stood before their last journey. He imagined how the place must have echoed with cries only the day before. He described the bodies still lying in the field, dead from cold, starvation, or suicide. There were many bodies of children, whose parents had given them poison or sleeping pills, so that they could be spared Auschwitz. I lived it all through Abek’s eyes until I felt that I could take no more. I forced myself to read all his letter.
“My life is a desert now,” he wrote. “I go on living only because I have you. Only you can make a future possible for me. When I hold you in my arms again, we will both cry our bitterness away. You will wipe away my tears and make me happy. You will teach me to smile again. Through you I might yet know some happiness … .”
When I put down the letter, I felt anew all the pain I had suffered at separation from Papa and Mama. I was afraid of the future. Abek’s parents were gone too, and I felt closer to them than to Abek. They were no more. I could hardly grasp it. With horror I remembered how I had battled with myself in the Dulag. Had I stayed in Sosnowitz and not been able to get back to Bielitz, I would have been sent to Auschwitz too.
I sat down at once and wrote to Abek. I wrote what he would want to hear: that I would be with him, that I would never leave him, that I would make him happy. I wrote slowly and deliberately, not in my usual swift, careless way. I was halfway finished when the lights in our quarters were turned off for the night. In the washroom, in the dim blue light there, I wrote the rest. I wrote without looking back, without correcting. I had to finish it without stopping.
Timidly I knocked on Frau Kügler’s door and asked her if my one weekly letter might be mailed ahead of time. To my surprise, she was not angry; she promised to send it off in the morning.
I returned to my bunk, undressed slowly, and neatly folded my things away, something that I had never done before. When I got into the bunk, I felt
Ilse’s hand reaching for mine. The gesture annoyed me. I turned away and gazed into darkness. Only then did I start thinking of what I had written to Abek and realize that it was false. In that hour when I should have felt closest to Abek I felt remote. When my feelings should have been strongest for him, there were none. He looked to me for strength and I had no strength to give. I wished I could tell Ilse how I felt, but Ilse would not understand. I was sure that she would think me cold and unfeeling.
As I stretched under the blanket, my body felt young and slim. I felt strangely accomplished, even beautiful. I was glad to be eighteen, glad to be alive, glad for my youth, and thankful that I had not stayed in Sosnowitz. I realized for the first time that I could live deeply and I was ashamed of my feeling of contentedness. I thought of Abek again, and I knew that I could not love him as he wanted me to. But I will have to marry him, I thought. What will happen to him if I don’t? And then suddenly, sweetly, I imagined unknown, gentle eyes looking at me. A happy, full, generous mouth that had never known bitterness or pain smiled at me. I smiled back. How easy it was! I felt my blood racing. I embraced my hard straw-filled pillow. With a happy smile, I closed my eyes and whispered, “Whoever you are, wherever you are, I love you!”
On February 8, his birthday, Abek wrote me a letter and enclosed a picture of himself. On the back of it he had written this dedication: “On my twenty-fifth birthday, my life, which is so lonely, is yours. You shall form it for me.”
I did not like it. I was more disillusioned than ever. Why, oh why, did he love me so much?
Winter passed and spring came again. Spring which always brought hope for the end of the war. The days stretched longer, I felt more restless. I particularly hated Sundays, when through the gates we could see the townspeople walking, their children laughing and playing.
If only I could be free! I felt myself clutching the bars of the fence. To be free, free–oh, God, how wonderful it would be!
Actually, we were well off. The work, once we got used to it, was not as difficult as it had seemed in the beginning. Frau Kügler was good to us, and never resorted to physical violence. We had food; there were no black market dealings in the kitchen as we heard there were in other camps. We could, of course, have eaten much more, but we were not really hungry and we were not cold.
Early one afternoon, a foreman came and told me to shut off my looms and go to the director’s office. My heart skipped a beat. “Why?” I asked. The foreman shrugged his shoulders. What could it be? I wondered, appalled. I had delivered my quota of goods. Besides, Meister Zimmer handled cases of individual quota failure.
I walked through the labyrinthian corridors. Arrows pointed the way to the office. I trembled as I approached, tugged at my blouse, adjusted the kerchief on my head, made sure that my stars were in place.
In the outer office four stenographers were sitting at their desks. They stopped typing and looked at me in amazement.
“What do you want?” one asked.
“I’m called to see the Herr Direktor.”
They looked unbelievingly at me. One of them giggled. I felt their curiosity.
One of the girls rose, opened a door and called, “Hilde!”
The director’s secretary appeared, nodded at me, and indicated the pale green door. I trembled, knocked, and went in.
It was a spacious room. The light fell, not from a skylight, as in the rest of the factory, but through large, open windows that looked out on rows of tulips and toward the street on a side of the factory that we never saw.
In the center of a thick carpet was a single black desk, very much like Papa’s. I walked up to the edge of the carpet, hesitated, and stopped.
Director Keller was looking through some papers, and did not immediately lift his head. I saw a miniature loom on his desk and a square frame in which he kept a picture of his family. Samples of material were displayed in glass cases hung along the walls. But what struck me most was that in this big, luxurious room he was alone. We fifty girls had to share space no larger than his office.
The director lifted his head. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “What’s your name?”
I told him.
“Hmmm.” With a curious smile he eyed me from my heavy ski boots to my kerchief. “Come closer.”
I stepped onto the thick carpet, my heart beating wildly. Two steps from the desk I halted.
“Aha!” he said again. “So that’s you.”
I felt blood shooting into my cheeks. What does he want? I thought in panic.
He held up a letter. The postmark looked familiar; on the letterhead were three lions holding a crown. I almost shrieked with joy and relief. I knew it was a letter from my uncle in Turkey!
“I want to ask you some questions.” The director’s voice was not as stern as when he lectured us.
“Yes.” I waited, checking my excitement.
“I have a letter here from someone who says that he is your uncle. Do you have an uncle in Turkey?”
“Yes, I do.”
“What is his name?”
I told him.
“Do you know his address?”
“Posta Kutusu 530, Istanbul.”
“So you wrote to him,” he said sternly. “You smuggled a letter out of camp!”
“No, I did not,” I answered quietly.
“How else would he know where you are?”
“Perhaps my brother, who is in the Gouvernement, or friends in Bielitz, wrote to him.”
My explanation must have satisfied him.
“You may write to him,” he said then, “but give Frau Kügler the letter.”
“Thank you,” I answered, realizing what a big thing it was, for we were not allowed to write to foreign countries.
He put the letter in a drawer-I was not to have it. Thinking that I was dismissed, I turned to go.
“Wait a minute,” he called.
I turned and faced him again.
He hesitated. “No, never mind. Go now.”
How I wished I knew what was in the letter! I wondered if by chance my uncle knew the director. It was possible: my uncle, who had a textile factory, came to the textile conventions in Europe every year.
“Oh God, I am so lucky!” I exulted.
I wrote a letter to my uncle. Shortly after, surely before it reached him, I was called to Frau Kügler. She had a package for me from Turkey. It was more than three-quarters empty.
“It was open when it arrived,” Frau Kügler told me. “It was probably not properly packed because things are missing.”
I could not help but notice that the neat wooden box would surely have taken effort to open. The few things that were left in it were wonderful–burnt almonds, sugar-coated nut clusters, and halvah. I called Ilse, Suse, and some other girls and we shared those delights. They were quickly eaten, but I was so happy with the idea of getting the package that I would not have cared even if I had not tasted anything at all.
Frau Kügler eagerly urged me to acknowledge the package. Her eagerness confirmed my suspicions that she and the director were guilty of opening it. As the result of my letters, more parcels came from Turkey, but each one that reached me was opened and more than half empty.
Then May came, the month I particularly loved.
When I woke on the morning of my nineteenth birthday Ilse embraced me, saying, “Happy birthday!” She led me to our table where, on a doily made of the paper in which the white yarn for the looms was wrapped, was a white china cup. Ilse had borrowed it from one of the girls. And my slice of bread was spread with margarine! That was indeed a treat, for only on Sundays did we get margarine. Ilse had scraped it from her bread and saved it for me.
I got other wonderful gifts that day, more precious and harder to obtain than any I will ever get: shoelaces made from factory yarn; three bobby pins made from the wire on which spools were suspended over the loom; a pair of stockings not too badly darned; a new kerchief (or rather a triangle cut from a square–the girl who gave it to me wore the
more bleached and worn half); and a few green leaves with one posy, plucked from the director’s garden through the barbed wire of the fence. I felt a lump in my throat–the girls had been wonderful to me!
That afternoon two parcels came from Abek, one with clothing and groceries, and the other with books. I was most pleased with the latter. There were dried flowers on the bottom of the box.
I thought and thought of how I could repay the girls in some way, and then I hit upon a plan. When I asked Frau Kiigler if I could arrange a play, she liked the idea. She herself was bored, and welcomed a change. So at night, in the washroom, I wrote a skit.
When I announced it to the girls, the whole camp was alive with expectation. Volunteers took parts. One girl had a wonderful voice; she sang classical pieces. Two girls offered to act in a sailor skit. One of them had studied ballet.
My play presented Ilse and me as old grandmothers, knitting and remembering the old times in Bolkenhain, gossiping about what happened to the girls, bringing out each weakness and peculiarity, and predicting, of course, a brilliant future for each.
Frau Kügler enjoyed the play immensely, laughing until she cried. Here and there I inserted a significant word or two in Polish, not meant for her German ears. The girls howled in appreciation.
When our two granddaughters (one was Suse) appeared, and we tried to tell them a bit about our lives, they winked at each other knowingly.
“Come, let us talk about our boy friends,” they whispered, taking advantage of our deafness, “for the old ones like to exaggerate a bit.”
Ilse and I strained to catch their remarks, and we smiled at each other with understanding. When our granddaughters left the stage we smiled indulgently after them. The play was over. There was a moment of complete stillness and then came a hurricane of applause.
We knew we were understood. After the merrymaking and fun, that note of hope was the right one to strike. The hope for a normal life, for children and grandchildren who could live in a world where our experiences would seem too fantastic to be believable–that was our dearest wish.
All But My Life Page 14