I was urged to arrange more performances for Sundays. I spent many a night writing in the washroom. I loved every bit of it. I loved the applause in my ears. I loved the single light burning on our improvised stage when the rest of the room was in darkness. I loved that light falling upon me and illuminating my figure. I loved to hear my voice in the hushed silence. But best of all I loved those upturned faces between the bunks, the smiles and sudden laughter, the knowledge that it was in my power to bring them an hour of fun, to help them forget.
When I look back now over the years, thinking of their happy faces, I remember too how pitifully few lived to know the joy of freedom. When I remember the forests of Czechoslovakia, where most of them lie in unmarked graves, I thank God that I was able to make them forget. Even now, when I meet the few girls who survived and they remind me of those performances, I feel humble and grateful. I know that that was the greatest thing I have done in my life.
Toward the beginning of June workmen started to erect a barracks at the far end of our courtyard and Frau Kügler told us that fifty more girls were scheduled to arrive. We lived in feverish anticipation during those next few days. Would there be someone we knew among them? Finally, the day came. After work we all rushed to meet the new girls. They were mostly from the vicinity of Sosnowitz. We were eager to hear what was happening in the outside world and they were of course anxious to find out what sort of camp Bolkenhain was. They told us that more and more people were being sent to Auschwitz, that the political situation was not good for the Germans, that the English were bombing cities in Germany in ever-increasing force. We listened hopefully to this last, praying that it might be true.
The new girls were trained by Meister Zimmer just as we had been, and after a week they joined us in the plant.
Toward the end of June, suddenly and without warning, our mail was no longer handed to us and we were not allowed to write. We were soon to discover a probable reason: on the Eastern Front, all was not well. We now had to stop our looms, often in the middle of a bolt of material, for lack of yarn. The machines stood idle for days. Finally we were told to remove the unfinished bolts and clean the looms. There was not enough raw material, not enough work. They said we had not produced enough and our punishment was not to have our mail. Incoming mail did not get to Frau Kügler; it was being burned outside the front offices of the factory. We were given odd jobs to do, such as cleaning windows and oiling machinery. Meister Zimmer ran about like a wild tiger, slapping whomever he could reach. He had never done that before.
Toward the end of July, for no reason that we could fathom, we were suddenly given mail again. I had a letter from Abek. Apparently he had written often, although he had not. received any mail from me.
Abek’s next letter came a week or so later. He was leaving Bielitz and was going to another camp. He wanted me to know, in case he couldn’t write any more, that he would love me always and that if he should die, my name would be his last word. How odd, depressing, and pessimistic his letter sounded! I felt terrible. His letters now meant more to me than I ever admitted to myself, and when they stopped coming, I took out the old ones and read them over and over. I omitted the ones in which he sounded weak and discouraged.
The best of his old letters seemed precious and wonderful now. I missed him, and thought about him all the time. I saw Abek as he was, unaffected by my moods, writing to me for months, not even certain if I received his mail, sending packages that meant depriving himself. How many nights did he have to paint to be able to buy the goods he sent me? I surely must love him for all that, I said to myself, over and over again.
Then, in the last hot days of August, 1943, we saw uniformed men walking through the factory. The director was excited. We were called into the courtyard, divided into three units, and told that we were leaving Bolkenhain.
Chapter 7
HOW DIFFERENTLY I HAD PICTURED MY DEPARTURE, WITH THE high gates thrust wide open to freedom, and how gladly I would have stayed in Bolkenhain until the war’s end.
When we assembled in the courtyard, we found Frau Kügler and the director engaged in discussion and we heard the words “Landeshut” and “Märzdorf.” These names came as a great relief, for we knew that in these towns were subsidiaries of Kramsta-Methner-Frahne, the firm we worked for. During our months at Bolkenhain many bolts of material had arrived in crates, their markings indicating that they had been sent from these towns. Now they sounded like old familiar places that we had known all our lives. “Thank God,” we whispered one to another, “we are not going back to a Dulag. They will let us work–that means we will live.”
Ilse and I clasped hands tightly and together we were assigned to the group destined for Marzdorf. Suse and Lotte were to go to Landeshut, along with Mrs. Berger and Litzi. We had no idea whether Frau Kügler was going with any of the groups.
There were a few minutes when we all embraced, then one by one we mounted our different trucks. There was silence while the gate opened, then the engines started with a roar. With the inevitable grinding of gears and a jolt we were on our way. I looked back at the fence that I had clutched so many times in desperate prayer. It did not look so confining now. Our truck swung out into the main street of the little town that we had seen only once, the evening when we first arrived, more than a year before.
It was late afternoon. We had been riding for a couple of hours and we were on a dark forest road. Low-hanging fragrant pine branches brushed our faces. It grew quite dark.
Ilse took my hand and whispered, “Gerda, I am afraid.” I did not answer, though I knew what she meant. There was something frightening about the stillness of the forest. Where were the Allied planes that were supposed to be destroying Germany? Where were our liberators? The fields we had passed earlier in the day had looked rich, the cattle contented. Orchard trees were heavy with fruit. The villages seemed calm. Germany suffering and hungry?–it was only we who suffered.
The truck’s headlights threw a low beam on the road ahead. “Gerda,” Ilse whispered again.
“I am afraid too,” I whispered back, not knowing how to comfort her. She started to cry, pressing her hands to her eyes.
It must have been about ten that night when we reached Marzdorf and could see the tall factory chimneys rising toward the sky. There were about thirty of us and I sensed that all of us were apprehensive about what was ahead.
The truck drove into the factory courtyard, enclosed by three six-story buildings. On the fourth side was a high fence topped by barbed wire and a gate guarded by an SS man. We were met by the new Lagerführerin, a girl of perhaps eighteen or nineteen, tall, blond, and vulgar-looking. Whip in hand, she was in the midst of a tirade directed at the Judenälteste, a sloppy, cow-eyed woman. My heart sank. This was not Frau Kügler, not Mrs. Berger, who was never afraid to stand up for her girls. This was different, so different. We were counted with the whip by the Lagerführerin and I noticed that she wore a ring on every one of her short, red fingers. How repulsive she was!
Roll call over, we were herded up to the sixth floor of one of the buildings. In passing, I noticed that the other floors of the factory were equipped with unfamiliar machinery. Some seemed to have looms but it was different, very different from Bolkenhain, much older and in disrepair. On the top floor a heavy iron door was opened and we looked into a large, nearly dark room filled with rows upon rows of three-tiered bunks. From some of the bunks girls’ heads popped up. “Where from?” they asked us, and immediately the whole room buzzed with life and the usual asking about news of relatives and friends.
“Quiet!” the Lagerführerin yelled hoarsely, and her whip smashed against the bunks, hitting girls all around her. It was quiet now. Again Ilse and I were lucky enough to be assigned adjoining bunks near a window. We were told to go to sleep, but sleep would not come. I rolled over on my stomach and looked out of the window, into the factory courtyard. It looked much smaller from so high up. The thought of the heavy iron door being bolted from the outside wa
s heavy upon me. There was no escape from here!
As I dozed off, I heard Ilse calling me. I was too tired to answer but could not fall asleep again. I looked out the window. A rocket, shot into the sky, illuminating the strange countryside. I looked at Ilse, but she was sleeping.
Maybe it’s the English, I thought with hope. Maybe they will drop a bomb. What if they did? We would be trapped here on the sixth floor! The flare vanished like a dream.
In the morning we were awakened by a shrill “Auf! Auf!” and a whip cracking against bunks. This was a woman guard, simply called Frau Aufsicht (Mrs. Overseer) because she supervised us on the way to and from work. Formerly, we learned, she had been a prison warden. She was small and thin, always dressed in gray; her face, her eyes, her hair, everything was gray. She seemed to have no mouth and never once did I see her smile. She was a creature born to hate and to be hated. She used her whip and profanity as if they were the only language we could understand.
Märzdorf was badly organized. There were about a hundred girls, including our group, but few worked at regular jobs, as we had in Bolkenhain. Each morning, after we were handed a chunk of bread and a bitter ersatz coffee, Frau Aufsicht marched us down to the courtyard where we stood roll call. Then several supervisors would appear to pick a number of girls for whatever work there was to be done. It was like a slave market.
From time to time, the young blond Lagerführerin, with her bejeweled fingers, would commandeer three or four girls to pull a child’s wagon in which she sat. As she rode around the courtyard, rickshaw-fashion, she would crack the whip over their backs.
The first day I was picked for a bricklaying detail along with four more girls. We were marched out of the courtyard and behind the factory where some construction was going on. A high pile of bricks was on the ground. We were told to form a line and throw the bricks from hand to hand until they reached a man who apparently was an experienced bricklayer. At first I thought I would never be able to do it. The bricks came too fast, their weight exhausted my arms, tore at my hands, and threatened to crush my fingers. Soon my shoulders began to ache and once when I missed a brick, it landed on my foot. I felt tears of pain welling up in my eyes and I wondered how I would last through the day.
Before long, however, I caught on to the rhythm of the work and then it became easier.
When we marched to quarters that night, I felt deathly tired from the fresh air, the unaccustomed work, and the excitement of the previous two days. All I wanted was to sleep.
The brick work was comparatively easy. The flax detail was what everyone dreaded and it was only a few days later that I learned why.
We had been at Marzdorf a week when I was chosen to work inside the factory, to clean and oil delicate parts of machinery which was being dismantled. I was glad for the change, for it permitted me to sit down. Besides, it was raining.
I was busy cleaning little screws when I sensed that someone was watching me. I started to feel more uncomfortable when I saw the blue cloth of a supervisor’s coveralls. Then I heard a voice above me.
“Well done,” he said, as he examined some screws.
I looked up, for surely it was rare that one should be praised. Then he asked me a tricky question.
“Are you hungry?”
I could not very well say yes and so accuse the Germans of mistreating me. Yet I did not want to say no, because it was true that I was hungry. I just said, “I eat in camp.”
“Come, come. Surely you don’t get enough to eat there,” he said in a fatherly tone.
Feverishly I continued the cleaning, my thoughts running wild. Perhaps he was not a Nazi; perhaps he was one of the partisans from the underground. My cheeks flushed, my lips quivered, as my hands continued to polish mechanically.
“You can’t get enough to eat,” he insisted.
I wished that he would go, but he stood there stolidly.
“Perhaps bread and butter,” he suggested. “Apples, sausage, warm soup.”
He mouthed those words so easily that I realized the disgusting truth. He was no partisan, for if he truly wanted to help me, he would not tease me.
He continued, his voice unctuous and dirty: “And for all that, I don’t want much from you–”
“What do you want?” I demanded.
His voice changed abruptly. “Don’t pretend to be stupid, or one might think you are a lady.”
I was on the verge of crying, but I looked at him with all the hatred I could muster, and continued cleaning. There was so much I wanted to say, but I knew that my life was in his hands. I was afraid even of silence. I rubbed the machine furiously. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him standing there watching me, as a cat watches a mouse.
He started to walk away, hesitated, and came back.
“You will be sorry!” he said before he left.
He could have taken me by force, he could have made up a story for the Lagerführerin and I would have been sent to Auschwitz, but evidently he decided to break my resistance. From that day on, Märzdorf became hell.
Next morning I was picked for the flax detail. We were marched to the freight depot just outside the factory. Freight car after freight car arrived, loaded high with bundles of flax. A huge crane lifted the bundles one by one from the cars, and dropped them at ten- or fifteen-second intervals. A human line quickly passed the bundles until they reached the barn. There they were stacked until they mounted three or four stories high.
The crane operator would throw the bundles systematically, accurately, with brutal precision. He did not care how we sweated under the dropping weight. The operator was completely indifferent to the frail girls who kept up the inhuman pace, with arms that were bloody, swollen, and infected, whipped by the prickly fibers. The dust flew thick, irritating eyes and wounds, and making it difficult to swallow or breathe. We had the sensation of the ground moving under our feet.
This was the loathsome flax detail. Slowly, the freight cars emptied. The piles in the barns grew high.
We had company on my first day. Four women were brought from a nearby prison to work for half a day, severe punishment for them. I wondered if they had been convicted for murder. It would not have surprised me, the way they swore! They said that they would have preferred to be locked in solitary confinement. I understood their choice.
The day dragged on but it finally came to an end, and we marched to camp. Sweat mingled with blood and the fine dust from the flax covered our bodies. Our eyes were red, our throats tight.
I did not even have the desire for washing and food, all I wanted was sleep. But that day was not over yet. Just as we got to our bunks, Frau Aufsicht came by and yelled at certain ones of us. “Get up, you dirty lazy swine, up to work!”
To work? But it was night! Yes, to work. A few were chosen, and I was among them. The supervisor kept his word.
We were marched back to the freight yards, to unload coal. I stood on the freight car, the black mass of coal under my feet, my blistered fingers grasping a shovel. I shoveled the coal onto a high pile on one side of the platform. There, tired hands shoveled it into round baskets; others carried the heavy baskets on their backs to storage.
There was a little break. Slowly my eardrums cleared. My hands and clothes were black. My throat felt dry. When I tried to clear it, the spit came black.
I looked at the railway signals flashing stop and go, red and green. The tracks were silvery gray in the moonlight. They held me fascinated. Bending over my shovel, I looked down, fully aware that I could not stand this life for long. The days at flax, the nights unloading coal. I knew now what the supervisor meant when he said, “You will be sorry.”
I could wait until a train approached, then jump. How fast it would be over, I thought. A few seconds, then quietness forever. No more roll call, no more the horrible Lagerführerin, no more smirking supervisor trying to buy me with soup and a piece of bread, no more flax, no more coal. Just one fast, stabbing pain and then … stillness … .
As I g
azed down at the tracks, I felt a strange sensation on my neck. Suddenly I realized why it was so familiar. I remembered my thoughts about death when I stood in my parents’ bedroom shortly after Arthur had left, and how Papa had turned me, grasping my neck to make me look into his eyes, forcing me to promise that I would never give up. Strange that my neck should trouble me now, at the precise moment when death seemed the only solution!
Beyond us the main station became alive with lights and whistles. Slowly a train puffed by. From behind curtained car windows came muffled cries of suffering. We deduced that this was a hospital train filled with German wounded. Watching it, I was not even glad with the knowledge that Germans suffered too. I was only sorry for the promise that I had given my father.
By the time dawn came the freight cars were empty of coal, and we marched back to quarters. We weren’t even allowed to wash, and it seemed only seconds until we were awakened again. Again I was chosen for the flax detail.
The same never-ending day continued and melted into the night and coal. Flax dust, coal dust, blood, sweat, all mixed together into a crust that covered my body. We were only a handful of girls who were chosen for both the flax and coal details, but I was always among them.
Ilse was jittery. She kept most of her meager rations for me.
“You need all the food you can get,” she insisted.
Then Sunday came. We didn’t work. To be away from the hateful flax was a most wonderful feeling. Locked up on the sixth floor we sat on Ilse’s bunk and looked toward the distant hills.
Ilse asked gently, “How are you going to stand it?”
I knew that she wanted me to reassure her, but all I could say was, “I don’t know.”
That night coal trains came again, and again I was chosen. During the night it grew cooler. Other freight trains passed, from them we heard faint cries and pleas for water; in those trains were Jews making their last journey to Auschwitz. Those trains rolled by swiftly. Like snakes, they rolled into the night, taillights blinking sadly, and with them disappeared lives, thousands.
All But My Life Page 15