What World is Left

by Monique Polak

  Death camps? My whole body begins to shudder. What has the doctor just said? For a moment, I wonder if perhaps I have misheard him. But no! He said children are disposed of in death camps. “Disposed of.” Those are words people use to talk about garbage, not human beings. Not children. Can it be true? It must be true! What would this man stand to gain by lying?

  My breath seems to be trapped in my throat. I must have made a choking sound because one of the doctors asks whether I am all right. “Young woman,” he says, “you look like you are about to faint.”

  I push him away. I am too upset to speak. So the rumors about the death camps are true. My Franticek, I think. My Franticek!

  As I rush out of the infirmary, I am filled with the terrible unwavering certainty that Franticek is dead. Gone, vanished. And somehow, my life has gone on without him.

  When I get outside, my legs give way, and I collapse on the ground, weeping. The sobbing makes my body shake and my throat hurt. No one stops to ask me what is wrong. In Theresienstadt, a weeping girl is not an unusual sight.

  While Hannelore and I wait in line for our miserable ladle of lentil soup (it isn’t even made from real lentils, just some awful dried lentil powder), we survey the changes taking place around us.

  There are poplar saplings in the central square. Several apartments have flowerboxes like ours. Mother never did get her red geraniums. She has settled for some scruffy-looking greenery. Mother says it is better than nothing. “Green,” she tells me, “is the color of life.”

  I don’t have the heart to tell her that maybe nothing would have been better. At least that way she wouldn’t be fooled into thinking that conditions in the camp are really improving.

  The poplar saplings and Mother’s plants aren’t the only new additions to the camp that are green. There are also squares of green grass that prisoners have been made to plant in the dirt. At first, the bright green color gives us a shock. We’ve grown so used to the gray and brown shades that are everywhere in Theresienstadt. Gray and brown bricks, and of course, gray faces. But within a few days, despite the prisoners’ best efforts to water the turf, it begins to turn first yellow, then brown.

  The same thing, I think, is happening to us. If, as Mother says, green is the color of life, we are turning gray and brown here too. Nothing can stay green in Theresienstadt.

  And though the camp is being embellished—there are a few new benches, a playground with three seesaws, a monument in the main square, and the bunk beds in the barracks have been cut down so there are two tiers of beds, not three—only the surface of our world has changed. We are still starving. We are still in danger of being sent on one of the transports. Death still stares us in the eye.

  “Can you imagine a bonbonnerie without bonbons?” Hannelore asks. “It’s criminal.”

  “Did you ever taste Dutch licorice?” I ask her. My mouth waters at the memory of the salty sweet taste. It is a kind of game we prisoners sometimes play— remembering our favorite foods from our old lives.

  Hannelore wrinkles her nose. “I hate licorice! I always preferred tortes—especially my Tante Helga’s nusstorte. She uses hazelnuts instead of flour. And mocha cream. Oh, it’s so good I can almost taste it!”

  “You don’t like licorice?” I poke Hannelore’s stomach. When I do, I notice how her ribs protrude from her side. “Something tells me if someone came around this instant and offered you a piece of Dutch licorice, you’d be glad of it.”

  Hannelore turns away. “You’re probably right,” she concedes.

  Talking about foods we’ve eaten in the past brings a momentary pleasure, but such conversations have a price. Afterward, we feel even hungrier than before. My belly is so empty it hurts. Sometimes my stomach makes odd gurgling noises as if it is complaining of neglect.

  No, all in all, it is better not to remember food and not to talk about it. So I try to change the subject. “This Embellishment,” I say to Hannelore, “makes me think of Potemkin Village.”

  Hannelore nods. “Yes, indeed. You’re quite right. We learned about Potemkin in school. He was the Russian minister who had his troops construct a pretend village along the banks of the Dnieper River.”

  “I can’t for the life of me remember Potemkin’s first name. Can you?” I ask her.

  Hannelore scrunches her forehead. She can’t remember it either.

  “It’s the hunger,” Hannelore says, shaking her head, “it’s beginning to affect our brains.”

  “Or maybe we weren’t paying attention in class! Maybe you were too busy mooning over Gunter!”

  It’s good to see Hannelore laugh.

  That night the soup is so thin and there is so little of it that I weep. I know I shouldn’t cry. There are far worse things than being hungry. But I can’t help it. The long days in the diet kitchen, the hunger and the sadness are wearing me down. So when Hannelore and I finish slurping our soup, and we are sitting together on one of the new benches, I take my spoon and use it to scrape at the inside of my cup. The enamel begins to fall off in tiny silver slivers. And because I am so hungry, I eat it.

  Hannelore, who is just as hungry, follows my example. The enamel tastes sharp and metallic, but at least those little slivers mean there is something in our empty stomachs.

  We don’t say much on the way back. I think we both feel ashamed that we’ve eaten the enamel bits. What if we get sick? Then all at once, Hannelore grabs my arm. My first thought is that she is suffering the first effects of poisoning. It will be all my fault. But it isn’t that at all.

  “Grigori!” she says excitedly. “His name was Grigori Potemkin!”

  Ten

  Hannelore and her mother are gone.

  But I can’t cry. It takes energy to mourn the loss of someone you love. Energy to cry. Energy to remember all the things that were, all the things you took for granted. The times you laughed together, the stories and secrets you shared, even the times you cried together. All of the last moments. The last time the two of you walked down the road on the side of the central square—the narrow road reserved for Jews. The last time you waited together in line for ersatz coffee or lentil soup. The last time you stood together as darkness fell, looking up at the stars and making a wish.

  It takes energy to think of all the moments that will never be. The letters we would never exchange when this insanity is over. If it will ever truly be over...

  But I don’t have the energy for any of this. My throat hurts too much, my belly is too empty. And my heart feels empty. If I lay my hand on my breast, I can feel my heart beating away, but I know the truth. It is just an organ. Inside, my heart has become as hollow as my belly.

  The tears won’t come even when I try to force them by squinting my eyes. Besides, I know I haven’t the right to cry. I haven’t suffered more than anyone else in Theresienstadt. In fact, I’ve suffered less. We are, after all, the lucky ones.

  But being lucky is a burden all its own. Those of us who remain in Theresienstadt must bear witness when others leave.

  If the tears do come, I know they’ll only upset Father and Mother and Theo.

  We have to be strong for each other. We tell each other sometimes that it takes strength not to cry. But part of me isn’t so sure. Could the opposite also be true? Might it take strength to cry, to consider all that was and will never be?

  But I am too weak for that.

  The Embellishment is not just a matter of flower-boxes and turf and seesaws. No, it has required several more transports, each of one thousand more souls. After all, what will the Danish delegation think if they see a city so crowded with people there is no place to turn, no room to breathe?

  I’ve stopped believing that any of them—Franticek, Hannelore, her uncle, her mother and all the thousands of others—are in a better place. I can’t forget what I heard the Jewish doctor say about the death camps.

  The old woman is talking again. “Did you hear what the old woman said?” voices ask as I make my way early one morning to the diet
kitchen.

  A group of children arrived in the middle of last night. They are from Bialystok, Poland, and their arrival at the camp is to be kept top secret. Though, of course, that isn’t too likely to happen in Theresienstadt. Not in a place with such a talkative old woman.

  The orphans are whisked off to a separate barracks at the edge of the camp. No one is to see them or speak to them.

  But I see them. Frau Davidels chooses me to deliver their soup and slices of stale brown bread. “Keep your eyes down,” she tells me, “and don’t say a word. There will be Nazi soldiers everywhere and you mustn’t draw attention to yourself, Anneke. Deliver the soup and the bread, then come directly back.” She eyes the clock on the wall in the diet kitchen. “I’ll expect you in twenty minutes then.”

  The soup is in a metal tureen, so I need both hands to carry it; Frau Davidels strings a burlap sack full of bread over my shoulder. I walk toward the barracks where the orphans are. Poor things. They have nobody left. No father, no mother. My throat, already sore, aches even more when I think of them.

  Four Nazis are stationed outside the barracks. Their rifles hang slackly across their chests.

  “Leave the food right here, you Jew bitch!” one of them says, pointing with his gun to a spot on the ground.

  When I stumble a little, one of the Nazis laughs. I hope I haven’t spilled any soup. The orphans must be very hungry.

  I hear movement inside the barracks. Little bodies shuffling. I imagine the orphans trying to make sense of their new surroundings.

  “Get going!” shouts the Nazi who called me Jew bitch.

  But before I reach the first corner on my way back to the diet kitchen, I hear noise—lots of it—coming from the barracks where the orphans are. Though I know I’m not supposed to, I slow down and turn my head just a little to see what is going on. The orphans are filing out of the barracks. There is a sea of dark heads and ragged clothing.

  A German voice pierces the air. “To the showers!” the voice says. “All of you! Raus!”

  Then I hear a terrible whimpering. It starts out low and small, but it quickly grows loud and desperate. “No! No!” I hear little voices call out. The voices are trembling, but the words are clear. “Don’t send us to the gas, please, no!” they plead.

  Gas? I think, struggling to make sense of the children’s cries. Showers? Gas? What do they mean? And then, suddenly, I begin to understand. I cover my mouth with my hand. There is nothing in my stomach, but I feel as if I am about to retch.

  I imagine Hannelore and Franticek standing outside some building marked Showers. But there are no showers inside. There is some terrible contraption instead, something wicked, designed to kill Jews, to gas us to death. The orphans must have seen this. No wonder they are so afraid! And no wonder their presence must be kept top secret.

  These children have not just lost their parents. These children have been at a death camp, perhaps the dreaded Auschwitz.

  I work, I eat, I line up for ersatz coffee and lentil soup, I battle the bedbugs. But part of me has disappeared, leapt out of my body for good after Hannelore left on the transport and I heard the orphans’ fearful cries.

  One Sunday afternoon, a group of young Czech prisoners tries to persuade me to come with them to the top of one of the barracks on Jagergasse. “You have to see the view from there,” one of the boys tells me. His accent upsets me. It reminds me of Franticek. “You can see for kilometers and kilometers.”

  “I’m too tired.” Besides, I don’t want to see for kilometers and kilometers. If I do, I’ll only be reminded that I am trapped here in Theresienstadt. That will make me feel even worse than I already do.

  Mother, who is darning one of Theo’s socks when the young people come knocking, urges me to go. “A change of scenery may do you good.”

  “Let’s go!” says a girl named Gizela, who has frizzy brown hair that looks like a wooly cap. She reaches for my hand. I can tell she is the sort of person who is used to getting her way.

  And so, reluctantly, I follow Gizela and her friends.

  The barracks, which are just down the street from our apartment, stink. But the young Czechs pay no attention. They hurry up the narrow wooden stairway at the far end of the barracks.

  I stop to take a breath when I reach the attic. “Come on!” says the boy who sounds like Franticek. “There’s still another staircase.”

  I gasp when a cold bony hand touches the small of my back. When I spin around, I see a face so pale it seems to shine in the dark. It belongs to an old woman. The bones on her face protrude under her papery skin. She looks more dead than alive. I draw back from her as if I am afraid to catch whatever she has got.

  “Do you have anything for me to eat? Anything?” she asks. I can barely feel her fingers on my back, they are so thin.

  I know that many of the old people in Theresienstadt have been forced to live in the attics. Chances are, of course, the Danish delegation will never come all the way up here to inspect the condition of the camp. But I have never seen someone look so old and ill.

  “I’m sorry,” I stammer. “I haven’t anything for you.” In the dim light, I can see other old people lying, crumpled like paper bags, on the floor. One makes a low moaning sound. I want to run away.

  There is nothing I can do for them. I have no food to share. I am filled with a terrible sense of helplessness. The way this old woman is looking at me, reaching for me, her eyes filled with desperation, only makes me feel more helpless. So when I hear Gizela call my name, I turn and hurry up the stairs. The old woman whimpers. I blink hard. I have to make the picture of those old people go away.

  Gizela and the others are already on the edge of the roof, pointing at the countryside. “Look! The trees are coming back to life! See their yellow-green color!” Gizela says. Her arms are as thin as mine. It seems to bother her that I am not more excited. “Come, Anneke! Come look!”

  “Okay, okay,” I tell her. It is the first time in nearly a year that I’ve seen anything beyond Theresienstadt and the tall dreary ramparts surrounding it.

  I look and see the yellow-green that Gizela is talking about, and I see the round hills and shallow valleys in the distance. They seem to stretch out forever.

  Another girl is lying on her back, gazing upward. “Look at the sky. There’s not a cloud.”

  I see the sky too. She’s right. There’s not a cloud.

  But none of what I see touches me. The sun is out, but I don’t feel its warmth. The others say they can hear a bird chirping, but I don’t. Gizela shrugs when she looks at me; then she turns back to her friends.

  In my heart, it is another gray day. I feel as if the gray in my heart will never go away.

  “I’m worried about Anneke,” I hear Mother whisper from behind the curtain. It is very late, and she and Father must think I am asleep. But it is as if I’ve become incapable of sleep. Sometimes, I toss on my mattress, slapping at the bedbugs. Lately, I’ve been trying a new strategy: I lie perfectly still and let them bite me. Sometimes, I pretend to be dead. If I am dead, the bugs can’t do me any harm, and the sadness will stop. If I am dead, perhaps I can be with Franticek and Hannelore.

  “What can we do for her?” Father asks.

  “I don’t know,” Mother says. Then I hear a deep sigh, followed by the sound of one of them shifting on their mattress.

  “Shh,” I hear Mother say. “We mustn’t wake the children.”

  Father is putting the finishing touches on his mural of The Ugly Duckling. “The story of The Ugly Duckling is a little like Commandant Rahm’s Embellishment, only the changes here are purely on the surface,” Petr Kien says one afternoon when he and his wife pass by our quarters. I’m glad there’s someone else who agrees with me.

  “But there have been some real changes,” his wife insists.

  Petr Kien raises his eyebrows. “Do you mean the flowerboxes?”

  “No, I mean the extra hour of rest time they’ve given us on Sunday afternoons. And the fact they
haven’t objected when that rabbi from Germany, the one with the long beard, addresses members of his old congregation. As long as there aren’t too many people.”

  “Bah!” Father says. “The old man is selling snake oil.”

  An image of Rabbi Baeck’s face flashes through my mind—his piercing blue eyes and his beard that is so long and bushy it looks as if birds could nest in it. I remember him from the night of the census count, the night I thought things couldn’t get any worse. Of course I realize now that I was wrong.

  The following Sunday, I announce I am going for a walk.

  Father and Mother forget to ask where I am headed. I know it is because they are so glad to see me leave the apartment. Since Hannelore’s departure, I’ve spent almost every Sunday afternoon inside, lying on my mattress, staring up at the ceiling.

  I know where to look for the rabbi: On Sunday afternoons, the German Jews tend to gather in one of the smaller squares. Sure enough, when I arrive, Rabbi Baeck is holding court. Someone has brought him a rickety chair to sit on, and a group of German prisoners is gathered round him, listening to him speak. Though his voice is frail, there is something musical about it.

  “‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, bless’d be the name of the Lord.’ These words,” Rabbi Baeck says, “appear in the Book of Job. It teaches us that, like Job, we cannot expect to understand the ways of the Lord.”

  People nod wisely, and when he looks up, Rabbi Baeck’s eyes settle on me. I would like to say something. Ask how God, if He exists, could simply stand by when Franticek and Hannelore were sent off on transports. But I don’t dare. If they hear my Dutch accent, everyone will know I am an outsider.

  Besides, perhaps Father is right, and Rabbi Baeck is selling snake oil. But I suppose that if his words help the people who come to hear him speak, then there is no harm in it.

  As I walk back to our apartment, I decide not to tell Father and Mother where I’ve been. And I think about that line from the Book of Job. The Lord has taken so much away from me. I don’t think I can ever bless his name.