What World is Left

by Monique Polak

  Many of those who are departing adjust their rucksacks. Though they are leaving Theresienstadt with far less than they came with, they fuss over their meager belongings: a change of clothes, a frayed photograph— the frame, if it had had any value, confiscated long ago at the Schleuse—a tin cup, a fork. There is no need for knives since we never have food substantial enough to require cutting. Some cast a final look back at the camp that has been their temporary home. Others simply head for the train.

  Those of us who have come to see them off do our best to be brave. “I know we’ll be together soon,” I hear a woman tell an older man. But when he is out of sight, the woman bursts into tears, her shoulders heaving as she sobs.

  After the train pulls out of the camp and I am returning to the diet kitchen, I notice a girl my age wiping her cheeks with the backs of her hands. I’d like to comfort her, but I don’t have the strength.

  There’s no room in my heart for a new friend. Besides, all friendships here end badly. Sooner or later, one of us will end up on a transport.

  Something else stops me from talking to this girl. It is a terrible thought: What if she is crying because her little brother is on the transport, sent to take Theo’s place?

  “What is it?” I ask Father when he hands me the little square of brown paper.

  Mother stands next to him, her arm on his forearm. Theo and Opa are on Father’s other side.

  “Have you forgotten what day it is?” Opa asks, his blue eyes twinkling.

  “What day it is?” I look out the window as if the view might provide an answer. The light has grown a little stronger.

  I know it’s May. What day exactly, I’m not sure. Then all at once, I understand why Father and Mother and Theo and Opa are gathered around me. To think I’d nearly forgotten my own birthday!

  “You got me a present?” I say, rubbing the little square between my fingers and trying to guess what is inside. It is something flat and hard. I resist the urge to tear off the paper. It has been so long since I received a present. I want to savor every moment.

  “It’s from all of us,” Theo says, “but Father made it.”

  It is just like Theo to try and ruin my surprise. I flash him a stern look. It is getting harder every day to keep the promise I made God.

  Tucked inside the brown paper is a tiny square metal frame, not much larger than my thumbnail. I see the back of the frame first. It is engraved with the numbers 24-V-1944: my fifteenth birthday. Where did Father find an engraver?

  I flip the frame over and when I do, my heart nearly stops. There, in miniature, is a portrait of Broek. I’d know it anywhere. The church with its tall steeple in the background, a giant poplar tree to the left, and in front just behind the little wooden picket fence, our clapboard house.

  I don’t ask Father why he chose to draw a winter scene. The poplar tree is bare, the roof of our house and the church are covered in a thick layer of snow, like white icing on a cake.

  Father’s drawing is behind a little piece of glass someone has measured and cut exactly so it can slide inside the frame. And on top of the frame, perfectly centered, is a simple metal hook.

  I unfasten Franticek’s strip of leather from around my neck. Carefully I untie the double knot that keeps my necklace closed and slip the leather through the hook.

  Father looks on approvingly. “I thought you might want to wear it on your necklace,” he says. The two of us have never discussed Franticek, though I suppose that at some point, Mother must have filled Father in on the details of my brief romance.

  I am so moved I can hardly speak. Father has given me back our house, the one I thought I might never see again.

  Thirteen

  A man rides by on a black bicycle and tips his hat. That is our cue. One, two, three. “Please, Uncle Rahm!” we call out in perfect unison. “No more sardines!”

  It is June 23, 1944, the day we’ve spent so many months rehearsing for. There is not a cloud in the sky and the air is warm but not hot. A fat bee buzzes in my ear and then flies off. The Danish Red Cross commission couldn’t have chosen a more perfect day to visit Theresienstadt.

  I am standing with a group of other children near the corner of the main square, stiff smiles pasted on our faces. We’ve been arranged according to height, as if we are posing for a school photograph.

  There is an unusual smell in the air: soap. We were allowed extra bathing privileges before this visit, and we were even issued a tiny bar of extra soap and a new outfit each. I am wearing a navy blue pleated skirt and a white blouse with a starched collar that makes my neck itch. The hem of the skirt is coming undone in one spot and the collar is a little yellow inside, so I know they aren’t new. I try not to think of the girl who wore these clothes before me and where she is now. Even so, I hope I might be allowed to keep the skirt and blouse even after the commission’s visit.

  On my way over, I notice new street signs. What was once L1 has been renamed Lake Street. Lake Street? What a joke. There is no lake in Theresienstadt! There’s not even enough water for all of us.

  My heart skips a beat when I spot shiny new signs over the doors on one of the buildings. They are written in a neat square script that I recognize as Father’s. One reads Boys’ school; another, Closed during the holidays. So, those murals in the infirmary are not Father’s only contribution to the Embellishment! I can’t help feeling a little bit ashamed. They are just signs, but I know too, that they are also more than that. They’re lies. Father is using his talent to tell lies. That can’t be right.

  There is no school in Theresienstadt and no such thing as a holiday. All that matters to the Nazis is tricking the Danish commission into thinking Theresienstadt really is a model camp. If the Nazis succeed with their charade, the Danes will make a glowing report to the international community, and the Nazis can complete their assault on European Jews.

  Everywhere I look, prisoners are playing the parts we’ve been assigned. At the main kitchen, bakers in white hats are baking bread, and when the commissioner walks through the main square, a man passes with a cart of fresh vegetables. Fat yellow onions, perfect potatoes, stalks of pale green celery, and the greenest spinach I have ever seen. I try not to gawk, though it has been more than a year since I saw any vegetable besides a potato or, now and then, a turnip.

  The Danish commissioner is tall and loose-limbed. The old woman says his name is Dr. Franz Hvass. He smiles brightly when he passes us. “Good morning, boys and girls,” he says. At first, we don’t know what to do. We’ve been instructed not to say a single word to any of the Danish visitors. But when Commandant Rahm gives us a thin-lipped smile, we understand we are to say good morning back: “Good morning, Herr Doktor.”

  Dr. Hvass turns to Commandant Rahm. “When I was a child, I didn’t like sardines myself.”

  Rahm nods understandingly. “We like to give the children sardines because they’re high in protein.”

  The boy standing next to me kicks my leg, but I am afraid to laugh. We have all been told what trouble we can get in if anything at all goes wrong today. “One false move from any of you dirty Jews,” the Nazis warned us, “and as soon as the commission leaves, we’ll shoot you and everyone in your family.”

  Of course I know what the boy who kicked me is thinking: That we have never seen a sardine at Theresienstadt, let alone tasted one. So we just stand there, smiling like wax dummies in a shop window.

  There are even red geraniums. One big terracotta pot overflowing with the bright blooms. Just before the commissioner passes the corner where we are standing, a small boy rushes over with the flowerpot. And now that the commissioner is on his way elsewhere in the camp, the boy, out of breath from his errand, has scooped the flowerpot up and is delivering it to Dr. Hvass’s next stop. This way, Dr. Hvass can be duped into believing Theresienstadt is full of flowerpots and happy, well-dressed children whose only complaint is that we have to eat so many sardines! Underneath the smile pasted on my face, I am seething with resentment and ra
ge. I want to scream, but of course, I can’t. And knowing that only makes me want to scream more.

  If only there was some way to let Dr. Hvass know the truth: that we are being worked to death; that we are starving and living in foul, unsanitary conditions; and that we live in constant fear of being sent on the next transport. And that we are the lucky ones because we are still alive, still here in this hellhole that Commandant Rahm has dressed up for the day, like Cinderella gone to the ball.

  Later in the day, those of us who don’t look too sickly are invited to a special performance of a children’s opera called Brundibar. It was composed before the war by a musician named Hans Krasa, now a prisoner in Theresienstadt.

  Listening to the music almost makes me forget that, sitting in the audience next to Theo, we are part of a performance—a special show Commandant Rahm is putting on for the Danish commission.

  The words to the opera are in Czech, so the Czech children in the audience laugh more than we do. Still, Theo and I manage to follow the story: A brother and sister need milk for their mother, who is ill. Desperate for money to buy the milk, the children try to sing with Brundibar, an organ grinder, but he chases them away.

  A young and handsome Czech prisoner plays Brundibar. The best part is when he twitches his whiskers. We can’t help giggling at that, but when Dr. Hvass claps his hands, I wish I could take back my giggles. I don’t want to help fool Dr. Hvass into believing Theresienstadt is a fine place. My chest hurts when I think that I, too, have helped the Nazis’ cause. In that way, I’m a little like Father.

  Mother was working in the soup kitchen the day of the Danish commission’s visit. The air, she tells us later, was heavy with the smell of meat and onions, rare delicacies that were brought into the camp for the commission’s visit. Dr. Hvass peeked into one of the cauldrons and remarked on the pleasant odor. “How are things here?” he asked a young woman who worked with Mother.

  All eyes—those of her fellow prisoners, as well as Commandant Rahm’s and those of the other Nazi officials who were present—turned to the woman. Mother told us how the woman took a deep breath and met Dr. Hvass’s eyes. “If you want to know how things are,” she told him. “Look around. Be sure and look around.” And then, she rolled her eyes.

  Rolling her eyes like that was a very brave thing to do. It was also the closest anyone came to telling Dr. Hvass the truth. All the prisoners who were there hoped he would understand the woman’s double message and why she rolled her eyes.

  But Dr. Hvass just smiled like a puppet. “That’s exactly why I’ve come,” he said, shaking the woman’s hand and not seeming to notice how bony her fingers were or how her fingernails were misshapen from fungus. “To have a good look around.”

  Just then, Mother said, three prisoners walked into the kitchen, singing a German song.

  It turned out Dr. Hvass spoke some German and that the song was one of his favorites. And so he joined in. Then Rahm had started singing too.

  If, when we heard about it later, the whole thing hadn’t been so evil and twisted, we might have laughed. Instead we try to tell each other the Danish visit won’t affect us. In fact, as Father says, the Embellishment may buy us time. And that night, for the first time since we came to Theresienstadt, there are two scraps of meat in our soup—though still not enough to require a knife. Those two scraps, I suppose, are a reward for our cooperation. If I weren’t so hungry, I’d spit them right out.

  The next morning, the countess hears Commandant Rahm whistling in the main square. The countess passes the news on to Mother and Frau Davidels. Soon the old woman is talking. Apparently, Rahm stopped whistling long enough to tell one of his underlings: “There’s been an exciting development. The visit was such a success that now we’re going to produce a film!”

  On Monday morning, when I open the door to the diet kitchen, three women workers are gossiping by the sink. Usually, Monday morning gossip has to do with which couples were spotted going into which cubbyholes the day before, and which husbands or wives are being betrayed. But today, because of the way the women’s backs are hunched and how close they are standing to each other, I know they are discussing more serious matters. Matters I’m not supposed to know about.

  So I do what any self-respecting girl in my position would do: I listen in. The stories children aren’t supposed to hear are always the most interesting.

  “It’s an absolute disgrace,” one of the women hisses.

  “The people involved in the Embellishment and now in this film are making it worse for all of us. They’re prolonging the war by helping the Nazis spread their lies,” another woman says. Then she spits into the sink to emphasize her disgust.

  Of course, I think about Father. He helped with the Enbellishment. But then, didn’t we all?

  The third woman sighs. “Have you two heard what that numbskull Hvass wrote in his report?”

  The other two haven’t heard.

  “He said the living conditions here were relatively good. Can you believe that, ‘relatively good’?”

  One of the women makes a snorting sound.

  “At this rate,” the first woman says, “the rest of the world will never do a thing to help us. We’ll perish in this model city.”

  “If they don’t ship us east first.”

  I know the Embellishment was a lie, but now, for the first time, I see that it may well have made things worse for all of us. Much worse. “Oh no,” I say. I mean to stay quiet, but the words slip out. What the women are saying makes perfect sense. Father is wrong. There was harm in the Embellishment, and there will be more harm in the film Commandant Rahm is planning. If the rest of the world can be convinced that life for the prisoners in Theresienstadt is relatively good, they’ll never intervene on our behalf. Or on behalf of the prisoners in other camps who have it even worse than us.

  I’ve been a prisoner in Theresienstadt since April, 1943, more than two years now. But I have never felt more trapped than I do at this moment. There is nowhere to go. I shall never get out of this dreadful place. No one will ever come to my rescue!

  The women turn to the door where I am standing. When they see it is me who has spoken, they get busy with their work. One sloshes water around in a bucket; another reaches for the scrub brushes. The third woman tightens her apron and tucks her hair behind her ears so it won’t get in her way while she works.

  I feel their eyes on me as I go to collect my scrub brush from the shelf by the sink.

  “Her father’s that Dutch artist. The bald one. Joseph Van Raalte. He is part of the Embellishment,” one of the women mutters under her breath, but loud enough so I will hear her disapproval. “And now I’ve heard he’s going to work on that godforsaken film.”

  The skin on my arms and legs begins to itch. Though I bathed about ten days ago, I feel filthy. Outside, and inside. My father is helping the Nazis carry out their evil plan. And I am benefiting from my father’s situation. It’s because of him that we have our own apartment. It’s because of him that we haven’t been shipped off on a transport. It’s because of him that Commandant Rahm sent Opa to us.

  I scratch my skin so hard I leave a trail of red fingernail marks along my arm. But that doesn’t make the dirty feeling go away.

  Father hasn’t said much about the film, though he tells Petr Kien it won’t be a standard documentary. Of course not, I want to shout when I hear the two of them talking. Documentary films are made to tell the truth; this is going to be a propaganda film. It will tell lies! And everybody knows it. Including Father—and me.

  The Nazi high command in Berlin is so pleased with the results of the Danish Red Cross commission visit, they have decided to shoot a film about Theresienstadt. This way, they can show the whole world what a wonderful place we live in. The plan makes me feel sick. I ache all over everywhere and it isn’t my muscles or my bones, it’s my heart. The worst part is that there’s nothing I can do about any of it.

  A prisoner named Kurt Geron will direct the film. I�
��ve seen Herr Geron around the camp, a small round man with a dark head of hair and a wide mouth, a little like a clown’s. He was a famous stage actor in Berlin and later an important film director. Mother gets a little stage struck in his presence. “I saw him in Blue Angel opposite Marlene Dietrich. He was wonderful,” she tells me. “One day I’d like to ask him what Marlene Dietrich was like. As a person, I mean.”

  Of course, Geron didn’t have much choice when Rahm ordered him to produce the film. Had he refused to go along with the Nazis’ plan, Geron and his wife would have been sent on the next transport east. But when I see him sitting on his canvas chair with the word Directeur sewn in bold letters on the back, and telling people where to stand and sit so he can get the best shots, I know it isn’t just a matter of following orders. I can tell Geron takes pleasure in his task. I know from the way his eyes are shining that he enjoys feeling important and having people to order around. He seems to have forgotten that he is helping the Nazis spread their lies.

  The film already has a title: The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews. And Geron cannot make the film alone. All of us will have to cooperate when the film crew is around. And before the final filming can begin, the Nazis will have to approve a series of set drawings, drawings that will detail, scene by scene, what the film will show.

  And who is the only artist talented enough to handle this assignment?

  Why, Father, of course.

  The pit Father has dug for himself and us is getting deeper. First there was the mural, then the signs. And now there is this film. This sickening phony film! There are new lines on Father’s forehead and his eyes are looking glassy. I try to console myself by thinking that at least Father does not seem to be taking the same pleasure Geron does in his task.

  It is bedtime. Opa has dozed off. So far, he isn’t snoring, but that can change at any moment. I hear Mother in the bathroom, playing a game with Theo that she used to play with me.