by Sharon Dogar
"You!" he says to Mr. Frank. "Show me where you keep your jewelry and money!"
Mr. Frank points. One man rifles through the drawers. Another man returns from the Franks' bedroom with Mr. Frank's briefcase and empties it. Anne's eyes are wide. Her loose papers and diary fall out all over the floor. She breathes in. I want to hold her. Mr. Frank moves.
"Keep still!" The man stuffs our money (not much) and jewelry (not much) into the briefcase. My heart is beating very hard. Very fast. I don't know how Mr. Frank can look so calm. I think of what Mutti said: "If the liberation comes close, they'll find us. They'll shoot us. Is that what's going to happen?"
I wish it had. I wish I had died then, with Mutti beside me, but that would have been too easy. To end it then, to kill me when I still had a body and thoughts that were my own. When my hope was newly dead and still might rise.
They search through the Annex. They open cupboards and drawers. I think of the empty rooms of our old apartment, of the furniture being loaded and taken away. I know that is what will happen to us if they don't shoot us. I don't think they'll do it here. We are all sweating. It is hard to hold your hands up for very long. We look at each other and away again. We hold a conversation with our eyes. Our eyes say we are shocked. Our eyes say, What next?
"You may pack some clothes," the man shouts. "Quick! Quick!" We put our arms down. We go to our rooms. We don't know what to pack.
We go back downstairs. Anne is on the floor, kneeling, putting her papers into a neat pile.
"Leave them!" snaps the man. She stands up. Not quickly and not slowly. She stands up with dignity and she nods at him, as though he were worth the respect of every human being. I wish I could clap. I feel proud of her. I hope he can't see that she is shaking.
The time goes very slowly, and very fast. The leader of the police is still searching through the room.
"Is this yours?" he asks Mr. Frank, kicking a wooden chest, and suddenly his voice is different. We all look up.
"Yes, I was a reserve lieutenant in the Great War," says Mr. Frank. He sounds exactly as he always does, his voice is soft and reasonable and we all cling to it. The man stands up very straight then, and he looks at Mr. Frank differently.
"Don't hurry them!" he snaps at the other policeman.
"You should have reported that," he says to Mr. Frank, and he sounds sorry. "We could perhaps have had you sent to Theresienstadt labor camp."
"Well," says Mutti very quietly. "Perhaps we might be allowed to open a window now that everyone knows we're here?"
I look at her. She is very brave. I don't know if it has worked. I don't know if her interruption and the man's sharp "No window!" has stopped Anne and Margot noticing what's been said. Because if we're not going to a labor camp, then where are we going? We all know the words. Death camp.
"May we tidy up a little?" asks Anne, and when he nods, she kneels down again. I kneel down too. Together we gather up her diary and her papers.
"Don't worry," I whisper. "Miep'll find them, she'll save them for you, don't make them too interested in it."
"I can't leave Kitty!" she whispers.
I hold her wrist, hard. "You must," I say. "You know it has a better chance without you." The tears fill her eyes, but don't spill over. We hide the diary, under the papers, in a neat pile.
We stand up together. I can see how hard it is for her to leave the papers. I hold her hand. It's sweating. She's shaking. The wait is awful. We sit down. We can't speak. We can't believe this is happening, but we know that it is. We are allowed to have some water.
"Well," says Mutti at twelve-thirty. "Lunchtime." No one answers, there is a silence from everyone. It is such a normal thing to say. She is crying silent tears. I could fight them, I think. I want to. I can feel my heart beating hard with it. I can feel it in Papi too. But they wouldn't just shoot us. They would kill all of us. Finally, at one o'clock, the van they are waiting for arrives.
"Up! Quickly!"
As we leave, one of the men kicks the papers and they scatter across the floor. Mr. Frank holds Anne close and whispers something.
We walk down the stairs. It is happening. But it's hard to believe it is happening. Mr. Kugler and Mr. Kleiman are with us. We are sorry about that. The police are in front and behind.
Outside.
We step through the door.
We are outside.
It is so bright. So bright and sharp; the daylight after the dark. It burns my eyes. We look at each other. We all look different. We look so white in the light. All of us stop for a moment in front of the truck. I hold my face up to the light and feel it on my skin. It is so warm, the air. So soft and so wonderful.
"Get in!"
I open my eyes. We are all doing the same thing, standing in the air of the outside with our faces turned up to the sun. It is just a moment, less than a second. And then it's over.
"I said, get in!"
The truck has no windows. Inside it is hot and dark and we begin to fear where we are going.
PART 2: The Camps
MAY 1945—PETER: MAUTHAUSEN, SICK BAY
So we have arrived—the moment is here, it is now.
I am lying in a bunk in Mauthausen.
There is word I must remember. A word that stains all it touches—a word that can never mean just a place, or be just a word. It is a word without hope or desire—Auschwitz.
I think I must be alive. But I'm not sure.
Am I alive or am I dead? How can I know—because they are the same thing for a Jew in Auschwitz.
It was there they sent us to first.
In Auschwitz we had dreams, and when we woke the dream went on—and it was a nightmare.
I'm dying. I must be.
Everyone who has been there is dead—even when they are still walking.
And now it's my turn.
How can I speak of this—are there words?
And will you listen now the time has come?
Will you go on, as I am forced to, turning the pages of each day—one after the other—and surviving?
Because this is not a story. This is the truth. These things really happened.
This is what all of us here long for you, outside, to know.
That we went gently, most of us. We walked into the night of the camps in long lines not knowing where we were going. We went in trains, wearing all of our possessions like hope. Once, we were legion, now we are few.
Now our naked bodies lie in piles. Our bones are ground to dust and we are ... ashes.
That is the truth.
***
I am so sorry to have to ask again, but is anybody there?
Is anybody listening?
Are there any of us left?
Or is it just me still breathing?
Am I the last—alone—in this river of dead and putrid bodies lying all around me?
I want to shout, to ask if anyone else is lying here like me, still breathing. But they might hear me, might come, might shoot me.
And someone must survive.
"Survive, be brave," whispers Papi.
"Tell," whispers Mr. Frank, "tell our story..."
The bodies around me are beginning to smell.
Is it really happening? The dream we all had, over and over and over. Is everyone dead? Are there no Jews left except me? Outside, there are no shouts, no guards, no music. I close my eyes.
"Survive, be brave," whispers Papi.
But I am not brave. And I am tired.
"Tell, tell, tell, tell, tell," the voices beat at my body, so many voices, so many bodies, so many stories ended, I cannot tell them all. I am the wrong person. It should be Anne here, Anne with her shining eyes standing in the doorway of my bedroom. Anne smiling. Anne laughing. Anne crying: "I have so much to say, so many stories inside of me, Peter!"
"How can I tell of this?" I ask her in despair.
"Put it into words," she whispers, "and begin."
"Are there words for this?"
"What else
have we?"
And so I begin.
First they took us to Westerbork, a holding camp. I remember Anne, her eyes dancing in the light of outside. We were still all together then. We still had hope. The Allies were coming, heading toward Holland. It was a race against time. Every Tuesday the trains came and went again.
Where did they go?
They went east:
to Theresienstadt,
to Sobibor,
to Bergen-Belsen
and to Auschwitz.
There was a river of us walking, a river of us lying, a river of us working—a river of us dying.
"Oh, Anne! Where are the words for this?"
"Inside you," she whispers. "Just find them—begin."
They put us on a train.
I am on a train. I do not know where we are going.
Auschwitz, Auschwitz. In my memory the wheels click it, whisper it, taunt me with the name of our destination. Auschwitz, Auschwitz, Auschwitz. But my memory is wrong. We did not know where we were going.
We have everything with us, the few things that remain. The doors close. Suddenly there is no light—or just a sliver of it, like a half-memory, high up in the carriage.
We can hear each other breathe in the dark. There is a sudden silence and in it we all hear a noise, the scratching of the chalk on the side of the car. They are writing a number—the number of us inside.
"Are they going to lose us?" somebody says. A few laugh. It's the afternoon. There are whistles and noise, palms bang against the door. Guards shout, and then the train starts to move. We are jolted to one side. We reach out to each other to steady ourselves. I hold on to Anne. The memory of her body against mine in the attic is sudden and sharp. We let go.
The wheels click a rhythm. I can feel my eyes closing; my head begins to fall. I jerk awake, come to. The light has gone and it is dark. Beyond the heat of our bodies it's cold—but still the train keeps moving.
Somebody groans. We are all thinking the same. When will it stop? When can we let go? Of our bladders, our eyes, our bodies—still standing. There is no noise, just the warm sharp smell of fresh piss rising, a groan of relief. Over and over, until the stench is as thick as a coat covering us.
"Sorry," the whispered words come. "Sorry, I'm so very sorry."
Now no one can rest on the floor.
We stand, hoping that soon we will stop. Sometimes the train slows, our heads rise up from their half slumber and wait, but the train goes on. We lean against the walls, against each other. We rock with the motion of the wheels, not noticing we're moving. Holding on to each other, to our bladders. Soon. We hope it will be soon that we arrive.
We did not know what we were hoping for.
The sun rises. The train keeps on going. People give up, they lie in the piss, they lie on top of each other.
Mutti puts her coat down on the floor. It gives us a patch to sit on. We are lucky. We take turns to sit on it. We piss on the floor, facing outward. We have not had to shit yet.
In my doze I hear the train wheels click. I wake up. This time it isn't a dream. The train slows and stops.
"Where? Where are we going?" someone calls. A tall man stares through the slit in the side of the carriage. He reads out Polish names. Inside there are groans. Silence. The smell of fear—and the sudden stink of shit.
"If it's like the camp at Westerbork, it won't be so bad!" whispers Anne. Nobody answers. We all know it won't be like Westerbork—that was just a holding camp. She begins to shiver. Someone begins to wail: "I can't wake her. I can't wake her." Someone else mutters, "She's the lucky one."
People bang on the door. "Let us out!"
Mr. Frank begins to whisper. "Stay together. Whatever happens we must stay together. Remember. They are losing. The end is coming. Wherever we end up, we must let people know that. We have information. We can give them hope."
He was right. Stupid us. We gave it away for nothing.
Somewhere in the cattle truck someone begins to say the Kaddish—the prayer for the dead. The train begins to move.
Day three. More people start to shit themselves. The smell makes others vomit.
Us men stand together with our backs to the crowd. We hold each other. We brace ourselves against the moving walls. We try to protect our space.
I feel Anne's hair beneath my chin.
"I'm so thirsty, Peter!" she whispers.
"I know," I say.
It's getting harder to stand. Sometimes now, the train stops.
For hours.
"Water!" people cry. "Water!" But there is no water. No one answers. There is just the heat. The stench. The silence. Outside, one voice calls to another on the platform.
"Answer us!" the man near the slit shouts. "Answer us, you bastards!"
We wait, but there is no answer.
"We are people, people in here," Anne whispers. But they do not answer, as though we really are cattle, lowing, calling out in a strange inhuman speech.
Beyond understanding.
The train starts again. The wheels click. The train rocks on its way.
It stops again. It is dark and we have stopped so many times before, we are used to it now. We think it will go on forever. Until we die. Some already have.
We are lost, in time passing without measure. We are awake and not awake. We are alive and not alive when the train finally stops—and the doors open.
Are there words even for this, Anne?
"Yes, even for this," she whispers. "You must go back there, Peter, so you can find them."
The light is blinding after the soft dark of the carriages. Voices shout. "Raus! Raus! Schnell! Schnell! Schnell!"
The fresh air hits the carriage and makes the smell even worse. We are suddenly ashamed. We stink and cower, try to hide ourselves. People fall and jump and crawl out of the carriage onto the platform.
We are the only ones left now. Us eight, standing in the doorway, staring.
There are men in stripes. Jews, like us. But not like us. Shorn. Like the walking dead, they are shouting at us in the lit-up, searchlight dark.
So much light.
"Out! Out!" they scream, and the dogs bark. Anne steps back.
"Women and children left!" Anne starts to move left. I pull her back. I want her close. We're still in the carriage. "Men, right. Women, here!" "Left!" "Right!" We hold hands and stare. And then I realize. The words make sense because they're speaking German. I can understand them.
An old man stands on the platform, staring, not moving. He doesn't understand. He stares around him, lost, pushing his glasses up his nose.
"Didn't you hear me?" a guard shouts. He strikes the man in the face. We stare, our eyes aren't big enough, our hearts not wide enough to take this in—to understand.
"I said left, you fool!"
The old man shakes his head, there is blood in his eyes, he can't see. He holds his hands up helplessly. The guard strikes him and steps over his fallen body. Dr. Pfeffer steps forward. Mr. Frank pulls him rapidly back. The guard steps up to the next man—perhaps he is the old man's son, I don't know. It's all so fast and calm that I'm still not sure I saw it. The man doesn't say anything, he punches the guard so hard his head rocks back and we all hear a snap. The guard stumbles, the man stands, fists bunched waiting to fight. The guard recovers his balance and shoots him. On the floor of the platform the old man wails. They shoot him too.
The shaved skeletons in stripes bend down and begin to search the dead men's pockets. I wonder why they open their mouths to search inside. After the silence and smell of the carriage the sound of the commands feels deafening.
But in my memory it is all silent. Flashes of searchlit moments. Pictures like guns going off. Memories of words that make no sense. The sound of a language that I recognize—but don't yet truly understand.
"You!" The guard means us. We step down. "Left, left, left." We men have stepped forward, determined to protect. I am holding Mutti's hand.
"No! Women this side! Right!
I said right!"
We stare at each other but not for long. We are shocked. We are scared. We are so tired and thirsty we cannot think. We cannot take it in. We have seen that they'll kill us if we do not do whatever they want—and quickly. We glance at each other before we let go of each other's hands like obedient children.
It is only a moment—a fraction of time, but later it will haunt us. How we seemed to let go of each other so easily.
"Peter!"
"Mutti!"
"Peter!"
"Anne!"
We hold each other with our eyes and then they disappear—intot hed ark.
Are they alive? Are they dead? Have they known this horror too?
I don't know. They are led away from us. We glance up and they are gone. So fast we never even noticed.
"This way! This way!" We are marched off. You can probably smell us coming from a mile away.
They march us through the black, wide gates.
ARBEIT MACHT FREI.
Work brings freedom.
That is what the gates say.
There was a rumor that in one camp they hung a dead Jew up on the black iron, a fresh one every day. We all believed it. We believed it because we knew by then that it was possible. We didn't comment, we just grunted and carried on, putting one foot in front of the other.
They put us in a room. We stare at each other. What has happened? We know something has, but what? The lights are very bright. People mutter: what will happen now? Somewhere, someone is praying over and over in a wail. "What good is that?" I snarl.