Annexed

by Sharon Dogar

  I try.

  I feel my heels press against the floor. My knees begin to grind. My bones press and crunch against each other. There is no cushioning flesh between them.

  I start to rise. My legs begin to lever. I am standing. I am standing.

  I hear my voice.

  "Peter!" it says. "I am Peter!"

  "Peter!" says the man. "I am Stefano."

  I am Peter.

  The words ring inside me.

  I am Peter.

  A carillon of bells.

  His arm rises and he touches me. I feel his hand on my shoulder. It is a long time since I have been touched, my body flinches, expecting a blow.

  "Don't stand, sit," Stefano says. It is surprising. His voice is gentle. His eyes look at me.

  "Peter, can you make it outside?" the other one says. I stare at him. He is not as thin as I am. He wears the red triangle of a political. He seems to be crying.

  "He's just a boy!" he says, but Stefano shakes his head.

  "There are no children here. If he's survived this far, he's a man."

  They link their arms together and make a sling. They lift me up and carry me.

  "We need to get you out of here. There are still some of those bastard Blockaltesters left. Can you make it outside?"

  Outside.

  Outside.

  I remember that word.

  I see a chestnut tree.

  There were streets. I think. And canals. And sunshine. And in autumn the leaves fell like gold coins that floated on the dark water of the canals.

  "Is it still all there?" I whisper. "The outside?"

  But they are struggling to carry me and cannot answer.

  Around us there are piles. Piles of long matchsticks lying like people in the dirt. There are no rows now, no Häftlinge standing. There are no guards shouting. I close my eyes. I lift my face to the warmth and silence of the sun and feel it on my face.

  I look around me. I see that the piles of matchsticks are men.

  So many men.

  All dead now.

  Or dying.

  I am still in Mauthausen, the place where...

  The guards hold hoses in their hands.

  "Stand! Stand! In fives. Two yards apart!" they shout.

  The Häftlinge shuffle into place quickly, efficiently. They are old and young and ill and lame and injured. They were all different once—but in the guards' eyes they are all the same.

  "Stand!" the guards scream.

  The men crawl naked in the dirt, they struggle to rise to their feet. Some, just a few, jump up quickly, eager to please—but the old and the wise crawl as slowly as possible, saving each small second of energy. Judging it finely, this balance between rising as slowly as they can, but quickly enough not to be shot, or beaten—this balance between living and dying.

  Every day I shuffle past the men standing like the naked skeletons of winter trees on my way to the quarry. Each evening when I return they are fewer. They are all naked. And it is freezing. At night the stars shine in a clear black frosty sky. The moon is clear. And they are beneath it. Standing. Like trees. In the morning the guards turn on the hoses.

  "Stand!"

  Each day there are less of them.

  "Stand!"

  Again and again.

  It took the last man days to die. He stood up. He would not lie down. In the end they played with him. Let him rest for longer. Took bets. He thought he could win...

  ...but like I am, he just took longer to die.

  The two politicals put me down. There is something soft beneath me.

  "One of the guards' uniforms." Stefano laughs. "He won't be needing it now!"

  The sun on my face feels like...

  ...a warm ball on my chest, bodies rising together like the whisper of the wind through the leaves of a chestnut tree, a burst of happiness like the taste of a strawberry. I remember Mouschi.

  I feel my face smile.

  The sun is real. I am not imagining it. It is here on my face.

  "That's right, boy, you lie in it!" I open my eyes.

  "They came!"Stefano says.

  "We're liberated," says the other.

  I close my eyes and smile. I've heard it all before, a long, long time ago. That word: Liberation. There was a room. And a radio. There was Anne. I had a mother then, and a father. We waited together, high in an attic, but no one came.

  Except them.

  It was sunny that day, too.

  Stefano laughs.

  "In the end, there were just too many of us!" he says. I listen to his voice. It has something strange in it. It has life in it. He must be a low number to be so strong. Has he done terrible things, too, like me?

  "You sleep, boy," he says. "It's over now. The Russians gave us guns!"

  "Do you know?" I whisper. "Do you know what they did?"

  "We know, and soon the whole world will know, too," says the voice.

  I sigh. I close my eyes. He talks of all the terrible things as though they are in the past, and not inside us.

  I am thinking of Otto Frank. Of all the terrible things I did, leaving him to die is the worst. I can see him now...

  We are standing together. It is the day they took my father. I cannot speak.

  "What is left of him?" Mr. Frank says. "The clothes that came back were not his, the number on his wrist was not his."

  "There's nothing left," I whisper.

  "You!" he says. "You are what he has left. You will remember. You will survive. You will tell his story."

  "Are we even men?" I ask. I am ashamed. I let my father go.

  I let Mr. Frank go too ... I walked away without him...

  Can I call myself a man?

  "Yes. We are men." Mr. Frank's voice is sharp and angry. "Never forget, Peter, it is they who are not men—all those who cannot feel shame. It is not your guilt or shame that matters. It is theirs. That is why you must tell your story."

  And so I begin. In the only way I can, in words like footsteps, putting one in front of the other.

  "Are you there?" I whisper to Stefano. "Can you hear me?"

  "I'm here," he says, "I'm listening."

  "They brought us here to Mauthausen from everywhere. Survivors. From Auschwitz and Budapest, from Plaszow and Buchenwald. All the Jews. They said we were vermin. A swarm of locusts. They kept on trying to kill us. But we kept on coming. They were our nightmare; now we are theirs. They gassed us. They beat us. They hanged us and machine-gunned us. They tried to walk us to death. But still, we kept on coming."

  The man holds my hand.

  "You're shaking," he says. "Hold on to me."

  "They hosed us until we froze. They made us fall like dominoes down the steps of the quarry. They stood us by the wire and made us dance until we fell from exhaustion. And when we died upon the wire, dancing from the electricity twisting through our bodies, they laughed—and said—'He dances better dying!'

  "Do you know this is true?" I ask him.

  He squeezes my hand, "I know it now," he says.

  "Some held hands and leaped to their deaths—they called them parachutists. And all the time they starved us. Worked us. Beat us. And still we came. Waves of us. They gave us typhus. And fever. And cholera. They made us carry our dead and leave them in piles. They fed our bodies through the chimneys and empty ovens. They spread the ashes of our bones upon their roads, and walked upon us. They made us wear the clothes of our dead, lest we should ever forget that we were next. They woke us before the sun rose. They stole our dreams. And still, we kept on coming."

  "Yes! It was terrible," I hear the voice say, "and now its over."

  I have lived in fear, afraid not of death, but of a greater loneliness than that—of survival. Of having to tell when there is not a single other Häftling left. Not one to nod his head and say "Yes," or "It is true, they called us Häftlinge and Untermenschen."

  Only me, alone, with the disbelief in the eyes of the people outside.

  "You're not alone!" he say
s. "There are others!"

  "Other Jews?" I ask.

  "Yes!"

  Then I am not alone.

  I am not alone.

  I am only dying.

  I close my eyes.

  "Peter!" they say. "Hang on, Peter!"

  I smile.

  My name is Peter van Pels.

  I am Peter.

  And I have told my story.

  "They've found some of the guards—look at that! They're killing them, Peter. They're beating the bastards to death with their clogs!"

  I will not open my eyes,

  I do not want to see their hatred.

  Somewhere else, outside of here, there is a world where birds are singing.

  In that world, I dreamed of freedom, of liberation.

  And it has come.

  "They're dead, the stinking cowards! Bloody hell, we're free."

  "Can you open your eyes, boy?"

  "I think he's going, mate."

  "Not now! Not now, boy!"

  "Can you hear me, Peter?"

  "Listen, boy. Your people have risen up!"

  I smile.

  It is here, then. The moment I have longed for. Fought for. Watched others die for.

  "You're free, boy. Free!"

  Am I?

  Can I ever be free of the pictures inside me? Of people standing in lines? Of a man putting a noose around his neck and jumping? Of God dying? Of bodies lying in piles like matchsticks? And of the truth that when there is nothing else, there is still the will to live? Driving us on, making us put one foot in front of the other. Me. In front of you. Because if I do not, I will die.

  No more. I do not want any more.

  Do you understand?

  Are you listening?

  Have you seen the dead lying upon the earth and drying—like r oots pulled? Anonymous—like teeth.

  I hear them whispering to me—the dead—I can see them.

  "Boy! Open your lips. Here's water!"

  The drops are sweet on my lips. Like a kiss.

  "We're saved!"

  But it is not the saved I see. It is the drowned. The dead. The nameless millions who already haunt me. I am sorry. I am sorry I pushed you down, I held my elbows out, I took the smallest rock so that you must pick up the heaviest. Where are the words for the nameless dead—for those who have already gone before me, and are calling me?

  I am ready.

  I am coming.

  I am standing at the top of the stairs, reaching out my arms to my mother. I feel her name on my lips.

  "Mutti?"

  "He's going. They've had it once they call for their mothers."

  I smile.

  "He's smiling!"

  "Well, he's going to a better place, isn't he?"

  "So are we, mate, once we're out of here!"

  She lifts her arms up for me ...

  "You are close, so close now," Anne whispers. "All stories must have an ending."

  Pictures fill me.

  Merwedeplein in the snow ... white blossoms shining against the evening sky in summer ... a line of geese ... a square patch of sky filled with stars.

  And Anne, words falling from her lips like leaves.

  "Peter?" she says. "They cannot blow our words away."

  The leaves of her diary lie scattered across the Annex floor.

  I am as light as a leaf now.

  As ready.

  "We are all dying," I hear Father say. "Its just a matter of timing."

  If there is a heaven, then it is crowded with us. I take a breath and, with my last thought, blow the leaves of her diary up from the Annex floor. I watch them as they fly—up through the attic window, past the tree, past the birds and the chimes of the church clock. Beyond Anne, beyond me and Mutti and Papi and Otto and Margot and Edith. Up and up and up into the air, to where the hands of our enemies can no longer catch them.

  Her words are written.

  My story is told.

  I am dying.

  But others will survive.

  Above us the words of millions hang waiting in the war-torn air like the last shreds of a burnt-out fire. Floating like pieces of ash. Soon they will settle. Some words will return with the living and never be spoken, but others will rise up in flames and cover the earth.

  "Now do you believe in words?" Anne whispers.

  Yes. I do.

  I am so close now I can hear their voices.

  "Peter!"

  Joyfully, I lift my arms up higher. I raise my eyes, and see them: Mutti is barefoot and war-torn, her arms outstretched. Papi stands beside her, his glasses are twisted and broken but his mouth is still smiling. In his hands he holds a piece of worn pink silk. Anne and Margot cling to each other as their mother wraps her arms around them. Liese stands behind them, her head still shaved, waiting for me.

  I search for Mr. Frank, but he is not with them. He is still among the living.

  I let my breath go.

  "Jump, Peter!" they shout together.

  And I leap, up into their waiting arms.

  ***

  Yes, I am dead now, but if you listen you can still hear me.

  Wystawach.

  Wake up.

  Are you still there?

  Are you listening?

  * * *

  Epilogue

  After being in hiding for two years and one month, Peter van Pels was taken to a holding camp called Westerbork. From there he survived a three-day journey on the very last train from Holland into Auschwitz.

  The experiences Peter has in the camps section of this novel are not documented, and are not, in that sense, real. They are reconstructed using other documented accounts. We do know that for a time Peter had a job in the postal department and that this would have meant he had extra rations, which he shared with Otto Frank.

  For me, in this section Peter exists as an "everyman." He helps me to explain how the camps functioned, how they made a cold and systematic attempt to strip prisoners of their very sense of self, abandoning them to a world where even the most basic survival required that they learn to steal and cheat as they struggled to survive the attempts of the Nazi regime to eliminate them entirely.

  Peter van Pels somehow managed to withstand seven months in Auschwitz and the loss of his father. Debilitated and starving, he was then forced on a death march through Poland and Austria to Mauthausen—a camp infamous for the inventiveness of its cruelty to Jewish inmates. Some historians think he may have died on the death march itself. Other records suggest he finally died in Mauthausen, sometime between being admitted to the sick bay on April 11, 1945, and the liberation of the camp on May 5. He was exceptional in that he survived so long.

  He was eighteen years old.

  Auguste van Pels was with the female members of the Frank family in Auschwitz and was transported to Bergen-Belsen with them. She was moved again in February 1945 to a slave-labor camp called Raguhn. Raguhn was shut down on April 8, 1945. Auguste was forced on a death march toward Theresienstadt. She died either on the way or shortly after arrival. It is possible that Auguste and Peter died within days of each other.

  She was forty-four years old.

  Hermann van Pels died during the Auschwitz October selections of 1944. He was gassed to death. His wife and son survived him by six months.

  He was forty-six years old.

  Edith Frank was with Margot and Anne and Auguste van Pels in Auschwitz until November 26, 1944, when Anne, Margot, and Auguste were separated from Edith and transported to Bergen-Belsen.

  Edith Frank fiercely supported her daughters in Auschwitz, at one point digging a hole into the sick bay, where Anne was being treated, to pass her food. She died on January 6, 1945, probably from exhaustion, starvation, and grief.

  She was forty-four years old.

  Conditions in Bergen-Belsen for Anne and Margot Frank were beyond belief. The camp system had broken down: there was no food, hygiene, or fresh water, and infection and illness were rife. The sisters stayed together and tried hard
to look after each other. They slept in the same bunk, by the door, "the worst position, because of the cold," and there is a short account of the conditions they lived in by Janny and Lien Brilleslijper. Margot died of typhus. It is likely her body was simply added to a pile outside the door.

  She was nineteen years old.

  Anne Frank died alone in Bergen-Belsen, days after Margot. It is hard to imagine the depths of desolation she suffered at losing her sister, the last of her family. Hanneli Goslar believes Anne died of despair and loneliness as well as typhus. "There is no one left," she said across a fence in Bergen-Belsen. She died just days before Bergen-Belsen was liberated.

  She was fifteen years old.

  Otto Frank survived seven months in Auschwitz and the ten days after the Nazis deserted the camp and left the survivors to fend for themselves in appalling and dangerous conditions. He eventually returned to Holland, where, after final confirmation that his children were dead, Miep Gies gave him Anne's carefully kept diary.

  He made the decision to edit and publish it. The rest is history. Anne finally achieved her dream of "world-class" recognition. She had already, unbeknownst to her, written something "life-changing."