Getting from Oświęcim to Berlin is more complicated than Major Fedchenkov anticipated. The train from Oświęcim in Poland only travelled as far as the German border city of Dresden. I had to break my journey and stay in Dresden overnight. The city is a shambles: buildings and houses reduced to rubble, roads impassable, social services in disarray, the population that is still alive forced into makeshift shelters and churches, driven by days of relentless shelling and the fires in the aftermath. After being turned away from a number of shelters that were filled beyond capacity, I am directed to an agency assisting displaced and destitute Jewish people to be repatriated to the fledging state of Palestine or their pre-war home town.
Fortunately the shelter is located only a few streets away from Dresden Central Station on Leubnitzer Straße, which means I can resume my journey the next day with relative ease. The wooden board hanging askew on the wrought-iron fence reads: Flüchtlings und Ausreisezentrum, Refugee and Repatriation Centre, with the Star of David painted prominently below as opposed the de rigueur Red Cross. I walk inside the two-storey building and find myself in a dingy, dimly lit hallway that smells dank and musty. At the centre stands a rickety desk manned by a gaunt man of indeterminate age - somewhere between thirty and fifty - wearing a peaked cap and hunched over a stack of papers. He resembles a dishevelled bank clerk. Without saying a word, I place my previously issued ID card on top of the stack.
He looks up, nods his head, writes down my ID number, which matches my tattoo, then adds my name, Ruth Lipschutz, and next to it, Berlin.
Standing up, he shakes my hand warmly and bids me to come in, belying his earlier impersonal attitude. As I follow him I can’t help noticing his rumpled, oversized suit. He has either been starved or the suit has been procured from a charity bin.
We enter a large hall that must have served as a kindergarten or meeting hall at one time. Scattered haphazardly about the perimeter are mismatched chairs with men and women slouched on them, couples bunched together on ratty sofas and a few children roaming around unattended. No old people. Little wonder, I think to myself: they were sent to the showers on arrival. There is an air of despondency and aimlessness about the place, despite professing to be a gateway to repatriation.
A man comes out from one of the rooms adjoining the hall and introduces himself as Aaron. “Have you eaten? Would you like something?” His eyes betray a gentleness that I cannot assimilate, given the barbarity and horror that I have experienced up to now.
“No, I haven’t eaten.”
“Please come with me.”
We go through a passageway that leads into an open area furnished with a long, scarred wooden table on which are laid out loaves of crusty bread, a tureen of stew or broth, a bowl of boiled potatoes, some mouldy pieces of cheese and bottles of water - no meat. There is a long bench on either side with a few people seated, helping themselves.
I stare at the food and drink. How often did I dream of this, lying on the hard, damp wooden bunk, shivering under the thin, tattered blanket? Picturing in my mind clean food, while clutching a dry slice of mildewed bread until the morning so that I could survive the day?
“Ruth? Efra tells me that is your name?”
“Sorry. I am not used to seeing food.”
Aaron laughs drily. “Who is?”
When I still do not move, he steers me gently towards the bench and helps me sit down.
“Please, eat. You need to regain your strength.” He places a plate and a bowl in front of me with cutlery. “I will come by a little later and we can talk about the future.”
The future? What future? I don’t have a future. I have a mission to understand my past.
I lean diffidently across the table and pick up two slices of bread, some mouldy cheese and a few potatoes. The instinctive fear of being shot or hung for this transgression make me pause before putting the plate down in front of me. But then, watching the others, it passes, and I start to chew slowly, enjoying the meagre meal, keenly aware that I can replenish the plate again.
Aaron comes by afterwards with Ephraim - the man who greeted me at the entrance, whom they called Efra. They sit down opposite me and pour corked wine into smudged glasses, sliding one over to me.
“So, Ruth, you are from Berlin. Is there someone there that we can locate for you?” Efra looks hopefully at me.
I shake my head.
“Anywhere?” This time Aaron asks, hope fading from his voice.
“Munich. I am originally from Munich. But I was staying with my aunt in Berlin when I was arrested by the Gestapo.”
“Oh, that’s a good start. Better than most people here, who have lost everything and everyone. If you can give us the address we can make some enquiries and see if we can help reunite you.” They sound elated and relieved at the same time.
I remain silent.
“Well,” Efra looks across at Aaron, “why don’t we let Ruth rest for the night and we can make the arrangements in the morning?” They both look at me. “Ruth?”
I nod my head acquiescently.
I follow Aaron back across the hall, then turn through a dark passageway to a room at the far side of the house. It is sparsely furnished with mattresses, blankets, pillows and scuffed, worn luggage; scattered throughout with men, women and children camped around their forlorn belongings. Aaron points me to a mattress, blanket and pillow that are unoccupied.
I stare around me: an encampment of abandoned souls, unwanted, not belonging anywhere; lost, forgotten people. Ironically, I have become one of them.
“Bathrooms are shared. Sorry. They are through there.” He points to a narrow corridor nearby.
As I lean against the wall on the ratty mattress, I study the faces around me. Some appear to be in a protracted state of shock. To my immediate left, an older man - or maybe not so old, most likely aged by an experience similar to mine - coils a leather strap around his hand, up his forearm, past his elbow, tightening it around his upper arm, then proceeds to place a similar strap around his forehead, tightening it at the back of his head. Both straps have a little black cube, one that protrudes from the crook of his elbow and the other just above the bridge of his nose. He then places a little cap on his head and begins weeping and praying, bobbing as he murmurs.
I start to sense that in some small way the enormity of the destruction, death and misery that I have witnessed diminishes my quest - I ought to feel fortunate to be alive, forget the past and get on with the future. Although I suffered unjustly, I might have suffered a similar fate had I never left home - with the uncertainty about my past. Maybe even been killed, regardless, by the relentless shelling.
But ultimately there is no telling how things might have turned out if my life had taken a different path. It was wrested from me at a young age and thrust into a harrowing six years that I will never forget. And unless I am able to discover how I ended up on the train with the Lipschutzes, I might never be able to reconcile my past and move on. Presently, I am here: homeless and nearly destitute, waiting as a Jewish refugee seeking to gain passage to Berlin. And from there? It all depends what I find out when I get there.
The older man next to me stops praying, unravels the straps, removes the cap from his head and, with a deep, anguished sigh, sets the prayer book down. He looks over at me, his eyes straining in the dim light.
“You are by yourself?” He has a kind, gentle, wheezing voice, barely audible over the din of fire trucks and commotion outside.
“Yes. I think so.”
“I lost my dear wife and young daughter. They were murdered the first day that we arrived at the camp.” Once again he sighs deeply, tears filling his eyes.
“I am very sorry to hear that.” It sounds cold and dispassionate, but under the circumstances I don’t know what else to say - I have long since forgotten the common expression of decency and compassion. A stranger telling me that his wife and daughter were murdered. What does one say? I lower my eyes, looking over at his gnarled hands clutching the pra
yer book as though it is his lifeline to salvation.
“Can I ask you a question?” I look curiously at him.
“Of course,” he replies eagerly.
“How come you still believe in God, after all that’s happened to you?”
For a minute he looks down, rubbing his eyes vigorously as though the answer has to be coaxed from within. Then when he looks up his face transforms in defiance. No longer is he old, worn and haggard, but reignited with a sense of righteousness. “The faith in God is not only based on good happening, but also bad. God is not a shield against injustice or evil, but like insurance: if you or your loved ones are harmed or maligned, eventually he will do the right thing. I am here. You are here. Broken, certainly. Battered, definitely. But we are alive. And where is Hitler and his Thousand-Year Reich?” He stands up and spits on the ground. “That’s where. You understand? Hitler is dead,” he shouts out to the dozen people in the room. “Dead and finished. With the damn Gestapo and the SS. Kaput! But I am here. So God made sure that we win in the end.”
Those in the room who understand what he said clap in approval. The others, not understanding German, simply nod, assuming that if some clapped it had to be good.
I refrain.
The man sits down on his mattress again and looks over at me. “You are coming to build Eretz Yisrael, the homeland for the Jews?”
I feel embarrassed enough taking food and shelter meant for Jewish people, although in some vicarious way I endured their fate. “Not right away. I have been displaced from my home in Berlin. I need to go back and see what’s happened to my home, my family.”
“If they are Jews then they were sent to the camps and the house seized by the SS, I am sorry to say. Hitler and his madmen spared no one and took everything.”
“They may have come back.”
He nods, betraying little confidence. “They may.” He nonetheless appears satisfied with my answer and does not pursue the matter further. After a few moments he picks up his prayer book, cap and leather straps, nods in my direction and walks over to where a young woman is nursing a baby. (I presume that she and the baby were in hiding - otherwise they would not be here.) I wonder whether in some symbolic way he has rediscovered the family he lost.
I lie back down on the mattress, trying to get some rest before my journey to Berlin. The nationality on my ID card reads German, and the point of origin Berlin. I don’t anticipate a problem getting into the city. But I am unclear as to how to locate the street, or even the suburb from where I was taken. I only have a small amount of money left. Aaron or Efra may be able to help me a bit more. But in a few days I will be penniless.
I become anxious thinking that I may never achieve my quest owing to something as trivial as money, but then I start to relax. I survived the concentration camp, the daily horrors, the killings, the nightmares, the piles of corpses, the rape, and the near-starvation rations. God did not want me dead. Because if he did, his angel of death was working overtime for six years alongside me. God - whichever god, Jewish or Christian - wanted me alive. To survive. With that thought I fall asleep.
BERLIN
AUTUMN AND WINTER 1945
Helga travelled north by train from Dresden to Berlin with the entire sector wholly under Russian control. The journey, which would under normal conditions take only a few hours, took the entire day from the time she left the Jewish shelter. Aaron and Efra had been able to locate the address for the Lipschutz family by searching through records of deported and displaced Jewish families. There was no record for a Dreschler family, though, and Helga couldn’t remember offhand the surname of her aunt’s family; to her they had always been Aunt Magda and Uncle Helmut. She distinctly recalled that her aunt had lived next door to the Lipschutzes, a fact that both beguiled and frustrated her in trying to understand how she had ended up with the Jewish family.
More fragments of memory started to surface, forming part of a large and intricate puzzle. At first there was nothing but scattered pieces and a generalised idea of how the fragments might belong together. Then a framework, and then gradually pieces falling into place where there had been nothing before but empty space. She remembered Oma telling her that she could no longer look after her and would be going away to be taken care of in a home for old people. She also recalled the trip from Munich to Berlin and arriving at her aunt’s place. A small room upstairs; a girl her age, blonde, blue-eyed, living in the room alongside. Or was that the girl next door, Ruth?
Suddenly another piece fell neatly into place. Visiting the Lipschutzes. An eerie feeling; being uncomfortable in the presence of the rangy, matronly woman: Alana Lipschutz. And a small girl who looked like the girl whose room was alongside hers. Sisters? Couldn’t be.
It was no good. No point in coaxing the pieces to rise out of the fog and then trying to force them into place. In time, maybe when she got to Nürnberger Straße, her memory would be jogged. She stared out the window of the slow, creaking train, forcibly suppressing the memory of another journey cooped up in a boxcar.
At nearly every station along the two hundred kilometres, she was forced to disembark and present her travelling papers. Aaron had attached a letter to her ID card documenting her point of origin, pre deportation, as Nürnberger Straße, Berlin. Once she entered Berlin proper, the sector under British control, the disruption and interrogation became even more rigorous: with whom did she live at this address? When did her journey begin? Was she travelling alone? The questions came tumbling down like an avalanche designed to frustrate her journey. But she was determined to reach her destination and visit the street, the homes of the Lipschutzes and her aunt and uncle. She had lost nearly six years of her young life, had been subjected to horrors she could never forget; it was essential for her to learn the truth of just how and why she had accompanied Alana and Heinrich on that train journey.
While her papers were being examined she took the time to survey the skyline and the surrounding streets. She had seldom spent time visiting the city the first time around. But she recalled from the few occasions when she had accompanied her aunt and cousin shopping that the cityscape had been graced with magnificent museums, awe-inspiring cathedrals, grand buildings, stately concert halls; the pavements teeming with people looking at shop windows displaying beautiful clothes, and necklaces adorning the collars of mannequins. Like Oma promised she would have one day. Now Berlin looked like a sister city to Dresden. Tenement houses sheared in half, their residents exposed like wiggling insects to the world. The palatial buildings that she remembered reduced to smouldering piles of ash, the wide streets choked with rubble. The once elegant people who had strolled through the streets window-shopping, now wandering dazed, desperately seeking morsels of food or the most sought-after commodity: cigarettes. At every corner, she noticed British soldiers being pestered for a few cigarettes.
She remembered from both the camps where she had been incarcerated the never-ending pangs of hunger; the search for and hoarding of scraps; the infinite fatigue; the shivering cold. Nobody had thought about cigarettes there. This was new. About the only difference from Dresden was that in Berlin a few buildings did remain standing, albeit damaged. And there were no fires, though there must have once been; the air smelled of acrid smoke.
She had left the train at Meininger Berlin Central Station and was walking warily through the streets to her destination when a passing jeep slowed down and stopped next to her. She didn’t think she stood out from anyone else, other than she was perhaps better clad in the thick Russian overcoat that the major gave her and clutching her belongings and little money tightly to her chest.
The British soldier who disembarked from the jeep started up with the usual drill of questions after he examined her papers. She felt like she had repeated the answers ad infinitum.
“As it says, Nürnberger Straße.”
“What’s in Numbarger Street?” His German was passable, but his pronunciation laughable.
“My aunt and uncle.”
“Their names?”
“Helmut and Magda.”
“Surname?”
“I don’t remember.”
“How come you don’t remember the surname of your aunt and uncle?”
“Dreschler. I think.”
Back to the jeep in a casual stride, nothing so urgent when she had wasted the entire day being forced to disembark from trains, interrogated at checkpoints and stations, delayed while the papers were examined. Her ID card and papers had been examined so many times that they were in danger of disintegrating.
“Are you Jewish?” He was back with the papers folded and ready to be handed back to her.
“I don’t see that it matters. You are not the Gestapo.”
“No, I am not.” His manner was becoming less inquisitive and more churlish. “But I mean to be helpful.”
“Thank you. You can be helpful by letting me continue to my destination.” She eyed him defiantly.
“Well, you can continue. If you don’t find anyone at Numbarger, there’s a shelter for Jewish people not too far away.” With that he gave her a limp salute and sauntered to the jeep, muttering something to his companions, who sniggered in reply.
She wasn’t delayed again until she reached Lietzenburger Straße, which was one street away from Nürnberger. A jeep passed by with two British soldiers, slowed, but did not stop. Her pulse quickened as she reached the corner of Nürnberger. Where ought she go first? The Lipschutzes’ home? Was it likely that anyone would be there? Alana and Heinrich had been in the same queue at the camp, but behind her. Could they have survived? She never saw them again past selection. Were they directed to the showers or hard labour? She seemed to recall the showers, in which case their house would be vacant. Had she been ordered to sorting on that day she would never have recognised their clothing. All she was able to remember was that Heinrich wore a delicate pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses and Alana a blood-red brooch. She didn’t know much about gemstones, other than hearing Heinrich mention something about selling the ruby; it was very valuable.
THE MADNESS LOCKER Page 24