The Seven Year Dress: A Novel

by Paulette Mahurin

  “This is better than the other one,” she said. “There’s another that’s a wooden stable-barrack. It used to hold over fifty horses, but now it holds several hundred prisoners. They sleep on wood slabs.”

  As she was orienting me to what I might expect there, I felt something brush against my leg. A rat began to climb up my calf. I tossed it off with a jerk of my limb. “Oh, God,” I moaned.

  Ester watched the rodent scurry away. “The dampness from leaky roofs, soiled mattresses, and stench brings these uninvited guests,” she said in an apologetic tone.

  Standing there shaking my head, trying to bring some reality to this overwhelming situation, I was speechless.

  “You’ll be close to my bed, and perhaps we’ll have work duty together.” Ester then warned me about the false friendships of the kapos, prisoners with privileges. “Remember that they will betray you for a morsel of moldy bread.”

  “I work in the kitchen peeling potatoes. It’s a good job. Easy compared to other jobs here.” Ester continued to tell me that the prisoners received three meals a day: those doing less physical work got 700 calories while those doing heavy labor received slightly more. Breakfast consisted of a hot drink. The remaining meals were composed of watery soup made with potatoes, and occasionally rotten meat and vegetables were added, a couple of ounces of bread, a tiny amount of margarine, and a bitter drink of tea or coffee. But after several weeks on starvation rations, the prisoners wasted away to barely-alive skeletons. Weakened by dehydration, hunger, and despair, most inmates quickly fell victim to disease.

  I listened to her and was reminded of what Max had told us about outbreaks of lice and contagious diseases in the camps. My back itched. I scratched the side of my neck and moved my hand over my scalp that ached in places where the harsh razor left abrasions.

  That night I forced myself to eat the rancid meat and vegetable soup. In survival mode, I willed myself not to dwell on the past. If I opened my heart (even a little) to life before Hitler, I would die of grief or do something to make the Nazis kill me.

  The next day, I learned that some of the prisoners worked inside the camp, while others were employed outside: in coal mines, in rock quarries, on construction projects, and, under armed guards, to shovel snow from the roads. A sizeable number were also put to work in munitions and other factories that supported Germany’s war effort. Hitler and his inner circle devised a plan for a Thousand-Year Reich or Third Reich. As Max had once explained to me, “Hitler wanted his vision to last a thousand years.” And before we Jews were all annihilated, we’d be used as slave labor to help achieve the means to this end.

  I was assigned to a women’s work detail in the building where we sorted prisoners’ clothes, which had been removed upon arrival at the camp. These items would be shipped back to be used in Germany. Still frail, I stood in line folding clothes when, by a stroke of luck, I saw my dress—the one Max had given to me. Quickly, to make it look like an accident, I grabbed it, along with a bundle of other items, and shoved them to the floor. I bunched my dress under the belt of my frock and returned the rest of the garments to the table. For the remainder of the day, I stood hunched over my worktable, trying not to draw attention. I breathed easier once I returned to my bunk where I stashed my dress into a hole in my mattress. I risked my life to get that dress, wanting to reclaim a tiny part of the devastating losses I had endured. That dress also represented the last time I was genuinely happy and felt feminine. There was something mysteriously empowering about the fact that I got away with taking it. No one reported me. If someone did see me, the compassion in her heart outweighed the small reward she might have received.

  Touching the dress in my mattress, I felt something stir in me—it was a reminder that, inside the bag of bones I was becoming, a woman still resided.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Days blurred into weeks. Time moved slowly, like a clock with a faulty pendulum. The winter of 1942 edged into spring. I thought about how May used to be my favorite month. Trees grow their leaves. Flowers bloom. It’s the time of year when flocks of birds transporting seeds and swarms of bees cross-pollinating were busy creating new life. Yes, May used to be my favorite month; it carried promise and renewal. But after several months in Auschwitz, nothing was fresh. Every morning before dawn we were startled awake by a guard. If we did not make our bed, which consisted of a small threadbare blanket and the mattress, to their satisfaction, we were punished. Punishment usually meant death. The day-in-day-out routine was torture.

  Marched out to roll call, we stood in paltry tattered uniforms as the block kapos counted the number of captives before reporting to the SS. If the number was incorrect, we stood for hours until it was sorted out. Anyone not able to stand was carted off to his or her death or killed in front of us. Evening roll calls were the worst. They were usually longer than the morning ones because the SS reviewed each prisoner’s performance for the day. We stood, without protection from the weather, as the guards called out our names and either let us step back into line or executed those accused of being lazy, uncooperative, or attempting to escape. Often these charges were false—contrived for the amusement of the sadistic guards.

  I remembered a particularly cold evening when an elderly man had fecal incontinence. When he started crying, the officer in charge beat him to death. That roll call lasted all night and included additional beatings. These cruel spectacles became commonplace. There was nothing to do but stand at attention, stare into space, and will my mind to go blank. There were times I pretended it was just a movie. Not real. There was no way to take in all the pain and suffering without some mental maneuvering on my part. To emote or allow the reactions in my body—nausea, acid stomach, muscle knotting, aches and pains all over—to be seen would be to raise my hand and say, kill me.

  Every day, guards in the nine watchtowers pointed rifles as we trudged past the double barbed-wire electric fences. Dogs in the streets had a better life than we did. The end of mealtime was indicated with the sounding of a siren, at which point we’d form into work groups. Marched at gunpoint by SS with automatic weapons and guard dogs, we went to our assigned labor stations.

  When I wasn’t folding clothes, I cut the linings out of fur coats to look for hidden jewelry or valuables. For twelve hours a day, I handled other’s belongings. My heart broke a little more each time I looked at photographs of once happy families, now shattered. I couldn’t help but think of my dear family, now lost to me forever and wonder how much more my heart could break.

  But there was a balance. Simple things keep me going. The brave, little flower that bloomed in the dry, cracked, unforgiving soil surrounding my barrack was an inspiration to my starving soul. The tiny, yellow petals held their head up high upon the lush, leafy green stem. It was a little miracle that reminded me of how resilient the will to survive in the harshest of conditions can be. There was also the kindness of others. I came to dinner one day, and Ester served me a ladle of soup. She took extra care to dish out a big piece of salami for me. The warmth of the smile on her face softened the cutthroat cruelty of the SS. During that night, she came to my bed and handed me something. Whispering in my ear, she said, “You’re around my daughter’s age. Today’s her birthday. She would have been twenty.” She handed me a sizeable piece of bread dipped in margarine. “Don’t let anyone see you eating this.”

  I put the generous gift down for a moment and reached for her. “I love you, Ester. You’re my family now.” I wept. With every swallow of what she sacrificed to give to me, I cried—not just because of the extra food, but also for the tenderness with which she offered it.

  Nothing is ever what you think it’s going to be, and that was true with the camp. I imagined that I would spiral into depression, and perhaps death, but I didn’t. The atrocities continued, but I created a “survival mentality,” allowing me to dull my senses so that I was able to function without collapsing from the mental and emotional burden of living in a death camp. I came to see that Au
schwitz exemplified the best and worst of the human condition. The simple, albeit rare, instances of selflessness, and the risky acts of compassion were a healing balm, mending my broken heart. There were those, like my friend Ester, who shared whatever they had—whether it was bread, or a warm blanket, or a shoulder to cry on when they were bone-tired and needed to sleep. They were there for us. I will never forget Clara. She was probably in her forties, about the same age as Ester. Skin-on-bones and hunched over, she gave her blanket to another woman with a cold. “Don’t get pneumonia,” Clara told the receiver of the gift. Another night, a woman hummed softly to a crying bunkmate until the distraught woman calmed. Those were the angels who lifted us up and inspired me to do what I could even if it was nothing more than offering an understanding smile. Unlike the kapos, who sold us down the river for a cup of coffee, they made life a little easier to bear.

  * * *

  Summer and fall crept into winter. I had been in the camp nearly a year and continued to work sorting clothes. Like the rest of the prisoners, I became emaciated despite Ester’s continuing gifts of extra food when possible. I was five feet two inches tall but weighed around ninety pounds. The only part of my body that remained fleshy was my chest. Since puberty, my breasts had been disproportionately large compared to the rest of my body. I tried to hunch over and puff out the top of my dress to hide my bosoms, but the SS knew what I was trying to hide from them. Their stares unnerved me. Although Hitler made it illegal for a German, especially the elite SS, to sleep with a Jew, raping and using women as sex slaves was the rule, not the exception. Rumors circulating the camp warned us which officers to avoid. So far, none of the notorious offenders were on duty where I worked.

  Once the last roll call of the day was over, we felt freer to express ourselves in ways that connected us to our humanity—vital after having been treated as subhuman since dawn. Those of us with enough energy danced, sang and told stories. We shared the only thing of value we had left: our memories. I realized that we had created a new family—bonded through devastating loss and grief—to fill the empty spaces inside all of us. We were kin in the most elemental way. For me, our evening gatherings felt like a wake. We honored those who had died with our stories. We prayed. We nodded when someone would whisper, “They wouldn’t want us to suffer,” or “They would want us to get on with life.” Communing with my new family of emaciated prisoners helped me feel human again. I remembered what it felt like to be someone that is seen and heard. A few of my new kin took risks by speaking more loudly than prudent, “To hell with the SS!” Laughter—even if suppressed so we wouldn’t attract the guards or kapos—helped to release the indescribable stress we endured. Even among our cadre of “trusted ones,” we never knew when someone would betray us.

  The camaraderie notwithstanding, life in the barrack was difficult. I was always being watched or felt as if I was. Privacy is a luxury of the rich and powerful; I was neither. I expected to be guarded and scrutinized during the day, but having no privacy at night was exasperating. And exhausting. Sleep was imperative to survival, but sleep in a barrack of 300 snoring, weeping, groaning, gassy, incontinent, restless people was a challenge. Lying awake, I also heard noises that surprised me: the sounds of lovemaking and an array of reactions from laughter to disgust from others who, like me, couldn’t sleep. The first time I laughed since Ben and I were ripped from Max’s farm was a night I heard tiptoe footsteps approaching. “Shush.” A man directed his instruction to me and then used my bunk to climb to the one above mine. Before long, I heard suppressed moans and repressed bursts of pleasure from them. Muffling a giggle, I remembered the many nights in the cellar when Ben and I pleasured ourselves. Tears of nostalgia, pleasure, and sadness rolled down my face.

  When the man returned several nights later, I wept as my hands found parts of my body yearning to be touched and experience release. My attempt was muted from lack of food, sleep, and most certainly from an unclean body. I was not successful that night. There was no way for me to rid myself of the filth, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to feel pleasure from my body—something that is every woman’s birthright. That night, determined to maintain my dignity, I decided that I wanted to experience as much normalcy as I could. The SS will not take my identity as a woman! They will not take my memories, my dreams, or my future! Huddled next to my dress several nights later, I was able to relieve some of my built-up tension. And it felt good.

  Together in the barrack there were those of us who found ways to give purpose to our existence, like the woman who had a few stolen moments of intimacy with the man who snuck in to be with her. How he made it past the guards is something I will never understand. Perhaps they were asleep or otherwise occupied? I like to think their Bible may have played a role, that they turned the other cheek. I wanted to believe that a modicum of goodness prevailed even in the worst of conditions. While some took risks and survived, others with sunken, dark, blank eyes and protruding bones gave up and merely moved on their conveyer-belt life until they succumbed to death.

  Something inside of me refused to give up. Was I surviving because I thought I had a future beyond this nightmare? Was I living to keep my family’s memory and Max’s memory alive? Maybe I was just determined to outlive the demons who put me in this hell.

  I didn’t know why, but, bit by bit, and against all odds an infusion of vitality came back to me.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  A year of my life in the camp vanished. I used to measure the passing of time by holidays and special celebrations with family and friends. Now the changing seasons were measured by the number of clothes I folded, gunshots I heard, corpses I saw, meals I swallowed that weren’t fit for a dog, and nightly clandestine gatherings of my new family. One year felt like ten.

  Amazingly, I got used to most of the routines in the camp. I could manage trouble sleeping, standing in roll call line for hours, eating slop, and the lascivious looks and comments from the guards that made my skin crawl. I could even deal with having the barrel of a rifle trained on me while standing for hours in the building full of clothes and other’s belongings. But what I couldn’t handle, what I never adjusted to, was wondering what had happened to the young sons and daughters of families dumped from the trains into the gates of hell. The clothing of the children and babies reminded me of the worst crime against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis. I heard the screams of devastated, sobbing parents. “They carted them off to killing centers and gassed them. Our children!” That was impossible to witness. And I never adapted to the gratuitous killing when an SS officer was in a bad mood and took it out on a poor victim.

  My nervous habits continued. While picking at myself was painful, it was familiar, thus comforting. I nibbled my nails down to the quick, and I picked my cuticles raw. It was a miracle my hands never became infected from all the filth in the barrack. No amount of nail-biting or picking at my skin could alleviate the endless distress of trying to survive as a prisoner in Auschwitz. I had constant headaches and a stiff, inflexible tightness around my neck. I also developed a twitch in my left calf that kept me up many nights.

  My emotions went up and down like a rollercoaster. Most of the time, I worked mindlessly—like the beat of my heart—when I was dealing with adult clothing articles: the coats, suits, shirts, dresses, shoes, hats, purses, and undergarments. After several months at that workstation, I simply processed the items and wondered if I was becoming callous. I was disabused of that notion when a small dress came to my workstation. Suddenly, all my suppressed feelings—the natural, compassionate, human reactions to this unbelievably heinous situation—flooded to the surface. It was a tiny, wool, plaid baby’s dress. Holding the tartan quilled green, orange, and navy blue cloth in my hands, I saw an image of a crying baby. Empathizing with that poor little girl, I felt my shoulders sink into my chest. I remembered how I cried for my Mamma when I was young. She was always there to comfort me, lift me up and rub my back as she whispered, “There, there, my sweet Helen.
You are safe in Mamma’s arms.” And I knew, from her touch and gentle words, that it was true. I was safe. Who was there when this plaid dress was ripped from the baby? Who was there to quell her fears when her family was being destroyed? And who was there to offer help to the inconsolable mother and father? Feeling the material of that baby’s dress, a lump in my throat threatened to explode. Trying to swallow, I gagged and was hit by panic that I was about to show an emotion that could get me killed. Breathe. Breathe. I inhaled the musty odor that came from the stacks of clothing and calmed myself. After that, afraid of being caught daydreaming, I had to curtail my ruminations about the people who once wore the clothes piled in front of me.

  This was my life, week after week.

  As the year 1943 moved on, I wondered what was happening outside of Auschwitz. Were other countries involved in Hitler’s war? How many? Would anyone be coming to free us? Years later I learned that after America had entered the war, carmakers and other manufacturers retooled to produce combat equipment. Even Hollywood was making movies with wartime themes that portrayed Hitler as evil. After I had come to America, I saw a movie with the Three Stooges. The movie was an attempt to alert American audiences to the serious ethical threat of Nazism at a time when many people were still not sure what was going on in Germany.

  Despite Hitler’s attempts to conceal the atrocities he ordered, the world discovered the truth. Prisoners who had escaped with the help of underground resistance groups spread the word. Brave people risked their lives to smuggle out secret Nazi documents and deliver them to the Allies with pleas for help. But help didn’t come fast enough to save the millions of Jews and other victims of torture and annihilation.

  With another spring approaching, changes had taken place. Many of the women in my barrack were gone, including the woman who made love in the bed above mine. I missed them. As new arrivals were ushered in and took their places, I saw the looks and demeanor of panic, fear, and shock that mirrored how I felt when I first arrived. I felt strangely satisfied to offer compassion and hugs to those weary from travel and shocked from loss. Easing their pain helped make mine less intense.