The Seven Year Dress: A Novel

by Paulette Mahurin

  Ester grabbed my hand. “Run!”

  We made it to a relatively safe hiding place under a coal bunker where I overheard an SS officer shout, “The Commandant wants all evidence destroyed!” I deduced from all the panicked yelling that Rudolf Höss and his men were attempting to conceal the mass murders and other evils that had taken place at Auschwitz. “Everyone is to be shot and burned! Leave no one alive.” A senior SS officer ordered several younger ones. He appeared to be the one in charge, but he was instantly distracted by other commands flying at him. In the pandemonium to hastily destroy evidence and abandon camp, the remaining prisoners, including Ester and me, were overlooked. Perhaps a junior SS guard noticed Ester and me hiding but decided to let us live. I’d like to believe that not all Nazis were evil. Maybe we were just lucky.

  Huddled together in the cold, Ester and I didn’t dare move. For hours, we listened to continued screaming, boots pounding the ground, and trucks being loaded with the files that hadn’t been burned. As the smell of burning flesh and paper permeated the air, I heard car doors slamming and engines revving. Ester and I looked at each other with, I think, the same question in our wide eyes: “Are the Nazi monsters escaping from their own death camp?” We remained there, hugging each other until nightfall came and brought with it an eerie quiet. As the moon glistened in the sky, we saw others who had been in hiding get up and walk about in a bewildered state.

  Ester tightened her grip on my arm. “Are you ready?”

  “To go over there?” I nodded toward a few men standing nearby. Still skittish, I didn’t want to move. I feared that this entire episode was just another elaborate, vicious ploy to torture us.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “I want to wait. I don’t trust…”

  “I understand. Then we’ll wait,” she said.

  And we did.

  Over the next few hours, more prisoners came out of hiding. I heard some talk of going to their beds to rest. Others came into view with bits of food. When I saw these prisoners moving about freely, talking above furtive whispers, and with food, I was stunned. No one looked over their shoulders; there wasn’t a hint of retribution.

  “I’m ready,” I told Ester. As I listened to the sound of my full voice for the first time in three years, I smiled. I breathed deeply. As the crisp, fresh air filled my lungs, I stood beside Ester and looked around at the remains. Approximately 7,000 Auschwitz prisoners were abandoned by the Nazis, most of us too weak and ill to move. With the unknown looming like a guillotine blade ready to drop, I remained on edge as I did what the others did: slept, foraged for food and blankets, and stared at the sky, wondering what would happen next. Our conversations centered on questions without answers.

  On January 27, 1945, our answers came. I heard a man bellow in broken German, “You are free! Come out!” The Russian allies, our liberators, had arrived. The ill, skeletal, wailing prisoners surrendered to men in uniforms who witnessed the sight of the walking dead with their mouths agape and looks of utter shock. I noticed several of the soldiers shaking their heads and wiping tears from their cheeks. Hugs, cheers, kisses, embraces, and “Thank God,” sang from the men wearing tattered stripes and women in rag dresses. The Russian soldiers must have wondered how any of us had the energy to move, let alone celebrate our liberation. I often wonder the same thing.

  One tall soldier, his eyes moist and his chin trembling, came to me with his hand extended. I looked into his kind eyes and then down to his opened palm. A bar of chocolate. He waited with his outstretched arm as I hesitantly walked toward him. I must have looked like a stray dog. He was using a lure to help me feel safe as he approached me. Glancing up again to meet his benevolent eyes, I fell to the ground and cried. He knelt beside me, opened my palm, and placed the candy in it. Although I couldn’t understand the Russian words he spoke, the compassion in his voice told me what I needed to hear.

  We were free.

  I was free.

  The first thing I did with that freedom was to let out seven years of grief that I had swallowed. Before leaving Auschwitz, I retrieved the dress Max had given me and clutched it to my heart.

  Although Höss and his men tried to hide their crimes, nothing could conceal the truth of their torture and mass murder. To the Russians and the rest of the world, evidence of the atrocities, corruption, and the felonious nature of their violations of human rights were evident and inexcusable. I later learned that, while the Russians were at our gate, the British, Canadians, Americans and French troops freed prisoners in other camps. The Germans also failed to hide their crimes in those camps, and the evidence confirmed the enormity of their heinous acts. The legacy of Hitler’s grand plan? Millions of dead bodies stacked up like firewood and tens of thousands of prisoners who were walking skeletons.

  Allied troops, aid workers, and physicians tried to tend to those left alive. Many were too weak to digest food and died after they were liberated. Nearly half of the prisoners freed at Auschwitz and other camps died despite valiant attempts to save them. Although it was quite some time later, I learned that my sister, Shana, was among those unfortunates who died at Dachau.

  Still in a state of shock and programmed to wait for orders or be punished, I remained by Ester’s side like an abused animal clinging to the one safe thing I knew. Constantly being hyper-alert and overly suspicious began to hinder the care I was getting to stabilize me for travel to a more secure place. My stomach was constantly upset, I had pounding headaches, and my habit of picking at my skin escalated. Finally, after a couple of weeks of eating healthy food, sleeping on a real mattress, being out in the fresh air, and free to take walks, Ester and I made it out of Poland to an American-run Displaced Persons Camp in Germany.

  Ester found a cousin who she went to live with. On our last day together, I had a lump in my throat and a heavy, sorrowful pain in my heart. There was no easy way to say goodbye to my beloved friend. We tried to find words to let each other go, but every attempt at a final adieu failed. So like the many nights we shared in the barrack, Ester silently hugged me and kissed my forehead. For the last time, she wiped the tears from my eyes as rivers streamed from hers. The wisdom and love that united us remained unspoken and unbroken.

  With the help of the Red Cross, I went into a relocation program in the United States where I found work as a seamstress.

  Before leaving Germany, I managed to visit the bombed-out buildings and rubble that Berlin had become. A few homes on the street where I lived, including my home, were still standing. I stopped by and found a German family living there. They let me in to look around. The house was empty when the new family moved in, and they had no idea what had happened to our belongings. I was the only remaining proof that my family ever existed. If they were to live on, it would be through me—in my thoughts and in my heart.

  Max’s old home was also intact, a new family living there. His parents had been killed after their son was branded a traitor for assisting a Jew. Devastation and grief rippled through innumerable lives during the debacle of Hitler’s regime, and for decades following the liberation.

  Throughout 1945, the Allies freed the Jews, and the SS fled. Wanting to avoid the comeuppance they deserved, they disguised themselves; they left the country, and they went underground and crawled away like a pack of fleas on a mangy dog. The deplorable cowards knew their fate should they be caught. The biggest coward—the evilest man of them all, Hitler—took the easy way out. On April 30, 1945, he committed suicide. It was the day after Germany surrendered.

  To this day, a part of me is still a prisoner. I remain a victim of the memory and images created by the heartless monsters that wanted to rid the world of the Jewish race. But that is just a small part of me, for my heart has learned to, once again, soften. To trust. Thanks to Ester, the selfless people I met along the way, and the kindness of our decent liberators—those who risked their lives to save mine—I have been able to construct a meaningful life after seven years of torment.

  My f
ather was right when he said, “Life is what’s important.”

  Epilogue

  Present Day

  Helen’s eyes glistened with overflowing tears as she told me that, after coming to America, she corresponded with Ester. Ester found peace and lived a simple life with her relatives, helping with meal preparation, gardening, and babysitting the young ones as they came into the world. “For a long time, Myra, it was those letters that kept me going. And then my work here. The sewing and kind people I did jobs for helped me grow new roots. I made a couple of friends with whom I’d share meals. They were lifesavers for me when Ester’s letters…stopped…, and I knew she had died. She lived well into her sixties. I never made contact with her family after that.”

  Not knowing what to say, I said nothing. My thoughts drifted from what Helen had told me to her life before Hitler and the insanity began. There was one person she hadn’t mentioned. If by divine intervention, Helen wiped her face, blew her nose, and told me that, after settling in California, she tried to locate Isaac. He was her last connection to Berlin. To her past.

  “Did you ever find him?” Waiting for her answer, I glanced around her apartment—at everything in its proper place and aligned just so. Instantly, I understood why nothing was messy or disorderly. She was beaten within an inch of her life if she didn’t sew buttons on neatly or keep hems straight. She had to abide by the anal-retentive directives of her criminal captor, the one who raped and abused her week after week, for months on end. I no longer saw my friend, Helen, as a neat freak or some kook bordering on being obsessive-compulsive. This extraordinary woman had been tortuously programmed to act as she did. In relaying her story, she reminded me about Pavlov’s experiments about conditioning on canines. Just like a dog does, she learned the behavior that avoided punishment. Although the physical cruelty ended long ago, the mental scars from the kind of trauma she withstood probably never went away. At least now she seemed free to process the ordeal, and maybe some of the pain. All labels I erroneously constructed about her dissolved as she shared her personal history with me. She told me a horror story that opened my heart. I was finally able to appreciate this incredible woman sitting before me.

  “Isaac? Yes, we spoke by telephone. He told me that, after we lost touch, he continued with school and became a World History teacher in New Jersey. He met a girl. They married and had two children.” She continued to tell me that she withheld the terrible events of her life from Isaac. “I wanted to spare him. It’s best to have happy memories. The truth isn’t always good to know.” She gave me a warm smile. “I suppose Papa, Max, and Ester were right all along.”

  I took in a deep breath to try to release the tension pressing in on my belly. I wanted to think of something to say, something appropriate, but at a loss for words, I continued to sit quietly with my watery eyes upon hers.

  Rubbing her wrinkled hands together, she looked at me and shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve never spoken the whole story to anyone. And now…all of this to you, Myra.” She nodded. “It’s good. For some reason, I’m not surprised. Perhaps because you are going to be a nurse?”

  A warm flush permeated my body as the generosity of her words flowed through me. For several minutes we sat together silently, looking at each other, and then I opened. “I’m so honored to know you. And I can’t thank you enough for trusting me with what happened.” I looked around her apartment, again, thinking about what Schüler did to her. Melancholy overwhelmed me. My heart physically ached.

  “No, my dear, thank you.” Her soulful eyes locked with my tearful eyes. Then, smiling a more serene smile than I had ever seen her give, she tilted her head from one side to the other, as if recognizing someone familiar from a long time ago.

  Overcome with a compelling urge to hug her, I asked. “Anything else you wanted to say?”

  “I remembered something Ester told me on her daughter’s birthday. She had said that I was around her daughter’s age. I just looked at you and felt what Ester might have felt. If my life were different and I had married, I might have a daughter your age right now.” Helen looked past me, wistfully, a little sad. And with a deep sigh returned her gaze to mine, she gently smiled.

  A lamp in the room flickered. Both Helen and I looked toward the lamp and to what was sitting next to it: the framed piece of cloth, which was all that remained of the dress Max had given her. That tiny relic was Helen’s only tangible link to her origins and the people who she once loved. In that small apartment that day, she glowed when she said, “For many years, I felt that that piece of material, with the blood of my brother splattered on it, was all that was left. For seven years of captivity, from when I went to Max’s farm in 1938 until I was liberated from Auschwitz in 1945, that was all that survived of my personal belongings. It was a symbol of everything that had been taken from me. For many years, I believed that.” She pointed to the words on the plaque, Nothing Lasts. “I was wrong to think that was all that was left.” She reached her hand across to mine and gave it a gentle pat. “There’s so much more,” she smiled. “There’s love.”

  You never know a person until you hear his or her story. Stories change how you feel about someone. When I saw Helen’s arm branded with a concentration camp number, I assumed her story wouldn’t be a good one with a happy ending. But as I looked into her beautiful, shining eyes, I knew I was wrong. Her spirit lives strong. She is content, grateful to have survived.

  I glanced back at what Helen called the seven year dress, the gift from Max. I had been curious about those soiled marks. Now, I had my answer.

  Perhaps they began as Ben’s blood, but they came to be her lifeblood.

  Post Note

  On 24 October 1945, the United Nations (UN) was established. Replacing the ineffective League of Nations, the UN is an intergovernmental organization to promote international co-operation.

  On 10 December 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Arising directly from the experiences of the Second World War, it was the first global expression of the innate rights afforded to all human beings. It reaffirmed the fundamental dignity and worth of the “human person” and promoted “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.”

  About the Author

  Paulette Mahurin lives with her husband Terry and two dogs, Max and Bella, in Ventura County, California. She grew up in West Los Angeles and attended UCLA, where she received a Master’s Degree in Science.

  While in college, she won awards and was published for her short-story writing. One of these stories, Something Wonderful, was based on the couple presented in His Name Was Ben, which she expanded into a fictionalized novel in 2014. Her first novel, The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap, made it to Amazon bestseller lists and won multiple awards, including best historical fiction of the year 2012 in Turning the Pages Magazine. Her third novel, To Live Out Loud, won international critical acclaim and was recognized on multiple websites as a favorite-read book of 2015.

  Semi-retired, she continues to work part-time as a Nurse Practitioner in Ventura County. When she’s not writing, she does pro-bono consultation work with women with cancer, works in the Westminster Free Clinic as a volunteer provider, volunteers as a mediator in the Ventura County Courthouse for small claims cases, and involves herself, along with her husband, in dog rescue.

  Profits from her book sales go to help rescue dogs from kill shelters.

 

 

 
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