“We’ll be right back, Jadzia,” Ludwika said when she got to the foot of the cot.
She took me by the arm and led me out to the hot August sunshine, which actually seemed cool compared to the suffocating atmosphere of the hospital barrack.
“How is she?” I asked about the girl.
“The doctors have selected her. They’ll take her this afternoon.” Ludwika’s eyes were clouded with pain.
We were silent for a few seconds, staring at the sky and the huge train station. It was full of new arrivals that morning. Often we tried to ignore the trains in the pointless attempt to forget about the destiny of those poor newcomers.
“It’s terrible,” I said at last, the words hurting as they left my lips.
“Everything here is. We can maybe save one or two out of every hundred. Getting sick is a death sentence,” Ludwika answered.
“Yes, I hope none of the other children caught it.” This was a real concern for me. I was thinking of my own children but also of every boy and girl who came to the nursery and school. We had all grown attached to them.
“We’ll have to wait at least a week. This virus can take awhile to show up. But today is a day to celebrate. It’s the twins’ birthday, isn’t it?” Her voice had adopted an excited tone.
At that moment, a birthday celebration sounded like a bad idea. How could I put on a party that afternoon while they murdered Jadzia?
“Yes, the twins turn seven today. They are so thin.”
“We’re all thin. The important thing is that they’re not sick,” Ludwika said.
“Yes, it’s true. Well, there’s something else . . . Johann is apparently in Kanada.”
“Kanada? That’s incredible. You’ve been less than a mile apart all this time and didn’t even know it.” She was smiling incredulously.
“Yes. Elisabeth will get a note to him to let him know we’re all right, but the only way I can see him is with permission from an officer.”
“But you could ask Mengele! You know you’re one of his favorites. After all, you’re not a Jew or a Gypsy, and you’ve never been a Communist. I’m sure he’d grant you permission.”
“You think so?” I asked nervously.
“Definitely. He’s very upbeat today; I saw him just an hour ago. Apparently his wife is here. You know he never talks about anything personal, but he was particularly happy today.”
I had to seize the opportunity. The doctor had a rather fickle temperament. When the day was gray or things were complicated, he became very taciturn and moody.
“You think now is a good time?” My voice cracked with my excitement.
She nodded. “He’s in the sauna, in his laboratory. He deals with correspondence the first part of the day and hasn’t yet started with his experiments, which take up the rest of the day.”
“Well, I want to try right now. The best gift I could give my children is for them to see their father.” In my euphoria, my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest.
“Okay, then, go on. What are you waiting for?” Ludwika nudged me.
I went down the stairs and walked down the dusty road toward the sauna. It felt like a long walk though it was only seven barracks away. When I came up to number 34, doubts started crowding my thoughts. I was about to turn around and walk away, but I realized I had nothing to lose. I was the director of the nursery school, and Mengele knew I was doing a good job. He could undoubtedly find someone to take my place, but I had learned early on that he did not like change. He wanted things to clip along with continuity and routine so that nothing interrupted his experiments.
Finally, I went up the three stairs and knocked softly at the door. I was unsure if I had been heard. Again, I was about to turn around and head back, but then I heard a voice from the other side telling me to come in.
I opened the door slowly. There was little light in the room. It was long but not very wide. On one side was the doctor’s desk, with a bookshelf behind it full of files; on the other side a hospital bed for observing patients. Next to the bed was a white cabinet with instruments and medicines.
The doctor looked up, clearly puzzled to see me. I was about to excuse myself and leave, but I made myself stay calmly rooted in place a few feet from his desk, waiting for him to speak.
“Frau Hannemann, to what do I owe this pleasant surprise? I was not expecting you. Is there a problem with the children?” he asked, his brows knitted together.
Though his concern seemed genuine, he never ceased to surprise me. How was it possible for him to feel such affection for the children and yet be capable of sending them to their deaths over a simple illness?
“No, Herr Doktor, I’ve come about a personal matter.” I could not keep the nervousness from my voice.
“I see. You have never asked me for anything for yourself before. I imagine it is something very important. I see you as a good German mother, a true model for our race. I have told my wife, Irene, about you, and she has asked to come see the nursery school this afternoon,” Mengele said.
I had not expected him to say that. We had never seen the wife of any Nazi in the camp, but Mengele was not the average SS member. Where others were barbaric and cold, he was always calm and polite.
“It would be an honor to have her,” I said.
“I won’t be taking her anywhere else in the camp; it’s no place for a lady.”
I was again surprised. Were we not mothers, wives, ladies like Irene? Every day thousands of women, children, and elderly people died, but to the Nazis we were merely a tattooed number, a statistic in a notebook of entries and exits.
Mengele went on, “In the women’s camp, there’s been a typhus outbreak, but thankfully the Gypsy camp is at quite a distance from the primary locus. She’ll be here hardly an hour and then I’ll take her back.” He seemed to be trying to convince himself that his wife would not be in danger if she came to visit us.
“We’re having a party in two hours.”
“Perfect, we’ll come then. You know that when a woman gets a notion in her head, it’s impossible to convince her otherwise. But what was it you wanted to see me about?” he asked, looking back down at his papers.
I clammed up. Maybe it was not a good time. He seemed busy and also worried about his wife. I was working up the nerve to open my mouth when he said, “Come on, out with it.”
“They’ve found my husband. He’s in Kanada. I wanted to ask you for permission to see him. This is the first news I’ve had of him since we arrived in May.” It tumbled forth in a rush, like I wanted to throw it all out at once and run away to safety.
“Very well. I’ll write you a pass to go to Kanada. You’ll have an hour after the party. I’m not sure they’ll let you see him alone, but I won’t be able to allow this to happen again. Personal relationships distract my assistants from their work. You have been loyal, and I want you to know I appreciate it, but the work comes first. Is that clear?” he asked with his freezing stare.
“Yes, Herr Doktor,” I said, swallowing hard.
He took out a piece of paper with letterhead, wrote for a few seconds, sealed it, then handed it to me.
“One hour, and not a minute more,” he said, looking me straight in the eyes.
“Yes, Herr Doktor.”
My heart was bursting out of my chest as I left his laboratory. The children could not see their father after all; in fact, I planned on not saying anything about it until the next day so they would not get worked up. But when they found out that he was all right and only a few hundred yards away, surely they would be pleased.
In the nursery barrack, excitement had taken hold of all the little hearts. It was the first party to be held in the camp, and though we could not offer anything grand, thanks to everyone’s cooperation we had managed to bake a simple cake and cover it in chocolate. It was a true delicacy for everyone who came.
I warned the children that in an hour Dr. Mengele’s wife would be coming and that they should treat her with utmost r
espect and kindness. We aired out the barracks to thin the stench of sweat and diapers. The Gypsy mothers took all the children outside to play while Kasandra, Maja, Zelma, and I decorated the room for the party. We made colored paper chains and had managed to acquire some balloons and streamers. We were all properly excited by the time we finished, and for a moment I had forgotten about my upcoming visit to Johann.
We lined all the children up between the barracks and waited in the shade for the doctor to arrive with his wife. After an hour, they still had not shown up. I figured Mengele had finally thought better of the idea. He knew his wife might be affected by what she saw in the camp, so I intuited that they would not be coming.
The children were hot, tired, and impatient to start the party. We let them into the building and were delighted to see their wide eyes and surprised faces as they looked at the decorations. Emily and Ernest were so happy I could hardly blink back my tears.
“Let’s start the games,” I told a group of children, who immediately started screaming and jumping up and down.
For that hour, we traveled to a place very far away from the barbed-wire fences. The children hunted after treasure, discovered hidden secrets, listened to a story, and watched an improvised puppet show put on by the teachers. I had never seen them so happy, but the biggest surprise of all was when we turned off the lights and I came out with the cake lit with two candles. The twins stared at each other with their jaws dropped. I placed the cake on the table and hugged them.
“Everybody get together,” I said to all the children. They all scrambled right up against the twins, who had knelt down to blow out the candles. I would have liked to take their picture, though I did not want them to remember this place when they were older.
“Have you made a wish?” I asked.
“Yes!” they answered in unison.
“Don’t tell anybody what it was, so it can come true,” I warned them.
Heedless of my words, Ernest blurted out, “We want Daddy to be okay, and we want to see him!”
That stopped me in my tracks. It was only for a few seconds, but images of recent birthdays flashed before my eyes. Johann had always been there. This was the first birthday he had missed.
“Blow out the candles!” I said, hastily wiping the tears that had started to flow.
The twins blew them out, and we all started singing. The room filled with the innocent voices of nearly one hundred children, and the whole camp heard their song. We were celebrating life in the middle of a graveyard. It almost seemed sacrilegious to me, but then I thought that as long as children can sing, the world still has a chance. Their voices filled our souls, which by then were as emaciated as our bodies. Evil moved with such strength in Auschwitz that it seemed like a dry, sterile land where everything good withered sooner or later. I knew that a nursery school in the middle of the horror could not be the exception to the rule. Even so, I tried to enjoy what each day offered us. One candle for each year of life. In Auschwitz-Birkenau we should have blown out a candle for every hour and every minute. A year was an unimaginable length of time.
TWELVE
AUGUST 1943
AUSCHWITZ
I had a hard time justifying to my children my need to be absent. I did not want to tell them I was going to see their father, because they could not come with me. The twins were still high on the excitement of their birthday party, and they were so worked up about the little carved wooden horse I had given them that they hardly noticed I was going to leave. Adalia was too exhausted to protest much, but the two older children did not let me get away easily. They peppered me with questions until I left them with Zelma and her children and headed to the entrance of the Gypsy camp.
The walk down the main road felt longer than usual. I would have to get through at least three checkpoints, and though I had a letter of safe conduct from Dr. Mengele, that did not guarantee that the guards would let me through. When I came up to the office barracks, I looked from side to side to make sure neither of the feared female guards were there. Fortunately for me, at that hour of the day they were at the train station helping with the selection of new prisoners.
I had never gone so close to the exit before. My breath came in quick, short gasps as I stopped in front of the main gate. For several months now those fences had become the worst sort of prison home for me.
The soldier on guard spoke harshly. “What is it?”
I expected no tact. To them I was at best a number but more likely just rubbish to be trampled.
“Dr. Mengele has written me a pass to visit Kanada,” I said, holding out the paper. My voice and my hands trembled.
The soldier held his gun with one hand while he took the letter in the other and went to the guardhouse where they sat when it rained or snowed. A sergeant came out of the small wooden building and approached me.
“Everything’s in order, but it’ll be dark within an hour. You must be back before the sun goes down.”
I sighed with relief, nodded, and took the paper back. As I walked through the gate, I was instantaneously aware of two things. The first was my physical appearance: it had been a very long time since I had seen a mirror, colored my gray roots, or tamed the wild hairs around my temples. Though I had cut my hair, I undoubtedly looked wretched. I knew my face would be sunken in with bags under my eyes, the nurse’s smock I was wearing was old and shabby, and the toes of my shoes were open holes. I pulled a pink ribbon out of one of the pockets of my smock and tried to tame my blonde mane into a ponytail. I pinched my cheeks to brighten my pallor and set off for Kanada at a brisk pace. The second thing I was aware of was that in the camp no one was called by name. I would have to search among the thousand-some-odd people of the Kanada work commandos. It would take me too long and would drastically reduce my chances of finding my husband; and if by some miracle I did locate him, we would barely have any time to talk.
The huge road was completely empty. Large watchtowers interrupted the monotonous landscape of wire fences and barracks behind them. I went by the gate that led to the camp hospital and stopped at another checkpoint. There were many more soldiers here than at the Gypsy camp. Kanada held true treasures robbed from the murdered prisoners. I showed my letter to the sergeant and they let me enter one of the least accessible areas of Birkenau. I walked between two huge buildings with smokestacks, crematoriums 4 and 5, respectively. I did not dawdle. Turning the corner of one of the crematoriums, I found myself at the entrance to Kanada.
Since our arrival in Auschwitz I had heard all sorts of rumors about that place. Most of them turned out to be true. What first took me off guard was how immensely large it was. It was twice as wide as our camp, though not as deep. There were dozens of barracks laid out in rows. The ones at the back were stuffed with clothes, shoes, and suitcases waiting to be sorted. Given the good weather and the ceaseless arrivals of trains that summer, the workers could not keep up with their macabre work.
I showed my letter to the guards at the entrance and they allowed me to enter with no problem. I looked for a few seconds longer at what were at least fifty barracks and sank again into despair. It seemed impossible to find Johann in a place like that in such a short time. My only chance was to ask people about him, hoping that there were not many Gypsies in Kanada.
I saw a young woman dressed in pants and wearing makeup. Her hair was very tidy. I asked, “Excuse me, where are the men’s barracks?”
I was surprised at how healthy she looked and how normal her clothes seemed. In fact, most people I saw there looked healthy and reasonably well dressed, not wearing tattered rags like the rest of us prisoners. She looked me over nonchalantly and pointed carelessly to the barracks to my right. Then she disappeared into the mountain of objects at the door of one of them. I walked as quickly as I could toward the men’s barracks. I went up to one of the first buildings and found a man in his forties with dark hair who was wearing an old but elegant suit.
“I’m looking for a Gypsy man named Johann. He pl
ays the violin,” I explained. I wondered if Kanada also had an orchestra; if so, Johann perhaps might have joined it.
“A Gypsy?” The man said the word like it tasted bad in his mouth. “I haven’t seen any around here.”
I continued my desperate search, glancing frequently at the sky to see how the sun was little by little making its way toward the forest on the far horizon. Don’t give up, I said, resorting to entering the barracks and calling out Johann’s name. I was so close to reaching my goal that I could not give up now. I had to see him even if it were for the very last time.
I asked after him in two or three barracks but to no avail. I ran around stopping every man I came across to ask. I was about to call the search off when I ran into a boy who could not have been more than fifteen years old. He had his hat pulled down low over his head and was wearing a kind of work uniform and military boots that were too big.
“Frau, I know a Gypsy. He’s in barrack 45, but right now he’s working on the train platform. Some of us go there to pick up the bags after the selections,” he explained.
I was ready to throw myself down and sob like a child. I tried to get myself together and just be grateful that Johann was alive. But I could not believe the irony of being here when he was not. The opportunity was slipping between my fingers.
“Could you please give him this?” I asked, handing the boy the letter I had managed to write a few hours before.
“Of course, Frau.”
I thanked him and headed for the exit. My bad luck dumbfounded me, though on the other hand I knew I should not complain. Almost everyone still alive in Auschwitz had lost everyone they loved shortly after arriving at the camp, and at least my whole family was still breathing.
I was walking out of the first round of fencing when I saw a large group of men carrying suitcases approaching. I paused to see if Johann was among them. The special work group entering Kanada was escorted by soldiers and kapos. I walked through the rows impatiently but saw no sign of him. Desperate, I started shouting his name.
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