Survival

by M. Ben Yanay

  “I see,” she said and forced herself to pat him on the head. “I shall pack some things and wait for you at the house.”

  “You mustn’t speak of this to anyone,” he warned her before leaving the kitchen for the bedroom.

  *

  Terry noticed the tiny changes in the German woman’s demeanor. She took to wandering about the house nervously, went out to the balcony and came back absent-minded. Her blond hair, which she normally let down to her shoulders, was now tightly braided. Her chin and nose, which she used to turn up over her outstretched neck, seemed sharper now, and her tone, which was usually calm, had a distinct note of irritation to it. Frau von Keitel reiterated, “I need this pocket today. You’re not leaving here until it’s done.”

  Terry was done after about three hours. She completed the requested pocket and accentuated its mouth with a diagonal black ribbon. She spread the heavy woolen overcoat on the table and turned it inside out. She sewed the pocket to the lining parallel to the outer pocket. She sewed on both sides as well as the bottom. Both sewn lines held tightly to the lining. She then presented the concealed pocket to the German woman, who inspected carefully.

  “Well done,” she told Terry and turned the coat back over. She wore it and put her hand into the pocket. “Very good, that’s exactly what I wanted.”

  Terry got up, but not before concealing a few rolls of thread and a pair of scissors. She bent over and tied her shoelaces as she stuck two pins to the rim of her own coat. As she got up, she sighed poignantly and said, “Would you like anything else, madam? I’ll be happy to stay and assist you.”

  Magda von Keitel’s face cringed. She closed her eyes. “No, I require nothing further. Go. Go now to your camp and never come back,” she said in a cracked voice.

  Terry remained standing, her eyes indicating she was expecting something in return.

  Magda cleared her throat. “Yes, of course. Here.” She gave her a few Reichsmark bills. “You’ll find half a loaf of bread and some onions on the kitchen table. You can take it all. Take the potato from the crate too. Now go. Take it now before I change my mind.”

  This was a very handsome reward indeed. The bread was still fresh, a real treasure. Terry wrapped the prize in a scrap of cloth she found on the floor and placed it in her bag, along with the potato and three small onions. She left by the yard door to the garden, which was in full bloom, her heart leaping with joy.

  14. “Blood for Goods”

  Strasshof Concentration Camp, where Terry was transported from Debrecen along with her two sons, was not very far from the town of Strasshof. Thousands of Jews, all transported from ghettos in southern Hungary, occupied the camp, in the framework of a deal referred to as “Blut gegen Waren” [German: Blood for Goods] that had been organized by the two leaders of the “Budapest Rescue Committee,” Rezso [Yisrael] Kasztner and Joel Brand. They reached an agreement with SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, who was in charge of the mass deportations of Jews to ghettos, concentration camps and extermination camps. The agreement was based on the approval given by the Reich Main Security Office, headed by SS-Obergruppenführer [senior group leader] Reinhard Heydrich, to Vienna Mayor SS-Brigadeführer Hanns Blaschke to receive workers. The latter reported a shortage of labor, so Eichmann acquiesced to postpone the deportation of some thirty thousand Jews from eastern Austria so that they could be put to work in Vienna and its outskirts. This was also in exchange for five million Swiss Francs to be paid by the Rescue Committee to the Reich.

  The agreement entered into effect in June 1944. The Jews who had made their way in transport cars to extermination camps suddenly discovered their route had changed. They were being diverted to Strasshof Concentration Camp. They were now under the supervision of a Vienna-based administrative center, which sent them to work in factories, fields and occasional jobs. Their lives had been spared for the time being.

  *

  Like all the other inmates, Terry felt the days of Nazi Germany were numbered, much like the war. In recent days, there have been persistent rumors in camp. Those in the know said the camp commander received a direct order from Berlin to annihilate all the prisoners before the Russians’ expected arrival. The rumors grew stronger when the order was given to start digging ditches in the empty field by the camp. The digging started, but after two days, the snow returned, so the workers were met with further difficulties still, presented by the harsh weather.

  The inmates lay in their beds, mulling over a new rumor. They were to be used as protective shields for the Germans, who were expected to fight right to the last bullet, and never surrender, under any condition whatsoever. The snow stopped. Junior commanders in boots walked along the paths the prisoners had carved out by hand, using makeshift plows. Children were making snow walls on either side of the paths. Terry recalled the ice palace she had once built with her childhood friends, complete with a surrounding snow wall. She stuck green twigs in the wall and created a small circle out of small stones.

  She wondered where the camps’ top brass had disappeared. Have they all fled when the time was right? And what will become of the von Keitels during their long journey? She was well aware of the fact that the order to keep digging the ditches did not change. Either way, she knew the end was near, closer than ever, and that all she could do was wait and pray.

  *

  Terry planned to share the bread with her fellow inmates at the shed. She calculated how many slices she could carve it into. Whom would I give a small consolation piece to first of all, she asked herself. I will give some bread to the small children, those under five years old. They’re so weak. Most of them resemble skeletons. Their tummies are swollen, and besides, they’re shivering like leaves in the wind. Or maybe I won’t? Perhaps, I shall hide this treasure from them all and only share it between my two boys? No. That’s out of the question, perish the though. After all, we are all subject to the same misfortune. Everyone brings in what little they can lay their hands on, she concluded.

  The watch had become less strict at that point. The grown children, like Sandor, went out of the camp through large holes in the fence, right into the piles of rubbish on its outskirts. They risked their lives approaching the camp, waiting for the sentries to be less alert. They had been collecting scraps of food thrown out, and despite being explicitly barred from doing so, they snuck into yards to ransack the bins.

  Terry was aware of the bravery Sandor and his friends displayed, of their daring. No, I couldn’t possibly pamper my kids with this bread. We shall make do with a blood omelet. But today, I shall add the onions and the potato, so they’ll do wonders to its taste.

  She stepped faster and turned to the road leading to the regional slaughterhouse. The large structure was surrounded by a fence. Its yard had cages and a stockade for the animals prior to their slaughter.

  *

  Last summer, when she first arrived at the concentration camp, she was sent to work at the slaughterhouse. It filled her days with terror. She saw the cattle, cows, sheep, and pigs. First, they beat the animals senseless with long clubs and hammers. Their cries preyed on Terry’s mind at night.

  Then the throat was cut and their blood spilled onto the steep concrete floor. Among the prisoners, the men were tasked with knocking the animals out. The blood ran into a ditch below the concrete platform. The women were assigned the task of collecting it into buckets, then spilling the contents into the open sewage. Terry was busy doing this for two whole months. The blood ran all the way to a cesspool far from the slaughterhouse, so very little of it actually got there. The imprisoned men and women collected the runny red stuff in makeshift containers and used it to make a kind of porridge they referred to as “blood omelet.” Other ingredients included scraps of vegetables and potato skins gathered from the town’s stinking piles of garbage all around the camp. They used to fry the mix or cook it over a fire until it thickened. It had become the only nourishing food source for most of the inmates. Many children survived thanks to it.
Terry never had any. She avoided it due to Jewish dietary laws; keeping kosher prohibits eating any part of a pig, even its blood. Nevertheless, she judged no one and criticized none of her friends. Whenever she could lay her hands on a few vegetables, even putrid ones, she made her kids an omelet.

  For some time, she was tasked with secondary carving of the cattle, once the initial carving stage was over, along with the removal of the fur and hair from their carcass. Every so often, she could not help vomiting her guts out and could barely stand up again despite the supervisors’ watchful, angry gaze.

  After the secondary carving, which had consisted of cutting the meat into small portions, the pieces were packed up and sent to the warehouse refrigeration rooms. From there, the meat went to the German Army’s supply depots along the Eastern Front.

  After four months of hard labor at the slaughterhouse, Terry received orders to report to the buttons station in the main clothing factory on the outskirts of Strasshof. She scrubbed herself forcibly with a worn-out straw brush for many days to get rid of the stench of blood. Then, after a while, she revealed to one of the women managers at the clothing factory that she was capable of much more—that she was an expert seamstress on par with other professionals.

  15. The Test

  Terry passed the first test at the home of Ernst Buhler Freiherr [the second rank of nobility in the German-speaking world] and his wife, Zelma Buhler Freifrau. They ordered a velvet dress from Terry for their young and rebellious child, Yulia, whose German title was Freiin.

  Yulia loved the light blue dress Terry had sewn for her. She also loved to sit in Terry’s company in the course of the three days that took to get it ready. She asked Terry all sorts of questions about her youth. Terry told her about her Christian family, about her days in the youth camp one summer, about the many hours she spent with her girlfriends by the river. Terry told her about the old seamstress in whose house she learned how to sew. Her name was Rosa Greenfeld, a well-to-do widow. This was the first time Terry had come to know any Jewish customs and ways.

  Freiin Yulia was grateful for her stories. At the end of each day, she would go over to the kitchen and prepare some package for Terry. Once, the parcel comprised a fresh apple along with a plum jam sandwich. Another time, she gave Terry a bag with potatoes and a carrot. On the third and last day, she gave her a few thick slices of bread. Those were three wonderful days, during which Terry got to wash her hands in fragrant soap and bring her kids some wholesome, hygienic food.

  The second house Terry had worked in required her presence for as long as an entire week. It was at the home of Oberst [Colonel] Helmut August Heine, an elderly, burly widower with aching legs. Nevertheless, his pain did not stop him from attempting to grab at Terry’s chest and behind at any chance he got. This made Terry sick, but what could she do? Whom could she possibly complain about this to? Who would hear her out and believe her? By then, Jews were beyond the point of being allowed to complain.

  One day during that god-awful week with him, she toyed with the idea of slapping him across the face. Nevertheless, an involuntarily shake at the very thought made Terry come right back to her senses. She did fear his revenge, but as the days passed, she grew calmer. No one approached her on his behalf, and she heard no news of him.

  Her other private clients were mostly occasional jobs—some men, but mostly women—who had become regular clients. Between one appointment at this house and then another, she kept coming to the factory in exchange for a measly scrap of food.

  *

  Terry reached the red ditch and leaned over the edge. She took out a tin cup and filled it up with blood. She heard horses neighing. The makeup of the animals reaching the slaughter had changed of late. She saw mostly mules and horses. Nevertheless, it’s the same blood, she thought and paced faster. She would soon return to camp, cut the bread into thin slices and hand it out to the hungry children at the shed.

  She suddenly stood still, overcome with anguish. The upcoming meeting with her little son Andre filled her eyes with tears. She tried to ignore the fresh memory. Her hands moved, restless, and she felt sharp pain down her spine. It happened only yesterday, she thought. This was yet another day she wanted to forget completely.

  *

  Each day at lunchtime, when the Austrian schoolchildren finished studying for the day at the school adjacent to the camp, they used to stand over the fence and watch the inmates in a kind of curiosity mixed with repulsion and compassion, as though the prisoners were animals in a traveling circus. Those among the camp children who had not gone to work used to stand on the other side of the fence with yearning eyes and outstretched arms.

  Terry realized that not all Austrian kids mocked the starved Jewish kids. Some felt embarrassed in view of the pleading gaze of the imprisoned children. Sandor told her that some had come over especially to pass on their meals through the fence, a sandwich or a piece of fruit, and sometimes a baked potato or hardboiled egg their own parents had given them to eat at school.

  “That’s really nice of them,” she told her son. “They are refraining from eating to keep you from starving. The Lord sees everything, and he surely blesses them and will reward them for their good deeds when the day comes.” Yesterday, Sandor told her, a generous Austrian girl threw a hardboiled egg over the fence to pass on to the smallest Schuster boy. The three-year-old managed to grab hold of the precious egg, but five-year-old Andre pounced and snatched it from him. He squeezed it and ate it whole, shell and all.

  The little Schuster boy cried his heart out, ran over the puddles and wept to his mother. Sandor heard about it from his friend Eric Schuster, the robbed boy’s older brother. Terry learned of this, as well. She came to a decision to punish her son for this act, and worse still, to remonstrate him outloud, and in public.

  “Go fetch him,” she ordered Sandor. “Bring me the rascal immediately!”

  Sandor returned to the shed empty handed after a long while. “He’s ashamed. He is hiding. He’s scared of you.”

  Andre arrived at the shed’s doorstep by evening. His feet carried him to his mother unwillingly. It was the dark that got the better of his fears. In his despair in view of the darkening skies, he had no choice but to return to his mother. She asked him to explain himself.

  Andre looked down and whispered, “Anyuka,” [Hungarian: Mother]. “But Anyuka, it’s not my fault; I couldn’t help it. I was so hungry. I was so hungry. I couldn’t resist. I’m not to blame.”

  She couldn’t listen. She was so run over by anger, her ears went red.

  It wasn’t the child she was furious with. She was incensed that hunger got the better of him, took hold of his soul and tried him, had put him to the test, which he failed. Terry’s eyes filled with fire and she swung her arms in the air, clenched her fists, grabbed her son and began hitting him. She hit his back and behind, slapped him across the face and pulled his hair. She then saw his scared gaze, so she stayed her hands. In her despair, she began hitting her own hunger-swollen belly, until she collapsed to her feet on the shed floor, weeping and helpless.

  In her agony, she got hold of the child and embraced him, her tears falling on his face. They sat like that together for a while, weeping and wailing, clutched together, their tears mixing across each other’s face.

  “Get up, Mom, enough, Mummy …” he begged her, helping her up.

  Terry picked herself up, gathered herself and rose slowly, still holding on to her son in her lap. She laid him on the mattress and lay beside him, caressing his head, mumbling, “Forgive me, child, forgive me,” until his crying subsided and his breath was regular once again. She was by his side the whole night. Her eyes opened and shut every now and then. She was overcome by nightmares in those few moments of sleep. Andre slept right next to her, spooned by her aching body, much like little Arno at the time. She felt Andre’s neck, found his beating heart, saw it was steady and regular and was relieved. Yes, the boy is alive. She closed her eyes for a moment.

  But te
rror kept tormenting her, rolling in her mind like thunder. Shadows overcame her through the dark. Wild horses ran toward her, galloping, running her and her children over with their hooves. She felt their hooves hitting her over the head. I’m going crazy, she thought to herself. I’m going mad. I have to relax and get some sleep.

  Those horrific images would not relent. She held on to Arno’s broken head as though it was some round fruit dripping with red juice. Her clothes were soaked. The bleeding was like a river. All red. The water collected at the ditch surrounding the ghetto at Debrecen. She saw Sandor walking over to the foot of the ditch, collecting blood-water with a tin cup. “No!” she screamed, “do not touch your brother’s blood!”

  Terry woke.

  Then, in February 1944, all she wanted was to die with her son and be buried along with him. She stood by the small grave she had dug by herself and covered her own head with fresh dirt. Her warm tears hardened and formed lava stones. Each tear fell heavily from her eyes onto the cloth that wrapped her silent son. The skies darkened slowly, and it began to rain. Rabbi Sonnenfeld came over and whispered in her ear, “Terry, Terry, you must cover the grave.”

  God,’ she pleaded in her heart, by your mercy, do not abandon him.

  She had not slept a wink that entire night.

  When dawn came, she went out to fetch a pail of water. She washed her face in cold water and then removed her clothes and soaked them. The coagulated blood made them pink. She pressed them dry and left them on the floor. Wrapped in a flimsy blanket, she then went outside to throw the water out and refill the pail. Her movements were automatic, mechanic, as she poured water over her own body, wiping away the red stains all over her skin. Her hair was standing up. Her blood curdled. She went over to the pile of clothes and put them back on. Sandor opened his eyes. “Mom,” he cried to her. “Are you here?”