I Have Lived a Thousand Years
Page 8
How lucky for me that my last menstruation was just over when we arrived. I’d rather die than have blood flow down my legs! In full view. Oh, my God! I could not bear it. But … what about next time, in less than three weeks?! There’ll not be a next time. By then the war will be over, and we’ll be free. This cannot last much longer. It’s impossible to survive this much longer.
Getting used to thirst is the hardest. I’m always thirsty. For Mommy hunger is hardest. She complains of being hungry all the time. But for me, thirst is much worse. The only fluid we get is four gulps of a black liquid called coffee at the morning Zählappell. I think I’m going mad with craving for water all day long. We are forbidden to leave the area of our barrack, and so the “lake” is out of bounds. No drinking all day, and all night. The sun is scorching, and we loiter aimlessly about the barrack all day. We are forbidden to enter the barrack during the day, or sit in its shade. But sometimes we take a chance and sit, even lie, on the ground behind the barrack. When a German approaches we give a slight kick to girls who have fallen asleep, and in a flash they are on their feet. Mommy keeps falling asleep, and I keep guard. When it’s her turn to keep guard, she also falls asleep. It is better that I lean against the wall of the barrack and sleep that way. I can keep alert when I sleep standing up.
From the scorching sun our faces blister and crack. Brownish discharge oozes from the cracks and forms large crusts around the edges. Our faces look ridiculous and repulsive.
I definitely look more ridiculous than most girls. My extremely fair complexion responded to the fierce sun by sprouting large blisters ringed with red on my nose, my cheekbones, and the back of my neck. My ears look enormous because of towering blisters on my earlobes. I look like a clown. A mass of pus sores around my cracked lips make, me look as if I’m wearing a perpetual grin stretching to my ears.
My hair has started to grow on a scalp flaming red from the onslaught of the sun. The sharp, yellow bristles against a scarlet backdrop make my head look like a blushing porcupine.
During the night of the riot someone had torn my left sleeve at the shoulder. Now the sleeve hangs folded to my elbow. On the exposed shoulder another blister has popped up.
I walk barefoot since I cannot wear the shoes I received in the showers. They are too small. Huge, silly blisters also cover my feet. A large blister blew up on the side of my right leg. Someone had kicked me in the cattle car and the bruise, after festering for a while, also turned into a huge, domelike blister. So, my ludicrous looks are compounded by a strange limp. With blisters also on my soles, I have not managed to devise a graceful manner to navigate. How can Mommy and my cousins claim that I look like my brother Bubi? He is handsome with perfect features. And I? My God! I am a disfigured scarecrow.
How is Bubi now? Is my handsome brother also disfigured by sun and thirst?
THE DAWN OF NEW HOPE
AUSCHWITZ, JUNE 9-10, 1944
It’s our tenth day in Auschwitz. Today Aunt Celia is going to join us, right after Zählappell. Last night she sneaked into our barrack with the happy news that a woman in our barrack was willing to change places with her. From now on we will stand Zählappell together. Suri and Hindi are also looking for girls willing to change places with them. Then we will be a row of five together. There is a much better chance to make it when you are five, together. You share the soup equally. You warn each other. You help prop each other up during the long stand. I can’t wait for this Zählappell to be over.
Here they come, marching smartly, a delegation of five SS officers. Rapidly they count the heads of the first row. All’s in order. Then they bark an order. What was it? March?
March! The first rows begin to move, and we follow. We are marching past the row of barracks toward the gate of the camp. The gate opens and we march through. We are marching on the gravel road between two rows of barbed-wire fence, past rows and rows of barracks. “Look, Mommy. We are leaving the camp. We are leaving Auschwitz!” But Mommy does not relax. She is worried about leaving her sister behind.
“We had no chance to let Celia know. Or Suri and Hindi,” Mommy whispers. “What will happen to her, my poor little sister? She has had diarrhea for three days now….”
We were told that diarrhea was very dangerous in Auschwitz.
Our march leads to the showers. With practiced speed we undress. The stares of the SS guards no longer matter. We feel no nakedness without our prison uniforms as we felt no clothedness in them. Our bodies have lost dimension. It is our souls that are naked, exposed, violated.
The shower and shaving are by now familiar experiences. And so is the wet, shivery wait on the outside—the Zählappell.
We are ordered to march. Again we pass many camps beyond barbed-wire fences lined with gawking inmates, tall watchtowers, and finally, the high, forbidding iron gate crowned by the huge, black, spidery letters—ARBEIT MACHT FREI!
We are leaving Auschwitz!
The train station comes into view. A long row of cattle cars. Barking dogs. Barking SS guards. Familiarity breeds less fear.
I have a pair of shoes now. They fit, and give me a new outlook on life. As the train begins to move out of Auschwitz’s morning fog, I feel curiously elated.
“Mommy, you’ll see. We’re going to a better place. You’ll see. Let’s thank God that we’ve left Auschwitz behind.”
Mommy is silent. The ordeal of separation from her sister is a heavy burden. The train rolls amid stark hills, forlorn farms. The cracks of the wagon afford a view. At times we stand still for hours. At dusk we roll into a dense forest, and the train comes to a halt. We spend the night standing still in the depth of the forest. When light begins to sift through the cracks of the wagon, the train begins to move again.
The wagon is not jam-packed this time: We even have room to lie down. Five sisters with lovely voices lead us in singing familiar tunes, and soon the memory of Auschwitz dissipates in the dawn of new hope. I join in by reciting poetry, and many of the girls respond in a chorus to the refrain of my most popular poem, “God, Help Our Beloved Nation …”
The train slows to a halt at a station. The sign reads KRAKOW. I remember learning about Krakow in school. It’s the capital of a province of Poland called Galicia. My father’s family originated from Galicia. In Krakow there is a large and prominent Jewish community. Or, rather, was. All the Jews must have been deported from here long ago.
“ ’Raus! Alles ’raus. Aussteigen!” Out! Everybody out! Off the train! We are driven in open army trucks through a cold, dismal, rainy morning, across winding, hilly roads. The sky is heavily overcast. Large drops of rain hang on a huge sign in German and Polish above a wide metal gate: CAMP PLASZOW.
The gates open, and we roll into a circular clearing surrounded by high hills. Rows of barracks are neatly set about a central square with a high flagpole flying the SS flag. Here the trucks discharge their cargo of one thousand women with their freshly shaven heads glistening against the darkened sky.
We have arrived in Plaszow, the most notorious forced-labor camp in Poland.
“MOMMY, THERE