I Have Lived a Thousand Years

by Livia Bitton-Jackson

  We start on a long trek along the endless row of boxcars, and peer into each. Most of the cars are not empty. There are men and women lying about in the dark interiors, and we call to them, asking about Bubi. Not one of them answers. Are they asleep? Are they dead? Should we climb into each wagon to see if any of them is Bubi … ?

  But Mommy trudges on, and I follow. There are many others who, like us, simply plod along the tracks. But they do not seem to be looking for anyone. They are simply walking about in a daze. We address these walkers, we inquire about Bubi, but they do not answer. They do not seem to hear.

  Many lie about on the ground, on the tracks, on the metal steps leading to the boxcars. They seem unaware of what is going on all about them. Mommy and I crash ahead, from one boxcar to another, in a futile search for my brother. The bulk of the prisoners has left the embankment. The valley is covered with a carpet of prison stripes.

  “Mommy, there is no point in hanging about here. This train is endless. We cannot look into every single wagon. Let’s go and try to get some food. …”

  “I’m not leaving until we find Bubi. I’m not leaving until we find Bubi. I’m not leaving until… Bubi!!”

  He is limping toward us, slowly, deliberately dragging his tattered, injured leg.

  “Bubi!!” I cannot believe my eyes. How can this happen? Among the thousands, we meet face to face. He, too, was looking for us near the train.

  Bubi is in very poor condition. He is barely breathing. His wound has opened and blood is trickling down his leg. His face is badly bruised from a brutal kick he had received. Who kicked him in the face? When? He cannot remember.

  The three of us sit on the embankment, and all around us inmates are disappearing. We are almost alone.

  Suddenly, there is the sound of rapid gunfire. Another volley, now louder. Squirts of red slash the green valley. Shrieks of pain and panic are interspersed with rounds of shooting. Inmates are dropping among the cornstalks like toy tin soldiers, and their bodies rapidly form large red piles among the green corn.

  “Zurück in die Waggonen!” Back into the wagons. “Los! Los!” Orders shouted in hysterical German accompany incessant gunfire, and the multitude, like a giant torrent, surges toward the embankment. The shooting continues, and the mad, upward rush is intermittently blocked by the bodies rolling downward among the ranks. “Back into the wagons!”

  What happened? Where are the Americans?

  Within minutes the embankment is swarming with inmates—many bleeding from heads, shoulders, abdomens, limbs—running, limping, tottering toward the wagons.

  Mommy, Bubi, and I scramble to our feet and hurry toward the nearest wagon in the segment reserved for women. Mommy tears a piece off her skirt, and ties the cloth about Bubi’s head as if it were a kerchief. “Here. You are a woman now. No one will notice the difference. I want you to come into our boxcar. I will take care of you.”

  In the insane rush no one pays heed, and before the boxcar fills to capacity, the doors are slammed shut from the outside, and the train begins to roll immediately. The sun is setting. From the small, barred window I can see the green valley studded with pools of red, and hundreds of prone bodies in striped uniforms. The train picks up speed and rolls past the valley of the dead and the dying.

  Where to?

  What happened to our liberation? Why are we back again in a German prison car? Are we being herded like cattle to slaughter? Is this all a game? A sinister, cruel diversion?

  My God, is it our destiny to be pawns in a game? When will the game be over?

  We are once again prisoners locked behind bars, still hungry, thirsty, dazed. And very tired.

  Except those who are lying dead in the cornfield. For them the game is over. Their bid for freedom was silenced suddenly, arbitrarily. Have they lost the game?

  Or have we?

  IT’S AN AMERICAN PLANE!

  IN THE TRAIN, APRIL 28, 1945

  The train keeps rolling among high mountains and dark forests. Mommy and I huddle together, hoping with our mutual body heat to form a shield of protection against the bitter cold in the boxcar. Bubi is lying on his back with closed eyes, motionless. He is still alive. His breath is an uneven series of faint eruptions through partially opened lips.

  No one speaks. There are no words for the events of yesterday, the sudden bliss of liberty, the brief, intoxicating gasps of freedom, the sudden reversal, the shooting, the bloody corpses in the cornfield…. And the prison train half full with wounded, starved, and apathetic inmates rattles on and on.

  Faint rays of early dawn filter through the cracks of the cattle car. The heads of prone bodies bounce and bob in tune with the steady jolt of the train’s clank and clatter. Only a few feeble cries of pain and muffled groans disrupt the silence of apathy and the rhythm of the moving train.

  By noon we reach a station, and the train stops. The cessation of movement awakens the inhabitants of the boxcar. One by one they stir and scramble into a sitting position. But Bubi remains still.

  Mommy crawls to him and strokes his face. “Bubi. Do you hear me? Can you hear me?”

  He opens his eyes. “I’m dizzy,” he says, and shuts his eyes again.

  There is loud shouting outside. One of the girls crawls over to the window and peers out.

  “I see white trucks with large red crosses … many German soldiers.” Her voice is a croak.

  The Red Cross. Perhaps they came to take the wounded.

  The loud shouting continues. Finally we make out the words in German: “All line up near your window! Hold your dish out! The Red Cross is handing out warm soup. One by one, step to the window, and reach out with your dish!”

  Soup! Warm soup! In a second the bedraggled prisoners crowd near the window. I untie my dish from about my waist and with great effort get to my feet. The wagon is spinning about me. Mommy is helping Bubi to his feet, but he keeps tripping and falling. She tries to prop him up, but both tumble to the floor. Holding onto the wall I make my way toward them. I manage to reach them, and the two of us pull Bubi to his feet. Supporting him on two sides, the three of us inch our way to the window.

  By the time we reach the window, the crowd dwindles. Many are sitting and slurping the steaming yellow liquid. The soup’s aroma saturates the wagon and makes my body tremble. It’s our turn. Mommy supports Bubi with both hands as he approaches the window and reaches out with his right hand holding the dish. I am supporting Mommy from behind.

  There is a burst of machine-gun fire. A sudden impact hurls Bubi backward against Mommy and both fall to the floor, blood spurting from Bubi’s forehead. The dish in Bubi’s hand is covered with blood. Rat-tat-tat-tat … machine-gun fire from every direction. Everyone about me falls to the floor. Blood is bubbling from the shoulder of the girl next to me. The girl on my other side tumbles face down, her soup spilled. A hole in the middle of her back is spurting blood like a fountain. As I lie flat on the floor I see streaks of fire darting through the walls from all sides, and zigzagging through the car. One such flash hits my neighbor in the face, and her eye splatters on her left cheek.

  I cover my head with my tin dish. Whatever happens I must survive. Arms, legs don’t matter. I must protect my head to survive.

  “Mommy, put your dish over your head, and lie flat on the floor!” Mommy can’t hear. Machine-gun fire drowns out my voice. I scream with all my might, “Mommy, put your dish over your head! Lie flat, Mommy!”

  Mommy does not hear. She is holding Bubi’s bleeding head in her lap and bandaging it with a piece of cloth she has torn from her dress. I shriek hysterically, “Mommy! Leave him alone! He was hit in the head. You can’t help him! Lie flat so you don’t get killed also … Mommy, please, please, don’t get killed.”

  I know this is the end. Yet somehow, somehow I must survive. Even though around me everyone is dying, I want to stay alive. Panic paralyzes me into one obsessive thought: to live. To live!

  The Red Cross food trucks were a Nazi trap: They lined us up
at the window with the ruse of the warm soup distribution in order to hit us more easily with machine-gun fire. I know this is the end. They will keep shooting until everyone in the boxcar is dead. Yet, somehow I must stay alive. I must. I must live.

  Mommy cradles Bubi’s head, unaware of the relentless barrage of gunfire. She is oblivious to death and danger about her. A young girl’s leg is torn off at the knee, and she sits holding the lower leg. When she lets go, the lower leg falls to the floor and she stares at the knee bone, a bloody stump protruding from the tattered thigh. Then she begins to scream.

  She is Lilli, the pretty, sixteen-year-old girl who entertained us with her singing in Augsburg. I idolized her: She was everything I was not—petite, brunette, a talented singer. I grab her lower leg, and with my two hands press it against the bloody knee stump. It is still attached by a shred of skin.

  “Hold it!” I scream at Lilli and wait for her to place her two hands on the bloody limb before taking mine away. “Hold it!” Lilli stops screaming and obeys my insane impulse, believing that by pressing the parts against each other they will grow together again. She holds the leg, her hands overflowing with blood.

  The shooting has stopped. A sudden deadly silence. We look at each other. Did the shooting really stop? Is it all over? And we are not all dead. Eight dead. Many wounded. Some were not hit at all. Mommy and I are covered in blood, but neither of us was hit. Bubi lies unconscious but he’s alive: He is breathing, but blood is seeping through the rag Mommy tied about his head. He is also bleeding at the right elbow.

  Lilli is sitting in a pool of blood, trembling violently but still holding on to her leg. She does not answer when I ask her if she is in pain. The girl whose eye was shot out complains of a headache. She does not seem to realize that she lost an eye.

  The youngest of the three Stadler sisters from a neighboring town in Czechoslovakia is bleeding profusely from one arm, and complains of severe pain. Her older sister, a tall girl with a lame leg, keeps soothing her with endearments. Both seem unaware of their oldest sister’s condition. She is lying next to me near the wall, face down, the hole in the middle of her back oozing dark blood. She is a teacher, and once she substituted for our teacher in Somorja. I liked her better than our teacher and I told her so in Augsburg. This made her happy, and from then on she gave me a smile every time we passed each other. I bend over her. I cannot hear her breathing. I touch her arm. It is cold.

  All at once the wagon doors slide open. German soldiers shout at us from the doorway to get out of the wagon. The enemy planes are expected to stage another attack. We are permitted to leave the wagons and hide in the forest. Los! Move!

  Some start to crawl toward the door. But most are unable to move. “Los! Move! The planes are coming!” This must be another trap. But I see German soldiers running up on an incline toward the nearby forest.

  “Elli, you go. I cannot move. I’m staying here with Bubi.”

  “Mommy, you must. You can make it.”

  “And what about Bubi? We cannot leave him here.”

  I know Bubi is beyond help. I have not heard him breathe for some time now. But I do not want to leave Mommy behind.

  “Let’s take him along.” I crawl over and lift Bubi by the shoulders. Without protest Mommy lifts his legs, and we drag him toward the door. All at once he opens his eyes. I scream: “Mommy, Bubi is alive!”

  “Of course he is alive. You didn’t know?”

  I didn’t know. How wrong I was! He is alive. Oh, my God. I start to weep and my tears are dripping on Bubi’s head as I drag him by the shoulders. At the door I prop Bubi up in a sitting position, climb off the wagon, and help Mommy down. Once outside, she collapses on the ground.

  “I can climb off if you help me,” Bubi mutters. I help him crawl off the wagon, and he is leaning on my shoulder as I pull Mommy to her feet. People ahead are crawling up on the green incline toward the forest. Holding on to each other, the three of us start crossing a gravelly strip flanking the tracks. But there is a wire running horizontally about a foot high in the air, and neither Bubi nor Mommy are able to step over it. They cannot lift their feet high enough. I bend down to lift Bubi’s foot, but he loses his balance, and all three of us tumble onto the tracks.

  Mommy cries, “It’s no use. I cannot go on. Elli, you go ahead. Leave us here.”

  There is a low steady hum of approaching planes. They are back.

  “Let’s crawl under the wagons.”

  The three of us crawl under the boxcar on all fours. A few other inmates are also there. Beth Stadler and her injured sister are lying on their bellies. The planes are flying low. A plane dives down into a clearing at the edge of the forest some hundred yards ahead and sprays machine-gun fire into a cluster of inmates and German soldiers among the trees. It’s an American plane!

  Incredible. An American plane! So it is true: It is an “enemy” attack. But why would American planes fire at a transport of concentration-camp inmates? Can’t they see the striped uniforms? And why would the Germans attempt to save us?

  The planes fly overhead, spray machine-gun fire in every direction, and fly off. Within minutes, they return, fly low, and attack a third time.

  The noise of the planes’ engines combined with the sound of rapid machine-gun fire is ear-shattering. I can see bluish flashes zigzagging in every direction. An airplane is diving toward the trains. Eva, a co-worker from Augsburg who is crouching on my right, is hit and killed instantly. Beth Stadler lies on top of her younger sister, and whispers, “Don’t worry, little sis, I will not let them hurt you this time. I’m covering you with my own body. If they shoot here, it’s I who will be hit, not you.”

  Her sister does not answer. She is dead. She’s been hit in the side of the neck.

  Beth Stadler goes wild. She crawls out from under the wagon and positions herself out in the open. She turns her face upward, waves her arms at the sky, and howls, “God! Do you see me? I am here! Kill me! Kill me! You killed my two sisters. My two beautiful, talented sisters. And you spared me, a cripple. Why didn’t you spare them? Why didn’t you kill me instead? Kill me now! I don’t want to live. What will I tell my parents? What will I tell my mother? Oh, God, what will I tell her?”

  The planes drone overhead. Mommy calls to her, “Beth, come here. Come under the wagon fast.”

  In a daze Beth turns around, and crawls toward Mommy. Then she crawls over to her dead sister under the boxcar, embraces her, and begins to sob.

  The planes are gone. We continue crouching under the wagons, waiting in silence. But they do not return. Beth’s sobs break the silence. “What will I tell my parents? The cripple survived. And my two beautiful, talented sisters are dead!” We crouch silently, waiting. The planes do not return. The attack is over. The German guards and the inmates start to emerge from the forest. We, too, crawl out from under the wagons. Beth is dragging the body of her sister.

  “Back into the wagons!”

  Beth carries her sister on her shoulder into the boxcar. Mommy and Bubi and I support each other as we clamber back into the wagon. Beth lays her sister alongside the older one who is face down near the wall. The wounded lie quietly. Several are no longer breathing. The girl shot in the eye is also dead.

  The wagon floor is covered with pools of blood. The three of us find a dry corner. Lilli lies in a stupor, trembling violently, her leg still hanging on a shred of skin. She is no longer holding on to it.

  Two guards appear in the open doorway. “Are there any corpses in this car?”

  “Yes, there are.”

  “How many?”

  We count. “Twelve.”

  Two males in bloody, striped uniforms clamber into the car, carry out the dead bodies one by one, and place them on the strip of gravel alongside the tracks. Despite Beth Stadler’s pleas, her two sisters are also carried out of the wagon and placed on the heap of bodies opposite the open doors of our car.

  The sun is setting by the time the train begins to pull out. The doors are
left open, and Beth stands in the car’s entrance staring at her sisters’ bodies as the train rolls past them with increasing speed and clatter.

  “Remember, Beth,” Mommy reminds her, “the anniversary of your sisters’ deaths according to the Hebrew calendar is three days before Lag B’Omer. Your sisters’ Yahrzeit is the thirtieth day of Omer.”

  I look at Mommy in amazement. How can she have her wits about her at such moments? How can she remember the Hebrew date after what we’ve just been through? How can she think of Yahrzeits?

  The train picks up speed. It is getting dark. Sabbath is coming to a close. It is April 28, 1945.

  FREEDOM, AT LAST

  SEESHAUPT, APRIL 30, 1945

  Perhaps our guards no longer care whether we escape or not. The doors of the boxcar stand wide open. It is bitter cold in the wagon. Most of us are wounded, some critically. The others are too weak to move.

  We roll with a steady, loud clatter amid high mountains and deep forests. The train moves on all day. All night. We have been in the cattle car a whole week, without food, without water. The night seems endless. The rattle of the train goes on forever.

  Lakes glisten with eerie gray light. There is deadly silence in the boxcar. My brother is lying with closed eyes, his head in Mommy’s lap. Mommy sits propped against the wall in the corner, her head hanging to one side, her eyes half closed, her mouth wide open. I know she’s asleep.

  Lilli is silent now. She stopped whimpering some time ago. I touch her. She is very hot.

  Beth is silent, too. She’s not asleep, though. She leans against the wall quite upright, staring ahead. Her eyes seem enormous in the shadowy darkness of the car.

  The two remaining sisters from the small Hungarian village huddle together, asleep. Judy, the girl from Budapest with the injured shoulder, also sits upright, and seems wide awake. She wheezes very loudly, the only human sound in the wagon. Sometimes she gasps for air, and then Mommy trembles in her sleep, raises her head and opens her eyes for a second, then closes them and lets her head fall to one side again. Judy must have been shot in the lungs. That is why she has trouble breathing. I hope we will be liberated soon. She needs urgent medical attention.