I Have Lived a Thousand Years

by Livia Bitton-Jackson

  The two cousins, Irene and Martha, are lying near me, asleep. Irene was injured in the face and Martha bandaged her wound with the cherished scarf she had received from her father across the barbwire fence in Dachau. The scarf was Martha’s talisman, and now it is a blood-stained wrapping on her cousin’s face.

  Suddenly, Irene grows restless. She lifts her head and rips the scarf off her face. She sits up abruptly and shrieks, “Martha! I can’t see! I can’t see anything!”

  Martha awakens. “Don’t take off the bandage. Your face is still bleeding.”

  “But I can’t see! The bandage is off and I can’t see anything! I’m blind! Martha, I’m blind! My God, I’m blind! I’m blind! I’m blind!”

  Her screams wake the wagon. Words of comfort emerge from every corner. It’s dark in the car; no one can see. Your blindness may be temporary, caused by the sudden flash you saw. You lost too much blood; your lack of vision is a sign of weakness. Your face and eyelids are swollen, blocking your sight. Finally Irene quiets down and all sink again into lethargic silence.

  But Irene does not rest. She launches into a low-pitched monologue describing every detail of the machine-gun barrage on the wagon … the blinding flash which hurled her to the ground and caused her to bleed profusely, the pain, the noise, the blood, the blood…. With each repetition her voice grows more hoarse. Her words begin to slur. Her sentences crumble into phrases, disjointed, confused. But she talks on, incessantly, feverishly.

  Martha attempts to quiet her, to no avail. Irene is beyond hearing. I touch her gesticulating arm. It is very hot.

  Irene no longer describes the carnage caused by the strafing attack. She is talking about her family now, her hometown in Czechoslovakia, her mother, her father … her sisters.

  Pale light filters into the wagon. I look at Irene’s face. Two empty eye sockets stare back at me. I cover my face with both hands. God! Oh, God! God!

  Irene grabs my arm. “Look there! Do you see it? What a beautiful meadow! Beautiful! Do you see it? There! There!”

  She gesticulates wildly. She points at the dark wall of the wagon. “There! Beautiful meadow … trees, birds … beautiful …”

  Then she falls silent.

  Now Lilli begins to whimper again. “Are you in pain?” I ask, but she does not respond. Her lips are dry. Her leg stump is no longer bleeding.

  “Water …” she whispers in a barely audible tone.

  With the brightening light I see she is very pale. I touch her brow. It is cool. I stroke her face gently. I have no strength to cry. I have no tears, no tears at all. Yet I hold a sob deep within. Not in my mind. My mind is blank. In my stomach. I’m sobbing in my stomach as I am stroking the cooling forehead of pretty little Lilli lying next to the ravaged face of gentle Irene.

  “Mommy,” Lilli whispers. “Mommy …” Her head hits the floor of the wagon with a thump. She is dead.

  During the morning hours Irene dies, too.

  The train rolls on. All day. All night.

  The first flickers of dawn pierce the car, and I realize that we have been standing for some time. I must have dozed off after all. In the cattle car everyone is asleep, the dead and the living dead.

  Judy is no longer wheezing, no longer gasping for air. The blood on the floor of the wagon has long dried.

  Where are we? I want to peer between the slats but I cannot move. My limbs seem frozen. Better lie still and wait. Wait for the train to move again. Wait for the familiar rattle, which has become the only rhythm of life.

  Slowly, eyes open all around. No one moves. No one breaks the numb compulsion of motionlessness. We lie still and wait.

  In mid-morning sounds reach us. Human voices.

  A shadow is cast into the wagon. Then another. The voices seem quite near now. With effort, I lift my head.

  Two tall men in strange uniforms stand in the doorway. They look at us with a curious expression. One of them shakes his head and says something to the other. I do not understand what he says. I am very tired. It is difficult to concentrate. Then the two tall men in the strange uniforms leave the wagon.

  In a few minutes a heavyset officer with reddish cheeks appears. He speaks very loud in a strange Yiddish, “Who are you? Are you Jews?” Then he repeats, “Who are you? Do you understand me? Can you hear me? Can you speak Yiddish? Who can understand me?”

  We all stare without answering. Finally Martha, nearest to the entrance, whispers, “Who are you?”

  “We are Americans. But who are you? Are you Jews? Are you men or women?”

  “Americans?!”

  We all struggle into a sitting position. “Americans!” So it has come. We are liberated. It is all over. We are free. The Americans have finally come. We are free. They’ve come at last. At last.

  “Are you really American? Where are the Germans?”

  “The Germans surrendered. We’ve arrested your guards. But who are you? What prison camp do you come from? Are you men or women?”

  “We are Jewish women from the concentration camp Dachau. We are unable to walk. Most of us are badly wounded … machine-gun fire. Two days ago this train was strafed by American fighter planes. There are many dead among us.”

  “We’ve not eaten for many days. Many days,” I manage to speak. I am speaking German. The American seems to understand. “We’re very thirsty.”

  “You’ll get food soon. But first we must get you off the train. Can you get off the train?”

  He gives me a hand, and helps me off the wagon. Then he helps Mother. Two German civilians carry my brother out of the wagon, and place him on the ground near the train tracks. They carry the bodies of Lilli, Irene, Judy, and all the others out of the wagon, and place them beside the tracks. The entire station, every platform, is filled with the dead and wounded, and the living dead, all covered with blood. A sprawling horizontal multitude.

  A large group of German civilians stand near the station house. They are the only vertical bodies. Except for the heavyset American officer. He is making a speech to the “Leading citizens of Seeshaupt …” Seeshaupt? That’s a resort in Bavaria, an exclusive resort. “Have you ever seen such horror? Such atrocities … maimed skeletons … Your government… your people bear responsibility …”

  So this is it. Liberation. It’s come. I am cold. The trembling in my stomach … Too much air … it’s too light. I am very tired.

  A middle-aged German woman approaches me. “We didn’t know anything. We had no idea. You must believe me. Did you have to work hard also?”

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “At your age, it must’ve been difficult.”

  At my age. What does she mean? “We didn’t get enough to eat. Because of starvation. Not because of my age.”

  “I meant, it must have been harder for the older people.”

  For older people? “How old do you think I am?”

  She looks at me uncertainly. “Sixty? Sixty-two?”

  “Sixty? I am fourteen. Fourteen years old.”

  She gives a little shriek and makes the sign of the cross. In horror and disbelief she walks away, and joins the crowd of German civilians near the station house.

  So this is liberation. It’s come.

  I am fourteen years old, and I have lived a thousand years.

  I’m numb with cold. With hunger. With death and blood, and the rattle of the train rolling on and on… . Freedom, at last.

  Why don’t I feel it? Why don’t I feel it?

  HOMECOMING

  ŠAMORIN, JUNE 1945

  The large military trucks are driven by handsome young Americans with shiny black faces and quick flashes of brilliant, white teeth. They must be good-hearted men, these young black Americans—their smiles give them away.

  In the middle of June the “repatriation” began. Hundreds of thousands are waiting to leave the refugee camps and return home. The first transports went to various parts in Germany and Austria. And now our turn has come: We are being “repatriated” to Czechoslovakia. Mo
st of our friends are staying behind. Their turn is next, transports to Hungary and Rumania.

  We climb onto the huge military transport, Mommy, Bubi, and I, and are seated on metal planks flanking the three sides of the open vehicle. Our new belongings, a gray duffel bag and two smaller bundles made of sheets and three green army blankets, are tossed on top of a luggage heap in the middle of the truck.

  Then, the roar of the engine, a sudden rush of open air, frenzied waving, and we are off in twelve enormous, noisy vehicles. Very soon the transit camp recedes into a bluish haze and the hills come racing to meet the curving road. We race ahead, suspended between sky and Bavarian Alps. Wide-open sky. Unbridled charge of savage wind. Freedom; exhilarating, intoxicating, threatening. I hold on to Bubi’s arm with a firm grip. With eyes closed, chin raised, Bubi is thirstily drinking it all in through wide-open nostrils.

  “Fast, isn’t it?” My voice vibrates against the oncoming air current.

  “Wonderful. Just wonderful. These black Americans, they call them Negroes, they are the best drivers in the world!”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I remember reading it somewhere.”

  My brother Bubi knows everything. The road spirals upward on a narrow path. I’m not going to be afraid. I’m not going to be afraid.

  The trucks race nonstop all night. Stars hang against a brilliant sky. The chill night air paralyzes my body even under the blankets. My jaw is stiff from a thousand shivers. Aren’t they ever going to stop? Don’t they have to rest? They have been driving since yesterday morning.

  “There are two of them. They are taking turns.”

  By noon the next day the army vehicles come to a screeching halt in the center square of a Gothic town. Thank God. Finally we can rest our weary limbs for a while here, I hope.

  The drivers come to the back of the truck, and greet us with wan smiles. One of them says something in English, and then they begin to unload the luggage. With waves of their arms they indicate for us to get off the truck. We oblige, somewhat uncomprehending. As soon as the trucks are empty, the engines are revved up, and the vehicles take off in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

  What’s this? We stand, a lost bunch of worn travelers, in the midst of nowhere. Dusty cargo of the mighty American machines, we are dumped unceremoniously in the center of a strange town. Where are we? What will become of us?

  We find out that we are in Pilsen. Pilsen is Czechoslovakia. We are home. Our little crowd begins to scatter in every direction. Mommy, Bubi, and I have to get to Bratislava in Slovakia, much farther east, and the only transportation is by freight train. We head for the train station.

  It is getting warm. Our duffel bag is much too heavy. Bubi and I are dragging it on rough roads, sweat soaking the new American army surplus clothes we received in the transit camp. With our free hands we are helping Mommy carry the smaller bundles.

  At the station there is a freight train ready to leave for Bratislava tomorrow morning. The station master allows us to move into one of the cars and spend the night. Mommy finds a wicker broom, and sweeps the freight car clean. We spread our blankets, open our ration kit, and dine in the spacious luxury of an empty, cool wagon. What a stroke of good fortune!

  By nightfall several other passengers find their way into our wagon. They are all refugees of the war, heading home. Soon the wagon is full of people, and there is a pervading mood of expectation. For tomorrow.

  It is noon when wheels stir into motion and the wagon begins to roll. We are moving at last.

  Mountains mellow into rolling hills then flatten into wide-open stretches of green meadow. We are heading east toward the lowlands of the Danube Valley. The foliage is becoming familiar.

  The train moves in sparse installments, and it is only on the fourth day that we arrive at the outskirts of Bratislava. The train stops for several minutes, just long enough for the three of us to scamper off, dragging our bulky belongings. Our traveling companions wave frantically from the belly of the wagon as the train picks up speed and vanishes into the blinding sunshine.

  Mommy, Bubi, and I spend several days in Bratislava, until a farmer traveling east consents to give us a ride to our hometown in his cart. It is called Šamorin now.

  My first sight of Šamorin is obliterated by a hot summer haze and dust churned up by the horse’s hooves. The dull ache in my stomach changes to sharp stabs. The peasant cart turns the corner. There, on the small elevation of the deserted square, stands our house, now faded yellow with large patches of gray. A battered sign hangs above the shuttered store front: FRIEDMANN—GENERAL STORE. The windows are dark. The gate is ajar.

  “Here,” Mommy says. “Stop right here, please. And thank you kindly.”

  The courtyard is deserted. The rooms are bare. The floors are covered with thick layers of dust. And something else. In the middle of every room there is a heap of human excrement.

  Where is everything? The furniture, bedding, carpets, curtains, pots and pans. Even the pump from the well is gone. How will we get water?

  And where is Daddy?

  “Perhaps Daddy is staying with someone else. Until our return. He didn’t want to be alone in this empty house. Soon we’ll find out.”

  Bubi limps into town to find out. I run over to our neighbors to borrow a wicker broom. Mrs. Plutzer stops in her tracks. “Elli! Jesus Maria, it’s Elli! You’re back! Jesus is kind. You’re alive.”

  The Plutzers bring us a pitcher of milk, some eggs, and a bundle of straw to sleep on. We are home.

  Thirty-two young boys and girls have returned. Our arrival makes the number thirty-five. Daddy has not come yet.

  Then, one day, two weeks after our homecoming, Misi Lunger arrives and brings news about Daddy. He saw Daddy along the route home in the company of a man named Weiss from the village of Nagymagyar. What causes Daddy’s delay?

  When news reaches us that Mr. Weiss has arrived in his village, Bubi decides to get to Nagymagyar at once. A Šamorin cattle dealer on his way to some villages in the Nagymagyar vicinity offers Bubi a ride on his wagon early next dawn.

  It is still dark when Bubi rises and takes off toward the home of the cattle dealer. I feel a tinge of regret that Mommy does not let me join my brother on the journey. It is a hazardous trip for a girl: The countryside is full of roaming Russian soldiers.

  It’s about 10 A.M. when Bubi, his face ashen, walks into the kitchen. “Bubi, you’re back so soon?”

  “I did not go.”

  “The cattle dealer did not go to Nagymagyar after all?”

  “The cattle dealer went. I did not go.”

  A cold hand stops the beating of my heart. Mommy looks intently into Bubi’s eyes. Very, very quietly, she asks, “Bubi, what happened?”

  “We hung around for a long time before he was ready to start. When I climbed up next to him in the driver’s seat, he said, ’Look, kid. It’s a shame you should make this long trip for nothing. The others told you to go to Nagymagyar because nobody wanted to be the one to tell you. I’m going to tell you the truth about your father. He’s not coming home. He died in Bergen-Belsen two weeks before liberation. Lunger and Weiss buried him with their own hands.’ And so I did not go to Nagymagyar.”

  Mommy freezes. I give a shriek and run into the yard. Bubi follows me.

  “Come inside, Elli. There’s the law. I have to rend a tear in your dress. And then we have to sit shiva.”

  In the kitchen Mommy sits on the floor, staring into the vacuum.

  “When news of the death reaches the family after the lapse of shloshim, the thirty-day mourning period, they sit shiva only for an hour, instead of a week,” Bubi explains in a soft murmur. “Daddy died in April, and now it’s July.”

  Bubi grips my collar to rend a tear in it, and I begin to howl like a wounded beast. Gently he pushes me down on the floor, and I sit shiva for Daddy.

  There is nothing to keep us here any longer. Now we know that all the others are not coming home, either. News reaches us daily of
family and friends who were taken to the gas, and others who died in one camp or another, or on the highways of Germany, on death marches. And others who died after liberation on their way home.

  Each piece of news adds to a deepening sense of isolation. We are the only survivors, the three of us, just as Bubi said in Waldlager. There are no Jewish children here, no older people. The children I saw marching toward the smoke in Auschwitz, the little boy with the yellow clown, they were the last ones. When I see a child on the street, I see those children, and little Tommi, Susie, and Frumet in the cattle car heading for Auschwitz, and my insides turn numb with the pain of emptiness.

  I want to go to Palestine, the Jewish Land, and live among people who share my inner void. I want to hear the echo of that void reverberate in the voices of my fellow students, my fellow shoppers, my fellow pedestrians. When I reach for a bar of soap on the grocery shelf and my fingers cringe from the memory of soap made of “pure Jewish fat,” I want to glimpse the horror in the eyes of the next shopper reaching for a bar of soap. Can the void ever be filled?

  Perhaps it can be shared. Perhaps in the Jewish Land.

  But I have a problem. Bubi received an affidavit from a school in New York, and soon he will be leaving for America. The three of us had vowed never to be separated again. We must follow Bubi to America as soon as we can.

  What’s America like? Are there people in America who can understand? The compulsion to fill the void? The search, the reaching out? The sense of futility? The irrevocable statement that is Auschwitz? The loss of perspective? The total, irreconcilable loss?

  Can anyone understand the pain of the uprooted? This was my home once, my town, my country. The pasture beyond our house was my childhood playground. The path leading to the Danube was my path. I can still hear Daddy’s firm, light footsteps next to me in the grass as we hurry for a quick swim in our river. I can hear Mommy’s cheerful chatter, Aunt Serena’s soft singing far behind us. I can see Bubi and his friends striding ahead with fishing gear, partially swallowed up by the tall grass. I can see the poplars swaying in the distance and the deep shady forest looming far beyond. I can smell the mist of the water, mingled with the odor of wet moss. I can hear the pealing of church bells and their echoes booming in the surrounding hills. It is all part of the fabric of my inner world—the Danube, the meadow, the Carpathian foothills, and the town. Without it I am not whole. Yet, it is no longer mine. It is not my home anymore.