Sapphire Skies

by Belinda Alexandra

  ‘But what about us?’ I asked her. ‘We’re eyewitnesses to their crimes. What do they intend to do with us?’

  Anticipating that there would be some desperate act by the Nazis before the Red Army arrived, Dora and I stowed away food and prepared a hideout in one of the storage bunkers.

  A few days later, Russian bombers destroyed several bunkers, including the food depot. Fortunately Dora and I had been loading a truck at the time and weren’t inside the depot. We rushed to inspect the damage and were relieved to see our hideout bunker still standing.

  The SS soldiers ordered prisoners out of their barracks, even though the temperature had fallen seventeen degrees below zero. Those who didn’t move quickly enough were beaten. In the confusion Dora and I, along with another woman from our bunker, slipped away to our hideout. From the commotion we heard outside it was clear something terrible was happening.

  ‘They’re going to make all able-bodied prisoners march west, to Germany,’ the woman claimed.

  I stared at her in horror. The idea was madness. Even the strongest prisoners weren’t up to that in the extreme cold. They were inadequately clothed and many of them didn’t have shoes.

  We remained hidden in the storage bunker, huddling together for warmth. I heard Soviet planes engaging with the Germans near the camp and imagined Valentin up there in his Yak fighter coming to rescue me.

  Early the following morning the lights outside the bunker went out and darkness fell over the camp. I crawled to a window but I could only see the flames of dozens of bonfires. We ventured out, hiding behind abandoned barrows and crates in case the Germans were still about. All around us lay the frozen bodies of women who hadn’t been well enough to march. The SS had shot them. They’ve made a bad job of hiding the evidence of their atrocities, I thought.

  There seemed to be no guards around and parts of the barbed wire around the camp had been cut. Was it a trick? I squinted at the guard towers, trying to see if any soldiers remained there. But they appeared to be abandoned. Were we truly free at last? I wanted to believe it but was anxious that this was only a lull before another storm hit.

  ‘I’m going to the men’s camp,’ said the woman who had hidden with us in the bunker. ‘I want to find out what happened to my husband and son.’

  We couldn’t stop her. In her shoes I would have done the same thing. But Dora and I thought it was wiser to go back to our hiding spot. We were right. At first light SS soldiers arrived in trucks. They spread throughout the camp, dragging sick patients out of bunkers and forcing them to stand in the snow. Dora and I clung to each other when we heard soldiers breaking into the storage bunker where we were hiding. We covered ourselves with piles of blankets but the soldiers had brought dogs and we were sniffed out.

  ‘Out! Out!’ the soldiers screamed, beating us with the butts of their rifles.

  We were forced to line up with the other women from the camp in rows of five. Jewish women were placed in the front rows, the rest of us behind them. The blood drained from my face. They were going to execute us, row by row. I glanced up, willing the Soviet Air Force to arrive. But the sky remained empty.

  The soldiers formed into their murder squads. The woman next to me, a Polish resistance fighter, started to pray. From the rhythm of her speech I knew that she was reciting the Lord’s Prayer. I crossed myself.

  From behind the soldiers came a rumbling sound: vehicle engines. A convoy of German armoured cars pulled up. An officer leaped out and rushed towards the commander of the firing squad. A heated discussion took place, and a few moments later the commander gave an order and the soldiers turned on their heels and boarded the trucks that had brought them here. Then they drove off towards the road to join the convoy.

  We prisoners looked at each other. We were still alive despite such a close encounter with death. Several women fainted.

  ‘We’d better find some food and drinking water,’ Dora said.

  We hurried as fast as our thin bodies could carry us to the main camp, checking over our shoulders for guards, but no one appeared. Some of the prisoners had already raided the SS storage cellars and were astounded to find piles of warm clothing and food left behind in the Nazis’ haste to depart.

  Dora grabbed a coat, a pair of boots and some bread. ‘I’m not taking any chances,’ she told me. ‘I’m leaving now!’

  For me, the best decision seemed to be to stay in the camp and wait for the Red Army. I embraced my companion of the eighteen months, knowing that I would never see her again.

  Red Army soldiers arrived at the camp the following day. We gathered around the fences and watched them.

  They were horrified when they saw the state we were in. Several of them tugged open the gates. ‘You are free!’ they shouted. ‘You are free! You can go home!’

  We staggered towards them, embracing and kissing them. I stumbled towards one soldier and fell at his feet. ‘Thank you!’ I cried, hugging his legs. ‘Thank you for coming for us!’

  The soldier’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Comrade, you are Russian?’ he asked, bending down to help me up. ‘Of all the horrors I have seen … Comrade, what have those monsters done to you?’

  The Red Army brought with them doctors, nurses and volunteers, and the stone buildings of the main camp were turned into hospital wards. The nurses tended to the sick, while the volunteers, many of them Polish people from the surrounding countryside, handed out clothes from the storage rooms. I had borne the cold so long that the coats, boots, underwear and dress I was given felt luxurious.

  Now that we were free, I wanted to return to my regiment — which was my first duty — and then make contact with my mother. It was raining and the snow was turning to mud but I was determined to leave Auschwitz as soon as possible. The soldiers said that the government was setting up repatriation points for Soviet men and women who had ended up in Poland or Germany as prisoners or forced labourers. They told me there was one in Katowice, thirty-three kilometres northwest of Auschwitz. The food volunteers gave me a package of cheese, bread and dried fruit for the journey.

  I headed towards the gate, shoving my hands in my pockets to keep them warm. My fingers touched something inside. I took the object out: it was a ticket for a cinema in Budapest. The discovery drove home to me that I was wearing another woman’s coat; a woman who had met her end in the gas chambers. Something in my mind jumped. I heard screaming and lifted my hands to my temples. I saw the dead woman in the cart and her miscarried child. My feet felt as if they were sinking into the ground. The buildings around me no longer seemed solid but vibrated before my eyes.

  A soldier near the gate turned and looked at me. I collapsed to my knees and he rushed towards me. ‘Wait!’ he said, helping me up. ‘You’ll freeze to death.’

  He took me back to the hospital barracks, informing one of the nurses what had happened. The nurse took my pulse and my temperature, then made me remove the coat so she could feel my arms and legs.

  ‘What made you think that you’d have the strength to walk to Katowice?’ she asked. ‘You’re malnourished and dehydrated. Stay here another week and rest. Then you can go.’

  Over the next few days, I helped the volunteers in the kitchen by peeling potatoes and chopping cabbage for the vats of soup they made for the hospital patients, staff and soldiers.

  ‘It’s just as well the nurse stopped you from heading out on your own,’ one of the cooks told me. ‘They are driving some of the hospital patients to the railway station this afternoon to evacuate them to Katowice. You’d best go with them. The army unit stationed here is well disciplined, but there are other units that are roaming the countryside and raping any women and children they find. Their officers can’t seem to bring them under control. They target mainly German women for revenge, but they’ve also raped Russian women and Jewish women liberated from the Nazi camps.’

  The cook’s news filled me with dismay. Being in Auschwitz had confirmed that I’d fought on the side of right in this war. But the beha
viour of these Russian soldiers meant that we were brutes now, just like the Nazis.

  The trucks in which we were driven to the station were crowded and uncomfortable, but the volunteers made sure each person had plenty of food and water.

  ‘Eat only small amounts,’ a nurse reminded a male patient who was no more than skin and bones. His eyes were enormous globes in his head. ‘If you eat too much or too quickly your digestive system won’t be able to take it,’ she warned him.

  As we exited the main gate, I glanced back at the ironwork sign that I had seen that first day: Arbeit macht frei. I looked at the emaciated man the nurse had spoken to and felt sure that whatever life threw at me, it could never be worse than what we prisoners had endured at Auschwitz. What could be worse than the very depths of hell?

  TWENTY-SIX

  Katowice, 1945

  In Katowice we were met by Polish Red Cross volunteers and billeted in public buildings. Inside the school, where I was to stay with other former inmates of Auschwitz, we were led to a dining hall and given soup to eat. It was nothing like the foul-tasting muck at the camp. The soup was flavoured with onions, pickle and dill and I relished every piece of carrot, potato and parsnip in it. Mama made a similar dish and the taste reminded me that I would see her again soon.

  While we were eating, some women arrived. They explained that they were Polish Jews who had been hidden by sympathetic neighbours in Katowice. One woman showed me a picture of a mother with two young children. ‘Did you see my sister and her boys at the camp?’ she asked in German, which was the common language between us all now. ‘She was given up by a work colleague.’

  I took the photograph from her and studied it, then shook my head and handed it back. How could I tell her that her sister and her nephews were surely dead? I didn’t have words for what I had witnessed at Auschwitz. When later I took a bath I soaped myself vigorously, scrubbing behind my ears and between my toes, as if I could cleanse off the horror. But when I dried myself, it seemed that the stench of burnt flesh still clung to me. I was distressed that I might never be rid of the smell.

  The following day a doctor examined me, and afterwards I was interviewed by a Red Cross official. She was assisted by a Russian interpreter. The woman was brisk and efficient in her manner but the interpreter made me uncomfortable. When he spoke to me his lips curled back, exposing his yellow teeth. It gave me the impression of a dog about to attack.

  The official took down the number that was tattooed on my arm. ‘The guards destroyed most of the registers before they fled Auschwitz,’ she said through the interpreter. ‘You have to tell us who you are.’

  I hesitated. I had been a number for so long that I’d almost forgotten my name and who I was along with it. The memory of the NKVD officer staring at me across the sunflower field came back to me. Was it better to go on pretending I was Svetlana? But I was not as scared of the NKVD as I had once been. Now that the Soviet Union was on the brink of victory, I doubted that they would persecute me when I had fought for the Motherland and had ended up in Auschwitz for my trouble.

  ‘I am Natalya Stepanovna Azarova.’

  I gave my rank and regiment details. My name meant nothing to the official, but the interpreter frowned. ‘I want to rejoin my regiment,’ I told them. ‘I can be useful to the Soviet Air Force when they enter Berlin.’

  The interpreter translated my remark for the official but it seemed to me that he added some comment of his own.

  ‘I admire your courage,’ the official told me, ‘but according to the doctor’s report you are suffering from malnutrition. The Soviet government has ordered all prisoners of war to be sent to Odessa for repatriation. The train won’t leave for another week, however, so why don’t you take the opportunity to recuperate here? The medical officer in Odessa will be able to judge if you have improved enough by then to rejoin your regiment.’

  I was disappointed at not being returned to combat immediately but disobeying the order to go to Odessa would have been regarded as desertion.

  At the end of the interview, the official gave me a notebook and a pen. As soon as I returned to the dormitory I wrote letters to Mama and Valentin. I didn’t tell them that I had been in Auschwitz, only that I’d been captured. I poured out my love for them, and wrote out the words of ‘Wait For Me’ for Valentin.

  When I boarded the train for Odessa the following week, I was buoyant with joy. I would soon be back among my people and flying again! The other Russian women in my carriage were mostly nurses who had been captured, or civilians who had been taken to Poland to work in the labour camps for the German Reich. There were a couple of tank drivers but no other pilots.

  A young woman sat down next to me and introduced herself as Zinaida Glebovna Rusakova. We started talking and I learned that she was from Moscow too. She had been in her final year of medical school when the war broke out and had enlisted as a field doctor.

  ‘I was captured when the Germans encircled the Soviet Army in Vyazma,’ she told me. ‘I was kept in a prisoner-of-war camp until I was brought to Poland to work in a German armaments factory.’

  ‘You were captured in 1941!’ I exclaimed. ‘How did you survive so long?’

  Zinaida leaned towards me and whispered, ‘The prisoner-of-war camp was pure hell, but at the armaments factory we weren’t treated badly. I ate better there than I had when I was growing up in Moscow!’

  I was taken aback by Zinaida’s story. It made me wonder whether I might have ended up in a camp like hers instead of Auschwitz if I hadn’t tried to escape. ‘The thing that kept me going,’ Zinaida continued, ‘was that I made sure every twentieth shell I produced was a dud. That way I was still assisting the Motherland.’

  I was filled with admiration. Zinaida could have been hanged or burned alive for doing that. I’d seen it happen to inmates in Auschwitz who had tried the same thing. She reminded me of Svetlana in many ways: she had the same bright, cultivated energy.

  The memory of Svetlana’s death came back to me. I’d had to shut it out in order to survive, but now it returned like a nightmare. My heart ached and I excused myself to go out into the corridor so I could shed the tears I should have cried back then. But even though I wept my heart out, I felt no relief. I tried to recall the good things about Svetlana — her pretty face, the sound of her voice, her gentle touch, but they were blurred. I’d lost the essence of my friend when I’d shot her. How could I ever live with myself?

  As the train moved through the Ukraine, I was sickened by the destruction I saw. Entire villages had been reduced to ruins. The people who remained were living in holes in the ground, like rabbits in burrows.

  The women and I were travelling in passenger carriages but attached to the train were some cattle cars like the ones the Germans had used to transport prisoners to Auschwitz. When we stopped, I saw men climbing out of those cars to stretch their legs and go to the toilet, always under the watchful eyes of the guards.

  ‘Who are those men?’ I asked Zinaida.

  ‘They are soldiers who were captured by the Germans and agreed to fight on their side in special Russian units,’ she replied. ‘They will certainly be tried as traitors when they’re repatriated, but I guess it was either that or starve.’

  Although Odessa had been bombed and parts of it lay in ruins, the station was decorated with garlands of flowers and a band played the Soviet anthem when we alighted from the train. There was a giant portrait of Stalin with a message written underneath it: Our great leader, Comrade Stalin, welcomes his children home. I stared at the portrait and recalled my last conversation with Valentin when he had told me Stalin had personally signed my father’s execution order. Now, as much as I hated Stalin, I could never show it. I had to think of Mama. We were directed by soldiers to walk to the port on foot. A New Zealand warship had arrived from Marseille and Allied soldiers were supervising the disembarkation of troops of Soviet soldiers.

  The passengers from our train were led towards a warehouse. Outside it, Sov
iet officials examined the passenger lists from both the train and the ship. We were divided into two groups. The first group of repatriated men and women, including Zinaida, were ordered to enter the warehouse. As part of the second group, I remained outside. I had an eerie flashback to the selection process at Auschwitz, but in my anticipation of getting back to my regiment I pushed the memory away.

  ‘What’s going on?’ an Allied officer from the ship asked one of the officials in Russian.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the official told him. ‘We are dividing people into groups to make the processing easier.’

  The Allied officer nodded and shook hands with the official before returning to his ship.

  A truck arrived from the station with the belongings of those who had come by train. It was a shabby assortment — mainly bundles of clothing and other personal items. Everything I owned I now carried in my pocket: the notebook and pen the Red Cross official had given me, and the toothbrush, toothpaste and comb I’d been issued with in Katowice. The possessions were dumped in a pile. A soldier came along with a can of petrol and poured it over the goods before setting them alight. Those of us who saw what happened gasped but nobody dared protest. I searched my mind for an explanation. The only one I could think of for this callous act was that many of the camps had been plagued by typhus-carrying lice. Fire was the only way to destroy them.

  Two Ilyushin bombers appeared and circled over the harbour. The sound of their engines was deafening. What were they doing? I heard a sound like a volley of gunshots. Feeling uneasy, I looked around, but nobody else seemed to have noticed.

  About half an hour later the planes left and two men wheeled a mobile sawmill into place next to where we stood. The piercing scream of the saw hurt my ears. Was there some purpose in creating this noise? Then the doors to the warehouse opened again and our group was ordered inside.

  I was following my companions when an official grabbed my arm. ‘Natalya Stepanovna Azarova?’