Lunch with the Stationmaster

by Derek Hansen

  Women stepped forward with fatalism and resignation when their names were called. Few resisted and few wasted their breath on pleas for clemency. It broke Gabriella’s heart when the six, seven and eight year olds stepped forward obediently but clearly baffled why anyone would want to kill them. Many had already lost their mothers and sisters and reached for the hand of the nearest adult for comfort and reassurance. It was as if they needed to know they weren’t at fault and that other adults valued them. In the end Gabriella couldn’t look at them. She felt too guilty because their names had been called out not hers, and too overwhelmingly relieved that she had escaped the cull one more time.

  The girls’ tattoos were no guarantee of survival but they were a lifeline of sorts when there was no other, provided they kept their health and strength and worked hard. Gabriella and Julia survived selection after selection but the rapid decline in the number of prisoners foreboded the inevitable. At one stage there had been more than seven hundred women in their barrack, now there were fewer than three hundred and the odds against their selection shortened.

  Gabriella’s and Julia’s names were called on the same morning in early November. Gabriella stepped forward as meekly as all the women before her had done. She had expected a surge of panic but there was none. Just a deadness and, to her surprise, a sense of relief that she no longer had to fear hearing her name called. Her father had once spoken of the relief some of his patients felt when he told them further intervention was pointless. Some had even drawn strength from the knowledge that the uncertainty of their future was resolved. That was the relief Gabriella felt, the relief of a patient told her condition is terminal. She clutched her bag in one hand and sought Julia’s hand with the other. Together they marched all the way to the station.

  It was less than two hundred miles from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz but their train took two and a half days to cover the distance. Twice a day the cattle trucks were opened for toilet stops, but principally to bury the prisoners who had died en route. There were no individual graves or markers, just a hole big enough to accommodate the bodies which were buried without ceremony. The rigours of their journey prepared Gabriella and Julia for an end which they considered inevitable.

  When they finally disembarked, they noticed that some prisoners were being pulled out of the line to one side and realised to their horror that they could be separated. The thought was unbearable. They held hands as they approached the selection point, each hoping that neither would be pulled out of line.

  ‘You and you!’

  The girls were too afraid to look.

  ‘You and you!’

  The voice was angry. Without warning guards grabbed her and Julia, pulled them both from the line and made them stand with the few other prisoners who had been selected.

  ‘What’s happening?’ said Gabriella to anyone who had an answer. She was relieved that Julia was still with her and they could face whatever the Germans intended to do to them together. But there was safety in numbers and what little safety she’d had was disappearing with the column of prisoners marching along the muddy road away from them.

  ‘I think we live another day,’ said a young man alongside her. ‘Look at us. We’re all young, all strong. There’s still work in us.’

  Gabriella looked around her and had to acknowledge the truth. They’d been selected but somehow deselected. She was momentarily overwhelmed with relief, but it was tempered by the sight of so many others vanishing down the road. If she was to live, what was to happen to all the prisoners in the column? The rumours she’d heard suddenly acquired substance. The full horror crashed down on her and she bit her lip so she wouldn’t cry out. But nothing could stop her tears. It had occurred to her that her mother, Elizabeth and her Uncle Jozsef had also faced this final selection. Neither her mother nor her uncle were young and her sister would have been barely able to stand. Had the Germans been more lenient then and less demanding in their selection? The passing parade suggested otherwise.

  Of the fifteen hundred prisoners who had begun the journey in Theresienstadt only twenty-two were selected for further work. Gabriella’s tiny group was marched into camp and taken to a processing centre where their heads were shaved and their clothing taken from them. They were given striped prison clothing to wear: trousers, a shirt, jacket and cap but no underwear. They were allowed to keep their shoes. Gabriella also managed to keep her book.

  After processing they were left standing on an open parade ground, exposed to a bitterly cold wind and rain squalls that gusted in across the flat and featureless landscape. They stood there freezing as hours passed, forgotten or ignored. But the position of the parade ground at the junction of rows of barracks gave the prisoners some idea of the scale of the camp. The sheer size and scale of Auschwitz horrified Gabriella. Barracks stretched away seemingly to the horizon whichever way she looked. She’d thought Theresienstadt was enormous for a prison camp yet Auschwitz dwarfed it. In the distance, in the direction the rest of her fellow travellers had gone, Gabriella could see smoking chimneys. Instinctively she knew their purpose. Alongside her she could hear soft voices murmuring and knew that the others had noticed the chimneys too. Suddenly the icy cold of the wind and rain could not begin to compare with the chill in her heart. Almost immediately she became aware of the sickly, sweet smell pervading the air. She closed her eyes and did her best not to vomit.

  Gabriella and Julia had been in Auschwitz for less than a week when their names were called. They had not yet come to terms with the overcrowding — there were more than a thousand women in their barrack, jammed together in rows of three-tier bunks — or got used to starving. Before Auschwitz they had been hungry but now they learned the difference between hunger and starvation. Their rations were less than half of what they had received in Theresienstadt. And they hadn’t got used to the smell, the shadow cast by the chimneys or to the desperate condition of the walking dead who populated Auschwitz.

  When they heard their names called, the girls had no doubt their time had come to go into the gas. They were told they were being taken to work in a munitions factory but by then nobody believed anything they were told. They’d met fellow prisoners who told them about the showers that weren’t showers and confirmed the purpose of the chimneys. Some of these prisoners had survived in Auschwitz for more than a year and somehow had learned to live on little more than a crust of bread and a few spoonfuls of thin soup a day. They’d lived through selections that had robbed them of their family and friends and heard all the lies and promises that were doled out to keep the doomed passive during the final march to their execution.

  Gabriella and Julia stepped forward, as passive and obedient as robots. Mercifully, horror had numbed them and fear had lost its currency. There were no tears. They were ordered to collect their things, then, hand in hand, they joined the column of selected men and women for what they believed was their last walk. Gabriella took little notice of where they were being taken. She stared at the ground or at the back of the person in front of her. Once she looked up to the sky, hoping for a last glimpse of beauty, a reminder of the way the world had been before the madness began, and how it would be when it was all over. But the sky was as grey as potato soup. There were no trees, no birds, no sun. A cold breeze chilled her and she felt weary beyond measure. Death was but another small step.

  ‘The station. Look! We are going to the station!’

  Gabriella had no idea who had spoken, only that it was a man. But the message was unmistakeable. They were not going into the gas. They were being given another chance to live.

  Fortunately for them, the Soviet advance coupled with a shortage of manpower in Germany’s faltering war effort had created an urgent need for slave labour and Auschwitz was an obvious source. The cattle trucks which had taken her away from her home in Sarospatak now became Gabriella’s lifeline. What were the discomfort and deprivations of the box cars compared with the prospect of the gas chambers and their evil chimneys? Gabriella felt
born again when she and Julia were herded into the packed car and felt the train pull away from the station. They didn’t care where they were headed as long as it was away.

  They were taken back west, to a camp at Urderon near Dresden, and put to work in a former textile plant turned munitions factory. They laboured twelve hours a day and slept whenever they could to try and preserve their strength. But the thin soups they were given to sustain them gradually became more watery and some days as many as three prisoners had to share one bowl. Bread kept them alive but there was never enough. Gabriella and Julia had escaped Auschwitz but they could not escape starvation. Every day they grew progressively weaker. Every day more prisoners died.

  They worked alongside local people who asked them what they’d done wrong to be treated so badly and were appalled by the answer. The locals also battled rationing and food shortages but they were not immune to the suffering of the prisoners. Occasionally and surreptitiously they shared the little food they had. Sometimes it was bread and sometimes vegetables, meagre offerings received with overwhelming gratitude. Gabriella was once slipped a generous slice of potato cake which she shared with Julia later that night. There was fat in it, salt and a hint of cheese. One in five of their fellow prisoners had died since Auschwitz, men as well as women, but they were both still alive and sharing a piece of potato cake. They ate over a blanket so they would not lose a precious crumb of their life-giving gift. Both girls wept.

  Late in March, with the Russians pressing from the east and the Allies advancing through Belgium and Holland, the prisoners were told they were to be moved. A rumour immediately swept through the camp that they were to be returned to Auschwitz and that this time, in their weakened condition, there would be no second chance.

  Optimism had blossomed with every Allied bomber that flew overhead and with every new tale of German defeats. The local women admitted the war was almost over and that they were praying the Americans would reach them before the Russians. Liberation had seemed a matter of mere days away. Now, with salvation knocking on the door, they were to be cheated. The spectre of Auschwitz cast a blanket of fear over the entire camp.

  It was a pleasant spring day when the walking scarecrows made their way to the station and the inevitable box cars. None of the guards yelled at them for straggling, no one got beaten. When Gabriella could drag her eyes up from the ground she noticed how much older the guards had become, how nervous and apprehensive. The Germans had always been so arrogant, so unwavering in their resolve. The change was monumental. She caught the eye of one of the guards.

  ‘Where are we being taken?’ she called out.

  In the weeks and months past she never would have dared address a guard. She heard a sharp intake of breath from Julia. Heads lifted, curious to hear if there would be an answer and what it might be.

  ‘Buchenwald, I think,’ said the guard hesitantly. ‘Yes, Buchenwald.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Gabriella.

  A murmur swept along the line of prisoners. Buchenwald not Auschwitz! Relief was palpable. But, as Gabriella soon learned from other prisoners, Buchenwald was also a concentration camp and they had no reason to expect conditions would be any better there.

  That night, while their train sat in a siding, the railway lines ahead of them were destroyed by bombing. They remained there, locked in their box cars, throughout the following day and night without food. When the train finally began moving once more it did so at a snail’s pace, finally diverting south. Towards evening the train halted at a siding near a village. The prisoners were unloaded and escorted to an abandoned work camp. There was no food and the beds had been stripped of bedding.

  The prisoners were starving. Many, including Julia, were too weak to rise from the beds once they’d settled on them. They lay down as though to die. Some women pleaded with the guards to let them forage in the adjacent fields to see what they could find. The guards agreed and allowed the prisoners to take turns scouring the land in small groups. All they found were turnips which were pooled and distributed. With no cooking facilities, they ate the turnips raw. The guards took the same share as the prisoners.

  Sometime during the night the train pulled away empty. For two more days, the prisoners took turns foraging. Their guards demanded pots and fuel from the villagers so they could make soup with the scant pickings the prisoners managed to find. It was barely enough. On the third day, the guards informed them that they’d been ordered to march on to Theresienstadt, a journey of some thirty kilometres. For the exhausted and starved prisoners it might just as well have been three hundred. Gabriella recalled her last arrival at Theresienstadt when she’d been showered, given clean clothes to wear and two meals of bread and soup. At the time she’d thought such treatment was normal; now she appreciated what a luxury it had been. This time there would be no showers, no clean clothes, and she would be lucky if there was even a bowl of soup to share.

  Some men fashioned stretchers from bed boards and frames to carry the prisoners who could no longer walk. It amazed Gabriella that, even in the midst of the nightmare, some people still had the decency and strength to think of others. She didn’t volunteer for a turn carrying a stretcher. Her diminishing reserves of strength had already been claimed by Julia who needed help even to stand and Gabriella’s steadying hand to walk. Julia wasn’t sick, merely exhausted and near starved to death. Her body had shrunk away to almost nothing as it metabolised the last of her muscle and flesh in its bid to keep going.

  That evening they were directed by locals to another lager, an abandoned work camp just north of Theresienstadt. They no longer drew comfort from the rumble of artillery away in the east, or the flashes that lit up the night sky. There was no comfort either in the American planes that flew over by day and waggled their wings to let them know that help and rescue were on the way. There was only hunger, exhaustion and death.

  Gabriella volunteered to help a group forage for food but the fields had been well picked over by the locals. The prisoners were given a thin slice of raw turnip each. Gabriella gave hers to Julia. That night she read Peter Pan and Wendy to her. The story was unimportant because they both knew it by heart. The book had become their talisman, the embodiment of their desperation to survive. The words and pictures were a reminder of life beyond the camps, something beautiful to cherish, something to live for. Julia smiled, but even smiling seemed to sap the little strength she had left.

  When Gabriella awoke the following morning, the April sun was already up and beaming through their barred window. Women stood around in groups talking softly. She rose to visit the latrine and discovered the guards had gone in the night and left the main gate open. Even as she watched she saw some men slip out and away in their striped prison clothes. When she returned to her barrack she found her companions discussing what to do. They were split in their opinions. Most wanted to remain in the camp and conserve their energy until liberated, but a few argued that they would be better off spreading out over the countryside. Who was to say that the SS would not come back, or that they wouldn’t be blown up by a retreating army unit? Who was to say they wouldn’t starve to death anyway before help arrived? Gabriella returned to the doorway and watched as a steady trickle of men and women slipped out through the gate. She made up her mind.

  She took Julia’s hand and helped her to her feet. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’re going home.’

  Julia smiled and a single tear ran down her cheek. The truth was, she was in no state to go anywhere. Nevertheless, they walked out of the lager, Gabriella’s arm around Julia, holding her so that she didn’t fall. Stepping out into freedom seemed so easy, such an insignificant act after all they had gone through.

  ‘We are free, Julia,’ said Gabriella. ‘Now you must be strong.’

  Julia giggled and squeezed Gabriella’s hand.

  From time to time on the road they passed German farmers and villagers who could not meet their eye. At midday, Gabriella boldly walked up to the door of a farmhouse, knocked
and asked the old woman who answered for food. They were given a piece of dry bread slightly bigger than their combined daily ration at the work camp and some blackcurrants that would have struggled to fill a dessertspoon twice. The old woman closed the door without a word. Gabriella half carried Julia over to a barn and sat her down on a pile of straw. The bread was dry and hard to swallow but the currants were an unexpected treasure; just the taste of them promised life, strength, health. The girls ate them one by one, using them to flavour the bread, savouring every moment. Julia could hardly stop giggling. After their precious meal she went to sleep in Gabriella’s arms. Later, when Gabriella awoke, she discovered that Julia’s exhausted heart had stopped beating.

  ‘It was my birthday,’ said Gabriella softly.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Ramon.

  ‘It was my birthday. April 14, 1945. It was the day I turned sixteen.’

  ‘Dear God,’ said Lucio, visibly moved. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Later,’ said Ramon. ‘I can hear Gancio with our coffee.’

  ‘No, it’s okay,’ said Gabriella, ‘I don’t mind. Milos has been doing all the talking not me.’ She leaned back so Gancio could place her coffee and lemon liqueur in front of her. She waited till everyone had been served. ‘You ask what I did? Can you begin to imagine how devastated I felt? Sometimes I think it was my worst moment of the whole war. I’d lost my father and I didn’t know whether my mother, my brother or my sister were still alive. I’d been dragged from my home in a crowded cattle truck and left alone on the station at Krakow. I had faced selection, been selected, watched as people were marched away to the gas chambers and ovens. I’d seen the chimneys. But it all came together at that moment, my worst moment, when my sweet, brave Julia died.