by Rebecca Bryn
He handed the star from the top of the tree to Charlotte. ‘Eric has a big garden. I’ll ask if he wants to plant it somewhere. It may survive.’
Jane placed baubles, garlands and tinsel into a box. ‘It does seem a shame not to give it a chance.’
He unwound the fairy lights and coiled them into a neat bundle. ‘If it stays fine I may go up the allotment later, love. I still have a bit of ground to turn over and Eric’s bound to be there, catching up on his autumn digging.’
‘Can I come, Grandpa?’
‘Another time, sweetheart. When it’s not so cold.’
‘And anyway, it looks like snow.’ Jane took the box to put in the cupboard under the stairs. Sounds of tidying came from the hall.
The thought of snow sent a shudder of something more than cold down his spine. He could still hear the tramp of Nazi boots on frozen snow and the rumble of trucks fleeing from east to west, leaving nothing for the advancing allies…
News of the Soviet advance caused Nazi panic. Inside the camp, work progressed feverishly: demolishing gas chambers and crematoria, covering over burning pits, destroying evidence. Rumour had it Sturmbannführer Baer, the camp commandant, had packed to leave. One by one the chief rats abandoned their posts, leaving nervous guards to keep control while SS officers hastily gathered incriminating documents into boxes for removal or destruction.
Officers hurried about their own business, intent on saving their skins. A file of documents lay on the desk in his office. No-one was near. Quickly, he leafed through pages: this was damning evidence. He glanced around the room. How to keep them safe? A flattish tin box with folding wire handles sat on the floor in a corner. He tried to lift the lid but it was locked. He checked the corridor but no-one paid him the least attention. He flung open desk drawers. Keys…
He tried several in the lock. A small, ornate brass one fitted and turned. He opened the lid and forgot to breathe: this too was evidence. He put the documents in the box and relocked it, pocketed the key and opened the door. He stood talking to another officer. He ducked back into the room and waited, heart thudding. Footsteps rang along the corridor, coming closer. Shouting… Running feet. He eased open the door. Maybe he could lose himself in the commotion. He joined the melee. He’d made it almost to the corner when the cry went up. Had he been seen? He fled to his room, hid the box under his bunk and stuffed a blanket in front of it. If he’d been recognised, it was too late now. He needed to see Miriam.
Rows and rows of wooden barracks stretched before him as far as he could see; in Mexico camp half-built barracks thrown up to house the thousands transported from Hungary remained unfinished. On the road between the barbed-wire fences, ranks of women and children, ill-dressed for the cold and some barefoot, filed towards the main gates, a haze of breath freezing in the still air around them. Some helped others, barely able to walk, to trudge through the snow.
They were evacuating them from one lethal hell into another. All too soon it would be dark, and the temperature would plummet further overnight. He searched their faces but there was no sign of Miriam.
The years of misery and suffering in the camp were drawing to a bitter, desperate end and, here and there, the camp bore witness to the rage of the survivors: windows were smashed, kitchens looted. The remaining guards held rifles at the ready with over-nervous fingers.
A staccato of machine-gun fire split the air. Staff cars and laden trucks rolled past him and turned west outside the gates. He hurried on, legs weak at the thought of what he would find. His hand trembled on the door handle. Miriam lay on her bunk, eyes closed, cheeks flushed. ‘Miriam…’ He touched her forehead. ‘You have a temperature.’
She nodded. ‘The boys?’
‘You don’t need to worry about them.’
Her face relaxed.
‘Sore throat?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was a croak.
‘Rash?’
She loosened her blouse. Her taut skin was red over protruding bone, blotched, and in places it peeled away.
His heart sank another fathom. ‘Let me see your tongue.’
She opened her mouth. Her tongue was the unmistakable colour of a strawberry. She knew as well as he that she’d caught scarlet fever.
‘They are evacuating the camp. The women and children are leaving. Miriam, you are all in grave danger. Any who aren’t able to walk…’ The infirmary was filled with sick and dying women. To have survived so long to succumb now… he held her hand in both of his. ‘You are witnesses to their crimes.’
She nodded helplessly. ‘What can we do?’
‘The camp in is chaos. They’re running in panic. Maybe you have a chance.’ He took a calming breath. ‘If they leave the sick behind, a doctor must stay too. Maybe, I can protect you. I’ll liberate whatever stores I can find and come straight back. There’s sulfa, if it’s still there, that will help your infection.’
‘Stay safe.’ She swallowed with difficulty. ‘I love you.’
He hurried back to the main medical block and went in search of sulfa. With it, Miriam could make a full recovery. The pharmacy was locked. He tried the surgery. He found the precious drug, a small packet, enough for now, and gathered together what few supplies were left that were useful. He fetched the tin box from under his bunk and strapped it beneath his coat with his belt, pulling the leather tight through the handles and around his body.
He ran outside, arms full, and an SS officer grabbed his sleeve. The precious sulfa was in his pocket. He clung stubbornly to his lootings. ‘I’m a doctor. These supplies are for the sick.’
‘There won’t be any sick. Tomorrow the men leave. You will go with them.’
‘If I’m to go with them tomorrow I’m not needed tonight. While I have patients I shall attend their needs.’
The SS officer spat in the snow. ‘Then attend your patients while you still may.’
He ran back to the infirmary and Miriam. He would not leave with the men in the morning.
She lay on her bunk in the cramped nurses’ quarters. Her eyes were open and Ilse, barely able to stand herself, held a cool cloth to her friend’s forehead.
‘I brought what I could carry. I found only a small amount of sulfa.’
Ilse looked up at him. ‘We have more cases of fever, doctor.’
‘And I fear you are among them, Ilse. Rest now. I’ll tend to the sick.’
Ilse lay down beside Miriam, one arm over her friend’s shoulder. Their plight was more serious than he wanted to admit.
He covered them with a blanket. ‘There has to be more sulfa in the pharmacy. The SS are too busy saving themselves to worry about us at the moment. Tonight, I’ll make a proper search… bring food, more blankets, anything I can find to help us survive. I’ll be back before dawn, and I shall never leave you again, I promise. I’ll defend this infirmary with my life if I must.’
Darkness came early and with it a bitter wind. He stayed with Miriam and Ilse, cooling their fever with cloths wrapped around snow, and helping them take sips of such water as they had. He comforted those he could, carried out those for whom liberation came too late, and redistributed now spare blankets.
Bright stars paled in a velvet sky when he left the infirmary, the secret box still hidden beneath his coat, and walked through fresh crisp snow. Some of the lights on the guard towers weren’t lit. Pools of shadow swallowed the burning pits. Virgin snow covered the mounded horror with a mantle of pristine beauty: only a hand, like that of a drowning man’s, stuck above it, while the sickly-sweet stench of death hung in the air. His breath wreathed in front of his face. It was cold, so desperately cold.
The pharmacy door stood wide open. Packages lay scattered across the floor: spoiled or empty. He should have come sooner. He read labels searching for sulfa. All these medicines could have been used to save lives.
He pocketed what sulfa he found and piled together anything of use. If he wanted a future with Miriam there was one more thing he had to do. A future? He’d failed
so many. He didn’t deserve a future but Miriam did, and she needed him. He found what he was looking for in another room. He picked up the needle and the bottle of liquid, and administered the injections that might keep him alive.
Dawn was still far to the east, barely visible through the ragged cloak of night, but, outside in the road, lines of men already awaited the start of the march west. A senior SS officer, rifle raised, motioned him to join the ranks.
‘I am staying behind. The sick need me.’
‘You think we have no need of doctors on the march? You’ll come with us.’
A shout went up and rippled through the men. ‘Soviet tanks have reached Krakow.’
Krakow… how far away was that? Sixty, seventy kilometres to the east? How long would it take if they had to fight every inch of the way? How long if they met no resistance? If they had snow ploughs, Soviet trucks could be here in hours.
‘Quickly… march… units of one hundred. Anyone who lags behind will be shot.’
The column shuffled forward as more ranks of men formed behind them. Orders were shouted. He searched for a means of slipping away unnoticed. Behind him a familiar grey-bearded figure supported a fellow inmate, encouraging him to move forward with the others. A rifle butt stabbed Aaron in the kidneys and he fell to the ground. Anyone who lags behind will be shot. Doctors were not immune to bullets any more than rabbis.
He helped Aaron to his feet: sulfa had aided Aaron’s recovery, but he was far from strong. The Soviet army had given Miriam and the other infirmary inmates a life-line: there’d been no time to carry out the planned massacre of the sick. He checked the drugs were still safe in his pocket: Miriam and Ilse’s lives could depend on them.
Chapter Eleven
Walt shivered and turned his back on the white flakes floating past the window. January 1985, another New Year… He pulled his chair closer to the fire and threw on a log. It responded with a guttering flame, and fireflies flew up the chimney. He tugged his jacket collar closer. He hated snow.
In January 1945 there had been blizzards. Minus 25 centigrade, he’d read afterwards: so far, the coldest month of the twentieth century. Some seven thousand sick had been abandoned in the chaos to fend for themselves.
His vision misted and he shook his head. The March of Death… so many had survived the camps only to die of exposure and starvation on the long, forced march west through Poland’s bitter winter. He closed his eyes and let his mind take him to a place he’d never truly left.
A pall of frozen breath hung over the endless shuffling column behind and ahead of him. It was one of many dark millipedes, each with hundreds of pairs of tired legs, crawling across white desolation in the wretched dawn. His fingers, toes and cheeks were numb: his socks stuck to his feet inside his boots. Aaron Schaeler stumbled along at his side, his words of encouragement to others finally stilled as his fight for his own survival demanded all his effort. SS officers watched the stragglers: any too slow or caught trying to escape the column, be they German or internee, were shot dead.
Three days they’d ground their way west towards Wodzislaw Śląski, near the German/Polish border, where the survivors were to be loaded into open boxcars and taken to Germany: an attempt to hide the scale of the atrocity? Forced labour? Hostages? The rate of attrition would be appalling.
Three days, or was it four? Every morning fewer souls struggled to their feet than had laid their heads to rest the night before. Miriam, too, could be dying and every step took him further from her. Aaron’s strength was failing rapidly, and the rabbi knew it. He slowed his pace to the rabbi’s, trying to keep him from lagging behind too much. An SS officer jabbed a stumbling German soldier in the kidneys with the butt of his semi-automatic rifle, and then raised the weapon, swinging it as he aimed.
He threw himself into a drift at the side of the road as staccato cracks shattered the frozen air. The tin box hidden beneath his coat dug into his stomach and knocked the breath from his lungs. The weight of a body landing on top of him took the next breath. He gasped and inhaled a mouthful of snow; icy air caught at his throat but he lay motionless, the slow tramp thudding in his ears.
He couldn’t feel the snow on his face. He fought to keep his breaths shallow, his limbs limp, his hands still, as the weight of the dead body crushed him. He strained to hear the slightest sound: the muffled squeak of feet on compacted snow, the creak of boots, the swish of fabric, the laboured breaths and curses. No-one paid him any heed hidden beneath a corpse: one more for the snow to cover with its virginal caress, fallen by the way and silenced. If they knew what he’d stolen…
He didn’t move until long after the millipede’s feet fell silent. He pushed the body away with an effort and raised himself on one elbow. In both directions the dark shapes of prisoners and guards, too sick or exhausted to keep up, littered the bruised ground. Hunger gnawed at his belly, his hands and feet were numb, his head spun.
A guard dying at his feet had a thick coat that would fit over his own. If he took it he might be shot as a German: a warmer death, but he had a promise to keep and Miriam would be waiting. He had to think that. She would be waiting.
He swallowed a mouthful of snow that failed to quench his thirst and turned the guard over. He knew his face, despite the bullet hole that showed mutilated brain; he’d been at the last Zählappell, cold and callous as ever, and had fallen behind on the march. His rifle had been taken, but he had a revolver and ammunition, and fur-lined leather gloves.
A prisoner lay on his back, only yards away, eyes staring to a godless sky. The man had a scarf. His coat was thinner than the guard’s, but he’d been a big fellow once and it was safer than wearing the German officer’s coat. He wrenched unyielding arms from the fabric before it froze solid. It was about survival now; he had no compassion left to waste on the dead.
His war had always been about survival, but at what cost? He shrugged the filthy coat over his own, and numb fingers fumbled with buttons. He took in the scene around him: he needed to get his bearings.
God, no…
‘Aaron. Aaron…’ He slumped to the ground beside his friend, and felt beneath his beard for a pulse. A red stain bordered the dark hole in Aaron’s chest: the bullet Aaron had taken for him. In death Aaron’s body had hidden him, helped him as he’d helped him steadfastly in life. He raised a fist to heaven and yelled his anger to Aaron’s god. ‘God of Moses and Israel… Damn you… Why?’ He laid his friend by the side of the road and covered his body with snow. Aaron Schaeler had found his good day to die; he would make sure his sacrifice was not for nothing.
The low sun in the east brought no warmth. He faced into the wind. How far west had they come? How far to the port of Gdansk and freedom? Could he and Miriam make it?
They could if he could get back to her with the sulfa, if the Soviets and Germans hadn’t stripped the land bare of food, if they could avoid the Soviet invasion front, their transit and work camps: if they didn’t freeze to death. Gdansk, Scandinavia, England and, with luck, the only passports they’d need were the six-figure numbers tattooed on their left forearms.
Gunfire sounded away to the south and an explosion lit the sky. To the north a pall of smoke hung in the cold air. He had sulfa and the box of documents: that was all he had strength left to carry. He huddled into his new coat and squinted into the sun as he trudged east towards Krakow and the camp. A flurry of fresh snow brushed his lips: clean, not like ash with the taste of the dead. His breath froze in icicles on his eyebrows, as tears froze on his cheeks. He pulled the dead man’s scarf over his head and face and stumbled on, hour after painful hour.
The distant sound of trucks forced him from the road. A farm ghosted through trees. Exhausted, he watched and waited. As darkness fell he shouldered open a barn door and ate grain stolen from chickens. The foot-thick chicken manure kept him warm as vehicles ground past in the sleepless night.
Cock-crow: fitful light shone on beady eyes and fluffing feathers. He removed a warm egg from beneath a
hen, broke it into his mouth and swallowed, and then felt beneath another. She clucked noisily and he withdrew his hand. He stole two more eggs and wiped a coat sleeve across his mouth: it stank.
He peered through a knot-hole. The farmhouse windows shone with yellow light: time to go. The blizzard stung his face, and buried the footprints of the millipede now striped with the frozen ruts of heavy vehicles. He tramped on, death behind him and death before him. The cold slowed his mind and dragged at his legs; too late, he heard the snow-muted tread of boots. There was no hiding place and he hadn’t strength left to run. He sank to the snow to wait. Dark uniforms morphed out of the blizzard and a bristle of rifles hedge-hogged around him. He tugged at his sleeve tiredly and pointed to his tattoo. ‘Prisoner of war…’
The rifles lowered. A soldier spat on the snow, reached in his greatcoat pocket, drew out a packet of Russian cigarettes and offered him one. The soldier lit it for him and nodded. ‘Ya.’ He motioned west and jabbered in Russian.
He shook his head, not understanding, and pointed to where he thought Krakow lay. If they forced him to march with them, Miriam was lost. The officer shrugged, shouted a command to his men and hurried them on.
He drew on the rank tobacco, the smoke warming his lungs as the column of Red Army soldiers marched past. He hunched onwards, no longer sure if he headed east. A road sign pointed drunkenly to the right, towards a vast expanse of white: the name of the town was scrawled in Russian.
He stumbled on in the direction it pointed, sure he’d wandered too far to the north. Towns had people; someone would point him in the direction of the camp. Snow-crowned tree-stumps bore mute witness to the ravages of the Nazi war-machine but gradually the forest thickened and oak and birch, rimed with frost, cut the wind.
Head-down he placed one foot in front of the other: Miriam needed him. Suppose the Soviets had already liberated the camp. She’d get treatment and food, surely, but suppose they moved the sick east by train? How would he ever find her again? His feet dragged too slowly. Left, right, move or die, left, right, move or die, left...