The Sisters of Auschwitz

by Roxane van Iperen

  The following days, Janny steals around the sick bay like a predator. Not at all at ease, she keeps a close watch on the doctors and nurses. Their body language, the whispers, the conversations of people leaving the barracks; she is searching for clues everywhere. The SS doctors are hunting the sick barracks too, picking the weakest for the Selektion – but when? Lien sleeps and sleeps and no one knows what is wrong with her. The fever is drawing the last bit of energy from her body and she has stopped speaking. A few dozen feet further, Janny lies awake at night and all she can think of are Mother’s words from that last night before the transportation, when the five of them sat together in Westerbork: You must stay together!

  On the third day, Janny intervenes. She walks to the entrance of the sick bay and speaks to a Czech doctor. The woman listens, nods and goes inside. At Lien’s bed, she holds still.

  ‘Komm mit, get up. Your sister is outside.’

  Lien lifts up her eyelids, sighs, shuts them again. She softly shakes her head.

  ‘Can’t. I’m ill.’

  The woman takes her by the shoulder, tugs at the cotton of her shirt, insists.

  ‘Come, she is not leaving before you come with her.’

  The woman stays at her bed until Lien finally slides her bony legs over the edge and pushes herself up, so the doctor can lift her under her armpits. At the entrance she hands Lien to Janny, who nods gratefully. Her sister has not yet recovered, but the fever has subsided.

  ‘If you hadn’t got me out of there, they would have sent me to the gas,’ Lien says to her sister a few days later, still weak but no longer ill.

  They have heard that another selection is due. Janny shrugs. If they do not look after each other, everything is finished.

  Against the bright beam of the spotlight, the man has faded to a silhouette, but it is him, unmistakeably. His hand behind his back, a slight smile on his face and energetic as ever, he is standing in front of the crowd like a conductor in front of his choir. They are anxiously awaiting the next gesture of his hand. Beside him, a long table with SS colleagues, pen and paper at the ready. Scales separate the women from the table. The room is filled to the brim; today’s job is a big one.

  Mengele nods and the next woman steps forwards. She is naked and bald. Her ribcage is a pointed roof above her caved belly, two flaps of skin are the souvenir of her breasts, vertebra swirl down her back like a string of beads. The woman behind her looks the same, and the next, and the next. On the scales. She can barely stand still, her knees buckle. Mengele’s hand.

  Right. Dismissed.

  Next.

  The woman is a copy of her predecessor, but her body seems slightly stronger. The tiniest difference.

  Mengele gestures.

  Left.

  Next.

  The group on the right grows fast. Too old. Too ill.

  ‘I am twenty-nine!’ a woman shouts at Mengele. ‘And I have never had diarrhoea!’

  He does not even blink.

  ‘Right!’ His voice echoes through the hall. Emotionless, as if he is organizing sports teams in the gym.

  Next.

  Edith Frank steps forwards. Mengele instantly gestures.

  Right.

  She ducks under the spotlight and quickly turns around; this is the most important bit.

  ‘Next!’

  Anne and Margot step forwards. Anne’s body is covered with crusts from old scabies sores. She has only just been discharged from the sick barracks; Margot was by her side all the time. Together, they step into the beam of the spotlight and in front of the selection table. Margot nudges her sister and Anne straightens her back.

  ‘Left!’

  A pen scratches the paper. The girls pass the metal lamp and disappear in the dark on the other side. Edith gasps for breath.

  ‘The children! Oh God . . . the children!’ she shouts after them, but they are gone.

  It is 30 October 1944 and the final selection in Auschwitz-Birkenau is over.

  5

  Star Camp

  A hunk of bread, a piece of sausage and a sliver of hard cheese. Move on, next platform. Dalli, dalli. Dogs and whips and shouting. By now they know the drill. Go, go, go. Cattle carriages waiting for them, just like in Westerbork.

  ‘Schneller! Hier rein!’ Faster! Get in!

  Climb up, get in, that smell again. It does not matter, at least they are leaving Auschwitz, or so it seems. More people get in; they shuffle forwards. The sisters squeeze each other’s hand, do not let go. The familiar feeling of strangers pressing against them – but the bodies are more angular now. Pans with water are shoved between legs and into the carriage before the door shuts, a dull thud and the curtain falls. Pitch-black. Blink as you wish, it makes no difference whether your eyes are open or not. Lientje’s breath next to her. Light, thin. Janny cannot make out her face but knows that she is watching her. They are looking at each other, without being able to see.

  ‘We’re leaving,’ Janny whispers, and she knows her sister nods.

  It feels as if they are going back. Back in time, back in space, back towards the Netherlands. The swishing sound of wheels on tracks, the rhythm of the joints below them beating time. They count each bang till it makes their heads spin, until minutes, again, turn into too many hours and only the old tricks help them to stay on their feet. Stay as close to the doors as possible, gasp for air at the crack. Stand at the sidewalls; they will protect you. Snooze with your back against mine. It is different this time. They are so much weaker now than they were then. They cannot even keep up an appearance of civilization; it is each to their own now.

  They stop all the time, cover a short distance before the next air raid siren sounds. First the roar of an engine starting up, then a long run-up, higher and higher, until a choir of sirens from all directions drowns out the sound of their beating hearts. Shootings, loud bangs, guards jumping off the train to take cover, while they stay in the stationary carriage, petrified, wondering what on earth is happening outside. It feels like a bomb could drop on their heads any moment. All their excitement about the Allied forces advancing has gone.

  A day. A night. The first people collapse, they lie between their legs. Blankets are snatched away from bodies. Stop, door opens, a piece of bread and some water, door shuts. The air in the carriage is thick and heavy, they are short of breath, their muscles weaken and their head is pounding. They press their faces against the walls, their mouth against the cracks for some oxygen. The cold, it is so cold, but even the cold does not dispel the stench. Wheels hurtle across tracks. They do not know where to, but as long as they hear that sound, they know that they are alive.

  A day. A night. They can go out, briefly. The horizon, fields, the trees next to a ditch; everything is dark and grey and wet but it is blissful. Someone says they are in Germany, they really are going back. Back in, quick, do not let go of my hand. Get in last, stay close to the door where the cracks are. At the back of the carriage, on the filthy floor, familiar faces with their eyes wide open, their lower jaw all stiff. The closing of the door and the metal bolt. Darkness. The connecting rods slowly getting back into motion.

  Noise outside – they are standing still. Screeching steel of other trains around them, sharp whistles, conversations in German behind their door, laughter. Hoarse whispers from a dark corner.

  ‘I think this is Ravensbrück.’

  The women’s camp near Berlin? Stories of children flung into the fire alive, babies left in empty rooms. Janny and Lien shiver and hug themselves, stiff fingers around their fleshless upper arms, a dirty horse blanket wrapped around their shoulders. A jolt, a forwards movement; the train takes off again.

  A day. A night. They gasp for oxygen like dying fish. Those who are still alive press themselves against the walls of the carriage, scratching the wood with their fingernails. They did not think there was anything left to take away from them, but that was an illusion. Father, Mother, Jaap; sometimes when the sisters look up, they seem to sit next to them, alive. They
can almost touch them. But when they stretch out their fingers, they are stroking a stranger. A growl, a slap.

  Where are their loved ones? Did they stay behind in Auschwitz? Their cheeks are feverish, their bodies frozen and the images are haunting their minds. Their relatives gone, their families gone, the women and girls who were with them in Auschwitz gone. The carriage rocks at each switch, someone tumbles over them, they push her away. No one has spoken for hours, perhaps no one ever spoke, perhaps they do not even have a voice. No one knows who is still conscious and who has slipped away. Even the smell does not bother them any more. A pinch in a finger, are you still there? A pinch back.

  And then they stop.

  Is there anything more delightful than the smell of pine trees in autumn? It goes straight to your brain from the hairs of your nose, crisp and fresh like the start of a new day. Beds made, the cotton tucked in tightly at the foot, the first frost flowers already appearing on the window. Down the stairs and out of the kitchen door, breathing clouds, the air against your cheeks like frozen iron but not as glacial as in months to come. Take a walk on the heath with Bob, hand in hand.

  A rolling landscape, shrubs under a smooth layer of fog as far as their eyes can see – it is like walking through clouds in the sky. Janny does not have to place her feet, one step follows the other. They are floating on cotton wool balls. Ahead of them is another couple, floating. Another couple in front of them, and another. An endless garland of stooped figures meanders through the heath, disappears at the purple horizon. A white sun begins to fade behind dark clouds and she feels the first drops touch her skin. She looks up. The heavens close above their heads, cover the heath with a canvas of shadow. They must get back to The High Nest before it really starts. Janny turns, someone bumps into her. The row behind them is endless too. Bob tugs at her hand, drags her along.

  ‘Janny, come on!’ Lien hisses at her sister, pulls her arm.

  They walk on, tripping over tree roots and stones along the way. Her feet are numb, she must lift them higher. No floating clouds. Janny remembers where they are: Celle station, Germany. They were ushered out of the train there, barely able to stand on their feet.

  ‘Raus!’

  They had to drag the dead out of the carriage but were too exhausted. Their hands tugged and pulled, but the rest of them was not there. Leave the bodies on the platform, heavy and pale, feet wide apart. Move, rushed by dogs and guards.

  They pull the horse blanket a little tighter, but the cold is biting their naked calves. It has started to rain. The wind picks up, but the forest air is still lovely. Lungs, heart, walk.

  When they walked through the town in the first part of their journey, their blood started flowing faster, their heads shot up. Civilization. Normal people. The guards and their dogs formed a line between the procession of stumbling skeletons and the citizens. Through the gaps the sisters tried to get a glimpse of their faces, meet their gaze, street after street, mile after mile. A man, a woman, a baker, a butcher, a group of children, an elderly couple. But as soon as their eyes met, the others looked away. People passing from the opposite direction, on their bicycle, on horse-drawn carriages, gave way, pretending not to see them. Pedestrians on both sides stopped and stared. But no one spoke.

  They slog on, how many miles to go? They have left Celle hours ago. The forest path they walk on ends at a stretch of heath. No more cover. Rain is lashing against their faces, runs in streams to their neck, fills the holes behind their collarbones. Gusts of wind gather speed on the open field, take a run-up and try to knock them over, someone slips. Do not stop. Knees up, step over. Those who miss one beat are lost. Drops turn into hailstones, wind turns into storm. Foul weather. Orders are barely audible. Their bodies lean forwards. Barbed wire. The camp.

  Bergen-Belsen.

  The sisters look at each other, hug each other tight, breathe out. Glistening hailstones fall from their hair, past their eyes, on their cheeks. When someone mentioned it at Celle station, they would not believe it, but it is true. This is good. Bergen-Belsen is good. There are no gas chambers here. This is just a camp.

  They are left like animals in a corral. No roll call, no lines, no labour, no shouting. Just a foggy, barren site full of grey silhouettes in the rain, tents and shacks as far as their eyes can see. Janny and Lien sink down on a sandhill and huddle together, pulling their drenched blankets up to their noses. It feels as if they are underground; there is smoke and steam everywhere, people squat, make themselves small, walk with a stoop as if the ceiling is low. A teenager drifts about, wearing nothing but a striped shirt, his legs sticking out of the cotton like twigs. A woman on the ground grabs the hand of a passing guard and presses her lips against it – she will not let go until he gives her a push against her forehead and she falls backwards in the mud. Someone is stirring a pot above a fire. One women leans forwards, her upper body bare, while another woman empties a bucket of ice-cold water on her hair. A cloud of steam shoots up like a flash fire.

  They crawl into their blankets. They no longer feel hunger; the emptiness in their stomach is a familiar block of concrete that has been there for months. But the cold in their bones, the cold that has turned their skin into pink sandpaper and is keeping their jaws locked, the cold is impossible to get used to.

  A shapeless figure approaches through the rain. Two shaved heads sticking out like frozen birds. They stare at each other. A warm glow, jaws loosen. A cry of joy shoots off on the wind. They throw off their blankets and the four of them fall into each other, crying. They are Anne and Margot.

  Bergen-Belsen was never set up as an extermination camp; it was established on the German heath for prisoners of war, including large numbers of Russian soldiers. During the war, the camp expanded and stretched for eleven square kilometres, with various subsections. Owing to poor conditions and a large number of infectious diseases, the majority of the soldiers soon succumbed. Diseases such as dysentery and typhus were passed on from neighbour to neighbour and spread further by lice and mites. As soon as someone had contracted the disease, life literally ran out of his orifices. Almost all enemy uniforms were emptied without a shot being fired.

  Only one year before the sisters arrived, in 1943, the SS took over the camp administration and Bergen-Belsen also became an exchange camp for Jews. The idea was to swap these people for German prisoners of war in other countries. The chosen Jews are on the so-called Palestine List and placed in the Sternlager, the Star Camp. They are made to wear a yellow star on their clothes. The exchanges do not really happen, but most prisoners are not forced to work or wear prison clothing – more importantly, there are no gas chambers. And so the rumour spreads across Europe that this is one of the better locations to end up in.

  This myth is debunked within a few months. In the spring of 1944, the Germans decide to pick up thousands of Polish and Hungarian women from the ghettos, and also transfer all the Jews from other concentration camps who are ill but nonterminal to Bergen-Belsen for ‘recovery’. To facilitate this, extra accommodation is added: a Zeltlager, a tent camp, is built with large circus tents to house a few thousand women. Sometimes 7,000 people stay there at a time. There is no medical care, no sanitation, no extra water or food supply, nor any form of organization to receive them, let alone to help them to recover.

  In the late summer of 1944, when the tents have only just appeared in the heathlands of Lüneburg, a logistical disaster occurs. Overcrowded trains dump their load at Celle station, ten miles away, and armies of emaciated prisoners arrive at the gates of the camp each day. Men, women, children; the influx is immense. The SS quickly orders the prisoners to build extra barracks where roll call is heard in the Star Camp for the new loads of patients they are expecting from Birkenau; some 3,000 women. The sisters’ transportation was supposed to be housed in these barracks too, but they were not finished on time.

  In the meantime, the tents are filled to the rafters with dying people – sometimes almost 1,000 per tent, and by the time Janny, Lien
, Anne and Margot arrive, early November 1944, the number of prisoners at Bergen-Belsen has doubled. But the avalanche is yet to come.

  The Red Army marches on and more and more Nazi concentration camps will be evacuated in the following months. The Brilleslijper and Frank sisters are in the vanguard of the mass evacuation; they were lucky to be in cattle carriages. After New Year, the Germans chase hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, barely able to stand on their feet, ahead of the advancing fronts in endless death marches. They die like flies along the way – exhausted, cold or shot on the spot by guards. Very few lucky ones make it to Bergen-Belsen.

  In the winter of 1944 to 1945, Bergen-Belsen descends in a free fall of illness and chaos. There is no stopping it. Within a few months, tens of thousands of prisoners die and their bodies are stacked up around the camp like deadwood at the back of a garden.

  6

  The Storm

  The tents are packed. All the sleeping shelves, three layers up, are taken and the four of them spend their first days huddled together on some straw on the floor. Janny and Lien take the Frank sisters, ten years younger, under their wing; they make sure the girls wash themselves at the little tap outside every day, even when an icy wind is howling and they are very reluctant to remove their blankets and take off their thin dresses in the cold. Stay clean, eat, stay together.

  When the girls found them on the sandhill, their joy was indescribable. They had come such a long way – from the Netherlands to Poland to Germany – and they had lost so many people since Westerbork already. They asked each other in which carriage they had travelled and who they had seen on the transportation. And where was their mother, Edith?