The Red Thread

by Rebekah Pace

  He would not meet my eye as he replied. “Someone must keep order at the platform. Members of the Judenrat have taken turns at this duty since the deportations began.”

  “Have you done such a thing, Vati?”

  He gripped my arm. “Yes, because I had no choice, Peter. The Nazis do not tell us where the transports go. It is possible our situation wherever we’re going will not be so bad.”

  “Do you believe so?”

  “I must. How else can I stand it?”

  We waited at the station for a day and a half. I slept that night with my head pillowed on my mother’s lap, her coat over me. There was no food or water, and we were all hungry and thirsty by the time the transport train arrived. But otherwise, the Judenrat staff treated us humanely. I believed that my father, sensitive to people’s fears, would also have tried to set everyone at ease when he supervised departures.

  German guards herded us outside to the platform and onto the waiting train. I heard someone behind me in the crowd murmur, “They say we’re going to a Jewish settlement—a resort town.”

  But the trains didn’t look like anything that would bring us to a resort. The guards ordered us into boxcars without seats, toilets, or windows, and we were crammed in so tightly we could not sit down. The journey took more than a day. Later, I learned that the distance was fewer than two hundred kilometers—a two-hour trip by car—and to this day, I wonder why it took so long.

  By the time we arrived, my mouth felt furry and my tongue stuck to my palate. I craved water, but I was no longer hungry. The stink of waste from the overflowing buckets we’d had to use as toilets clung to my nostrils, and the thought of food turned my stomach.

  Shouting and confusion met us when the doors slid open at the station. The guards pulled us from the cars, not caring that our muscles were stiff and sore from standing and absorbing the jolting and swaying of the cars. Many of the adults stumbled, fell, and lost their grip on their luggage. Numb with fatigue and disoriented from emerging from the dark railway car into the sunlight, I tried to stay with my family as I was jostled by the crowd.

  In front of us, a man stopped to relieve himself at the side of the road. A guard hit the man with his rifle butt and kicked him when he fell to the ground. Then he shouted at the rest of us. “Everyone move! Get going! Schnell!”

  My father held my mother under the elbow as they shepherded me ahead of them. I stayed right behind Mira, who was stumbling along after her parents. Her mother, who had believed the rumor that we were going to some kind of resort where we’d wait out the rest of the war, kept looking around, dazed. She seemed to have forgotten she’d vowed never to let Mira out of her sight again.

  A guard shoved in between us and tried to take Mira’s violin, but she clutched it against her chest.

  “No.” Her voice was just above a whisper.

  I didn’t know if the guard heard her, but her body language was clear enough.

  The guard raised his rifle to strike her, but Mr. Schloss, my father, and I quickly closed ranks to shield her. A second guard stepped in and pushed the raised rifle aside.

  “What do you think the little girl has in there? A Tommy gun? This is Chicago and she is Al Capone, ja? Dummkopf.”

  He turned a fierce glare on us. “Go on! March. Don’t push your luck.”

  My stomach rumbled as we walked the four kilometers from the train station at Bohušovice nad Ohří. Our destination was Terezín, or Theresienstadt, as they called it in German, a transit camp and sorting station. There they separated the men from the women and assigned us to barracks within the walled fortress.

  The Nazis had encouraged us to bring money and valuables, which they were all too glad to confiscate upon our arrival. Mira saved her locket by hiding it inside the secret pocket in the hem of her coat sleeve.

  In the men’s barracks, there was just enough room for our one suitcase apiece. We were to sleep on bare wooden bunks set into the walls, three tiers high. At least six men slept in each ten-foot-long bunk. My father’s and Mr. Schloss’s feet hung over the edge when they lay down.

  In our first weeks at Theresienstadt, I learned that the camp commandant was strict about hygiene, but not so concerned with whether we had enough to eat. We were not guests. We were prisoners.

  Our parents received work assignments—our fathers, to do manual labor, and our mothers, to tend to the elderly members of the community. For the first time in over a year, Mira and I spent time together without one of them looking over our shoulders. I think Mira was happier than she had been since before we came to the Judenhaus, because within the fortress walls, she found solace. The many artists and musicians there nurtured her spirit and her talent, and she soon found an excellent violin instructor among our fellow inmates. Out from under her mother’s thumb, her confidence grew, and she became too headstrong for her own good. Though men and women prisoners were not supposed to mingle, she sometimes took my hand when I walked her home from her lessons. I, of course, could find no fault with her.

  She and I attended informal school a few hours a day, and while she was at her music lessons, I began my spiritual journey. For the first time in my life, people who understood how to cling to their faith and their identity even in our troubled situation surrounded me. Searching for a glimmer of hope in our situation, I decided it was time I knew more about the Jewish faith. I studied the Torah and learned to pray.

  Both our fathers sought a seat on the Judenrat at Theresienstadt. When my father won the election and Mira’s did not, the tension and unease that had festered while we all lived together caused both Mr. and Mrs. Schloss’s jealousy to flare into open animosity.

  ***

  Though I couldn’t recall the last time I’d thought about our arrival at Theresienstadt, that morning when I woke up in my Weequahic apartment, memories lingered until the walls seemed to close in on me. When I headed out to get some air, I went to Benny’s. He was busy with a customer.

  The bell on the door jingled when I was in the back of the store, and I ducked behind the freezer case again, fearing those punks had come back. After a minute, Benny called, “You okay, Pete?”

  I picked up a carton of ice cream on my way to the counter, though I didn’t really need it. “All this thinking, it is driving me meshuggeneh—crazy.”

  “Are you still that upset about the robbery?”

  “It is not so much the robbery, but I am thinking it has made me to remember other things that are not so pleasant.”

  “Could be. I’m really sorry you’re having a hard time.”

  “Yes, it is coming back to me all the time now. The Nazis are telling us there is nothing to fear—as long as we follow their rules. Work will make us free. But this was lies. There is always something to fear. Always. The robbery is making me think of this, right?”

  “You’re still having dreams?”

  “These dreams, they are so real, but at the same time I am knowing I am dreaming. It is making me remember the real things that I would be liking to forget.”

  “It sounds like you have post-traumatic stress. If you had it from long ago, the robbery could have triggered it. That happens a lot to people in the military.”

  Benny was wearing an olive drab army jacket with his last name, ‘Martinez’, printed on the left chest pocket.

  “Were you being a soldier, Benny?”

  “No. This belonged to my abuelo. After the robbery, I got to thinking about how he must have felt when he was in combat and all the stuff he must’ve seen. I was a little nervous about coming back to work. Wearing his jacket gives me courage.”

  “When I was being a boy, I am never thinking about soldiers having fear. They are the ones with the power over us, right? But now I understand that the guards in the camps, they were bullies—cowards. Did you know when they are hearing the Allies knocking on the door, they are running off fast. We pris
oners are thinking the Russians who liberated us are heroes. They are never seeming scared. Sad, horrified by what they are finding, yes. But not scared.”

  Benny nodded. “People show fear different ways. Some guys I know push back when they’re scared, and it makes them reckless. Channeling fear and using it when you’re scared can make you a hero, but it can also get you killed.”

  “Were you having fear during the robbery?”

  “Plenty! Valeria and Benito, and you, somewhere in the back—all flashed through my mind in less than a second.” He was silent for a moment. “Abuelo, he fought in Vietnam—two tours. Abuela told me he always hated the Fourth of July because of the noise from the firecrackers. You know, like how they have those compression shirts for dogs?”

  “Huh?”

  “They like, hug the dog, make them feel safe when they’re frightened of loud noises.”

  “No kidding? What will they come up with next?”

  “I wish they’d had something like that for Abuelo. My dad told me that when he was a kid, he learned not to sneak up on his father, not to make sudden moves or loud noises. My dad said Abuelo wasn’t like that before the war, and no one ever did anything to help him. Now they got shirts to calm down dogs with anxiety. Don’t seem right.”

  “No, it is not. Every war is leaving a lot of broken people behind.”

  “Abuelo blew his brains out the night after my youngest aunt graduated high school. Guess he figured his kids were all grown up and able to take care of themselves. His memories must’ve haunted him until he couldn’t take it anymore. Back then, they never got veterans the psychological care they needed.”

  That I understood. “It was same for us who were being in the camps. No one was knowing how to deal with us. The soldiers, the Red Cross, the aid societies, they cannot be understanding what we’d experienced. They gave us medical care. But counseling? Talking about my feelings? Nah. It was enough to be surviving, right? We are just trying to put it behind.”

  “Pete, how long have we been friends?”

  “I am thinking since you start working here, before you are buying the business. You were stock boy, right?”

  “Yeah. In all that time, you’ve never talked about your past. It’s not good to keep what’s troubling you bottled up.”

  “Bottled up was how I am surviving. I am learning not to call attention to myself. The Nazis during the war are taking away so many things. Home. Family. Education. Careers. Freedom.”

  “That’s what I mean. This is heavy stuff and you’ve been carrying it alone. Have you got another friend—someone from way back, maybe? A better friend than me you can open up to?”

  “It is not good to be talking about it. I am making peace long ago and am putting it out of mind. What is the good of rehashing?” I was lying and he knew it.

  He put my ice cream in one of those paper bags that help keep frozen foods cold. “I think my abuelo felt the way you do—but the memories he kept inside ate away at him until they destroyed him. I don’t want to live like that, and I’d hate for you to let your memories keep you from living.”

  “What is keeping me from living? Oy vey, I been living so long I am not stopping. Fit as a fiddle.” As I walked out of the shop, I looked back. “If I was going to be talking about this, I am doing it seventy years ago. Not now.”

  At home, I scooped myself a bowl of ice cream. I didn’t want to think about what happened after Mira disappeared, but I couldn’t stop obsessing about the past. At the moment of my death, if my life passed before my eyes, I wouldn’t want to see it all again.

  10

  The five hundred Danish Jews that arrived at Theresienstadt in late 1943 caused a stir in the camp. We were not allowed access to radios or newspapers, and as 1943 passed into 1944, transfers who came through Theresienstadt from other camps had whispered rumors that all the Danish Jews had escaped the Nazis and made their exodus to neutral Sweden. We’d also heard rumors that Germany was losing the war, but we did not know whether to believe it.

  Though the new arrivals had not managed to flee to safety, their homeland did not forget them. The deposed Danish government inquired after them and sent them care packages. This made me resent my home country even more.

  The Nazis called Theresienstadt a Jewish Residential District. It was touted as a resort town, good for families, and also a place where the elderly would receive excellent care. My family and Mira’s had arrived nearly a year before the camp fell under the scrutiny of the International Red Cross.

  Children were considered an inconvenient but necessary part of the charade, but as there were no schools for us, some of the adults who had been teachers and professors took turns giving us our lessons when they were not at their work assignments.

  My father pulled strings to get me a job fetching tools and sweeping up at the box factory. Before I went to work the first day, he took me aside. “You must work hard, Peter, but not so hard that you draw attention to yourself.”

  “Yes, Vati.”

  “Useful hands are less likely to be sent away. Do not speak unless you are spoken to. Do not smile or laugh.”

  I heeded his words. A few months later, I helped clear the factory away to make room for a marquis tent on the same site and assisted a crew of carpenters who were refurbishing a café in the town. Down the block, another crew repaired and painted fences, and still more workers cleared away years’ worth of garbage generated by too many people crowded into inadequate housing.

  I wasn’t supposed to know why we were doing these things. Again, my father spoke to me in confidence and treated me like an adult. “A delegation is coming to inspect Theresienstadt on behalf of the Danish government, to make sure their citizens are not being mistreated.”

  “We will be lying if we make it look like everything is fine here.”

  “Yes, we will. But the Nazis believe they must do this to save face. So you must continue to behave as I asked you.”

  I’d forgotten what it felt like to be treated well and wondered how we would fool anyone into thinking we were happy to be living at Theresienstadt. But once the Verschönerung beautification project was in full swing, our prison came to resemble a town, and it seemed that the deception might work.

  The camp commandant designated the community hall as a school and ordered a playground built on a square where, just a few weeks before, we had been forbidden to tread. We had never had a real football to play with—just one made of rags tied together. But a shipment of new balls arrived ahead of the delegation, to be used in the scheduled exhibition matches.

  The camp commander appointed one of the men from the Judenrat to act as mayor, and outfitted a troop of prisoners with uniforms so they could pretend to be the Jewish police force. We were supposed to be self-governing in Theresienstadt.

  A commissary sprouted overnight in an empty storefront. With newly issued camp money in hand, the women shopped for used clothing and sundries.

  When truckloads of flowers and shrubs arrived, groups of women and girls went out armed with trowels to plant them. Others wielded paintbrushes and brooms. Soon even vacant storefronts resembled thriving businesses, with curtains hung in the windows so our visitors would not see through the guise.

  About a week before the camp beautification project was complete, my father pulled me aside outside the barracks. “They’re bringing in a camera crew to shoot newsreel footage and a documentary. When they arrive, I want you to stay away from them and the filming. Take care not to appear on camera. Don’t act interested in what’s going on.”

  “Of course, Vati.” I would have liked very much to watch the film crew at work, but I obeyed him.

  Just before the delegation arrived, we were briefed on what to do and how to act. We were to work together to keep up the charade, so we went about our business and tried to look happy. One afternoon, the whole camp sat outside in the sunsh
ine to watch a football match. I was sure the delegation noticed that all the players had been shaved bald. Did they not wonder why?

  Other men gave demonstrations of the skilled trades set up in the shops in town, but no matter what lies the Nazis told our guests, we did not live here as free people. No one paid us. We labored under the threat of execution.

  A swing band—comprised of Jewish musicians, of course—played in the new café every evening of the delegation’s visit.

  The camp commander ordered that children’s rations be increased, but even the littlest ones understood enough to say, while members of the delegation were within hearing, that their tummies were too full to eat any more bread and butter. When the children sang and gave recitations, their performances helped convince the delegation they were not being mistreated. Although they probably thought children were truthful, often to a fault, at Theresienstadt, even the littlest children were taught to lie. Outsiders would not understand, for how could they conceive of the horrible things we children had witnessed since we had first been taken from our homes?

  I was tired of the lies. I wished to tell our visitors how the Nazis regularly forced the men who sat on the Jewish Council, like my father, to decide which of us would be transported to other camps. We heard rumors that prisoners were treated far more harshly at the camps in the east. I worried that the strain of making decisions that sealed the fates of others would cause my father to suffer a nervous collapse.

  My father was far from the only one in anguish. Now that I was working with a crew of young men, I heard the kinds of rumors that had not reached my ears in the schoolroom. Some older girls and women were being forced into sexual relationships with guards. I was now old enough to understand why the men with sisters and wives in camp despaired over their inability to protect their loved ones.

  Relationships between Aryans and Jews violated the Nuremburg Laws against mixing the races, but the officers who sought favors from prisoners did not care. Some female prisoners granted favors for food or protection. Others did it for fear of reprisal against themselves or their families if they did not.