A Delayed Life

by Dita Kraus

  One of the SS women was a guard who had accompanied our group from Hamburg to Bergen-Belsen. She was called Bubi.

  She was young, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six, tall and slim, with a rather pretty round face and very short dark hair, cut in men’s fashion. Together with a number of other SS women, she had been assigned to the Neugraben camp in Hamburg before we were transported to Bergen-Belsen. Our guards were exchanged several times. The last were women, and they were the worst. They wore black capes that made them look like bats or angels of death. They beat us with sticks or whips, and their female commander was the most sadistic and inhuman of all.

  Bubi was one of the earlier contingent. Her behavior was different. She would speak to us from time to time, even make jokes, but although she too carried a stick, she didn’t use it on us. Soon she became friendly with one of our girls, and it became evident that what had been rumored about her was true. She was a lesbian.

  In Neugraben I was in the same room as Lotta, the most beautiful of all our women. She was so beautiful that even in the same rags we all wore, standing among rows and rows of bedraggled women, her hair not cared for any more than that of all the others, she still attracted the eyes of everyone. Thanks to her beauty, she received better treatment in all the camps. In the family camp in Auschwitz, she was Blockälteste of Block 6. Her mother was also with us, all the while in the shadow of her striking daughter, quietly admiring her. Lotta was a few years older than me, but in Neugraben she befriended me and called me Didi, which I liked.

  At first, Bubi managed to get assigned to the contingent where Lotta was working that day. During our march to and from work, she walked alongside Lotta, striking her black riding boots with her stick and having short exchanges of conversation with her. In time she grew bolder, staying longer and closer to Lotta, until she took to visiting her in our room.

  We were about twenty-five women in the room. Two-tiered bunks with narrow gaps between them took up all the space. Lotta’s bunk was the lower one in a dark corner, at right angles across from mine. When Bubi first came into the room in the evening, everyone thought it was a control visit. We froze, not knowing what to expect. But she casually told us to carry on, spoke for a short while with Lotta, and left. She repeated her visits more often and stayed longer. After some time she would spend whole evenings sitting on Lotta’s bed, holding whispered conversations with her. Lotta would lie on her back, hidden in her dark corner, and we’d hear her burst into laughter from time to time.

  Lotta was certainly not a lesbian, and I don’t think that their relationship went beyond what we all could observe, but what prisoner would dare refuse anything to a powerful person, such as an SS guard? Besides, it was useful to have a friend higher up; maybe she would exempt you from the worst workplaces or even let you have some extra food. Most women were willing to do anything for a slice of bread, let alone something so trifling as pleasing someone like Bubi.

  After bringing us from Hamburg to Bergen-Belsen, the job of our SS guards, including Bubi, was finished, and we didn’t see them again.

  But one day, after the SS staff abandoned the camp and left us locked up without food and water, a new prisoner appeared in our hut in Bergen-Belsen. It was Bubi. She sat down on the floor near Lotta with the rest of us, smiling, without any explanation. She wore street clothes, and if it wasn’t for her round, healthy face with her short-cropped hair, she would have been indistinguishable from us.

  Nobody took much notice of her. True, we might have wondered why she chose to suffer with us, risking hunger, infection, and lice when she didn’t have to. I thought maybe she loved Lotta so much that she didn’t want to be separated from her, even at such a price. Yet in those last days we had become so lethargic and indifferent that we didn’t care what made Bubi join us.

  But when the British arrived and liberated us, we knew that soon we would be fed and clothed and sent home, we started again to ponder what to do with Bubi. There were discussions, some saying that we must hand her over to the British and reveal her true identity. She was, after all, an SS woman, and we shouldn’t shield her. Yet others thought that because she’d always treated us fairly, we should repay her by keeping silent and let things take their own course. She would probably be found out anyway, but let us not be the whistle blowers.

  I never learned who was instrumental in Bubi’s later fate, but, as I was working with the interrogating British officer, I saw her among the arrested SS women. I was undecided about my feelings toward her. I was pulled in two directions. On the one hand there was enormous satisfaction at the justice of our reversed roles. I—the former prisoner, who had been humiliated, starved, kicked and dehumanized—was now free and, in a sense, her superior. The former guard, who only a few days ago had power over my very life, was locked up and would probably be tried for her war crimes. It was elating but not altogether without conflict, because of all the perpetrators of our suffering, she had been the mildest and least harmful. The commanders, the sadists, and the murderers were hiding somewhere and might never be caught and punished. Should Bubi be the sacrificial lamb for the likes of a Mengele?

  Then came the morning when it was her turn to be interrogated. She sat opposite the British officer, dressed again in her uniform, a narrow skirt and a tight-fitting jacket. I sat at the far end of the desk. When she recognized me, she seemed bewildered. Our eyes met, and for a moment her face expressed the gamut of feelings that passed between us. First it was surprise, which quickly changed to pleasure at recognition, then the realization of her new position toward my elevated status, and finally her eyes became pleading, as if she were appealing for help and understanding. The moment passed, and she lowered her eyes; neither of us had spoken.

  I don’t know if my eyes also reflected what I was feeling, but inside me I heard two voices, both equally imperative. The first screamed, This is your enemy; have no mercy or pity on her, and treat her as cruelly as you were treated.… Avenge your suffering. But the other voice said, This person never harmed you; she is not to be blamed. And moreover, you are different from the Nazis: You are humane. You are incapable of being cruel.

  The interrogation started. She stated her name, age, address, and the date she joined the SS. I have long forgotten it all except for the fact that her real name was not Bubi, of course. I translated everything accurately and matter-of-factly.

  Then the officer left the room for some reason, leaving the two of us alone. In that instant, she turned to me eagerly and said, “Hast du eine Zigarette?” Suddenly there was no longer any dilemma. I knew what it meant for a smoker to be without cigarettes; my mother was a smoker herself. I had seen our women pick up the tiniest butts that had been trodden with a heel into the ground, which they later opened, rolling the scraps of tobacco into pieces of newspaper. They would burn with a flame and be consumed very quickly. The last bit, which could no longer be held between the fingers, would be stuck on a hairpin so as not to lose even the very last draw. And now I was in possession of any number of cigarettes, with permission to help myself to more as often as I wished.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, I took out the packet of cigarettes I had in my pocket and gave it to her. She had just hidden it in her clothes when the officer returned. A feeling of relief enveloped me, a feeling of satisfaction at my spontaneous reaction, without weighing if I had acted right. A nagging thought did disturb me, however: that if I told my friends, they would condemn my action. That is why I didn’t speak about this incident for years.

  For many years, I didn’t know what happened to Bubi and also never tried to find out.7 I had to take care of my own life and was not interested in the fate of our former guards.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  After the Liberation

  My career as interpreter didn’t last very long. Within a few days the British got things organized, the mountains of dead bodies were buried, the survivors got regular food and some clothes, and the ill were put into makeshift sickrooms. But the camp w
as so filthy and infested with lice and other vermin that it was necessary to move us out from there. I don’t remember how we were moved; I must have been already sick by that time. I remember a clean room with four beds, a table, and chairs on the second floor of a red-brick building, which had formerly housed the Hungarian soldiers, the helpers of the SS, who manned the watchtowers. There was a whole campus of these buildings, with footpaths between them and a large central kitchen.

  One of the buildings was turned into the British administration office, where my mother started working for the camp commander. Mother had been a secretary before she married; she knew stenography, English, and French besides German and Czech of course, and she could type in all these languages. She figured it would be beneficial to practice her skills, since she would have to be our breadwinner when we returned to Prague.

  There was an interim period of which I have only a hazy recollection. I know I was lying on the top of a three-tiered bunk in a large hall with many other women, while my mother balanced precariously on the ladder, trying to feed me or washing my arms and face. I must have been feverish most of the time; I felt a peculiar tingling in my fingers, which I get whenever I run a high temperature.

  Like hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the prisoners, I had contracted typhus. Unlike most of the others, I survived. Mother told me afterward that I was taken to a makeshift hospital, where she saw that I didn’t get much attention. She managed to get accommodation in a room shared by two other women and moved me there from the hospital.

  The other two occupants were Mausi and her mother, Mrs. Hermannova. They had also passed the selection of Dr. Mengele and were with us in Hamburg and Bergen-Belsen. As we were living in one room, I was able to observe their relationship. Mausi’s mother was a difficult woman, most of the time complaining about this and that, demanding attention and services from her daughter. We called her Mrs. Mausová, meaning Mrs. Mouse, behind her back. But Mausi treated her mother with loving care and kindness, never losing patience or showing irritation.

  Next door lived a Dutch girl named Flora van Praag (such a name I couldn’t forget!), who had a room all for herself. Her boyfriend, a British officer, somehow found her a piano, on which she played joyful tunes and dance music all day long, while in the evenings we heard her laughing with her boyfriend.

  Mother was a smoker, and the camp commander allowed her to make free use of the officers’ cigarette supply, which was stored in his office. She modestly took only one or two packs a day, and although she smoked a few, we still accumulated a hoard.

  There was a man on the ground floor of the opposite building who sold fresh beef twice a week. He was an enterprising former prisoner who bought (or stole?) cattle from the surrounding countryside, slaughtered them, and traded the meat for cigarettes. In the morning Mother went with a few cigarettes to buy fresh meat. Since we had no kitchen utensils, Mother scraped the meat with a knife and made little patties, which she fried in a pan on an electric hotplate. We bought the knife, two plates, some salt, and butter from the cleaning woman, a German hausfrau whom the Brits sent to work for us. We paid her with the usual currency: cigarettes, of course. How I enjoyed these wonderful hamburgers! They helped me to recover quickly, and I gained weight and became stronger.

  I don’t know how long I was ill. I slept a lot, and when I awoke, the room was light and airy and my mother had nice things for me to eat, then I fell asleep again. But I felt better and better and then I could get up and walk a bit, to the toilet across the corridor and back. And all the time there were things to eat. We got meals from the central kitchen, as much as we wanted of everything; moreover, Mother traded cigarettes for all kinds of delicacies, such as eggs and milk. While I was recuperating, I often sat by the window, watching the people outside.

  One morning I saw one of our young women dashing out from next door and embracing a British soldier in uniform. The soldier was her brother. Their family name was Pressburger. Her younger brother Harry had been sent as a youth from Prague to England, in the children’s transport organized by Nicholas Winton. When the war broke out he joined the British army and was one of the liberators of Bergen-Belsen. There they stood, in the street, clinging to each other, crying, unable to let go.

  We were thinking of the future, waiting to go home. (Home? There was none!) To be allowed to leave, we needed a medical certificate confirming that we were not carrying the typhus infection. Repatriation of the survivors was handled by several officers appointed by the camp commander. Mother and I went to register for repatriation, and it turned out that the officer was a Czech himself. I remember the lists pinned on his door, with names of missing people. Among them was Josef Čapek, the brother of the famous Czech writer Karel Čapek. I learned later that he had died at Bergen-Belsen.

  The officer entered us on the waiting list but said that there was a shortage of buses and trains. Only small groups could be accommodated every few days.

  * * *

  While we were waiting, life seemed brighter every day. We enjoyed our freedom. The soldiers were eager for female company; they had strict orders not to fraternize with German women, but we, the former prisoners, were okay. The army organized film shows and dancing parties in the square; I could hear the music through the window. Each of us had by now acquired some dress or skirt, and whoever was fit enough was down there dancing.

  I watched them from the window but didn’t join them. I was shy and didn’t know any dances. Also I had never danced with a man.

  Meanwhile Mausi had become friendly with a Scottish army doctor named Sean, who often visited her, and sometimes they went out together. It even seemed that it might become a permanent match.

  I also had a boyfriend, called Leslie. He wasn’t an officer, just an army driver. I met him when he was sitting in his jeep and I asked him for a light. The next day he came to visit me in our room. He invited me to see a film. Mausi and Sean were also going to see it. When we left the building, Leslie kept back and let the two go in front. We walked a few paces behind them. He explained to me that in the British army, an officer must not be seen walking with a simple soldier like him.

  I still remember the name of the film: Lady Hamilton. I didn’t understand a word of what they were saying, but it was the first film I had seen since 1940, when the Jews in the occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were forbidden to go to cinemas.

  Another time, Leslie took me for an outing in his jeep. We drove through the lush countryside until we came to a forest. Leslie spread out a blanket in a clearing among the tall trees, and as we sat there, he started kissing me. His intentions were clear, but I was shy and frightened. Apart from a childish, innocent kiss from a schoolmate, I had never been embraced or kissed by a man before. Kissing Leslie was okay, but anything more was unimaginable. He was rather insistent, said that nothing would happen to me. He also told me quite earnestly that the British soldiers were strictly forbidden to consort with German women. Leslie took out something from his pocket to show me how he would protect himself from making me pregnant. I looked away, horrified and disgusted, and started crying. At that moment he must have realized that I was still an innocent child, pulled away, and began comforting me. He was very gentle, dried my tears, and behaved like a perfect gentleman. We met again several times before he moved on with his unit. I felt that, following the encounter in the forest, he liked and respected me more.

  On the day of his departure, he came to say goodbye very early in the morning. We four women were still asleep when he quietly opened the door. I awoke as Leslie was discreetly tucking the blanket over my exposed behind, before he whispered his goodbye. He said he must hurry, because the truck full of his fellow soldiers was waiting for him below in the street with the motor running, but he just wanted to see me for the last time. I never heard from him again.

  One afternoon there was an announcement from a loudspeaker, inviting women to come to a dance with the soldiers. This time it was not to be held in the square but in
a hall in a nearby German town. I put on my black skirt and climbed on the truck with the other girls. We drove along tree-lined lanes until we came to a picturesque small town with colorful, old gabled houses.

  When we arrived at the dance hall, it was empty, with chairs lined up along the walls. We were told to wait. After a while the soldiers arrived and the music began. There was a dance master, also in uniform, who called out directions, such as turn left or turn right or change partners. One of the dances was funny; the words went something like this:

  You put your right hand in, your right hand out, your right hand in

  And you shake it all around

  You do the hokey cokey and you turn around

  That’s what it’s all about

  You put your left hand in, your left hand out, your left hand in …

  Then came the left foot and the right foot and so on. It was very amusing, and everybody laughed.

  I sat on my chair next to the wall, and whenever a soldier came to ask me to dance, I replied that I didn’t know how to dance. They bowed and went to ask another girl.

  Then came the dance master himself. When I replied the same way, he just held out his hand and pulled me up. He said, “I am a dance instructor, and I will show you.” Of course I looked down at my feet to see what I must do, but he lifted my chin and held me tight. “Don’t look down,” he said authoritatively. It was surprisingly easy: the feet just knew the right steps and at the end of the first round, I already felt confident. He danced with me several more times, and I enjoyed it.

  It made me proud that he danced only with me, when he was not busy moderating.

  Since then I have never had another dance lesson. I didn’t need one.

  * * *

  My mother was very concerned about our future, all the time wondering how we would manage. We had nothing, no home, no possessions, no money, and also no husband or father who would provide for us. None of our close family could have survived; there was no one in Prague to whom Mother could turn for advice or help. Whatever we had owned had been confiscated by the Nazis: our modest bank account soon after the German invasion, and the rest of our household the day we were deported to the ghetto.