by Dita Kraus
Summer came, the beginning of the school vacations. We used to go swimming in the pool, which was free for all Hadassim residents. Sometimes Michaela came, too, but she was becoming increasingly tired. Nevertheless, she went with Otto to Netanya to buy a present for my approaching birthday. Otto chose a picnic hamper, and Michaela a small cooking pot with a lid.
Our flat needed redecoration, and I arranged with a house painter to do Michaela’s room first. Since she wanted to lie down during the morning, Ora Goren, the village nurse, invited her to come and rest in her guest room. In the afternoon Ora came to say that Michaela had not got up since morning and she was unable to wake her.
I went with her, and together we made Michaela sit up. She was unnaturally drowsy, and we had to hold her up to lead her the short distance to our house. Her room had not been finished yet; all the furniture was still outside. We laid Michaela on her bed on the lawn and covered her with a thin sheet, and she immediately fell asleep again. In the evening, when the room was finished and the furniture returned, Otto and I managed to bring her back in. But she was almost unconscious. During the night, Otto and I checked several times, but she did not wake and had not moved. She also had not passed water since the previous morning.
At a very early hour, I asked Ami, our next-door neighbor, to help me lift her into the car, as Otto was not allowed to do any lifting. I folded the back seat and made a kind of bed for her to lie on comfortably, and we drove to Meir hospital. Otto, who had examined her drawer and found an empty bottle of the diuretic pills, reported it to the doctor. On her chart was written Suicide?
A few evenings before, I had had a long talk with Michaela. She had been dejected, complaining about her swollen legs and abdomen. I’d sat on her bed and tried to help her overcome the black mood, speaking about food. If she would return to keeping her strict diet, she would not have these swellings. “Don’t you remember how good you felt at Ben-Uri’s, when you ate only what he allowed? You could feel well again if you kept the saltless diet.”
She’d looked at me with hope in her eyes and had said, “You think even now…?”
Her words had scared me. Was she aware that her disease was incurable? I’d wondered. All those years of her illness, my deepest fear was that she would somehow learn there was no hope. With my greatest efforts, I had kept up the pretense that she would get well again. It needed extreme strength. Often I wished to let go and cry, to embrace her and mourn for her young lost life. But it was imperative never to let her suspect my fears. Moreover, I also had to hold up the morale for Otto, who leaned on me for support. His rage at his inability to enforce a cure for her drove him crazy; sometimes he even behaved quite irrationally.
I could not allow her to give up. “Of course,” I’d said. “Just try to overcome your craving for salt. You will see how good you will feel.” It had seemed to convince her, and she’d gone to sleep with a renewed determination.
In the hospital, Michaela never woke up again. They put her opposite the nurses’ station, to keep an eye on the monitor to which she was attached. I sat with her and watched her beautiful, serene face, the outline of her young feminine body under the sheet, and followed her breathing. The hours passed, and she did not move. I stopped a young woman doctor in the corridor and asked her if there was a chance that Michaela would come out of her coma. She answered curtly, “I have seen such cases,” then she walked on briskly. When I left late in the evening, there was no change.
Next day was Thursday. On that day Avi was to return from America, where he had visited his brother. He had been absent for many weeks, and Michaela had been expecting him eagerly. He arrived in his car and honked the horn under her window, as he used to do, his face all smiles. Shoshana, our neighbor on the left, came out immediately and asked him not to make a noise. She told him that Michaela was in hospital and her condition was very serious. He was crestfallen and left quietly.
I saw and heard him from the window but did not speak to him. We were at home at the time, since Otto had to rest after we had been sitting with Michaela the whole morning.
A while later, Shoshana came to tell us that there was a call from the hospital. In those days, we still didn’t have a phone. The message was that Michaela had stopped breathing. A member of the family had to come to the hospital to identify the body.
Neither Otto nor I had the strength to do that. We summoned Shimon, who was in Eilat, working in a children’s summer camp. He arrived a few hours later and, together with my cousin Doron, drove straight to the hospital. The doctors asked us to allow a postmortem on Michaela’s diseased liver for medical purposes. We agreed.
Ronny, then ten years old, was playing somewhere outside when the message arrived. He heard the news from one of the neighbors.
The funeral took place the next day at noon. The cemetery is in Even Yehuda, the village next to Hadassim. Friends and relatives gathered on our front lawn, where Michaela had slept only three days before. The ritual washing of the body was done by Shulamit, a Yemenite woman from the neighboring village of Ein Yaacov, our longtime babysitter. I asked her later how the autopsy scar looked, and she showed me on her finger how small the incision was. She said Michaela looked beautiful and peaceful.
I still wonder: Was Michaela aware of what she was doing when she swallowed the whole bottle of pills? Did she do it in the hope of getting rid of the edema before Avi came back from America? Was her mind muddled, or could she still think rationally? As it is, she was spared years of suffering, which inevitably would have ended in death anyway. I wish I could be sure that she only wanted to look slim for Avi’s sake and that she did not intend to die.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Stolperstein
Not long ago, I received the news from Heiner Schultz that a memorial plaque with my mother’s name—called a Stolperstein in German—would be placed on Falkenbergsweg, a street in Hamburg, on September 29, 2010.
As I was in Prague at the time, I decided to fly to Hamburg to participate in the ceremony. There are already twenty thousand such memorial stones in Germany, and over three thousand in Hamburg alone. The artist Gunter Demnig produces them and places each of them himself.
I arrived early in the morning, a day before the ceremony, and was met by Heiner and his daughter. On the way we passed well-to-do villages on the outskirts of Hamburg. I tried to recognize spots where we did forced labor, but everything looked totally unlike the war-damaged places of the past.
After breakfast Heiner took me by bus to see the place where our camp used to stand. Now there is only a grassy clearing in the wood. The only reminders of our camp are two concrete foundations where the barracks stood. On a large rock in one corner, an attached bronze plaque commemorated the camp of the Jewish women. Heiner tells me that vandals ripped it off several times. Instead of the plaque, the text is now chiseled directly into the rock, paid for by a private sponsor.
Not far from there is Falkenbergsweg, which is actually a narrow road with houses on one side and the foot of the wooded Falkenberg on the other. Here is the spot where one Stolperstein has already been inserted, and the next one will be my mother’s.
In the morning we retrace our steps together with Karin, Heiner’s wife. A lady with a video camera has already come and polished the existing plaque, preceding Heiner, who had wanted to do it with utensils he brought in his knapsack. In a short time a small crowd gathers around, some journalists, a few students with their history teacher, and some members of the voluntary organization that started this commemorative project.
The artist sculptor arrives with a few workmen and a trailer containing the tools. While he kneels down to remove a few paving stones to make room for the Stolperstein, a few reporters interview me. They ask me to hold the stone with the bronze plaque. The concrete cube is heavy, the polished bronze top smooth and shiny. They take pictures while I read the name of my mother, Elisabeth Polach, and the dates of her birth and her death. I don’t want to be photographed crying and create a c
heap drama, but my eyes do sting and are surely red.
The artist is now ready, and he inserts the cube into the hole, pouring water over it to make it set, and the workers then fill the gaps with sand. The remaining sand is swept away and then Karin and another person each place two red roses next to the stone.
The ceremony ends. I stay a while to answer questions from the students, who are visibly moved, and then we disperse.
Now we have to hurry because there is a meeting with the members of the organization in Harburg. One of the ladies takes us in her car. Together with many more members, we attend a lecture in a hall, hear some explanations about a Jewish family who owned a shop on the busy street below. Then the large group descends to view the three stones in their memory and also lay red roses there. But not all passersby are aware of what the gathering is about. A young woman with a baby pram rushes by and scatters the roses.
The next day I get a guided tour of the city by my friendly hosts. It’s a lot of walking, but the weather is pleasant, and the city beautiful with its multiple rivers, channels, and parks. My flight back to Prague, where I lived at the time, leaves at half past seven, and in just three hours I am magically back in my own bed.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Where Do I Feel at Home?
Otto and I started visiting Prague every year from 1990, until he became too ill to travel any longer. When he died, I used the money he had received as compensation for his father’s property and bought a small apartment in Prague. Twice a year, in spring and in autumn, I spend several weeks there. I meet my old friends and have also found new ones. Although I speak Hebrew well enough, the Czech language and culture are still closer to my heart.
When people ask me, “Where are you really at home?” I don’t know what to answer. My roots are no longer in the Czech Republic, but at the same time, I cannot say that I feel rooted in Israel. I enjoy the charm of Prague and the Czech landscape, but in Israel I love Lake Kinneret and the Mediterranean, where I go swimming every morning. My loved ones are buried in Israel, but the names of my parents and my grandfather, who perished in the Shoah and have no graves, are engraved on a marble headstone in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague. When I am in Prague, I am relaxed and feel at home. But when I return to Netanya, it too is my home.…
And when I die, I will be buried next to Otto in Kibbutz Givat Chaim.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
I Need Not Delay Anymore
One of my activities is giving talks about my personal Holocaust to students in Israel and also abroad. After the lecture I usually answer questions from the audience. For the youngsters, it’s a harrowing experience, and often they ask with hope in their voice, “But after the war, was your life a happy one?” Can I disappoint them and say no? I make some funny comment to avoid a direct answer. But I think to myself, If only it were.…
Dear reader, I cannot stop here, leaving you feeling sorry for my life’s sorrows and losses. Miraculous things happen to everyone and to me, too, of course. Here they come.
I have been lucky to reach the respectable age of eighty-nine (at the time of writing this). I am still reasonably healthy, despite being half deaf. I can travel, listen to music, drive my car, read books, paint flowers, play bridge, swim in the Mediterranean, meet old friends, and make new ones. I have recently even become the heroine of a book named The Librarian of Auschwitz.
My son Ronny is happily married and has two lovely children, my pretty granddaughter, Gabby, who recently finished her army service and enrolled at university, and handsome Daniel, who finished the last grade of high school and will soon start army service. Ronny’s wife, Orna, is like a daughter to me.
Shimon’s sons, Ehud and Assaf, have become wonderful men. Both are tall and good-looking, friendly and loving. They are successful in their work and are raising a new generation of smart kids. My relations with them and their mother, Miriam, couldn’t be better. (Old bitter memories are forgotten.) I love to spend weekends with them and play with the little ones. It makes me happy that, despite Hitler’s efforts to exterminate us, there are now fourteen Kraus descendants—the last one, my great-granddaughter, Michelle, is just ten months old.
No longer do I wait till … till the war ends, till we are liberated, till I marry, till the child is born, till we have more money, till the school year ends, till peace comes …
I need not delay anymore; I have caught up with my life.
NOTES
9. Fear
1. Now and again I stood in the queue at the grocer’s instead of Mother. There was a pub in our building; as Jews were not allowed to be outdoors after eight o’clock, I could go through the cellar to fetch a beer for Grandfather’s evening meal.
13. Life in the Camp
1. Fredy Hirsch did not die by suicide as is commonly believed but was given an overdose of sleeping pills by our physicians and died in the gas chambers together with the September transport on March 8, 1944. There was an underground movement in Auschwitz. It was decided that if the September transport was indeed going to be murdered in the gas chambers, the barracks would be set on fire and the prisoners would try to break through the fences and escape. Fredy Hirsch was to give the signal to start the uprising with his sport teacher’s whistle. He was extremely perturbed, knowing that the children had no chance of survival. He asked the doctors for something to steady his nerves. The doctors had been promised by Dr. Mengele that they would be recalled to the hospital barracks, where he needed them. They therefore did not want the uprising to take place and gave Fredy a stronger dose of sleeping pills, so he could not be wakened to give the signal. He was taken in his sleep to the gas chambers together with the entire September transport. Several doctors and the pharmacist Dr. Sand survived. Otto Kraus personally heard this explanation from their mouths in March 1989 in Terezín.
14. Hamburg
1. “Come on, come on, get working, faster, faster!” In Hamburg schneller is pronounced sneller.
2. I remember a conversation from a later time, when we were working in a street, stapling bricks from a bombed building. A passing woman stopped and asked me, “What crime have you committed?” I said, “We are Jewish.” She continued, “All right, but what crime have you committed?”
16. My Italian Boyfriend
1. Written messages were on tiny pieces of paper wrapped around a stone and thrown up or down.
18. Tiefstack
1. I later learned that the date of the bombardment was March 21, 1945, and the name of the killed guard: Paul Gustav Karl Freyer.
21. Bubi
1. In 1994, a German journalist, Rainer Hoffschildt, who was researching homosexuality in the concentration camps, approached me with the request to tell him anything I might remember about Bubi’s behavior in Hamburg. From him I learned her real name, Anneliese Kohlmann, and that she had been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. More about her can be found on the Internet.
30. The Kraus Factory
1. The Nazis called all non-Jews Aryans. When they expropriated Jewish property, they called it Arisierung, or “Aryanization,” and the non-Jews they installed to run Jewish businesses were called Arisatoren.
34. Givat Chaim
1. A kibbutz member was called a chaver or chavera, meaning “friend” or “member.” Plural forms are chaverim and chaverot.
2. People or places not part of the kibbutz were referred to as being from outside. Some chaverim had parents outside. The barber who came twice a month to trim our hair was from outside. Matti, the teacher, was from outside. Children from outside often came to vacation with their kibbutz relatives.
35. My Career as a Cobbler
1. The most popular head covering in Israel used to be a khaki cloth hat, which was practical not only as protection against the hot sun but also to wipe the perspiration from one’s face or as a receptacle for the oranges or nuts one gathered
under the trees. It was called a kova tembel. Kova in Hebrew is a hat and tembel is a fool. And, indeed, the person with the hat pulled low over the forehead looked somewhat foolish. The iconic drawing of “little Srulik” in khaki shorts and the kova tembel became a kind of symbol of Israeliness … of pioneering, volunteering … salt of the earth.
43. Otto’s Writings
1. This was the translation of Země bez Boha, his first novel, published in Prague in 1947.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I AM INDEBTED to the publisher of Akropolis, Filip Tomaš. It was his idea to turn my reminiscences into a book. I wish my close friend, Dana Lieblová, had lived to see the book published. She had just completed the translation to Czech when she suddenly died. I am also grateful to Hana Hříbková, the gifted editor, for merging the separate parts into a whole. These three people became the midwives of my Delayed Life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR