Two Princes and a Queen

by Shmuel David

  Rudi sat silent, large tears rolling from his eyes. He, too, had parted from his girlfriend who’d boarded the train four months previously. Afterward, we all ran to hug Mara. We hugged the others goodbye, too, promising we’d meet again.

  We knew we’d be walking two kilometers south along the banks of the Sava, and innocently believed that the distance would be difficult, but we didn’t know there’d be a far graver problem—the strict guard kept over us by the Germans at the camp.

  ***

  Early the next morning, truckloads of armed German soldiers came to the mill. They quickly jumped out. One of them, probably the commander, entered the mill with heavy steps and loudly ordered us to be outside with our suitcases and equipment within ten minutes. People came out with bowed heads, each one with a backpack or a knotted blanket containing all their belongings. We stood there in the cold, misty morning, the German commander’s orders and shouts blending with fresh, pleasant memories of the previous evening around the fire and particularly Mara’s moving words to us.

  A few strong young men loaded tables, closets, and large kitchen pots onto the trucks. Other mill and granary residents, as well as those living in rented apartments in the town, stood in two rows, according to their group leader’s instructions. Their shabby backpacks on their backs, they sullenly and reluctantly obeyed the German officer’s order to start moving.

  After less than an hour’s walk along a path bordered with vegetation on the banks of the Sava, we arrived at the camp. It looked like an abandoned military camp with the remains of barracks. On each side of the main avenue, two more rows of long huts had been erected. They organized us according to our order in line, approximately forty people to a hut. Luckily, Friedl, Inge, and I were in the same hut, which was located next to the well. A large bucket, tied to a rope, stood at the opening.

  ***

  That evening, on his way home on the subway train, Alan listened to his last meeting with Erica, realizing that he had a lot of material for a book. Erica’s story complemented his father’s diary, and he felt a strong need to do something with the material. He knew he should make time to write, but how? Working in a senior position at the bank was demanding. It would be hard to keep a low profile. No one there would agree to such a step.

  At the next meeting, as Alan was wheeling Erica in her wheelchair, he told her that Rachel had asked him to spend more time at home. Erica understood Rachel.

  “It’s important for you to be at home. I can’t understand the work culture here. You all work late in America. When I was young, people came home early to be with the family.”

  Alan explained that because of the urge to build a career, people commute long distances from the suburbs to work. Seventy years ago, in Belgrade, his grandfather Emil had motored every morning in his private car to his office in the city.

  They sat on the veranda overlooking the other side of the building, and he described the squirrel on the lawn below, fruit in each tiny paw, industriously eating it.

  “I so love nature,” said Erica. “And today, I can’t see it. The orange-colored trees in autumn and the heavy lilac blooms in spring. Today, my entire world is one color. It’s only in my memory that I can feel those colors. Tell me more about Nina. I wasn’t much older then than she is now.”

  “Her latest craze is going to nursing school. She wants to be a certified nurse in a hospital.”

  “That’s wonderful,” said Erica. “She reminds me so much of Inge. Now she wants to be a nurse.”

  “With her grades, she could easily get into medical school and become a doctor. It’s considered a more secure profession, with an appropriate salary. I’m afraid she’ll be wasted,” he said.

  “Let her follow her heart. If she wants to help people, that’s great. Not everything can be measured in money. You see the world through glasses of career and money. See what a wonderful daughter you have. I remember the talks we had with Inge in the infirmary. I talked a lot about ideals then. About helping others when all hell was breaking loose around us.”

  Mačva Baths, August 1941

  Every morning, we three and a large group of young people and adults went to work at the German military hospital. It was situated in a building used as a dormitory for the teaching college, until the German occupation. Inge was already a veteran there. A German officer had seen her resuscitate someone and took her to work there as a nurse. We cleaned houses and offices, including the toilets of the garrison district headquarters. At the end of the workday, we returned to camp at Sava, a walk of about a kilometer. We younger ones walked at the head, followed by the adults, who dragged their legs with difficulty. In between walked armed German soldiers. How enraging it was to see armed, fully equipped soldiers with the words Gott ist mit uns (God is with us) on their belts when their hearts were made of stone as they shoved lagging adults with their rifle butts.

  These were the hot, close days of August, and the walk along the Sava took us through swarms of mosquitoes and blackflies that made us itch and scratch until we drew blood. The days at the mill and granaries seemed like the Garden of Eden in contrast to life in the camp and hard labor. Some of the young people were made to carry sacks of wheat from the mill and granaries to ships anchored not far from there at Sava Dock, providing the German forces up the Sava with wheat. One day, Ancel came to the infirmary with a bleeding cut on his face. A soldier had struck him with the butt of his rifle.

  Inge disinfected the cut, carefully taping the edges together, as only she knew how to do.

  Ancel told her they were carrying sacks from the mill and loading them onto barges on the river. He looked pitiful, his back hunched and his shoulders weak. How could he possibly carry a sack of wheat on those shoulders?

  “We walk part of the way through shallow water to the barges,” he told Inge as she wound the bandage around his forehead. “And heaven help anyone who drops a sack into the water by mistake or, according to the Germans, on purpose. They could kill for that.”

  He related that he’d collapsed under the weight, and the sack had fallen into the water. He was sure it was the end of him. The German soldier guarding them attacked him, screaming that it was forbidden to load wet sacks into the hold of the ship. He was sure that Ancel had done it deliberately to spoil the entire shipment. He was mad with rage, aiming his gun at him.

  At that moment, said Ancel, he saw pictures of his childhood in Vienna pass before his eyes; his mother the pianist, who wanted him to be a pianist like herself and who made sure he had piano lessons and took care of his delicate fingers, now gnarled and stiff with effort. He saw the rifle butt in front of his eyes, believed his end was near. The German soldier approached, threatening that if he didn’t lift the sack out of the water and take it to the pile of spoiled sacks, he’d shoot him. He tried to get up and lift the water-logged sack, now even heavier, but couldn’t, and then he felt the sudden blow of the rifle butt on his forehead.

  “I saw stars,” he said. “Yes, actual stars, as they say. It’s not just an expression,” he said, looking admiringly at Inge.

  Inge and I looked at him with pain and compassion. Inge checked the bandage she’d just applied to make sure it wasn’t loose.

  “Enough humiliation. We have to do something,” said Inge, voicing what we all felt.

  The young men worked hard for two nights, removing the sacks from the granaries. Ancel, who was walking around with an elegant bandage around his forehead, managed to evade heavy labor the next day and joined the line of cleaners at the barracks. In the meantime, the food supply to the camp dwindled fast; it was now virtually impossible to get bread or fresh vegetables.

  One evening, as we sat in the infirmary during curfew, we longingly remembered the summer days at Kladovo, when we’d swim in the Danube, even holding swimming competitions there. A pity we couldn’t find a place to cool off now as we did last year in Kladovo. When she heard this, Ing
e told us that not far from the barracks, on the way to the Mačva Baths, which once served as a bathing spot for residents, were pools of clean water. One day, she’d heard a couple of soldiers talking about going there to bathe.

  “Why shouldn’t we go there?” I asked.

  “It could be dangerous,” answered Inge. “If we’re caught there, it would be the end of us.”

  I suggested we go there when the German soldiers leave.

  “We could at least try,” I said. “Let’s go and see the place. Maybe it’s worth taking a risk.”

  We agreed to go the following day, after finishing our work at the German barracks.

  “We have to get cleaned up after that disgusting work,” said Friedl. “Every time I get there, I don’t understand how I can actually do that filthy job. At first, I used to vomit every morning.”

  The next day, toward evening, Friedl and I went to look for the pools hidden behind the Mačva Baths. We approached the place quiet as mice, hiding behind the huge leaves of river undergrowth. We could hear the soldiers laughing and chattering. We drew closer, until we could see them. They were very close to us. One of them was humming the German tune on all German lips at the time, that song of yearning, “Lili Marlene,” which every lonely soldier at the front sang to his girl waiting for him at home. Now that Café Roma had become a dim beer hall, you’d hear drunken Germans singing it.

  The soldiers sitting in the pool were well-fed and overweight, their upper bodies exposed to the summer sun, red as a steak before it’s placed in the hot frying pan. Metal disks on chains around their necks jiggled on their hairy chests.

  The pools with their clear, clean water were very tempting. We waited until the last soldier left the place. We wanted to jump in immediately but hurried back to the camp to tell our friends. We told them how close the Germans were; although they didn’t see us, they were almost close enough to touch.

  The next day, we went there to bathe. The water was very pleasant, and the spot hidden among the trees was magnificent, even more beautiful than the place we’d bathed in on the Danube. We didn’t know then that we only had a few days left to enjoy the beauty of the place and the fresh water. It didn’t occur to us that within days the horror would increase. At least we made good use of those days, when relative quiet reigned.

  One day, when we came to our private pool, we were surprised to find familiar visitors. From a distance, we could already hear Milka’s voice, and when we approached, we saw that Mara and her friends from Sabac were also there. We were overjoyed. Reunited, we told them what had happened since our farewell party at Mara’s house.

  On a cold and misty morning on the twenty-first of August, we woke to the sound of doors slamming, shouts in German, feet dragging, and voices pleading for their lives. From the door of the hut, Inge and I watched in shock. We had occasionally hidden behind the door to avoid attracting the soldiers’ attention. In the square near the well, about ten meters away, the soldiers had gathered together about thirty young men from the first two huts. Their hands were tied, and the soldiers were giving them orders. Among them were Ancel and Heini from our group, who were both trembling with cold…or fear.

  A few moments later, the group disappeared with the soldiers. We sat on one of the beds, frightened to death, trying to understand what had happened. Rumors started coming in about locals shot in their homes that night in Sabac. They talked of seven or nine deaths, among them the local doctor, Bora Tiric, whom soldiers took from his home in the middle of the night and shot in the back.

  When we left for work at the Sabac barracks that morning, we were afraid of what we would find. We heard bodies were lying in the street, and our hearts hammered as we approached the town with its scents of dew-wet grass and morning coolness. At the well in the little market, we saw the first body, a man lying in a pool of blood. Not far away was the body of a young man who’d been shot. As we advanced toward the German barracks, two of our young men approached us. One of them was Richart, who had always made us laugh with his schiffsreview sketches about camp life. He looked humiliated and wretched. His back was bent under the weight of a young man’s body. His feet were tied with a rope, a long trail of blood behind them. I tried to look away so as not to see this horror, and then I saw Ancel and Heini standing next to an electric power pole opposite the entrance to the bank. Threatened by the soldier facing them, they were forced to do the unthinkable—hang the body lying at their feet from the pole. Ancel tried with all his strength to wind the rope around the pole but couldn’t do it. He looked from the soldier in front of him, gun ready, to the electric power pole, and back to the lifeless body lying at his feet, as if pretending to consider how to deal with such a horrifying task. The soldiers hurried us along to the barracks.

  That evening, Ancel told us about the viciousness they’d experienced. He said that the day’s events had made him lose any remaining will to live. He hadn’t recovered from the horror he’d been forced to carry out that morning.

  “I feel dead,” he said. “Hanging a dead man’s body from an electric power pole is an unspeakably barbaric act.”

  I saw no point in raising the issue of resistance or escape. He seemed to have lost any remaining will to fight. Partisans probably wouldn’t be interested in him. But Inge and I became even more determined.

  The following morning, as we were going past the square, we saw a town garbage cart moving slowly, a bare, blood-stained foot sticking out. On top was another body, its hand outstretched as if asking for help. Alongside the cart walked some of our young men with shovels in their hands. The procession made its way slowly to the old graveyard, where the bodies would be buried in a common grave.

  That evening, Ancel told us that what had happened two days previously was in retribution for Partisans’ actions. Eleven locals were killed—Dr. Tiric and Dr. Bata Cohen and nine farmers. On the evening of August 22, unexpected visitors arrived at the camp. They were almost destitute, with only the few belongings they were allowed to bring. These were Sabac’s local Jews, about sixty men and women who were in a painful physical and emotional state. They’d managed to live a rather normal life in the town and had evaded our fate until then. They were put in the fifth hut, which had been almost empty until then. We talked to some of them, and it turned out that the soldiers had robbed them of their property, and they’d even had to pay a ransom for their lives. Melamed, the tailor, arrived in a state of total exhaustion and blindness, suffering from pain in every part of his body, having been cruelly abused. He was taken to the infirmary in Sabac, where Dr. Rousseau tried in vain to lessen his pain.

  Death at the Barrier, September 1941

  When Alan got to Erica’s room, he was surprised to find her bed empty. He hurried to find the nurse. When she saw his worried look, she reassured him.

  “Don’t worry. She’s been taken for an ultrasound. The machine is only free in the evenings. But good that you came—no need to wait,” she said. “Could you answer a few questions for me?”

  “I’m not family,” said Alan. “Just writing a book about her. I don’t understand. Don’t you have any details about her?”

  “Of course we do, but I wanted to ask some more questions. I thought you were the son she spoke of.”

  “I didn’t know she had a son.”

  “I must have made a mistake. I’m sorry. Come back tomorrow, all right?”

  That night, he listened to recordings he’d typed out and even began to see how he could organize them.

  The following day, he returned to ask after her. He found her in her usual place next to her bed, ready to go for a walk. In reference to the previous day’s test, she said only that there’d been concern over a possible tumor, but that everything was fine.

  “What does ‘everything’s fine’ actually mean?” quipped Erica. “What’s there to check? If the time has come to go, then that’s all there is to it. One has to know wh
en to leave. This is a time for young people.”

  “Why talk about death?” said Alan. “Look at you. I wish many more people your age were in your position.”

  “Now, that’s enough! Looks to me as if I won’t be allowed to go in peace. Tell me, did I ever tell you about Nada? I met her at a field hospital near Münster. What a brave young woman.”

  “You’re brave too,” said Alan, pressing Record.

  “Not brave enough,” she said. “My actions were always based on convenience, even when I finally escaped.”

  ***

  Friedl, myself, and a few other girls were sent to sew and iron soldiers’ uniforms. At least we didn’t have to walk every morning to the German soldiers’ filthy barracks, or crouch over tubs of soapy water, constantly scrubbing and rubbing at their bedclothes. When I saw Chava’s hands, she was from the Mizrahi hut, they were red and chapped so badly, the flesh was almost exposed, and I realized that we were fortunate. One day, Chava said she didn’t have the strength to wash clothes anymore, that the soap made her hands peel, and one of the soldiers beat her. Inge joined us for a day one week after she persuaded her superiors that she should occasionally spend one day in camp in order to help the increasing number of soldiers there.

  The washing was done mainly near the river bank. Soldiers on guard duty would sometimes walk away to the teapots they got from the military kitchen. I thought that if I had the courage, I’d try to run. You would have to exploit the time the soldiers took to get to the pots. I even discovered a place in the fence that seemed hidden behind some trees. Once, when I went with Inge to the toilet, we crouched in our cubicles and I told her quietly that we ought to think about how to escape. I thought the no-return point had come, and if we waited any longer, we wouldn’t be able to escape, or worse still, we’d die there.

  A few days later, at the beginning of September, close to noon, several rounds were fired from a machine gun. Inge, who was working with us that day in the sewing hall, hurried in the direction of the fence. It was clear to us all that someone had tried to escape. I stayed glued to my seat. I didn’t want to see the horrors I’d witnessed two weeks before. But it quickly became apparent that I wouldn’t be able to avoid the terrible scenes of death. Inge and three men ran toward the fence. They returned in alarm within a few minutes and told us that two of the washer women, Rita and Chava, had been shot by guards stationed at a low point of the fence. Chava’s body was wrapped in blankets and brought to our hut. Inge murmured that nothing could be done to help her. She was sprayed with bullets, her hands still grasping the barbed wire.