Two Princes and a Queen

by Shmuel David

  “What about your daughter? Is she not coming?” he asked.

  “She doesn’t know I’m here,” said Erica. “No point in adding to her burden.”

  When he left, he promised to come the following day.

  On his way home at rush hour, he stood crowded with everyone else on the train, hoping that on Forty-Second Street, many of them would get off and he’d be able to sit comfortably. He promised himself that the next day he’d talk to Erica about the idea of writing a book about the whole affair. He had to confide in her. After all, he’d promised not to do anything without her consent. He had to get her consent, while she was still lucid.

  The next day, she looked a lot better. When she heard about the idea of his writing a book, her only regret was that she’d not be able to read it.

  “And you won’t be able to read it to me,” she said. “Because you won’t have anyone to read to. But I would like to say that your visits have given me great pleasure. At least I’ll know that I am leaving a good world with people like you and Nina in it.”

  “So you are okay with my publishing your story!”

  “Your curiosity made me revive that period in my mind. I summed up a period of my life that is considered beautiful in terms of age—but for me and my generation in Europe, it was traumatic.”

  “I hoped to hear about my family, and I did, but I was also given the fascinating and sad story of everything that happened in Sabac and the heroism of the Partisans.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you more details about your family. Only about Inge, and she, too, went in the end, like all the women, on the death march to Sajmište. As you know, no one came back from Sajmište to tell the story.”

  “Is there no written material about what happened there? A diary? Letters?”

  “You know, come to think of it… I remember now that there were letters…”

  “What letters?”

  He pressed Record and Erica continued her story in her steady, calm voice.

  ***

  Around June, a Partisan from Belgrade joined us. She worked as a nurse at the Christian hospital there, and she told us about two friends who’d received letters from a common friend at Sajmište. Her friend was also a nurse. Her name was Hilda, Hilda Dajč, I think. What was incredible was that she wasn’t forced to go there. She volunteered, went willingly. Her father was highly respected in the community, and the Germans wanted him to be their liaison person with the Jews. That’s why they didn’t send the family to Sajmište like the rest of the Jewish families in December 1941.

  They didn’t yet know what was going to happen there, but Hilda Dajč wanted to go and help her people in that terrible place. But after she left, the noose only tightened, until the way out was blocked.

  The friend from Belgrade, I’ve forgotten her name, joined us in June, after Jelka was killed in our terrible battle with the Četnics, and we urgently needed another nurse for the regiment. We became friends. She told me that some of Hilda’s letters got through to her at great risk. At first, she sent a letter when she arrived—the Germans weren’t yet reluctant to allow letters out. But from January to February 1942, when they started to implement their plan to destroy the camp, anyone caught with a letter was hanged. Hilda made a huge effort to tell her close friends what happened to her. They were studying at Belgrade University. Find those letters. She probably mentions people’s names, including Inge, because they apparently worked in the same infirmary.

  ─ Part III ─

  Sajmište

  Belgrade, February 2002

  Two months had gone by since Erica’s death. Alan had listened to her story for months and now knew it as well as he knew his father’s story. He felt close to her, as if he were part of her family. Her death left a great void in his heart. He and Nina were at the funeral, together with her daughter and some other close friends. Not many attended. Most of her acquaintances and friends had already died.

  Throughout this time, her voice echoed in his mind, telling him to look for Hilda Dajč’s letters.

  He approached the Holocaust Archives in Belgrade, but the impression he got from their response was that he could expect nothing from them.

  He contacted the Holocaust Museum in Belgrade. He wrote, telling them he was looking for material on Belgrade Jewry during the war, between the years 1941 and 1942. Apparently, they did not give out information over the phone or by mail to strangers, and he would have to go to the archives himself. He spoke to a pleasant, kind employee called Barbara, who called back with the news that she had information on Hilda Dajč, but that he would have to come to the archives and sign papers before he could see it.

  Alan’s heart beat hard as he mounted the steps. He was about to meet Barbara in her office. She had done so much for him, without even knowing him. She was glad to help and promised to give him access to any material she had. Recently, Alan hadn’t been able to take leave, and so he used the long weekend of their wedding anniversary in February. Rachel had planned a little holiday that weekend. She didn’t understand why it was so urgent for him to travel to Belgrade when at long last they had an opportunity to spend some time together, skiing in Denver with friends. But work constraints enabled him to go to Belgrade only on these dates.

  When he reached Belgrade after a stop in Zurich, the city seemed to him to have stood still. Seven years had gone by since the Dayton Agreement, but in his mind, he could hear the Allied planes diving to bomb again. As the taxi drove through the main streets of the city, he saw walls damaged by machine-gun fire. The wide streets seemed abandoned. There were so few cars, and these were from the seventies and eighties, which gave the place the appearance of a city living in the past, or which had lost its will to live.

  Barbara was small and plump, very different from how he’d imagined her in their phone conversations. After a few polite words about the flight and the journey, she took him to the coffee corner and made them both coffee.

  The archives were beautifully organized, and a caring and responsible hand was clearly evident. They paced the length of walls heavy with documents, while Barbara explained to which periods and geographical regions they all belonged. When they reached the year 1942, the Jewish camp at the Sajmište exhibition grounds, Alan’s heart was beating very fast. Together, they examined documents and photographs. Almost six thousand Jews and gypsies were murdered there in the three months between March and May of 1942, said Barbara, showing him a picture of the Saurer polizei. There were two of them. The names of the drivers were also known: Getz and Majer. Just as he was despairing at the sheer quantity of documents on the Sajmište wall, Alan was surprised to find a notebook that looked rather like a school exercise book. The binding was stained, nothing was written on it, and the pages were gnawed at the corners. Inside the notebook, in gothic letters, was the name:

  Inge Müller

  Block 14 A

  February–April 1942

  Next to the notebook, he found a file with the following:

  Hilda Dajč

  Letters to Nada and Marianna

  Block 14 A, February–April 1942

  February 10

  I’m sitting on my rickety wooden bunk in the corner of Block 14 A, on a thin layer of damp straw to soften the hard, wooden surface. Luckily for me, my bunk is in the corner, so I have a little more privacy than the other girls. It’s two thirty at night. I’ve just finished my night shift. All day on my feet and a night shift too. I share my shifts with my good friend Hilda, and Matilda, our pharmacist. Every night, something unexpected happens; no night goes by without drama. Sometimes it’s anxiety or the night fears of women or children. How could there not be after all the terrible things we went through on the way here? Just that interminable walk through muddy snow, our worn-out shoes soaked in icy water, was enough to drive you mad. How much can a human being take?

  That march finally pe
rsuaded me that there is no limit to the body’s endurance. And today, I am even more certain that women have more stamina than men.

  Tonight, I was called to Block 7. Someone was screaming there as if she was being slaughtered. I could hear her screaming before I even got there.

  “Emily!” She was waving her arms frantically in all directions. “Give Emily back! Give her back!”

  I gave her some valerian I had in my bag. After a few moments, she calmed down a little and stopping screaming.

  I was afraid she might harm herself. Later, her friend told me she’d been forced to leave Emily, her baby, to die of cold in the snow, while a German soldier stood there, shouting at her to hurry, “Las, las.” Emily was only a year and half, blue and almost frozen. She thought she could return later on to take her, and even left her the wool blanket she’d hastily packed the day before when they set out on the march from Ruma.

  We arrived at camp Sajmište near the city. Hanne had told me about his favorite city, and I can see the shining lights across the Danube. That’s where he spent his beautiful childhood days with his mother and father, Louisa and Emil. I can actually imagine him there. Our world seems so close, but in fact it’s very distant from the life that goes on across the river. Sometimes we seem to be on another planet, another one of Hanne’s frequent terms. If we’d known where the march was headed, many of us would have jumped into the freezing Sava to die there, rather than reach this terrible camp. Ever since the young people left Sabac on the train, we’ve been condemned to endless atrocities. Who knows what will happen? What’s certain now is that there’s not a single spark of light at the end of the tunnel.

  The journey here began on January 26. Early that morning, we heard the Germans shouting in the camp on the bank of the Sava, “schnell, schnell,” hurrying us along. They ordered us to take our few belongings and led us along the bridge above the Sava in the direction of Článek train station. The sun hadn’t risen yet; we walked under gray January skies, and a fine rain stung our faces. At Článek, we were loaded into a train of dilapidated cattle cars. We were so exhausted from the march through the snow, we didn’t have the strength to climb onto the train. Beside me was a woman with a small girl who was afraid to climb on. One of the soldiers barked at her, yelling and pushing her with his rifle butt. I couldn’t control myself and shouted at him, “Shame on you. Don’t you have a mother too?”

  He didn’t look at me, just continued to push the mother and her child. I tugged at his arm with what strength I had left. Only then did he turn and strike me hard in the face. Afterward, when I was inside the car, I heard about the mother of the baby who’d been forced to throw him inside like some object.

  The cars traveled slowly to Ruma, where we got down and began the exhausting march on foot to Zemun, a march I thought would never end. A procession of women in black or gray moving through the white snow. Some with babies in their arms, some with small children holding their hands, their eyes staring forward in despair, oblivious to the shouts of the soldiers. The cold penetrated our thin layers of clothing, and a thin wool blanket hastily taken that morning or a worn-out coat were of no help. There are only women and children on this march. The men were left behind, in the long ditch in the Sajmište maize field. They were left tangled together, a pile of gypsies and Jews.

  I have to stop writing now; my eyes are closing. Tomorrow we get up early, and I have to report to the infirmary at seven thirty in the morning.

  February 15

  The cold wind gives no respite. It comes in through the broken window, whistling and banging at the window frame in the wall. The cold gets into every corner, causing us to suffer even during the little rest time we have. However, the huge, terribly crowded building we live in without partitions, all the windows open to the wind, is still less crowded than Block 3, where most prisoners live in less than a meter per person.

  There are very few men in the camp. Only the lucky ones got here for various reasons, unlike those captured in the hunt for hostages, who were made to stand over open ditches, to be shot in the neck by a firing squad. Every morning, they are taken out to labor that perhaps makes them curse the fact they’re alive and weren’t made to stand over ditches in front of a firing squad.

  The buildings here were once used for international exhibitions and fairs organized by Sajmište in 1937, and each block was named after the country that exhibited there. Block 14, for example, is also known as the English Pavilion. And Block 3, where most of the prisoners are housed, is also known as the German Pavilion. Between five hundred and a thousand women are crowded in there. It’s a huge place, and not every woman has her own bunk. Block 9 is also called the Turkish Pavilion. Ironically, this is where the showers are located, if you can call those openings in the ceiling showers. Now, with the daily rise in the numbers of the dead, the Turkish Pavilion serves as a storage space for the bodies until they can be taken for burial across the Sava to Belgrade, labor that frequently falls to us. Our block, Block 12, is adjacent to the hospital building and the pharmacy. It holds fifty beds, and is usually full. The latrines are outside for hygienic reasons. We all work around the clock. The Germans make us work at every kind of imaginable labor. Fortunately, I am in the infirmary all day. My workday begins at seven thirty each morning and ends at nine o’clock at night. I’m lying on the mattress now, exhausted, but I have to write this journal. Who would believe me otherwise?

  We are two nurses here under the direction of Matilda, the pharmacist. She isn’t from our transport group. She’s one of those who’ve been here since December, when the camp was established, like Hilda Dajč. She has good ideas about how to pass the time and how to keep warm. Today is the weekly day for making tea with milk. She asked us to light all the kerosene burners in the infirmary. We have twelve of them. I stand over the pot of milk mixed with tea, stirring and stirring, my eyes tearing from the smoke. That’s how I keep warm. My friend Hilda stands over the second pot. She also got here in December, but unlike the others, she volunteered to come. We talk a lot, and she tells me about herself. She was born in Vienna, but her parents left long before the Anschluss. They moved to Belgrade because her father, Emil, an engineer, had an opportunity to open a flourishing business there. This reminds me of Hanne’s family. His father, also Emil, came from Budapest to Belgrade for economic reasons as well.

  In Belgrade, Hilda went to the city school, where she excelled in all subjects, but her soul was mainly drawn to literature. She came to architecture after her father explained to her that literature is for the soul, and in order to make a living, she needs to study something practical. She believed that architecture was the closest profession to art. She managed to complete her first year with honors.

  The Germans invaded Belgrade when she was in the middle of her second year. Her yearning for literature never left her, and she stayed in touch with art and literature students. She told me about the literary society named after the adored Bosnian poet, Aleksa Šantić,29 which says it all. Hilda was the editor of the newspaper and had her own column. She’s an inspired, idealistic girl with a tendency to excessive emotion. I can’t understand how she can bear the horror of this place.

  Hilda told me how she got here. No one forced her to come. It never occurred to me that anyone would willingly volunteer to come to such a hell. Her father was the liaison between the Jewish community and the occupying regime, so at first, they didn’t touch her family.

  In April, at the beginning of the occupation, she was working as a volunteer at the Jewish hospital established in Visokog Stevana Street after the terrible bombing attacks by the Germans. There were scores of wounded, and the Jewish community initiated this with the permission of the local German office. The hospital was run by Dr. Bucič Pijade, a very special person in his own right. He greatly admired Hilda, who had come there without much knowledge and devotedly and responsibly learned everything on her own.

  In December,
the Germans ordered all women to report to 23 Washington Street, and Hilda joined them.

  ”I went with the women and children. I thought there’d be a need for someone who could give first aid, and they’d probably open an infirmary. I’m willing to do anything to help the unfortunate, and so here I am. Dr. Pijade tried to persuade me to stay at the hospital, but I knew my place was here, with the most wretched of all.”

  That’s what Hilda told me with her characteristic naïveté and irresistible, winning smile.

  ”My parents begged me to stay at home. ‘Why would you go rushing off there to volunteer? Who knows what dangers are waiting for you? In a few months, all this will be over, and the university will open again.’ But I told them I’m not needed at home. I’m needed at the camp. I acted in accordance with my conscience, and I’m at peace with that. I see, too, that they were wrong. Not only is the situation bad, it’s getting worse by the day.”

  But our situation is better than that of the gypsy prisoners. It’s even worse there. Hilda and I were called to take care of the gypsy children who suffered from lice. We cut their hair. I’ve never seen anything like it. Afterward, we rubbed kerosene into their heads; my skin is still burning right up to the elbows. It was terrible. There were about twenty children in that state, and who knows what will happen tomorrow? It’s contagious.

  When we got back to the camp, mealtime was over—if you can call sauerkraut with watery soup a meal—so we didn’t eat. This meal is served once a day, in the morning or the evening, and there isn’t enough for everyone. We are all becoming skeletal. I’ve noticed that the less we eat, the less we feel the hunger, which was very hard in the beginning.

  That evening, they told us we’d eat only bread and tea with milk. Luckily, we’d prepared tea that morning, as we hadn’t eaten a thing for lunch. We made do that evening with a piece of bread each and tea with milk.