Eva's Story (11 page)

When I walked forward he waved me to the right. I turned to wait for Mutti but was horrified to see a Kappo push her roughly over to the selected side.

I screamed. Mutti rushed across the room to give me a farewell kiss but one of the SS women caught her and beat her fiercely over the spine with a leather belt, but not before she had managed to get near enough to me to give a whispered instruction.

‘Try and tell Minni!'

My body started to shake uncontrollably and my teeth chattered violently as I watched my mother, my darling Mutti, being marched away naked with others in her group. It was the blackest moment of my life. I thought it was the last time I would ever see her.

We dressed in grim silence. That night instead of being returned to our old barrack in A Lager we were walked across to another part of the camp which was separated by a barbed-wire gate guarded by a sentry and searchlights.

Franzi tried to comfort me but I was inconsolable. I just knew that I had to try to get to Minni to tell her what had happened. This compulsion was so strong that I did not consider what would happen to me if I got caught.

I told Franzi I was going to go back. She did her best to stop me, pleading and warning, but nothing she said made any sense to me except that if I got killed I would share Mutti's fate.

We were herded onto our bunks once more and I lay awake, waiting until the middle of the night. Franzi, who was beside me, kissed my head as I slipped off the middle bunk and crept out of the barrack. I could see the sentry tower and I clung to the wall, in the shadows, as the beam of the searchlight swung slowly clockwise over the camp. All was quiet. I moved stealthily towards the sentry gate without considering that it might be shut. By some miracle it was wide open but I didn't spare it a thought as I ran through, just as the searchlight shone behind me.

I made my way to Minni's barrack and slipped inside. Everybody was asleep. The bunks for the nurses were near the door and I woke up the first person I came to.

‘I've got to see Minni urgently,' I whispered.

The sleeper was awake in seconds and whispered back, ‘Where have you come from? Who are you?' She was off her bunk by now peering at me to make sure I was not an informer.

‘Please, please, it is very important,' I insisted, ‘I have to see Minni.'

Several other nurses and patients were awake by now, scared of the commotion I was making. She took hold of my arm and led me down a few lines of bunks until I saw Minni's bulk under a thin blanket. I shook her.

‘Eva!' she awoke with a start. ‘What's the matter?'

She held me to her bosom as I sobbed uncontrollably and blurted out the terrible news. ‘They have selected Mutti.'

‘Shh, darling, I will see what I can do. I will try,' she repeated, ‘I will try.' I also told her that I had been moved from A Lager to B Lager. Now that I had done all I could I was beginning to calm down.

‘I will speak with Herr Doctor Mengele tomorrow.' Minni's tone reassured me. ‘Go back now. Be very careful that you are not seen.'

We kissed each other goodbye and I made my way back into the night. No one spied me and surprisingly there were no dogs about. When I returned from my perilous crossing Franzi was waiting by the door to grab hold of me and hug me. I felt limp and numb and crept back into my space on the middle bunk, emotionally and physically exhausted. All the women sharing my bunk, together with some Dutch friends who had known Mutti from our original transport carriage, were wide awake and waiting up for me. They all tried to give me comfort and some hope and at last I managed to fall asleep.

For the first time since we had been captured I was without Mutti in the night.

The following dawn, after Appel, we were told that we were to be moved to Camp C, about two kilometres away, to another work unit called the Weberei. We were then led away from familiar horrors to unknown ones.

I was in despair. I cried all the way. Franzi walked along beside me but she could do nothing to stem my tears. I felt that this was the final goodbye and that the last ties with my family – my mother and my cousin – had been broken. Nothing could console me in the knowledge that I was now totally alone.

On that first morning after Mutti's selection, we were marched to a huge shed which contained long trestle tables piled high with heaps of rags and rolls of very hard paper. Our task was to tear the material into ribbons about three centimetres wide, plait them into ropes some five centimetres thick and daily complete a length of twenty metres. We were told that it was going to be cut into metre lengths for throwing hand-grenades. There were only a few pairs of scissors in the entire shed which we could borrow from one another but mostly we had only our bare hands to use as tools. I often had to use my teeth.

Throughout the day the SS women and men walked round to check that the plaited ropes were strong enough. They were very strict about quality. If you didn't make your plait properly and it came apart when they pulled it you were thoroughly beaten. Each evening our individual quantity of rope was measured. At first, if we did not complete our lengths, we were warned to do better. If we did not improve we were told that we would be selected. Inevitably some women were too weak to work properly. Gradually they lost the strength to tear the thicker material with their hands or teeth. One by one, they were selected and they disappeared from the assembly line. We all feared that this would happen to us too but I always managed to complete my quota.

Now that Mutti was gone my nights were intensely miserable and without her comforting arms around me I found it very difficult to bear the appalling conditions. Everyone near me somehow tried to show me a little extra love to make up for it and Franzi made it her business to stay as close to me as she could. That way she remained one of my sleeping partners and she did her best to stand in for Mutti by cuddling me at night. However, we were all becoming dispirited, worn out with worry and lack of proper food, and no one could take the place of my mother.

All the conditions in the new camp, including the sleeping arrangements, were exactly as before. However, apart from Franzi, I now had a new selection of sleeping partners – we did not have any choice, we were simply allotted places as we marched into the barrack. The others on my bunk were a mixed bunch: some were much older than me; some were intellectuals who found the degradation extremely difficult to cope with; others were rough diamonds, able to accept the conditions – like Gretl, who was also Viennese, and even in this grim situation could always find something to make us smile. But as the youngest I felt very vulnerable and sorry for myself. I was trapped in the most appalling place and at night I dreamt about escaping, running through forests, hiding from my hideous tormentors. I didn't want revenge on the Kappos, I just wanted to run away from them. I was determined to live, and to be free.

Every night was another test of endurance. No matter what we had been before capture – doctors, nurses, housewives or market women – we were now all in the same predicament. At night we had to be a team. We were so tightly packed on the bunk that no one was able to lie on their back or their front, only on their side. The ten of us slept together like a set of human spoons, so that when one person turned in their sleep we all had to turn. Even our sleep was regimented.

I was normally so tired I couldn't stay awake, even though another kind of bedfellow lay with us – hideous, large, black bedbugs that multiplied freely, flourishing in our warmth and in the old wood of the bunks.

Each time the ‘team' on the bunk above turned, these revolting bugs dropped down on us in great lumps and stuck to our skins. They were sickening bloodsuckers that feasted off our bodies. There were so many that we would have been covered with them had we not scraped them off immediately. Even so our skins were pitted with bites and boils from their attacks.

The way we had to live was disgusting. One day I thought I had found a possible remedy for the problem of not being able to clean myself after going to the latrines. I saw a large roll of white cotton wool lying behind a barrack and I pulled a piece off the roll and kept it safely in the pocket of my dress until I could use it later in the day. I was looking forward to wiping my bottom with something soft but when I used it I discovered at once it was not cotton wool at all but fibre glass. I had razed my whole backside with tiny fragments of glass splinters which I had to pick out as best I could. It rapidly turned septic and I was sore for days.

One night I was woken by a peculiar sensation on my feet. I looked down to see a black rat about to gnaw at my flesh and I screamed in fright, making so much noise that people thought I was being killed. I lay there trembling and sweating for a long time until the others in the bunk finally convinced me that the animal had gone. After that incident I dreaded going to sleep.

We suffered daily from hunger pains. There was always just enough food to keep us alive but no more. We were being torn apart by the need for more nourishment. We became so obsessed by food that we could have committed any crime to obtain extra rations. We were often issued with such revolting, mouldy gruel that, although I was slowly starving to death, I could not bring myself to eat more than a mouthful of the stuff.

Some days I would volunteer to help fetch the heavy soup vats from the kitchen barracks. These were huge wooden containers, larger than dustbins. It took four of us to stagger back to the hut with them. Very occasionally we were lucky to find them filled with milk. For a minute or two we would manage to set the vat on the ground, out of sight of the barrack, and then drink our fill of the nourishing liquid and thank God for it. We had to be extremely careful not to leave any sign of the theft on our faces or clothes or we would have suffered a cruel beating from the Kappos.

Because of bugbites and the filthy conditions I developed a huge boil on the back of my neck. It was drawing together painfully into a great lump that needed to be lanced. There was one particularly vicious Kappo who was always hitting me during Appel because I found it impossible to stand still for such a long period. This time when she struck out at me her hand landed squarely on my boil. That did the trick! The boil burst open and pus spattered all over her hand and face. I felt great satisfaction in seeing her look of disgust as she wiped it away.

We had learnt early on that it was essential to have a utensil of our own for food, preferably a mug or bowl for the sloppy soup, and in the first weeks Mutti and I had gone without bread in order to swap for one for each of us. We also realized that these old rusted mugs were precious items that were invariably stolen if you took your eyes off them. I usually managed to tie mine around my waist with a rag or piece of string but even so there were times when I lost my mug and had to starve myself once more to get another. The weekly showers meant that all our clothes were removed for delousing. Nothing belonged to us personally and if we did have something to make life a little more civilized – like a mug, or a pin, or a piece of soap – then it was often lost with our clothes at the door to the showers. We began to devise ways of keeping them.

The Kappos had sharp eyes and punished anyone they caught holding on to something precious. As I walked past them to the showers with the other naked women I developed the knack of holding my mug in front of me, then behind me.

It was a terrifying game because of the chance of discovery and the beatings that might follow. Still, our little possessions meant such a lot to us that we set out to hoodwink the Kappos if we possibly could. We would conceal things under our armpits or in even more ingenious ways. One formerly buxom woman, whose ample breasts had now been reduced to thin flaps of empty skin, tried to smuggle a small piece of towelling under her breast-fold. Just as she was about to enter the showers, the Kappo's alert eye detected a minute corner of rag peeping out. She strode over to the culprit and, with a twisted look on her face, grasped hold of the nipple with her thumb and forefinger, lifted up the flap of skin and let the tiny piece of towel drop to the floor. We all stood frozen with fear. There was absolute silence as we waited for the screams of abuse, but the Kappo suddenly saw the comical side of it and fell about laughing. To our relief that incident was over.

After the showers a different set of deloused clothes was thrown at us. If we were lucky we found small items in the pockets which we could swap. Can you imagine exchanging a rusty safety pin to keep your knickers up, for a scrap of rag to dry yourself? Every tiny item was precious currency.

To feel clean again was a relief but it lasted only a short time. We were plagued by lice. These pests crawled all over my body, they bit me behind the ears, between my legs, on any part of the skin that was moist and warm. Everyone was tormented by them. Although the barracks were clean, we ourselves were filthy and our physical condition encouraged the lice to multiply. Their bites would come up in little blood bumps that burst when we scratched them, but they itched so much that we could not help scratching – it nearly drove us mad. Once a week after showers we were sprayed with some kind of powder that probably killed the living lice but not the eggs, so that a few days later we were crawling with them again.

Every night the bed bugs would renew their attack. Towards the middle of October, when I had managed to get my tin mug through the showers once more, I carefully placed it as usual within eye-sight and hand-reach on the edge of my bunk, before I fell into an exhausted sleep. The night was humid and uncomfortable. When I awoke in the morning and reached out to check that my mug was still in place it was covered inside and out with a living crust of bedbugs about two centimetres thick. As I grasped the mug my fingers crunched into them and their blood spurted all over my hand. I shuddered with revulsion. It made me want to be sick. So did the incident that happened a few mornings later.