I Have Lived a Thousand Years (17 page)

All the other girls also sit self-consciously at their workbenches and giggle in secret anticipation of Herr Zerkübel’s reaction. At ten, Herr Zerkübel, the supreme master of
Montage,
makes his customary, silent, impassive appearance. As he passes among the rows of young girls fidgeting in suppressed excitement, his demeanor remains aloof. His stony face and posture continue to hold immutable disregard of our very being. Our new clothes do not render us visible to Herr Zerkübel.

Herr Zerkübel’s manner does not dampen my enthusiasm. I sense a change in my old partner, Mr. Scheidel, and that’s enough.

In the evening, back at our living quarters, I try on my coat again. It’s beautiful!

All at once, I notice white stitching at the hem of the lining. I look closer, and see that the stitches form letters. LEAH KOHN—DÉS. It’s a name, and a place. A town in Hungary. And the name of a girl. A Jewish girl.

These clothes belonged to Jewish women. They were taken away from them, and given to us! This coat ... this coat belonged to Leah Kohn from Dés. She was tall and slim, just like me. And she loved this coat, that’s why she stitched her name into the hem of the lining.

Is she alive? Is she now shivering on bitter cold winter days and nights in a thin prison sack, while I delight in her warm coat?

Or was she taken to the gas chamber to suffocate in agony after having been stripped of this beautiful coat?

Leah Kohn’s coat is no longer a source of delight for me. It has become an agonizing burden. And so has the pretty pink dress of a nameless owner.

I have become an accomplice to SS brutality and plunder by wearing these clothes. I have become a participant in Nazi crimes by benefiting from pillage and perhaps even murder. How dare I wear this coat? How dare I wear this dress?

Leah Kohn, forgive me.

T
HE
B
OWL OF
S
OUP

AUGSBURG, APRIL 1, 1945

The “Goat” is especially nervous this morning. This balky SS man looks like a goat and even his gait is like that of the foolish animal. His large, buck teeth protrude above a pointed chin and, when he walks, his head bobs up and down on a ludicrously elongated neck, like a goat. And the name has stuck.

At the
Zählappell
he announces that he needs forty girls to clear some debris in the factory yard. Some debris! We knew there was extensive damage in the wake of yesterday’s Allied bombing. Our factory was put out of operation for today. We could see from our cell-block windows that the passage to the factory was blocked by masonry fragments, twisted metal parts, and other rubble—the remains of the factory annex leveled last night.

The frequency and intensity of the bombings heighten our anticipation. We feel that the Allies have the upper hand. The end of the war just has to be near. The taste of liberation is becoming ever more tangible. And with growing hope, fear of death becomes an actuality. There is palpable tension in the air.

From one end of the roll call, the Goat separates eight rows and orders them to march. I am among them. It is a brutally cold morning. Fierce wind slaps frozen snow piles
against the windowpanes. The ground, where exposed by snowdrifts, glistens with patches of ice.

At a run we head for our cell block to get the coats we had been issued at the beginning of the winter. But the Goat is frantic. He orders us to march straight outdoors.

“Los!” he
shouts in a nervous rage. “Follow me. March!”

This is insane. We have nothing on but a thin dress and a pair of shoes. No underwear or stockings. It is certain death to work outdoors without at least our threadbare coats.

As a rule the Goat is not extraordinarily cruel to us. As a matter of fact, I have reason to believe I owe him my life. The incident happened last Yom Kippur, when I decided to observe this holy day of fast. I had to forego my food ration before leaving for work on the night shift because it was served after the onset of the fast. Naturally, I also passed on the midnight soup and the morning bread portion. The next evening meal was served before the conclusion of Yom Kippur, so I left for the second night of work after having fasted for thirty-six hours. At 11
P.M.,
one hour before the anticipated midnight bowl of soup, I collapsed, unconscious, next to my machine. When I came to I was peering into the worried blue eyes of the Goat. I was told it was he who had carried me to the factory medical office and then, without reporting the incident, escorted me back to work.

But this morning his demeanor had changed. The cauldron of breakfast coffee arrived, but he did not allow us even to have the hot drink.

“But our coats,
bitte, Herr Offizier,
let us quickly get our coats. It’ll take only a minute.
Bitter
?”

“Los!”
he shouts, beside himself. “March after me this instant!”

He heads for the staircase. We march at his heels. As we pass the toilet, several girls duck through its doors. I follow them. We hide behind the tall trash cans in the toilet.

When he reaches the ground level, the Goat counts his group and discovers that eight of us are missing. In his panic he orders the column back to the camp. The
Oberscharführer
is notified, and a campwide search is mounted for the missing girls.

All this time we are crouching behind the trash cans. From the sounds reaching the toilet we realize what is going on, and hold our breaths. Soon one of our inmates enters the toilet and calls out, “Come out, girls. The
Oberscharführer
is very mad. He ordered the entire camp to go without rations if you don’t show up immediately.”

We file out of the toilet. The
Oberscharführer
barks the order: “Line up against the wall. Attention! Not a move, till midnight.”

All day, all evening, in the hall, without food, without moving. It is bad news, but not as bad as it could have been.

We do not have to do the work outdoors. And the others are issued sweaters in addition to coats.

As we stand there I am terribly hungry. It is the fifth day of Passover. Mommy and I had decided that one of us would observe Passover by not eating the bread ration. The other one would compensate for the bread by sharing her ration of the cooked meal at noon and in the evening. I had volunteered to be the one to give up the bread ration. Mommy had agreed because she was in far worse physical shape than I.

So I had only black coffee in the morning, and one-and-a-half bowls of soup at noon and in the evening. All that liquid without the ration of solid bread made me ravenously
hungry, and by the third day of Passover I felt quite weak. Now, on the fifth day, having been deprived even of the morning coffee, I am feeling faint. My leg wound, which has become much smaller, now starts to hurt. I find it difficult to stand but am afraid to crouch, even when the Germans are not looking. I dare not attempt a second violation.

Some of us begin tottering but dare not collapse. Our camp mates are neither permitted to speak to us nor make gestures of communication. They pass by and cast compassionate glances at us. Poor Mommy keeps walking back and forth, passing me every few minutes, her face a mask of pity and despair. I make an effort to encourage her, but as the hours pass this proves almost impossible. I think I will pass out any minute.

At noon the cauldron of soup is distributed in the hall right before our noses. So is the evening soup and bread. We are still standing. My legs feel wooden and my spine is a stripe of pain. My stomach feels like a ton of bricks. There is a light trembling in my whole body. I am very cold.

At 10
P.M.
the camp retires for the night. Lights go out on the entire floor. Only a faint searchlight illuminates the corridor. Our shoulders slump. Our heads hang to one side. Our lips and our hands tremble. We are beyond fatigue. Beyond hunger. But we are still standing.

Brisk footsteps approach. It is the
Oberscharführer.

“Are you tired? Are you hungry? Did you learn your lesson?”

We begin to cry.

“Go to your Blocks!”

We are barely able to move. Slowly, we trudge to our respective cells.

It is dark and quiet in my cell block. Noiselessly, I approach my bed. Mommy stirs. She sits up abruptly and hugs me with uncharacteristic vehemence. “Thank God! Thank God it’s over! Come sit here.”

From under her blanket Mommy takes out a bowl. There is soup in it. The bowl is almost to the brim with thick, cold soup. It was her supper. And her lunch. She had saved it for me.

“Eat it.”

“It is your lunch and supper. I will eat half. Take out your spoon, and let’s eat together.”

“No. I will not eat. You have not eaten all day. You have to eat it all.”

“Look, Mommy. I admit, I’m very hungry. And I will eat half of the soup. But you must eat the other half because you have become very thin and every drop of food you deny yourself may prove disastrous. Take your spoon and let’s eat together.”

Mother gets very angry. She whispers, “Stop talking and eat!”

She takes the spoon, thrusts it into the soup and raises it to my mouth. I shake my head with lips shut tight. Mommy looks straight into my eyes, her face aflame. But I am adamant: “I will not eat if you don’t share it with me.”

Mommy’s anger and despair charges the air. “If you won’t eat it, I’ll empty the bowl on top of the bed!”

I shake my head. “I will eat only if you also eat.”

Mommy takes the bowl of soup and turns it over. In a splash, the contents land on top of her gray army blanket. Pieces of potato scatter in every direction. The liquid is sucked up by the bedding.

I cannot believe my eyes.

The soup. There is no soup! Mommy deliberately spilled it. And on the bed! My God, what is happening to us?

“Mommy, why did you do this? For God’s sake, Mommy, why?”

Mommy begins to cry. She hugs me tight, and cries. We lay down on my side of the narrow cot. I also begin to cry. For the soup, for Mommy, for all the hungry, miserable, cold prisoners of the world.

We cry until dawn. Our weeping is uncomforting, heavy, and hopeless. Bitterness burns my throat. Unrelieved, oppressive, desperate. The sky seems to darken with the coming of the dawn. Our grief is total, and for the first time, uncontrollable.

Much later we find out that was the night Daddy died—on the fifth day of Passover.

T
HE
B
IRD OF
G
OLD

AUGSBURG, APRIL 2, 1945

For some unfathomable reason, on this dark dawn in the spring of 1945, I remember a strange dream I had over a year ago.

My father and I, the two of us, stood in the middle of our storage room called the
kamra.
In this room we kept sacks of flour, animal feed, chopped-up wood, and other odds and ends.

I hated the kamra. It was a dark, bleak place. When Mother sent me to fetch flour or wood, I hurried out of the kamra as fast as I could. When I was little, I used to believe there were evil spirits in the dark corners of the kamra and was terrified to enter it.

But in my dream I was standing in the middle of the kamra with my father, without an apparent purpose. We just stood there, silently, our backs to the entrance where a dim light filtered in. The flour sacks stood menacingly against the wall, and the pile of wood harbored a strange, brooding stillness.

Suddenly, a bird flew into the kamra. An unusual bird with an egg-shaped body covered with golden feathers and large, greenish yellow wings. As it flew in, a shaft of bright light streamed in with the bird. The shaft of light followed the bird as it fluttered about. It hovered above my father’s
head, the light growing ever brighter until it bathed the bird in a glittering flood of blinding sparkle.

But the room remained cloaked in darkness. And we, too, my father and I, remained wrapped in the shadows.

“Look at that bird!” my father called out, pale with shock. He was deeply moved. Not frightened; strangely moved by the awesome sight. I glanced at the bird and then averted my eyes. I dared not look at it. It was too awesome, too frightening. I began to tremble. My father gripped my arm, and again cried, “Look at that bird!”

He stood transfixed, not moving his gaze from the horrible beauty of the apparition. His grip tightened on my arm. When I looked at him, he was no longer a living creature but a gray statue with eyes lifted to the heights. His lips, motionless, kept whispering, “Look at that bird ...”

When I awoke I had a clear, dreadful knowledge that my father would be dead. I did not tell anyone of my dream. I did not ever think of that dream.

Until now. And now, all of a sudden, the dream takes hold of me with the savagery of the dark, bitter-cold dawn.

A
N
E
CHO IN THE
F
OG

EN ROUTE TO DACHAU, APRIL 3-4, 1945

Fantastic rumors are circulating during the last days of March. The Allies are approaching. Our liberators, the Americans and the English, are very near ...

Then other rumors reach us. We are going to be evacuated. Shipped eastward. We are going to be transported to Austria ...

There is nothing to indicate the rumors’ validity. Our work routine is the same. There is no change at the factory. None of the German workers reveal any awareness of imminent events. No covert remarks of regret come from Mr. Scheidel, who has become my friend. Nothing.

Then, one April morning at the conclusion of
Zählappell,
the
Oberscharführer
reads the order. Tomorrow morning we are to be transported to Dachau under guard. Not a word of this is to be discussed with anyone. Not in camp. Not at work.