I Have Lived a Thousand Years (18 page)

The day laden with apprehension drags on. Mr. Scheidel is oblivious of my predicament. Why can’t I tell him goodbye? Why can’t I convey my fears ... or my thanks for the surreptitious help?

I remember the morning when he put a small brown paper bag on the workbench and hinted with a wink that I take it. There were dried thin bread crusts in the bag. When
I attempted to thank him, he averted his eyes in panic and acted feverishly preoccupied with work. I hid the brown bag under my dress on the way back to camp, and Mommy and I eagerly shared the marvelous snack. His gesture encouraged me to ask him for paper. “Paper?” His astonishment had baffled and worried me. “Did you say paper? What kind of paper? What do you need paper for?” I knew it was risky to ask for anything, especially an item like paper, but had not realized the extent of its gravity. I regretted my mistake but was obliged to answer his question.

“Any paper. Just a small piece. For writing.”

“For writing? What do you want to write?”

“A poem. I want to write a poem. I ... some time ago I used to write poems. But forgive me. I didn’t intend to . . .”

“Ah, a poem. You’re a poet, ha? A poet!” Mr. Scheidel’s rasping laughter frightened me.

But the next morning he furtively placed a few yellow slips of paper wrapped in crumpled brown paper on my lap under the workbench. This was the onset of Mr. Scheidel’s clandestine paper-smuggling operation, and the onset of my career as camp poet.

Goodbye, Mr. Scheidel, faded old friend. Goodbye,
Montage.
And you, Herr Zerkübel, the monument of stony superiority. As you emerge from your glass enclosure, will you notice that we are gone?

The journey through Augsburg is a high point. Our streetcar snakes around Gothic buildings lining the cobblestoned streets. The city is gradually receding into a fine spring mist, which seems to envelop every silhouette of the past.

Goodbye, Augsburg. I had hoped you would be the
scene of our liberation. I had dreamt countless times of Allied troops marching toward me on your cobblestoned streets, bringing liberty with the rattle of armored trucks and tanks. I had a sweet, mysterious premonition of freedom when I first caught sight of your Gothic charm, when I first breathed your reassuring civilized air eight months ago. Eight months of dogged dreams, hopes, and prayers.

Now we are leaving you, Mommy and I, and all of us, still prisoners. Heading for what future? Dachau. What awaits us in Dachau?

At the terminal we disembark, and continue on foot. Our journey leads through bombed-out streets, gutted neighborhoods. The last seven months have not left the city unscathed.

The train station is also in ruins. The row of cattle cars is far beyond. We wade through heaps of rubble to reach the cattle cars. The train takes off instantly. By nightfall we arrive at a gloomy, dark place called Landsberg, and we march on a narrow rocky road through stark landscape, past barren trees, endless telephone poles. In the gathering dusk flocks of crows perched on the telephone wires are strikingly etched against a metallic sky. Their shrill cries send a chill down my spine.

Camp Landsberg is a subsidiary of Dachau, a sprawling, enormous camp, but its austere gates do not open for us. The camp is full to capacity: Inmates from several other camps in the vicinity arrived before us. We are lined up near the gate, and wait far into the night. Our guards telephone for orders, and during the early dawn the orders reach us. Back to the cattle cars.

Thank God, we are leaving this ominous place.

During the late afternoon the train halts at a place called Mühldorf. Open trucks are awaiting us at the station, and we are driven among tended green fields and then through the gates of a small, overcrowded camp. Skeletal inmates flock noisily to meet us with huge, hysterical eyes, eager faces, and rapid, animated questions. What camp are we coming from? What have we been doing there? Where are we from, originally? They are women, emaciated beyond anything we have seen. Even the inmates at Landsberg, who had flocked to the fence and whose shriveled appearances had shocked us, were not so starved as these excited skeletons. They speak with rasping voices, clamoring for answers and more answers.

Soon we find out that typhus raged at Mühldorf and at all the other camps of the Dachau complex all winter long. It was this devastating disease that killed about fifty people daily, and left the survivors in such a skeletal state.

The male inmates behind the barbed-wire fence look even more ravaged. In less than an hour we find out that there are men from Somorja, our hometown, among them. And a bit of heaven—Bubi, my brother, is in Waldlager, Mühldorf’s twin camp in the nearby forest!

Mommy and I can barely contain our excitement. How can we get to meet Bubi? We find out that trucks with provisions go to Waldlager daily, and if we are lucky we might be picked for the work commando of unloading. If we persist in volunteering for this physically taxing assignment, we might eventually be selected to go along with the trucks.

The next morning one hundred women are selected for transfer to Waldlager. Mommy and I are among them! Right after
Zählappell
we are put on trucks and driven through
luscious green woods. The sun’s rays and a dainty breeze dapple the greenery, and I feel happiness tremble within me. Mommy and I are in ecstasy. Everything is turning out beautifully. Oh, my dear God. Thank you, my dear God!

Waldlager looks like a forest of oversized mushrooms. Hundreds of small, grassy mounds conceal an underground world of bunkers, where thousands of inmates are housed, fifty to each long burrow.

Our dark, dank hole is lit by a small window in the ceiling, which, just like the entrance of the bunker, is camouflaged by tall grass. In our excitement, Mommy and I can think only of Bubi. We find out that the men’s camp is right beyond the barbed-wire fence we saw nearby, and when the guards’ backs are turned it is possible to meet the men and even talk to them after work and the evening
Zählappell.

Mommy and I spend the day anxiously waiting for nightfall.

Finally, after
Zählappell,
Mommy and I stand by the fence, huddled together against a relentless downpour. The entire camp is shrouded in haze and no living soul seems to stir on the other side of the fence. Just as Mommy and I resolve to make our way back to our bunker, two sticklike figures materialize from the mist and slowly approach the fence. One of them mutters in Yiddish, his voice barely projecting across the fence, “Are you from the new transport?”

“Yes.”

“From which camp?”

“From an airplane factory in Augsburg.”

“You must have had it good there. You look strong. Where are you from?”

“Czechoslovakia. Hungarian territory. Somorja is the town’s name.”

“There are some men here from Somorja.”

“We’ve heard. That’s why we’re here,” Mommy says and her voice rises in anticipation. “Do you know my son, Bubi Friedmann? Tall. Blonde. He was an interpreter in Auschwitz. Do you know him?”

“Yes, we know him. He’s in a bunker together with others from Somorja. Wait right here. We will tell him to come.”

The two figures disappear with a slow shuffling gait into the milky darkness, and we are left standing in the brutally cold rain. The barbed-wire fence looms like an eerie black web, with hanging raindrops forever uniting and dripping into dark pools on the ground. The piece of bread from Lina is becoming soggy and wet in Mommy’s hand.

Lina was assigned to the kitchen commando this morning, and she smuggled the bread from the kitchen. She gave it to Mommy during the
Zählappell.
“Mrs. Friedmann, give this to your son when you see him tonight. The men in this camp get very little food.”

Out of the gloom a tall, thin shape now emerges and comes toward us. Ah, Bubi! But when he is nearer we see a mere skeleton with wild dark hollows for eyes. A tattered prison uniform hangs in shreds from its frame. The apparition comes with a painful limp and a loud clatter. A tin can hanging about its waist makes an awful din every time the figure takes another step.

When it reaches the fence, the figure stops clumsily and positions itself a few steps from us. From such close proximity we can see the face clearly. It is the face of a skeleton with
parchmentlike skin covered with patches of light fuzz, and scabs. There are severe bruises on the high cheekbones. It’s a face unlike anything I have ever seen. It resembles faces in the science fiction magazines my brother Bubi used to read.

As the apparition stands there silently staring at us, a horrible certainty grips my insides. “Bubi!” It is he. I know it.

Mommy’s eyes open wide with horror. “This is not he. This is not Bubi.”

Bubi’s eyes focus on the piece of bread in Mommy’s hand. His voice is an unearthly gasp, “You may throw the bread over the fence, Mommy. The guard does not mind.”

Mommy’s shriek is a bloodcurdling howl.

“Bubi! Is it you? Oh, God is it really you?”

“Mommy, throw the bread over the fence.”

Mommy swallows hard. She swings her arm, and the soggy piece of bread flies above the barbed wire and lands in a puddle at Bubi’s feet. With the deliberate, jerky motions of a robot, Bubi bends over to pick it up, but stumbles, and with an ear-shattering clatter rolls into the mud. Mommy gasps. I grasp her shoulder to give her support but cannot control my violent trembling.

We watch aghast as Bubi scrambles to his feet and, bread in hand, trudges away, clumps of mud tumbling from his tatters.

We wait. But he does not turn around. He keeps limping on, and soon his figure is swallowed by the twilight. But the clatter of his tin can continues to echo in the fog.

It reverberates in my being all night long.

T
O
F
ACE THE
W
ORLD

WALDLAGER, APRIL 1945

Mommy is assigned to the kitchen commando. She sits in an elongated barrack among many other women and peels potatoes from early morning till late at night. The peelers are permitted to eat from the potatoes. Sometimes they peel carrots, and they are permitted to eat from the carrots, too. But they are not permitted to take anything out of the kitchen—they are frisked every evening as they leave for the bunkers. A few days ago, a young girl from our transport was hanged in the
Appellplatz,
the central square of Waldlager, because at frisking time they found on her a carrot and two potatoes. Mommy does not dare hide any vegetables on her body, and I am glad.

Members of the kitchen commando do not get any bread ration in order to compensate for the vegetables they eat during peeling. So now Mommy and I have only one bread ration among us. Until now Mommy and I shared one bread ration, and the other we threw over the barbed-wire fence for Bubi. Every evening after
Zählappell
we would watch Bubi as he hobbled to the fence with his clattering tin can and wait for the piece of bread to land on his side. Then he would retrieve the bread from the ground with great effort, and limp away, just as he came, without speaking.

Now I alone meet Bubi at the fence, because the kitchen commando works late into the night, but Bubi does not take notice of the change. He continues his robodike routine. I no longer attempt to speak to him; I have resigned myself to his silence. But tonight, before his departure, Bubi raises his eyes to mine, and slowly, haltingly begins to speak. “Where is Mommy?” he asks.

The shock of Bubi’s voice stuns me into momentary silence. This is the first time he has spoken since our arrival, almost two weeks ago.

“Where is Mommy, sis?” he repeats, and the unexpected thrill of hearing the familiar reference to myself nearly causes me to faint. I quickly pull myself together.

“Mommy works in the kitchen commando.”

“That’s good. This way she can eat potatoes.” Then Bubi adds that he has been feeling much stronger. The bread ration he has received from us has made a significant difference in his condition.

I am bubbling with joy as I report this to Mommy in our bunker at night. Thank God, Bubi’s health is improving. And he is okay mentally: He knows who we are. And his speech is not impaired. Our fears about Bubi were unfounded.

Mommy and I can barely sleep with the emotion of this new development. Our hopes are rekindled. Bubi will make it.

A few days later sudden, unexpected changes occur. The camp is agog with the news: The Americans are approaching, and Germans are surrendering the area without a fight. Mommy has just left for work, and I run to the fence to send a message to Bubi. As I emerge from our bunker, I run into
a male inmate. A male inmate! From the men’s camp beyond the barbed-wire fence!

“How did you get here?” I shout, and my head is reeling from the implications of his presence here.

“The gates are open,” he shouts back.

“Where are the guards?”

“There are no guards at the inner gates. Only at the main gate of the camp ...”

I continue running toward the gate of the men’s camp. Before I reach the gate I see Bubi coming toward me. I reach him and throw my arms about him. He, too, encloses me in his frail arms, and we stand there in a silent, timeless embrace. I close my eyes. Freedom. It has come. It has come.

Together we walk to our bunker and sit on its roof, a small grassy elevation. A soft breeze ruffles the tall grass around the bunker.

“So this is it,” I say with a deep intake of breath. “Freedom. It has come.”

“Not yet. These are only rumors. We are not liberated yet,” Bubi warns.

“But where are the guards? Aren’t you here, in our camp? The gates are open. Doesn’t that mean everything? We are free to move about. The Americans will get here soon, and then we’ll be liberated. But it has already begun ...”

“One never can tell. One never can tell what the Germans will do next. There may be some fighting. The Americans aren’t here yet ...”

I cannot keep from talking about the future. “After liberation I want to travel throughout Germany to find all our relatives in the different concentration camps, in different
parts of the country. Especially Auschwitz. Most of them had arrived in Auschwitz. Daddy, we have no idea where he can be. He had been taken to a labor camp in Hungary; he is probably going to be liberated there. He will probably be the first to get home. Perhaps we should go home first. We will find everybody at home. Perhaps that’s the best plan. To go home, and not waste time searching here in Germany, when everybody will be heading home anyway ...”