I Have Lived a Thousand Years (7 page)

Sunday 5
A.M.
! That was less than three days away. Backpacks had to be sewn, choices made. What to cram into a pack small enough to be carried for long distances? Food? Clothing? Valuables? Where were they taking us? To a cold climate? Then warm clothes were most essential. Would they feed us on the journey? If not, food was most essential. How about gold, silver, or even china? Converted into cash, these may prove most important. Who knew? Who could guide us? I wished Daddy was here.

Mother tore up sheets and made knapsacks for each of us. My brother, Bubi, insisted on having the largest and heaviest knapsack. He wanted to carry the family burden. In Daddy’s stead.

In mute stillness we move about making preparations for departure. With averted gaze we passed each other, muffling even the sound of footsteps.

Was this the pall of defeat?

The men’s chanting of the Psalms was getting louder. The young boys joined the chanters. Bubi sat among them on the floor of the synagogue. The drawn-out sound of wailing had an eerie quality in the dead silence of the ghetto. Centuries’ old Jewish wailing. I hated it.

Like shadows we passed each other in the synagogue yard, not seeing. The dread knowledge of the past few days hung like a heavy veil.

A state of stupor gripped us Saturday night, the night before departure. Mommy suggested that we test our
backpacks. She thought it was a good idea to wear them for a short time around the room. Sort of a dry run.. Would we be able to carry them for long distances?

Suddenly, Aunt Serena begins to scream, “I’m not going anywhere! I’m not leaving here! I’m not going anywhere! And I will not let them have anything! Nothing! Nothing!”

She runs to the closet. She holds up a cup of her fine china. The cup files and crashes against the wall. One by one, Aunt Serena smashes the entire set.

“They will not have this! And this!” Now she is holding a magnificent Dresden fruit bowl. Stunned, we watch her smash it with astonishing force against the wall. A crystal vase is now in her hand.

Mother runs to her. She clutches her older sister in her arms. “Please, stop. Please, Serena, stop this. Please, calm down. My darling, do not do such terrible things. Oh, no. Don’t. I beg you. Everything will be all right. You’ll see.”

Now I am also hugging her frantically, and I begin to sob.

“Aunt Serena, please. Come, sit down with me on the sofa.”

But she sees only Mother. Fiercely, she turns on Mother. “Why do you say everything will be all right? Don’t you see? They will kill us all. Every one of us. Don’t you see? First they take everything from us. Then they take us far away from our home. To murder us. I am not going! Let them kill me here. And they will take nothing from me. No more!”

She grabs her pillow and in an instant tears it open. Feathers fills the room, fluttering like wild snowflakes above the debris of broken china and glass.

Bubi rushes out of the room. Mommy and I desperately try to soothe Aunt Serena. Finally, she sits down on her bed
and begins to cry softly. Mommy is crying, too. And I sob, my head buried in my pillow.

Slowly Mommy begins cleaning up. Feathers, broken china, fragments of crystal. Bubi returns to the room, and we all work like robots, our limbs sluggish with dread.

Then, to sleep.

At dawn we have to be ready for deportation.

O
H,
G
OD,
I
DON’T WANT TO DIE!

NAGYMAGYAR, MAY 21-
DUNASZERDAHELY, MAY 27, 1944

It is a dark, cold, cruel dawn. Mommy asks me to join her in
shaharit,
the morning prayer, and the prayer for the journey. I shiver, and pray, and gulp a glass of milk Mommy presses into my hand. I am unable to swallow the slice of brown bread.

We join the crowd of people with bundles on their backs at the gate. I recognize the picture from a history book: It was entitled “The Wandering Jews.” Bearded men, bedraggled women, and weeping children, with bundles on their backs. I am part of that picture now. I’m one of the figures in the medieval scene. So is Mommy in her blue raincoat, hauling an outsized bundle on her back. And so is my brother in Daddy’s overcoat, bent like a question mark under the weight of his enormous bundle. And Aunt Serena in her beige gabardine, huddled with her bundle like a frail bird.

A weird momentum sets the motley crowd of men, women, and children into motion, and silently we march through the haze of the early dawn of the strange village. Gates open. Dogs bark. Children run into the street. Silent, furtive faces appear. Are they curious, or sad? I cannot tell. I do not turn my head. Embarrassment is controlling my movements, my thoughts.

Horse-drawn wagons are waiting for us at the end of the
village. Hungarian soldiers are directing the traffic of wagons loading and departing. Dust, noise, and confusion, and the clatter of a hundred vehicles.

Bubi gets on a bright yellow buggie. Mommy, Aunt Serena, and I are directed to a drab peasant coach. A young guard from the ghetto recognizes me, and hurries over. “Hello, Ella.”

“My name is Elli.”

“Oh, yes. Elli. Now I remember.”

Mommy and Aunt Serena take the center seat, and I move onto a thin plank behind them. The young soldier sits next to me on the narrow seat in the back. I am embarrassed. I shoot a sideways glance at Mommy. How does she like my sitting next to a soldier? But Mommy is preoccupied with Aunt Serena who, shrunk and pale, is sunk in the depression of defeat.

The soldier wants to know how old I am, where I come from, and if I have brothers and sisters. He also wants to know what I am thinking.

“Are you afraid?” he asks.

“Yes. I am very afraid. So afraid that I stopped thinking.”

“Do you know where they’re taking you?”

“I? We don’t know anything.
Do you
know where they’re taking us?”

No. He does not. His orders are to escort us to Dunaszerdahely, and stay there until further orders. He looks at me, and I can see sadness in his eyes.

“Do you know,” he says after a while, “that you look very much like my sister? She has a small nose just like you, and has freckles on her nose. Just like you. But your eyes are different. She has brown eyes. Yours are blue.”

I do not correct him. The Hungarian
csárdás,
“Blue eyes . . . Prettiest is the girl with blue eyes ...” made blue eyes the standard of beauty. I am glad he doesn’t notice that my eyes are blue-green.

During the two-hour coach ride, the soldier, Pista Szivós, talks about himself, his family, and his expectations. He, too, loves to study. He, too, wants to get a higher education. When the war is over. On an impulse I decide to confide in him. My heart pounds with panic as I reveal the secret of my notebook with the poems. “Would you keep it for me until the war is over?” I whisper with suppressed excitement. “If I return, I will look for you in your village across the Danube. If not, you can keep it.”

“You’ll come back, Elli. I know you will. I will take good care of your poems. You’ll get them back safe and sound. I will be waiting.”

I hope Mommy does not notice my rummaging in the knapsack. She sits gazing grimly ahead. Furtively, under cover of the knapsack’s bulk, I slip the notebook into Pista’s hand. Unaware, he opens it with eager interest. “May I?” he asks.

“Oh, no! Please, don’t!” I whisper in panic. “Someone might see it.”

Uncomprehending, he looks at me. “Why not? What’s wrong?”

“The books. All books were burned. Didn’t you know? I saved this from the flames. Against the order.”

In a flash he closes the notebook and puts it into his green canvas satchel. “Don’t worry, Elli Friedmann, I’ll take care. No one will find out.”

I thank him and my voice quivers.

The cart now rattles on cobblestoned streets.
Dunaszerdahely is packed with gawking faces. Pista Szivós grows silent, and I become aware of renewed churning in my stomach. It’s almost noon.

The cart caravan comes to a halt before the town’s synagogue, and we quickly disembark onto a carpet of teeming humanity. The synagogue yard is surrounded by a heavy cordon of sinister-looking soldiers in strange dark-gray uniforms and black arm bands.

“The SS!” Bubi exclaims with horror. “We’re being handed over to the Germans!”

“We’re in God’s hands,” Mommy whispers. “Hungarians, Germans—what’s the difference? God is with us. He’s with us everywhere.”

I wish I felt like Mommy. To me the SS look very scary, much scarier than the Hungarians with green uniforms and expressive faces. The SS don’t look human. Their faces aren’t faces, they are grim masks. And their voices are angry barks.

They bark orders. We are herded into the synagogue yard jammed with men, women, children camping on the ground leaving no room to advance. As I turn back I can see our cart pull into line with the others. Pista waves goodbye and points to his breast pocket. My poems are safe. Thank you. Thank you, Pista. Forgive me. I cannot wave to signal my thanks. I am paralyzed by fear.

Mommy leads the way toward the synagogue building under a shower of orders barked in choppy German. I follow, picking my way carefully so as not to step on a foot, an arm, a head sprawled on the ground.

The synagogue is brimming with a tumultuous mass of people, baggage, baby carriages, wheelchairs, all piled on top of each other. Excruciating noise: men, women, children,
invalids—shouts, shrieks, pleas, moans, whimpers, screams, wails—and the incessant surge of newcomers. Mommy finds the staircase to the ladies’ section above. Then, to the attic. Masses of people and baggage cover the stairs, the ladies’ section, the attic. Mother finds an empty nook in the far corner of the attic under a dark, dusty eave, and this becomes our home for the next seven days.

Somehow news leaks in that hundreds of cattle cars have arrived at the train station—a sure sign that our deportation is imminent. Thank God! Anything but this intolerable crowding, heat, and hopelessness.

We march again. We press on and on in the hot, hazy sunshine through dense dust clouds whipped up by thousands of feet. At the train station, endless cattle wagons, windowless boxcars, await us with doors agape in sinister silence.

Eighty-five people to a wagon. Men, women, children, infants, the elderly, the crippled. Move! Faster.
In die Waggonen!
No questions, no questions. Move on, move on . . . move on!

The wagons fill fast. Those who get in first sit alongside the walls. Others crouch in the middle, feet drawn up. My brother gets a spot next to the wall. He’s always the first everywhere. He offers the spot to Aunt Serena and Mommy. Bubi and I crouch at their feet. Children are held in laps. The doors slide shut plunging the car into total darkness. Panic grips my bowels. I do not remember our rabbi’s teaching: God is going into exile with his people. I do not sense God here in the pitch dark of the cattle car. The train begins to move and gusts of air rush in through the gaps. A shiver runs through my body.

Oh, God, I do not want to die!

A
USCHWITZ

AUSCHWITZ, MAY 31, 1944

Sometime during the fourth night, the train comes to a halt. We are awakened by the awful clatter of sliding doors being thrown open and cold air rushing into the wagon.

“ ’
Raus! Alles ’raus!
”

Rough voices. A figure clad in a striped uniform. Standing in the open doorway, illuminated from behind by an eerie diffused light, the figure looks like a creature from another planet.

“
Schnell! ’Raus
!
Alles
’
raus!”

Two or three other such figures leap into the wagon and begin shoving the drowsy men, women, and children out into the cold night. A huge sign catches my eye: AUSCHWITZ.

The pain in my stomach sends a violent wave of nausea up my gullet.

The night is chilly and damp. An otherworldly glow lights up tall watchtowers, high wire fences, an endless row of cattle cars, SS men, dogs, and a mass of people pouring out of the wagons.

“ ’Raus! Los! ’Raus! ’Raus!”

Metal buttons glisten on SS uniforms.

“My things! I left everything in the wagon!”

“On line! Everyone stand on line! By fives! Men over there! Women and children over here!”

Mommy and Aunt Serena and I make only three. Two more women are shoved alongside us to make it five. Bubi is shoved farther, on the other side of the tracks. He turns to shout goodbye and trips on the wire fence flanking the tracks. Daddy’s new gray hat rolls off his head. He reaches to pick it up. An SS man kicks him in the back, sending him tumbling onto the tracks.

Mother gasps. Aunt Serena gives a shriek and grasps Mommy’s arm. I hold my mouth: A spasm of nausea hurls a charge of vomit up my throat.

“Marschieren! Los!”

The column of women, infants, and children begins to move. Dogs snarl, SS men scream orders, children cry, women weep goodbyes to departing men, and I struggle with my convulsive stomach. And I march on. Next to me Mommy silently supports Aunt Serena by the shoulder. I march and the sounds and sights of Auschwitz only dimly penetrate my consciousness. Daylight is skirting the clouds and it turns very, very cold. We have left our coats in the wagon. We were ordered to leave all belongings in the wagon. Everything. We would get them later, we were told. How would they find what belongs to whom? There was such wild confusion at the train. Perhaps, somehow they would sort things out. The Germans must have a system. They were famous for their order.

The marching column comes to a sudden halt. An officer in a gray SS uniform stands facing the lines. Dogs strain on leashes held by SS men flanking him on both sides. He
stops each line and regroups them, sending some to his right and some to his left. Then he orders each group to march on. Fast.

I tremble as I stand before him. He looks at me with friendly eyes.