Annexed (21 page)

"
How can I tell of this?" I ask her in despair.

"
Put it into words," she whispers, "and begin.
"

"
Are there words for this?
"

"
What else have we?
"

And so I begin.

First they took us to Westerbork, a holding camp. I remember Anne, her eyes dancing in the light of outside. We were still all together then. We still had hope. The Allies were coming, heading toward Holland. It was a race against time. Every Tuesday the trains came and went again.

Where did they go?
They went east:
to Theresienstadt,
to Sobibor,
to Bergen-Belsen
and to Auschwitz.

There was a river of us walking, a river of us lying, a river of us working—a river of us dying.

"
Oh, Anne! Where are the words for this?
"
"
Inside you," she whispers. "Just find them—begin.
"

They put us on a train.

I am on a train. I do not know where we are going.

Auschwitz, Auschwitz. In my memory the wheels click it, whisper it, taunt me with the name of our destination. Auschwitz, Auschwitz, Auschwitz. But my memory is wrong. We did not know where we were going.

We have everything with us, the few things that remain. The doors close. Suddenly there is no light—or just a sliver of it, like a half-memory, high up in the carriage.

We can hear each other breathe in the dark. There is a sudden silence and in it we all hear a noise, the scratching of the chalk on the side of the car. They are writing a number—the number of us inside.

"Are they going to lose us?" somebody says. A few laugh. It's the afternoon. There are whistles and noise, palms bang against the door. Guards shout, and then the train starts to move. We are jolted to one side. We reach out to each other to steady ourselves. I hold on to Anne. The memory of her body against mine in the attic is sudden and sharp. We let go.

The wheels click a rhythm. I can feel my eyes closing; my head begins to fall. I jerk awake, come to. The light has gone and it is dark. Beyond the heat of our bodies it's cold—but still the train keeps moving.

Somebody groans. We are all thinking the same. When will it stop? When can we let go? Of our bladders, our eyes, our bodies—still standing. There is no noise, just the warm sharp smell of fresh piss rising, a groan of relief. Over and over, until the stench is as thick as a coat covering us.

"Sorry," the whispered words come. "Sorry, I'm so very sorry."

Now no one can rest on the floor.

We stand, hoping that soon we will stop. Sometimes the train slows, our heads rise up from their half slumber and wait, but the train goes on. We lean against the walls, against each other. We rock with the motion of the wheels, not noticing we're moving. Holding on to each other, to our bladders. Soon. We hope it will be soon that we arrive.

We did not know what we were hoping for.

The sun rises. The train keeps on going. People give up, they lie in the piss, they lie on top of each other.

Mutti puts her coat down on the floor. It gives us a patch to sit on. We are lucky. We take turns to sit on it. We piss on the floor, facing outward. We have not had to shit yet.

In my doze I hear the train wheels click. I wake up. This time it isn't a dream. The train slows and stops.

"Where? Where are we going?" someone calls. A tall man stares through the slit in the side of the carriage. He reads out Polish names. Inside there are groans. Silence. The smell of fear—and the sudden stink of shit.

"If it's like the camp at Westerbork, it won't be so bad!" whispers Anne. Nobody answers. We all know it won't be like Westerbork—that was just a holding camp. She begins to shiver. Someone begins to wail: "I can't wake her. I can't wake her." Someone else mutters, "She's the lucky one."

People bang on the door. "Let us out!"

Mr. Frank begins to whisper. "Stay together. Whatever happens we must stay together. Remember. They are losing. The end is coming. Wherever we end up, we must let people know that. We have information. We can give them hope."

He was right. Stupid us. We gave it away for nothing.

Somewhere in the cattle truck someone begins to say the Kaddish—the prayer for the dead. The train begins to move.

Day three. More people start to shit themselves. The smell makes others vomit.

Us men stand together with our backs to the crowd. We hold each other. We brace ourselves against the moving walls. We try to protect our space.

I feel Anne's hair beneath my chin.

"I'm so thirsty, Peter!" she whispers.

"I know," I say.

It's getting harder to stand. Sometimes now, the train stops.

For hours.

"Water!" people cry. "Water!" But there is no water. No one answers. There is just the heat. The stench. The silence. Outside, one voice calls to another on the platform.

"Answer us!" the man near the slit shouts. "Answer us, you bastards!"

We wait, but there is no answer.

"We are people, people in here," Anne whispers. But they do not answer, as though we really
are
cattle, lowing, calling out in a strange inhuman speech.

Beyond understanding.

The train starts again. The wheels click. The train rocks on its way.

It stops again. It is dark and we have stopped so many times before, we are used to it now. We think it will go on forever. Until we die. Some already have.

We are lost, in time passing without measure. We are awake and not awake. We are alive and not alive when the train finally stops—and the doors open.

Are there words even for this, Anne?

"
Yes, even for this," she whispers. "You must go back there, Peter, so you can find them.
"

The light is blinding after the soft dark of the carriages. Voices shout. "
Raus! Raus! Schnell! Schnell! Schnell!
"

The fresh air hits the carriage and makes the smell even worse. We are suddenly ashamed. We stink and cower, try to hide ourselves. People fall and jump and crawl out of the carriage onto the platform.

We are the only ones left now. Us eight, standing in the doorway, staring.

There are men in stripes. Jews, like us. But not like us. Shorn. Like the walking dead, they are shouting at us in the lit-up, searchlight dark.

So much light.

"Out! Out!" they scream, and the dogs bark. Anne steps back.

"Women and children left!" Anne starts to move left. I pull her back. I want her close. We're still in the carriage. "Men, right. Women, here!" "Left!" "Right!" We hold hands and stare. And then I realize. The words make sense because they're speaking German. I can understand them.

An old man stands on the platform, staring, not moving. He doesn't understand. He stares around him, lost, pushing his glasses up his nose.

"Didn't you hear me?" a guard shouts. He strikes the man in the face. We stare, our eyes aren't big enough, our hearts not wide enough to take this in—to understand.

"I said
left,
you fool!"

The old man shakes his head, there is blood in his eyes, he can't see. He holds his hands up helplessly. The guard strikes him and steps over his fallen body. Dr. Pfeffer steps forward. Mr. Frank pulls him rapidly back. The guard steps up to the next man—perhaps he is the old man's son, I don't know. It's all so fast and calm that I'm still not sure I saw it. The man doesn't say anything, he punches the guard so hard his head rocks back and we all hear a snap. The guard stumbles, the man stands, fists bunched waiting to fight. The guard recovers his balance and shoots him. On the floor of the platform the old man wails. They shoot him too.

The shaved skeletons in stripes bend down and begin to search the dead men's pockets. I wonder why they open their mouths to search inside. After the silence and smell of the carriage the sound of the commands feels deafening.

But in my memory it is all silent. Flashes of searchlit moments. Pictures like guns going off. Memories of words that make no sense. The sound of a language that I recognize—but don't yet truly understand.

"You!" The guard means us. We step down. "Left, left, left." We men have stepped forward, determined to protect. I am holding Mutti's hand.

"No! Women this side! Right! I said
right!
"

We stare at each other but not for long. We are shocked. We are scared. We are so tired and thirsty we cannot think. We cannot take it in. We have seen that they'll kill us if we do not do whatever they want—and quickly. We glance at each other before we let go of each other's hands like obedient children.

It is only a moment—a fraction of time, but later it will haunt us. How we seemed to let go of each other so easily.

"Peter!"

"Mutti!"

"Peter!"

"Anne!"

We hold each other with our eyes and then they disappear—intot hed ark.

Are they alive? Are they dead? Have they known this horror too?

I don't know. They are led away from us. We glance up and they are gone. So fast we never even noticed.

"This way! This way!" We are marched off. You can probably smell us coming from a mile away.

They march us through the black, wide gates.

ARBEIT MACHT FREI.

Work brings freedom.

That is what the gates say.

There was a rumor that in one camp they hung a dead Jew up on the black iron, a fresh one every day. We all believed it. We believed it because we knew by then that it was possible. We
didn't comment, we just grunted and carried on, putting one foot in front of the other.

They put us in a room. We stare at each other. What has happened? We know something has, but what? The lights are very bright. People mutter: what will happen now? Somewhere, someone is praying over and over in a wail. "What good is that?" I snarl.

"It's helping him, Peter!" Mr. Franks voice is soft. Unchanging. I shut up. We smell. We smell like animals. And our faces are puffed up and strange with the need for water.

A man comes in. "Take everything off. Leave it all here. You can have it back later."

I look around. We all have the same look: confused, dumb, scared. Made similar by our hunger and thirst and separation.

By the end you could not even tell if we were men or women. In the end we are all bones. All bones. As I am.

"Please! Water! We're thirsty!" says one man.

"Later," says the German.

Slowly we undress. We try not to look at each other. There is an old man. He has glasses. "These too?" he asks.

"I said everything!" He is talking as though we are ill, or sick. He is talking as though we are children. It is confusing. He is not angry. I don't understand it. Why is he behaving as though this is normal? Why are we? We are standing before him desperate, and cold, and thirsty and hungry—still believing that if we get it right we can survive.

"Remove everything!" he says again.

"But without his glasses my father can't see!"

"Then he is not of much use to us, is he?" the man says.

The men in stripes come in. They search through our clothes, separating, removing. I think of the crows that gather in the chestnut tree.

We hold our hands to cover ourselves. We look down. We feel the shame is ours. I have never seen my father or Dr. Pfeffer or Mr. Frank naked. We cannot meet each other's eyes. We cannot look anywhere except at the floor.

They take us to the showers. They are hot. We can't believe it. The wonder of being able to wash off the fear and stink and terror of that journey. It gives us hope.

"Why would they do all this if they were just going to kill us?" asks Dr. Pfeffer.

"Who are the Jews in the stripes?" whispers another. But we have no answers.

We are shaved. The men who do it wear green triangles.

Green triangle meant criminal. They gave criminals razors to shave us with.

We stand in a line. We watch. We sit. They shave all of us. Everything. Our heads. Our arms. Our privates. And I know we are all thinking the same thing. What about our women? Is this happening to them too? It hurts. Some men cry silently.

They'll get used to it. Or die.

It happens every week: on Saturday.

I look at the men who do this to us. Who are they?
Are some of them really Jewish?
I keep thinking. The thought goes around and around in my mind:
How can they be?
What is happening if they are Jewish? Is this real?

How strange, to think that I tried to make sense of it, that we all did, as though that were possible.

We are naked and shivering. There are no towels to dry ourselves with. Our clothes and shoes have gone, and in their place are piles of the pajamas. Striped, like the men's who have shaved and stripped us. We don't want them. There are no shoes—there is only a huge pile of clogs.

The old man cries out: "I want my glasses, I can't see without my glasses!"

"Your glasses are gone," says the German calmly. He makes a gesture; one of the striped men strikes the man across the face.

Already it doesn't surprise me. I turn away. We put on the stripes. We try to find clogs that fit.

"Get a good fit, it's important," says Papi, and Dr. Pfeffer agrees. "Shoes are the difference between life and death," he says. We grab armfuls of the clogs, try them all and grab more, keeping the best to try again. Some of the men look at us like we're mad.

Those were the ones who died quickly.

Others join us in a frantic hunt.

They lasted longer.

We stand up, the four of us. And we look at each other. We look away, quickly. We look like them now. The Jews in the stripes, who speak that strange, harsh language—and beat and kick and kill us. When we try to walk we find we cannot lift our feet, and so we hobble, as they do, for fear of the clogs falling off.

It is done.

We have become Häftlinge.

We are not sure what has happened. But we know something has.