Finding Rebecca: A Novel of Love and the Holocaust (3 page)

“Very good,” Christopher said,
looking up and down the line of men, all of whom stared straight out in front
of themselves. Most had bruising on their faces. “Work hard, men, and you will
be rewarded.” Christopher added, but none answered back.

Someone had begun to address the
crowd behind him and Christopher whirled around. The crowd fell silent. All
eyes were on Friedrich who, with the other two officers, was now standing on
the back of the flat end of a truck parked outside the long building with the
warnings about the gas inside. Friedrich began. “You have come here, to
Auschwitz-Birkenau, as a vital cog in the war machinery of the Reich. You have
come here to work. Your job is almost as important as those brave soldiers
risking their lives every day on the front. All those willing to work will be
safe and well fed.” Friedrich addressed the crowd in German and, while most
seemed to understand, there was a Sonderkommando below who was translating into
Polish as he spoke.

The officer on Friedrich’s left then
took over. “You have arrived here after a somewhat arduous journey. You are
valuable to us and the Reich. First and foremost, we want to make sure that you
are healthy and willing to work. For this purpose we will require that you
shower, and be disinfected. This is very important for the sake of your own
ongoing health and wellbeing. We cannot tolerate any infections to spread among
our workers.” People in the crowd were smiling and hugging their children
tighter, moving from foot to foot. Life came back to the people’s faces,
suspicion being eroded by the light of hope. The officer continued. “Once you
have your showers there will be a hot bowl of soup waiting for you.” The people
were used to killings such as they had seen at the train station. Life in the
ghettos had been brutal, but now they were starting to believe that this was
their final destination, that this was the work the Reich had in mind for them.

The third officer stepped forward to
speak. He pointed down at a man at the front of the crowd. “You there, yes,
you, what is your trade?” Christopher could just about make out the answer. The
man was a carpenter. “Oh, very good, we have need for those.” The officer
replied. “You will be very useful to the cause. And you, what about you?”

“I am a doctor,” the man replied.

“Excellent, we have urgent need for
doctors in our camp hospital here.” He paused to look out over the crowd. “If
there are any more doctors or nurses here please make sure to report to me
after your shower and I will make sure you are stationed where your skills are
most urgently needed. “

Friedrich stepped forward once more.
“We have need for doctors, dentists, nurses, mechanics, plumbers, electricians
and craftsmen of all kinds. But we will also need unskilled workers as well.
All will be given well-paid work here. All are important to the Reich and our
fight against the threat of Bolshevism. Now please make your way down to the
entrance to the changing room as the guards are directing you. Once inside,
make sure to hang your clothes on the clearly numbered hooks and to make sure
to remember these numbers for later. We only have one changing facility which
must be shared by both sexes, my apologies for this situation which we are in
the process of having amended.” The atmosphere among the people had changed
entirely. Much of the fear had been lifted and it was with smiling, reassured
faces that the people herded through the entrance to the flat roofed building
and into the changing room. Christopher saw the woman with the blue headscarf again.
Her face was doleful, resigned, different from the others, as if she knew
something that they didn’t, that even he didn’t.

Once they were all inside, the
Sonderkommandos followed them and Christopher with them. The people were quiet
as they changed and folded their clothes into neat piles below their coats,
which hung from the numbered hooks. The Sonderkommandos repeated the
instructions that the officers had given the crowd from the roof, this time in
their native tongue. The people complied without any struggle or argument.
Christopher walked along the rows of people changing, their hope was now in his
heart and he smiled back at them as they glanced up at him. Christopher left and
walked outside, not wanting to add to the prisoners’ embarrassment at changing
in front of other people. The relief coursed through his system. The selection
had been a nightmare, the murder of the people at the train an indescribable
horror, but at least that was over, he thought to himself as he walked out into
the now mainly empty yard.

Christopher stood there for a few
minutes before he noticed the SS men on the flat roof of the building again.
The officers had gone. These men were carrying metal canisters and wearing gas
masks, and Christopher’s blood froze. He suddenly had the urge to run back
inside, to warn the prisoners, but stopped himself for he knew that there was
nothing he could do. There was no way to change what was about to happen. Horror
overtook Christopher; darkness invaded his sight with unspeakable pain. He
looked around the yard to make sure that no one was watching him. The SS
soldiers on the roof removed what looked like covers from narrow metallic
chimneys on top of the crematorium and poured the contents of the canisters
down. Seconds later, the screaming began, pounding through the thick walls of
the chamber inside. Trucks backed into the yard and Christopher stood to the
side. The trucks started their engines, revving them in an attempt to drown out
the horrific cries coming from inside but Christopher could still hear them, and
though he wanted to cover his ears to block out the sound, he didn’t. An SS man
walking past looked at Christopher with a smile and remarked. “The water in
those showers must be too hot. The Jews don’t like it.” He laughed. Christopher
tried to smile back with every piece of strength in him, but he couldn’t.

The SS man walked on and it was all
Christopher could do to remain standing. The effort of not breaking down was
causing his entire face to ache. The grey of his uniform filled his eyes as he
looked down at his jacket, and ran each open palm along the sleeves. His cap
fell off as he bent his head down to his chest. Still the screaming went on,
dulling now. He tried to think of Jersey, of Rebecca, of when they’d met, of
anything but this. But as the thoughts came he wondered if he were too late, if
she had succumbed as these people had this day. If she had died, what was there
left for him now, in this place?

It might have been the first week or
the first day when he met her. Christopher left his father in the house, with Uncle
Uli, who had come over with them from Germany to help them move. Alexandra was asleep
upstairs as Christopher pushed the front door open and ran down the dirt track,
which sprawled five hundred yards down to the beach, the sea and France just
across the channel. He picked up a smooth grey stone and hurled it as far as he
could out into to the blue water, then picked up another and ran down towards
the seagulls resting on the shore. He threw the stone out towards them as they
took off and watched them soar into the sky. He sat down on the rock where the
birds had been, passing pebbles from one hand to another, listening to the
clacking sound they made as they clashed with each other. The sun was hot again
that day and his green flannel shorts were heavy on his legs. His shoes and
socks slipped off easily and he walked out into the thin water a few feet from
the shore. His father had forbidden him to go swimming on his own and, even
though he could think of nothing more wonderful than to run out into the sea,
Christopher obeyed. He watched his toes through the surf and felt the cool
water lapping at his ankles. It was a few minutes before he heard her.

He wasn’t sure what the noise was at
first. It seemed to be coming from a fence, just across the road that ran
alongside the beach. Christopher pulled his socks onto his feet, not waiting to
dry them, and pushed them into his shoes. He ran across the beach towards the
sound of the wailing. As he drew closer he became more convinced that it was a
kitten, and wondered if Father would let him keep it. The grey road that
stretched along the shore was rough and unkempt, like his father’s face when he
didn’t shave. There was a small hedge running parallel to the road. Christopher
looked both ways and made sure there were no cars coming. He waited a few
seconds to be sure and then scuttled across, following the wail along the
hedgerow. He called out in German and then remembered himself. Father had told
him to speak in English, the language of his mother, who had grown up here. The
first words came in a whisper that he hardly even heard himself. The wailing
stopped. Christopher called out again and he heard a rustling through the bush,
directly in front of him. The bush was just too high to see over and he
struggled up and over it and fell through onto the grass below.

It wasn’t a kitten. She was crying,
her head bobbing up and down between her arms. She raised her eyes to look at
him as he stood up. Her blue eyes twinkled through the wet tears as she sat
there wrapped up into a shuddering little ball. She had a wide bruise spilling
across her cheek. Christopher stood in silence for a few seconds, not confident
enough to speak in English, but eventually he began.

“Why are you crying?” She pushed her
head back down between her knees. Christopher thought the words through in his
head, hearing his mother’s voice. “My name is Christopher. I am 6, what age are
you?”

“I am 6 too,” came the tiny voice up
through the folded arms and the dark blond hair. “My name is Rebecca.” She said
as she raised her head up to look at him.

“Why are you down here alone?”

“Will you run away with me?”

 
“Yes I will.”

Rebecca stood up and took his hand.
Christopher noticed that they were in a field, which led up to a small house.
She took a few steps back towards the house and stopped.

“Where should we go?” she asked.
Christopher tried to think of somewhere, looked back at her looking at him. He
didn’t know anywhere except his own house and the beach so he led Rebecca
through a gap in the hedgerow and across the road, making sure that there was
no one around. They ran down towards the sea. She asked where they were going
but Christopher didn’t answer, he just ran, clutching on to Rebecca’s hand as
they went. They arrived down at the water’s edge and he turned to her.

“What happened to your face?”
Christopher asked. She didn’t answer, but picked up a stone and hurled it into
the sea. He began to look for stones, to skim, just as Uncle Uli had taught
him. Christopher picked up a few flat stones, imagining them skipping across
the cool surface of the sea as he ran his fingers over them.

“Have you ever skimmed stones?”

“No. I don’t know what you’re talking
about.”

“Here,” he said, placing the stone
into her hand, parallel to the water in front of them. “Try to throw it onto
the water so it will make them skip along.”

Rebecca smiled and drew her arm back.
The stone flew about three feet, barely landing in the white ruffles of surf
lapping against the shore in front of them. Christopher placed another flat
stone into Rebecca’s palm. She threw it again and the same thing happened again.
Unperturbed, he gave her another stone, and then another and then went to look
for more until she had thrown about thirty stones into the surf at their feet.
She was smiling now. “Isn’t this fun?” she said and Christopher nodded.

They played on the beach for an hour
or so before Christopher heard his father. Rebecca turned to him and he told
her to hide, that he would come back down for her in a few minutes and she
scuttled behind a rock and stayed there. The voice came closer and Christopher
saw his father’s silhouette appear across the sky. His father called him for
dinner and turned immediately to walk back, where once he might have chased him
down the beach and carried him laughing above his head back to the house.
Rebecca looked over at Christopher from her hiding place and he smiled at her.
He followed behind his father as he walked back up towards the house and, once
his father was far enough ahead, doubled back to the beach, back to where
Rebecca was hiding.

“Come with me.” Christopher said,
extending his hand to her. “Don’t worry, you’ll be safe.”

Dinner was on the table when
Christopher arrived at the house. Uncle Uli smiled, picked him up and sat him
down at the dinner table in between himself and Alexandra. His father didn’t
look at him, just at the plate of food in front of him. They spoke German at
dinner, even though Father wanted them to start speaking English all the time.

“So how was your day down at the
beach?” Uncle Uli asked. “You were gone for quite a while.”

“It was fine.”

“We had a very productive day
painting the house, didn’t we, Stefan?”

“Yes we did,” Christopher’s father
answered, briefly flicking his eyes around the table as he spoke. Uncle Uli
reached across to Alexandra and gently pinched her cheek, but no one spoke.
They ate in silence for a few seconds before the crash came from upstairs.