I Have Lived a Thousand Years (14 page)

Suddenly, a marching column appears. Men and women and—children! They are marching in rows of five. Women with hair, wearing colorful clothes, some with hats on. Men and young boys and little children! A little girl is clutching a doll. Their faces are white, without blisters and sores. They walk fast, breathless, afraid. But they walk like people, nervous and alert. They are not robots animated by an unseen external force. They are people, moved by a force within.

They must have just arrived in Auschwitz! From the outside. They still wear the expression of the free. They have not yet acquired the posture of the inmate. How different they are!

Some people glance at the barbed wire in my direction. Several women look at me curiously. A young woman even smiles at me. I take a rash chance, and call out to her, in German.

“Where are you from?”

“From Lodz.”

“Did you say Lodz?”

“Yes. The Lodz ghetto.”

“You came now from Lodz?”

“Yes. We’ve just arrived.”

Her last words reach me from a distance. She is marching on with the transport at a fast pace. A little boy has just dropped his clown. As he is about to pick it up, a motorcycle approaches. An older boy who holds the little boy’s other hand gives him a tug, and the little boy marches on without his clown. The clown, dirty yellow, remains at the roadside.

The columns march on and on. Row after row after row. Then they are gone. All’s quiet, and the dust settles. Then traffic resumes. But the clown lies still in the sunshine.

My dear God. The little children. The little girl with the doll. The little boy without his clown. And all the others. The little children of our transport, three months ago. A lifetime ago. Where are they all? Where did they march? Where are these men, women, and children marching? From where I kneel I can see the smoke, not too far away. I have seen it all morning. I have smelled it all night. Dear God. Have mercy.

The older inmates have told us that our camp was adjacent to the crematorium, and the smoke smarting our eyes, our throats, our lungs is the smoke of burning bodies.

Is it true, dear God? Is it true that the little children are trampled underfoot in the gas chamber? Is it true that the stronger adults struggle like wild animals to reach pockets of air high up and trample the weaker ones, and the little children?!

They told us, over and over again. So we should stop screaming when we heard it. So we should believe it.

I’m getting dizzy from the heat. The sun is high and strikes my bare scalp with relentless fury. I am very thirsty. The sun’s glare is blinding. My throat is dry. The sun ... I can’t bear the sun.

My dear God. Have mercy.

T
HE
S
ELECTION

AUSCHWITZ, AUGUST 1944

“I’m asking you to risk your life,” I whisper. “I need your help.” Without a moment’s hesitation Mrs. Grünwald’s reply comes, “I’ll come.”

“I’ll come, too,” young Ilse Grünwald volunteers.

“God bless you,” I whisper. “I’ll be back.”

I need one more person to help me sneak Mommy out of the infirmary and carry her all the way to our cell block. It is a dangerous undertaking—and if we get caught we will be sent to the gas chamber. I had been warned by the SS commandant that I would be put to death in the gas chamber if I as much as approached the vicinity of the
Revier.

But I have no alternative. Mommy must be smuggled out. Dr. Tauber, our young doctor friend from Somorja, had sent me an urgent message: “The selection is scheduled for tomorrow morning. All the sick in the
Revier
beyond three weeks will be taken to the gas chamber. Your mother is unable to walk or stand for longer than a few seconds without support, and she has been hospitalized for three weeks. If you want to save her life, you must get her out of here immediately....”

I must act at once. I need one more person. In the dark cell block I find Yitu’s bed and climb to the second tier. She is not asleep. She nods. Yes, she understands the plan. Yes,
she’s willing to join us. I can barely fall asleep. Please, God, help us.

At dawn Mrs. Grünwald, Ilse, and Yitu join me near the entrance of the Block, and the four of us walk casually toward the infirmary. We pray silently as we slither through the semidarkness. No SS guard is in sight. It’s forbidden to walk unescorted even to the latrine. One has to wait for at least fifty girls to gather and then request an SS guard to escort them on the short distance to the latrine. Sometimes it takes hours for an SS guard to appear. We learned to wait, and control nature. No one would dare to leave the confines of the Block unsupervised.

And now we are walking alone, the four of us, without permission, without an escort, to the vicinity of the infirmary, an area strictly out of bounds. God help us.

Still there’s no SS in sight. We make it to the infirmary. As soon as we reach it, I quickly rap on the wall, and within an instant, four nurses carry Mommy through the door. Only two of us can carry her at a time. We chain-lock our hands, and the nurses place Mommy on our locked hands in a sitting position. Mommy is able to lock her arms about our necks, and in this fashion we carry her a few steps. Then the other two take over. None of us is strong enough to carry her longer than a few steps. Walking as fast as we can, we reach our Block undetected. Thank God.

The inmates are lined up for
Z
ä
hlappell.
We sneak among the lines one by one. Mrs. Grünwald and I carry Mommy behind the lines, and place her on the ground in a crouching position. We cover her with our bodies until the SS arrive for the roll call. But Mommy is unable to crouch long. She can only lie, or sit propped up against my legs with her
feet stretched out. We have no choice. We must take a chance and let Mommy sit in a propped up position. When the SS brass approaches, several girls help me pull Mommy up on her feet. I stand behind her, my body giving her support. And so she stands for the few moments it takes for the SS to count the heads of the first row nearby.

It works. Thank God. But how long can this be kept up? Two days? Three days? And what then?

Mother cannot walk to the Block after
Z
ä
hlappell.
She has to be carried. The
Blockälteste
must not notice. If she sees her, she will report her as an invalid. She will not take any chances of harboring an invalid in the Block. That is unquestionable sabotage.

We succeed in smuggling Mommy into the Block and hiding her in the bunk. The day passes without incident. But what will I do tomorrow? Will my friends come and help me carry Mommy unnoticed to the
Z
ä
hlappell
again? Will they stand by me, risking detection every moment?

There is a sudden commotion at the front end of the Block. It must be near midnight, the lights have long been out. What is all the noise about? The news spreads rapidly. Selection. Tomorrow at dawn, the entire Block will stand for selection. Women from our Block will be selected for work in factories in Germany.

Selection! How will Mommy pass selection? I have just smuggled her out of the
Revier
to avoid selection, to save her from the gas chamber. And now . . . Oh my God, what have I done?

T
HE
T
RANSPORT

AUSCHWITZ, SEPTEMBER 1, 1944

Loud barks and bellows thunder through the sleeping Block:
“Los! Los!
Fast! Fast!” The selection commission of three SS officers, two dogs, one
Lagerälteste,
one
Blockälteste,
and an interpreter position themselves at the open wing of the gate.

“Get undressed and line up, single file, on the right side of the partition!
Los!”

All one thousand inmates of the Block quickly climb from four tiers of beds, pull off their dresses, and line up alongside the brick structure that divides the Block in half, lengthwise.

“Los!
Start moving ahead!”

It is very cold in the Block. It has been raining all night. Puddles of water cover the ground. The line of shivering, naked bodies advances toward the selection commission and parades before them one by one. Those who pass selection go through the open gate to the outside and are ordered to dress. Those who do not are ordered to drop their dresses in a pile at the gate and return to the interior of the Block, on the other side of the partition. There they remain naked, awaiting their fate.

By the time Mommy and I reach the gate, there is a heap of sopping wet dresses on the ground, and a group of shivering bodies huddled together on the other side of the brick
divider. I support Mommy with one hand as we advance, and, by the grace of God, she is able to manipulate the task without tottering. As we approach the commission, I make believe I am huddled against Mommy for warmth and not lending her my hand for support. The first SS man grabs her left arm and jerks her out of my grip. He looks over her body and shoves her roughly, impatiently, out the gate into the dark, foggy dawn slashed by relentless rain.

God, I must rush after her, keep her from falling. I restrain myself and keep my despair under masterly control while I stand stoically during the brief scrutiny. I’m stronger than Mommy. There’s no doubt about me passing muster. Hurry. Hurry.

I am about to bolt through the gate, to reach Mommy, when one of the SS men notices the wound on my lower leg. It is the bruise I had received from a kick over three months ago, and it has been festering ever since. Now it is a deep hole oozing an awful dark brown liquid, and exuding an atrocious stench. Around the hole, the leg is swollen and red. Lately it has been quite painful.

The SS man pokes his colleague: “Look at this.” He points to the wound on my leg. “What do you think it is?”

Please, hurry. I must reach Mommy . . .

“I don’t know. But it looks bad. She can’t work with this. I don’t give her a week, and she’ll be dead.
Tot!”

“Drop your dress in the pile here, and join the others on the other side!”

“But, officer, please. That was my mother right before. Let me go after her, please. Please. I’m strong. I can work hard. I promise, I will work very hard! Please let me go after my mother!”

“Shut up,
Schweinhund!
Get to the other side!”

I must go after Mommy. I must reach her right away.

I turn to the other SS man. He is young. Perhaps he will listen. “Officer. Please. I
can
work. I’m very strong. This wound is nothing. Nothing. I’ve had it for over three months, and was working heavy work in the mountains.
Planierung.
I am a good worker. I promise I will work even harder. Please . . . please, let me go after my mother.”

The young officer looks at me with disgust. With a snarl he points his stick and jabs me in the chest with such force that I stagger backward. Then, without a word he turns his back and continues the job of selection. And I am to join the naked group huddled in the back of the barrack.

I start to tremble violently. This cannot be happening. Mommy passed selection and I’m held back. In one cruel ironic quirk we both perish.

The others begin to comfort me. It’s not so bad. Perhaps we will not be sent to the gas. Perhaps we will be sent to lighter labor. There will be other transports . . .

I’m not listening. I have to get to Mommy. I have to get to her before it’s too late. She’s out there in the pouring rain. She cannot stand on her feet without support. She cannot put on her dress without help. She’s out there, lying in a puddle in the rain, naked. By now they must’ve discovered she was an invalid. By now they must’ve put her in a transport for the gas. . . .

My head is spinning. My trembling grows more violent.

Now I recognize a girl I had worked with in Plaszow. She is the youngest of three sisters. The two older ones were sent on the transport, and now she is standing alone, visibly shivering, and crying. I move over to her quickly, and whisper in
her ear, “Annie, let’s sneak out of here and join the transport. Your sisters are there. Let’s get to the transport . . .”

She is sobbing now, and does not answer. “Come, Annie. Follow me. We can sneak through the hind gate. No one will notice.”

“I’m afraid. They’ll shoot us.”

I look around. No one is paying any attention to us. I run to the hind gate. It’s locked! The only means of escape is through the front gate.

At the front gate the selection is drawing to an end. The line on the other side of the partition is dwindling rapidly. The last inmates in line are disappearing through the open wing of the gate.

The
Blockälteste
approaches with a bundle of dresses in her hand. “Here. You can put these on. Dress quickly. You’ll be taken from here.”

It’s all over. Under the
Blockälteste’s
watchful eye I pull a wet, soggy prison dress over my shivering body. She turns for a second. Like lightning I climb over the chesthigh, brick partition, and duck for a moment. In a flash I yank off the dress, and dash to the end of the dwindling line.

There are three or four girls ahead of me. I clutch the dress to my right leg, concealing the wound. The sopping wet garment clings to my limb, entirely covering my lower leg. The SS men are in a hurry now. The selection has taken too long.

I’m last in line. I hold my breath.

A quick, cursive glance at my body, and the officer shoves me through the open gate into the downpour.

I look around. There is no one out here. The rain, like a
sheet of lead, obliterates my vision. Where did everybody go? Where’s Mommy?

The
Blockälteste
is closing the gate of our Block. The selection commission, the SS men and their dogs, the
Lagerälteste
and their interpreter, are marching toward the SS command barrack.

I pull the prison uniform over my head. The selected transport is nowhere in sight. I run to the nearest Block. It’s dark and quiet. So is the one next to it. But the third Block is lit and noisy. I run in there.