I Have Lived a Thousand Years (15 page)

There is pandemonium in here. A stout woman stands on top of a table in the middle of the Block, calling out numbers from a long sheet in her hand. Those whose numbers are called precipitate from the surging mass of women and form a line in the back of this Block, which is much more enormous than ours.

I peruse the multitude, searching for a familiar face. Not one. I am afraid to ask questions. I’m afraid to inquire whether this is the transport freshly selected from Block 40.

Where can Mommy be? As the numbers line up in the back, the crowd lessens. I still cannot see Mommy. And I still do not see a familiar face.

The lines stand noisily for hours waiting for
Zählappell.
Finally the SS men arrive and begin the count.

It’s late in the evening by the time we are given orders to march. The rain has subsided somewhat but has turned very cold. We march through the gate of the camp, past the command barrack where I knelt only a few days ago for twenty-four hours. We are marching on the road where the transport from Lodz arrived. I look for the yellow clown. It is not there.

We stand in formation outside the showers for over an hour. Where are we being taken? I have still not asked any questions. What is this transport that I have sneaked into? Where is it heading?

Perhaps Mommy’s transport was lining up in another Block while I rushed head-on into this one? Perhaps at this very moment Mommy’s transport is loaded onto trains, and shipped off who knows where? Or, perhaps she is, at this very moment, inside the showers, while we are awaiting our turn ... What if she leaves through the other exit at the precise moment I am entering from this end? Or, perhaps she was detected, and taken to the gas hours ago?

A ferocious trembling grips my body. What should I do now? I do not want to leave Auschwitz now. Perhaps Mommy was detected and held back in Auschwitz . . . not taken to the gas chambers yet. Perhaps I can still save her.

The front gates of the shower Block open, we are hustled inside, and the doors shut behind us. There is no escape. There is no way out.

“Auskleiden! Los!”
Get undressed! Move it!

In the crowded compartment, as bodies are getting stripped in haste, I notice a lone figure huddled motionlessly against the wall.

“Mommy!”

In a leap I am at her side. “Mommy, it’s you! It really is you! I can’t believe it!”

Mommy is oblivious to my presence. She stares vacantly, her quaking body clinging to the wall. She seems desperately ill.

How did she get here? Who helped her dress, walk, line up? She cannot answer my questions.

Oh, God, I have found her. After all the panic, the tension, the fear ... I have found her. She is here. Right here, in the showers. We are in the same transport. What perfect bliss!

We are together, Mommy and I. We are leaving Auschwitz together! What a divine miracle.

A H
ANDKERCHIEF

AUSCHWITZ, SEPTEMBER 1-2, 1944

It is in shoes you conceal your possessions.

You have to leave your prison dress in a pile before entering the shower, and pick up a disinfected one from another pile at the exit. But you hold on to the shoes. You take them with you into the shower. It is in the shoes you hide things you hope to keep, like a small memento from home.

Mommy has such a memento. It’s a small handkerchief with her initials embroidered in one corner. It was part of her trousseau. She wears it in her shoe, wrapped around her foot.

I help Mommy get undressed, and tuck the handkerchief in her shoe. We are driven into the shower compartment in a frantic haste. The rush of cold water from holes in the ceiling lasts less than five minutes.

“Los! Los! Blöde Hunde.”
Move it! Idiotic bitches. Put on your shoes. Fast.

I struggle with my sopping wet shoes. By the time I am ready to help Mommy with hers, the room is almost empty. The tall, husky SS woman supervisor is standing in the doorway, driving the last few girls into the next compartment. Mommy is sitting on the wet floor clumsily trying to wrap the handkerchief about her foot. The SS woman notices her.

“Du, blöde Hund!
Hurry and get to the other room!”

But Mommy does not hear. She is oblivious to everything except the impossible task of maneuvering the handkerchief around her foot with paralyzed hands. The SS woman leaps at her, grabs her arm, and in a rage begins to twist it.

I lose my head. I forget everything. I remember only that Mommy’s arm is paralyzed, that she is ill and very weak, and that the SS woman is going to break her arm.

I jump at the tall, husky woman and shove her against the wall. “Leave my mother alone! Don’t you see you are going to break her arm?”

The towering buxom figure in the dreaded SS uniform swings around. Her fist on my cheek sends me reeling. A second punch knocks me to the slippery floor. Now she is on top of me. She is kicking me in the face, in the chest, in the abdomen. She is kicking my head. The black boots gleam and my blood splashes thinly on the wet floor. A kick in the back sends me rolling across the floor toward the exit. Then the door slams and I’m lying flat on the cold, slick floor. Cold drops of water keep falling on my face from somewhere.

A thought formulates somehow—I’m alive! I taste blood. I am unable to lift my head. My body feels totally numb. But I am alive. She did not trample me to death. She could have shot me. But she did not. I have committed the unthinkable, the unforgivable. I attacked an SS officer. The gravest possible form of sabotage . . . Yet I am alive. Brutally bruised, but alive.

The noise in the adjacent compartment has subsided. I hear Mommy’s faint voice, “Elli . . . Ellikém. Can you hear me? Try to get up. Try. Can you hear me? Elli, try. I cannot
help you. You must. You must get up. Now. All by yourself.”

I roll on my abdomen and slowly pull myself up. My head reels. Blood is trickling from my nose and mouth. I cannot open my left eye. There is a very sharp pain in my left side. But my legs are not broken. I can stand.

Slowly I limp out of the damp compartment. In a puddle in the middle of the room I notice a dismal looking little cloth. It’s Mommy’s handkerchief.

“Mommy, wait.” I stagger toward the puddle and pick up the small, soggy rag.

“Leave it there.” Mommy’s voice is an agonized whimper of resignation. “I don’t want it anymore.”

“But I want it.”

In the next room I manage to put on a dress, and help Mommy put on hers, and join the lines of women shivering in the cold dark September night.

We stand outside the showers till dawn. All night we stand with freshly shaven heads, wet bodies, in threadbare gray cotton uniforms. There is no means of protection from the relentless autumn wind. The brick wall of the barrack has no nooks or crevices to cling to. The cold is inexorable. It seems unbearable, this exposure to cold, hunger, fatigue.

Many girls begin to sob aloud. Others whimper with teeth clenched. And some recite phrases remembered from the Psalms.

The pain in my side grows sharper. My left cheek is swollen. The cut above my lip makes it difficult to speak. The old wound in my right leg is throbbing with a vengeance. I’m unable to stand on that leg.

There is an especially painful bump on the back of my head. Mommy says I fell to the stone floor of the shower
room with a frightful bang. And then the SS woman gave a sharp kick to that same spot on my head. But my head did not crack. Solid material, Daddy used to tease. Solid, like rock. And stubborn like rock.

“You are insane,” several girls accost me on the lines. “Totally insane. Didn’t you know what you were doing? You jumped on an SS woman! And she didn’t kill you!”

I crouch against the wall of the barrack near Mommy, who is slumped, unconscious, on the ground. I drape an arm about her skeletal shoulders and huddle close to keep us warm. Her open mouth is a dark hollow.

The SS guards have retired for the night to a nearby barrack, and we are left on our own. Everyone takes the liberty of crouching. The night seems forbidding and endless. The sky has not a single star.

The filtering light of dawn brings our German masters marching briskly. The roll call brings the reality of our existence into focus. We have survived the night.

A long row of cattle cars await us at the train station. I help Mommy, slowly, painfully, up into the boxcar. Then I climb up, smothering a cry of pain. A sense of triumph overwhelms the anguish. I have won. I have attained the first, and greatest, triumph of my life.

My whole being is awash with a sense of gratitude.

T
HIS
M
UST
B
E
H
EAVEN

AUGSBURG, SEPTEMBER 3, 1944

“Elli, wake up. We’ve arrived.”

Sun streaks into the boxcar through open doors. The train stands still. Mommy is gently shaking my shoulder.

I can open only one eye. My head weighs a ton. Slowly I scramble to a sitting position.

“You slept for over twenty-four hours,” Mommy says. “We’ve arrived.”

“Where are we?”

“The sign says Augsburg.”

Augsburg. Augsburg. I learned about Augsburg in school. The Battle of Augsburg. When was it? When was the Battle of Augsburg?

German officers, men and women, stand on the platform and scrutinize us with curious glances. They stare at us, then exchange incredulous, puzzled looks.

The tall officer at the head of the group breaks the awkward silence, and addresses us directly. “We expected women. Five hundred women.” Then, after several moments’ hesitation, he inquires, “Who is in charge?”

Our guards had returned with the departing train. We have no escort, no leaders. Except these openly astonished, hesitant men and women in an unfamiliar military uniform. They are our new masters.

“Any of you speak German?” the officer inquires again. Several girls volunteer.

“We expected a transport of women from Auschwitz,” the tall officer repeats. “Are you from Auschwitz? Were you sent instead of the women?”

“We are from Auschwitz. And we are women.”

A wave of disbelief ripples through the ranks of the assembled army personnel. Women? Our freshly shaven heads, gray prison garb, and sticklike bodies are not very convincing proof.

We quickly line up in rows of five, ready to march. Our new masters just stand, waiting. We too, stand, awaiting the order to march.

The train pulls out of the station, and the last boxcar has disappeared around the bend, and we are still standing at attention. Finally, the commandant addresses us again,
“Aber wo sind euere Pakete?”
But where is your luggage? Laughter rings from the lines. Our luggage?

“We have no luggage,
Herr Offizier,”
the interpreter says softly. “We have nothing.”

“Tell him, our valets are bringing our luggage on another train.” The wisecrack in Hungarian is greeted by a general cackle. Hungarian is the language of all five hundred of us.

Wisecracks begin to fly.

“My luggage is being sent special delivery.”

“Oh, I forgot my golf clubs in Auschwitz!”

Laughter is breaking up the lines.

“You have no luggage at all? No personal belongings? How can that be?” The officer is incredulous.

“No,” the interpreter says, then, her tone lowered, she repeats, “We have nothing.”

We march through clean provincial streets. Houses, neat little gardens, cobblestoned sidewalks. People are gawking at us from windows. The few passersby on the street turn to look at us in astonishment.

Houses. People. Streetcars. My God, life still goes on. Despite Auschwitz. Despite gas chambers.

Mommy drags her feet. She is unable to keep up with the pace of the march. A short, blonde woman officer approaches her. “What is your name?” she asks timidly.

“My name?” Mommy begins to stammer. “A-17361.”

“But that’s a number. What is your name?”

“You want my
name?”

“Yes. What’s your name?”

“Laura Friedmann.”

“Frau Friedmann, can you walk a little faster?” Mrs. Friedmann? She actually called Mommy by her name, and with a title—Frau? Mrs.? Am I dreaming?

“No. I’m unable to walk faster. Even this is great effort. I received an injury in Auschwitz. I’m partially paralyzed.”

I hope it’s safe to say all this to a German officer, even though she is obviously not an SS. Neither are the others. They wear the uniform of the
Wehrmacht,
the official German army.

“Do not worry,” the German officer replies. “Here you will get better. We will take good care of you.”

I am surely dreaming.

At the terminal we are loaded on streetcars that are reserved for us and driven through busy city traffic to the industrial section. Here we disembark at the gate of a factory complex with large black lettering: MICHELWERKE.

Michelwerke
is a factory complex manufacturing parts for
the
Luftwaffe,
the German air force. In order to boost production, the plant had requested five hundred female prison workers from a concentration camp. And here we are.

Our living quarters are in one of the factory buildings. First we are led to the showers in the basement. There are real metal showerheads here, not just holes in the ceiling. There are wooden mats on the floor, and taps marked “warm” and “cold.” We are handed a clean towel each! And soap. One piece of soap to every one of us! Towels and soap!

“Girls, my soap is perfumed!”

“Mine, too!”

“Girls, this is a dream!”

“We’ve landed in paradise.”

“This cannot be true. We are making it all up . . .”

You yourself turn on the water. Warm water comes from the tap marked “warm.” And you turn it off when you’re through. At your leisure. It does not start and stop by an unseen arbitrary hand. In this shower you are your own master. And the towel. It’s clean and soft.