by Paula Wynne
They had gone from wailing to crying quietly and resting their chins on their chests, pleading with God to save them.
Johan often wondered if it would be like that until he died. Would he become like them? Or die like sweet Elza? No! He must stay alive to look after Ima.
With each block of stone Johan lifted, his fingers grew numb, sometimes refusing to lift the stones. They froze against the cold rubble. Although he kept rubbing them against his legs, they refused to warm up. If only the day would give them some heat.
Smoke and dust skulked into the fortress, choking him with its acrid smell. It mingled with the odour of diesel fuel from the burnt tanks down in the valley, leaving a sour taste in his mouth.
As he toiled, lifting rocks and dumping them into tin buckets, Johan’s stomach grumbled. He swallowed hard, savouring the memory of bread.
Yesterday, for the first time, he had stolen a crust of stale bread that a soldier, one of the kinder ones, had left by the side of a dying prisoner. After gorging on it, he had returned and found another for Ima. Although it was stale and hard it tasted somehow better than his memories of Ima’s freshly baked bread, with a soft, spongy inside and a flaky crust.
Whenever he thought of bread, pangs of hunger rumbled around his stomach and recollections assailed him, such as the days his father had roasted large fat juicy sausages over a bonfire.
Johan forced himself to stop the thoughts. They just made him angry, and there was no point to that.
As he was now the only man in their family, Johan had to look after Ima. When they had arrived here, three years ago, Papa and Johan’s brother, Aron, had been sent to a different barrack. A day later they disappeared. Ima kept asking the other men, but none of them knew where Papa and Aron were. Now, they feared the worst. He glanced up, wondering, as he did every day, where they were, or if they were even still alive.
Just thinking about them made Johan’s fingers twitch.
Already crowded, Terezín was now overflowing with half-naked, skeletal people, crawling over themselves to move anywhere.
It was chaos.
Without a hint of any sun, the sky looked the colour of grimy washing water. Streaked here and there, trails of bone-white smoke still hung in the air from the early morning’s mortar shells. April’s ice had only just melted, so the grounds were slushy with no warmth to cake the mud.
Within an hour, the suffocating, awful stench of decomposing bodies announced the arrival of a long line of skeletons.
Suddenly Johan spotted The Wolf and The Pig. They were having an intense discussion. He needed to hear what they were saying, what news they had on the Russians.
There was only one thing to do. Even out here in public.
7
Everyone lives in a triangle. The political prisoners wear reds and the Jewish yellows. Then, there are triangles for Gypsies, communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals. But it’s important to see beyond the triangles. Not to separate people by what badges they wear. They are all living the same hell.
Johan sidled closer to The Wolf and The Pig, taking another risk to spy on them. He pretended to be lifting and carrying rubble. With each step, he moved himself closer until he could hear them.
The Pig grumbled, ‘Why are they coming here?’
‘The Soviet troops cut off rail and road lines to Auschwitz, so they’re sent here.’
‘So many?’
‘They’re also being shipped from Buchenwald and Gross-Rosen.’
‘We have doubled the scum in the past few months,’ The Pig complained. ‘There’s too many to watch closely, and to feed.’
The Wolf sniggered, ‘You never worried about that before. Who cares if they eat or not? Half of them are diseased, so they don’t need food.’ He spat on the ground. ‘Nothing but fleas on them!’
‘But we’re on minimum staff,’ The Pig groaned.
‘Don’t worry,’ the Wolf remarked with a roll of his eyes, ‘most of them are already dead on their feet. At least that saves our last stock of bullets!’
As they arrived, the new prisoners shuffled past the guard hut, through the iron gates and into the barracks. With every step their smell grew stronger, so ripe that Johan could almost taste it. He squeezed his nose tight and held it there for a moment to rid his nostrils of the fetid odours of diseased, sweaty and unwashed bodies, as well as clothes caked in urine and faeces.
Some dragged their bones inside the courtyard, sunk to their knees with a hollow thunk and then slumped forward onto their faces, unable to ever get up again. Others had tears streaming down their faces, unsure if this was heaven or another hell.
A line of those still standing hobbled past rows of bricked huts, towards the registration building hidden amongst a warren of makeshift tin shacks, where The Wolf instructed them to undress. He usually examined them when they were naked and unable to hide anything in their meagre clothing, but today he just made them all sit in a huddle.
Johan hurried past the frying chamber that everyone feared more than death itself.
Today it was mercifully silent, but on other days even the chamber’s thick stone walls couldn’t muffle the screams. Rumour had it that it was some kind of secret, scientific testing room, but The Wolf had embraced its terror and would relish his slow inspection of the trembling ranks of prisoners while he selected the next “subjects.” The doors were slammed, and thick bolts slid into place. There was no light inside, so this would mean being enveloped in darkness. Then would come the dreadful hum that was as much felt as heard across that whole camp. Most died, but a few were hauled out still breathing but looking like freaks.
Like his Elza.
Trying to force the memory from his mind, Johan dragged his bucket of stone and rubble and dumped it outside the fortress walls as the Wolf had ordered.
The biting wind tugged at his thin cotton shirt. It was his first time out of the gate since he had arrived at Terezín, and his instinct was to run. And run. And run.
But I can’t leave Ima.
More than anything, he wanted to savour the world beyond the gate, to try and remember what it looked like, but a guard stood smoking only a few feet away and was a reminder the reality Johan had to exist in. Even had he not been there, a bleak mist shrouded the valley and crept towards Terezín, covering the outside world in a murky blanket that ate away at all but the foreground.
The only thing he could see clearly was the green grass below his feet. For a moment he hesitated, wondering if it could be eaten, like the cows ate the grass near their old home.
At that moment, a guard shouted at him to return to the gates.
With his eyes downcast, Johan marched back. Yet as he passed, his eyes flicked sideways to the guard hut. Still there, illuminated under a stark white bulb and undamaged from the bombing, sat his prized possession.
His little red aeroplane.
Heat flushed through him. He wanted to crash through the guard hut and rescue it. Instead, he gritted his teeth and shuffled onwards, neither fast nor slow enough to attract attention, for his next load of broken stone.
After dumping the final bucket of rubble outside the gate, and with the lighter patch of sky that hid the sun indicating it was around midday, he saw yet more of the skeletons hobble into the barracks.
Inside the long stone fortress, the frost-eaten grass had been trampled into mud by the queues of prisoners. In the middle of one line a man’s legs caved in and he hung off the others around him, like clothes flopping off a wardrobe hanger.
At the checking point, they were searched.
Did the Wolf really think these beggars had any money or jewellery? They would have traded them long ago for a mouthful of food.
Each day more and more of the camp’s guards and soldiers were seen leaving, so it took several hours to process all the new prisoners who arrived. Today, for a change, the guards didn’t seem to care if some sneaked in without being checked. Previously, the dogs would have been called, but maybe they had
left, too.
Not far behind, the final wave of drab, hunched prisoners staggered up to the gate, like dybbuks, ghosts slinking out of the mist. The clothes they wore hung on them like sacks. What shoes they had were broken and ragged.
Many walked on bleeding, torn bare feet. Johan’s gaze stopped at one set of feet, dragging along in shreds of a prison uniform.
The boy’s trousers hung loose over his legs, held up by a piece of string, and frayed above his ankles. Torn in places, his shirt was oily and grimy, and the bones down his spine poked through many torn holes.
Johan glanced at the boy’s face. For a moment he stared at him, wondering why he looked like Papa. Then their eyes met. They sparkled with recognition even as they filled with tears.
Johan gaped as he looked into the face of his lost brother.
8
Providence is a strange thing. Some days all hope is lost, yet on other days small sparks rise, helping to stay alive. But is this nothing more than another deception from Ima’s God? Those dark rings circling Aron’s eyes made him look like the deathly skeletons who enter the cleansing rooms. Would he be thrown in there like many of the other people arriving every day? Has God sent him back, only to take him away again?
Johan wondered if this gaunt, pale boy could really be his brother. He beckoned to Aron, who followed him behind the barrack. There, forgetting all caution, Johan threw his arms around his brother and hugged him, but all he was holding was a sack of bones. Aron’s skin clung to his body, holding his skinny, skeletal frame together just like a bag.
A soldier had come up to them and raised his rifle butt to ram it into one or the other’s head, but seemed to decide it wasn’t worth the effort. ‘Go and try to find yourself a space. They are dogs, just like you!’ The guard spat, ‘Fight like hounds for a place to sleep.’
As the brothers moved away from the gate Johan was awestruck that his brother had returned.
‘You look good,’ Aron gripped Johan’s hollow cheeks between his fingers. His hand gestured to his own body. ‘Look at me.
Fit to be the next Olympic sports star!’
Tears trickled down Johan’s face.
Aron wiped them away and pulled Johan’s head into his armpit. The smell of sweat and oil almost choked him, but he stayed there for a long moment, tucked into the nook of his brother’s arm, listening to Aron’s rapid heartbeat.
Ima would be so happy.
His own heart filled with a joy that he could only remember from the day his grandmother had given him his aeroplane.
His brother smelt different. Most prisoners stank like death was lingering over them, just waiting for a moment to snatch them. Some smelt rotten already. All of them carried a sickening odour of unwashed bodies mingled with the foul breath of decaying teeth.
Aron almost smelt pleasant. A change in smells at least. A whiff of sweat overpowered by the smell of oil.
After a moment, Johan pulled away and looked past Aron at the queue of prisoners. ‘Is Papa with you?’
Aron’s jaw set hard. ‘No.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I shall explain everything to you later. I am too tired and hungry. I must sit before I fall.’
‘Come,’ Johan took his brother’s arm. ‘Let’s hope that Ima doesn’t die of a heart attack when she sees you.’
‘Ima’s alive?!’
‘Her prayers have been answered. Every night she prays for you and Papa to be safe.’
Aron gaped. ‘She still prays?’
‘Yes,’ Johan whispered. ‘But we aren’t allowed to pray. When Herr Bachmann refused to pray silently, he was shot in the throat, right through his throat.’ Johan stroked his neck and grimaced, remembering the bullet going through the old man’s neck and out the other side.
Aron limped along beside Johan, following his lead.
‘Herr Bachmann’s death quickly taught me a lesson.’ Johan’s eyes grew suddenly hard: ‘To stop praying.’
‘Not even in silence?’
‘If Ima’s God was so good and kind, then why did He allow these soldiers to kill another German, just because he’s a Jew?’
‘Shh!’ Aron draped his arm over Johan’s shoulder.
Although comforted by the gesture, Johan bared his teeth. He tried to keep his voice down, but it came out as a hiss. ‘So what if they’re not Jewish? They were Germans, so Ima’s God let them kill their own kind.’
Aron remained silent.
Johan couldn’t work out if he agreed, or just didn’t want to argue so soon after finding each other again. ‘Now, when Ima tells me to pray in silence, I only move my lips in pretence,’ he flicked his hand dismissively. ‘Most of the time I don’t even bother with that.’
Aron muttered, ‘I know, it’s hard…very hard to keep faith in the camps.’
Johan remained silent.
Why did Ima’s God let The Wolf do those things to Elza? Each day he tried to swallow the bitterness but could not.
As if Aron had read Johan’s thoughts, his brother asked in a soft voice, ‘And how is our Elza?’
Johan’s stomach cramped. This time not from hunger, but from the terror of hearing his sister’s cries, seeing her fear when the Wolf commanded her to walk with him to his chambers. They were filing past a barrack and he stopped, slumped against the wall, and, in a bleak monotone, told Aron how their sister had died. He did not tell him he kept a bone hidden in his pocket.
Her bone.
When he had finished, he looked up and saw the rage and hurt in Aron’s eyes, and the set of his jaw.
Johan’s voice broke, ‘Elza was the most beautiful girl in Terezín, but that room,’ he pointed across the courtyard to the building everyone feared, ‘turned her into a monster. When she came out of there, her face was distorted out of shape. She couldn’t eat or drink. Food or water just slid out the side of her twisted mouth. She just sat on our bed, shrunken and drooling.’
Johan dropped his head and stared at his dirty, torn shoes. Telling Aron brought the pain back again, fresh and horrible. Eventually, he murmured, ‘Even ugly and deformed, I still loved her. Maybe even more.’
A horrified, muffled groan slipped out of Aron’s tightly pressed lips.
Johan raised his eyes to Aron’s. ‘See that side door with those large hosepipes? Sometimes water leaked out. I couldn’t make out if it was a frying room or a giant bath. None of us were ever allowed inside. Except those who The Wolf chose to be put inside. And when they came out they were either dead or couldn’t speak anymore.’
Aron cursed under his breath. Words that Johan had heard some of the men say, but that he would never repeat in case Ima clipped him around the ear.
They stood in silence for a moment, then he finally whispered, close to his brother’s chest, ‘The very day Elza…came out of that place, I swore that they would never take me in there. I would rather die!’
Then, hating to see what it did to his brother, but leaving nothing out, he finished by telling Aron how Elza had finally been killed.
Their Elza.
Aron grabbed Johan with more strength than his skeletal arms should have possessed and pulled him into a silent embrace.
Muffled in Aron’s shoulder, Johan murmured, ‘Please do not speak of this to Ima. She is heartbroken and cannot talk about Elza. It pains her too much.’
‘Of course it does.’ Aron let Johan go and wiped a tear with the back of his hand. As he stared up at the sky his jaw moved under his skin and Johan slipped his cold fingers into his brother’s dirty hand.
After a moment, Johan wriggled free of the grasp and leaned over to scratch at the flea bites on his ankles. Pus oozed out where his dirty nails had broken the skin.
Aron squinted at him and jerked his hands off the bites. ‘Stop!’
‘Our barracks are full of fleas. In the men’s barracks, Herr Rosenberg stole kerosene and poured it down his legs. For a few days, he was the only one not scratching.’
‘So, let us steal some for you.�
��
Johan shook his head, his eyes wide. ‘When The Wolf found the kerosene hidden under Herr Rosenberg’s bunk, he took him into the courtyard and lit a match to his ankles. Ima said the kerosene had already soaked into his skin, so it didn’t light straight away, but when it did, Herr Rosenberg screamed and screamed until he died in the flames.’
Aron groaned, and again pulled Johan towards him.
Johan wanted to scratch again, but instead he balled his numb fingers into fists. ‘One day I’ll get them back.’
‘How?’
‘I haven’t worked that out yet. But I’ll find a way. My own way to get revenge.’
Out of the mist, a warplane streaked overhead. Loud bangs echoed up the valley. A distant artillery barrage echoed around the courtyard.
Aron bent into a crouch and looked wildly around, muttering, ‘I didn’t come all this way to get killed.’
Johan grabbed his brother’s oily shirt. ‘Come, let’s go inside to see Ima. She will be so happy that you are alive.’
* * *
After her initial shock, Ima cradled Aron’s shorn head against her chest for so long it seemed they were glued together. Johan explained to her that Aron was too tired to talk about Papa, but would tell them where he was after resting.
Johan whispered to Ima, ‘I must find some food for Aron. With all these new people arriving there will be even less food. I cannot let him starve. Now I have two people to look after.’
Ima stroked Johan’s cheek and turned to Aron. ‘It is a miracle that you made it. It’s a God-given miracle!’ Her voice had become hoarse from pleading, crying and begging first the Nazis and then God for more news about Papa and Aron.
When Aron had spent his tears in Ima’s arms, she smiled, her face lit up and her mouth creased into a broken toothed grin.
‘Ima!’ Aron leaned closer. ‘What happened to your teeth?’
