What She Lost

by Melissa W Hunter

  The soldiers eyed the violin case. The taller soldier nodded at it and said, “You won’t be needing that.”

  “But,” Jacob began, looking down at his one prized possession. I saw the longing in his eyes. I knew he heard music in his head, music that his fingers longed to play. With reluctance, he turned to my mother and offered her the violin. “Please keep it for me, Mama,” he said lovingly. “For when I return.”

  My mother took it in silence. With the help of my father, she stood, and they both threw their arms around Jacob. I wept silently, leaning heavily against Isaac and closing my eyes. I didn’t want to see him walk out the door. I didn’t want to see the soldiers with their guns. I didn’t want to hear the sounds from the street as the door opened, sounds of other young men calling out to their families amid shouted German orders and barking, snarling dogs. This time, if I saw him go, I knew it would be forever.

  After Jacob left, his absence was palpable. We lived in total silence, except for my mother’s sobs. She held his violin to her chest, wrapping her arms around it, rocking it like a baby. It was never out of her grasp. She would run her fingers along the grain of wood and the fine strands of wire. It was a poor substitute for Jacob. The instrument was silent along with the rest of us. Only Jacob’s hands could make it come to life. I watched as my mother’s tears fell on the plush, royal blue velvet that lined the inside of the case whenever she placed the violin next to the bow. I clung to my mother and cried along with her.

  Sleep was my only escape. I closed my eyes at night and imagined Jacob reunited with the violin. My mother and Helena sat before him as he lifted the slender instrument to his shoulder, raised the bow, and closed his eyes. He rose with the music, rose to a place where he was safe and strong, a place where music enveloped him forever.

  Twenty-Two

  Olkusz Ghetto, outskirts of Sikorka, 1942

  They came for Sam and Isaac next.

  Then they came for me.

  My mother hid me behind her back. “There’s no Sarah here,” she insisted, huddling in the corner as I kneeled behind her. Her shawl was thrown over us both. I didn’t dare move or breathe.

  My father trembled near the door. My aunt and uncle stood together by the stove. The twins slept in the next room, barely moving themselves, covered in a dirty blanket. I couldn’t see the soldier as I crouched behind my mother, but I heard his footfall as he paced the small room, looking in the usual hiding spots. My mother wrung her hands. “It’s just us here,” she said. “Us and the little ones. You don’t need them. They’re too small to work.”

  I felt my heart thunder in my chest. I was surprised the sound didn’t reverberate off the walls. I could feel the soldier’s presence. My knees shook. My legs cramped. I knew any minute I would have to move. I couldn’t help myself—my legs wouldn’t hold me.

  I shifted in the most tiny, miniscule way, but the soldier saw. He walked purposefully to my mother, and the next thing I knew, she was thrown against the wall. The shawl fell away, and I was exposed, shaking in the corner.

  “You thought you could hide her from me?” he asked, turning on my mother.

  She fell to her knees on the floor.

  “Go!” he yelled, reaching for me roughly and pushing me to the door.

  I heard my mother’s screams as I was thrust outside. My heart raced in my ears. I tasted the saltiness of tears in my mouth. I struggled to look back, to reach out to my mother. “Mama!” I cried. “Mama! Mama!”

  I reached for my sister’s hand, only to find she wasn’t there. A part of me breathed a sigh of relief. She wasn’t there. She didn’t have to experience this. She was somewhere safe. Somewhere no one could harm her.

  I heard a cry. “Sarah!” In the confusion, I turned to see Gutcha running toward me. We threw our arms around each other, holding on for dear life. Nothing would make me let go of her. Nothing. She shook against me as we both sobbed. Hands pushed us forward, onto a truck bed, but still we held on to each other. A press of bodies surrounded us—young female faces, shocked, crying, yelling as we were jostled against each other. Most of the faces I recognized. Some I didn’t. Rachel was suddenly there beside us, weeping with us. I remembered fleetingly the last time I’d spoken to Rachel and the argument we’d had over a boy. All the petty concerns I’d once had seemed so foolish now. Who was prettiest? Who was smartest? Who did the boys like the best? What did it matter anymore? We were together in the same situation. I was shivering and holding on to Gutcha’s hands. The door closed, surrounding us in darkness. There were screams. Only a small slit of light shone from a single window. We clung to each other as the engine roared to life and the hatch was shut with finality. A fist hit the side of the truck and a deep male voice yelled, “Go!” We lurched forward. Over the heads of those around me, through the small window, I saw the ghetto fade away. I saw men and women running after the truck, after their daughters and sisters and wives. I heard my mother’s screaming in my ears. It was the last thing I would ever hear of her.

  Part II

  After

  Twenty-Three

  Cincinnati, Ohio, January 1983

  In my dream, my grandmother stands at an empty crossroads. Two road signs point in opposite directions. She stares to the left, down a stretch of road that leads to Cincinnati. She turns to the right and gazes at the longer road that leads to Israel. My father and uncle stand some distance down this road, silently waving her forward. She raises her foot and takes a hesitant step. She doesn’t look back. I hear her whisper, “I’m coming. I’ll be with you soon.”

  I hold my mother’s hand as the airplane outside the window taxis to the end of the runway. Somewhere behind one of the small oval windows, my grandmother sits with my father. I watch as the plane begins to pick up speed, its engines growing louder, and finally its nose lifts into the air, headed for Israel. I continue to watch as it grows steadily smaller in the sky, finally swallowed by gray clouds heavy with snow. Josh’s hands are eagerly pressed to the glass. He wants to stay and watch the planes, but my mother says gently, “It’s getting late. It’s time to go home.”

  “When will they be back?” I ask my mother as we walk through the airport to the parking lot.

  “Your father will be home in a couple of weeks,” she says. “He’s going to help Bubbe get settled. I’m not sure when she’ll be back.”

  “Will we see Bubbe again?” Josh asks as my mother buckles him into the station wagon.

  “Of course.”

  “Will she be happier?” he asks.

  My mother doesn’t answer at first. Finally, she says, “I hope so.”

  As I sit staring out the window, I remember the many times my aunt and uncle visited this past week. I remember the conversations in Yiddish between my father and uncle. I knew they spoke Yiddish, the language of my father’s childhood, when they didn’t want us to know what they were saying.

  “Why did she go?” I ask, watching my mother’s face in the rearview mirror. She meets my eye. She concentrates on her answer. “Sometimes people need to go somewhere new, to start fresh,” she explains. “We all think this is best for her, Melissa. Even her doctors think so.”

  “But why Israel?” I ask, thinking about the country I’d only read about in Sunday school. I pictured the map on my classroom wall. It conjured images of deserts and camels and biblical characters. To me, it was so far away and foreign.

  My mother pulls the car onto the highway. The airport terminal fades from view as we drive home. Some small part of me feels we are leaving my grandmother behind. But my mother looks at me again and says, “Your grandmother has family in Israel, family she hasn’t seen in such a long time. They can help her better than we can. They understand what she’s been through. They can help her heal.”

  I consider this as I stare out the window. What had my grandmother been through? I wonder. Who is the family she is going to meet, family I didn�
�t know existed? And will my grandmother ever be happy again?

  Twenty-Four

  Peterswaldau, subcamp of Gross Rosen, Lower Silesia, May 1945

  The day dawned the same as any other: dull, gray, as colorless as an undeveloped strip of film. Yesterday I had seen purple wildflowers growing along the fence and thought, It must be spring. But the color had felt like an intrusion, an unwelcome interruption to the somber hues of the camp, of the barracks that we ate in, slept in, worked in. I blinked and rolled my head. The faces that stirred in the bunks around me were skeletal and pale, lips dried and cracked, shaved heads exposed or wrapped in dirtied kerchiefs. Our feet were bare and caked with mud. Our clothing was little more than rags.

  But through my tired fog I noticed that something was different on this morning.

  There was silence.

  I sat up stiffly, puzzled. Gutcha stirred beside me, her thin limbs collecting together as she struggled to sit up as well. “What time is it?” she whispered. I shrugged and peered over the side of the plank we slept on at the girls in the lower bunk. Five or six bodies lay tangled together on the hard wood, strangers embracing each other for warmth. One of the young girls separated herself from her bedmates and looked up at us with sunken eyes. “What’s happening?” she whispered. We all gazed at the grimy windows that lined one wall of our barracks. Through the dirt, pale sunlight streamed in, falling weakly on the muddy floor and on the few faces that now stood up to look outside.

  “What do you see?”

  “Is it morning?”

  “Where is the Aufseherin?”

  I finally threw my legs over the edge and dropped to the floor. The motion each morning made the teeth in my mouth clatter together and the limbs of my body ache from stiffness and fatigue. It was hard to sleep surrounded by so many stinking bodies, the sounds of moans and sobs and dry, hacking coughs waking me every few hours. But living on a short amount of sleep was one of the many things to which I had become accustomed.

  Confusion and panic surrounded me. I reached for Gutcha’s hand and pulled her with me to the window. “What’s happening?” she asked, her fingers clutching my own. “I don’t know,” I said, pushing a few girls aside to peer out into the yard.

  Before dawn each morning, we were awakened by the sound of sirens and the loud shouting of our Aufseherin strolling between our bunks, striking her club against our bed frames and the unlucky girls who didn’t stir fast enough. We were forced to line up in the rain, or under the baking sun of summer, with barely any food in our stomachs to give us strength for roll call before a breakfast of bread soaked in murky water. If we were lucky, we had a bit of boiled potato to sustain us for the day. But now, I had the sense it was later in the morning than usual and preternaturally quiet. Standing on my toes, I gazed outside.

  At first, I didn’t register what I was seeing. The muddy ground outside our barracks, usually patrolled by female guards, stood vacant. The only signs of life were the few blackbirds that pecked at the ground or fluttered to the trees in the distance, beyond the barbwire fence. The fence itself reached silently toward a cruel sky, unguarded by the uniformed soldiers—an undefended sentinel.

  I gasped. Someone beside me said, “There’s no one there!”

  As fast as the feeble bodies around me could, everyone pressed in closer to peer outside. Soon, the windows were surrounded, faces looking this way and that for any sign of life. Voices murmured, “Where did everyone go? What does this mean? What’s going to happen?”

  Some prayers were uttered, both in thanks and in fear. The girl standing to my right, a young brunette who had arrived just the week before, slid down the wall and began to cry hysterically. “This is it! They’re going to kill us! They’re going to kill us!” she chanted. Her cries hurt my ears.

  “Will someone shut her up?” another girl asked angrily.

  I threw my arms around Gutcha and felt her heart flutter beneath her bony rib cage. I was afraid to breathe, to hope, to think. The minutes ticked away like hours as we held each other, dropping to the floor when we became too weak to stand. Gutcha curled her body next to mine and whispered, “Whatever happens, Sarah, we must stay together.” I nodded and rested my head against hers, feeling the soft stubble that grew there rubbing my cheek.

  The longer the morning stretched, the more we allowed ourselves to wonder and hope, but also to fear. No one was brave enough to step foot outside. Silence fell as others joined us on the ground, huddling below the windows, waiting and wondering. Finally, a sound reached us. Low at first, it built in volume and urgency, a vibrating rattle that was both scary and yet familiar. Some of the girls crawled to the farthest corners of the barrack, squeezing together in fear. A few of the inmates continued to look outside, though, and an older girl finally shouted, “It’s a truck!”

  “German?” someone whispered.

  The girl at the window stretched her neck to get a better view. “No. I don’t think so,” she said. “No, no, no—it’s not German. There’s a line of them. Look!”

  I rose on my haunches to look outside while Gutcha knelt beside me. My stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten since the night before, and that had been a third of a piece of bread. But I ignored the feeling and rubbed away a patch of filth. Trucks were pouring into the camp, along with large, lumbering tanks. Soldiers sat behind the wheels and in the truck beds, and an unfamiliar red flag waved from the foremost vehicle. I held my breath. My legs trembled. “What do you see?” Gutcha asked. I ducked reflexively as the trucks pulled alongside our barrack but then stood once they’d passed. I was close enough to see the details of the men’s faces now. Their expressions as they slowly drove through the yard were cautious and grim. Some of the girls behind me whimpered. Some cried outright, in anticipation or distress.

  Finally, the closest vehicle pulled to a stop. My heart raced as I watched the soldiers jump to the ground. One took off his hat and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, while another shook his head as his eyes took in the line of gray buildings. I realized that none of the other girls in the other barracks had left the safety of their bunks either. I imagined the anxious faces peering out at the soldiers and wondered how long we would have remained like that if they hadn’t arrived.

  The first soldier turned to gaze in our direction. He said something to the soldier beside him. The second soldier saluted and went to the nearest lorry, returning with a megaphone that he handed to the first soldier. The silence was shattered as he began to speak, but the words meant nothing to us. It wasn’t German or Polish, French or Danish. We glanced at each other. “What is he saying?” the newly arrived brunette asked, chewing nervously on her dirty fingernails. Her tears had left dark stains on her cheeks. A woman pushed her way forward. “Russian!” she exclaimed. “That’s Russian!”

  We let her pass to the window, where she stood looking out at the men. They congregated into a group as we watched. They didn’t look unkind, only confused and curious. Finally, the first soldier spoke again, and we all turned our eyes to the woman.

  “Do you understand what he’s saying?” someone asked.

  “Shhh!” the woman hissed. She listened as the soldier spoke into the megaphone, then turned to us, her eyes wide. “He says, do not be afraid. We mean no harm. The Germans have gone. Please come out.”

  I didn’t believe my ears at first. “Can this be true?” someone asked. Gutcha and I looked at each other, a spark of hope igniting between us. As much as we wanted to believe his words, no one moved toward the door. We all shared a sense of apathy and a general lack of trust. The men continued to watch us warily from the other side of the glass until they all turned as one to face the neighboring barrack. We craned our necks to see a frail girl standing on the dirt path leading to the center of the yard where we lined up daily. She was alone, her threadbare, striped prisoner’s gown whipping against her bony knees, her head wrapped in a soiled kerchief. She said so
mething we couldn’t hear, then collapsed to the ground. One of the soldiers rushed to the young woman’s side, lifting her in his arms. As we watched, the women from the other bunk ran into the yard, surrounding the soldier, reaching for him with emaciated arms.

  Before I could think to move, the bodies around me pressed forward, rushing at the door to our bunk and throwing it open. A chill wind washed over us. I was pushed forward with the rest, gripping Gutcha’s hand in my own. “Don’t let go!” I yelled as we were surrounded by yelling, screaming girls, voices merging incoherently.

  The yard was chaos. Someone behind me fell to her knees as we were shoved and jostled, grabbing at my hem to steady herself. I jerked backward, landing beside the girl, mud splattering my bare legs and soaking through my gown. Gutcha yanked the material out of the girl’s fist and I heard it rip. She pulled me up, wrapping her arm around my shoulder and guiding me through the melee. I heard someone yell, “Give us food!”

  Gutcha pulled me toward one of the soldiers, a young man with dark curls flattened to his forehead and a sprinkle of freckles on his nose. His eyes were wide as he backed away from us, striking out at the hands that reached for his uniform as though shooing away pesky flies. He pulled a rifle from his back and trained it on us with shaking hands, yelling, “Nyet ! Nyet !” I clutched Gutcha tighter, staring at the butt of the rifle only a few feet away. I felt my feet sink into muck and remembered it had rained the day before. A voice, louder than the others, began barking orders in Russian. The soldier turned in the direction of the voice and reluctantly lowered his weapon, cursing under his breath.

  A tall man with graying hair beneath his fur ushanka and deep, heavily lidded eyes stepped forward, reaching for the megaphone. In a commanding voice that reverberated through the yard, he yelled, “Stop!” We all froze in place. A blackbird circled overhead, its singular cry echoing in the sudden silence. My heart thundered in my chest as I wondered what would happen next. Some of the soldiers huddled together, turning their backs on us as they whispered to each other. The gray-haired soldier removed his ushanka and ran a hand through his silver curls before speaking into the megaphone again. “I am Lieutenant Kramarov of the Soviet Red Army,” he said in fluent German. “The war is over. The Germans have fled. You are all free to go.”