The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII

by Marion Kummerow

  Not a single thread was wasted, which was a shame, because Mindel had hoped that she’d be able to keep some material to make a new dress for Paula, who was all but naked since her dress had literally fallen off a few weeks ago. But naturally Paula was the last in line and nothing remained for her to wear. At least Paula stayed warm under Mindel’s dress and never suffered from cold feet or hands.

  “Don’t you worry,” Mindel comforted her doll. “Once we get out of here I’ll buy you as many beautiful dresses as you want. In all the colors of the rainbow.”

  Paula smiled at her and nodded.

  In the afternoon, Mindel walked all the way to the other side of the camp to show Hanneli and Laura her new dress.

  “Hey, Hanneli,” Mindel said and did a full turn, coming to stand in front of the older girl with a curtsy. “How do you like my new dress?”

  “It’s very beautiful, Mindel. You look like a princess,” Hanneli complimented her. The dress wasn’t new or beautiful by any standards, even camp standards, but it fit her and all the holes had been patched up.

  “Have you heard from your friend Anne?”

  Hanneli’s face fell. “She’s so ill. The last time we spoke she could barely talk loud enough for me to hear her and was coughing all the time.”

  “Oh.” Mindel furrowed her brows. “Does that mean she will die soon?”

  “I hope not. They distributed packages from the Red Cross and I grabbed an empty box and am now asking everyone to contribute something to toss it over the fence for her.”

  “You can do this?”

  “Yes, the fence is not that high and most everyone gave a little something.”

  Mindel was excited and wanted to do her part. But she didn’t have anything to give. No extra clothes or special trinkets…nothing except…Paula. She fought a heavy fight with herself and then reached under her dress to fetch her doll.

  “Here.” She held out the doll, her heart breaking a little inside.

  But Hanneli shook her head. “No, you can’t give away Paula, she‘s your special friend.”

  “But I don’t have anything else to give.”

  “Don’t worry. Anne will be happy with whatever is inside the box already. And I think she’s too old for a doll anyway.”

  Mindel was secretly relieved and put Paula back inside her dress. It would have been so hard to give her away, especially now that Laszlo was dead. She couldn’t help but think of him often, and having Paula nearby always helped to dispel the fear and sadness.

  Suddenly, Mindel had an idea and she darted out of the barracks, calling out, “I’ll be right back. Wait for me.”

  Mindel hurried to the back door of the kitchens, hoping the Russian woman would be working today. She made sure there were no SS guards around before she snuck inside, searching for the kind woman. As soon as she saw her she walked over, and said, “Please, could I have just a small piece of bread? Please?”

  The woman scowled down at her, “What are you doing here? We’ll both get in trouble if the guards see you.”

  “I was very careful not to be seen. It’s not for me, but for a very sick friend. Please.”

  The woman sighed, turned around and cut a small slice from a half-loaf of bread. “Here, take this. Be gone with you now. Don’t tell anyone where you got that.”

  Mindel nodded earnestly and rushed out, remembering her manners at the last moment and turning around even as she was half through the door. “Thank you!” She scanned the surroundings the way Laszlo had taught her and then ran back to Hanneli’s barracks as fast as her weak little legs would carry her.

  Completely out of breath, she had to stop a few times on the way to recoup her strength. The smell of the bread in her hand reached her nose, making her aware of the gnawing hunger in her intestines. Just a little bit, nobody will know. But she shook her head, closing her hand tighter around the bread and moving on. This bread was for Hanneli’s friend.

  She held out the crust of bread and proudly showed it to Hanneli. “Here, for Anne.”

  “Where did you get that? Please tell me you didn’t steal it.”

  “No. The Russian woman gave it to me…but I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

  Hanneli hugged her. “Thank you so much. Such a wonderful contribution to the box.”

  “Can I come with you when you toss it?”

  “No, you can’t. The guards have become more alert and I only go minutes before curfew. You’ll have to be in your barracks by then.”

  Mindel pouted, but after Hanneli promised to recount every detail of the toss-over, she marched off. Once she arrived at the orphans’ barracks her legs were so wobbly she could barely stand on them.

  Mother Brinkmann shook her head. “Oh, Mindel, child, you shouldn’t walk that far, not with the little food we have.”

  Mindel wondered what exactly the amount of food had to do with walking, but she was too tired to ask.

  A week later Hanneli came to the orphans’ barracks with a sad look on her face.

  “What’s wrong?” Mindel asked her.

  “Nothing.”

  “Did Anne get your box?”

  Hanneli shrugged and Mindel had the suspicion there was something the older girl didn’t want her to know. She hated how the adults, and even the older children, always assumed she was too young for one thing or the other. She had just turned five, for crying out loud! Five! She wasn’t little anymore.

  “I want to know,” Mindel insisted.

  Hanneli gave a deep sigh. “Another woman stole it.”

  “What? How dare she? What happened? How?” A million questions stormed out of Mindel.

  “She must have overheard us talking about the box and waited in the shadows until I threw it. Then she pushed Anne over, scooped it up and ran away, even before Anne knew what happened.”

  “How mean! Didn’t she know the box was for Anne and not for her?”

  “For sure, she knew, but she didn’t care. I have been at the fence every evening since, but have never met Anne again. I’m afraid something has happened to her.

  Mindel felt so sad for her friend, she put her tiny hand on Hanneli’s arm and said with the same soothing voice Mother Brinkmann used to console a child, “Don’t worry. She’s probably dead by now, but you shouldn’t be sad, because these things happen.”

  “How dare you say this!” Hanneli yanked her arm away from Mindel and rushed off, leaving a very confused little girl behind.

  Mindel had only wanted to help, and everyone knew that death was part of the daily life at the camp, therefore she didn’t have the slightest idea why her friend had reacted in such a strange way.

  26

  The only indication of passing time was the weather. With spring arriving, the harsh cold abated, but now Rachel and the other women had to combat humidity, pelting rain and muddy roads.

  Keeping clean in these conditions was all but impossible and Rachel had given up any pretense of being a normal person long ago. As usual, they were woken before daybreak and after a meager breakfast assembled in columns to march to the salt mine.

  But instead of walking down south, they were marched up north. Rachel groaned. Nobody gave any explanations and speculation among the prisoners ran high. Some whispered about death marches, sure they’d be sent on one of them, as the SS wanted to avert prisoners’ being liberated by the Soviets.

  Leave no evidence behind, was the order of the day, and flesh-and-blood people like Rachel were considered nothing more than evidence of the Nazis’ crimes that had to disappear before the Allies swooped in.

  Not sure whether she’d withstand walking for days or weeks on end, Rachel all but wept with relief when the group arrived at the train station. Not even the cattle cars waiting for them could put a damper on her mood. As long as she didn’t have to walk, things weren’t half bad.

  Somehow, she climbed into the wagon and huddled together with the lot of tired, hungry, and dirty women. The stench of unwashed bodies, human excrement, u
rine, and death was all around her and she feared she would never get the smell off her skin again.

  She must have collapsed from sheer exhaustion, because the train suddenly stopped, the doors were opened and SS guards forced them to disembark with their incessant “Schnell! Schnell!”

  But fast wasn’t in Rachel’s vocabulary anymore. Everything she did was slow, since this was the only way her emaciated body managed to do any task. The woman in front of her wouldn’t move, despite the generous whiplashes from the guards. Frantic lest she become a victim of their wrath herself, Rachel shoved her aside. The woman fell onto the ramp with a dull thud and looked up at her with lifeless eyes.

  There was no time to mourn or even acknowledge that a human being had died. In her hurry to get down from the cattle car, Rachel stumbled across the woman, who was nothing but another number, a scratch mark on a list of corpses to be removed. One less person to toil in slavery for the Aryan master race. The platform seemed strangely familiar, but her barely functioning brain needed a full minute to recognize it was the train ramp of Bergen-Belsen. A glimmer of hope that Mindel might still be somewhere in the camp warmed her heart, although that warmth dwindled to almost nothing as she remembered the one-hour march to the camp she first had to endure.

  The guard in front of her swung his whip over his head, seemingly boasting to his comrades about his versatility painting figures in the air. He stumbled and all but fell, catching himself at the last moment.

  Rachel flinched back and was about to move on when she saw a glitter in the mud, where he’d been seconds ago. She dropped to her knees, risking being lashed, while her hand grabbed whatever glittery thing he’d lost. It turned out to be a ring, undoubtedly stolen from one of the women, since it seemed much too small for his pudgy fingers.

  She hurriedly slipped it inside her shoe and managed to get up before one of the guards could hit her with his truncheon. For the next minute she held her breath, hoping nobody had noticed what she’d done. The ring in her shoe added to her discomfort, seemingly getting bigger and scratchier with every step she took toward the camp.

  The march was an endless ordeal, forcing a body that had been depleted to the maximum to keep on walking. Many women straggled and whenever they couldn’t catch up, inevitably a shot rang out as that one was put to her final rest. The first several times, Rachel flinched, but when the shots became more frequent, she stopped batting as a much as an eyelid, since every movement drained valuable energy from her body.

  She gasped in horror, the very moment she marched through the gate with the odious words “Arbeit macht Frei”: The camp was bursting at the seams. Everywhere she looked there were women standing, sitting, lying, squatting. Since her departure a few months ago, the camp population must have tripled at the least.

  The stench of death was ubiquitous and for a brief moment, Rachel considered begging to be returned to the salt mines. As opposed to her former arrivals at Bergen-Belsen, this time she wasn’t processed or registered. No, the newcomers were simply dumped inside, left to fend for themselves.

  With chaos raging and apparently no SS guards even bothering to maintain a semblance of order, Rachel took the initiative and made her way to the barracks where she had been living last, hoping to find Anne or Margot. The hut was incredibly overcrowded with five to six women sharing a bunk and despite having been exposed previously to the most awful stenches human misery could produce, she gagged as she ventured deeper inside the darkness of the barracks.

  Neither of the girls was there and none of the women she asked knew anything about them. Back at the door she glanced one last time into the hut, deciding it was preferable to sleep rough than to try and find a space in this hell on earth.

  Outside, dozens of women had secured themselves protected spots under the small awning of the hut. They were leaning against the wall, soaking up the warming sunshine of early spring, looking more dead than alive.

  Rachel recognized a former barracks mate and approached her. “Hey, aren’t you Wanda?”

  “Hm.” Wanda gave a barely perceptible nod. In her early thirties, she looked like an octogenarian.

  “I’m looking for Anne and Margot Frank.”

  “Both got sick.”

  “Where are they?”

  “No idea. Caught typhus and one day disappeared. I reckon they died and their corpses were put in front of the barracks to be discarded.”

  Rachel flopped down at the empty spot beside the woman, the lost hope draining all her energy to stay afoot, since the Frank sisters had been her only link to Mindel.

  Wanda moved aside to make room for Rachel to lean against the wall and murmured, “It’ll all be over soon. If I were you I wouldn’t set foot into the barracks. There’s nothing but typhus and dysentery in there.”

  Rachel nodded. Sitting out here was as good as anywhere else, and since the SS apparently had abandoned the camp – except for the men guarding the fence – she decided to stay in this very spot until she either died or the Allies came to liberate her. Whatever happened first – she’d long since stopped caring.

  In the morning, Rachel woke with a start, when a ray of sunshine danced across her face. Her entire body was frozen stiff, but out of habit she scrambled to stand upright. Judging by the sun high on the horizon it must be mid-morning already. How could she have missed roll call?

  Anxiety settled in her bones, since she was certain she’d have to pay for such a transgression of the rules. Not showing up for roll call was something nobody, except for those already in the clutches of death, would dare to do.

  Frantically looking around, she didn’t see SS guards, or any semblance of order in the camp. Just women sitting, crouching, lying. Even outside the smell was debilitating, as women were urinating and defecating wherever they found themselves, too weak or too far gone to bother getting up.

  Rachel entertained the idea of doing the same, but somehow found the strength to put her feet into motion and go to the latrines, where she finally dared to remove the ring from her shoe and inspect it. It was a fine golden ring with a tiny diamond, probably an engagement ring stolen by the SS guard from some unfortunate soul – and now it was hers. She thought about the best place to hide it on her body, and finally decided to wear it – on her toe. Tucked beneath her socks and shoes it was the safest hideaway.

  On her way back, she passed the kitchen barracks, where a sole woman sat inside, her forehead on the counter.

  “Hey, where’s the line for breakfast?” Rachel asked her.

  The woman raised her head and stared at her with empty eyes. “No line. No food. No nothing.” Then her head dropped back on the counter.

  Rachel looked around in the kitchen. Normally in every camp, the kitchen barracks were spit-spat clean, and not a single tool was out of place, since working in the kitchen was one of the most coveted work details, only given to favored prisoners. None of them wanted to risk losing the job and being sent somewhere else and did their best to please the capos and SS by showing impeccable work ethics and cleanliness.

  But this kitchen looked as if had been ransacked. Nothing was in place, and every last morsel of food or portable utensil had been stolen. Rachel shook her head. If one couldn’t even count on the SS to keep order in the camp anymore, what was left of human discipline?

  She turned around, just as two young soldiers came inside, hauling a sack of wheat behind them. She stared at them as if she’d seen a mirage, but when she blinked, they were still there, dumping their burden. They stared at her, apparently unsure what to do, then shrugged and left again in a hurry to leave this godawful place.

  Rachel opened the sack, dug her hands into the wheat, shoving it into her mouth, choking on the dry mass. She swallowed and swallowed, her mouth dry as sand. Near to suffocation, she frantically glanced around the room, located the faucet and stuck her head beneath. When she opened it, water burst into her mouth, almost drowning her, and then died down to a trickle.

  With her face wet and s
meared, she returned to the sack of wheat and stuffed as much as she could into her pockets, before shoving more of the mass into her mouth. After two days without any food at all, it was a feast. Other camp inhabitants must have seen the soldiers, too, and approached the kitchen in an angry mass of starving people poised to fight for survival. Rachel quickly assessed the situation and slid out the back door just as the crowd entered the kitchen and an awful fight over the raw wheat broke out.

  Continually more and more inmates from other camps arrived in the most precarious conditions and were dumped inside the barbed wire fence, while the camp organization had basically ceased to exist. There was no order, no food distributed, no nothing.

  Suddenly she missed the horrible brown liquid called coffee and the equally horrible muddy liquid called soup. At least it had given a semblance of normal life. But this here, this was pure anarchy.

  In a last, superhuman effort she walked to the connection between the Women’s camp and the Star camp, where she hoped Mindel would be. All the guards who’d abandoned the Women’s camp seemed to be concentrated here, sitting with nervous expressions outside their watch post, making sure nobody crossed from one compound into the other.

  She bided her time, observing the guards for several hours before identifying one that looked to be more compassionate than the others. After dark, when he was alone for a moment, she approached him with cold sweat running down her back.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  “What do you want?” he asked with a surprised, but not necessarily angry, face

  “My baby sister is in the Star Camp. She’s only five years old. Please, is there a way I could go search for her?”

  “Five? Why wasn’t she allowed to stay with you?”

  “We got separated when we arrived,” Rachel said softly. “Please, can you help me?”

  His face showed that he was struggling, but then he shook his head. “No. I can’t help you. It’s verboten.”

  “It wouldn’t be for nothing,” she whispered.

  He gave her a suspicious glance, but she noticed the flicker of greed in his eyes. “What do you have?”