by Anna Ellory
Please forgive us. I know you love Henryk, stand proud beside him, care for him.
I hope the diamond necklace bought your freedom. As I gave it to you, I was looking only at him. For if you had left for safety he would have gone with you. He chose you every day, and in doing so you had my love too.
I hope you are reunited, I hope that you have a future. Please love him with everything you are, there is no shame in needing, wanting, desiring and being fulfilled by another person. You don’t have to meet all your needs alone.
Thank you for allowing me into your world, even if it was only for a heartbeat. Take care of Henryk and love him enough for the both of us.
Truly
Frieda.
How accurately the letter reflects Mum and how honest it is. She tries to calm the fluttering in her chest, for Mum never read this, when maybe she should have. Mum was strong, she cared for Dad, she loved Miriam and she did everything alone. She needed to be needed and Miriam – small, fragile, petite Miriam – always needed her. Dad chose Mum, but are the choices we make for others or for ourselves? What if Dad had chosen Frieda? What if he had never had to make that choice?
Picking up the next letter, its original hard to read in the light, Miriam pores over the tiny script, words squeezed on to both sides of the page.
Henryk,
I was woken with force. Hani and me in our bunk with three other women. We slept holding the other so that we could stay safe.
‘Please hurry. We need you.’
It was a young girl. ‘My mama delivers the babies; we need your help. You speak Dutch, yes?’
‘Yes, I do and Hani too.’ I was fearful of us being separated so I clung to her.
Hani and I went with her, following her through the maze of blocks which are larger here, thousands of people squeezed in, rather than hundreds. I do not know any of the faces, yet I know all of them. The vacant stare. Accusatory: what was it that allowed you to survive, when my mother, sister, daughter, granddaughter was selected? They died and you live. Why? We all do that. It seems involuntary. Trying to assess what makes someone special just by looking at them. It’s luck, it’s got to be.
We heard the commotion before we saw what was happening.
A woman, Matka, was holding up her hands, in peace.
A young girl looked at her, wild, feral, she bared her teeth. She was pregnant and she touched her stomach with one hand and placed the other ahead of her to warn others off.
‘Mama,’ said the girl. ‘This is the Dutch speaker.’
‘I need to be able to see what is happening and explain to her to remain calm, baby will not come and the pain will be bad if she continues.’
I explained to the girl that her baby was coming, that Matka was here to help, but she started talking in such broken Dutch I was not sure I could make out many words at all.
I looked to Matka. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure she is speaking Dutch; I cannot understand her.’
‘Is Roma,’ said Hani.
Hani talked to her. The words passed through three mouths, from the girl, to Hani who translated in Dutch to me, and then from me to German for Matka while Matka’s daughter, Sylvie, watched.
The girl was fourteen years old, Elisabeth, she kissed Hani once, twice, three times and said she didn’t know what was happening.
‘The Germans put something in me, very painful,’ she said. ‘Am I going to explode, a bomb?’
Hani explained that it looked like she was having a baby.
Hani and the girl conversed and the girl’s face changed as she realised what was happening and allowed Matka to move closer.
Her breathing became more fluid. Matka was very patient with her. I watched her absorbing the situation and relayed everything Matka said to Hani who passed it on to the girl. Hani held the girl, comforted her with her touch and it worked. Elisabeth calmed and in no time Matka instructed the straw mattress be placed on the floor.
In a few loud, long moans, a baby was born, blue and covered in blood. My initial reaction was that the baby was dead, but it quickly pinked up and yelled to tell the whole block it had arrived. Matka put the baby into the waiting girl’s arms and instructed her to place it on her chest.
She used strips of cotton to tie off the cord.
The girl smiled, a layer of sweat pinpricked her forehead. She looked at the baby and cried; Hani cried, I cried. It was beautiful.
After a few moments, Matka massaged her empty stomach and more contractions started.
‘Is there more?’
‘No, just the afterbirth.’
It was delivered without issue. Matka placed it in a cotton sheet and she and Sylvie looked it over.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Checking it is all intact. It’s important.’
The baby and mother were cooing, pure exhaustion and bliss all over the girl’s young face, and Hani was at her shoulder.
Then Sister Klara entered.
The baby was ripped from its mother.
The baby was a boy.
Sister Klara took the baby by the legs, it hung upside down. Mouth open – wailing.
‘Look away,’ Matka whispered, but I could not.
Sister Klara left the block with the baby.
The girl tried to get up to follow, but her legs didn’t hold her. Hani and Matka supported her under her arms and she staggered towards the closed door.
There are no babies in Auschwitz.
Hani and I walked back to our block as the sun rose, snowflakes curled and fell among the ashes.
Innocence drowned.
We move about our day unable to remove the image of the baby floating in the bucket outside the block. Matka wrapped the baby with the afterbirth and took both away. Leaving the poor girl, the grieving new child-mum, alone.
Miriam feels a knot, heavy and cold, settle in her chest. She tries to breathe around it, but, like the centre of a web, it seems to hold everything together. To pull on a single thread will cause it to fall apart.
Despite Axel always being there, she had been alone after burying Michael, in a world of grief that no one would talk about and that no one could share. Then she shakes the thought away. And views the letter through Frieda’s eyes. Frieda, pregnant and knowing that this would happen to her.
The next two letters in Eva’s handwriting on beautiful clear white paper. The original in French from a triangle of paper the size of Miriam’s palm.
To the baby inside of me,
You were made in love, and I have loved feeling you grow. I will never be able to look upon your face with peace. There is no future for us, of that I am certain. However, I know that in another lifetime, in another world – we will find each other again. Mother and child.
Loving your father and knowing you, even if I’ll never meet you, have been the best and worst times for me.
They say love is beautiful, love is kind, but it is not. Real love hurts, its ferocity binds two people together even though they are bound to be torn apart. Love is cruel.
You are stronger than I ever thought was possible and just by surviving every day you helped me to see the sky, the purity of a raindrop, the flecks in the sun.
Thank you for keeping me alive.
I am so deeply sorry that there is no more than that.
I will never hear the word ‘Mama’ or hold your little hand. I am sorry that to be born means you will die. Life has no cause or meaning. But know that despite all the chaos, you are loved. And that will see you through – even if only in spirit.
You have been a guardian angel, saving me from my own destruction.
Thank you.
Your Mama.
Miriam wipes the tears away from her cheeks and feels the ball of emotion in her chest. She looks to her father, his sleeping form peaceful, and wonders at the horrors he has seen, and can understand why he chose to leave it all behind.
She knows he would never have told anyone about it, he would have carried the burden alone. Hol
ding on to the pain as his own cross to bear, for not living up to his own high expectations.
‘Have you ever forgiven yourself?’ she asks aloud.
‘None of this was your fault, Dad. It’s so deeply sad, but know that you are forgiven for whatever you have done; it was a lifetime ago. My lifetime, and all you have done for me is enough. I love you.’ And she cries further. Picking up another letter, she reads the tiny scrawl.
Dear Henryk
I suppose we are finished. I suppose we are done. We only just got started and now we cannot be.
I will not survive this camp. I am not sure I will survive the birth. I was optimistic in Ravensbrück, but here . . . Here they are so efficient at killing, at murder. I know I stand no chance. I pray, though to whom I know not, that I will survive long enough to see its face. The face of our child. I want to see you again; the baby is the only thing left of you that I have.
I miss the idiosyncrasies, the tiny things I can no longer recall. I see you in my mind, but it is just the shadow of you. You will never grow old or fade for me.
I still feel you, your presence, like a second skin covering my own. I miss you. I suppose that if we were face to face words would be superfluous. We would touch without touching, speak without words. A symphony in silence. I would leave this world with the taste of you on my lips. The feel of you under my fingertips, the contours of your face made granite to my touch. If I had known the last time I held you would be the last – I would have looked harder into your eyes, burned my soul into your own. I would have sparkled in the touch of your gaze, shining bright from the love of it.
I will think of you at the end. I have known you and been known by you.
We are living in an ever-decreasing circle. There is no talk of freedom, no talk of Allies or liberation. All we talk of is home. Our lives, however short, we want to share them with another. To revel in a story of love, or bravery, courage and strength.
At my end, I will think of you and all the hope and possibility that opened to me the moment we met. Thank you for being in my life. To have known you grow old, to hold your hand, to have had a future is gone. But you will have me, in my heart, I have given it to you. For another chance at the same fate, Henryk, I would travel the same road. A hundred times, to have shared our snatched moments.
No more paper.
No more letters.
No more words.
Miriam places the last letter down. The pencil must have made a whisper on the paper as it traced out Frieda’s thoughts. What happened to Frieda? And the baby? And as Miriam looks at the collection of letters, despite knowing so much, she realises she may never know. She places the letters back where they were collected and prepares herself for tomorrow.
Early the next morning the sky is heavy and clouds leaden with snow. She gets up to the noise of the hospice and kisses his head.
‘Frieda,’ he says.
‘No, Dad. It’s Miriam. I am trying to find out what happened. But first . . . I need to go and help my friend.’ Her thoughts leave the letters and the past and look towards the woman who saved her. ‘I need to help Eva first.’
‘Frieda,’ he says again, beckoning her with his voice, then settles, mumbling, ‘My Frieda . . .’
She is too early to leave for the police station. With time on her side, she rearranges the letters and places them safely in her handbag. Finding the last one translated by Eva, she notices that the original of this one is different. Although the words are pressed tight on to each page, this letter covers both sides of two pages. The paper, although yellowed and thin, isn’t ripped from a book and the words don’t have to navigate around other text. This is clean paper; or it was . . . over forty years ago.
38
MIRIAM
Dearest Henryk,
Paper and a pencil are my only solace. I know there is no future; but now I must tell you all that happened. My hands shake . . . but I am no longer cold. This is my end:
The last day started at evening roll call. The Kommandant at Auschwitz stood close then paced away, his boots reflected the searchlights that had become our moon.
‘Dreckhund!’ Obscenities, callous and cold, rang out like steeple church bells. I thought of my family a lot at that time. I imagined them sitting around after a dinner of Bratwurst: I could hear the sausages sizzling and dancing in a thin layer of fat, the skin, browning, waiting for a knife to break it open and juices to run free. Absorbed by potato and bread with a smothering of butter across its perfect white surface.
Famished and frozen, the thought of food was poetry to a starved soul. Talk of meals eaten, extravagance and indulgence. The descriptions would make us salivate, and would satisfy our hearts, if not our stomachs.
The showers had smoked twice that day so the Kommandant was all puffed out, proud as a peacock. Standing too close, I could smell his half-smoked cigarette and the heat stung my frozen nose. He moved in to me. He was so close I heard the leather of his uniform strain as he bent over, lowering himself to my eyeline. Then he turned to Hani.
‘Zigeunerin,’ was all he said. ‘Gypsy.’ A fact, but poison from his lips.
I held rigid as the cigarette sighed, extinguished into the pallid coolness of her forehead. The pockmarks of burns grew like acne. He flicked the butt in her face and with a wave of his hand we were dismissed and rushed back into the blocks, dogs at our heels, insults in our ears. I grieved the heat of the cigarette as the stench of life returned. I reached out for Hani’s hand as we fumbled our way, sliding around and against each other. She snatched it back and moved forward with the crowd.
I remember stopping at pressure all the way across my stomach. My bump grew like rising dough and hardened beneath my hands. My breath caught.
It was time.
I found my way to the bunk, but got in at the bottom. Lying down with some caution, as a pain grew from my lower abdomen, all the way up to my chest, and ebbed away.
Despite exhausted limbs, empty stomach and a battered soul, I was not able to rest.
The camp slept and peace replaced hate, the world righted itself a bit. Pressing my fingers at the upper right side where I normally could find a foot, I waited, pressure of feet against my fingers, I smiled and did it again. There was no alarm, baby was fine.
Pressure grew and my stomach hardened beneath my hands.
The rats started to retire, bored of eating dead bodies by day, they looked to chew on the living at night. As my stomach softened I rolled on my side and watched them. Another tightening. My belly held life and love. Every day it reminded me what love can do.
The scrat of rats were on the hunt, their long claws clacking, sharp from plying flesh off bone. Hani launched herself in front of me from the bunk above. Placing her freezing arm around me she sighed into the warmth of my body. Taking heat but not giving any in return.
I pulled her arm closer and nestled her slight figure into my chest, careful to move my bump away, as usual. There were lots of big bellies in Auschwitz, from malnutrition, no one knew I was pregnant.
‘I am so . . . so . . . humiliated, I hate this.’ Hani said. I knew where this was going, the same monologue in its varying forms. ‘These people are evil . . . Why nobody is doing anything to stop this? We cannot be vanished from the face of earth. Never am I going to leave. I’d rather they got it over now, liquefied me now, than torture me as they do.’ Nothing changed, the test of time was how many burns Hani could accumulate before her suffering ended.
I squeezed her arm, rubbing the chill out of her skin. The baby gave an almighty kick as a large wave hit and a small cry escaped my lips. Hani placed her hand to my stomach and as powerful as an electric shock pushed my arm away so hard I almost toppled over the side of the cot.
‘What is this?’ Pure terror distorted her voice. ‘You are pregnant?’ Another wave so strong took over my body and even if I had wanted to, I could not reply. I focused on my breathing, like Matka had said to the young girl.
‘What is happeni
ng? How?’ I could feel her eyes looking at me. I was pleased the searchlights were moving over another block. The emotion in her voice was enough, I did not need to see it too.
‘A child? Here?’ The fear was in her voice. I struggled with a lump in my throat.
‘What you are going to do?’ She touched my face to bring me back to reality. The wayward thought of the barrel and Sister Klara drowning my little angel brought a whole different kind of shiver through my body.
I placed my lips to the top of Hani’s head as she processed all the new information, knowing this would hurt her, but feeling so much lighter that she finally knew.
Hani placed a hand on my stomach and the ripping, stinging, tearing she must have been going through repelled her body from mine. A hand touching an open stove, feeling the flames lick skin, but holding it there anyway. Finally, I felt her relax as she felt my body perform something unique, muscles flexing and relaxing without any conscious effort.
I found myself singing to Hani in a whisper, as I breathed to my baby’s rhythm.
Hani cried, I cried. It felt like the end, and it really was.
That night we swayed, Hani by my side, breathing and moving in the small spaces between bunks, her hands in contact with mine. The searchlights, our rising sun, and a crack of a bullet fired at a rat, a woman, a shadow.
The day was tucked up in a blanket of dark. A deep guttural noise escaped my lips, causing panic: noise was exposure.
‘Shall I get Matka?’ Hani asked, bending down to dry my face with my shirt as I moved on to all fours. A straw mattress on the ground. A huge rise in panic as I realised this journey would soon be over. My child would be born and everything would change. I grabbed her hand and forced her to look at me.
‘No, Hani. My baby cannot be taken from me.’
Hani said, so gently, ‘But Frieda – if not then is stillborn.’ The word was there to shock me.
No one can understand how a baby so helpless can cling to life so hard, submerged in water. Gurgled and burbled until drowned, causing everyone who can hear it to rip apart, the depths of a wound that will never, ever heal.
I grabbed Hani’s arm, she looked away. ‘I will die before that happens, you look at me and see.’ I pulled her even closer. ‘It. Will. Never. Happen.’ The words between contractions, feral.
