by Anna Patrick
‘Either way, they avenged your aunt.’
‘Yes, you’re right, it must have been a disgrace for Maryta’s father to see his daughter married to a divorced man or even worse to see her living in sin with him.
‘Living in sin.’ Marta snorted. ‘And now here we are in the seventh circle of hell and all I can think is: Does any of it matter?’
‘Oh Marta, I’ve made you mournful, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. Tell me something of your life at school. Did you make any friends there? What else did you do to warrant being expelled?’
Marta remained sorrowful for several minutes, but when she glanced up to see Renata’s hopeful face, she shook herself out of her despondent mood.
‘Let’s leave that for another Sunday. It would do us good to get out of here for five minutes.’
‘Good idea, we’ll do that,’ said Renata, as she hitched up her shoulders and gave a feeble smile.
22
‘The thing I remember most about boarding school, except for the mice in chapel, was bath time.’
‘That’s a strange thing to remember.’
‘The bath time was even stranger, believe me. We all had to wear these long vests under our school uniform and when we got into the bath, we kept them on.’
‘What?’
‘It’s true. The nuns used a flannel to wash us under the vest.’
‘But it would be sopping wet?’
‘It was and I remember thinking I never kept my clothes on when I had a bath at home.’
‘Why did they do it?’
‘I suppose they had some bizarre notion about the human body being sinful. They must have whisked off the wet vest and wrapped us in a towel and dried us off but I’ve no recollection of that at all.’
‘What a narrow-minded approach to life. But with that background it must have been an agony for nuns to go through that humiliating reception at Ravensbrück.’
‘I don’t recall it being fun for any of us.’
‘Whoa. I meant nothing offensive. It was appalling for all of us, but you have to feel a special sympathy for nuns who have taken a vow of chastity and can’t bear to see a child’s innocent body to face scrutiny by those pigs of men laughing and jeering.’
‘No, you’re right. I don’t know why I reacted like that. Perhaps I’m still blaming the nuns for my incarceration in boarding school.’
‘Easier to blame them than your parents.’
‘How true. Have you considered studying psychology when you get out of here?’
‘No, I’m setting up a restaurant with a menu as long as your arm and plates the size of wagon wheels. God, can you imagine it? Having enough to eat? Going to bed with a full stomach?’
‘No, I can’t anymore.’
But Renata, eyes closed, mouth watering, had entered her fantasy world of food.
‘The soup will be so thick with vegetables and meat and pulses you’ll be able to stand your spoon up in it.’
‘Renata stop it. It’s hours before we get our evening rations. And I’m sure it makes it worse to keep obsessing about food.’
‘Do you? But you’re the same aren’t you? Don’t you think about food all the time?’
‘No, I don’t. I dream about food, I admit it, but when I’m awake my biggest desire is to wallow in a luxurious bath, get rid of all these vile fleas and lice, step into a freshly ironed nightgown and sleep in a comfortable bed with clean linen, a thick duvet and a pillow to rest my head on.’
‘Mm tempting as a second choice, but not as good as mine.’
Conversation often turned to food with inmates exchanging recipes and memories of meals prepared for special occasions. Sick of hearing the subject, Marta determined to make her friend focus on something different, so she returned to her schooldays.
‘At some point my mother gave up trying to send me away to boarding schools, and I returned home and attended a local school. With my life back to normal, I found I enjoyed school. Well, perhaps I should qualify that, I enjoyed the subjects that interested me and I excelled at, language and literature above everything else.
‘Best of all I became friends with a small group of girls and we did everything together. We used to play ‘Truth or Dare’. On my God, Renata, that was so exciting. We were honour bound to tell the truth in response to any question or undertake the dare if we didn’t want to answer. I tell you we used to sweat in those games wondering what questions the others would dream up. The dares were daunting as well so the choice between them wasn’t easy.’
‘How old were you then?’
‘Fourteen or fifteen, I guess. We were good friends and loyal to each other, but I have to tell you their parents didn’t approve of me. They regarded me as a bad influence which I always considered most unfair. After all, I never made my friends do anything they didn’t want to do. If they did something, like a dangerous dare for example, then why did I get the blame? They could always have told the truth instead.’
‘Perhaps it was your rather exotic family background they really disapproved of.’
‘That’s possible. I’ve just remembered a time when I tried to get one of my friends to break my leg.’
‘What? You are joking, aren’t you?’
‘No, honestly, I couldn’t face going to school that day, perhaps I hadn’t completed an assignment, or I was in trouble for some other reason. I decided a superb excuse for my non-appearance would be to break my leg. So, along with my friend Krysia, we went to the railway sidings where there were plenty of sleepers lying around. I knelt on one of them and I told Krysia to keep jumping on the back of my leg.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, how was that ever going to work? And you’re supposed to be the intelligent one?’
‘Seemed a good idea at the time,’ said Marta, a little petulantly. ‘Besides, I was a lot younger, probably just eight or nine.’
Renata snorted in derision. ‘Bet you had a few bruises to show for your good idea.’
‘Yes, all right, there’s no need to go on about it.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘Humph.’
Silence followed while both women examined their clothes for lice with studious attention until they caught each other’s eye and giggled like small children.
‘I’m quite convinced now that my parents didn’t divorce, but I’ll tell you who did.’
‘Who?’
‘Aunt Haneczka.’
‘Never.’
‘Yes, it’s true. The marriage to Stefan didn’t work out and it must have been a real divorce because Aunty married Henryk Szlendak in 1938.’
‘Was Andrzej ever aware of his background?’
‘I honestly don’t know. He was a pilot and died in the early days of the war and Aunt Haneczka died in 1941 so I guess we’ll never find out. Anyway, let me tell you about my mother’s death. At the age of thirteen, I developed scarlet fever. Mama nursed me and then caught the disease herself. She developed complications, and they admitted her to hospital. When I went to see her, she said: ‘Tusienku, you have such beautiful eyebrows; never let anyone mess with them.’ Those were the last words she ever spoke to me. Two days later she died.
‘The official cause of death was scarlet fever and its complications, but everybody said she died of a broken heart because she didn’t want to live without my father.
‘My beloved Mamusia dead. Nobody can ever replace your mother and nobody ever did. That’s when I started smoking. One of my parents’ friends, seeing me devastated, offered me a cigarette, and I became hooked straightaway. If you offered me the choice right now between an extra ration of bread and a cigarette, I would take the cigarette. God, I can’t tell you how I miss having a smoke.’
‘I tried smoking once, but it made me throw up.’
‘Then you’re lucky. It’s one less thing to miss. An
yway, after my mother died, my father took me to live with Maryta and him and she looked after me with great care and love.
‘She made me an off-white dress for the funeral and tied up my hair in a huge black bow. Mamusia had requested that my father place red roses around her face in the coffin. Somebody did, but it wasn’t him; he didn’t even come to the funeral. I walked behind her coffin on my own.
‘They buried her in the Powazki Cemetery in Warsaw between two fir trees. Masses of people turned up to pay their respects, but not the one person she would have wanted there.’
‘Oh Marta, how sad.’
‘I miss her every single day.’
‘So what was life like with your father and Maryta?’
‘Not good to be honest. He started to drink heavily and eventually lost his job as editor. Whether he felt guilty about my mother or whether he and Maryta were falling out of love, I can’t say, but they used to have terrible arguments. In fact, they used to get me out of bed at night to take sides. I remember leaning against the wall thinking how stupid and petty their disputes were.’
‘How selfish.’
‘Yes, I guess. They couldn’t carry on like that and eventually they split up. By then I was getting on with my life and busy working for my final examinations to graduate from school and go to university. The world beckoned, and I was more than happy to embrace everything it offered.
‘There is one other incident I remember from that period. It’s hard to believe now when you look at my wispy scarecrow head, but I had the most fantastic, chestnut coloured hair which I wore in two plaits. They came down to my bottom, and they were a complete pain because they were so heavy.
‘One day, in a fit of rebellion or just to assert my independence, I made an appointment to the hairdressers and had the lot cut off. There was so much hair they sold it to a wigmaker so I made money too.
‘What a relief it was to shake my head and feel the bounce of my new bob! I returned home so proud of myself and do you know what my father said: “Oh Marta, what have you done? Your one beauty.” Almost exactly the same words spoken to Jo when she cut off her long hair in Little Women. Do you remember that book? “Oh Jo, how could you? Your one beauty.” He had a point, I suppose, but I never regretted doing it. And Maryta said I looked modern and grown up which was just what I wanted to hear.
‘I did some strange things growing up. For example, I used to drink loads of vinegar.’
‘Yuk. Why did you do that?’
‘Because I wanted to be pale and interesting and I read somewhere that drinking vinegar would get rid of my rosy cheeks.’
‘That’s mad. My mother used to pinch my cheeks to give me a little colour in them, saying it would make me look healthy.’
‘I used to pinch my eyebrows together to create frown lines.’
‘Why?’
‘To make me appear intellectual.’
‘I wish I’d known you in those days. All my friends seem boring in comparison and their parents even more boring.’
‘I’m sure Maryta would have settled for boring instead of all those pointless arguments. I’m not sure what happened to her after they split up, but my father married a woman called Blanka, which surprised everyone, and life settled to a large degree until war threatened. He was an officer of the Riverine Flotilla of the Polish Navy, stationed in Pinsk on the River Pina, and they mobilised his reserve battalion on August 31.
‘Shortly after war broke out, I made my way to Pinsk to find him, but it was already too late and I never saw him again. There was a card from him, posted in Pinsk, which ended with the words ‘Stick together’. I’m not sure whether he meant that in a spiritual sense or whether he meant Blanka and me, but I never saw her in Pinsk, although she had gone there to be with my father.
‘I heard from him once more in 1940 and then nothing more until 1943 when I was sitting on the toilet reading the paper and saw his name in the list of people murdered at Katyn.’
‘Oh God, what a terrible way to find out.’
‘That’s the truth. It was the most terrible shock and I still can’t bear to think of him dying in that dreadful way. That’s why I don’t understand why our communist friends are so delighted at the prospect of liberation by the Red Army. To me it would be an unmitigated disaster.’
The Sunday Escape Committee, as they called themselves, continued to meet well into the Spring of 1945. When Marta had exhausted her many tales, Renata was supposed to take over, but she seemed reluctant to talk about her family. So they started on the books they had read and spent hours arguing over characters and plot lines and how they would have behaved in similar circumstances.
The camp regime did not alter, but everyone detected a new nervousness among the aufseherinnen and SS officers; at the factory, they increased quotas, but talk of an end to the war became a regular, if whispered, feature of each day.
Then, out of the blue, the Ober announced that inmates could leave for another camp or stay at Finow. They had to choose immediately. Marta and Renata looked at each other in panic. What should they do? The Russians were approaching fast, and that made all the difference. In those few seconds of weighing up alternatives, they took the risk and climbed into the trucks.
‘Have we done the right thing?’
‘Too late now.’
When fuel ran out, the guards forced them to march along endless roads. They slept as they walked and encouraged each other when their legs turned into lead and all they wanted to do was lie down and die. Some did and were dispatched with a shot to the head. The crack of a revolver was enough to make them continue.
Sometimes they ate bread and water, more often nothing. At night they slept in the ditches and carried on in the morning. Numbers dwindled as the stragglers were shot or failed to get up in the morning, death reaching them before the SS bullets.
When they reached the sub camp at Hamburg, the Germans were running about in a panic and glanced at the new arrivals in terror. Clinging to each other they made their way to the nearest hut and collapsed exhausted onto the bunks. As the hours passed, Marta became aware of a change of atmosphere, of different sounds reaching her ears, of strange voices she didn’t recognise.
A camp inmate kept them updated: the Germans have vanished; the British Army is here; the war is over.
‘We… should… be… celebrating.’
She dragged every whispered word out of her larynx. Renata moaned in response. Asleep or awake they barely moved.
A rich, meaty smell wafted in through a broken window and teased their nostrils transporting Marta back to her childhood watching their cook prepare stroganoff in the Polish way. She salivated at the chunks of beef sizzling in the pan; her eyes prickled as the sharp knife sliced through the onions; she pinched a cucumber pickled in dill before the cook shooed her away.
This was like the dreams of food they used to have in the camp with the added satisfaction of aromas making them seem real.
Her eyes shot open.
‘Renata, listen, this is important.’ She cried with the effort of speaking urgently.
‘Only eat bland food. Anything else will kill you.’
‘No… strength… to… eat.’
She thanked God, knowing how Renata’s thoughts revolved around food. Outside emaciated bodies passed out and died in an instant or lay clutching their stomachs in agony as they feasted without restraint on the rich stew prepared by army cooks.
The pity of it all struck her. People who had survived so much denied a future through someone’s good intentions. It was such a human action, after all, to try to feed up those who had nothing. To show love through food.
Marta lay on her bunk and observed the soldiers, many openly tearful, who ventured inside the stinking huts to help the bed-ridden with water and, after their initial error, small quantities of rice or potatoes.
What a s
trange creature man was. Here were hardened soldiers who must have witnessed terrible scenes on the battlefield yet, for all that, could find it within themselves to weep with compassion. Yet other men, endowed with the same intelligence, the same type of military training, had not only inflicted the suffering on them in the first place, but mocked them as they did so.
Among the victims of this misery she had witnessed so many responses ranging from the bestial and criminal to the enlightened and kind-hearted. What caused the difference? Was it religion? Sometimes it was. Friendship or kinship? It certainly played a role in her survival. Was it upbringing? Well if it was, it had nothing to do with class, she was sure of that. Was it nationality? She had mostly been proud of her fellow Poles in the camp, but then again two Ukrainians, whose nation proved so helpful to the Nazis, had procured food and then medicine for her.
Would she ever be able to figure it out? No, mankind was a puzzle: a terrifying, awe-inspiring, ridiculous conundrum.
Long periods of sleep and better nutrition saw the friends get better. Minds raced ahead of bodies as they revelled in the knowledge the war had ended, Hitler was dead and they were safe in the British zone of control. Both wept at the thought of their beloved Poland under Soviet control.
‘Maybe it won’t be so bad.’
‘You think?’
As the weeks passed, they grew impatient with life in a concentration camp, surrounded by painful associations, and leapt at the chance to move to Wentorf, 20 miles east of Hamburg, and its displaced persons’ camp.
Wentorf
1945
23
‘Will you look at this place? I’ve never seen anything like it. I was certain we’d end up in another basic camp with wooden barracks, not these fancy brick buildings.’
Renata peered round the tarpaulin wide-eyed as the truck drove into Wentorf DP Camp.
‘You’ll fall out in a minute.’
‘Don’t you want to see?’
