by Steven Uhly
The Jews hurried through the darkness, crossed a stream that flowed into the village, and when they were two kilometers away they fell to the ground in a cornfield and rested and gazed up at the night sky studded with stars, two hundred people. The last to arrive were those carrying others, including Ruth. She and a man were bearing the old man, who had resumed his silence like an act. Now they lay exhausted, gasping for breath on the still-cool earth.
We can’t stay here, one of the women said after a while, They’ll find us in the morning. They picked themselves up, the young carried the old and children again. Then they continued until dawn, until they came to a forest that offered greater security. While they walked, Anna felt that this was the way into the Promised Land, that this must be the final exodus, and perhaps its only purpose was to strengthen them in what they were.
But what else are we to think now, after all that’s happened? she wondered, without knowing the answer.
18
The lorry came from the west. It had belonged to the U.S. infantry, but that was some time back. Six months before, two civilians had helped themselves to it from the fleet of various American units. They were men with British passports. This was not any old lorry they had stolen, but a vehicle captured from the Wehrmacht, which had been repainted and was no longer of much use now that the Allies could do as they wished with Germany and her property.
Since then it had been in almost constant use, today being no exception. The first vehicle was followed by four civilian lorries, all different, the livery of the companies they had once served still visible beneath the makeshift coat of green paint they had been given.
They had set off at dawn and taken minor roads to avoid Allied patrols and the great floods of refugees. As the lorries were empty they had managed to pass a few checkpoints relatively cheaply. It was one o’clock in the afternoon when they crossed the border into the former Wartheland. The sun was shining, there was barely a cloud in the sky and the drivers were starting to sweat behind their dusty windshields.
The roads were full of army legions, people on foot, some heading east, others west, it was difficult to gauge their goal, were they panic-buying or fleeing or finally returning home? All were loaded with bags and sacks, all looked like people who would never give up, not for anything.
The lorries drove the last portion of the journey via Landsberg an der Warthe, Schwerin an der Warthe, Birnbaum. They gave Posen a wide berth and it was late afternoon by the time they reached their destination.
A man leaped from the passenger door of the first lorry, he was wearing a British officer’s uniform, he moved gracefully.
His name was Peretz. He spoke several foreign languages with a Hebrew accent.
He approached the house, followed by the driver, a thickset man with a receding hairline and a red face that made him appear as if he were under permanent stress. With small steps he followed Peretz as he strode to the house. They screwed up their noses at the stench that hung in the air. The driver and passengers of the other lorries waited, engines running.
They vanished into the house, reappearing a few minutes later. Peretz made a gesture that told the others, The house is empty. The other drivers got out and gathered around him.
“Looks like they left in a hurry,” he said. “There’s all sorts of stuff lying about that people would normally take with them.” They turned and looked back at the village they had driven through. No one articulated their thoughts. Peretz glanced around. He pointed in the opposite direction.
“If they came to the house from there, then our people must have fled that way.”
The others nodded, it was the logical conclusion; when you escape you take the same line as that of your pursuers, human beings are not rabbits. They got back into their lorries and drove on.
Peretz had an intuitive feeling for fugitives. He had come to Europe in the same British Army uniform he was wearing now. With thirty thousand other Jews from Palestine he had fought against the Nazis in Italy. A Jew in hiding behaves no differently from a Nazi in hiding, Peretz said later to his contact man at the Institution for Immigration B, who asked whether he dared stay in Europe and find Jewish survivors for Israel. The other man had frowned, but Peretz knew what he was talking about, his experience of the Nazis was not of them as monsters, but as defeated foes.
Now he was unerringly leading his convoy toward a forest about ten kilometers to the east of Tulce. The sun was setting when they arrived. A luster lingered over the fields, but the forest loomed dark and impenetrable before them when they stopped on the road that ran alongside it at a small distance.
The silence of the transition from day to night enveloped the men who now got out of their lorries and looked toward the forest. Peretz went back to the stowage area and brought out a Wehrmacht loudhailer, a large, green, lead funnel riddled with scratches. He had taken it from a German soldier he had shot dead. Since then he had kept it with him as an item of war booty and a symbol, for he had the specific feeling that he, Peretz, had wrested all linguistic control over reality away from the Nazis and was now in possession of it himself. The imperial eagle was still visible on the side of the loudhailer. But Peretz had scratched away the swastika beneath it and in its place carved a star of David that looked a little scrawled.
Now Peretz, hailer in hand, approached the edge of the forest. When he had gone a few meters he stopped and broadcast in Hebrew, in German and in Yiddish, “This is Peretz Sarfati from Bricha, the Jewish organization for escapees! We’re here to take you to safety! Please come out! We’ll take you away from here!”
He waited. It would not matter if they believed this was a trap set for them by Polish anti-Semites. Peretz knew that there was always one amongst them who would take the risk. They were the chancers, those for whom it was all or nothing.
Peretz could never have imagined, however, as the woman approached him, that he would be looking into a face devoid of fear. He felt that she was eyeing him in a way with which he, who thought he had seen everything, was unfamiliar.
He could never have imagined it possible to suffer such a shock at the sight of so much beauty in a face, of a body’s movements, of the strange energy emanating from it.
When the woman was standing in front of him, allowing her gaze to roam across the men and lorries of Bricha, Peretz was lost for words. He stared at her in disbelief and forgot why he had come.
“Are there more of you in the forest?” Peretz’s driver called from the lorry.
Anna nodded. Turning to Peretz, she said, “The people from the house in Tulce and others who were already there when we arrived. I don’t know if we’ll all fit in your lorries.”
It was obvious that a woman like this should have such a voice, Peretz thought. Pulling himself together, he said, “I’ll call them again.” He took a few steps back from Anna and repeated his announcement, but this time his voice sounded shrill and nervous.
Now there was greater movement in the shadows of the trees. People gradually emerged from the forest and crossed the field. When they had all arrived where the lorries were parked they had left behind a broad swathe of trampled corn.
They stood in silence on the road, peering expectantly at the faces of their helpers. Peretz realized that Anna was probably right and that there were too many of them. To avoid losing his train of thought again, he ignored her and gathered his men around him.
They did, in the end, manage to pack everyone into the lorries, but afterward Peretz swore that he would never do anything like that again. The suspicion niggled at him that the only reason he had done it may have been to deny Anna the satisfaction of being right.
Fitting everyone in was a proper squeeze. They stood there like cattle, body pressed against body, nobody could sit. It was worst for those who had already been transported in this manner, in the opposite direction and in cattle wagons that brought them to concentration camps. But it was bad for the children, too, who were encircled by bodies that towered over and threat
ened to collapse on top of them like tall waves whenever the lorries negotiated a bend or had to brake.
The return journey took longer than the drive there. The vehicles were hopelessly overloaded and on the poor roads could only proceed at walking pace. If an axle breaks now, Peretz worried, but the thought did not reach its conclusion because Anna’s face got in the way, Anna who was standing in the cargo area behind, and Peretz felt nothing but anticipation. My God, you’re all over the place, Peretz thought apprehensively.
On the floor beneath him lay numerous cartons of American cigarettes, with which they paid off the Russian soldiers at the checkpoints. Whenever one of the guards had a pang of conscience and asked, “What are you transporting in your lorries,” they told the truth: Jews. What do you want with Jews? most would ask in surprise, and they would reply, We want to get them out of Europe. They even earned the occasional praise, the soldiers would say, You ought to have done it sooner, then we would have been spared all this mess, or, A good thing too, get rid of them! After all, they’re the ones responsible for this debacle. Given this response, Peretz would offer a friendly smile from the passenger seat and say, “Exactly what we think too.”
They drove at night through conquered Germany, where at any moment the road could be congested with refugees on their way west. Where one unexploded bomb after another detonated during the clearing up operations. Where vast numbers of people, without a roof over their heads, spent the mild night by the side of the road, some lying half on the asphalt because it was less damp, having to take care that they were not run over by lorries.
Peretz had never imagined that such a total defeat would be possible, yet now it was a fact of everyday life. But as his mind turned again to Anna, he felt that everyday life was over and a new era was beginning.
Anna was trying to protect her belly. Marja was standing between her and Mrs. Abramowicz, who held Dana, shielding her from the other bodies pressing on them. Ariel was standing behind Mrs. Abramowicz. Ruth was somewhere up front with the old man.
Marja’s head was pushing against Anna’s abdomen, but they were so closely packed that Anna could not see the girl because another body, the broad back of the mother, filled the gap above the girl, leaving Anna no room to move. The pressure of the bodies jammed against each other was so great that Anna could lift her feet from the floor without sliding back down. She thought, We’re wedged in so tightly that we could all lift our feet. What an image, Anna thought, a bunch of Jews learning to fly inside a lorry.
Anna could not move her arms. It was stuffy and hot. After a while a peculiar sensation rose within her. It rose like a flood and threatened to suck her under. All she wanted was to get outside into the fresh air, move her arms and legs, she would rather sleep in the forest in fear of the Poles or anybody else who hated Jews, she was used to that. But this here jeopardized her self-control. How do the others manage? Anna wondered. She stared at the faces of her fellow sufferers. They looked strangely abstract in the darkness, reduced to their essential features like the sculptures of an artist who has conceived how to represent the same thing again and again in very different ways.
Intense concentration, this is what Anna saw, intense concentration to avoid losing one’s head and cracking up or screaming wildly. Intense concentration to avoid causing suffering to those in a situation as dire as their own.
Anna took as deep a breath as her constricted lungs would allow and tried to calm herself. If you survive this, the thought occurred to her, then you’ll get married. She almost burst out laughing.
Hours passed. The monotonous drone of the engine, the immobility inside these lurching vehicles and the unvarying darkness enfolding the passengers, although dawn was already breaking outside, sent feelings and thoughts into a loop impossible to break out of. Most of them bore up and hung on as they had over the past few years: they swam in their boundless inner selves like castaways whose only goal is land, whose minds have not descended into chaos only because they have learned to suffer longer than they have suffered already, to bear up and hang on for even longer.
Anna copied the children: she fell asleep, thereby discovering another use for the support her body received from the squash of others’.
As the lorries with their dense cargo crossed the final demarcation line, thereby arriving at last in the American sector of Berlin, Anna was dreaming of Israel. While the men in the drivers’ cabs breathed a sigh of relief and felt quite differently, even though they were still sitting on their sore backsides and still traveling along bumpy roads, Anna glimpsed a light, the like of which she had never seen before, warm and lustrous it settled on the ochre-colored earth, the earth-colored houses and the gently undulating sea. When Peretz had bribed the final checkpoint with cigarettes and they could be absolutely sure that no one would prevent them from reaching their destination, Anna’s dream slipped down, down, down into her belly, and in the darkness she saw a pair of eyes as blue as the sea.
When the convoy came to a stop and the men opened up the back of the first lorry several people collapsed onto them; they had passed out from the exhaust fumes that were particularly noxious at the very rear. Most of the passengers had become so stiff that they needed to be helped down. The legs of others had gone dead. But the majority had hung on and now descended the ramp unsteadily to where Peretz and his men were waiting.
Anna and the little girl in front of her woke up because all of a sudden they lost their footing. Stumbling, they knocked into other bodies that were also on the move, and it was a while before they realized they had reached their destination and the torture was over.
Peretz stood at the bottom of the loading ramp, guiding the people in the right direction. He earned a peculiar look from his driver, for Peretz never normally took charge of this. Whenever he reached his destination he would go to the commandant to officially register the arrival of his charges.
This time, however, Peretz stood there and gently pushed the bodies toward the large entrance gate, but he was not watching them for his gaze was fixed on the darkness inside the lorry. When Anna appeared he looked away and felt like a little boy again.
The sun was rising as Anna came down the ramp. When she spotted Peretz she asked, “Where are we?”
Peretz turned, pretending not to recognize her. Anna saw through his ploy but did not let it show. Her belly was sore where the girl’s head had been digging into it. Her neck was sore, her breasts were sore. She felt exhausted even though she had slept.
“We’re in Zehlendorf,” Peretz said as soberly as possible. “This is a general refugee camp with liberated prisoners-of-war, forced laborers and many concentration camp survivors from U.N. states. You’ll all be here for a while until things move on.”
Anna looked at him expectantly. Peretz acted as if he had not noticed. But he was unable to pretend for long.
Peretz found it painful, this sudden realization that he had nothing to defend himself with against Anna. Although she had not asked he explained what “a while” meant: two nights, and then members of Berlin’s Jewish Community would take them in.
“The Americans want to close this camp because it’s too small. But we haven’t yet found a suitable place for our people,” Peretz said apologetically, feeling like someone who has built himself up, only to have to back down.
Anna nodded, turned away and followed the slow stream of people making their way toward the gate of the sparsely lit refugee camp. She did not look back.
Peretz watched her go with a feeling of ultimate defeat.
19
When Lisa was nine years old and spring arrived, there was a ring at the door. It was late afternoon, it had been raining but now the sun was out, diffusing a fresh, invigorating light.
Lisa opened the door. Before her stood a woman who looked at her in bewilderment. She was heavily made up, her clothes looked expensive but threadbare, she wore high-heeled shoes and carried a real leather bag, which at the time was a rarity. Lisa noticed it at once b
ecause Herr Weiss had shown her how imitation leather was different.
When the woman had got over her shock she said, “Who are you?”
She sounded surprised.
“Who are you?” Lisa said defiantly.
The woman smiled nervously, ran a hand through her hair, which had the semblance of a well-rehearsed gesture, and said, “I’m Maria Kramer.”
Lisa stared. All of a sudden she fancied that the woman before her was an actress who had chosen their front door as her stage.
Before Lisa was able to react, Frau Kramer, who had been cooking in the kitchen and wondering what was keeping her granddaughter so long, came into the hallway. When she saw who was at the door, her features changed. Standing behind Lisa, she looked at the woman like somebody from whose face all expression has been eliminated.
“Can I help you?”
The woman stared at Frau Kramer and, with tears welling up in her eyes, said softly, “Mother.”
If this is a play, Lisa thought, what is my role? She turned to her grandmother for help.
Frau Kramer knew perfectly well which drama was being played out here. Her expression did not change; it remained frozen and alien—Lisa had never seen her grandmother look like this.
“I’m sorry, you must have made a mistake,” Frau Kramer said. She grabbed the handle and was about to close the door—even Lisa found this impolite—when the other woman prevented her by quickly putting a foot in the way.
“Mother, please, it’s me, Maria! Don’t you recognize me?”
“No,” Frau Kramer said, shaking her head. “Maria Kramer is dead. This is her daughter, my granddaughter. You must be looking for someone else. Now please leave.”
“Mother!” the woman cried out. Lisa thought her despair was brilliantly acted. She seemed so real that Lisa watched the woman captivated, like a spectator so thrilled that they forget themselves.
Frau Kramer pulled Lisa into the apartment and pushed against the door to eject the woman’s foot. The other woman resisted, she was almost screaming now:
