The Girls of Room 28

by Hannelore Brenner

  In the winter of 1944, Eva Landa and her mother arrived in Gutau, which was then a Polish village. Auschwitz and the concentration camps at Stutthof and Dörbeck, on the Vislinskij Zaliv River near Gdansk, were behind them. Their numbers had been reduced, and the work they were forced to do—digging tank trenches ten feet wide and twelve feet deep—was much too hard. For Eva, the worst part of the war years began now, in Gutau. She remembers:

  The first freeze came early that year, and it began to snow. We had no warm clothes, sometimes not even shoes. Wooden sheds were built, but we had to sleep on straw strewn over the bare ground. There was a stove in the middle of the shed, but we had nothing to heat it with. It was terribly cold. There was a brook not far from the sheds, where we could wash until it froze over. We were given no food until our work was finished—turnip soup and a piece of bread. Many of us came down with typhoid, diphtheria, and other diseases. We were plagued with lice, but had neither the strength nor the means to do anything about it. There was no light, and it got dark early.

  On November 22, 1944, my mother died of hunger, total exhaustion, and lice. My mother had fought so long for her own life and mine, but could hold on no longer. She was forty-five years old—I was thirteen at the time. By then I had almost no hope that I would survive.

  A week after my mother’s death, we were told that those who had no shoes or who could no longer work could stay in the camp. I was barefoot and so I stayed in the camp. When the others had left the camp, the rest of us were counted. They chopped off a shock of our hair, so we wouldn’t be mistaken for workers. Then we were led to the train station—or so they told us. We marched all day and all night. And I didn’t have any shoes.

  Suddenly we were ordered to turn around, and we had to go back the same long, weary way. I don’t know how long it took, because I hadn’t seen a watch in years. Those who were still in the camp were very surprised to see us return. They thought we would be murdered. But we evidently did march to the train station, except there was no longer a train station, nor were there any trains. The Red Army was very close by. We could hear the thunder of their cannons.

  When I returned from this “excursion,” I could no longer stand up. I couldn’t support myself on my feet, which were black and festering. The camp physician wrote down my number and said that they would have to amputate my feet, that they would never heal. But there was no longer any chance of getting away from the place, since all the roads were closed because of the approaching front line.

  I had wonderful friends in the camp—Gita Torbe, Eva Pollak, Resi Schwarz. They helped me so much. Without them I wouldn’t have survived it all.

  On January 20, 1945, we were given orders to get ready to march. This applied of course only to those who were able to walk. No one knew where they were headed. The Russians were close by. Anyone who could walk left the camp. I stayed behind, lying on the straw. And then the very worst part began.

  The SS men began “inoculating us for typhoid,” so they said. In reality it was phenol that they were injecting. But they did it clumsily, or didn’t have enough injections. At any rate I wasn’t given one, and no one died of it.

  The very same evening they then ordered us to go to the camp cemetery, where trucks would be standing ready to transport the sick. I couldn’t stand on my feet, so I stayed behind in the camp, lying all alone in deep straw.

  Meanwhile, my comrades had marched to the cemetery where the trucks were supposed to be waiting for them. But it was a lie, of course. There were no trucks. And on the way to the cemetery the SS men shot them all. They beat some of them to death with their rifle butts to save on bullets. The blows weren’t always fatal. Despite everything, a few of them managed to survive.

  Meanwhile, I lay hidden in the straw. The Germans didn’t find me. They were in too much of a hurry! That night, it was January 21, 1945, something incredible happened. The Germans simply ran away!

  The next morning the few survivors came back to the camp. Among them were my comrade Anita Fischer and her mother. They had spent the night lying on the road unconscious and had now come back to the camp. [Anita’s name now is Anita Franková, and she works at the Jewish Museum in Prague.] We had nothing to eat, and those who could still walk went into Gutau to beg for food. A lot of Poles helped them and even let them into their homes. But I only know what I was told, since I couldn’t stand up, and I had to make do with what they brought me. The Lithuanian women, who had more energy, cooked potatoes on top of the stove and gave me the hot water. It tasted wonderful.

  The next day a Red Army soldier, maybe twenty years old, suddenly appeared in our shed. He greeted us, but we couldn’t understand him. Then came a military doctor who treated my feet, which had turned completely black. After a few days we were quartered in the house of the mayor, who presumably had fled. The war wasn’t over yet. But you could feel the end was near.

  Theresienstadt, December 23, 1944 (from Otto Pollak’s diary)

  The first Slovak-Hungarian transports have arrived. Four hundred people. Nine who had died on the way were carted away. As a Christmas present we are given three ounces of bacon, a white roll, a pound of potatoes, and a boullion cube. What might my poor child have gotten? It has been two months to the day since Helga left.

  December 24, 1944

  An Aryan transport with furniture and archives arrives from Hungary. Also members of the Hungarian government, or so it is said.

  December 31, 1944

  Nine o’clock in the morning. Meet with blue-eyed, blond Eva Winkler, Helga’s friend, who I assumed was a mischling. Her father is a carpenter. Evidently that’s why she wasn’t included in the October transports.

  January 1, 1945

  Driving snow this morning. I’m constantly thinking about my child. In the afternoon Helga’s friends Marianne Deutsch and Anna Flachová come by with their good wishes. It hurts more than it helps, because Helga isn’t here.

  January 5, 1945

  Frieda’s thirty-fifth birthday. How is she doing, I wonder? Does she think we’re still alive? In her last Red Cross letter she wrote: Take care of little Helga until I’m able to see her again. If Frieda only knew that my only child was taken from me on October 23rd and that I no longer have any way to watch over my precious girl. I’m constantly plagued by my conscience asking whether I shouldn’t have left with my child after all, whether I didn’t betray Frieda’s last words of advice by putting Helga in the care of her counselor. The head of Helga’s home advised me not to go on the transport. R. Sticker and Dr. Altenstein told me that we wouldn’t be able to stay together and our only time together would be on the trip itself and that my sacrifice would be in vain. All these objections wouldn’t have kept me from joining my child on her journey into the unknown if I had both legs and could have carried my own baggage. I know what moral, psychological, and material support I provided for my child in Theresienstadt.

  The transport of October 23, 1944, carried 1,707 prisoners away from Theresienstadt, among them Helga Pollak, Handa Pollak and her aunt Hanička, the counselor Ella Pollak, Eva Stern, Laura Šimko, Kamilla Rosenbaum, and Greta Hofmeister.

  “None of us knows how long we were in Auschwitz,” Helga Pollak says as she describes her experiences.

  From the moment the train came to a halt beside the ramp, most of us were in shock. Had it been three days, or maybe six? At any rate, they were days without any food, any warmth, any blankets, any mattresses. We now lay jammed together on wooden bunks, six to a bunk that was made to hold four. No one paid any attention to us, and no one spoke to me.

  I walked around the barracks and wept. A kapo asked me why I was crying, and I said, “I want to be with my mother.” And the kapo, a woman, asked me where my mother was, and I replied, “In England.” She was so surprised that she gave me half a head of cabbage and a packet of margarine. I shared it with the people on my bunk. We were given something to eat, but we had no dishes, no spoons and things of that sort. And so we had no way to hold our fo
od, which was always soup.

  Once, at some role call or other, a band marched passed us. They were playing music! I thought I must be in a madhouse, I’ve gone completely crazy. Another time the camp elder, Edith, a Slovakian woman, came in and asked us if we were hungry, and we all said we were. Then she asked who would help fetch a bucket of soup. There were several volunteers, and four in our group went with her. Eva Stern and her sister Doris were among them. They did not came back. Four other women brought the bucket back.

  Then Mengele came into our barracks, and we had to walk backward past him completely naked, with our hands raised. He selected several of us, either pregnant women or those who were too old or too thin. And then it was off to the baths again. And then we stood all day in rows of five and waited.

  When it got dark, we were rushed to a train. Many transports were processed there, and I was in a panic for fear I might lose my group. We walked past tables and someone handed us bread and sausage. Once we were in the dark, we all sat down on the floor. I ate my bread and sausage right away, because I told myself that this way no one could take it away from me, which is what had happened to the food I brought with me from Theresienstadt. It even happened with a couple of chocolate drops that I hadn’t eaten because I wanted to bring them to my niece Lea. But they took all my things away the moment we arrived, and then, too, I never saw Lea in Auschwitz.

  Handa Pollak has never forgotten her arrival in Auschwitz, either.

  After the first selection that took place immediately on arrival, we were sent to the showers and what happened there came as a horrible shock. It was as if we were in some awful nightmare. We had to undress and were shaved. The moment the women were shaved bald I no longer recognized them—they were like a band of monkeys. What I saw weren’t familiar human beings. I could somehow make out familiar voices, but couldn’t attach them to faces I knew. I became hysterical. No one could calm me down. I began to do strange things. We were given a jacket, but to me it seemed like trousers. I wanted to slip into the sleeves as if they were trouser legs. And when that didn’t work I grew more hysterical. I’m actually a very calm and composed person. But that night… It’s a wonder that I didn’t go mad.

  We were given a few pieces of clothing—a light dress, a pajama jacket, a pair of socks. But no underwear, and it was October. We were in Poland, and it was very cold. We grabbed shoes at random from a big pile, without any regard to size or whether they matched. The shoes I got were much too big. But that wasn’t so bad. It was much worse if someone got shoes that were too small.

  Then we were taken to our block, with its three-tiered bunk beds. But whereas we had slept two to a bunk in Theresienstadt, here it was six, all under one blanket. Anyone who wanted to roll over had to ask the others first; it would have been impossible otherwise. That’s how close we lay to one another.

  After a week there was another selection. We had to undress and march past an SS doctor, with our hands raised. I had no problem passing, because I was tall for my age. But as Tella walked past him, she had to stand still. It was a frightening moment. We didn’t know whether she would make it. He checked her over. Tella was very thin. He hesitated. Then he let her pass.

  We were taken to another camp, close to the Auschwitz train tracks. We were given underwear and a piece of bread. And then we were loaded onto trains again. They took us to Germany, to Oederan in Saxony, near Chemnitz. There we were brought to a factory. It was directly beside the tracks, which meant that trains could be easily loaded and unloaded. And there we got off.

  In January 1945 the SS ordered ten wooden barracks to be built in Theresienstadt. Children were also put to work constructing them. Flaška had to break up the ground with a rake, but her gloves had so many holes that she froze terribly.

  No one knew why these barracks were being built. All anyone knew was that the SS attached great importance to them, because they drove the prisoners to work at a feverish pace. Little Marta Fröhlich pushed heavy carts of loamy soil up a narrow wooden ramp, sometimes under the watchful eye of Commandant Rahm, who stood nearby, legs astraddle. “I always trembled when I saw him. One time my cart upended, and everything fell out. I was horribly afraid.” But her comrades quickly came over and helped her deal with the accident, and nothing happened.

  In February 1945 more mysterious construction projects, closely guarded by the SS, were begun. Sealed storerooms were to be built in the casemates of the fortress, and next to them, in a section of the ramparts, a “duck pond” was to be created. At least that’s what they were told. But the engineers managing these projects soon became convinced that they were for something quite different: a deadly trap into which the SS would drive the prisoners the moment the planned liquidation of the ghetto had arrived. There was talk of gas chambers; ever since the arrival of the Slovak-Hungarian transport on December 23, 1944, everyone in the ghetto knew what awful things had been happening elsewhere. And so the prisoners began to sabotage the construction work. But these efforts were of little consequence because of new developments, of which the prisoners were becoming increasingly aware.

  Aware of their imminent defeat, the Germans were growing uneasy, and they were divided about how the remaining prisoners at Theresienstadt should be handled: Kill them all and liquidate the ghetto? Or create alibis and hide the evidence?

  “One day I saw smoke somewhere and I went to find its source,” Horst Cohn recalls. “And then I saw six SS men burning filed papers out in an open field. One of them turned around and saw me. And all six of them instantly pulled out their pistols and fired at me. I ran away as fast as I could, at the speed of lightning, but in a zigzag, hitting the ground again and again, like the way the rabbit gets away from the fox in the story. Then I reached a house and hid. I’ve always said that the Brothers Grimm saved my life.”

  In early February 1945 there suddenly came word that a transport with twelve hundred prisoners was to be sent to Switzerland. “Are they crazy?” Ela can clearly remember even today how outraged her mother was. “They can’t believe we’re going to fall for that! That a transport is actually going to Switzerland! After all that has happened! After so many people were forced to leave and not one of them has ever returned!” Ela and her mother did not volunteer for that transport.

  Among those who were put on the list for this transport were Eva Winkler and her family—but not because her parents were anxious to get on it. Karl Rahm had personally added their names. Up to the last moment the Winklers doubted that this transport was really going to Switzerland and fearfully awaited their departure. “But when we saw that we were traveling on a real passenger train and not in those cattle cars,” Eva says, “we gathered fresh hope that it might perhaps be true.”

  This time they were not disappointed. The train was bound for Switzerland and brought its passengers, among them Horst Cohn and his parents, safely over the border. Postcards that arrived in Theresienstadt a few days later confirmed the incredible news for those left behind. Was their long-awaited liberation actually close at hand?

  The drone of airplanes, which could be heard ever more frequently now, bolstered their hopes. As did the shiny silver strips, more and more of which rained down on the ghetto—they came from Allied planes dropping strips of tinfoil to avoid being picked up on German radar screens. The residents of the ghetto took notice. Two of these tinfoil strips can be found in Vera Nath’s album, along with the words “Forbidden to pick these up.”

  When Adolf Eichmann showed up yet again in Theresienstadt on March 5, 1945, he ordered a new “beautification.” The cemetery was to be tidied up and decorated with little gravestones; the prisoners’ quarters were to be whitewashed, the kitchens cleaned, the coffeehouse, the stages, and the house of worship all reopened. What was the point? Did this herald the end of the war? All signs pointed in that direction.

  In mid-April, Theresienstadt was treated to yet another big surprise. The Danes were told to get ready to go home. The news spread like wildfire. And on Frida
y, April 13, 1945, between eight and ten in the evening, several white Red Cross buses drove up, all of them fitted out luxuriously. The Swedes escorting these buses even distributed food, cigarettes, and sweets among the other prisoners and made no attempt to hide their disdain for the Nazis. Paul Rabinowitsch, the trumpeter from Brundibár, climbed aboard one of the buses along with his mother and stepfather, as did 412 other Danes. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. “Those left behind stood there waving and weeping,” he would write decades later. “They had felt somehow safe as long as the Danes were there. But what would become of them once the Danes were gone?”2

  Those left behind did not know what their liberation would be like. But their belief that it was going to happen very soon grew stronger with every day—as did the bonds of friendships among the four remaining girls of Room 28: Ela, Flaška, Marta, and Marianne.

  As she watched the Danes depart, Ela recalled a song that she most likely heard in the early days of her confinement in the ghetto, when she was still in the Hamburg Barracks. She remembers it to this day, and mentions it in commemoration whenever she gives a talk about Theresienstadt. Ilse Weber, a poet and children’s book author who had been deported to Theresienstadt in 1942 and who died in Auschwitz in 1944, would sing it as she played the music on a guitar.