by Clara Kramer
Chapter 16
THE EXODUS
4 June to 24 July 1944
Wednesday, 28 June. I saw Hela Ornstein! I was cleaning upstairs and watching at the same time to check the soldiers are not returning. I was peeking out of the window. I saw two young girls walking, one of them was Hela. I admired how she walked so sure of herself, apparently she got used to her role as a gentile. Inside she is probably not so comfortable as she seems, she lost so tragically her father and sister.
Out there is beautiful, June, my heart aches when I see people walking, free, enjoying the beautiful weather, not afraid. We are vegetating here in fear.
I had been awakened by traffic in the middle of the night. Trucks and tanks drove by for hours and hours. When Beck came down in the morning, he said the radio didn’t say anything about a Russian offensive, but something had to be happening. Maybe the Nazis were starting their own offensive. Something was hanging in the air. There was a thick mist, but we wouldn’t know what was coming out of it until it was upon us. The idea that it might be the Russians didn’t lessen our anxiety. It increased it. Imminent salvation always brought the corresponding thought of imminent death. The two went hand in hand, like twins, mocking us. And like the thunder of the dancing feet above our heads during the parties, it crowded out every other thought.
The soldiers and trainmen were out, so the bunker was frantic. We were cooking all the potatoes we had. Patrontasch was able to empty the buckets. And Artek figured out a new invention. He took out several bricks from the chimney, which was in the corridor. It was right across from the ‘window’. We’d have to keep the bricks in during the day because if Julia was cooking the bunker would fill with smoke. But at night, we’d have cross ventilation! It was still going to be stifling hot, but even the smallest breeze was a triumph.
Ala left in the morning, but since the soldiers had been at home she couldn’t come down to the bunker to say goodbye. Hans had driven her to the train station with the horse and buggy. I didn’t know if I would ever see her again or have the chance to thank her for all she had done for us. But I was also filled with selfish thoughts. Without Ala distracting the soldiers, taking them for walks, entertaining them, it would make it that much harder for Julia to open the trapdoor to give us food and water.
Hans still kept coming to the Becks’. He and Georg had become fast friends. Their conversation always turned to the killing of Jews. Hans bragged that he personally was responsible for the ‘relocation’ of 32,000 Jews. I was familiar with what Hans was like, but the number still stunned me. If one man like Hans had killed so many, it seemed conceivable that not a Jew be left in Europe. We might be the only ones. If there were 50 Jews left in Zolkiew it would be a miracle. Beck came home with another policeman and the Ukrainian commandant and joined the party. They sat drinking until two in the morning. Beck was usually as vocal as the others in expressing his hatred of Jews. But tonight he was telling these killers that God forbids killing. Richard, the youngest and nicest of the soldiers, who called the Becks ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’, answered that in war, killing was not only permitted, but necessary. He said he still believed that Germany would win the war. He told Beck that he would understand why if he listened to the news.
Beck turned on the radio and listened as the report stated the Nazis were bombing London with V2 rockets. Huge parts of the city had been destroyed and countless civilians had been killed. There hadn’t been a word on the news about any movement close to us for weeks now. The Russians were attacking Finland and Romania. Mr Patrontasch took out his map and drew the new line of the Russian front. It had moved west of us. Where we were there was no movement at all. On the map, the front looked like a line with a big fat semi-circle in the middle. I had hoped that the military traffic that continued even now was a response to a Russian offensive. But with the rockets over London, this must be a Nazi counter-offensive. The soldiers responded to the news bulletin by singing Nazi songs and a rousing chorus of ‘Deutschland Über Alles’.
There had been times when we thought we would be freed any day. There had been times when we had lost all hope. But never did I imagine we would be in this hole for 18 months. One way or another, I had thought it would be over by now. Still, the months went by quickly even if every day felt like an eternity. Now, with this news, it seemed certain that the war wouldn’t be over soon. There was no one in the bunker who felt any different. The songs overhead seemed to echo the bombing of London. The news also said that the British sometimes had to spend up to three hours in their bomb shelters. I took out my notebook and calculated that we had been down here 13,000 hours. I had become as crazy as Mr Patrontasch.
After the others left, Richard stayed up late with Beck. They were whispering, so I couldn’t hear the entire conversation. Richard was begging the Becks to go to Czestochowa, where the Nazis had sent Ala in the end. I heard him say that she would be safer with her parents. Who knew what would happen? They might not be able to find each other when the war was over. Or something worse might happen. No matter what occurred here, Ala was further west and it was safer there. Richard was a Nazi patriot and the most noble of the soldiers. He was in love with her and all he could think of was her safety, as well as that of the Becks. It didn’t help our cause that the Becks hadn’t heard from Ala for over a week. I knew that until they heard from her, the Becks would be on edge, wondering if they made the right decision to let her go alone. Beck knew that the Russians were slaughtering the Volksdeutsche, but Richard reinforced Beck’s fears with numbers and towns. His young and earnest voice was full of care for Beck as he continued to urge him to save himself. Richard didn’t know that right below him sat the reason why the Becks hadn’t been on the first train west.
When Beck came down in the morning, we could all see the effect the conversation had on him. His depression was as oppressive as the heat. He gave us one piece of good news. The trainmen had left. But as happy as I was that there were two Nazis fewer over our heads, with housing so scarce, more Nazis might be assigned to the house. And if they were anything like the new SS man, it would be disastrous.
Without telling the Becks about his plan, Richard set about trying to contact Ala. The soldiers had a military phone in their room. They worked for the General Staff and so needed to be in contact at all times. I was sitting in the corridor near the ‘window’ because it was all of two degrees cooler when I heard the phone ring and Richard screaming, ‘Mutter, Vater, Ala ist am Telefon!’ My heart started beating faster. Because Ala worked at the post office, Richard was able to place the call. After the call was over, I heard Julia weeping and calling Richard her son, over and over. I felt like I was hearing from my own sister and that the Becks were my own parents, my family.
The results of the phone call were a disaster. Julia decided to visit Ala. The trip alone would take three days there and three days back. For at least a week we would have only Beck to take care of us. Everything would be that much harder. There would be no Julia to cook for us. No Julia to bring the food down while Beck distracted the soldiers. When Beck came down to give us the news, he told us it would be all right and he would get Maria, Julia’s sister, to cook for us. His words were reassuring, but he looked terrible. Every time he came down to the bunker, he seemed more depressed than the last time. His time was running out as much as ours, and the separation from his wife and daughter robbed him of his energy and his strength. Beck was not Beck without Julia and Ala. There was something mystical and invincible about the three of them when they were together that I only realized when they were apart.
Beck closed the hatch and went to work. While he was gone, Norbert came back. I heard the welcoming cries and laughter. On went the radio and the singing. My new fear was that between Norbert, Hans and Georg, they would start looking for Jews in the house. They no longer walked around the house in their boots, which allowed us to follow their movements and act with the appropriate discretion. For some reason, they all wore slippers and moved a
bove our heads like ghosts. We never knew where they were. I listened to Georg on several occasions shut off the light and the radio and just stand in the middle of the floor right above our heads for minutes and minutes at a time. He had to be listening for us. We didn’t breathe when Georg was above our heads. More than any of the others, Georg shot our nerves to pieces. His step, his silence, his voice, everything about him was suspicious and predatory. He seemed like he was stalking us, in the dark, with the patience of a hungry leopard waiting for his prey to give itself away with a breath, with a blink of an eye, with the rustle of a foot against a bush. He made me want to scream. Even the brutes, Hans and Norbert, were less of a threat. They were always vocal and obvious in everything they did.
The field phone rang and then the soldiers moved around above us like I had never heard them before. They were packing! They were shouting at each other about going to the front. Richard disconnected the field phone. I couldn’t believe the moment had come! If they were leaving, the Russians must be coming. If we could have leapt into each other’s arms, and shouted and danced with joy, we would have. Instead, we had to wait for them to leave the house. We waited and waited. They started pacing upstairs. Hours went by and still they were there. Richard was the first to leave. I was writing in the diary, with my hands slick with sweat, which also poured off my forehead and ran down my arms in streams. I was waiting for the moment, my hand poised to document their exodus. But Richard came back and I heard him tell the others that the order to leave had been rescinded. I knew nobody gave a damn about 18 Jews in a bunker and the generals in Berlin weren’t considering us in their plans. But the persistent, fluctuating, desperate insanity of our situation made me think otherwise.
Beck was equally distraught. He couldn’t get any hint of what was happening from any of the soldiers. They had suddenly become discreet about their plans. Even Richard wouldn’t tell his ‘father’ what the Nazi army in Zolkiew was going to do.
Beck’s response was to get drunk. The soldiers had gone out and Beck called Klara upstairs. We were eating our potatoes when Norbert strolled through the door. Klara ran down into the bunker and Patrontasch closed the hatch after her. Norbert had forgotten something and quickly left again. We waited, all of us, for the knock on the trapdoor to come again, but it never came. Klara started to worry whether Mr Beck was all right. He had been drinking and perhaps had just fallen asleep. We all went to bed with our tiny little window open. The flowers right outside the brick-sized opening were in full bloom and the night breeze drifted in with their scent. It was almost pleasant to lie with my eyes closed and my arms around little Zosia, smelling a sweet breeze. Of course my skin was on fire from bed-bug and flea bites, not to mention the prickly heat.
Around midnight, there was a knock at the door. Then again and again. The knocking turned to loud banging. We had all woken up but Beck wasn’t answering the door. We heard the soldiers calling to let them in and still he didn’t answer.
Klara whispered to me: ‘He had a headache…a bad one. I thought it was just the vodka. Something must have happened to him. I know it!’ The soldiers went round to the back of the house, knocking on all the windows and calling out his name, over and over. It was loud enough to wake the dead. But still he didn’t answer.
Klara asked me to come up with her. I thought she was crazy.
‘Even if they broke the bedroom window all they’d see would be him with two dark-haired women! They wouldn’t dare disturb him.’ After over a year of wondering what Klara’s true feelings about Beck were, I saw now that they ran very deep. I agreed.
Papa intervened. ‘No one’s opening the hatch.’
‘He could have had a stroke. Or he’s lying in his own vomit! We have to go upstairs.’
Patrontasch said, ‘No! Are you crazy, Klara?’
‘They might want to shoot us. But they wouldn’t shoot him. Not even Norbert and Hans.’
The banging and screaming got louder and louder. Loud enough to rouse him even if he were passed out.
We had to help him. He had risked his life for us every day. If he was dying and we did nothing to help him, we would be worse than cowards. The soldiers were banging now on the window right above the hatch. There was no way to open the hatch without being seen. It was too late. Patrontasch stood in Klara’s way, blocking her. She looked at her brother, a flash of contempt in her eyes.
‘Mother of Christ! Hold on!’ It was Beck. We all said a little prayer of thanks. In the morning he told us that he had fallen asleep waiting for the news on the radio. He had been so exhausted he had thought the pounding on the door was coming from the radio. He also told us the soldiers would be leaving that day. We were cautious in our reaction. We couldn’t bear being disappointed again.
As soon as Beck went back up, Mr Steckel said he had something important to tell us. I had never heard the pharmacist say more than two words to us, so I was curious and knew it had to be serious. He cleared his throat.
‘My pallet is right under the soldiers’ room…The first week they were here, Hans the policeman bragged to Norbert that he had killed 72 Jews with his own hands. The next day when Norbert came home he sang and whistled as usual until the Becks walked into his room to say hello. But Norbert was upset and he said to the Becks, “Papa, the bloody policeman Hans visited me in my office today. He shook my hand. I had to wash it ten times. I felt so dirty. Papa, I have had it good here. I don’t want to know what is going on in your house. I don’t see anything. I don’t hear anything and the Jews in Brody I didn’t betray either.” He thought since Beck was a Volksdeutscher, he’d understand. But he didn’t.’
Richard had also been in the room when Norbert had made this confession to Mr Beck. I wish I could say we were stunned by the news that the Nazi soldiers had known about us from the beginning. But we were so sick; so exhausted from hunger and thirst; so hot and so near the kind of mental and physical apathy that precedes giving up that we were numbed. We couldn’t comprehend it. I understood their outrage when the Blue Coats were searching the house for us and Norbert had called them ‘swine’. It was another incomprehensible miracle. Our lives were in the hands of these soldiers. They had been protecting us and we didn’t even know it. We were so sure Norbert was the most foul of the Nazis and now we owed him our lives. I didn’t know now if his anti-Semitism was just a ruse like that of Beck. But it couldn’t have been the Becks they were protecting. They had only been here a week when the conversation had taken place.
I wasn’t angry at Steckel for not telling us. He hadn’t even told his wife. She seemed more surprised than any of us. We all knew instinctively that he had been trying to save our lives. If we had known and had let up our guard for one moment, it might have led to our deaths as well as that of the Becks. We were either vigilant all the time or not. To think that Mr Beck had heard yet hadn’t understood this assurance from the Nazi soldiers was too much for our enfeebled minds to comprehend. I didn’t know anyone who would have been so wise as Mr Steckel as not to report the conversation.
Even when the soldiers, having finally got their orders to go, said goodbye to Beck, they didn’t tell him that they knew we were downstairs. Hans the policeman left in such a hurry, he didn’t even stop to say goodbye to his dear friend Beck. He honked, waved goodbye from his car and was gone.
After they left, the house seemed oddly empty. We had survived for 18 months, survived the searches, the trainmen, the soldiers, the SS, the Blue Coats and so many close calls that recalling them was enough to make me wonder why we were still alive. I still found it hard to believe that we might one day walk out of the bunker. Even with the sound of artillery and the thunder of bombs in the distance heralding our impending freedom, I didn’t believe in the inevitability of our survival. Even with the trapdoor open, and with Kuba and Artek cutting wood in the cellar without fear. Even with the radio on and Beck and Patrontasch giving us reports that the Russians were taking Minsk, Pinsk, Borosov, Wilno, Baronowice and Kowel, which was
especially important because it was part of our front, I did not dare believe in our good fortune. Only when Julia arrived late at night, exhausted from her trip, after having got stuck in Lvov for over a day with no place to sleep, did the house become alive.
Julia called Lola and me upstairs to scrub away the stains of the Nazis, clean their rooms and strip their beds and boil away the imprints of their bodies on the sheets. Even though I was sitting with Julia in the kitchen with my hands around a tall glass of cool water that was replenished before the last sip was taken, I fought down my joy. It was 11 July: Mania’s birthday. Two birthdays since she died. She would have been 15 years old. I had dreamed about her last night as I dreamed about her so many many nights. In my dreams, she was always alive. I always saw her in front of my eyes when I looked out of my little brick window. She was waiting for us. What right did I have to be alive when my sister was dead? I knew that if we lived, everything I enjoyed for the rest of my life would evoke her memory, her death, her courage and her absence. I vowed my life would be dedicated to her memory.
We finally went to bed that night with the hatch door open, letting the heat escape upwards instead of being trapped downstairs. The last thought I had before I drifted off was that it wasn’t so bad down here. It was almost cool and, crazy as it was, I swore I could feel a breeze drifting through my hair.
I awoke to tanks and trucks rushing past the house and Beck staring into the hatch, whispering, ‘The Nazis. They’re back!’ Patrontasch closed the trapdoor just as the banging on the front door started. Four soldiers told Beck they were moving in and began dragging in their gear. The bunker started heating up at once. It was certain now that there was a conspiracy in Berlin to torture us and taunt us with the expectation of freedom, only to rip it from our grasp. We were starving, sitting in the dark without electricity, hot as hell, waiting to die.
