Small fires were burning throughout the area fed by camp records and incriminating documents. The furnaces ran constantly, but they couldn’t dispose of bodies rapidly enough. We knew that we were being kept alive in case the Germans were victorious. But what if they lost the war? As prisoners we had witnessed and experienced the Germans’ crimes, so we wondered if we would be destroyed along with all of the other evidence.
The atmosphere of the place had also changed and had become disorganized. The camp no longer seemed like a fortress; the guard towers were unmanned and no prisoners were working even though it was Thursday, a working day. The sound of gunfire and artillery was moving closer. I knew that the Allies were approaching and that any day might bring about the end of the war.
Famished from my absurd ten-day journey, all I wanted to do was to find space in a bunk and dissolve into it. I was too hungry to recognize my churning hunger pangs. I was too thirsty to realize my mouth was crusted over and felt like sandpaper. My body couldn’t exert itself any further. I was beginning to hallucinate as my internal networks were shutting down. Dragging myself over to the closest barracks, I couldn’t even make it into the doorway because it was packed full with prisoners. Alas, I made my way over to the tents, only to find them also filled with prisoners, mostly Hungarians. My last choice was to jeopardize my safety by looking for an empty bed in the hospital barracks. I figured that at that point I had nothing left to lose; I would either eventually die outside in the mud or inside in a bunk. My body craved indoor rest. My feet were killing me; they were bloody, swollen stumps.
And so I clomped along, pressing my shattered spectacles to my nose to keep them from falling. Along the way, I happened upon a rat that was headed in the same direction. With that rodent as my guide, I followed it until it joined with a mischief of rats that was swarming around the front of the building. Instinct told me that whatever they were doing was not something that I wanted to see, but curiosity got the best of me and so I looked inside. What I found was absolutely unthinkable.
At first I figured that what I was seeing was simply another hallucination, and maybe it was. I hope that it was. I swear I saw dying prisoners sinking their teeth into a corpse, tearing apart the skin to get to the muscle. A horde of rats was partaking in the meal alongside the men like fellow diners at a restaurant. I froze in disbelief, half expecting the vision to have disappeared by the time I opened my eyes again, but there it was just the same: I had witnessed cannibalism.
Although my body was tipping the scales in favor of death, I couldn’t bring myself to participate and so I stepped away from the hospital and found a spot, maybe a square-meter wide, to curl up on in the stone-laden courtyard. Something tickled my forehead as I laid my head down. When I tried to brush the culprit away, it swung back and graced my skin again. I looked up to see three tiny weeds that had avoided detection from everyone else. Elated, I pulled them from the soil and gobbled them up.
CHAPTER 47
I can’t remember anything from the following day. I must have spent it in and out of consciousness on the ground. No matter how many times I’ve tried to extricate some small fragment, some insignificant detail, from that day, all I recall is blackness. Had what happened the next day not occurred, I’m sure that I would have been married to the darkness permanently.
Jolting out of a semi-unconscious state, I opened my eyelids to find that they were covered with rain droplets. The misting rain that morning was not what startled me awake, however. It was the piercing, grinding sound of an army tank climbing up the hillside on its way into the camp. Sitting upright, I looked around the courtyard, reading the reactions from my fellow prisoners in the courtyard. Many of the men stayed where they were, either from fright or from weakness. I couldn’t see how most of the prisoners were handling the approaching army because they were largely enclosed in the barracks or the tents. I wondered if I should run for shelter or remain out in the open.
Was the approaching army coming to liberate us or to exterminate the rest of us once and for all?
In the end, I made the decision to stand where I was, propped up against the cool stone wall, and accept the consequences either way they fell. I was tired of running from one place to another, of being yanked around this way and that. I didn’t have a bit of fear left inside me. I really don’t think I had much emotion at all left to express.
I stared at the beautifully carved front gate, looking on, waiting for whoever was about to enter through it. All around me other prisoners began to stand and watch with me as the rumbling grew louder and the ground vibrated more violently. When it sounded as though the tank was hovering right outside the gate, its progression was halted. Five, ten, fifteen minutes must have passed before the tank finally charged into the camp.
The first part of the tank I saw was the gun turret, a jaw-dropping rotating structure that was pointed right at us. But I still felt no fear as it moved ever closer. I observed a white star on the side of the vehicle, but this still provided me with no clear indication of what country the tank belonged to. It was only when I caught my first glimpse of the soldiers who were manning the tank that I realized that the United States had come to save us.
Once the rest of the prisoners became aware of the news, cheers of jubilation filled the air. Men stumbled from their resting places to greet the soldiers of the U.S. 11th Armored Division, filling the courtyard in order to welcome our liberators. We saluted the men and hailed them as heroes, parting so that their tanks could move freely.
The day was Saturday, May 5, 1945. It had been nearly five-and-a-half years since the war began, and more than four years since I was first rounded up and removed from my home. My nightmare had lasted from my seventeenth year to three months shy of my twenty-third year. I had passed into adulthood without the free will most adults are able to enjoy. I had missed out on half of a decade of my life. It seemed like an eternity. Somewhere during that time, between the ghetto and the camps, most of my family had perished. I wondered if any of them had survived.
I joined in the celebration as the American soldiers took command of the camp, but I couldn’t help feeling a deep sadness for my loved ones. I had always imagined that liberation would mean embracing my family so that we could all rejoice together. Instead, I hugged the men standing closest to me, pretending that they were my family. In a sense, they were.
The scene that next played out is unforgettable. A group of relatively able-bodied prisoners shimmied on top of the front gate and used ropes to pull down the hefty brass Nazi eagle above the entryway. Expressing emotions we didn’t know we still had, we pumped our fists, smiling and egging them on. As it crashed into the dirt, we all shouted with delight. Its destruction symbolized the disintegration of the Nazi regime. The war was in its final days and we were confident that the Germans would be defeated.
As a result of our liberation, some men burned their uniforms, throwing them into fiery pits along with their prisoner identification numbers. Having nothing else to wear, I tossed my metal bracelet inside the bonfire but kept my clothes. Other men wandered directly to the gate, wanting to immediately vacate the camp, only to be told that they had to stay. Prisoners who spoke broken English acted as translators, telling us why we couldn’t leave. Apparently we were not the first camp to be liberated; Allied forces had liberated dozens of other camps and had learned from these experiences. In the past, diseased prisoners walked away from the camp only to collapse on the street or meander around helplessly with no real destination, no intact home, to return to. Looking around at the thousands of unburied corpses on the ground, the soldiers knew we were all sickly. They also feared that we might harm the local civilians or that they might harm us. Therefore, we had to remain in the camp with our liberators. They said that they would take care of us until we could be released. Could we trust them?
I, like many of the prisoners, did not take this news gracefully. I longed to return to Warsaw and to look for my mother and my grandparents. Sitting around in the camp see
med like a ridiculous waste of time. I didn’t want to spend another day in confinement. Attempting to raise my voice in protest, I overexerted myself and returned to the darkness once again…
When I woke up in a hospital bed, three days had passed by. Upon opening my eyes, I didn’t know where I was. A radio was blaring from one corner of the room, spreading what seemed to be cheerful news, based on the broadcaster’s inflection, in a language I couldn’t understand. Looking to my left and right, I saw other ill prisoners in the same position as me, except they were plastered with casts and some of them were amputees. A steady stream of nurses carrying clipboards entered and exited the building, pausing in front of certain beds to take notes. Paint and pictures adorned the walls of the building, letting me know that I was not in the camp hospital but rather in an old SS building that had been converted into an infirmary. Perhaps our liberators were correct to keep us in Mauthausen for awhile until we were healthy enough to be released.
Looking under the covers, I saw that my uniform had been replaced with a new pair of cotton pants and a thick white shirt that draped across my frail body like a dress. One of my pant legs was rolled up above my knee and a large bandage was wrapped around the leg I had injured during my accident in Gusen II. Even though I was in pain, I almost felt contented lying there on the plush mattress; what a difference it was from sleeping on sacks of paper and straw. I hadn’t felt that comfortable in years.
However, panic overtook me when I reached underneath my new shirt—which felt heavy and strange after wearing my threadbare camp shirt for so long—and realized that my necklace wasn’t there. I sat up and screamed to catch the attention of one of the nurses. My mother’s ring, the only family heirloom I had left, had been taken away from me. How had I managed to keep it hidden from my captors but not from my liberators? What would I do without it? My palms began to sweat, my heart raced, and I flung myself around trying to collect enough momentum to swing myself out of bed. Finally, a stern, heavyset nurse made her way to my bedside. I asked her where my necklace was, but she couldn’t understand me; she stared at me and shook her head, frustrating both of us. She left and returned with a young, blonde nurse who smiled sweetly and asked me what was wrong. A nameplate on her white uniform let me know that her name was Mary. After I explained my predicament to her, she nodded sympathetically and told me she would check the hospital lockbox to see if it was there. “Don’t worry, we’ll find it,” she assured me. Several minutes later, she came back and placed a necklace in my hands. “Is this it?” she asked me. When I felt the familiar weight, I knew it was my mother’s ring even before I looked at it.
Mary then explained that a doctor had opened my swollen knee and drained the excessive fluid from it. Tucking a blanket around me, she informed me that I was also being treated for severe malnutrition and dehydration as well as an acute upper respiratory infection.
In her next breath, she screamed with delight as she said that Germany had just surrendered to the Allies. World War II had just ended in Europe! The day we had all been looking forward to for so long had finally arrived. The news seemed like a dream. She danced around the room and raced down the hall, embracing the other nurses. However, despite feeling a rush of pure elation, I was unable to join them.
I sat up in bed and my pathetic reflection stared back at me from a cracked, patina-stained mirror on the opposite wall. My yellowed teeth were rotted and my inflamed gums were full of gaps. My sunken cheeks were the shape of an over-mixed soufflé. My withered, bony wrists were the diameter of a child’s. My blemished skin was the texture of a piece of cheesecloth. I weighed just 30 kilograms (about 68 pounds).
Quietly, Mary walked over to the mirror, unhooked it from the nail, and placed it face down on a cart in the hallway. After instructing me to stay in bed for another week or two in order to recuperate, she handed me a clean ceramic bowl of soup. For the first time in many years, I ate broth that did not resemble lukewarm wastewater. It was a mouth watering, very thin potato soup that easily coated my stomach. I had only ingested a few spoonfuls and was about to press the bowl directly to my lips when Mary took it away from me, warning me of the deadly side effects of overconsumption following starvation. She told me about all of the prisoners who had died after liberation simply because their bodies couldn’t process large quantities of rich food. For this reason, she slowly increased my rations so that I alternated between eating a few ounces of potato soup and a few bites of unleavened oat bread until my bodyweight began increasing.
My kind nurse even assisted me with taking my first “real” shower since my last one in the ghetto. When I hesitated in turning on the water, fearing that gas would spew out of the spigot, she reassured me that only water was in the pipes. Since I was used to trickles of water from faucets in the camps, once the water came pouring out the pressure was so strong that it knocked me backwards. The water was so warm that it seemed to wrap my body in a hot, wet blanket. Steam flowed out of the stall, moistening the walls and opening my clogged pores. When Mary handed me a bar of creamy soap, I held it to my nose and breathed in the smell of roses. Working the soap into a foamy lather, I coated my body and hair with it as dirt ran down my legs and into the drain. Had I been allowed to, I would have stayed in that shower for hours enjoying all of the delightful sensations. When Mary was satisfied that I was clean, she handed me a fluffy white towel. Rubbing myself dry, I thanked her for letting me feel like a human again. I was clean and happy for the first time in such a long time.
She assisted me with short walks around the interior of the building to strengthen mobility in my legs, and, little by little, I relied on her for support less and less. I slowly gained weight. My gashes healed and faded into scars.
Every time I tried to talk with her about my past she hushed me, telling me not to speak about “such horrible things.” Therefore, as my body repaired itself, I forced myself to forget. Paramount to my recovery process was pushing away my past.
Perhaps I became too good at that.
Three weeks later, Mary put a chocolate bar and a pair of pre-worn leather shoes into my hands and told me it was time to let someone else take my bed. The ill far outnumbered the hospital capacity. Before leaving, I asked her if I could have my tin camp bowl to take along with me. I told her that it looked like every other camp bowl, but I had carved my name into the side of mine with a rock. She gazed at me strangely, tilting her head as she asked why I would want such a nicked-up item back. I told her that she wouldn’t understand, but that I wanted to keep it as a reminder of my experiences. She agreed to look for it in the neglected items room and returned a few minutes later, holding it in her hands. I took it from her, inspecting it to make sure it bore my name, which it did. With that, I was discharged from the hospital.
I decided to treat my taste buds to the chocolate bar as soon as I stepped outside. Opening the wrapper, I sank my swollen gums into the chocolate, bringing back memories of when my father had surprised my mother with those tiny morsels of chocolate in the ghetto. I wished so much that they both could have been with me that day so that they could have bitten into the full size bar with me. Blima would have been old enough to share the candy bar, too. I’m sure she would have had a sweet tooth like the rest of my family. Nostalgic thoughts breezed through my mind, greatly diminishing the pleasure I experienced from eating the sugary snack.
Walking around the camp, I became aware that during my hospitalization I had missed out on the lynching of SS guards who had been hiding in the camp, pretending to be prisoners. Although most of the leaders had fled prior to liberation, a few dozen had stayed behind. I would have liked to see them suffer, but I’m not sure that I would have participated in the torture.
Relief organizations had taken up posts in the camp, including the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. They provided former prisoners like me, who were now considered Displaced Persons (DPs), with vital resources: fo
od, clothing, and assistance in locating relatives. Of supreme importance to me was the Central Tracing Bureau, which was established to help DPs find loved ones.
Despite this, the place was overcrowded and still felt like a concentration camp even though the enemy had left. We slept in barracks and tents just as we had when the Nazis ruled the camp, although we were treated humanely, fed adequately, and not forced to participate in wretched labor groups. Even so, many of us still walked around in our dirty concentration camp uniforms for weeks until clothing was distributed to us. I carried my dented food bowl around my waistband, fearing that someone might dispose of it. Walking around in my clean outfit from the hospital made me feel like a king.
We all just wanted to be able to move on with our lives; we were tired of camp life. We thought that liberation should mean freedom. In truth, by that point we were free to return to our former residences if we so chose, but in reality we were scared to return to the very cities we had been extracted from. We feared so many things: being shot by an anti-Semite as soon as we exited the gates of the camp, being harassed on the streets, and dealing with the conditions we might find in our hometowns. We knew that anti-Semitism hadn’t just dissolved over night. We feared encounters with civilians who might harbor bitter feelings of resentment towards us. In actuality, it seemed far safer to remain with the other war refugees in the DP camps than to wander the roads alone and unaided. For the first time in nearly six years we were allowed to make our own decisions and yet we struggled with making them. I, for one, didn’t know what my next move should be.
How do you restart your life?
A small fraction of my fellow inhabitants chose to return to their homelands in the hope of finding a piece of their old life there. A larger portion of the DPs in my camp sought assistance with immigration efforts to countries like Canada, France, Australia, South Africa, and the United States. Most of them, however, longed to establish roots in what was then British-controlled Palestine. Therefore, illegal yet unsuccessful efforts to enter the country ensued. In fact, it was not until mid-1948 after Palestine was divided into a Jewish and an Arab state, thereby forming the State of Israel, that survivors and refugees could enter freely. I remained indecisive about where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. All I knew for sure was that I had to find out if anyone from my family was still alive.
My Mother's Ring: A Holocaust Historical Novel Page 22
