Shores Beyond Shores

by Irene Butter

  But I thought her work was grosser.

  “Mutti is like the Dr. Frankenstein of undergarments,” Werner suggested.

  “They’re alive!” I added, thinking back to kids joking about the monster movie.

  My brother chuckled.

  “Reni, that was good!”

  I beamed.

  22

  Camp Bergen-Belsen, Germany

  Late Winter 1944

  “What’s it like outside the camp?” I asked Mutti one evening. I was tired of being cooped up in the Star Camp without them all day.

  “Just a big, cold building with women working,” Mutti said. “You are not missing anything.”

  “Do you see other people? Other places?” I pressed.

  “Reni, stop,” Mutti said, “There is nothing to see.”

  I asked Pappi the same question when he returned near dinnertime.

  “It’s a lot of work,” he said.

  “Do you get to eat off silver platters at lunch?” I tried, thinking back to the playful conversation on the train a few weeks back.

  “Do we what?” he responded, and then relaxed into the thinnest of smiles. “Oh, not yet. I promise to let you know when we do.”

  “And is Mr. Loewenberg finding cigarettes for Mrs. Loewenberg?” Werner asked.

  Come to think of it, I had seen very little smoking at Bergen-Belsen.

  “A few, I’m sure,” Pappi said. “It’s not easy. I think he is trading food for them.”

  “Bread for tobacco? You can’t live on cigarettes. Though, God knows, she tries,” Mutti said, then added, “Mrs. Loewenberg never looks very happy.”

  “Who does look happy here?” asked Werner.

  “Vogeltje does,” I said.

  That was an easy answer.

  “Vogeltje’s crazy,” he said.

  “No she’s not,” I pushed back.

  My brother rolled his eyes. “She’s strange!”

  “She’s out of the ordinary,” Pappi said, “I will grant you that, but Vogeltje isn’t crazy, she is rare…like a gem.”

  “Like a gem?” repeated Mutti, her brown eyes widening.

  “But not as rare as you, Trudi,” he said quickly.

  Mutti snorted.

  Vogeltje, or “Little Bird” in Dutch, was a sweet, caring woman in our barracks. She was small, not even a head taller than me, who wore her hair pulled tightly behind her ears and loosely around her shoulders. Vogeltje didn’t have a family in the camp and she didn’t talk much, but she could be caught smiling and singing to herself or to the littlest children. That’s how she got her name, for singing all the time.

  “She’s so graceful,” I said, thinking back on how she seemed to glide across the barracks’ uneven floors.

  “I find her rather plain,” Mutti said.

  Vogeltje was nondescript. She could be like any of us, any age, with any features. To be honest, I probably would never have noticed her before coming to Bergen-Belsen. She would have blended away if not for the smiling, laughing, and singing. For that, she was rare. I didn’t think Vogeltje was crazy, but even if she were, I didn’t want to be normal if normal was being unhappy, or even mean, all the time. There seemed to be enough of that here.

  “Anyhow, kids,” said Pappi, clearing his voice, “I’m just thankful I don’t have to buy your mother’s love with cigarettes.”

  “No. You just need to get us out of here,” Mutti said.

  Weeks went by with a sameness that was life-sucking. My parents worked without breaks and without food, or heat, or time to visit with each other. When they returned late in the day, they were more and more exhausted, often resting in bed until dinner. They ate their soup with trembling hands, a sign of starvation, Werner said. Within the month, they became thinner and my hands began to tremble too.

  I was assigned to the role of cleaning the barracks and our clothes, which meant that Mrs. Mandel and I crossed paths too often. Over two hundred people slept in our barracks. All I had to clean with was a bucket, a rag, and a short broom that constantly lost strands of straw. No mop, no soap. I pushed around the dirt, dust, and mud, trying to make sure nothing littered the rutted and stained floor. I bristled whenever Mrs. Mandel was within view, because she always found something wrong.

  “You are a spoiled girl,” she took to saying. “You call this clean?” She jabbed a speck of dirt with her shoe toe, grinding it to dust.

  I swept her mess onto a piece of torn cardboard stamped “Red Cross.” Standing up, I came face-to-face with her leaning over me, a rigid piece of straw sticking straight up from her cracked fingers.

  “And this!” she said from behind the strand. “Cleaning up doesn’t mean leaving pieces of your broom behind! You are a spoiled, spoiled girl. You and your family.”

  She let the straw tumble to the ground. I trembled. A single dark eyebrow hair over her left eye pointed up to the lines that crossed her forehead. As I bent over to pick up the straw, I thought she would kick me and grind me to dust. Instead, she stomped off.

  Pappi, Mutti, Werner, and I each had two sets of clothing. Weekly, I washed whichever wasn’t being worn. I had to be very careful not to wash too hard and wear through the material. Pappi had a pair of blue pants and a pair of gray pants. Mutti had a grey wool skirt and a crimson dress. Werner had brown trousers, and blue shorts that fell below his knees needing long socks in the cold. I had two dresses: a brown one and a red one. I was glad I hadn’t brought my white or yellow ones. At least dark colors didn’t show the dirt. Because we had had these clothes since leaving Amsterdam, all the colors had fallen away.

  The washroom was at the end of the barracks; its concrete floor–with a hole for drainage–was permanently wet. Over the hole were wood slats that looked like the deck of a boat and apparently were a constant source of temptation to those who wanted to throw them into the stove for an hour of warmth. Taps spewed only frigid tan water into long concrete basins. I tried my best to get out the dirt and grime, but I could only do so much, especially with no soap or hot water. I kept pulling my hands from the water, trying to warm them in my sleeves, pockets, and against my skirt. They would turn bluish and were slow to move.

  I’m so sick of wearing the same things, I said to myself, intertwining my fingers and stretching them until the joints cracked. I hereby promise that when we finally get out of the camps, I will never wear dark, dull colors again.

  One day as I was cleaning, Werner returned early from his work. He used a stubby knife to cut the stitching and pry apart shoes and separate the parts into different piles.

  “Reni,” he said, “You have never seen so many shoes in one place. The pile of shoes, it must be four or five meters tall, and that doesn’t include the smaller piles. They look like a small mountain range.”

  “Where’re they from?” I asked.

  “All over. The military mostly. Others from prisoners, I guess.”

  Where had those shoes been worn? What battles fought? What parties danced? What cafés had they sat in before ending up here? What countries did they walk?

  “Do they smell?”

  “Yeah, like leather.”

  “Not like feet?”

  “Well, not like your feet, at least. Compared to you, they smell like flowers,” he said. “Mostly, they’re clean. Some have dirt and somebody else’s had dried dog poop…”

  “Eww, poop?”

  “Yeah, you just scrape it off. But you know what I really hate? I hate that I’m a shoe slave. I have to help the Nazis get better shoes while mine are getting worse.”

  “Can’t you sneak ones?”

  “Are you kidding? The Kapo knows my crummy shoes. He knows they’re too small, because he makes fun of me. He would beat me if he saw me in anything else.”

  I looked at Werner’s socks bulging from the open toes of his shoes. He had recently cut them to make room for his growing feet. Pappi said he was amazed that Werner could keep growing with so little food. “You are strong,” he’d said to Werner. �
��Both of you,” he’d added after looking at me.

  “Don’t believe that old saying,” said Werner, rubbing his toes now. “It isn’t the cobbler’s kids who have the worst shoes.”

  One of my other jobs was caring for smaller children while their parents were working. I had always thought little kids were fun, but also thought they could be a bother: all the excitement and running around and getting into stuff. Here, they were different. There wasn’t any excitement or running around, and there wasn’t anything to get into. They were like small ghosts, shadows of the playful energy they must have been before the war. All they seemed to think about—well, all any of us could think about—was food.

  One boy, Joseph, would wait too long to go to the bathroom, panic, then pee himself. His pants were almost always damp.

  “Joseph, did you pee?” I said as he approached in tears.

  He nodded, looking down.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay. Here we go. Just stop crying and we will take care of it. Come here.”

  He came over and settled next to me. I didn’t care about the pee anymore. He leaned into me. The pee got cold. Then I heard the heavier steps of an adult. Oh no, I thought.

  “What’s that on the floor?” demanded Mrs. Mandel. “Is that urine?”

  “The…the boy is sick and he…”

  “What are you doing!” her voice came out like a storm wave. “Was I not clear? There are to be no accidents on the floor, and God forbid if there are, you are to clean them up immediately! Why are you coddling him? Clean it up immediately!”

  Her instructions were clear, but I was too shocked to move. Joseph buried himself deeper into my side. Everything was quiet except a ringing in my ears.

  “Immediately means now, du kleine dreck!”

  I dumped Joseph in my haste. He started crying while I ran to get the bucket and rag.

  Mrs. Mandel yelled at me the whole time I scrubbed. The rag caught on a jag in the floorboard and ripped. Mrs. Mandel repeated that I was spoiled.

  “We aren’t spoiled,” I said under my breath.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Look at me. Look at me! Oh, I know your family. You are all together, and you are all spoiled. Clean up!” The last words sprayed from her mouth. Her hands clenched and unclenched.

  Even after my shaking died off, I was jumpy the rest of the day, and only settled after Mutti got back. I told her about my day with Mrs. Mandel.

  “Keep clear of that woman,” Mutti said.

  “Are we spoiled?” I asked.

  “What?” Mutti snorted.

  “Are we?”

  “Oh Reni, honestly, you…we are not spoiled,” she said, meeting my gaze. “Well, maybe we spoiled you and Werner a bit before all this. But here and now…really? Yes, some have it tougher than others, but none of us is spoiled.”

  “Okay.”

  “Did Mrs. Mandel say that to you?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Let your Pappi and me know if you have trouble again. Understand?”

  But it wasn’t easy. I kept my distance without trying to look like I was. I was more attentive to the children and got better at reading the signs when they needed to pee, poop, or throw up. Wising up, I kept a bucket of water and rag close by. I did a better job of not leaving anything on the floor as I swept, and Mrs. Mandel found other people to harass. But it didn’t change her idea of our family.

  23

  Camp Bergen-Belsen, Germany

  Early Spring 1944

  At Bergen-Belsen, our typical daily menu started with a small piece of bread and flavorless “coffee” brewed from acorns. It finished with another small piece of bread and a small ladle of soup in the evening. A few shreds of potato, beet, or onions in the soup were a treat. Otherwise, the soup was just water and turnips. Now and then there was a little extra flavor like some pickled beets or a smear of jam. Then there were the days when there was no food, because the Nazis claimed that the kitchen workers weren’t working hard enough. And sometimes all we had were just the bitter, hard turnips, my least favorite food in the world. At first, I gave my portion away to anyone who wanted it. Then, I gave my portion to my family. Finally, I ate them, remembering Mutti saying, “You really will eat anything if you are hungry enough,” and finding these words to be true.

  Not having enough to eat was hard, but Mrs. Mandel made it harder. She was in charge of serving meals, a task she took seriously because food was power. Mrs. Mandel showed preference by the ladle. She gave her friends more soup and dove deeper into the kettle to scoop out the vegetables that settled and swirled around the bottom. The food line nudged ahead. I held up the larger of the two brown cooking pots we had brought from home. Mrs. Mandel didn’t look at me, but she knew who was in front of her. The ladle in her hand bathed just beneath the surface, pulling a watery portion from the top. It reminded me of the wash water after I had cleaned our clothes. I moved up to get some dry bread. Mrs. Mandel made small talk with the woman behind me in line, and I watched the ladle sink deep enough into the kettle to wet Mrs. Mandel’s fingertips. I thought of saying something to Pappi and Mutti. It was unfair, but I decided it was better to work harder. The price our family was paying was my fault, and it was my job to turn that around.

  Every night before bed the women chattered about food and complained about all sorts of people and things, especially standing at Appell, but I came to want the Appells. Appell time was guaranteed family time. We couldn’t talk, though we weren’t talking as much, anyhow. Mutti was in bed earlier. Pappi didn’t say much, except to ask how I was doing and if I was healthy (I was, compared to most). Just being near each other was a gift.

  New friendships, like with Hanneli Goslar, made up for not seeing as much of my family. I looked up to Hanneli since she was two years older than me. She was quiet, but she seemed to know so much. Her long face always looked calm and neutral. An important man in the German government until Hitler came to power, her father was forced to quit since he was Jewish. Like our family, Hanneli’s had moved from Berlin to the same neighborhood in Amsterdam, thinking they had distanced themselves from the Reich. Before being sent to camps, her mom and the mom’s newborn had died in childbirth, so it was just Hanneli, her father, and her little sister Gigi, who was four years old. Normally smiley, one day I noticed that Gigi was sleeping in Hanneli’s lap; her head was wrapped in a stained bandage.

  “How is she?” I asked.

  Gigi had had a boil on her head that had grown as big as her fist over the past week. Yesterday, Hanneli and I had decided to take the little girl to the infirmary. It was not an easy decision since so many people who went to the infirmary seemed to die. A doctor there lanced the boil. There wasn’t anything for the pain. It was terrible listening to Gigi cry and whimper.

  “She’s okay,” said Hanneli. “I hope they got out all the infection. I keep checking and washing it. But she hates it.”

  Gigi didn’t move; she was sleeping soundly. A couple of little ones wormed their way into my lap. I welcomed the warmth. I licked my thumb and wiped the goo from a boy’s eye and some dirt from a girl’s cheek. A nearby boy named Henry put a filthy thumb in his own mouth. Hanneli told him to pull it out.

  “I’m hungry,” Henry said.

  “That’s no excuse for eating dirt,” I said.

  “Or your hand,” Hanneli added.

  “Come here,” I said.

  He crawled over, and I wiped his thumb on my jacket. I cleaned the dirt from under the tiny nail as best I could.

  “Okay, now you can suck on it, but no eating it!”

  With a serious look, he nodded.

  Hanneli smiled.

  “Hanneli? Reni?” one girl asked. “My stomach hurts. I have to go to the potty.”

  “I took the last two kids,” said Hanneli.

  I got up, moving the two in my lap to the floor.

  “What’s your name?” I asked. The girl had arrived within
the last few days.

  “Lila,” she said and repeated that she didn’t feel well.

  The latrines were mostly empty. I lifted Lila and sat her on the edge of the hole, balancing her with one hand so she wouldn’t fall in. Lila was not so small that she would tumble all the way through, but she could get stuck. With my other hand, I held up her skirt. She shivered, and I heard the splash of diarrhea. After a short time, I asked if she thought she was done.

  “Think so,” she said.

  I helped her down, carefully pulling up her underwear so as not to get any mess on my hands. There wasn’t any way to wipe her.

  “I feel like throwing up,” Lila said.

  I turned her around and she rested her hands where she had just been sitting. I held back her matted hair, and her sickness fell into the blackness. Her belly groaned. When she was finished, I carried Lila back to the barracks. I fumbled with the door latch with my one free hand, and I almost walked into Mrs. Mandel who was coming out. She glared at me holding the child.

  “I assume you made it to the latrine this time,” she said.

  I stopped my tongue.

  “There is sweeping that needs to be done in a corner near your bunk. You missed it,” she added and pushed past us.

  I got so mad that I wanted to scream. All day, I was taking care of sick kids, and trying to make neat a floor that refused to be clean. My voice itched to follow my heart, to tell her she was unfair, that she was doing the same as the Nazis—deciding who was “in” and who was “out,” and showing kindness to friends only. But she was bigger than me, just like the Nazis were bigger than all of us. She was in charge. She controlled the barracks. She controlled the food. So I willed my mouth shut. I didn’t want to make it any worse for my family.

  “She’s so mean!” I blurted after sweeping.