by Irene Butter
They said nothing. Pappi sat, took off his worn out shoes, lay down, and closed his eyes. I looked over at Mutti who stayed upright, but leaned her head against the frame of the bunk.
“Okay, Reni. Do you have something hearty for us?” Pappi asked after a few minutes. In the past he might have added that he “was starving.”
“Of course, ” I said, and took the brown pot out from under my blanket.
“Have you seen Werner?” Mutti asked.
I shook my head. She took a deep breath, looking around. Pappi moved to her side, resting his hand on her bony leg. They both looked at me and nodded. They refused to eat until I did.
“I already had mine,” I said.
“Do you need more?” Pappi asked.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Take more, Reni,” Mutti said, “I’m not hungry.”
“I’m fine. My belly doesn’t feel well today, “ I lied, and then, seeing their concern, added, “but it’s not bad. My belly, I mean.”
And so they passed the brown pot and the bread, saving more than Werner’s share for him.
“Has anybody heard or talked about an exchange?” I asked, eager to think about something else.
“Nothing,” Pappi said, starting to gather the dishes.
“No, Pappi,” I said, “leave them. I’ll clean them in the morning.”
Mutti took off her shoes, removed her cap, and laid her short, matted hair on the pillow. She moved to one side and patted the space next to her. I settled in, feeling terrible. Before surrendering to sleep, I gazed up at the swirling shapes made by the woodgrain of the bed slats above me. The knots stared at me as my eyes fluttered and closed.
I was standing on a mountain of Dutch yellow coins in a world of gold that was all mine. The glint was blinding. I blinked and squinted, turned and twisted to make sure no threats approached. This was my gold. I slipped and slid down, falling faster and faster. Stopping was impossible. I grabbed at the coins, but the handfuls just passed between my fingers. I woke to something being pulled from my hands. I clenched them tightly and called out: “No!”
“Reni, it’s okay. It’s just me,” Werner whispered.
He had his hand on mine. I sat up. It was darker; my eyes adjusted. Mutti and Pappi were asleep. I looked at Werner and saw that his left hand was bandaged.
“What happened?” I asked. “Where have you been?”
“I cut myself, and I’m late because of collective punishment. A guy, Bernie, was really sick and spent too long at the toilet. The guards beat him in there, on the toilet. And then they came and beat us, and made us work two hours longer,” he said, and caught his breath. “One of the guards kicked me, and my knife slipped. I cut my hand.”
“Badly?” I asked.
“Not really,” Werner said. “They forced us to look at Bernie, his body. He was a good guy, Reni. He didn’t do anything wrong, except be sick. God, we are all guilty of that here.”
Werner stopped for a moment. I thought he was done talking. I handed him the soup pot and its remains. He took it, but rather than slurping it down, he took a sip and frowned.
“I heard a story today,” he continued. “Everybody was talking about it. It happened at an Appell in another section of camp. This one guy was about to be beaten when he told the guard ‘Kill me if you must, but don’t lay your hands on me. Don’t beat me. Don’t hit me.’”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the story, but Werner needed to tell it.
“The guard let him go. He just let the guy go. Talk about courage. No compassion for a sick guy, but they let another one go for standing up for himself when they normally would have beat him. None of it makes sense.”
We kept trying to make sense of everything, as if an understanding would make the things better. There didn’t seem to be any understanding and certainly no promises, so I clung to the simple notion that good people were capable of surviving.
“You are lucky, Reni. You don’t have to leave camp and go to work. And see things like that.”
He slowly ate his cold dinner. Then he turned away and curled into himself next to Pappi. He didn’t understand what it felt like to be left, not knowing if they would come back. Every day waiting to see if I still had a family. I promised to stop sneaking food, but I had learned that such a promise after a meal is worthless. I needed to keep it while staring into the soup steam.
26
Camp Bergen-Belsen, Germany
Summer/Fall 1944
It was teetering on summer. Little by little, day stole from the night. Longer and warmer days made for easier travel, so the number of arrivals began to increase. They came from other camps and from countries like Italy, Spain, and of course, the Netherlands. All this movement was promising, some adults said while in the food line. It was a sign that we would soon be exchanged.
Wasn’t that the reason we were in Bergen-Belsen in the first place? Yes, and we were in the special Star Camp section. Even if we were not traded, others said, the war would end soon. Germany would lose. If we just hung on a little longer, something would improve.
Except that rumors and opinions cut both ways. Others chimed in saying that hope was crazy. The Nazis could not be trusted, no matter what they said. One way or the other, they would do whatever they could to make things more difficult.
“What do you think?” I asked Werner one morning when our parents had gone to the latrines. “Will we really get out of here? Pappi and Mutti haven’t said much.”
I pulled myself up until I sat cross-legged against a corner of the bunk, folding my pink blanket and putting it at the end of the bedding. I leaned forward and tilled my soiled hair with rough fingers, pushing wayward strands behind my ears. Meanwhile, Werner’s hair performed its magic. In the time it took to lower from the upper bunk his hair had just fallen into place, a part as straight as an open book.
“They’re careful, Reni.”
“But this could be it. We could get out.”
“Could be,” he said. “Or it could be something different. Remember, nobody has actually ever left here alive. They just keep arriving.”
I pressed Pappi about it later that day after he returned from work. I waited until Mutti had walked off to get some water. He balanced on the edge of the bunk for a second, before deciding to sit back on the mattress, the bedside board jutting up his knees a bit. This never looked comfortable, and it could put your legs to sleep if you stayed like that too long. Instead of giving me a straight answer, he asked if I had heard the saying that truth was born from consistent rumors. My head glided back and forth. That meant, he said, that the more you heard something, especially from different sources and over time, the better the chances it was true. If there was only one source, it was usually wrong. He told me to ignore talk that flits about like a field of grasshoppers.
“Like the fact we are exchange Jews?” I asked. “And we are privileged… I mean compared to others?”
“Well, yes, the exchange piece has been consistent, yes?” Pappi quizzed me.
“Yes,” I said.
“But when we are to be exchanged and with whom…that keeps jumping about. So what does that mean?”
“That there will probably be an exchange, but we don’t know the details.”
“Right.”
Pappi’s proverb ruled out most of what was rumored, so I tried to ignore those whispers. Then one took hold. With each repetition, its roots crept deeper, and it flowered. A small group of mostly Dutch Jews from Bergen-Belsen would be sent to Palestine, to be traded for German missionaries living in the city of Jerusalem. We didn’t know any of the people involved, yet it was a story worth following. Somebody getting out of here meant that any of us could get out of here.
Several times the chosen group of about two hundred prisoners were ordered to be ready for departure the next day—the news flew through the camp—only to find out that the deal had been cancelled. I began to learn that frustration was, well, frustrating, but it was also a gift
, a morsel of hope. Frustration required energy that the people who had truly given up didn’t possess. It meant they still cared. And so did I.
The days continued pulling and stretching. More prisoners rolled in by truck and train. Nobody left. Soon there wasn’t a single word about the Palestinian trade, much less our own exchange. Our Ecuadorian passports, supposedly our lifesavers, seemed worthless.
“They leave tomorrow. I just heard,” Pappi said before even greeting us, as he arrived back to the barracks from work one evening. He had a slight smile and sat down next to Mutti and me on the bed. “Trudi, are you awake?”
“I’m awake, Pappi,” I said, got up, slid onto Pappi and Werner’s bed to shake Werner who I knew wasn’t asleep.
“Reni, stop!” Werner said. “Pappi, do you mean the people going to Palestine?”
“Really? They are being allowed to go?” asked Mutti, turning her head toward him and sitting up on one elbow. “How? When?”
Pappi repeated the news. At this moment, I thought eagerly, two hundred prisoners are gathering their belongings.
“Pappi, do you believe what you heard?” I tested him. “Is it consistent?”
He nodded yes. He had heard it from different people.
When I thought of the Holy Lands, all I could think of were school history books of a land cleaned bright by the sunlight bathing everything in gold, and bushels of olives, bread, and meats. All the food you could want. Paradise: warmth, food, cleanliness. It felt like something hanging almost within our grasp.
“Still, it is always possible that this is a German trick, but I don’t think so since the Germans are talking it up,” Pappi said. “Even the Nazis need to look like they have a heart from time to time.”
Mutti raised her eyebrows.
We all smiled a little. This was the first sign that an exchange was not just a false promise. But how long would it take for the next “exchange” to be organized, and I thought in wordless fear: would we live long enough to be part of it?
More and more, the flat, distant hum of planes washed over Bergen-Belsen. Pappi explained that the Allies—the good guys fighting against Hitler—were up there. The skies seemed to support it. High between the clouds, flocks of bomber planes migrated east to bomb German cities and then west, back home, to rest and clean wounds. We stood for the Appell one late morning, herded for another forgettable reason.
“Maybe,” Werner said, “shouting for us to line up and keep quiet makes the Nazis feel like they’re in control, especially since they don’t seem to be in control of the skies.”
The hours rolled by, but at least it wasn’t cold or raining. A few of us tilted our heads at the sound of a single plane passing overhead. I squinted into the blue. What did those men see as they looked down? Did they know we were a camp of prisoners, or did we just look like another farm, factory, or town? If they bothered to give a glance did they see people, or just buildings and roads? If they saw us, did they wonder why hundreds of people would bother standing around in the shape of a square? My heart beat faster. An air attack earlier in the spring had sent bombs and bullets into a section of the camp, killing some prisoners. That low-flying plane had come and gone before the guards had been able to react. It was scary to me that the good guys might bomb us again. Maybe they thought only about killing the Nazis and not about saving us.
“Pappi,” I said quietly, “tell me again why we don’t have to worry about the planes up there.”
“Because the Germans didn’t react when they bombed us earlier,” explained Pappi, “The Germans didn’t fire back, which means the camp isn’t a threat. The Allies poked the camp with a stick, and we didn’t bite, so they won’t do it again.”
I needed to hear that. His words put me more at ease, at least during the day. Sometimes the air-raid alarms, or Fliegeralarm, went off several times a day, their wavy drones like the heavy breathing of sleeping giants, breaking conversations in mid-sentence and work in mid-chore. At those times, we were ordered to our barracks, as if thin roofs, walls, and blankets offered protection. At nights, the buildings were blacked out. Even the lighting of a match was strictly forbidden, lest a single flame catch a pilot’s eye.
“Werner, what do we do if the Allies bomb us by mistake?” I figured he’d have a good answer, since he thought and worried about it so much.
“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. What can we do? We can’t tell where a bomb is going to fall. We might try to escape, only to run into one.”
I hadn’t thought about that. “Aren’t you worried?” I asked, surprised by his calm.
“Not about that. What can we do? Besides, the Allies have so many planes up there, it must mean they are winning.”
In the inky darkness, late in the night, I listened. When we’d first arrived here five months earlier, I felt that we had been devoured and were in the swollen belly of some hungry beast. Now, hearing our rustling bunk neighbors and hundreds of dozing strangers, it felt like we were in the billowing lungs. We were breath itself. We were important—if only to this monster’s survival. Without us, the camp would have no purpose. It would wither and die. With us “exchange Jews,” the Germans could hope to get back some “real” Germans to help win the war. In our own sick way, we really were needed. Somehow, that made me feel better.
Summer grew weary. Daylight burned to embers earlier and earlier. The night circled closer, like a pack of wolves. October began. Coolness and rain followed. Between the streaked gray weather, we stole glances at the ceaseless bombers. Smoke rose to the south—Pappi said it was likely from the city of Hanover. Some German newspapers made their way into the camp. They were read and destroyed, their stories shared by mouth since outside news was verboten, forbidden. News reports said that German soldiers were dying heroically in battle. There was no mention of victories, only courage. Pappi said that was another sign the Germans were losing.
It was also telling that our guards started changing, with the young men replaced by older men and young women. The new guards may not have been as young or as big as before, but they were more nervous and unpredictable. The war was not going their way, so they took out their frustrations on us. We stood longer. They yelled and threatened more.
One morning at Appell, after standing over two hours, a small, older lady in front of me sat down in the mud and hugged herself to her knees, rubbing one leg and shivering.
“Get up,” Pappi whispered to her, adding what we all already knew. “You aren’t allowed to sit.”
“Tired,” was her reply. “Legs are cramped.”
I couldn’t see her face, only that her head bobbed a little. Pappi repeated his words.
Get up, I thought, get up. The orderly row ahead of me was now broken as if a tooth had been knocked out. I glanced left and right and saw the closest guard look over, like a spider that senses the first vibration of a fly caught on a sticky strand.
Get up, oh please, I thought. The woman tried to rise only when she heard the guard’s voice.
“Was ist das hier in einer Judenschule?” What is going on here in the “Jewish school?” Anything the Germans didn’t like could be blamed on a Jewish education.
The old woman planted her right arm in the mud and pushed her body up, her wrinkled and gnarled hand sinking into the muck reminding me of tree roots along a riverbank. She fell back. Pappi leaned forward a bit as if to help, then straightened as the guard emerged from our right. I glanced at the guard’s face expecting anger, but his droopy, puffy eyes and full bottom lip that turned up at the corners made him appear disinterested. I knew better: don’t judge a bully by his expression.
“Aufstehen, dreck,” he said, in a voice as bland as an adult ordering coffee. Get up, filth.
As the old woman moved, the puffy guard wheeled around as briskly as a paw’s strike. I was confused at first. I thought that the old woman had slipped, like an ice skater’s awkward breakneck sprawl. Then I saw the whip dangling from the guard’s tight, white fist. As the woman sat sprea
d-legged, blood ran from under her gray hair, down the back of her neck, and disappeared into her coat. Her hair darkened and thickened. With the second whipping, she cried out to stop. Her arms raised, the sleeves falling, revealing skeletal, blotched, and scabbed arms.
The guard’s eyes looked bored, though he flushed a deeper pink as he hit and hit, his trunk of an arm pumping in blunt strokes up and down, up and down. The whip ends wrapped over the old woman’s shoulders, and curled around her neck. Falling to her side, I saw thin red trails over her cheek and chin. I snapped my eyes shut. I now knew the difference between the sound of leather hitting wool and ripping skin. She hissed and screamed like a cornered cat, spitting and weeping. Then silence, except for what I took for a mad dog’s panting. My heart banged to escape. I opened my eyes to blurry slits, just enough to see the black pile. The old woman was buried under her coat and skirt, but for one root-like hand still looking to pry apart the earth. I saw mudsplattered boots turn from view, and then I heard steps marching off.
I stayed stock still, trying to slow my breath, forcing myself not to cry, and then willing the tears to dry on my face. I didn’t dare even a quick move of my hand to wipe my cheeks. Don’t draw attention, I repeated to myself, disappear. I was afraid to even look at my family. If they could do that to a weak, old woman, they could certainly beat us, too. My toes cramped, curled under as far as they could, as if every part of me was trying to hide into itself.
Even with my eyes closed, I couldn’t escape. Like a movie newsreel, the scene of the old woman’s beating kept spinning through my mind. I heard new guards taking over, teasing the other guards to rest after such an exhausting shift.
