by Irene Butter
Twice Betty returned. She checked Mutti and nodded. She read-justed the makeshift coat pillow, then felt Pappi’s wrist, which I had checked on a half-dozen times already. The third time she returned, the clouds sitting on the horizon were beginning to glow from the rising sun. Her hand stayed on our father’s wrist longer than usual. She felt his neck, and bent down to listen to his breathing. She repeated her actions.
“I’m sorry,” Betty said softly, “but he’s de…gone. He’s gone.”
No, he’s not, I thought. I stared at Pappi. He looked the same as he had over a minute before, an hour before. How did I miss the difference between alive and not alive? How long had he been gone? Werner shook Mutti awake, tried to talk, and choked on the message.
Betty told her.
Then Betty tidied some things, tucked in Pappi as if for a nap, and left. I wasn’t sure what to say or do. If I spoke, I didn’t know what sound would come out, or if it would ever stop. Realizing my hunger, I picked the food tray off the floor and mindlessly, methodically, started putting hard bread and cold soup into my mouth. Werner joined in. Mutti’s eyes were closed again, so I didn’t offer her any. I rocked and stared at Pappi.
It wasn’t long before people started coming by to pay respects. A few friends stayed longer, praying and reciting psalms under their breath. Amens. Mutti was awake now more than ever with the comings and goings. She nodded instead of talked, keeping her eyes on Pappi as if expecting him to join in.
“Werner. Irene.”
I looked up at Mr. Abraham, and his wife Gerda, friends of my parents, from Amsterdam, Westerbork, and Bergen-Belsen. Their boy, Hans, a few years younger than me, and their daughter, little Ruth, stood behind them, their hair falling over their eyes.
“Your father just died,” Mr. Abraham said with eyes boring into my brother and me, before shifting down to the tray. “How can you be eating?”
I put down my spoon. Werner wiped his hands on a napkin. Was it bad manners to eat around death? Was it bad for us to eat when we were hungry?
35
Biberach, Germany
January 24, 1945
People came and went. Our window brightened blue as the sun rose. The train stopped. A guard came by and told us that we had arrived in the town of Biberach. There was a German internment camp here with mostly British and a few American prisoners. They were taking off the dead and very sick—those who might not live long enough to make it to Switzerland for the exchange—and welcoming onboard healthy British and American prisoners. I overheard that the Germans had promised a certain number of exchange prisoners and they needed to deliver.
Could the sickest include Mutti, or maybe even Werner? Nazi officers, their eyes peering from under sloped caps, looked in on us.
“That one’s dead,” one said with a gesture from his chin.
Mutti nodded, trying to sit up higher.
“Remove him,” said the other officer. “We can leave the body at the station.”
I hadn’t thought about it: what would become of Pappi now?
Two men in overalls appeared behind the officers in the doorway.
“Can’t we take him to Switzerland?” Werner asked. “To be buried… properly?”
The men in overalls said they were taking the body. We could follow them outdoors to say what we needed to.
“Bitte, please, officers,” Mutti said. “I can’t go outside. Give us a few minutes alone.”
By “us” she meant her and Pappi.
Werner and I helped move Mutti to the bench next to our father, and nestled her in. I saw his death clearly then, his white skin holding no color or hints of motion. His hearty hands that had held our family together for so long were at rest.
“Go,” she said, “I’ll be okay.”
We waited outside the compartment in the hallway, with the men in overalls. After a few minutes Werner looked in. Mutti was asleep, curled over Pappi. We entered. I wiped her face with the sleeves of my coat. Werner and I each gently took one of Mutti’s arms, lifted her away from Pappi and placed her back on the opposite bench.
I buttoned Pappi’s tattered winter coat under his chin, and felt the cool stiffness of his neck. I gulped down my tears as Werner told the men to enter. I turned up his collar and straightened his coat as best I could. One man gathered his body just under the arms, and the other man picked up his feet. They lifted Pappi’s likeness with ease and angled it out the door. We followed.
The dry, bitter cold battered my face and shoulders; I started shivering. How easy it was to get used to warmth. Dozens of passengers—some sick and some past sickness—were carried and guided off our train. How the Germans decided who should stay was a mystery. Nearby, healthy, clean prisoners waited, bags in hands and eyes on us, to board. Suddenly I was afraid it was a lie, and we would all be forced to stay here with Mutti, traveling on alone. I calmed my breathing, grabbed Werner’s hand, and focused on moving my feet.
Snow filled the space between the tracks and ties. The sweet scent of tobacco drifted and blew away. The Biberach station was as simple and plain as a wooden casket. The men asked Werner for Pappi’s name. They placed Pappi on a bench by the door to the station, and pinned a note to his coat: John Hasenberg. Died January 23, 1945. Then they backed away. Everyone backed away. It was just the three of us.
Only last night Pappi and I had talked. Before that we had eaten together, slept in the same place, and stood by each other for hours. He had hugged me. He had comforted me. He had always played with me. He had leaned in close when people took photos of us. He had been so strong for so long. How would I live without him? I collapsed into Werner. He braced himself with his good foot.
“He knew we were okay,” Werner said. “He’d taken us this far. It was far enough.”
I wanted to protest, but I was dazed, expecting my soul to flee from the pain, to kill me.
And now Pappi was to be left alone in a place we didn’t know, and we had no idea what would happen to him. The wind hurt my eyes. And the line of people waiting for the train was growing shorter. I straightened the note pinned to his coat, making sure it was secure, patted his rumpled coat, lightly kissed his forehead.
You sweet little one,
you belong to me,
you belong to me,
you are the most lovable.
We climbed back onboard and into our compartment. I wanted to crawl into a dark hole. I found my way to the corner of the bench where he had just been and hid under my blanket. Was his death my fault? I squeezed my eyes shut. If I had paid attention earlier, if I had seen that he was hurt. How had he hidden his injuries? Even Betty hadn’t found anything. If the camps had taught me anything, it was how to provide comfort. But that wasn’t enough. I knew that no matter what else happened or where we ended up or how I would grow up or how old I would become, I would forever remember this time, this absence.
My next fear was Mutti. Her survival now seemed as fragile as a dying flower’s last petal. With one parent gone, I clung to the other. Werner wasn’t getting any better, either. His toes had not only begun to swell, they were turning brown, the smell of rot was stronger. It wouldn’t be long before Mutti and Werner couldn’t walk alone to the bathroom. I wept more heavily into my blanket when Werner and Mutti were asleep so that I could hide my mounting fear.
36
St. Gallen, Switzerland
January 25, 1945
For two years our journeys across Europe had not been our choice. My family’s trips were free, courtesy of Hitler and his Nazis, yet had cost so much. Each trip had taken us to a worse place, as we lost more and more: our freedom, health, dignity, and now Pappi.
We reached the Swiss town of Kreutzlingen, just over the border from Konstanz, Germany. Our train parked next to another that faced the opposite direction on neighboring tracks. German and Swiss officers and guards tramped about outside and inside. German guards looked ornate—badges, pins, piping, eagles, skulls—yet scraggly compared to the Swiss soldiers who
se uniforms were simple and well-pressed, their faces unlined, saved from years of war.
“The Swiss even look neutral,” Werner said.
This was it, the exchange, that we had dreamed about. The Germans ordered us off the train that would soon be heading back into Germany, and the Swiss ordered us onto the other train that would take us farther into their country. In the snow and cold between the two tracks, we passed the newly freed German civilian prisoners. These people were what we were worth. One of them equaled one of us. I looked at their clean coats, full suitcases, shiny shoes, plump hands, and full faces. Like us, they may have recently been prisoners, but it was obvious that the Allies hadn’t treated them the way we had been treated. A few dizzy, brilliant snowflakes freckled the air as the Germans passed us and boarded the cars we had just occupied.
“Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!”
Their joy merged into a chant. They were going home.
I was born in Germany, like my parents and their parents and their parents before them, but we had been forced to leave almost ten years before. We weren’t going home to anything. Maybe Amsterdam at some point, but it felt as if we didn’t have a home anywhere. The Americans in our group started their own chant.
“USA! USA! USA!”
We boarded our new train and began our journey into Switzerland, the country I had dreamed of for a decade, as I’d traveled with my heroine, Heidi. Heidi was the star of her own adventures, and I wanted the same. But adventure wasn’t the word I would use for my life. More like perils or whatever…not adventure. In the book, Heidi’s parents died, so she returned to Switzerland to live with her grandfather. My grandfather, grandmother, uncles, aunts, and friends were all dead. And now, my Pappi was dead too. Heidi and I had things in common that I never had wanted in common.
After two days, our Swiss train finally halted. I opened my eyes, groggy and full from my body’s rhythmic napping, eating, and napping again. Outside, steam floated by like clouds, the shapes of spires, buildings, and mountaintops formed and disappeared in the mist. Where were we? I knew one thing: Bergen-Belsen was now far behind us.
I rubbed the sleep off my face and watched as dark-uniformed men and women trudged by outside, then climbed aboard with a blast of cold. They poked their heads into our compartment. I stiffened under my pink blanket, the one I had carried through everything, bracing for a yell, a raised baton, or a lunging German shepherd.
“Time to de-board!” a woman bellowed in an odd German accent. She walked up and down the aisle, yelling it over and over. “Time to de-board, please!”
Please? When had I last heard that?
My mother, Mutti, didn’t budge or look up. She was curled on the bench just like my father had been two days before. She was wrapped in her ragged gray dress and threadbare stockings, her head heavy in the folds of a coat bunched into a pillow. I gently cupped her face in my hands.
“Mutti, Mutti, wake up, wake up,” I said.
“Reni,” she said, pushing her bangs out of her eyes. She wore her hair short, especially because of the lice, but she kept the front long. She widened her storm-gray eyes, trying to awake. I loved her big, pretty eyes, even when she was so ill.
“I’m here,” I said.
One bony hand alighted on the back of my head. I hugged her close, but not hard. Then I turned toward Werner, asleep on the other bench. I tapped his good leg.
“Werner. Wake up.”
People shuffled by in the aisle.
“What’s all the ruckus?” Werner asked, shaking his head so his bangs fell into place. His eyes were so much like Pappi’s, I thought, always a little puffy.
“We’ve stopped,” I said. “I think we’re really free.”
“Well, that’s good news,” he said, grimacing and looking down. There was no way he was going to put his shoe back on. His injured foot was balloon-swollen.
He gathered his coat and one small bag, favoring his good shoed foot.
“Reni, help me up,” Mutti whispered.
I tilted her small body up off the bench, my arms seeming to sink into nothing but her clothes. She was as frail as a dry leaf. I leaned her against the door frame and gathered our belongings: two knapsacks with clothes, Pappi’s shaving kit, some papers and photos, a couple of brown pots, and a few utensils. Back in Amsterdam our dining room table had had more on it than we now owned. Gone were the smooth white coffee pitcher, the slight silverware, the crystal sugar bowl with the silver top, the china with little cups just for eggs. Little cups crafted for only one pleasant purpose. I grabbed my blanket and my knapsack, and helped my brother. The dent in the leather bench that Werner left behind slowly rose as if a spirit was trying to join us, and all I could think of was Pappi. I could feel Pappi’s hug. I could feel his hand on my shoulder.
Neither Mutti nor Werner could walk alone, and I couldn’t carry them. Forcing my eyes open, I headed out into the aisle, bumping into the large belly of a man dressed in night blue wool. He was with two nurses in white.
“We need help,” I said.
Nobody replied, but their eyes said everything. A nurse took a breath and a step back. Her makeup looked loud on her pale features. Her clothes were pristine, not a thread out of place, and not a stain anywhere. How was that possible? How must we look? For the first time I saw our weakness, our sickness, and our filth. Mutti and Werner looked so old, their eye sockets deep as buckets. Even my beloved blanket suddenly looked tired, and more gray than pink.
Gloved men carried off Mutti and Werner in narrow, sagging stretchers, instructing each other to be careful around corners. I followed. At the last step before the concrete platform, I was taken by the elbow as if I were being courted. On the platform, our belongings surrounded us like beach debris after a storm. I stared at the train door we had just exited, and out of habit, expected Pappi to walk through it.
The sky was as blue and thick as a baby’s quilt. The bitter wind slapped my cheeks. Toward the center of town, pastel buildings with crimson roofs stood shoulder-to-shoulder like sentinels in front of steeples, and a clock tower jabbed up at the sparse clouds. In the other direction a few houses speckled the hill that rolled up to violet mountains that hemmed the horizon. I had never seen anything so tall, as if the peaks were scratching at the doors to heaven. The train station was a palace: five stories of great, curved stone. Nothing was smeared, nothing was broken, and nothing was makeshift. If we seemed unreal to the people here to help us, this place was unreal to me, like a page ripped from a fairy tale.
Important-looking people glanced at us from behind clipboards, sometimes pointing, sometimes making little marks, and sometimes asking questions. A doctor with a wire-thin mustache gave Werner’s foot a close look, bending it back and forth as Werner swallowed and grimaced, before moving over to Mutti, travelling her wrist with his fingers. After finding what he was looking for, he closed his eyes and moved his lips…one, pause, two, pause, three, pause. Then he spent time looking her up and down: in her mouth, ears, and eyes. Mutti reminded me of a baby bird fallen from its nest.
“This one,” the doctor directed men with a nod toward Werner. “Werner Hasenberg. Sixteen. To the hospital. The foot is bad. I’m concerned about gangrene.”
“And for this one…” he said, pointing at Mutti, “Gertrude Hasenberg….” He stopped and whispered to a nurse who looked at me before walking off.
Werner was carried off before I could say anything to him. I returned to Mutti. A balding man with in a hefty overcoat knelt by her. Deep grooves divided the space between his eyebrows, and lines ran from his nose to the corners of his mouth.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“He’s the priest,” a nurse said.
“Can he help Mutti?”
“He’s giving last rites.”
“Last…what? Dying rites? Oh, no, no….”
The world blurred.
“Excuse me, Father,” someone said behind me.
I turned to find Mr. Wolf, the dwarf, s
tanding next to me, straightening the glasses on his nose. Mr. Wolf ’s wife was in a nearby stretcher, with their two children next to her. The priest finished a sentence and looked up, his hand still on Mutti’s forehead. He didn’t have to look very high. “In the Jewish faith we give traditional death prayers—the kaddish—after the person has died.” Mr. Wolf stretched his back while keeping both hands on his cane. “Not before.”
“Jewish?” The priest repeated. “All of you?”
“Most. Probably all.”
“I was told there were refugees, some dying.”
“We’re both. Is there a rabbi here?” asked Mr. Wolf.
“No.”
“Then bless you for helping. But don’t bless Trudi yet,” he said. He turned to me and added, “I’m so sorry, Reni.”
The priest told a nurse that he would return. Then he left with a look in my direction, but not quite at me.
“Your mother is very, very sick. Do you understand?” the nurse said. “We will do our best.”
I knelt down and held Mutti’s hand, trying not to wring it too hard. I looked at her face. She was asleep. Her eyes were shut and still. She can’t die, I told myself, not after everything we have been through. Not after Pappi. I rose, still grasping her hand as the orderlies picked her up. The nurse stood in front of me and put a hand on my shoulder. I looked up at her. I felt a slight squeeze.
“You have to stay here. The hospital is full with the sickest. You aren’t that sick.”
“But I need to go with her! She’s my mother, and my brother is gone already,” I said and grabbed the nurse’s hand hard and felt the bones grind together.
