“We must go,” I wanted to whisper. Instead I heard my voice saying: “Maybe tonight.”
“All assemble!” the voices of the SS rang out.
For some moments we stood ready. Then we heard screams and frightened begging from the forest. Three SS men had rounded up fourteen girls in the forest. Now they lined them up in front of us. The commandant took out his pistol. The girls screamed. The commandant fired again and again and the girls fell, one on top of the other.
I closed my eyes and held Ilse’s hand tightly. We marched on. At that moment I vowed that I would never try to escape, never take our lives into my hands, never step off the path that was leading us to death.
A week passed, two, perhaps three. We lost count of time. About every second day there would be warm soup, if one were lucky enough to be among the first in line, cold soup when one was among the last. At times there wasn’t enough to go around.
We usually slept in barns. One night we rested in a bombed-out church listening to artillery fire both from the East and farther away from the West. We felt ourselves lucky if we found a few grains of wheat or oats in the barns.
Everywhere we left some dead. Some we buried, others we simply left. Hundreds of girls had frozen feet, bloody and full of pus. I saw one girl break off her toes as though they were brittle wood.
Waking one night in a barn, I felt the girl next to me leaning too heavily on my legs. I protested. She did not move. My legs ached, I felt crushed under the weight. I tried to push her–and found she was dead. I remembered her from Bolkenhain. She had worked at the loom next to mine. I don’t remember her name, but I do remember the way she stooped over the loom to repair a thread–the way she smiled when our eyes met.
One girl spotted a milk can leaning against a tree. She ran out of line to see if there were any milk in it. An SS man grabbed her by the neck, forced her to her knees. I saw her turn, petrified, when he took the rifle from his shoulder.
“Mercyl Mercy!” she pleaded.
She threw her arms up as he fired. Was it in prayer or desperation? And as he turned to go, the SS man kicked her aside.
I watched it all in horror and wished that I were dead.
There were planes roaring above us; we heard machine guns in the distance. The front lines were not far, yet they weren’t close enough. How fortunate the soldiers were, to be able to carry guns! I had dreams about stealing a gun from an SS man during the night and shooting them all. But those were only dreams–I didn’t even know how to fire a gun.
Why did we march? Why did we let them slaughter us? Why did we not try to fight back? What difference would it have made if they had killed some of us? We were dying anyway, and they would kill the survivors sooner or later in any case.
Our group shrank to a quarter of its original size. Why should I hope? I thought. Why should I be free, and the others dead? Why should I think that I would be a privileged one? But these thoughts were dangerous. I had to hope. I had to go on to the end. If Papa, Mama, and Arthur survive, they will wait for me, hoping and praying. I must not disappoint them.
“Be strong,” Arthur had whispered, almost six years before.
“Be strong,” Mama had called over the mass of voices as I left Bielitz.
The snow melted and it became mild. It could almost have been spring. For miles and miles now we saw road signs pointing to Dresden. A big, beautiful city–I remembered it from my history books. We must have marched about two hundred and fifty kilometers since Grünberg. The SS evidently wanted to reach the city before nightfall. It was getting dark, and big trucks were constantly coming toward us, forcing us off the road, and slowing our march.
As we approached the outskirts of Dresden we heard air-raid sirens blowing warnings, and soon hundreds of planes roared through the skies.
We stood on a bridge over the Elbe as the SS watched us from the banks. They probably felt the bridge was a likely target and this would be an easy way to get rid of us.
It was as if the world were coming to an end. Giant bombers roared over us. Heaven and earth shook. Houses collapsed like dominoes. People screamed and some jumped in flames into the icy river. Germany was being destroyed.
I was not afraid for my life, I felt triumphant watching Dresden being destroyed. And yet I had a painful feeling of detachment and utter loneliness. I don’t remember how long the attack lasted, how we finally got off the bridge, I only remember the triumph and the loneliness.
And so passed another night.
The mild weather held for a few days, and we marched on. One afternoon as we passed through Freiberg the windows of a pretty house were open, and someone inside was playing the piano. Soft music floated in the air. As we came closer, our steps drowned out the music; only after we passed the house did I begin to hear it again.
In my mind I wrote a story to go with the music. It was about someone who tended a plant all his life, and it never blossomed. Only after the person died did the flower bloom.
I looked at Ilse. She was crying without a sound–the way Mama cried when we took Papa to the station for the last time.
Chapter 13
IT GREW COLDER AGAIN, CRUSHING OUR TIMID HOPES THAT PERHAPS nature would be kind and spare us. It was stormy and snow fell constantly. We marched on and on. During the day I wished for the night, and during the icy, fearful night I wished for a new day.
As if in a nightmare we walked through bomb-damaged cities. I remembered Chemnitz vaguely from my geography lessons and because my Uncle Leo from Turkey had purchased textile machinery there on one of his visits. Now Chemnitz was rubble, some buildings still smoking. I can still see an old woman with a black shawl collecting wood in a basket.
We marched through Zwickau, Reichenbach, Plauen. On and on with the snow falling, the wind howling about us, and the all-pervading hunger gnawing within us. We were two hundred and fifty kilometers or more beyond Dresden, more than five hundred from Grünberg. There were perhaps no more than four hundred girls left. It must have been around the twentieth of March; we had been marching for almost two months. Now we came to another camp, Helmbrechts. It wasn’t a death camp; we saw with relief that there were people there, and no furnaces.
The SS guards departed and a new commandant took over. The previous commandant left his girl friend at Helmbrechts. Her golden days were over.
We were put into an empty barracks with a dirt floor. I looked at the electrified wire along the fence and again I had that terrible feeling of being trapped. I thought that our chances of survival were much better out in the open, no matter what the circumstances.
Before we entered the barracks we stood in the freezing courtyard and undressed down to our shoes. Our clothes were bundled up and taken away. We were given a strange assortment of clothing, still wet, that had been dipped in a solution said to kill vermin. I was given a pair of heavy slacks and a thin organdy blouse. Ilse received just a long navy-blue coat.
The camp consisted of perhaps a dozen barracks. We were housed in one large one. There were Ukrainian women in some of the others, but they had roll call at different hours and we rarely saw them. The whole camp was encircled by fences topped with electrified wire. Beyond the fences stretched snow-covered plains as far as the eye could see. There were no homes or buildings.
We all had diarrhea now. At night a wooden barrel was put near the door for the use of perhaps four hundred girls. We were told that it must not overflow … . We had to run all night, stand in line, and plead for our turn. When the SS women came in the morning, they beat us, calling us every filthy word in their vocabulary.
Our food was meager. Hungry and without anything to do, the girls began to speak of food, exchanging recipes for the richest pastries. It was terrible to listen to. I tried to tell myself that the gnawing pain in my belly was just like a broken leg, I had to stand the pain, and in time it would get better.
It was in Helmbrechts that I met Lilli. She was from Hungary. She and her husband–she had no idea where he was–
were university professors. I noticed her one morning as we stood at attention for a long time waiting for a kettle of yellowish, tasteless, lukewarm liquid–our “coffee.”
It was one of those mornings of many deaths. It was strange: some days hardly anyone died, other days we lost many. Some would fall muttering a few words, but for the most part they fell silently to the frozen ground. Then a creaking wheelbarrow would come and the bodies would be thrown into it.
That morning, as I watched the loaded barrow being pushed away, I thought: It will make more trips today.
When I lifted my eyes I met the sad gray eyes of one of the Hungarian girls. Strange as it seems, even under those unspeakable circumstances there were still prejudices. The Hungarians were not popular with us, nor we with them.
“Are you thinking the same thing?” asked the Hungarian girl in beautiful German.
“Probably,” I answered.
“It won’t be long until our turn comes,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Maybe it never will,” I replied.
“You are silly!” she exclaimed. “Do not tell me that you still hope.”
“I do, and you do tool” I snapped back. “If you did not, why wait? There it is.” I pointed to the charged wire that ringed the camp.
She smiled wanly and walked away.
That afternoon we heard artillery fire again. We had not heard it since we had arrived at Helmbrechts. The door of our barracks was locked. I was restless and as I walked about I saw the girl with the gray eyes sitting on the dirt floor killing lice.
“Come, keep me company,” she said.
I could see the angry glances of our girls as I sat down. They didn’t like to see anyone fraternizing with Hungarians.
“Well, well,” someone said sarcastically, “the end of the war will come when even the Poles and the Magyars get together!”
We burst out laughing, and that laugh sealed our friendship.
The days, except for the hunger, were not so bad, but we dreaded the nights. Without bunks or blankets, we had nothing but the earthen floor to lie on. Shivering, our bones aching, we huddled in groups and we waited for the dawn.
One night, somebody shook me out of a sound sleep. It was Tusia, the giraffe-necked girl I had been friendly with in Bolkenhain. I hadn’t talked to her in a long time. In a way, I felt guilty about it. I quickly get interested in people but just as quickly avoid them when they expect to be my only friends. I am sure that I hurt many people in that way. It was the case with Tusia. I respected her deeply–her wisdom fascinated me and she never bored me–but she did irritate me.
“Come on,” Tusia whispered now.
I followed her to her sleeping place, near the door and the barrel. A terrible stench was all around.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I want to talk to you.”
“Yes, about what?”
“Just talk.”
“Did you have to wake me for that?” I was vastly annoyed.
“Gerda,” she whispered again, her hand fumbling in the darkness for mine. “Gerda, do you remember, once you said that we would be free for our birthday?”
Tusia and I were both born on May 8. Yes, I remembered.
“Will we be free?” she whispered eagerly.
“Yes, of course!” I was short with her.
“You don’t seem too convinced.”
“Tusia, what do you want me to say in the middle of the night, when you wake me to ask such questions?”
“Such questions?” She sounded hurt. “Are they not important? Don’t you see that I have to know right now?”
Then it dawned on me: Tusia had probably lost her mind. I stopped arguing with her. She pressed my hand.
“Come closer,” she whispered. I felt her breath on my face. “Gerda, it will be wonderful when we are free. But you know, we have not talked in a long time. I have watched you. I was hurt by you. But still I am grateful to you, you have given me belief in humanity.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Your spark has not gone out, it never will. You will hurt people but you will make them happy.” Then she said again what she had said in Bolkenhain: “You are going through mud, but your feet are still clean.”
She rambled on; I did not interrupt her any more.
“I am tired,” she said at last, releasing my hand. I went back to my place beside Ilse, but I could not fall asleep again. The things that Tusia had said were troubling me.
It was later than usual when we were led out of the barracks and given our pieces of bread. The sun had risen. As I turned to go back in the barracks, I recognized a body lying face down in the filthy snow.
“Tusial” I touched her, thinking she had fainted. Her hand was pointing to an empty tin cup–she was dead.
I wished again that I could cry the deep hurt out of me, but I could not. Ilse tried to say something, but I barked at her to leave me alone.
I am hurting Ilse, I thought. This is what Tusia meant.
I thought about Tusia all that day. What had she meant by my “spark”? Then it came to me: my making others happy–as in Bolkenhain, when I arranged the entertainment. How happy those upturned faces had been–and how few of those girls were still living!
I wonder if I still can do it, I thought.
That night I tried it. I went over to a group of girls and swore them to secrecy. This, I knew, would be the best way to broadcast news. Then I told them that I knew from a sure source that the war was going to be over in a couple of days. It could take a week or so, at the very most. To make my story better, I threw in a few figures about American divisions, tanks, and planes. The Germans were retreating. They wouldn’t kill us now; they were too frightened.
Some of the girls were skeptical, others overjoyed, but all in all they seemed glad to accept their lot with the knowledge that there soon would be an end. I told Ilse the same story, of course.
“Who told you all that?” she asked suspiciously.
“I can’t tell you,” I replied.
Her eyes widened. “Does that mean that you don’t trust me?”
“Ilse, the person who gave me this information risked her life. If I tell you who it was, and the secret somehow leaks out, you might give her away, under torture.”
“You know I would die before I told!” Ilse cried passionately.
“I know,” I acknowledged with great dignity, “and that is why I will not tell you.”
“Gerda,” she said softly, “promise me, please, that when you are free to tell, I will be the first to know.”
I never gave a promise more gladly. In that horrible camp we were behaving like the young girls we had been years before, typical schoolgirls, emotional teen-agers, making vows, telling secrets, swearing lifelong devotion.
“I would rather die than tell” had been a favorite phrase, so often and so lightly used, only now death was really close, and keeping a secret unto death might mean but a matter of a few hours, a few days … .
My stories caught on; I knew by the way the girls looked knowingly at me when I passed. I doubt if the Allied High Command knew as much about the progress of American and English troops as I kept reporting.
Girls came to me, to ask questions.
“Are you sure it is so?” they would ask over and over. “You know it would not be fair–”
“Not fair?” I asked myself. Not fair to light a spark of hope, to see a grim mouth smile?
Only Lilli and Suse made no reference to my sensational news. They did not seem glad nor did they say they did not believe me. Once, though, Suse remarked, “Too bad you can’t write plays now, Gerda. Your material is so plentiful.”
Chapter 14
ONE MORNING WE WERE TOLD THAT WE WERE TO LEAVE HELMBRECHTS.
“No, no!” moaned Ilse.
“Are you crazy?” I asked her, full of hope again.
I wanted to be in the open, I feared enclosures. Outside, I believed we had a chance. I still had my ski boots an
d by now the clothes we had arrived in had come back to us, free of vermin. This we regarded as a big favor.
One girl whispered to me as she dressed: “You were right, Gerda, they are afraid of us. We have our clothes again.”
We assembled for our last roll call in Helmbrechts. No more than three hundred answered their names. The commandant made an announcement:
“You will rejoice to hear that the greatest enemy of the Führer is dead. Franklin Delano Roosevelt has died–as all the enemies of the Führer will die!”
Roosevelt dead … Perhaps it was only a bluff. Later we learned that the news was true. The day we first heard it was probably April 13, 1945.
We marched away from Helmbrechts in the rain.
Ilse found a margarine wrapper. We licked it dry, tasting the fat. Though we got no food that day, Ilse said it did not matter, we had had the nourishing margarine. We were comforted.
We slept outside that night. It was very cold, and the evidence could be seen in the morning in the many stiff bodies on the ground. That evening, after another day’s march, Use suddenly collapsed.
“Leave me here,” she whispered, “I can’t go on.”
I pulled her to her feet, held her arm around my neck, and dragged her on.
“Leave me,” she kept begging. “Leave me in the woods. Some peasant will be kind.”
“I will stay with you,” I said.
Her voice was strong again. “No, you must go on!”
“I will not go on without you,” I said. “You would not go without me, would you?”
She did not answer.
It was almost dark. Somehow we got to a barn for the night. As Ilse’s arm dropped from my neck, she fell in a heap. Tonelessly, as if to herself, she said, “I cannot walk.”
Horror gripped me. I took off her shoes and rubbed her frozen feet slowly and gently.
All But My Life Page 20
