What World is Left
MONIQUE POLAK
Text copyright © 2008 Monique Polak
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be
invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Polak, Monique
What world is left / written by Monique Polak.
ISBN 978-1-55143-847-4
1. Theresienstadt (Concentration camp)--Juvenile fiction.
2. World War, 1939-1945--Children--Netherlands--Juvenile fiction.
I. Title.
PS8631.O43W43 2008 jC813’.6 C2008-902648-9
First published in the United States, 2008
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008927295
Summary: Anneke, a Dutch Jewish teenager, is sent with her family to Theresienstadt, a “model” concentration camp, where she confronts great evil and learns to do what it takes to survive.
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided
by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry
Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British
Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Design by Teresa Bubela
Cover image used with the permission of the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum, courtesy of Ivan Vojtech Fric
Additional photographs by Monique Dykstra
Author photograph by Elena Clamen
The views or opinions expressed in this book, and the context in which the
images are used, do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of,
nor imply approval or endorsement by, the USHMM.
ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS
PO BOX 5626, STN. B PO BOX 468
VICTORIA, BC CANADA CUSTER, WA USA
V8R 6S4 98240-0468
www.orcabook.com
Printed and bound in Canada.
Printed on 100% PCW recycled paper.
11 10 09 08 • 4 3 2 1
For Ma, with love
Acknowledgments
What World is Left could never have been written without the support and love of many people. I owe a huge debt to them all. Filmmaker Malcolm Clarke, director of the documentary Prisoner of Paradise, encouraged me to do the research for this book. When he learned that my mother had been a prisoner in Theresienstadt, he advised, “Make her tell you. Tell her she has to do it.” Malcolm also put me in contact with Czech writer Eva Papouskova and filmmaker Martin Smok, who were of great assistance, both personally and professionally, when I traveled to the Czech Republic in the summer of 2007. Eva accompanied me on my visit to Theresienstadt, along with my friend Viva Singer from Montreal.
The Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec believed in this project and funded my research trip to Holland and the Czech Republic. Writer friends Claire Rothman Holden, Elaine Kalman Naves and Joel Yanofsky provided encouragement at various stages along the way. My neighbors Liz Klerks, Joanne Morgan and Don Kelly read the first draft of this book. The team at Orca Book Publishers—Bob Tyrrell, Andrew Wooldridge and Dayle Sutherland—brought the book to life. My editor at Orca, Sarah Harvey, was the midwife who helped me deliver it. Sarah, I can’t thank you enough for your wisdom and sensitivity and for taking me where I had to go.
My daughter, Alicia Melamed, has always been my anchor and my sunshine both. My father, Maximilien Polak, helped in ways too numerous to mention, but his sense of humor is at the top of the list. My grandparents, Jo and Tineke Spier, remain with me in spirit every day and hovered close when I was working on this book. My husband, Michael Shenker, was with me every step of this difficult, exhilarating journey. But I owe the greatest debt to my mother, Celien Polak, who agreed to share her story after some sixty years of silence. Though my book’s protagonist was inspired by my mother, Anneke’s thoughts and feelings are entirely the product of my imagination. Sharing her story and allowing me the freedom to turn it into a work of fiction are my mother’s greatest gifts to me and ones for which I will always be grateful.
One
My bed is warm and cozy. I think I’ll sleep a little longer. I let my head sink into my feather pillow. The duvet feels so soft against my skin. I sniff the air. Yesterday was Thursday—laundry day. Sara, our new housemaid, hung out the sheets and pillowcases, and now they smell as sweet as the clover that grows by the canal behind our house.
I pull the sheets up so high they cover my face. A real Dutch face, Father often remarks when he looks across the kitchen table at my blue, blue eyes, my blond ringlets and my turned-up nose.
Tomorrow I will wear my favorite brooch, the one Johan gave me when I turned eleven. It is shaped like a tiny golden mirror with a curly handle on its end. I’ll pin it on my new blue sweater from Opa, my grandfather, and all the other girls at school will admire my brooch and my new sweater.
I yawn; yesterday was such a busy day. What fun it was to go fishing behind the house with Father and Theo. I caught a striped perch, reeling him in all by myself, without Father’s help. Theo, who is only ten, wanted a story, so I invented one about the perch. How his parents and his sister were caught by other fishermen and how he longed to join them on the land. “I’d rather be served for supper with a slice of lemon and a little mayonnaise,” I said, pretending to be the perch in my story, “than have to swim here in the canal all by myself.” Theo laughed at my imitation of the perch, and even Father seemed to enjoy the part about the lemon and the mayonnaise.
I yawn again and stretch my arms. But there’s isn’t room to stretch. In fact there’s someone else—who can it be?—lying beside me. A girl I don’t recognize.
At least not at first.
I want to push the girl away, but there isn’t room. There’s someone else next to her too. Oh, this is awful to be crammed so close.
And then I feel something bite the inside of my ankle. I reach down and swat at whatever it is.
That’s when I realize where I am. Not in my warm cozy bed in Broek, the feather pillows fluffed, the sheets smelling like clover. I am in Theresienstadt.
I slap at my shoulder. Don’t bedbugs ever sleep?
I shift my body and turn to face the other direction. At least Mother is next to me. Not all of the other girls are so lucky.
Because the lights—three incandescent bulbs hanging loosely from the ceiling beams—are always on in our barracks, I can see Mother’s face. Even asleep, she looks tired. How long ago was it that she stood at the potbelly stove in our kitchen, wearing her apron with the tulips on it and frying up that perch I’d caught? “Butter,” she’d said, adding another spoonful to the fry pan, “makes everything taste better.”
I scratch the skin around my shoulder. I know I mustn’t, but I can’t help it. I am itchy everywhere. I fight the urge to jump out of the bunk. Besides, there is no place to go. We are prisoners here.
If only this was the dream, and I could wake up and return to my old life.
If I jump out of the bunk, I risk waking Mother, and then the other women will squawk. They are always squawking about something. “Don’t make such a racket!” “Why does a girl your age have to use the bathroom so often?” “That’s my peg you’ve hung your jacket on!”
I have to be careful not to bump my head. There are only a few centimeters of space above me. I hear rustling and the soft sound of someone else g
roaning in her sleep.
“Don’t leave any spots. None at all.”
“Yes, Frau Davidels,” I call from inside my metal cauldron. The cauldron is so huge I had to climb on a chair and crawl into it. I’ve been scrubbing with a long wire brush for nearly half an hour, and the muscles on my arm are already sore. My whole body is damp with sweat. I hate cleaning.
But I know I mustn’t complain. I was lucky to get this job in the diet kitchen in one of the camp’s small infirmaries.
Cleaning toilets would be worse. My stomach turns at the thought of the long row of wooden latrines where I did my business this morning. To think that at home in Broek I minded having to share a bathroom with Theo. Now I have to squat next to at least a dozen other girls and women and wipe my bottom with scraps of torn-up glossy magazines.
“That’s a good girl,” Frau Davidels says, her voice fading as she walks down the corridor, supervising the others who work in the diet kitchen. Frau Davidels only pays compliments when there are no Nazis about. If there are Nazis in the diet kitchen, Frau Davidels’ lips get small, and her voice turns sharp. “Scrub harder!” she tells us. “Can’t you see that spot you’ve missed in the corner?”
Frau Davidels wears a white bonnet and apron. But because I’ve seen her when she isn’t working, I know that underneath the bonnet, she has sleek dark hair that falls to her shoulders. Mother told me Frau Davidels is the widow of a Jewish Czech banker. I imagine the two of them, walking arm in arm down the cobblestone streets in Prague. It’s a sunny day, and Frau Davidels is carrying a parasol.
Frau Davidels was sent to Theresienstadt with her only child, a son. But he was sent away on a transport. “The poor woman!” Mother said. “I don’t know how she finds the strength to carry on. First the husband, then the boy. It’s too much for one soul to bear.” And so, when Frau Davidels uses her sharp voice, I try to remember how she must suffer. Doing that makes her sharp voice less hard to bear.
Transport. Just thinking the word makes me shiver and scrub harder. I didn’t have to be in Theresienstadt long to understand that what everyone here fears most—more even than death itself—is finding a thin strip of paper with your name and number, and the word Included! on it—the sign that you are being sent on a transport. All I know for certain about the transports is that they are headed east. “To other ghettos like this one. Only better,” the Czech gendarmes assure us. But something about the way the gendarmes refuse to look us in the eye when they talk about transports makes me suspect they are lying, trying to keep the lambs quiet before we are sent to slaughter.
Besides, if Frau Davidels’ son was still alive, wouldn’t he have written by now to tell her so?
The one goal—the only goal—at Theresienstadt is to keep your name, and the names of those you love, off the transport lists. But transports are as much a part of life here as bedbugs and latrines.
Father told Theo and me how Emperor Joseph II built Terezin in honor of his mother, the Empress Maria Theresa. How the old empress would turn in her grave if she knew what had become of her son’s gift to her! It was the Nazis who renamed this place Theresienstadt. Now it stinks of sweat and human waste. It is so crowded with prisoners there is no room to move about freely. And because trainloads of Jews keep arriving, others have to be shipped out.
I scrub at the crusty patch of black until it comes loose from the side of the cauldron and falls to the bottom. Considering the watery broth we get for lunch and dinner, it is a wonder the cauldrons get dirty at all. I look down at the little pile near my feet. Nothing but burnt crusts. I tried eating some on my first day in the diet kitchen, but the crusts tasted bitter, and they didn’t make the hollowness in my belly go away.
“We’re the lucky ones,” Father told Theo and me when they pushed us out of the train at Buhosovice near Theresienstadt. “We’re going to the model city.”
Some model city! I shake out my arm to make the cramping go away. It is Father and Mother’s fault we ended up here! How could they have been so foolish? Why hadn’t we left Holland when it was still possible for Jews to leave the country? Parents were supposed to look after their children, but Father and Mother haven’t done a very good job of it, have they?
Something inside my stomach does a flip. Only this time, it isn’t hunger.
No, it’s like the feeling I had at home when I went into Father’s studio and opened one of his precious jars of paint. I dipped the tip of my finger into the thick red liquid and took a deep whiff of the paint. It smelled like chalk. Father seldom loses his temper, but he is very particular when it comes to his studio—and especially his precious art supplies.
“Who touched the magenta?” he called down in a booming voice. By then, Theo and I were at the kitchen table. Mother was at the stove, stirring a little sugar into the red cabbage and onions she was making for our lunch.
Theo shrugged. Mother pretended not to hear. At first I didn’t say a word. But then I came up with an idea. The one person who wouldn’t stand up for herself if I put the blame on her.
“It must have been Sara!” I called upstairs. At that point, Sara had been with us for about four months. She was Jewish and her parents had sent her from Germany when they felt the political situation there was becoming dangerous. They were sure she’d be safe in Holland. And Father and Mother had agreed to let her stay so long as she helped with the housework.
I knew it wasn’t nice of me to blame Sara, but I did it anyhow.
“Sara!” Father’s voice boomed even louder now. “I’ve told you before: never ever touch my paints!”
Sara must have been upstairs, changing the sheets on one of our beds. From downstairs, I couldn’t make out her reply to Father. All I could hear was the sound of her voice as she apologized for something she hadn’t done. At the time, I felt relieved. Better for Father to get upset with Sara than me. But now, scrubbing the cauldron, I wished I hadn’t put the blame on Sara.
“Here’s the scrubber, Hannelore. Make sure you get the cauldron perfectly clean. It’s a matter of hygiene.” Frau Davidels’ voice takes me away from my memories of Sara: the way her fingers sometimes trembled when she dusted Father’s books and how carefully she folded the laundry, rolling each pair of socks into a neat ball.
Who in the world is Hannelore? By now, I know everyone who works in the diet kitchen, but I’ve never met a Hannelore. I want to see her, to find out whether she is my age, but of course I can’t see anything from inside my cauldron. And so my friendship with Hannelore begins before I even lay eyes on her.
“Hannelore,” I whisper when I hear Frau Davidels’ steps disappear down the tiled corridor.
At first, Hannelore does not answer. So I try again, only a little louder. “Hannelore, how old are you?” I ask.
When Hannelore finally speaks, she has a tiny voice that makes me think of a mouse. I wonder whether Hannelore has small dark eyes and a pointy chin. I hope she doesn’t have a tail! And if she has one, I wonder how she manages to hide it under her clothes or what she does with it when goes to sleep.
“I’m fourteen,” Hannelore answers from inside her cauldron.
“Me too!” I tell her, unable to hide my excitement. What were the chances we would be the very same age? It has been so long since I’ve had a friend to open my heart to. And if Hannelore is my age and works in the diet kitchen, we will certainly become friends. Best friends even. I imagine us lining up for soup together, huddling to keep warm. The guards will never let us link arms, but we can stand close to each other and exchange stories about the boys we like. I can tell her all about Franticek Halop. How handsome he is and how sometimes, when I pass him in the street, he smiles at me.
“My arm is tired,” Hannelore says. Then she makes a sniffling sound.
“We’re lucky to be here.” My voice is sharper than I intend, but what surprises me most is how much I sound like Father. It could be him speaking from inside my cauldron. It’s odd, because I hate Father’s habit of turning everything into a le
sson, and now I’m doing it myself. “They could have made us clean latrines,” I tell Hannelore. “Scrubbing cauldrons is a pleasure compared to that.”
Hannelore sniffles again. I’m not sure I can be friends with such a crybaby.
For a little while, all I do is scrub. I can feel my lips turning to a pout. This Hannelore has already disappointed me. She is the one to pick up our conversation. “Where do you come from?” she wants to know.
“Broek,” I tell her, but then I realize she might not know where that is. I can tell from her accent that Hannelore is German. Perhaps she’s never visited Holland. “Broek is in Holland,” I tell her. “Not far from Amsterdam.”
“I’m from Hamburg.” Hannelore’s voice sounds less tiny. “How did you end up in this place?”
“Girls!” Frau Davidels is back. I can hear someone else’s footsteps too. It must be a Nazi supervisor. “No chatting!” Frau Davidels says. “Concentrate on your cleaning! Or else!”
I hear Hannelore sniffle. I imagine she isn’t used to adults being stern with her. She must be a pampered girl. Maybe she is an only child, the long-awaited offspring of older parents. I can see them in my head. The mother is mousy. The father listens to Bach and smokes a pipe. They never raise their voices when they speak to her. No, Hannelore is their princess.
The way my mind works almost makes me laugh. “That Anneke is always inventing stories in her head,” Opa, who is my father’s father, used to say about me when he knew I was listening. He was teasing, but I know that in some way, he had paid me a compliment. I cannot paint like Father, but I can invent stories. And certainly that is something.
Two
Hannelore’s question gets me thinking: How did we end up in this place?
I reach up with the brush and scrub at a troublesome bit of crust. We’ve been in Theresienstadt for only a month, and already it is getting harder to remember our old life. What brought us here, to this so-called model city?
What World is Left Page 1
