The Locket

by Evans, Mike

  Late that afternoon, as the sun neared the horizon and after the belongings had been sorted, soldiers came to where we were moving the bodies down to the crematorium ovens. They ordered us to stop our work and placed us in a line. Then one of them walked along choosing every second person. I was not chosen in that process but Gila, the overseer, redirected him to me and I was placed with those selected. The others were sent back to work while we were led off in the same direction as the group of women and children from the afternoon trains.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “They have too many,” someone replied. “What does that mean?”

  “The crematorium is full. They can’t put us in the chamber.” “Us?”

  “Yes,” she nodded grimly. “Us.” “So, where are we going?”

  One of the women pointed up ahead of us. I looked in that direction to see a line of women and children forming along the edge of a large open pit, easily a hundred meters in length. To the left, a bulldozer sat a few meters away, a driver perched on the seat. Flies were everywhere and the stench was awful. Then shots rang out in a hail of gunfire from automatic weapons. The bodies along the edge of the pit tumbled in order from left to right as bullets ripped through them. I turned away, but a soldier standing nearby grabbed me by the shoulder and pushed me back in line. When we moved nearer the hole, I saw it was half full of rotting corpses. The last rays of sunlight were fading but in the shadows below I saw a rat wriggle from the pit with flesh dangling from its mouth.

  Someone whispered with wry frankness, “We’ll be the last for this hole. It’s almost full.”

  “And it’s been open too long. They won’t like the smell.” “Why don’t we run?” I asked.

  “Won’t do any good,” an older woman shrugged.

  “And besides,” another suggested, “they’ll go to our group in the barracks and shoot them all.”

  Another pointed to the left. “They already have the tractor ready to fill the top.”

  Everyone seemed so calm, the soldiers relaxed as if merely doing a day’s work, my fellow inmates resigned to the fate that awaited us. I was scared and my body trembled at the thought that death was just moments away. Still, the women continued to talk.

  “If we run, they’ll shoot us on sight and somebody will have to carry us back to the hole.”

  “Just more misery and work for everyone.” “I’ve seen that happen, too.”

  “I’ve carried the bodies,” another added.

  Behind us a line of women snaked down the dirt road, but I could see the end of it with soldiers guarding the way out. Like lemmings, we followed the person in front of us, moving nearer and nearer the hole. Periodically, shots rang out in a burst of gunfire that made me jump.

  Finally it was our turn. Trembling and crying, I made my way close to the edge of the hole. Even though death awaited me, I was reticent to get too near the edge for fear of falling in. One of the guards stepped forward and shoved me forward until my toes were right at the edge.

  On the opposite side, three trucks were backed into place. Canvas tarps covered the back, beneath which were mounted the machine guns we had heard while standing in line. With little fanfare, an officer to my left nodded and the shooting began. From the corner of my eye I saw bullets rip through the bodies to my right, sending a fine mist of blood and shattered bones into the air. Before they even reached me my skin was damp and sticky from the crimson spray. Then a bullet grazed me just above my right ear. Searing pain shot through my head and blood ran down my face. The world spun around and I tumbled forward into the pit. I landed face down on a pile of flesh and lay there, numb all over, unable to move. Seconds later, a body fell on top of me, pinning me in place. The odor was horrible and I felt millions of maggots working through the rotten flesh beneath me.

  The guns fell silent and then I heard voices shouting down at us from the ledge above. Moments later, there was the pop, pop, pop of pistol fire. A shot pierced the body lying on top of me and I felt the lead sting my side.

  After a moment the shooting stopped, and feeling returned to my arms and legs. I wanted to roll on my side to get my face off the body below me, but I was afraid someone would see me move so I lay there hoping the maggots didn’t crawl inside my mouth.

  From above came the sound of shuffled footsteps as more people appeared along the edge, and seconds later the machine guns began again. I heard the hollow plop of bodies as they landed in the pit. One of them fell beside me, then two more piled on top of me. The weight was almost more than I could bear, pressing my ribs against my lungs, making it difficult to breathe.

  Finally the shooting stopped and once again I heard the sound of pistols being fired into the bodies of those recently fallen, just to make sure they were dead. Then the voices moved away from the ledge and in a few minutes I heard the sound of the tractor approaching. The ground shook as it rumbled closer and closer. Panic seized me at the thought of being buried alive, and in desperation I pushed the bodies aside and stood. If they wanted to shoot me, they could. I wasn’t lying there waiting to be covered with dirt.

  In the west, the sun had already set. Only the indirect light of dusk remained. I moved to the side of the hole where we had been standing and stumbled toward the end, finding a path away from the tractor. Dirt cascaded into the hole behind, sending a cloud of dust ahead of it, but I ignored it and kept moving. To my amazement, no one caught sight of me and when I reached the end, I climbed up to the edge.

  Twenty meters away was a stand of trees and beyond it the woods. Instead of looking back to check for the guards, I kept my eyes fixed on the trees ahead of me and hurried to them. I crouched there in the dusky shadows and brushed the maggots from my arms and hair. Then, as darkness descended, I ran into the woods.

  Ihad not gone far into the woods when darkness fell, enshrouding the trees and bushes in inky blackness, forcing me to feel my way forward. Still, I pushed on, threading through the undergrowth, doing my best to continue moving south. As I did so, I thought of where I might ultimately go that would be safe and how I could get away from Adolf and the Nazis once and for all. Linz was the closest city. I could get there rather quickly and it was a place I knew well, but there was nothing there for me now. Everyone I knew who once lived there was gone, and as that realization sank in I was all but overwhelmed by a sense that I was left to fend for myself. Loneliness threatened to drain me of all resolve, but I pushed it aside. There has to be a way through this, I thought. I didn’t come this far just to give up.

  As I wrestled with what to do next, an image of Grandma’s locket came to mind. Then I remembered the jewelry box with the papers from Spain tucked inside. The box was in the basement of the apartment building in Vienna, assuming no one had found it. If I could get those papers, I might be able to leave Austria as a Spanish citizen. Vienna was far to the east, almost 200 kilometers away, but I resolved that night to make the trek. It seemed impossible to my mind that I could ever attain it, but the decision resonated with something deeper, a sense of purpose, a sense of hope that, as Papa and Mama told me more than once, in the end everything would work out all right.

  With every step I took that night the hour grew later and later, and the temperature dropped lower and lower. I wore only the dress and light jacket I had on when I left the train with Adolf. Before long, I was chilled to the bone. Then, about midnight, hunger pangs became overwhelming. I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. Papa used to tell stories about our ancestors surviving in the wilds of Europe eating nuts, roots, and berries. I knew nothing about which plants to eat and, even if I did, I couldn’t see them in the darkness. My legs ached from exhaustion and I wanted to curl up at the base of a tree and go to sleep, but I knew if I did I would be found and by noon the next day I would be back at the edge of another pit facing a German machine gun or, worse, the gas chamber.

  Sometime in the night, a full moon rose over the trees casting silvery shadows through the woods. It made for an eerie
effect but at least I could see the trees before I ran into them and the logs on the ground before I tripped. Then the woods became less thick, and a few meters farther I came to the edge of a field. Off to the right, moonlight fell on a farmhouse with a barn next to it. I started in that direction, keeping near the edge of the woods, and soon came to a road. As I approached the house I thought about hiding in the barn to rest, but that would leave me trapped in the morning with no way out. So I kept going and continued down the road, still confident I was headed in a southerly direction.

  Two hours later, as the sky turned gray with the approach of dawn, I crested a hill and saw the Danube River spread out below me like a broad silver ribbon, shimmering in the fading moonlight. A smile stretched across my face. I was right. I had been walking south and now I could follow the river east to Vienna. The road followed a gently-sloping route downhill toward the water. I picked up my step with renewed energy and a sense that, in spite of the great distance yet to be covered, I really was on my way.

  Less than half a kilometer from the riverbank, the road came to an end at an intersection with another road that paralleled the river. “This is Mauthausen Strasse,” I said quietly, the road that led from Linz, just a few kilometers to the west, through Mauthausen just to my east.

  Having figured out my location, I turned left, heading east, and in less than an hour came to the village of Mauthausen, the community from which the camp took its name. Houses stood to my left, along the uphill side of the road, and around a turn in the road I saw an alley that led behind them. I made my way to it and crept along, searching for a place to hide.

  Three houses later I came to a tool shed. It was in poor condition with several boards missing on the sides and tin missing from the roof, but sunrise was only minutes away and I needed to get out of sight. I crouched low, ducked around the corner, and tried the door. It was unlocked so I slipped inside.

  A workbench stood along the wall to the right with boxes stacked all around it. To the left, broken window frames leaned against the wall and on them sat more boxes, newspapers, and an assortment of rusted hand tools. I picked my way across the room to the workbench and crawled beneath it, then pulled some of the boxes closer to hide me from view. A draft rushed through a hole in the wall, but as the sun rose in the sky the building began to warm. I lay there a moment with my knees tucked against my chest, my head resting on my arm, and looked out between the boxes at the junk that filled the room. For a moment I thought of where it might have come from and who might have put it there, but before long my eyes grew heavy and I fell asleep.

  Midmorning, I was awakened by a sound at the door. I looked up to see an elderly man with a saw in his hand standing two meters from the bench. He took a board from the corner of the room, laid it on the bench, and cut it with the saw. Dust drifted past my nose and I felt the urge to sneeze. I pinched my nostrils closed and held my breath, hoping and praying he wouldn’t find me. When he finished cutting the board, he tossed the waste end aside, turned away, and left, pulling the door shut behind him. I rubbed my nose and listened for sounds of his return, but before long my eyes once again grew heavy and I fell asleep.

  When I awakened, the sun was setting in the west. I felt rested but I was even more hungry than before. I waited in the toolshed until dark, then watched through a crack in the door as lights went out inside the house. A little while later, I slipped from the shed and started back toward the alley. Near the corner of the yard I saw a trash barrel. I leaned over to see inside and spotted unburned garbage inside, a chicken bone and a piece of molded bread. I fished them out of the barrel, pinched off the worst of the mold, and consumed it with one bite. Then I chewed off the end of the bone and sucked the marrow from it while I walked. Almost two days had passed without any food to eat. I was desperate.

  For most of the night I walked in solitude, headed east from Mauthausen. The road followed the river part of the way, then veered north. Once or twice I hid in the bushes to avoid an oncoming car or truck, but otherwise there were no serious incidents. I reached Baumgarten, a tiny farming community, as the first light of dawn appeared.

  Not much of a village, Baumgarten consisted of five or six farmhouses with barns and outbuildings clustered around a store and a mill that was used to grind grain. The first place I came to had a barn that stood near the road. In spite of my sense that sleeping in a barn was risky, I took that chance and made my way to the one nearest the road. It isn’t that much of a risk, I told myself, and perhaps there is something edible inside.

  Beyond the barn door was an open area that held an electric milk churn and a vat like the ones used for making cheese. Four stalls stood along the back wall with a feeding trough in each. A ladder was affixed to the wall and led through an opening to the floor above. I took a deep breath and smelled the rich blend of hay, grain, sour milk, and feed. The smell of it made my mouth water.

  From behind me I heard a noise and turned to see a woman coming from the farmhouse fifteen meters away. I hurried to the ladder and climbed into the loft. Loose hay was piled there with several sacks of feed, a broken chair, and two small tables. I made my way to the far side of the hay and burrowed beneath it.

  Moments later I heard the sound of a creaking board. I lay motionless, listening as footsteps came toward me, paused, then retreated back to the ladder. In a little while I heard the plodding sound of a cow as it entered the barn, followed by the rattle of a bucket. When it seemed safe to move, I turned on my side and looked down to see the woman from the house milking a cow in the stall below me. She sat on a stool working the cow’s teats, squeezing streams of white liquid into a pail. When she finished with the cow, she moved on to the next stall and I saw they each held an animal.

  After a while, I turned away and closed my eyes, somehow convinced that sleeping was the safest way to pass the time. A few minutes later, I heard the sound of footsteps below, this time walking with purpose. My heart began to race at the thought that I had been discovered and betrayed. Surely soldiers were on the way to find me. But when I looked down again at the floor below, all I saw was a milking stool set near the ladder. On it was a small loaf of bread and next to it was a pail about half full of milk. Such a feast could not have been left there by mistake, it was intended for someone, but no one was around. Still, if I ate it they would know I was in the barn and then they would look for me in earnest. Wisdom told me to leave it alone but the hunger in my stomach compelled me to act. Throwing caution to the wind, I stole from my hiding place, climbed down the ladder, and snatched up the bread. Even now, when I’m hungry and take the first bite of a meal, I often think of that loaf of bread and the pail of warm, fresh milk. Nothing ever tasted so good.

  In a while I heard voices from outside and looked up to see the woman standing near the house, talking to a man. From the way they talked I was sure he was her husband. I moved closer to the door and peeked out for another look. He was standing beside a truck with his back to the barn. She stood a few meters beyond him, and when she glanced over his shoulder I was certain she made eye contact with me. After a moment, he opened the door of the cab and climbed inside. She moved closer and pushed the door closed behind him. They continued talking through the window of the truck. While she talked to him, she gestured with her hand toward the back of the truck. When I didn’t respond, she glanced in my direction with a knowing look and gestured again.

  Trusting anyone was a risk that often meant the difference between life and death, especially now that the Nazis controlled our lives. But not everyone in Austria agreed with them. There were still those who looked upon us with compassion. The bread and milk had not been left by mistake. They were offered as an act of kindness from a stranger. I wanted to trust her. I needed to trust her. Walking for two days took me closer to my destination but I knew from that experience that unless I found a faster way to travel, I might never reach Vienna. So when the woman gestured once more, I took the hint. I hurried from the barn, climbed into the back
of the truck, and curled up in the corner behind the cab.

  The ride from Baumgarten took me to Grein, a town on the river not quite halfway to Vienna. There we turned from the road onto an unpaved lot beside a store. We idled around to the back and came to a stop alongside a larger truck parked a few meters behind the building. The cab door opened and the man slid from behind the steering wheel.

  As he did, his hand came through the slats on the side of the truck and he dropped a five Reichsmark note beside where I was lying. I looked at it a moment, thinking what a huge sum of money it represented and how he must have dropped it by mistake. Then I snatched it up and shoved it into my pocket.

  A few minutes later I heard footsteps approaching and then the door to the truck beside us opened. When the engine started, I climbed from the truck I was in and crawled into the back of the one beside us. Thankfully, I guessed right. It was headed west and took me all the way to Stockerau.

  I found out later that the farmer and his wife were part of a network that rescued people who escaped from the camp. When the Germans came through the area searching for escapees, they and their friends searched, too. Those whom they found, they gave overnight shelter and did their best to shuttle them as far away from Mauthausen as possible. I never knew their names, or the name of the second driver who took me to Stockerau, but they are to me some of the Righteous Among the Nations, without whom many thousands more of us would have perished during those dark years of German occupation.

  From Stockerau, Vienna was only a day’s walk away. That walk, however, took almost a week to complete. For one thing, German military patrols were much heavier around Vienna, which meant I always had to be on guard, and I found no one offering assistance. Once when I stopped to buy a bit of something to eat, I was certain a woman recognized me and went out to find the soldiers. I left before they arrived, but the added scrutiny meant that inside the city I had to slip from building to building and limit my exposure on the street to only those times when it was absolutely necessary. Making my way to the ghetto was all the more difficult, as I had no means of reckoning its location except by our trek into it from the railway depot when we first arrived, by my short excursion beyond the wall with Tomer, and by what I saw while riding in the truck when we were selected to work for Adolf.