A Sparrow in Terezin

by Kristy Cambron

  “To work for them.”

  Please, Lord, she prayed. Please let them bring him back.

  “I cannot take a trip today. They’ll be watching us.”

  “They won’t be able to watch everything.” Though no one could possibly overhear their conversation, Kája lowered her voice. Something about the vastness of the rooms and their eerie, echoing walls made her think that even they had ears. “Matka, I saw an advertisement at the train depot. There is a Hitler Youth Parade in Wenceslas Square today—in the shadow of the clock. We will pass by them. You’ll see.”

  Izabel Makovský looked up, dazed it seemed, until she recognized Kája. Her eyes finally focused. “Kateřina, dear. What is this costume you’re wearing? You’re not suitably dressed.”

  Kája looked down at her wrinkled blouse and uniform skirt. No—she wasn’t dressed in the finery that her mother’s propriety had always demanded. But then, that was before the war. Everything was different now. Didn’t she realize that?

  “I know. I’ll tidy up straightaway. But first,” she said, reaching out to offer her arm. “May I help you up?”

  Izabel kept hold of the pearls in one hand and braced against Kája’s arm with the other.

  She noticed the broken tea cup when she stood and stopped to touch a gentle fingertip to the pieces that remained.

  “A cup,” she noted, turning them over in her fingertips. “I’ve broken the last one. I thought we were to have tea today but I couldn’t find the other set.”

  Kája swallowed hard, trying to understand. “Tea?”

  “Yes. The ladies were to pay a call. I wouldn’t want us to look shabby. We’ll bake our best batch of loupáks. Or perhaps a cherry koláče? The fruit pastry is always appropriate.” She waved a pointed finger at Kája. “And I know it is your favorite.”

  Favorite or not, Kája doubted there was a cherry koláče left in the world. Fruit filling, yeast, sugar . . . who could find such things now but in dreams? She was ever so hungry and until that moment, hadn’t acknowledged the intense grumbling in her stomach. She put it and the talk of baked delicacies out of her mind and nodded, letting the matter go.

  “And we must fix your hair.” Izabel took one of Kája’s deep fiery locks in her fingertips. “Pinned up, perhaps? And the pearls. Make sure you wear them today.”

  Kája angled her mother around the remains of the shattered porcelain at their feet and walked with her toward the hallway.

  “It won’t be a grand dinner party like in the old days.” Izabel peered outside to the empty, rain-covered terrace. “But a ladies’ tea nonetheless. And we must be ready for it.”

  Kája had no idea what to think.

  She felt the heart breaking in her chest to admit that her mother was slipping away. She was frail in body and even more so in mind. Her own world was alive, but extended not a day beyond the parties of the early 1930s. To enjoy tea in the parlor with pearls and delicately pinned hair . . . it was difficult to imagine that had been their world.

  Soft moonlight pressed in from the back windows. It danced upon them as they continued walking through the dark hall. And without warning, without a split second to ready her mind, Prague became the nightmare Kája had feared.

  They stopped, limbs frozen and breathing shallow. Something was very wrong.

  Truck engines roared and brakes screeched outside in the street. Izabel dug her nails into Kája’s palm. They both stared at the shadows of men, soldiers with guns, their menacing forms outlined as they ran past the wall of drapes covering the windows.

  The shouting came closer, so near it rattled the windows in their panes.

  Kája knew she had but a moment to react.

  Quickly, she deposited her mother in a chair behind the dining room door, hoping that if the front doors were broken in, they might not see the slight woman in the shadows. Kája ran up the stairs to her room, stopping to retrieve her uniform hat and jacket. She shoved her shoes in Liam’s bag and having already hidden the travel papers in a loose board in her window seat, thundered back downstairs.

  She ran through the foyer, almost slipped in her bare feet on her way back into the kitchen. With no more than seconds to make a decision, Kája stared at the roaring flames on the hearth and whispered, “Liam, I’m sorry . . .” before tossing her uniform jacket and hat to be devoured by the licking of hungry flames.

  With the sounds of glass breaking in the street and murderous voices shouting loud, Kája turned from the burning uniform and hurried back to her mother’s side. She held Izabel’s hand, frail and ghostly as it was, and tried to whisper words of reassurance in the dark.

  “Surely they know that Father is a doctor. They will not take us away, not when they need his services.” Izabel’s hand trembled to the point of convulsion. Kája brought it to her lips and kissed her palm, salty tears dripping down. “We are in God’s care. We are his. They will not harm us. We must be strong and courageous.”

  Kája repeated the promises in Joshua 1:9 over and over, believing the words though the shouting continued outside. Izabel bit her bottom lip over the sound of agonizing screams as gunfire erupted.

  It wasn’t until they heard the splintering wood and shattering glass in their own entryway that Kája was forced to acknowledge the truth. She was sorry—so very sorry—for she’d have to break her promise to Liam.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  July 10, 1942

  Theresienstadt Concentration Camp

  Terezin

  In a place called Terezin, Kája’s beloved clock would have no time. This was certain.

  They’d traveled for days. With no hour. No recognizable time save for the darkening of the sky as the sun hid away and night bled back onto the horizon. Kája was keenly aware of the lack of it, thinking on God’s timing instead, willing her heart to stay strong as evil unfolded around them.

  The train lumbered on its tracks, loud with forgotten souls in tow, and pulled into the station just as evening was falling. They were greeted again with shouting, harsh voices that crept up Kája’s spine as a menacing chill. They exited the train and were force-marched into a line extending down the length of the platform. The old, the young, the feeble and wounded in spirit; they lumbered along, hauling their suitcases more than three kilometers through dust and dirt to the city called Terezin.

  Her father had described it as a town.

  He was right. Kája found it curiously provincial. And though she’d read about the Nazis’ death camps, it seemed she hadn’t landed in one, exactly. This was more of a halfway point, a holding pen for Jews. She’d heard it called a ghetto. And she’d heard there were constantly transports out from the ghettos to the death camps.

  At first glance the little town with its grove of trees and tired old buildings didn’t appear threatening like she would have imagined. There were wooden fences on the walk, blocking out something from view on the other side. And there were large barracks, shops even, and dirty streets all along the way.

  Those interned in the little city were somber, their expressions vacant. The old and feeble perched on benches, sitting like lost birds without a tree. Others walked about as dirt-covered ghosts, haunting the streets, their expressions of despair the most vivid thing about them.

  Kája swallowed hard and sheltered her mother with an arm around her shoulders.

  They came to a courtyard with multistoried brick buildings that boasted an aged stucco-like finish and lines of cracks up the walls that looked like fishnets. Flaking paint and arched openings cut into the wall on each floor, in which laundry had been draped over ledges to dry in the sun. The earth in the courtyard was dark, black almost, and appeared wet as the prisoners’ tired feet kept marching on.

  Soldiers shouted, causing Izabel to jump in Kája’s arms. The rough barking of the SS predicated the formation of lines and the great mass of frightened, wide-eyed prisoners who looked around in shock at the ruggedness of their new home.

  Nazi officials stood at the front of e
ach line, reading over papers the Jews produced, then shouted and pointed in the direction in which they would go. It was quite systematic for a hoard of people who had no idea what was happening to them. Kája looked around, confounded at the proficiency with which the SS accounted for each man, woman, and child of the houses they’d emptied in Prague. They were efficient in their brutality. A particularly old man was struck down in the courtyard and beaten about the head for no apparent reason.

  Izabel cried out then and Kája’s attention was brought back.

  She grasped her mother round the shoulders, turning her head from the horrific scene. Izabel looked very much like a wounded bird as she fumbled to step in line, trying to cover her ears with her fists over the agony of the man’s cries.

  “Matka,” she whispered against her ear. “You must look away. Do you hear me? Don’t watch. Try not to listen.”

  Izabel sobbed into her hand, a silent escape of emotion that was deadened by her palm.

  “I’ll stay with you,” Kája said, though her voice faltered just a bit and she cleared her throat before continuing with a sturdier voice. “We must be strong and courageous. God will sustain us.”

  “But God is not here.” Izabel shuddered and lowered her head, feeble as a mouse. “Surely he is not.”

  “We’ll just follow this line and do what they say. Yes?” she added, even as her voice continued teetering on the waves of fear. “We will show them that we are strong. We can work. We’ll work and survive this.”

  Kája gripped her mother’s shoulders and ushered her to the line in which she’d been pushed. She scanned the crowd, noticing that the women were being separated from the men and boys. She finally found her father across the way, engaged in conversation with one of the SS officials. He looked to be explaining something as he nervously shifted from foot to foot and glanced back in their direction every few seconds. Izabel shuddered again, and Kája diverted her attention back down to her mother’s crumpling form.

  She patted her shoulder and murmured, “Hush now, Matka. God will watch over us.”

  It had begun to rain then, a sorrowful crying from the sky. And a pang struck her in the moment, with the weight of what she faced now achingly clear. She pictured Liam, waiting at a train station, wondering where she was, standing tall through a steady rain like the one that dampened them now. He couldn’t know it, but she’d keep him waiting, never to show.

  She brushed the thought away as her father approached, the line pushing forward. His hair was wet, his glasses speckled with tiny drops of water.

  “Father,” Kája whispered, even as thunder created a rumbling backdrop behind them. “What will happen to us? To all the people here?”

  “We can help these people more by not interfering.”

  “What can you mean?” She pointed over to the end of a block of buildings where two bodies lay in the rain-swollen gutters. “Look at what they’ve done!”

  “Shh!” He hushed her without pause. “They have orders to send the Jews who are strong enough to work. There are factories here.”

  “They want us to work?”

  “Yes.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “And I have signed a contract—it is a Home Purchase Contract with the SS, through the Union Bank of Prague. It is a statement of our property, our assets. We sign it over to the SS and they will give us protection.”

  “What kind of protection?”

  “Better food rations. The best lodgings. A safer place to work.” He furrowed his brow, looking around as if every somber set of ears were listening to his whispered dreams. “They have allowed us to take more luggage. We can bring our valuables with us. To sell. To keep heirlooms . . . They do not afford all this privilege, so you must remain quiet about this. But all is accounted for. I have made arrangements for when we reach the front of the line. Do you understand?”

  Kája nodded, though it was with half effort and little hope.

  With what she knew in the back of her mind, of Jews dying systematically in camps in the east, she couldn’t believe such compassion would exist in the SS. But still she agreed, without words, and followed her father’s fanciful dreaming.

  Her father nodded reassurance when they were careened off from the men, and she nodded back. They’d be privileged, he’d said. They’d be taken care of. Their wares would be safe. And what they witnessed before them surely would not be their lot to pass.

  But contracts with the SS looked to mean nothing here.

  The contents of Izabel’s suitcase—furs and jewelry, evening gowns of silk and chiffon, even her grandmother’s pearl necklace and earrings—they were all confiscated. Kája wondered if her father’s suitcase was also taken, though there was no way to tell for sure. The line for the men was moving much faster than theirs.

  Kája was grateful she’d taken Liam’s necklace from her neck and hidden it deep in the seam of the worn leather satchel she’d carried. It was the only way she could think to keep it from being confiscated. It was a risk, she knew, even as the satchel was taken and inspected. All the while she held her breath, as deft hands searched the pockets and ran fingertips along the seams, feeling for bumps. Stacks of confiscated suitcases were tossed into great piles on wagons posted on both sides, but luckily the satchel was in poor condition, and it was returned to her without incident. Some were allowed to keep their wares, and she considered herself among the lucky for it.

  They were given used clothes that reeked of some cleansing agent, which she bundled into the leather satchel on the walk to their assigned barracks. Kája kept one arm tight around her mother’s shoulders and the other deftly holding on to the satchel and roll of blankets that had been tossed at them.

  Kája had no sooner deposited her mother in the overcrowded barracks than she heard her name shouted out by a woman standing in the crowded building with a clipboard and a star on her dress. Kája responded immediately, looking up to see the woman’s scowl, and replied, “I am here.”

  She approached and the woman looked her over, then marked a sheet on her clipboard.

  “You are Kateřina Makovský from Prague?”

  She stood before the woman, nervous but head held high. If Liam was right and she was inordinately stubborn, Kája had an inkling it would be a necessary component to her survival in this place. She notched her chin and answered, “Yes. I am.”

  The woman handed over a sheet of paper, a small rectangle, then answered, “You are to report to the ration line, then to the Jewish Council for medical inspection and work assignment. Memorize this number,” she cautioned, though her voice was staunch and formulaic. “You must know this number. It is how you will be referred to from this point on. Do you understand?”

  Kája nodded. “Yes.”

  “If you are asked, you must give this number immediately. At all times. There will be no opportunity for remembering.”

  “I understand. And my mother, Izabel Makovský? Will she be given a number as well?”

  The woman looked over the sheets of paper affixed to the clipboard, rustling the papers slightly as her eyes scanned the names.

  “She is not on my list.” She waved Kája off and called another name, dismissing her to follow the orders that had been given.

  Kája checked on her mother, who was cramped into a bunk with three other elderly women. She kissed her forehead and whispered, “I will return in a few moments. You just rest here a while, okay? I’m going to get us some food.”

  She strode out of the barracks and was greeted by a surprisingly cool rush of evening air.

  It was July, but northern Czechoslovakia wasn’t as warm as London could be. The fortress at Terezin seemed to house its own layer of cold, packed in with the coolness of earth and some shade trees amongst the towering buildings all around.

  Kája had felt this coldness when they’d walked the long road from the depot. She felt it now, and saw it in the lines of poor souls trailing out of a ramshackle building that looked like a stiff wind would tear the lot of it d
own. People appeared woeful as they waited for their food rations, whatever it turned out to be, standing about like tatter-clothed ghosts without a corner to haunt.

  “Kája.” He father’s whisper drew her to an alley on the way to the courtyard.

  She looked about and, relieved, ducked in to meet him.

  “How is Matka?”

  “She’s fine for now,” Kája whispered, shoulders hunched in toward him. “I left her to rest on a bunk. That’s all they have here—wooden plank beds three high, with thin blankets, and that’s if you’re lucky enough to find an open one. I had to steal a bunk when others weren’t looking, and three other women climbed right in with her.”

  If he was shocked at her admission, he let it pass. “That’s the way of it here, I’m afraid. Until I arrange for our new lodgings. We’ll have to manage a few nights.”

  “But there are women sleeping in stacks on a concrete floor. There’s not nearly enough room for all the people here. And I’ve seen only one lavatory for what looks like hundreds of people in our barrack. One toilet and wash basin! Why, the line to use it was extending out the door. What are the SS thinking with conditions like this? You’re a doctor. Surely you must know how quickly disease will spread.”

  He nodded sorrowfully and pulled her in closer by the sleeve of her blouse.

  “I have made arrangements. It may take some time, but I promise I will do what I can to get us out of the barracks.”

  “Is that where you are, in barracks?”

  He nodded. “Yes. It’s the same for the men where I will sleep.”

  “And how long will it be before you can get us out?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They gave me a number.” She held out the paper to him, hand trembling slightly. Kája prayed it wasn’t indicative of being placed on a transport list to somewhere even more horrible. “What does that mean?”

  He scanned the document, then handed it back.

  “This is your Passage Permit,” he answered, his voice laden with caution. “You must have it at all times. Hide it in your shoe if you must, for it is like gold here. It allows you passage outside of the barracks so you may go to work.”