by Robert Elmer
Of course her mother didn't know.
"Come, then," Hanne told her two friends, turning her attention back to where they stood. "I smell food, don't you? Aren't you hungry? Let's listen to the music as we eat."
She didn't need to ask, as she led little Bela and her mother to the line where a thin potato soup was being ladled into small cups and passed around to the newcomers.
"Thank you," Hanne told the older woman who handed her the cup of greasy, lukewarm liquid, along with a chunk of suspiciously green-tinged French bread. But just like the musicians, the woman didn't look up, just held out the cup to the next person in line.
What kind of nightmare village could this be, inhabited by apparitions? Since there was nowhere to sit in the middle of a cobblestone lane, Hanne stood among her traveling companions and sipped at her lukewarm soup, smiling and calling it delicious even as she tried not to gag at the rancid taste. Bela seemed to go along with the charade and didn't complain as she emptied her cup as well. Strange what hunger could do.
While they remained standing and before most had finished eating, a shiny black German staff car with the familiar swastika flags on the front fenders was admitted through the same gate they'd just passed through. The gendarmes obviously recognized an authority and straightened up as the car screeched to a halt on the far side of the road, a safe distance beyond the newcomers and the makeshift feeding station.
The driver jumped from the front and hurried around to open the back door, opening an umbrella as he did. The rain had paused by this time, though. Presently a ramrod-straight Gestapo officer made his appearance at the edge of the light, under his umbrella. The musicians halted in mid-note, making an awkward end of their little concert. Even the soup servers paused what they were doing when he stepped up to make his announcement on the hushed street.
"Welcome to Theresienstadt," he told them in a booming baritone. "I am Kommandant Burger. After you have finished your meal, you will be shown to your barracks, which you will find most comfortable. Then in the morning, you will complete your processing and receive a work assignment. But first, you will have a chance to write home to your friends and loved ones, telling them of the fine reception you've received here. We trust your stay here will be a pleasant one."
His galling words hung in the air as he turned on his heel and returned to his idling car. A moment later one of the older women cried out in fear when it nearly ran her over on its way out of the city. The kommandant's car didn't even slow down. But Bela's mother looked at Hanne with a spark of hope in her eyes.
"At least we'll have a place for the kids to sleep," she whispered."A place for us to sleep."
But there would be no rest just yet. For now they were herded to another series of tables, where they were each given a blank postcard and a pencil, and told to write home of their wonderfully positive treatment.
"Good food, and plenty of it!" yelled a young German officer, strutting about in front of the tables. "Warm, comfortable accommodations. A friendly welcome with music and festivities.You will write of this!"
If only. Hanne turned her card over to see a pretty picture of an alpine peak, then looked up to see the officer squinting directly at her. She swallowed hard and began writing, but could not find the words.
Dear Steffen, she wrote, but her tear fell directly on the "dear."
We have arrived at the town of Terezin, which the Germans call Theresienstadt, and I am well . . . enough. There will be much to do here. Please don't forget me.
She thought about crossing out the last line, which in retrospect seemed a bit melodramatic, but it was too late for that. The officer now paced from table to table, collecting their letters.
"These will be delivered to the Red Cross," he told them."You may address them to whomever you wish."
But the dark-eyed young man next to Hanne had ideas of his own, and she overheard his grumblings.
"Transport unbearable," he said as he wrote, "and the food will make us sick. But at least we've been allowed to keep our belongings. And they say we'll be staying in old military barracks around the city."
"Let me see that," said the officer, snapping away the young man's card. After scanning it quickly he crumpled it in his fist and tossed it aside.
"That was my letter!" protested the young man, but the officer shoved another card at him.
"I said good food, and plenty of it!" he barked. "A friendly welcome. Good music. This you will write!"
The young man accepted the card but did not pick up his pencil. This time he simply ripped the blank card into tiny pieces—which of course was the wrong thing to do. Without hesitation the young officer grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away into a nearby storefront, leaving the others to glance nervously at each other. Who would be next? Hanne finished her note, but as several guards herded them away from the tables she looked back to see her card—and the alpine peaks—flutter to the pavement.
For a moment she thought about turning to try and rescue it, but perhaps it was just as well. Steffen would be better not knowing she was well enough, when in reality she had never felt worse. She clutched her stomach, feeling as if she might lose the potato soup in the midst of all this yelling and shoving.
"All luggage!" The big gendarme now bellowed, over and over, in accented German. "Baggage inspection!"
Apparently he knew the language no better than did they, but well enough to get his point across. Hanne looked nervously at Bela's mother, whose bag was suddenly ripped from her arms and torn open, like lions attacking helpless prey. So much for the warm welcome. But no one objected, or only feebly. Now Hanne had no choice but to add the woman's other bag to the "inspection," as well as her own little travel purse, which several of the gendarmes eagerly rifled through for anything of value.
Several meters away one of the men laughed when he found and claimed a gold pocket watch, then held it up to his ear. An older woman raised her hand to protest the theft, then apparently thought better of it. What could they do? Another gendarme discovered a small engraved music box, which he tossed to a friend. Fortunately there would be nothing of value in Hanne's bag, at least not to these men.
"They can't do this!" whispered Bela's mother, but obviously they could and they did. Hanne just stood by with her hands curled into fists, waiting for this cruel storm to pass as the men shoved the bags back towards them.
"Thank you," she whispered, because her lips betrayed her in their automatic response. Perhaps the gendarme did not hear her, but she thought he hesitated for just a moment before releasing her bag.
And it went on. Five minutes later shouting guards separated the women from the men—with considerable shouting on their part, and renewed crying and wailing on the part of the Jews. Hanne could not even look at the young couples being pried apart. Instead she tried to reassure a young teen girl whose father was dragged away with the men.
"It's only for the time being, I'm sure. You'll see him again."
Perhaps yes. Perhaps no. The girl watched with exhausted resignation as her father disappeared with the other men.Then several other guards escorted the women away from the processing area in groups of ten or fifteen, parading them through narrow cobblestone streets glistening with rain. This time Bela stumbled alongside, holding Hanne's hand. Only the occasional movement in an upper story window told them anyone else was alive. More phantoms, she supposed.
"Just a minute, now," Bela's mother told her daughter, her voice barely above a whisper, "and we'll be sleeping in our own comfy bed. You wait and see."
Around the next corner they came upon a row of ancient two-story buildings, each one leaning upon its neighbor to remain standing. The lower floors had perhaps once been shops, with small windows facing the street and signs with Czech writing, full of strange accent marks and even strangerlooking words. Most of the windows were broken; some crudely boarded over. But when one of the gendarmes shone his light inside, all Hanne could see was row after row of crude bunk beds. The guard p
ushed open one of the doors and pointed.
"In here?" Hanne asked, pausing to peek inside.
"Ja, ja," replied the guard, sweeping his hand impatiently at their group. "Barracks tomorrow. Tonight you sleep in here.Plenty of room."
There would be no arguing, despite the fact that at least thirty or forty women and girls had already been crammed into the small shop for the night. Perhaps more. In the dark it was difficult to tell how many. At least half huddled under blankets, two or three to a bunk, with hardly enough room even to sit up. The others had curled up with their blankets around the floor, leaving nowhere to walk. But the door slammed behind them so that Hanne and the others were left standing, suitcases in hand. An angry voice berated them from across the room, probably saying something like "Get out!" or "Be quiet!"
"I'm sorry," said Hanne, "but I don't understand your language."
The woman repeated herself, a little more loudly. But it would do no good. The woman knew no Danish, or German, and Hanne knew no Czech. Hanne could only stand in the darkness, tears flowing down her cheeks.
"Mor," came Bela's small voice. "Where is my bed? I'm so tired. I don't feel so well."
28
TEREZIN CONCENTRATION CAMP, CZECHOSLOVAKIA
TUESDAY MORNING, 12 OKTOBER 1943
Who takes the child by the hand takes the mother by the heart.
—DANISH PROVERB
The next morning Hanne knew she could have done something for Bela, if she'd only had the right medicines.She mopped the little girl's forehead with a rag torn from the sleeve of her own blouse and dipped in a bucket of cold water of questionable clarity. She grabbed the arm of an official- looking woman who came hurrying through their overcrowded sleeping room. Wearing a yellow armband of some sort, surely this woman would be able to help.
"Pardon me." Hanne used her best German, which the woman was sure to understand. "This little girl needs something for her . . . I'm sorry, I don't know what the word is in German, but you can see, can't you? She needs medication."
The woman frowned but did stop for a moment to glance at Bela's little body, shaking with a fever that had attacked with a vengeance overnight. By now poor Bela would not even respond to her name.
"You may take her to the dispensary, if you like," replied the woman, as if they were talking about an inconvenience she would rather not deal with at the moment.
"They'll have medicines there?"
"No."
"What do you mean no?" Hanne snapped. "Don't you understand? We need medicines! Where are the medicines in this horrible place?"
The woman just shrugged and walked away.
"I asked you a question!" Hanne nearly screamed, but the woman wouldn't stop. So Hanne fumed and tried not to look at Bela's mother, who still had her hands full with a crying baby.
With permission from an outside guard Hanne took Bela to the dispensary anyway, a building five blocks away, crowded with dying people who sat as they did all around this city of Jews. So many sat in the hallways with the pitiful, lost look Hanne was coming to recognize. How long had they been here? So many simply waited to die.
But not this one, Hanne promised herself. Not yet.
Gritting her teeth, she carried Bela in her arms through the crowds, stepping over anyone who would not or could not move. A gray-haired man in a dirty white coat appeared to be treating some of his patients at a table near the center of the room. With what, Hanne could not be sure. In any case, she would bring Bela as close as she could, to find whatever care she could. Surely she could do something.
Bela looked up at her with wide, red-rimmed eyes, lucid again for a moment. She could barely speak for the chattering of her teeth, but she pulled Hanne closer and whispered in her ear.
"Is this what Jerusalem is going to be like, Hanne?"
"Oh, honey, no." Hanne looked around at the patients in that crowded room with the peeling wallpaper of faded flowers.It smelled to Hanne of urine and death, and certainly not the way a real clinic ought to smell. "Jerusalem is going to be so much better. You'll see."
Hanne felt her cheeks flame the way they had when she was six, when she had stolen a cookie from her mother's kitchen and had made up a preposterous story about her imaginary friend Sofie taking it instead. Her mother had instantly recognized the fantastic lie, just as surely as Bela would now recognize the more hopeful lie Hanne let slip from her lips.But the little girl closed her eyes and nodded, allowing Hanne to help her up on what she thought to be an examining table.
"Why are you bringing her here?" asked the bespectacled older man, the one Hanne assumed was a doctor. He looked to be perhaps her father's age, wiry and spry, no taller than she herself. He looked over his glasses at her from the other side of the table, where he was bandaging a man who had obviously been beaten. He spoke in heavily accented German, obviously a Czech.
"I'm a nurse," she told him, steeling herself for a battle—or whatever it took. "This girl has influenza symptoms. Or perhaps meningitis. A high fever. Headache. Sore limbs. Fatigue.She needs help."
"We have no medicine to speak of." He frowned and lifted his hands. "Today not even an aspirin. Haven't they told you?"
"Yes they told me, only I wasn't prepared to believe it."
"You're new. Try to get her to drink something and put her in the isolation ward over there." He pointed with his chin in the direction of a nearby door. "Do you understand? Isolationen. And then you can come back here and give me a hand."
"No, but you don't understand. She needs—"
"I do understand, nurse. I only wish I did not. Now take her to isolation. If she really does have the influenza or—heaven help us—meningitis, we don't want to be introducing her illness to the entire city. But yes, as a matter of fact, I could use the help."
She looked down at the quivering bundle in her arms and prayed for something she could do—anything—to help Bela.Getting angry didn't seem to help, did it? As the little girl shook with fever and convulsions, Hanne could only stroke her burning forehead and follow the doctor's orders. Bela groaned now, probably no longer conscious.
"Shh, it's okay." Hanne thought of what she might have to tell Bela's mother, waiting outside. "You're going to be okay."
But by this time she didn't even believe her own words.
"So. What do you think of the Paradise Ghetto so far?"
The little doctor grunted as they carried an older woman from the exam table to a cot on the far side of the clinic. The woman, who had collapsed earlier that day and who perhaps had some kind of kidney problems, tried her best to walk, but could not, so Hanne took the woman's other side and did what she could.
After just an hour at the clinic with no medicines and no modern medical equipment, Hanne wasn't sure how to answer politely.
"Some paradise. Is that what they call it?"
"Paradise Ghetto, yes. Hitler's gift to the Jews. You'll see more of it, I'm sure. The parks, the lovely boulevards, the flowers, the happy children playing in the quaint cobblestone streets. It's quite lovely. Oh, wait. That was the propaganda movie version I had in mind. It's so easy to confuse the two, if one isn't careful."
She wasn't sure how to respond to his dark humor, other than to flash a confused smile. But he kept his voice low and always seemed aware of every time a German guard or Czech gendarme might be entering the building. In fact, it wasn't long before she could tell without turning around, just by the way Dr. Aleksander Janecek brightened up and began saying cheery things like "This one will be up and back to work in no time!" or "That's going very well now, isn't it?"
But then as soon as the soldier left the clinic, he would return to the controlled desperation she had seen of him from the start. And it wasn't long before she had to ask.
"Why do you say such things?"
He paused to wipe his brow with the back of his hand and looked at her with red-rimmed eyes. Did this fellow never sleep?
"I have tried it both ways, Nurse Hanne Abrahamsen. In the past I have a
llowed myself to be surly and demanding, yelling and screaming at anyone who would listen that we need this and that medicine, or this and that supply. Much like yourself when you first stepped in. I thought it made me feel better. But do you know what it brought me?"
She shook her head, waiting for him to go on. He put his thumb and forefinger together in a zero.
"It brought me absolutely nothing. Worse than nothing.I found that when I complained the loudest, my patients would simply be transported from the dispensary, never to be seen again."
"To where?"
He shrugged. "They say there is a death camp, more than one death camp, to which they are transporting our people, and that this is just a transfer station. But you and I know this is the end for all too many, do we not?"
Hanne had to nod. She had already seen more than she cared to see.
"So now I put on a friendly face," he said. "I do what I can, and every once in a while they throw me a bone. Perhaps a few bottles of aspirin here, a few bandages there."
"And you're satisfied to work like that?"
"Satisfied? Ha!" He snorted and shook his head, as if the concept had never occurred to him. "We don't use that word to describe anything or anyone in this place. Satisfied, indeed.You're new here and you're Danish. Danes have never dealt with hardship. But you'll learn, my dear. You'll learn."
Hanne spent the rest of the day learning, doing what she could, following the doctor, holding the hands of desperately ill patients for whom they could do little or nothing, changing bandages, emptying bed pans, smiling at little children with a wide variety of ailments brought on or made desperate by a lack of nutrition and seriously overcrowded, unsanitary living conditions. She checked in on little Bela every few minutes, changing the washrag on her forehead, praying for help. And she caught the doctor watching her once, shaking his head with an expression of pity on his face—or was it exasperation?—and she wondered if he thought her still too naïve. Perhaps more time in this nightmare might change her.
