The Voyage of Their Life

by Diane Armstrong

  Later Leon discovered that two of his closest friends had been caught and shot. The survivors were fortunate in being allowed to remain in Switzerland, because many other refugees were sent back over the border to certain death. His group was interned in a camp located in the Ecole de Charmilles near Geneva for eight months. They slept on straw on the wooden floor of a large classroom, guarded day and night by Swiss guards and not allowed out.

  He was still in the Swiss camp when Rosh Hashana came round, but they had no shofar. Leon, who was a feisty ten year old at the time, was playing in the yard when he saw a young man walking past in the long coat and prayer tassels of Orthodox Jews. ‘Can you get us a shofar?’ Leon called out. The young man soon returned with the ram’s horn and passed it under the wire fence. Leon became a hero.

  During the service on the Derna, which in the absence of a rabbi one of the passengers conducted, a little girl wandered into the library and stood fascinated among the swaying, murmuring worshippers. It was little Veronica Matussevich, unaware that her frantic parents were searching for her all over the ship. Distraught at being unable to find her, they had gone to the captain who was considering turning the ship around in case she’d fallen overboard when one of the congregation brought her back to her relieved family.

  For the Jews who had not admitted their religion when filling in their application forms, the Rosh Hashana service posed a dilemma. Even those who were not religious wanted to take part in a service that stirred unbearably painful memories of parents, home and family life. Not to pray on this solemn occasion was unthinkable.

  One of these passengers was Zosia Rogozinski, who was travelling with her husband and two-year-old daughter Edie. Zosia was already panicking at the thought of life in Australia. Although her optimistic and resourceful nature had helped her to survive the Holocaust, the rigours of the voyage made her doubt their decision to migrate to a country they knew nothing about.

  After seeing Colombo, her worries redoubled. Would Australia be equally primitive and strange? Her friend Fela Feigin, who was travelling with her husband and small son, was also wringing her hands. She should have waited for the American visa from her sister instead of accepting the Australian permit just because it had arrived first.

  Seeing so many Jews gathered in prayer aroused considerable discussion among some of the other passengers. Since the Jewish quota was supposed to be small, how come there were so many of them on board? Archbishop Rafalsky, however, had no such qualms. He wished the Jews, including his troubled young friend Sam Fiszman, a happy New Year and urged his compatriots to do the same. Curious about this festival, Arnold Ohtra asked one of the Jews what year it was according to their calendar, but the man did not know. The observant Jews knew that it was the year 5708.

  On the morning of 5 October, the sun’s rays shining through the clouds formed a silvery stripe on the horizon, like a silken ribbon tied around the belly of the world. As my father had told me that we would soon be crossing the equator, I wondered whether this was it. Although raindrops fell, shirring the water until it resembled grey taffeta, the weather was as sultry as ever and everyone trudged around the deck or slumped on deck chairs, mopping their necks and foreheads.

  Our only distraction was the Miss Derna contest, which had been the main topic of conversation among the likely candidates for the past few days. Rita was convinced that Helle was the most beautiful girl on board and was certain to win. But although secretly she would have loved to be chosen, Helle was too proud to enter such a contest. It was demeaning, she thought, for any self-respecting girl to push herself forward like that. It would be like saying, ‘Here I am, choose me!’

  Rita was still meeting her stowaway in secret. He only had to gaze at her with those passionate dark eyes and her knees would start to wobble. But she noticed that he often looked worried. Australia was the next port of call, but since he had no permit to enter the country, he had no idea what would become of him, and dreaded the prospect of being sent back to his miserable existence in North Africa.

  As he confided his problems in that seductive accent, his eyes never leaving her face, Rita’s heart ached for him. If only there was something she could do to help.

  Now she rushed up to Helle, beaming. ‘I’ve got it all worked out!’ she said. ‘It was Philippe’s idea. He said if we got married, he’d be able to enter Australia legally!’ Ignoring the concern on Helle’s face, she continued. ‘I agreed. Philippe is going to ask the captain to marry us.’

  Helle was aghast. ‘How can you possibly think of marrying someone you don’t really know, just so he can get into Australia?’

  But Rita was too impetuous to be dissuaded by the cool voice of reason. ‘If it doesn’t work out, we can go our separate ways. I just want to help him.’

  After breakfast, the two girls followed the other passengers to the top deck to hear who had been chosen as Miss Derna. Helle’s heart beat faster as they waited for the announcement. John Papalas, the first officer, stepped forward and led a wisp of a girl by the hand. Placing a paper crown with the letter D on her smooth fair hair, and draping a Panamanian flag around her thin shoulders as a cloak, he announced, ‘Please welcome our Miss Derna!’ It was Ginette.

  Although she had started off being a lonely waif, Ginette had by now become everyone’s pet. Mrs Frant adored her and Dr Frant’s usually sharp glance softened whenever he saw this affectionate little girl who often snuggled into his lap. The captain had taken her under his wing and sometimes invited her to come to his cabin or sit at his table, which made her feel special. Thrilled at having been singled out from all the passengers as Miss Derna, Ginette beamed as she curtseyed to enthusiastic applause. Looking on, her little friend Haneczka pouted. She was just as pretty and her bow was bigger than Ginette’s. Why hadn’t she been chosen?

  Although Haneczka wasn’t aware of it at the time, she and Ginette had more in common than pretty faces and big bows. Like Ginette, she too had spent the war years being cared for by Catholic foster-parents. After having been palmed off to several people in Byelorussia, including a priest, she’d spent the past two years with a family she had become attached to. In 1945, when her mother found her, her foster-mother asked: ‘Do you want to go with that Jewess?’ Haneczka had no idea she was Jewish and didn’t want to leave, so the foster-mother abducted her, hid her near a river and refused to let her go. For a time, Haneczka’s mother went along with her demands and bought the foster-mother a sewing machine and whatever else she asked for, but in the end she decided to put an end to this charade and collect her child. Shocked at being forcibly reunited with her mother, Haneczka was shattered shortly afterwards when someone tore off the cross she wore around her neck and flung it into the fire. As a result of her traumatic experiences, she couldn’t eat for two weeks. That was when she discovered that food was a weapon she could use to control people. On board the Derna, however, most of us lost our appetite and Haneczka was no exception.

  After the coronation of Miss Derna, an announcement in several languages invited both young and old to don bathing suits and meet on the forward deck at three o’clock to celebrate the arrival of King Neptune. The captain, sporting a festive paper hat, arrived with his acolytes, the tiny Miss Derna and Colonel Hershaw, who urged everyone to salute King Neptune. As they walked along the thin red line that led to the mythical monarch of the seas and bent to kiss his hand, they were struck by a jet of water from a hose wielded by the crew. After everyone had performed their obeisance, the crew took great delight in catching the pretty young girls and pushing them into the tarpaulin swimming pool. Although most of the young people enjoyed the distraction, Helle noted in her journal that evening that the whole event had been pathetic.

  The following day Rita experienced a distraction of a less pleasant kind. Her mother had discovered her plan to marry the stowaway and was horrified. Ordering Rita to stay in the cabin, she went to discuss the situation with her brother. Shortly afterwards the captain, to whom Rita had n
ever spoken before, sent for her.

  Trembling with apprehension, she entered his cabin and found it surprisingly austere. Although the captain’s German was basic, his meaning was clear. In a quiet but forceful voice he said it had come to his attention that she planned to marry a stowaway. ‘I’m speaking to you as your father would have spoken if he had been here,’ he said. At the mention of her dead father, tears sprang to Rita’s eyes and she looked down at her tightly clasped hands. ‘You are a kind-hearted girl, but you can’t marry this fellow just because you feel sorry for him. I won’t hear of it!’

  Now that we had crossed the equator, the monotony of the voyage returned and the old irritations reasserted themselves. Evening thunderstorms came regularly, but although the gusts of torrential rain that ricocheted off the waves cooled the air for a while, the rain only increased the humidity. While some passengers wanted the portholes opened to catch the momentary breeze, others slammed them shut to prevent moisture from seeping into their bedclothes and making them damp and mouldy. As it was, the sheets were rarely changed. Helle waged war with a steward who kept running into her cabin to close the porthole that she kept opening. Leon continued to berate his cabin-mates for stepping on his blanket instead of using the ladder.

  Fred Silberstein was exasperated by the lax standards of hygiene on board. No one seemed to clean the washrooms, scrub the toilets or change the bed linen. Whenever he wanted fresh bedclothes, he had to pull them off his bunk himself, carry them to the steamy laundry where the walls ran with moisture, and argue with the belligerent laundry staff.

  Colonel Hershaw was annoyed with the captain. Despite his stated intention, Captain Papalas had not discharged Dr Themelis in Colombo after all.

  ‘What to do?’ The captain’s thick eyebrows arched above his mild brown eyes while he spread his pudgy hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘He came to see me the night before Colombo and begged to stay. He had tears in his eyes. He said, “I am not young any more. Who will give me a job? What will become of me?” But I am sure that we will see an improvement from now on,’ the captain said. ‘He promised.’

  Colonel Hershaw couldn’t conceal his contempt for the captain’s weakness. It was naïve to put any credence in this incompetent medico’s self-pitying tears, and irresponsible to place the health of the entire ship in jeopardy through misguided pity. As it was, he felt the Derna had been extraordinarily lucky that no epidemic had broken out as yet, and that no one had been poisoned by the rotten lamb. But to hope that this good fortune would continue for several more weeks was tempting fate.

  It seemed to Captain Papalas that the problems he had to cope with on this voyage were never-ending. Gloomily, he surveyed the number of worshippers celebrating the Jewish New Year. He had nothing against Jews but even a cursory glance at this crowd revealed that he was carrying far more of them than regulations allowed. Turning to Silva Rae at the dining table he sighed. ‘I wonder what will happen when we get to Australia and they find out that we’ve exceeded the quota. We might as well turn the ship around and go straight to Israel!’

  Not long after the Derna had crossed the equator, Ella’s brother Anton* became ill. He had been strumming his guitar on deck when he suddenly doubled over and winced as a spasm jabbed his stomach. When the pain grew worse and the colour drained from his face, Ella ran to Dr Frant for help. ‘It’s probably food poisoning,’ he told her. ‘He should eat as little as possible.’ But instead of improving, Anton deteriorated. His face was the colour of the ashes the crew flung overboard and he vomited and groaned with pain. Summoned again, Dr Frant took his temperature, looked at his thickly coated tongue and palpated his tender abdomen.

  There was little doubt that the lad had appendicitis, and that posed a serious problem. He was not a general surgeon and had no surgical instruments with him, not even sutures. There was no point even considering the ship’s doctor, to whom he wouldn’t have entrusted a sick cat, and in any case the Derna had no operating facilities. And Fremantle, according to the officers, was still about ten days away. All he could do was reassure the brother and sister and hope that the inflammation would subside.

  Some of the Greek seamen who had befriended Anton offered their advice. They were fleeing the oppressive right-wing government of their country and emerged on deck at night to breathe the salty air and sing the heroic songs of the partisans. Although they had no common language, Anton had responded to the mood of their songs and accompanied them on the guitar. ‘Your brother must eat something or he will die,’ they told Ella. Every day they smuggled something nourishing out of the kitchen for him: two tiny eggs, a little broth or some barley.

  Anxious not to alarm Ella, Dr Frant continued to make reassuring, non-committal remarks which only infuriated her. Although he was their guardian on the ship, he was just stalling, playing for time, refusing to take responsibility, she fumed. And what about that other doctor on board, the Greek one with the bulbous nose? Why didn’t he do something? She sat beside her sick brother all day in the shady area near the bridge where the officers had let him spread out his blanket, her mind churning. Had they survived the Holocaust for him to die on this accursed ship? She couldn’t bear to think of having to tell their mother in Prague that her adored son had died on the way to Australia because no one had known what to do. Her mother would probably blame her.

  Ella stared moodily at the sea as she shielded her eyes from the light glancing off the waves. The clear green colour of the Indian Ocean reminded her of the night she had arrived in Auschwitz. It must have been around two in the morning when the cattle truck jammed with prisoners had finally reached its destination. With guards yelling, whips cracking, dogs barking, she and her father were herded along an alley lined with poplars silhouetted against an emerald sky. For one moment time stopped, the terror in her heart subsided and the ugliness around her vanished as she stood transfixed by the surreal beauty of the scene. Even when she discovered that this vision owed its existence to the fumes of the Zyklon B used in the gas chambers, its eerie radiance stayed imprinted on her mind.

  Within minutes of arriving at the Nazis’ death factory, Ella was separated from her father and never saw him again. When she asked an older prisoner about the smoke that poured out of the chimney and the nauseating sweetish smell that permeated the camp and saturated your clothes and skin, she didn’t believe the answer.

  Some time later, she was thrilled when she heard on the camp grapevine that a transport had just arrived from her home town and that her mother was among the new arrivals. The thought of seeing her again, of being held in her arms and comforted, gave her hope for the first time. She wouldn’t be alone any more.

  As soon as she was able to sneak away from the watchful eyes of the guards, she crept out, hid behind her barracks, crawled on her stomach underneath the wire and flattened herself against walls to avoid being caught in the watchtower’s searchlight. Inside her mother’s barracks, she walked straight past a bony woman with a scrawny neck, lined face and broken nails. It was only when the woman called her name that she realised it was her mother. There was no trace of the beautiful, vivacious woman who had once been so proud of her complexion and white hands.

  But there was a bigger shock in store. The joy and outpouring of motherly love that the thirteen-year-old girl had anticipated were absent. There was no jubilation, no enthusiasm, no warmth. Debilitated and depressed, her mother was absorbed in her own misery. The longed-for hug felt perfunctory, and Ella couldn’t feel any love in her mother’s resigned arms. She was heartbroken. Although she was dying of starvation herself, she had risked her life to see her mother and hold her again, only to find a stranger who was too deeply sunk in her own misery to give any comfort or affection to her daughter.

  Before being deported, her mother had been entrusted with the care of her nine-year-old nephew. Her sister had sent him over the border to Slovakia for her to look after, thinking the boy would be safer there than in Hungary. Not long afterwards, however,
as Eichmann’s Final Solution accelerated and Jews in Slovakia were rounded up, Ella’s mother was deported to Auschwitz with her son Anton and her small nephew. When the three of them stood in front of Dr Mengele awaiting their fate, he ordered her and Anton to the right, but her nephew was sent to the left.

  Powerless to save him, she watched the child being taken away. Even though she knew that going with him would not have saved his life, she could not forgive herself that he was killed while in her care. The child was dead but she was still alive. Listening to her mother’s dead voice, Ella felt totally abandoned.

  From Auschwitz, Ella was sent to Ravensbruck and then to a salt mine at Bendorf. There she polished tiny ball bearings with micrometric screws in the bowels of the earth, while inhaling salt dust that encrusted her paper-thin skin. By April, the Allies were closing in. Determined not to leave a single Jew alive, the Germans dragged this surreal army of starved, disease-ridden skeletons through the German countryside, shooting those who could not continue their grotesque march.

  Surrounded by Wehrmacht soldiers, they were left in a forest clearing one night where they resorted to nibbling plants to try and fill their empty stomachs. Some of the plants were poisonous and those who ate them died in agony. The next day the guards pushed them on, but by the time they reached the outskirts of Hamburg, two-thirds of the group had died. When they came to a dynamited bridge one of the guards helped Ella down the riverbank so she could relieve herself. ‘When the enemy comes, please tell them that we were humane,’ he said. These were the first kind German words she had ever heard.

  A few days later, abandoned by their captors, she was lying on filthy straw in a closed waggon, too weak to move. Suddenly the door slid open and she heard the words that she had almost given up hope of hearing: ‘Ihr seitz frei.’ Dazed, she tried to grasp the idea of freedom and wondered whether she had died, because angels in white veils were leaning over her, speaking in soft, soothing voices. They were Danish Blue Cross volunteers. She was about to be taken to Sweden as part of a deal that Himmler had struck with Volker Bernadotte to exchange some prisoners for personnel-carrying trucks.