Auschwitz Lullaby

by Mario Escobar

  Night fell once again. Beside me, the children lay totally still. The poor things had no strength left. Exhaustion, thirst, and hunger had all but snuffed out their lives, like candles about to be extinguished. Johann held Adalia in his arms. She was wan and her skin so dry from dehydration. All she wanted to do was sleep.

  I picked my way to the wooden slats of the car’s wall to see what I could see through the cracks. I could make out a huge station with a central tower. People stirred more and more the longer we were stopped there. Then we were moving again, passing under an arch of some sort. On the other side, a long barbed-wire fence secured to concrete posts stretched out along the railway. Powerful floodlights lit up the camp. It looked huge and horrible, but at least it was somewhere to live, a way to escape the infernal train.

  People grew restless when we stopped again, but four hours passed without anyone coming up to the train. Exhausted, we all slouched and curled up the best we could, a tangled mess trying hard to avoid the cadavers and to get some sleep. The mother of the dead baby was the only one who stayed close to the dead bodies, as if already resigned to being swept away by the shadows.

  My family slept fitfully, dancing at the edge of death, and I began to weep in silence. I felt guilty for not having foreseen that the Nazi lunacy would end up getting us in the end. We should have fled to Spain or to America, tried to get as far away as possible from the madness that had possessed our country and nearly all of Europe. I had always wanted to believe that people would wake up and see what Hitler and his followers represented, but no one did. Everyone went right along with his fanatical insanity and turned the world into a starving, warring hell.

  When daylight finally came, we heard the barking of dogs and the stomping of feet over the gravel around the railroad. Fifty soldiers, an SS official, and an interpreter who repeated the orders in several languages woke everyone in the train.

  We were all eager to get out of the train’s nightmarish conditions, unaware that we were jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

  “Quiet now,” I said to the children. They looked at me placidly. They were very tired, though they were also curious about what waited for us outside.

  As the train car began to empty, Johann picked up our suitcases, and we looked all around before jumping down. A huge multitude was descending from the train cars. Below, SS soldiers and prisoners dressed in striped uniforms were separating everyone into different lines.

  “Get out quickly!” one of the soldiers shouted at us.

  Johann jumped down and then helped the rest of us. My legs were wobbly, and my bones ached, the cold of the place slicing to the deepest parts of me. The SS soldiers had dogs and were carrying nightsticks in their hands, but it did not seem like they were going to use them. A few yards away there were watchtowers and in the background huge smokestacks, but we hardly had time to look at what was right around us.

  They divided us into two huge groups: women and children on one side, men on the other. At first I tried to resist being separated from Johann, clutching his hand until one of the prisoners came up and softly said, “You’ll see him later. Don’t worry, ma’am.”

  Johann handed me the suitcases and stepped into the other line. We held each other’s gaze. He tried to smile to reassure us, but his lips contorted into unbearable anguish, not mirth.

  “Where are they taking Daddy?” Emily asked as she rubbed her red eyes.

  I did not know how to answer. I was speechless, made completely mute from grief. My brain simply could not process the meaninglessness of it all. I just stroked her head and lowered my eyes so she would not see my tears.

  “Men between twenty and forty years of age will come with us,” one of the SS officials said.

  The group split into two, and I watched Johann being taken away from us. He was at the front of the line, so I only had a few brief seconds to watch his wide back and dark, curly hair partly tucked into the neck of his shirt. My existence had revolved around my husband for many years now. My soul emptied as he walked away. Life was not worth living without him. Then I looked at our children. They studied me with their wide eyes, trying to read my heart. Then I understood that being a mother is much more than raising children; it is bending the soul until the self is forever mixed up in their beautiful, innocent faces. The group of men was now a good distance away, and I was still biting my lips to keep from crying. Johann was walking deep inside the formation, his face hidden from me. I begged heaven to let me see him one more time. Soldiers were pushing and hurrying the men, but Johann took the momentary risk. He turned and caught me with his eyes, those beautiful pupils more than making up for words.

  THREE

  MAY 1943

  AUSCHWITZ

  As our line advanced alongside the interminable barbed-wire fence, my fears took on phantasmagorical shapes. Interrupted only by short embankments of grass, an endless succession of wooden barracks stretched before us, like shipwrecked vessels along an infinite coast. All around them, like disoriented castaways, people dressed in rags stared at us indifferently. I thought it must be some sort of mental hospital. Shaved heads, striped uniforms, absent expressions on the faces first of the women we passed, and then of the men—surely they were signs of dementia. Who were all these people? Why had they brought us here?

  An eerily sweet smell permeated the place, and gray smoke clouded the first timid rays of the morning sun. Meanwhile, the female guards drove us at a martial speed and never stopped giving orders. We walked for quite a while until we came to a movable fence. They made us go through. The children were worn out and hungry, but they did not let us stop to give them anything to eat. They made us stand for nearly two hours in front of a small building of rough wood with a German sign that said “Registration.”

  Finally, a strikingly beautiful guard, dressed in an official dark-green uniform and cape, began shouting at us to enter the building. There, four women in prisoner’s dress who looked a bit better than the ones we had seen at the edge of the camp handed us a green sheet of paper where we were to write down our names and personal information, along with a white sheet of paper from the Reich Central Office that ordered our immediate internment at the camp. It took me some time to finish the paperwork for my five children. Adalia would not let me put her down, and the rest were clinging to my coat.

  “Faster, woman. We don’t have all day,” a female prisoner worker told me impatiently.

  There was a long line behind me. We moved forward to the second table, where some men were tattooing onto the new arrivals’ bodies the number we had been assigned on the green paper. I held out my arm and the pricks hurt, but the prisoner finished quickly.

  With no expression in his voice, he said, “The children too.”

  “The children?” I said, horrified.

  “Yes, those are the orders.” The man’s eyes were blank behind his round glasses. He seemed more like a robot than a human, completely devoid of feeling.

  Blaz, the oldest, stretched out his arm without hesitating, and once again my mother’s heart broke with pride in him. Right away, Otis followed suit and then the twins. They bawled a bit at the pain, but none of them pulled away or refused the tattoo.

  “The little girl’s arm is so thin,” I said, indicating Adalia.

  “We’ll do her thigh,” the prisoner answered.

  I had to pull Adalia’s white tights down and reveal her milky white leg for the man to mar it with the number preceded by Z for Zigeuner, Gypsy.

  We left the building and got back into the long line, this time waiting for the female guards to escort us to the Gypsy camp. We stood there for at least an hour while a fine spring rain soaked us to the bone. The children were so exhausted and hungry they hardly moved.

  The pretty guard—later I learned her name was Irma Grese—ordered us to start walking. We followed her in a long line along the edge of a small forest that was starting to turn green after the harsh Polish winter. The contrast between the trees full of l
ife and the muddy streets of the camp made me think about the miserable human condition: only we were capable of destroying natural beauty and turning the world into an inhospitable place.

  We came to a huge gate and continued on to a wide street that marked the entry to the Gypsy camp the Germans called “Zigeunerlager Auschwitz.” On each side there were long barracks that served as kitchens and storehouses, followed by some thirty more barracks for prisoner residences, a hospital, and bathrooms.

  The paper they had given us apparently had the number of the barrack where we were supposed to reside, but we were all so overwhelmed, exhausted, and hungry that we followed like zombies, unaware of where we were going or what we were doing.

  The guards grew impatient. With the help of some prisoners, they grabbed the papers from our hands and pushed us toward our assigned barracks. Finally, I pulled myself together, and before one of the prisoners wielding something like a nightstick could hit me, I figured out we had been assigned to barrack number 4.

  The main road was nothing but mud, and when we got to our supposed new home, we were surprised to see huge mud puddles inside as well. Water was pouring through the roof and dripping through the wooden walls made of bent, poorly secured planks. The barrack was literally a foul stable where not even animals would have deigned to sleep. That is what we were to the Nazis, wild animals, and that is how they treated us.

  Our new pigsty home reeked of sweat, urine, and filth. A large brick oven about four feet high divided the room in two. On each side there were three rows of beds the prisoners called koias. There were up to twenty people crammed into each of these wooden cages. People were supposed to sleep on bare wood, and the only protection was a shredded blanket, typically flea-ridden. Precious few had sacks stuffed with sawdust to resemble a straw mattress. But there were not enough of these “beds” for everyone, and some prisoners had to sleep on the muddy ground or on the stone bench that ran the length of the barrack.

  “Is there a free space anywhere?” I asked some women sitting on the bench. They looked me over and started to cackle. None of them spoke our language. They had to be Russian Gypsies.

  With our suitcases still in my hands, I searched for somewhere to go, but there was no room anywhere. The children started to whimper. They had been standing almost all day long with nothing to eat.

  One of the women, the block scribe—that is what they called those who did the daily prisoner count—told us there was a bit of space in the last row of koias at the back, but that my oldest son and I would have to sleep on the floor until more space opened up.

  I did not understand. How could space just open up? Did that mean some people got to go home? At that thought, the faint hope fluttered through my heart that I might see Johann again and return to our normal life. Maybe when the war was over, everything would go back to normal. Unfortunately, I later realized that she was talking about prisoners dying, whether because of the inhumane living conditions or because the guards outright killed them.

  The children tried to crawl up into the koia, but the block supervisor told us there were prescribed hours for rest and the guards forbade use of the beds until nightfall.

  I took a deep breath and put the suitcases down where my children would sleep that night. Blaz asked if he could go out, and though it was still raining, I thought it would be better for him to breathe clean air instead of the putrid, depressing air of the barrack.

  “Where are the bathrooms and the showers?” I asked the scribe.

  “In the last barracks at the end of the camp, numbers 35 and 36, but you can only go in the morning and at a set time in the afternoon. The showers are only for the morning.” She frowned at me, seemingly bothered by my many questions. Her strong Russian accent slurred the words, and it was hard for me to understand.

  “But what about the children?” I asked.

  “They have to go in the corner of the barrack, and the adults hold it until we’re allowed to go. At night there’s a bucket, and new arrivals like you have to empty it when it gets full.”

  My insides churned just thinking about it. I could just imagine how the urine would reach the brim of the bucket in a few hours and I would have to go out to the embankment to empty it in the freezing dark.

  “Everyone has to be inside the barracks within half an hour. Then they’ll bring supper and after that we can’t go out until tomorrow morning. If you’re caught outside the barracks, the punishment is severe,” the scribe said in a matter-of-fact tone.

  I could not understand anything. The rules seemed absurd and arbitrary. I had been working in hospitals for years as a nurse, and I knew that order was necessary for things to function, but the logic I was hearing was irrational.

  I took the children to the bathroom. Blaz was nearby talking with a group of boys, but when he saw us, he left them and followed us.

  “What is this place, Mom?” he asked.

  I knew I could not fool him. The other kids had gotten distracted playing in a puddle, so I squatted down and tried to help him understand the situation. “We’re being held here for being Gypsies,” I explained. “I don’t know how long we’ll have to stay, but we should try to lie low, go unnoticed. We’ve only been here a few hours, but I think it’s best we avoid drawing attention to ourselves.”

  “Okay, I’ll try. I’ll take care of the little ones and try to find us some food.”

  “Let’s go get cleaned up a bit,” I answered, ruffling his dark hair.

  When we entered the bathroom barrack, my heart sank. It smelled even worse than the sleeping barracks. There was something like an animal feeding trough that was utterly foul, and at the back a long concrete slab with holes that served as one long, continuous toilet. We went up to the trough. The water was dark brown and smelled like sulfur. I could not believe my eyes. How was I supposed to wash the children in that? It was a veritable petri dish of infection.

  “Don’t touch the water!” I shrieked as Otis moved to take a drink.

  “But we’re thirsty,” he whined.

  “That water is infected,” I said, drawing them away from the long sink.

  Their eyes grew large in disbelief. Their faces black with the dirt of long days in the cattle car, their dehydrated skin, the dark circles under their eyes, and their bodies limp from hunger—it all rendered me speechless. I wanted to wake up from that nightmare, but I could not give in. That is what I thought about as I tried to hold back my rage. For the first time in my life I did not know what to do or say.

  We returned to the barrack right at the end of what they called the free hour. Everyone was returning to the barracks, and within minutes the wide central avenue was completely deserted.

  We headed back to the place we had been assigned, and I bent forward to take the pajamas out of our suitcases. I was surprised to find them open. When I pushed back the cover, I saw there was barely a scrap of clothing left. The little bit of food we had brought, my coat, and the rest of our belongings had disappeared. I could not take it anymore, and I started to weep. Now all we had left was what we were wearing and whatever food they would bring us that night.

  I heard laughter behind me, which enraged me. One of the women was hiding one of my children’s shirts under her blanket. With two long strides I reached her koia and jerked back the blanket.

  “What are you doing, German frau?” she screamed with a heavy accent.

  “That’s ours,” I answered, grabbing the shirt and pulling.

  Another woman yanked my hair bun, and when I tried to push her hands away, the first woman slapped me in the face. One of the barrack guards, a fellow prisoner, came up to us. These women were responsible for maintaining order inside the barracks, like the prisoner overseers, the kapos, were to do outside.

  “Quiet!” she said, yanking me backward.

  “They stole from me!”

  “That’s not true,” one of the women answered. “This cursed Nazi is just stirring up trouble.”

  “Is that so?” the
guard asked.

  “No! They took everything we had,” I answered with palpable rage.

  “It’s your word against theirs. Get back to your bed and don’t cause problems. Otherwise we’ll let the Blockführer know, and you’ll be punished. You’re a mother. You’d better stay out of trouble with other internees,” the guard said, pushing me back to our bed.

  I returned to our koia with my face bruised and feeling utterly powerless, but I knew the prisoner guard was right. Ten minutes later, two prisoners entered with a large container that held a disproportionately meager amount of a stale black bread whose principal ingredients were sawdust, a spoonful of margarine, and a bit of beet compote. This was supposed to nourish us until the next day. The prisoners and the children quickly lined up with little bowls. A woman handed me a bowl with the rations for my five children and me. I was almost the last to receive the food. When the children saw what I had brought them to eat, they hesitated for a moment, but hunger took over, and they gobbled it down in seconds. I preferred to give them my portion. I knew that it would only carry them a little while longer, but perhaps it would be enough until the next morning.

  It quickly grew difficult to see. There was no electricity in the barracks, and when night fell, we all had to go to bed and try to sleep. Outside, it had stopped raining, but the water still seeped in through the walls and around the floor. I took Adalia’s boots off her and put Blaz on boot duty. Then I helped the twins lie down beside her. There were four other women in the koia with them who jostled them until their backs were pinned against the wet wood of the barrack wall. Then Otis got in, slipping between the women and his siblings and managing to secure a bit more space for them all, much to the protests of the uncomfortable bedfellows. There was hardly any light left in the barrack, just enough to look momentarily at the faces of my four youngest children. They seemed to be at peace despite the horror that surrounded us. I swore that I would do the impossible for them to survive. Then I stretched the blanket over them and turned to Blaz, who had climbed onto the rock bench with the other blanket.