When the World Was Ours

by Liz Kessler

  But mostly with love.

  She is so tiny you would think she were a kitten, but I don’t think she is. I think she just has no home, no mother, no one to feed her.

  And in that respect, she is even worse off than we are.

  So I make sure that I save at least something for her every day. I save the scraps under our mattress. It’s a dangerous thing to do because it encourages rats. But so far, I’ve managed to give Thereza some carrot peel, a tiny piece of potato and, one time, a few crumbs of bread.

  I could get more if I was like some of the people in here. At mealtimes, sometimes you have to pretend that you can’t see the lengths people go to in order to try to get some nutrition into their bodies.

  I’ve seen some of the older women plunge into the empty vats, scraping them with spoons to find one more mouthful. I’ve even seen women scrape the food table with their knives, searching for one last crumb.

  Mutti nudges me and tells me not to look when they do it. ‘Only by turning away can you give them back the dignity they have forgotten they possess,’ she says.

  I think about it a lot. The idea of turning away. We do it here so the women will not feel their shame exhibited. But what about beyond this place? What about the turning away that is happening out there?

  Sometimes I feel that the whole world has turned away from us. Not for the sake of our dignity, but to uphold their lives, their rights and privileges. Their lies.

  The guards have finished the punishment. The men have stopped screaming. They are both lying on the ground, motionless. One of the guards orders two men to take them away. Then he wipes the sweat from his forehead and addresses us all. ‘If you received a slip of paper with a number on it last night, you must come to the transport station now.’

  Mutti grips my hand. I’m grateful for the contact. She earths me. I squeeze her hand and then we both let go.

  As the crowds fall out in different directions, I already have my good thing for today to share with Greta later: I wasn’t one of the ones who received a slip of paper. Another day has passed without being transported.

  And it’s strange because if you looked around at the life we live here, you would surely think every one of us would want to get away.

  And we do. Of course we do. But not on the transport. We’ve heard stories about the transport. Rumours. Terrible, terrible rumours.

  And even with the rats and the lice and the hunger and the punishments and the daily cruelty, we know that as long as we are not on the list for deportation, we can still count ourselves amongst the lucky ones.

  1943

  LEO

  Mama was sitting on the bottom stair when I woke up and came downstairs.

  ‘Mama, you’ll catch a chill. You haven’t even got slippers on,’ I said.

  ‘The postman’s late,’ she said. ‘He should be here by now. Why isn’t he here?’

  My heart deflated inside me. Since we heard from Papa last year, she had done this almost every day. Waiting for a letter. Even when she didn’t sit on the stairs like this, I could see it on her mind – the anticipation, the tiny flame of hope that we might hear from him again. And every day she was disappointed.

  ‘What if he’s dead?’ she asked. Long gone are the days where she tried to protect me from the worst of her fears. Long gone are the times when I asked myself which of us needed to be the strong one.

  I sat down beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. She felt so small beside me, and not just because I had got taller. She was shrinking almost as quickly as I was growing.

  ‘He’s not dead,’ I said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  I held a hand against my chest. ‘I feel it in here. In my heart, I know he’s alive.’

  She leaned her head on my shoulder for a moment, and then—

  ‘He’s here!’ Mama jumped up as a shadow walked past the front window.

  Yes, there was an envelope coming through the door. Mama was there ready to grab it before it had even come through the letterbox.

  I prepared myself. I knew what was about to happen. The same as every other day.

  ‘It’s a bill,’ Mama said. Her shoulders sank so low her whole body seemed to crumple.

  Now. Here was my moment. Tell her. Just tell her. Take her mind off the postman and the bills and the long days without Papa.

  ‘I’ve got a girlfriend!’ I blurted out. My face burned with embarrassment, my arms hung stupidly by my side.

  Since Annie and I had met at the cinema last year, we’d become good friends. In many ways, it had felt like having Elsa back in my life. A girl to tease me and laugh with me and share stories of our lives with each other. It felt like a precious gift. Annie had brought a piece of myself back to me.

  Then, earlier this year, things had changed between us. We’d been walking in the park on a Saturday afternoon when she stopped and looked at me. And I don’t know if it was the sun that caught her hair, the depth in her brown eyes or just a sudden attack of bravery on my part – but I kissed her.

  When the kiss was over, she said, ‘About time!’ and laughed. Then I took her hand, and for the first time we walked hand in hand through the park. I felt that if she hadn’t been there, connecting me to the earth, I might have floated up into the sky with happiness.

  I’d held off from telling Mama in case it made her sad to remember what it was like to have someone who made you smile when she didn’t have Papa. But last night I’d told Annie that I loved her and she’d said the same back – and I couldn’t hold it back from Mama any longer. Surely she wouldn’t be sad to know her son was happy. And she needed good news more than ever right now.

  She looked at me in silence for half a minute. And then she broke out into the biggest smile.

  ‘Leo! A girlfriend! Oh, my sweet boy!’ She held her arms wide and pulled me towards her. I reached down to hug her back.

  Suddenly my mother was alive again. ‘I will put the kettle on and then you must tell me all about her,’ she said. ‘What is her name, how old is she, how did you meet?’ She paused to wag a finger at me. ‘And why are you only telling me now?’

  ‘How do you know I haven’t just met her?’ I asked, laughing.

  Mama raised an eyebrow. ‘Because I am your mother,’ she said. ‘I knew there was something. I have seen a change in you. I didn’t know what it was but now that I do, it is obvious. You have a girl, you have something to live your days for.’

  As I followed her into the kitchen, I chewed on a nail. ‘You don’t mind?’ I asked nervously.

  Mama whirled around and took hold of my arms. ‘Mind? Do I mind?’ she asked. ‘My dearest boy, I could not be happier. This is what I need. Something to feel joyful about.’

  We sat together at the table and I told her all about Annie. She was Jewish, like me. She was fifteen, like I was. She had come to England on the Kindertransport almost five years ago and lived with foster parents ever since. She hadn’t seen or heard anything from her parents since they waved her off at a railway station in Berlin when she was ten years old.

  ‘Oh, the poor girl!’ Mama put her hands to her cheeks. ‘Right, I tell you this,’ she said. ‘She is to come here for tea tonight. I can’t promise anything special – you know how it is with rationing – but I can promise it will be made with love.’

  ‘Mama, that would be wonderful. Thank you.’

  Mama’s eyes filled with tears, but she was smiling. ‘Oh, I can’t wait to have another woman in the family.’

  I laughed. ‘It’s only been a few months, we haven’t exactly got married yet!’

  Mama patted my hand. ‘A few months! I can’t believe you kept it from me this long. Well, we will make amends tonight.’

  I leaned over and hugged her tightly. ‘Thank you, Mama,’ I said. ‘I can’t wait for Annie to meet you.’

  She hugged me back. And I whispered in her ear, ‘And she will meet Papa one day. I promise you she will.’

  MAX

  When Max
’s father told him that they were moving again, he didn’t know what to say. He knew what he wanted to say. He wanted to scream and cry and beg him not to take them away from this wonderful life.

  Munich had become Max’s world. He was one of the boys at school that everyone wanted to be friends with now. He and his Hitler Youth pals ruled the corridors. Even some of the teachers had begun to fear them.

  And now he was to be taken away from all of it and moved to Poland of all places! His father had been promoted again and was to become one of the senior SS officers at the largest of the regime’s work camps: Auschwitz. It was an honour for his father but for Max it felt more like a punishment, and he had done nothing to deserve it.

  Luckily, Max was so highly disciplined by now that he knew far better than to argue or show his feelings. So he shut away his frustrations and instead responded in the expected way.

  ‘Thank you, Father,’ he said. And then, for good measure, and to show that he understood why the move was necessary, he thrust his arm forward and clicked his heels together and added, ‘Heil Hitler!’

  His father returned his salute. ‘You are a good soldier now,’ he said. ‘I am glad you understand.’

  Max took the gift of his father’s compliment with him and went to his bedroom. ‘Good soldier’ was the best thing his father had called him since the evening of his fourteenth birthday. It was a rare treasure and he would keep it along with the memory of the way his father had rested a hand on his shoulder that day too.

  But once he was alone, the feelings rose inside him.

  Max could feel something stinging in his eyes. No! He would not cry like a baby. He was a man, a proud Nazi. He would deal with his feelings another way.

  He softly closed his bedroom door so that he couldn’t be heard. Then he grabbed his pillow from the head of his bed. He placed it on his bedroom sideboard and rolled up his sleeves. And then he punched it, hard. And again. Over and over, punch, punch, punch, he hurled his feelings of injustice and frustration into the pillow till they were out of him.

  And then, panting, exhausted and rubbing his hands where they ached, Max carefully put his pillow back on the bed.

  He felt lighter. And he knew what he had to do.

  Standing in front of his mirror, Max straightened his shirt, flattened down his hair and checked his necktie. Then he went back into the lounge, ready to hide his feelings once more.

  His father put down his newspaper and called Max to him. ‘Are you ready to take the next step?’ he asked Max, peering into his eyes as he spoke.

  Max didn’t know what ‘the next step’ was, but he knew one thing: he was ready for anything his father had to offer him.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he replied sharply.

  His father rubbed his chin for a moment. Then, as if agreeing something with himself, he nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I have something to ask you which I hope will make you happier about the transition.’

  Had his father heard him in his room? How did he know Max was unhappy about it? ‘Father, I’m not unhappy,’ he began. ‘Whatever you—’

  His father held up a hand. ‘I’m still speaking.’

  Max swallowed the rest of his sentence and waited.

  ‘Do you want a job, son? Are you ready to work for the regime?’

  ‘Work for Hitler?’ Max gasped. ‘Yes! Yes, sir! I want nothing more than to serve Hitler. I want to give myself to him completely. Nothing else matters to me.’

  Max’s father removed his glasses and looked properly at Max. He seemed to be studying his son, looking for the cracks in his words, the lies in his promises, the hesitation in his commitment.

  It seemed he didn’t find any of those things because he nodded slowly and said, ‘I have already spoken to the commandant. I have asked if there is a role for you. And this morning I had word. You can’t do official work there till you are sixteen, so we shall keep quiet about your age. But I will be a senior officer and you have shown yourself to be a good soldier at Hitler Youth, so they are willing to give you an opportunity to help out.’

  ‘At Auschwitz?’ Max knew of Auschwitz from conversations at Hitler Youth. He didn’t know exactly what happened there – it was shrouded in too much secrecy for that – but he knew it was an important place. Perhaps the most important place.

  ‘Yes. Nothing major. Desk work, minor jobs. To begin with, anyway. And remember, if anyone asks, you are sixteen.’

  Max could hardly believe what he was hearing. He was being given the opportunity to work at Auschwitz? He wouldn’t be playing soldiers with the boys from school. He would be working alongside real soldiers.

  Of course, he would miss his friends in Munich, but he had left friends behind before and survived. And this time, the move would put him at the heart of the world he had built his life around.

  ‘Thank you, Father. That would be fantastic!’ Max said.

  His father put his glasses on and went back to his newspaper and Max knew that meant he was dismissed. He went back into his bedroom. This time he didn’t want to punch anything. This time the fire in his belly wasn’t rage or disappointment. It was the thrill of adrenalin coursing through his whole body.

  Suddenly, he couldn’t wait to get out of Munich. Auschwitz was where he would become a true soldier, body and soul. Auschwitz was where he would put into action everything that he had been building towards for the last five years.

  Auschwitz was his destiny.

  ELSA

  I haven’t seen Vati or Otto for weeks. I don’t know if they are even still alive. No word from them and nothing from Vati’s friend, Kem. Mutti says he hasn’t been in the kitchen for almost two weeks.

  We have no way of knowing what has happened to them, not without risking our lives to find out.

  And then the day comes. They no longer bother with the slips of paper at night. The transports are too regular and contain too many people. These last weeks, I feel as though we are living in the centre of a revolving doorway. Each day, hundreds come in, hundreds go out, in and out, in and out. And every day, those of us who remain say a small prayer of thanks that we are not being put on the transport.

  But today it seems my prayers have run out.

  ‘You’re leaving.’ The words wake me, along with the prod of a rifle in my side. ‘Pack your bags.’

  The guard moves to the next bunk. ‘You’re leaving. Pack your bags.’ And the next, and the one after that.

  It seems our whole dormitory is being evacuated.

  I gently shake Mutti who is still asleep. I hate to drag her away from the comfort of her dreams – but it will be worse for her if I don’t.

  ‘Mutti,’ I whisper in her ear. ‘We have to get up.’

  She reaches around for my hand. ‘I heard,’ she says. Her voice is as lifeless as her body. I worry about her lately. She is so thin that I daren’t even put my arm around her at night; I feel as though the weight might break her.

  We silently drag our bodies off the bunk, pull on our day clothes that haven’t been washed in months and go through our usual morning routines of checking each other’s hair for lice, stretching our aching bodies so that we can move without agony – and then I reach under the bunk for our bags and we start the process of packing our diminishing amount of possessions into them.

  A tiny part of me remembers a time when I worried about which pretty dress to pack, how many sparkly pairs of shoes I could fit in a bag. Then it became more about how many practical clothes and mementos I could fit in one case. Now I have nothing pretty, and nothing sparkles. I have a few changes of clothes – all ragged, all filthy. I realize what a fool I was to think that those things mattered. Still, hidden amongst the clothing is my one treasured possession: the photograph of Leo, Max and me from what feels like several lifetimes ago.

  While I still have this photograph, I can tell myself that the girl in it still exists. She is still in here somewhere.

  We are soon gathered in the square, ready to be taken to the transport
.

  Today’s good thing: I don’t have the energy to feel afraid. I don’t have enough moisture in my body to produce tears.

  That’s two good things. Greta will be proud of me.

  Greta. She was taken – I don’t know when. It was weeks, but I don’t know how many. Time has become impossible to measure.

  I stand in the cold, hardly feeling the wind on my cheeks, barely acknowledging the snow on the ground beneath my paper-thin shoes.

  I am a ghost of the person I used to be.

  But then we are ordered to march and, on the way to the transport, something happens that brings me back to life.

  ‘Elsa! Elsa!’

  At first I don’t turn. I refuse to give in to the hallucination. The disappointment of it will crush me.

  But then Mutti looks at me and I know she hears it too. So I let myself turn in the direction of the voice. And I see him. Like me, he is a pale imitation of the person he once was, but when his eyes catch mine and his face breaks into a smile, I know that it is really him.

  Otto. My brother. He is alive.

  The joy is so overwhelming I have to clutch my chest. I have barely anything but my ribs there now, and I don’t know if they are strong enough to hold the weight of joy in my heart.

  As we march, I take Mutti’s hand and we move bit by bit through the group. Slowly, gradually, inching towards him. He does the same. It takes him much longer than us as his limp is so pronounced now, but we come gradually closer, and as we do I realize that it’s not just Otto. Beside him, there is a thin, grey, hunched-over man.

  This time my heart almost rips in two. ‘Vati!’

  We are together. The four of us. Every fibre of my being aches with a longing to hug them, to hold them close to me and never let them go, but I know I can’t. We have seen people kicked and beaten for less. I see in their eyes that they want to do the same. But we know the rules. We know the consequences.

  We settle for simply knowing we are all alive and walking together.

  Finally, we reach the railway track. But there is no train here. Up ahead I can only see cattle trucks, a long line of them. I guess we will have to wait for them to move before our train comes.