When the World Was Ours

by Liz Kessler

  But the cattle trucks aren’t moving. In fact – the guards are opening up the carriages and ordering people into them. Shouting and shoving and pushing them in as if they are bags of junk to be packed in as tightly as possible.

  The crowd is gradually being pushed towards the trucks. Mutti grabs my hand. I grab Otto’s on the other side and see him take hold of Vati’s with his other hand.

  ‘Do not let them separate us,’ Mutti hisses.

  And then it is our turn. We are in front of a truck that is already so full of people I assume we are to move to the next one. Still gripping Mutti’s hand, I turn to look. The butt of a rifle in my side turns me sharply back.

  ‘Get in!’ the guard shouts.

  How are we meant to get in? The truck is full.

  We aren’t left wondering for long. We are shoved and squeezed and pushed and dragged until we are in. I am slammed against the side, face to the wooden slats. Mutti is beside me. Otto and Vati have got separated from us, but if I crane my neck, I can see them. They are in the same truck. We are together again, that’s the main thing.

  I remember the train ride to Theresienstadt and how squashed in we were. But at least that was a train designed for humans to ride in. At least we could breathe.

  Still more people are being shoved in. We are packed in so tightly I don’t even know if I am standing or merely being held upright by the crush of bodies. And still the guards push more people inside. I crane my neck to see. There is nowhere for them to go – can’t they see that?

  People are being trampled as others squeeze on top of them. People are bent double to fill every single available space. Human beings packed into every tiny inch of a cattle truck.

  This cannot be happening.

  I face the wall and pray for them to stop shoving more people in.

  And then, at last, they do. I hear the door slam shut, a bolt slide across, and we are finally full.

  There is no space that is not filled with people. Not one bit. I don’t know how many hundreds of us are in here, but however many it is, surely there are too many to share the miniscule amount of oxygen in here.

  We wait in silence. There is not enough air to speak. Finding a speck of it to breathe is all we can manage to do for now. If we are lucky.

  And then a clank, a jolt, a shudder, and we are moving.

  The trucks move so slowly, grinding along the tracks through a world that has abandoned us. I try to imagine what it looks like out there, beyond this dark, putrid carriage.

  I imagine forests and fields. Green grass, red leaves, white snow falling on branches. I fancy I hear the snap of a twig as a squirrel scampers up a tree.

  My thoughts are dreams. That world is not real any more. It doesn’t exist. For us, anyway. All that exists for us is this darkness, the sound of people moaning, the last gasps as another person gives up the fight. The stench of sweat from the rest of us, the barely living.

  And still we trundle on. I am lucky. There is a tiny gap between the wooden panels in front of my face. If I position my head just right, I can find a pinprick of air. It feels like a goldmine.

  On and on and on we go.

  After hours and hours, the clanking and the grinding come to a stop. Are we there?

  Where is ‘there’, anyway?

  The door is opened and guards are outside. ‘Throw out any dead!’ one of them shouts.

  He reminds me of the men who used to come down the road with their carts in Vienna, shouting out for scrap metal and odds and ends that people no longer needed.

  That is now us.

  Bodies are passed between people and out through the door. The Nazis throw them on the ground, and then, as abruptly as they opened, the doors are shut and bolted again.

  Even with everything that I have been through, I cannot believe what I have just witnessed.

  Someone is talking. Muttering in a low voice.

  Others join him, and soon I realize what they are saying.

  Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba b’alma di-v’ra chirutei.

  They are reciting Kaddish. The Jewish prayer of mourning.

  I don’t know it off by heart, but I’ve heard it in shul. I listen to the voices as if they are a song, and I close my eyes and imagine that the song can raise us out of this nightmare.

  We stop again. Three times. Each time is the same. Bodies removed from the carriage and left on the ground outside.

  After the third stop, we have immunized ourselves enough to the horror of it to be grateful for the benefit: we have more room.

  We can breathe. We can even move a little. Vati and Otto squeeze through to join us, and the four of us stand in a huddle together. We don’t talk much. There is nothing that we can say to each other to take any of this away.

  But we are together. And for now, we know what a precious gift that is.

  MAX

  ‘This is where the new arrivals come in.’ Max’s father pointed at the train tracks. ‘They are unloaded here and join the selection queues where we sort them according to where they are best suited. Ones on the right will go to the barracks. Ones on the left go over there.’

  Max looked where his father was indicating. A dusty path led to some buildings. There was smoke coming out of the top of them.

  Some instinct stopped Max from asking what happened at those buildings. The same thing that stopped him asking what the stench was. He had to force himself to breathe through his mouth so he wouldn’t take too much of it in – but even doing that, he couldn’t avoid smelling it. It smelled like rotting carcasses. He had never smelled anything like it.

  Swallowing the rising bile in his throat, he followed his father along the platform to the far end where a group of men were collecting cases.

  ‘Over there is a section that we call Canada.’ His father waved an arm beyond the end of the platform. ‘These men are collecting goods to be taken there.’ There were hundreds of cases on the platform, piled high like small mountains. The men were picking them up, three or four at a time, and carrying them in the direction of the place his father had called Canada.

  Max could see the men were all dressed the same. Shapeless, striped uniforms that hung loosely from thin bodies. Most of them had either a yellow star or red triangle on their uniform. Max knew this meant that they were either Jews or political prisoners and communists.

  Max’s father saw his son looking at the men. ‘This is efficiency at work,’ he said.

  When Max looked at him blankly, he added, ‘What happens here is business, Max. Profit, loss. We get our prisoners to help out on our production lines: they get to stay alive, for now, and we get the labour for free. It’s a good system, yes?’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ Max answered without hesitation.

  And he wouldn’t have given the men much more thought. He had, after all, seen plenty of men like them at Dachau, and seeing them here barely made him flinch. This was the way it was. The way it should be. He understood that.

  But then he spotted someone. He knew that face. Even when the man wasn’t looking directly at Max – hadn’t even seen him. Even on a body now a quarter of the man he had been, even with the bald head, the hollow cheeks, the lifeless expression just like all the others who Max had long ceased to see as fellow human beings. He knew that face.

  Mr Grunberg. Leo’s father.

  Max felt rage stir inside him. Why was this man in front of him again? First Dachau and now here? Had he been sent to taunt him? This ghost of his childhood, following him around wherever he went? How dare he?

  Then Max pushed his rage down, as a good soldier should, and thought again about the man in front of him. He wasn’t a ghost or a joke. No, he was simply a trial. Just like the letters from Leo and that old photograph that his father had made him burn. Max wouldn’t be surprised if his father had brought Mr Grunberg here himself. Whatever the reason, Max knew what was happening. He was being tested to make sure that he was fully deserving of his place in the regime.

  Well, h
e wasn’t going to fail a test like that.

  So, before the man caught his eye and forced him to acknowledge any glimmer of recognition, Max turned away and hurried to keep up with his father.

  They walked back up the platform again and his father pointed at the wooden carriages trundling towards them. ‘New arrivals,’ he said. ‘It’s going to get busy here soon. Let’s get back to my office and have some lunch.’

  Max marched beside his father without another word, other than to shout out his ‘Heil Hitler!’ salute to each soldier they passed.

  And if a tiny voice in his head questioned whether he should have acknowledged Mr Grunberg in some way, even just with a tiny nod of greeting, a much bigger voice replied: it was safer this way. Just as it had been safer to leave Vienna and start again in Munich, all those years ago. Just as it had been safer to burn the photograph and the letters from Leo.

  Just as it was safer to lock his memories, his thoughts and his feelings in a dark place deep down inside him, and throw away the key.

  ELSA

  We’ve arrived. After what feels like days inside this cattle truck, at last the train stops. The engines have been turned off and our door is opened.

  My eyes are assaulted by the daylight and I cover them with my arm as we are ordered to get out of the truck and line up.

  Vati and Otto are sent to a queue on the other side of the platform, dragged away so rapidly we don’t even have time to say goodbye.

  Guards are everywhere. ‘Stand here. You, over there. Move quickly.’ They pull us by our arms, dragging us into lines.

  ‘Leave your cases here,’ one of the guards orders, pointing to the edge of the platform. ‘They will be brought to you later.’

  We leave our cases where they tell us. A group of men are already coming down the platform to collect them.

  A flicker of something comforting arises in my belly. They have people to collect our cases for us? Wherever we are, this place can’t be too bad.

  The men push through the crowds to collect our bags. As they come towards us, one of them suddenly stops walking – just briefly. He starts again. He’s looking straight at me. Why is this man staring at me?

  There is something familiar about him. I can’t place him. He is bald, his face is like a grey mask with dark hollow cheeks, a striped suit hanging limply off his frame. I have never seen this man before. And yet, I know him. I am sure of it.

  He’s walking towards me. Before I have time to be scared or try to run away, his mouth is next to my ear. ‘Elsa, it’s me,’ he says, his voice gruff and urgent. ‘Leo’s father.’

  I gasp out loud. I can’t help myself.

  ‘Shush!’ he instructs me sharply. Then he talks quickly. ‘Listen. This is important. You are seventeen,’ he says.

  ‘I’m not,’ I reply. Has he forgotten I am the same age as Leo? He can’t have forgotten how old his own son is, can he?

  Leo. Is he here? Is the whole family here? Despite everything, a sliver of hope worms its way inside me.

  Mr Grunberg shakes his head. ‘You are seventeen!’ he repeats. ‘When they ask. You are seventeen.’

  Before I have time to ask who he means by ‘they’ or why he is telling me to lie, or if Leo is here, he has turned and gone, and taken my sliver of hope with him. The hope was a lie, anyway. I don’t want Leo to be here. I don’t want any of us to be here.

  Mutti is beside me. She hadn’t even noticed my conversation or Mr Grunberg. She is looking over at the men’s line. ‘Where have they taken them?’ she asks me in a voice I’ve never heard before. Keening.

  ‘My husband, my son,’ Mutti says. Her legs give way and she begins to sink to the ground.

  I gently lift her up again. The guards mustn’t see her like this. I keep an arm around her waist as we edge forward. ‘Mutti, we have to be strong,’ I say, some deep instinct taking over and telling me that I must be in charge now.

  ‘I know,’ Mutti mumbles, leaning her weight against me. She feels so small. So thin. Fragile. ‘I just don’t know if I have any strength left in me.’

  I can’t reply. My throat is clenched taut. Instead, I keep my arm around her waist as we stumble wordlessly along the dusty path.

  And then we are near the front of the line. Only a few ahead of us. I don’t know what makes me do it, but I quickly turn to Mutti: my darling, beloved mother, my rock, my heart, my world. I take her face in my hands. ‘I love you, Mutti,’ I say fiercely.

  She looks at me. Her chapped lips form the nearest thing to a smile that they are capable of making. ‘I love you too,’ she says, her voice like gravel. ‘I always—’

  ‘No touching!’ The guard screams in my ear so loudly it makes me jump. I reach up to wipe his spittle off the side of my face. He sees me do it and his face breaks out into a cruel smile. Then he makes a horrible sound in his throat, looks directly into my eyes and spits again.

  I feel it run down my cheek, towards my mouth. His grin is daring me to reach up and wipe it off. I know he will do worse if I do, so I leave it.

  Another guard pushes me forward. Mutti is in front of me. Facing her is a tall man in SS uniform. He looks at her for two seconds and then points to the left. ‘That way.’

  Mutti glances back at me. I start to smile at her. I want to tell her I love her again. I want to remind her to be strong. I want everything for her in that moment. I want those seconds of her looking at me to last for ever.

  A guard drags her away and another pushes me forward.

  I am standing in front of the tall SS man. His jet-black hair is parted to perfection on one side, his eyes, almost as black, bore into me.

  ‘Age?’ he says, appraising me.

  I have never lied about anything. Mutti and Vati say it is the worst thing you can do. But I no longer believe that. I have seen so much worse and I think Mr Grunberg knows better than they do about this place, so I clear my throat and say, ‘Seventeen.’

  He looks at me for a moment longer, rubbing his chin as he looks me slowly up and down. I don’t like the way he’s looking at me. It makes me feel unclean, unclothed. Suddenly, he points to the right. ‘That way,’ he says, and I am dismissed.

  Wait. No. He got it wrong. He sent me the wrong way.

  A guard is pulling me away. ‘Please! My mother,’ I say, pointing at the line shuffling along a dusty track towards some buildings with a chimney puffing out smoke. I can see her in the middle of the group, her head bowed as she walks, her shoulders hunched over.

  As I look, I notice that Vati and Otto have been sent to the same queue: Vati a few rows ahead of her, Otto limping heavily beside him. All three of them walking away from me.

  Something inside me is breaking.

  ‘You’ve made a mistake,’ I say, panic rising like a fire inside my body. ‘My family is over there. I should be with them.’

  The guard laughs. ‘Believe me, you don’t want to go that way,’ he says. And then he gives me a shove with the end of his rifle and indicates for the others walking behind me to speed up. ‘Come on. Keep moving. You should be grateful. You’re the lucky ones!’

  I don’t feel like a lucky one. I feel like someone who has had everything they have ever known or loved taken away and told they have to keep on living.

  I have nothing. I have no one. I refuse to let him define me as lucky. Today there are no good things.

  A woman behind me nudges me forward. ‘Keep going, before they punish us all,’ she hisses.

  My legs move without asking me if they should. My body lumbers forward. And somehow, my eyes find some moisture from deep inside me. A solitary tear runs down my face. All I can see in my mind is my darling mother being taken away from me, her shoulders hunched, her eyes on the ground.

  Mutti!

  My heart, my world, my everything.

  As I walk, I keep trying not to ask myself where they have taken my family, if I will see them again, what is to become of me. My heart beats to the sound of our steps.

  I want Mutti
.

  I want Mutti.

  I want Mutti.

  Eventually we get there. Wherever ‘there’ is.

  Two guards are standing in front of a black gate. Above the gate, three words: Arbeit Macht Frei. Work sets you free.

  One of the men unlocks the gate and stands beside it. He thrusts his right arm forward and shouts, ‘Heil Hitler!’ to the guard beside me.

  ‘Heil Hitler!’ the guard replies.

  Then he turns to the rest of us and indicates for us to go inside.

  ‘Home, sweet home,’ he says as we file past. ‘Welcome to Auschwitz.’

  We move, wordless and numb, through the gate.

  They call me forward and hold my head as they run a rough razor over my scalp. I watch my hair fall to the ground in clumps of knotted red curls and I remember Greta telling me that my hair was her favourite thing. I can see her eyes twinkle as she throws back her head and laughs.

  Like everyone else, Greta is part of a life that is no longer mine to claim.

  I follow wordlessly as we file into the building, where they tell us to undress. We let them push and shove and order us through the showers. We don’t react as they dress us in shapeless gowns and burn numbers into our arms.

  Afterwards, when I no longer have my family, my name, my hair or my clothes, I realize the final thing has been taken from me: my identity. I am no one.

  Something inside me switches off and I know that the process of dying has begun.

  1944

  LEO

  Annie and Mama were in the kitchen. I could hear them chatting and laughing and gossiping, non-stop. I’d been banished till they told me I could come in.

  I played along that I minded. ‘You see more of my mother than you see of me!’ I’d teased Annie when she arrived and hugged Mama before even kissing me hello. But she knew that making Mama happy was the only thing that gave me as much pleasure as making Annie herself happy.