by Malka Adler
I couldn’t stand in the sun and returned to the barracks.
And then came a disaster we didn’t know. One woman shouted save me, save me, my belly’s on fire, Mamaleh, I’m dying. There were several women who began crawling on the filthy floor, crawling, crawling, and they died. Others died in their bunks, some died with a plate of food in one hand and a good coat in the other hand. British soldiers came into the barracks. They held a handkerchief to their noses and passed among the bunks. Their faces were the color of whitewash and their eyes were shocked, and they spoke fast, fast. One of them said in German, go outside, everyone outside. I dragged myself outside. The British soldiers told us to sit down, everyone sit down and they pointed to a place not far from the barracks. They even carefully took out women who couldn’t walk and lay them all down in the sun near me. After about half an hour, they brought in local Germans who wore regular clothes and had no rifle, no stick and no dog. The British handed out a bucket, a rag, and a broom to each farmer and ordered them to clean the barracks. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Germans with blond hair and strong muscles, like the pictures I’d seen, sat on the floor of our barracks and scrubbed every centimeter with a rag, while we, thin Jewesses with lice and flaking skin, warmed ourselves in the sun as if we were in a convalescent home. I thought, you’re dreaming, Sarah, you’re asleep and dreaming. It wasn’t a dream. Fact, I pinched my leg and it hurt. Time passed and every few minutes one of the Germans ran outside to vomit on the sand. The British didn’t relent, when they finished vomiting they signaled to them to continue cleaning. There was sunlight and soldiers who took care of food and water and, nonetheless, at least seven-eight women died next to me within a few hours.
After a thorough cleaning by the Germans, the British disinfected the bloc and laid whole sacks of clean hay on the floor. In the meantime young, local German women arrived, healthy young women with washed hair, smooth-skinned faces and full breasts. Some had lacquered nails and plucked eyebrows and lipstick. The British told the German women to wash us, and several women in the group began to cry. One wrinkled her clothing and cried out, no, no, no. Some spat on the floor. Some of the women lay quietly, I was among them. Two German women approached me. One had thick hips and pearl earrings in pierced ears. Another had a chain with a cross round her neck, her hair was cut with bangs. I put up a weak hand to feel the holes in my ears and they were closed. Then I felt the clip in my hair. I removed the clip and closed it in my hand. The two young women smiled at me and carefully undressed me. They smelled of perspiration under their arms. I looked at my body, I saw bones and yellow skin full of scales like a dry fish. The eyes of the woman with the cross on her chest filled up in a moment, she bit her bottom lip, took a handkerchief from her pocket, but she still wet the cross. The young woman with the pearls scolded her and gently began to soap me. I saw she was making an effort to breathe normally, by her breaths I knew I didn’t have a chance. After thoroughly washing my hair, they patted me dry, as if they were doing it with cotton wool, and they dressed me in a clean dress. Finally, they combed my hair and took me in their arms like a sweet baby and laid me on a large mattress in the barracks. I felt good.
A few more hours went by and they brought us dry crackers and a cup of tea, and then a bespectacled British doctor arrived and said, eat only crackers, you mustn’t eat fatty food.
It was no use. Women continued to open canned food and the pile of dead near the barracks was as high as a mountain. I ate crackers and a little bread, I felt weak, but I didn’t give up on fresh air. I’d drag myself out of the barracks with difficulty and lean against the wall for a few minutes.
One day I saw an open truck enter the camp. There were soldiers on the truck. Within minutes a rumor spread that they were German prisoners. People in the camp began to run after the truck, shouting, cursing, throwing bottles and stones. The prisoners were hurt. I saw faces full of blood, I saw one falling from a blow to the head. I didn’t throw anything, I could barely stand on my feet, and if I had thrown a stone I’d have flown with it to the prisoners. Afterwards I saw those prisoners wandering around the area. I recognized the strong faces, light hair, and the expression of superiority. Also by the ballooning of their trousers above the knee, their shirts untucked, without belt or gun, without boots, without a hat. They passed among the blocs and loaded the dead onto a broad wagon and, taking the place of horses, they dragged the dead to a pit at the edge of the camp. I looked for happiness in my heart but found none.
The days passed. Released prisoners who could manage alone moved to a large, German military building. There were some who organized themselves in groups and left the camp. They had somewhere to return to. I had nowhere to go. The Jewish women who lay next to me also had nowhere to go. I felt myself growing weaker by the day. Women continued to die in the barracks and we were moved to another barracks. I saw the British burning emptied barracks. Seeing the fire made me feel good. I wanted all the barracks in Bergen-Belsen to be burned with nothing left to remember them by.
One day the British doctors passed among us. They were looking for sick women. They said that sick women would leave Bergen-Belsen to convalesce in a hospital. Two women lying next to me, Rissi and Hanchi, knew English. Rissi and Hanchi told the doctors we were ill. The doctors asked, Sarah, what illness do you have? I didn’t know what to say, but I felt I was dying, as if I was being eaten up from within. The soldiers found hundreds of sick women in our barracks. And then people dressed in dark overalls, a hat on their heads, and fabric-covered shoes, came and took us away from the barracks on stretchers with blankets. They covered our faces and sprayed us with DDT. And they loaded us into ambulances and trucks. I saw black smoke all around, I remember thinking, German barracks burn black, Jews burn gray-white.
We left Bergen-Belsen.
They took us to a place called The Round House, a large, two-story building with a sloping roof, it was a Nazi club. The British filled the club with hundreds of crowded beds and turned the place into a hospital. They gave me my own bed with my own pillow, two clean sheets and a blanket. The sheets smelled of a mixture of soap and moth balls. I pulled the blanket up over my head, hugged myself and whispered, Mamaleh, Papaleh, and wanted to die. English-speaking nurses approached me. One of the nurses pulled the blanket off me, spoke quietly, I didn’t understand a word, and then she put her hand on my head, and caressed, whispering, sh. sh. Then she brought me another pillow and I put the wet one underneath.
The hospital was noisy during the day and at night, an irritating noise. There were patients who constantly called out, nurse, nurse, there were patients who talked loudly to the wall, morning, noon, and night, the same thing, there were some who conversed between the beds, sometimes the third bed from the entrance took an interest in the seventh bed from the entrance, what are the plans after the hospital. There were also some who lay curled up in bed, like an exhausted baby. They neither spoke nor wept, after a day or two I saw the bed was empty. The empty beds were immediately filled. A few more days went by and a group of doctors stood at my bedside. One of them was a British doctor with a small ginger beard and a large gap between his two front teeth. Beside him stood two other young doctors. By their questions, I understood they were medical students. And there was also a nurse I didn’t know, with the hips of a girl, and two nuns. The nuns pointed to themselves and said Belgium, Belgium. The doctor examined me and said, well, she has typhus, and raised his chin as if there was nothing to be done, and I understood him without knowing any English, and I asked in German, how much time do I have left, doctor? He didn’t say anything and went on to the next patient.
My body burned. I threw off my clothing and lay naked under the sheet and waited for the end. At one point I removed the clip from my hair and gave it to the woman lying next to me. I whispered, look after the clip, it’s a keepsake from a French prisoner of war, look after it.
I was calm. I didn’t care if I lived or died. I regretted only one thing, I regretted that I’d ne
ver see my brothers Avrum, Yitzhak and Dov again.
A few days went by, I saw that I wasn’t dead.
The first thing I did was to take back the hair clip from the woman next to me and put it in my hair. I stroked it as if the clip and I had been together for life, and then the nurse from the first day approached me. She smiled at me and said, you will get well, Sarah, and she helped me to get out of bed and changed the sheet, and dressed me in a clean nightgown. The nightgown was enormous. I weighed about twenty-seven kilos. From then on, that nurse fed me porridge with a teaspoon, and water with a teaspoon, and a lot of medication. I ate like a bird but I knew I’d get well.
One evening British soldiers arrived at the hospital to cheer us up. They brought a record player and records and taught us how to dance an English hokey pokey. The girls who could get out of bed danced the Hokey Pokey with them. Even though I was stronger I didn’t get out of bed, I was sure my legs would break in the middle of the dance.
A few days later, the doctor with the gap between his front teeth came over to our beds and said, now, girls, we have to decide, you can go home, or you can go away to convalesce.
I asked, where is the convalescence?
The doctor said, in Sweden.
I said, why Sweden.
The doctor said, Sweden is good. I thought, maybe because it’s far away, and I quietly asked a British soldier who came to visit a pretty nurse, if there were dogs in Sweden, and if there were guns there, and he laughed.
I said, why are you laughing, and who did Sweden fight with during the war, ah? And then I informed the doctor, put me on the list for Sweden, and I signed papers.
Doctors from Sweden came to visit us. They were the height of the ceiling. They thoroughly examined all the women who said Sweden. They put a device on the chest, back, examined eyes, throat and ears with a light, felt the stomach, I immediately constricted down below and began to sweat, finally they gave us a note and a slab of chocolate, waffle cookies, good soap and hand cream and said, two days.
The day came.
Stretchers again. Soldiers, prisoners of war, were ordered to take us outside. I immediately saw they were Hungarian. They had faces like the soldiers who took us out of our home, who ordered me, strip, stupid Jewess. I saw them in Bergen-Belsen too. They stood with their rifles not far from a huge pile of garbage near the kitchen and shot prisoners who came near.
The Hungarian soldiers lifted the stretchers and fixed their eyes on the handle. They were submissive and polite, like dogs who were cautious with their master. They carried the stretchers carefully, primarily at the door where the British soldiers were standing. The Hungarians covered me with a blanket and measured the distance between the stretcher and the doorway, breathing as if they had to carry a large man with a belly. And then I saw a group of ambulances with the sign of the Red Cross. I remember crying out God, they’re lying to us, maybe Sweden is crematorium in German? I held onto the stretcher and sat up, the soldiers called out in Hungarian, lie down, Madame, lie down, and I shouted, stop! Stop! And then behind me I heard a shriek like a frightened animal, I turned around for a moment and saw a woman in socks and a nightgown throwing herself from the stretcher, and beginning to run. She ran aimlessly looking for a place to hide. She was followed by several other women who scattered in alarm, and then I saw women running out of the hospital, and they also began to flee. The Hungarian soldiers began to chase the women, they were even more alarmed because of the Hungarians, screaming, save us, save us, one of the women got into an empty barrel standing next to a tree, two disappeared into a pile of cartons. A strong soldier caught a woman, hugged her shoulders, tried to talk to her, it was no use, she wept and lifted her nightgown over her head. In the meantime, doctors and nurses arrived, they had a great many soothing words in Hungarian, finally the women agreed to get into the ambulances. I remained sitting on the stretcher. I knew that if I began to run I’d fall and my body would break in two.
To this day I can’t bear ambulances. Every ambulance in the street makes me want to flee to the underground. An ambulance once came to our building to take someone who’d had a heart attack. I was just returning from the market. I wandered through the neighborhood for half a day with bags of food in my hands, and it was a hot day, the middle of summer, like the day I left Germany.
The ambulances took us to the Port of Lübeck. They put us on board a ship and allocated us crowded cabins below deck. My nightgown was wet with perspiration, I could find no air. I went up on deck and leaned against the railing. The ship left the port and the first thing I saw was a huge ball of sun embracing the water, painting the waves red. My throat closed, I thought, a year alone with the Germans, without father and mother, with the body of a ten-year-old girl, and I’m alive, alive. I stayed on deck until dark and didn’t turn my head round. I didn’t want to see German soil, and ever since, I haven’t wanted to see it, not even on television.
We arrived at the Port of Kalmar in Sweden after a two-day voyage.
It was July, 1945. The port was full of happy people. There were women with beautiful smooth skin, a special hat and a dress with décolleté, sometimes one with a pattern, sometimes the fabric was cut straight with a broach or embroidery in the middle. Everyone had a huge smile for us. We disembarked thin and pale, some had no hair, I had short hair with a clip on the side. Some of the women were on stretchers and some stood on their feet wrapped in a blanket. People waved hello with handkerchiefs, and in their happy faces I saw how wretched we were.
From the ship we were transferred to a hospital, they checked for infectious diseases. Three weeks of pricks and X-rays and taking temperatures every two hours in the German language. The German language made me go hot and cold, maybe Sweden was part of Germany? And maybe they do special experimenting and in the end they’ll take all of us to a crematorium? Beside me I saw other pairs of eyes darting about and tiring of that German. A woman not far from me, jumped off the bed, ran outside and returned after two minutes. All right, there’s nothing outside, she said and sat down to eat. We were only given one meal a day, because the doctors didn’t want us to die from food. It didn’t bother me, because I always had bread under my pillow, others also had bread. And then, without discussing it among us, we arranged a roster. Every morning one of the women would go outside the hospital to check if they were building or organizing something outside, if they were changing the environment. Nothing was happening.
Three weeks went by and they found I had no contagious disease. There were twenty or thirty young women with me who could leave the hospital. They gave us a suitcase with three bras, four pairs of underwear and socks, two dresses, a sweater, a coat, shoes and a dressing gown, and they said, tomorrow to the convalescent home. That night I saw several young women going with their suitcases in the direction of the shower. They laughed behind the door, called out, help me, fasten my bra, tell me, how do I look, things like that. I didn’t go and try on. I knew two Sarahs could fit into the bra and underwear they’d given me, and that three like me could fit into the dress with space to spare.
From the hospital they transferred us by bus to the Convalescent Home in Ryd. An energetic albino social worker said in German, we’re going to a convalescent home especially for survivors from Czechoslovakia, nice dresses! On the bus, the women laughed at their appearance, some opened up suitcases, comparing clothes, touching the fabric, measuring the length and hemming. In the meantime, the bus entered a large pine forest and then everyone fell silent. I sat fixed to the window and began to whistle. One of the women on the bus began to cry. The social worker approached her. The woman wept, take me to the hospital, don’t want to be here, don’t want to. The social worker soothed her with kind words. After about an hour we saw two-story buildings among the trees, no chimneys. Next to the buildings were yellow and orange flower beds, nevertheless we refused to get off the bus. The social worker went from one to the other. The director of the convalescent home, with her starched collar and tightly ga
thered hair, helped her. The nurse had a kind smile. Some agreed to get off with the nurse, and I was among them. Some waited on the bus until we’d finished seeing the rooms. Only when we beckoned did they all agree to get off.
We were given a clean room for four girls, each with a bed and small cupboard of her own, but I didn’t unpack my suitcase. I wanted my suitcase ready for any event. The bell rang three times a day, inviting us to eat from beautiful china plates on embroidered table cloths. Waitresses with an apron and cap passed among the tables with full trays and served us good food. The waitresses had ringlets and curly hair. We also wanted ringlets and curls. One of the women in the group said, what’s the problem, she taught us to make paper rollers on her finger. Our hair was short, but we tugged, and tugged, and made rollers at night. In the morning we had ringlets and little curls.
Next to the dining room was a room with a piano, a stage for plays and a special hall with exercise equipment. The convalescent home staff were very good to us. They made sure we were constantly occupied, they taught us to speak Swedish, invited us to dance, or listen to concerts, to choirs, we sat in the hall like ordinary women taking an interest in music, but we weren’t ordinary women. Actually, the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes in the morning was my mother’s face in our home in Turi’i Remety. I never left home, I always helped Mama with the little ones, and then, in one day, one moment, everyone disappeared on the ramp at Auschwitz, and I didn’t know if they were living or dead. I only knew about Mama. I missed my mama. I continued to sit through concerts and choir performances by sweet girls with embroidery on their sleeves and braids with ribbons. I clapped them, but sometimes, in a flash, all the girls in the choir would fall naked one on top of another, and their bodies would shrink on the stage and their sweet braids would drop to the floor, and I would close my eyes in fright, open them slowly, and the sweet girls would be bowing before the audience, and I’d clap even harder, and again the sweet girls would fall naked, and fat rats would come to the faces everyone loved so much, oy my mamaleh, and I’d call out to God, or run outside.
