by Malka Adler
After almost a year in the convalescent home, I reached the normal weight of a slender young woman of twenty-two, and then, in the spring, they transferred me and several other girls to a Czech refugee camp called Robertshöjd, near the town of Gothenburg in Sweden. Around the camp was a barbed-wire fence, at the entrance stood a guard who examined papers. I saw the fence and wanted to flee, but I calmed myself, stop, Sarah, stop, there isn’t a crematorium, no electricity in the fence, the Swedes are good, rest. I found the strength, held tight to the suitcase, put my other hand on my chest, straightened up and entered the camp as if I was a tall, normal woman. I was taken to a bloc with two-story beds, twenty girls to a room. I said to the director, dear woman, I can’t fall asleep in a two-story bed, either a floor or a regular bed. I was given a regular bed in another room.
There were goy men in that camp.
The goys lived next to the kitchen and were always first in line for food. We received food through a hatch in the wall. There were times the Czech men didn’t want to wait in line and then they’d push one another, cursing and hitting. The blows of the Czechs weakened me, I would quickly go to the end of the line. There were times I’d go without food because of their shouts on the path.
One day we were told they’d found work for us and I registered at once. I set off to work at the Lessly factory, where I learned to sew dresses. I earned well and began to feel I had a chance in this life, especially after receiving a telegram from a young woman who was with me in the camps. She was in another town in Sweden. In the telegram she wrote that two of my brothers were alive and living in Israel. Her brother had met them in Israel. I sent her a telegram, writing, but I have three brothers, who is left? The young woman responded by telegram, two, Sarah, don’t know the names. And then came the letter from Yitzhak and Dov. They asked me to come to Palestine. I so wanted to meet my brothers. I decided to travel to Eretz-Israel.
On the day I heard that Jewish men from Eretz-Israel had come to the camp, I went to meet them. They looked strong and healthy. They spoke the Hebrew language among themselves, a confident language, unlike the Hebrew my brothers brought from cheder. The minute I saw them I fell in love with them, I could barely refrain from giving them a kiss. All the Czechs in the camp looked at the handsome men from Eretz-Israel, and I straightened up, and in my heart I shouted, you see, there are Jewish heroes in the world, and they’ve come from Eretz-Israel especially for us, to take us away in a plane.
That night I couldn’t sleep, I felt as if a hundred sewing machines were at work in my mind, lasting until morning. The heroic men told us that we should take five things to Israel: blankets, clothing and towels, a sewing machine, and a folding bed. I bought an old sewing machine and a folding bed. A friend who lived with me got me a trunk, I packed my things in the trunk and parted from the people I’d met in the camp.
The following night the strong young men took us in a truck to the airplane. It was a military plane with a Danish pilot. We flew to Marseille. There were problems on the flight. We were told to sit on the right hand side, and they suddenly said, everyone move to the left. A few minutes later, to the right, and again to the left, we moved from side to side the whole way, I was worried the plane might fall to earth and we’d burn to death.
Marseille smelled of rotten fish and perfume.
In Marseille, I saw a black person for the first time. As if he’d been burned in an oven and didn’t look good. Even his hair looked as if it had been in the oven. Apart from being black, he wore a coat and tie and he had a briefcase in his hand and he blew his nose on a handkerchief, like the French woman standing beside him. That night we slept in a hotel. Before going to sleep I bought perfume. I put perfume behind my ears, on my neck, under my chin, and on my wrists, I couldn’t sleep for the smell and the excitement. In the morning they took us to Palestine in another airplane. The plane was steady, we didn’t have to move from side to side during the flight. Not far from me was a woman with a pleated skirt and she was holding a crying baby in her arms. She moved around the seats, trying to calm her baby. Another woman with a beret and a burn-like mark on her cheeks walked beside her. The two looked related. The woman with the beret peeped over the mother’s shoulder, made faces and sounds at the baby. The woman with the baby turned to her and said, do you want to hold him? And she gave her the baby.
The woman with the beret sat down in her seat, said Yanu-leh, my Yanu’leh and sang him a lullaby in a deep, hoarse voice. The baby was alarmed and began to scream, I saw the hand of the woman pressing hard on the baby’s chest.
The mother stood beside her, said gently, maybe I should take the baby, he’s tired.
The woman with the beret didn’t hear the mother, said, Yanu’leh don’t cry, nor did she hear the man with the hat sitting beside her.
The mother bent down to the woman’s ear, and said loudly, give me back the baby. The woman bent forwards, pressing the baby’s face with her chest. He began to cough and the mother screamed, she’s suffocating my baby. One of the heroic young men ran up and moved the mother aside. He bent over the woman with the beret and whispered things in her ear. In the meantime other people jumped up and gathered round the mother and then I felt the plane fall and stop as if it had been struck. It happened twice, and people began to shout, the plane is falling, the plane is falling.
It took four forceful young men to restore the baby to his mother and calm everyone. The woman with the beret wept and the man next to her pleaded with her. She knocked off his hat and continued to weep. I went to her. I took the perfume I’d bought in Marseille out of my bag and gave it to her, take it. She didn’t want to take it. The man without the hat whispered to me, she had two, twins, a son and a daughter. I lifted my hand with the perfume and began to spray. I sprayed the aisle, I sprayed the people, above my head, I went to the front and sprayed that part of the plane. Only when the perfume was finished did I return to my seat.
After about seven-eight hours we saw shore lights through the window.
The young men said, that’s it, we’ve reached Haifa. I said to one of the men, my brothers won’t recognize me and I won’t recognize them because four years have gone by since we parted. Leiber, who became Dov in Israel, was a boy of sixteen, and today he’s a man of twenty, and Icho – Yitzhak, was a boy of fifteen, and today he’s nineteen. The young man said, don’t worry, they’ll help you. I knew my brothers had been in Israel for two years and, in my heart, I worried, maybe they look like the brave young men bringing me in the airplane? And how will I recognize them if all the young men in Israel look the same? I took a piece of bread out of my pocket and put it in my mouth.
We reached Haifa after the Declaration of the State, in October or November, 1948.
They took us to an immigrants’ camp. There were a lot of people in the camp. They looked old to me. Maybe seventy, or a hundred. They had red marks on their cheeks and short jackets. Their collars were half in half out and there were papers in their pockets. They took their papers out of their pockets, looking for a way to understand something. I saw they didn’t understand anything. I didn’t understand either. The women wore dresses a little below the knee. They had rollers in their hair. When they took out the rollers their hair turned nicely upward. I had thin, short hair. All I had to do was run a comb through it and that’s all. If I pulled hard on my hair, I could make a few ringlets, but I didn’t feel like ringlets in a camp full of immigrants. I didn’t like looking in the mirror, the young woman I saw in the mirror gave me nightmares because of the black smudges around the eyes and because of the thin face, and the thin line where the mouth should be. I had to puff out my cheeks and give myself a light slap to restore the lips to their place.
I sent Dov and Yitzhak a telegram from Haifa.
The telegram said: A message to my brothers Dov and Yitzhak. It’s me, Sarah, your older sister. I came by plane to Haifa. I’m waiting in an immigrants’ camp. When will you come? P.S. Have you heard anything from Avrum or father?
One day people came to call me, they said, Sarah, Sarah, come, you have visitors. I went to the gate, my legs gave way, and I fell twice, for no reason, but I got up quickly and continued walking. Two young men stood before me, they were at least a head and half taller than me. They had shoulders, and a neck and a broad jaw like strangers, but I still recognized them by the smile and the eyes. Dov was the first to smile, he had a head full of brown curls, and a brown sadness in his eyes. Yitzhak smiled after him, he had a knife-sharp glance. They wore black trousers and a pale shirt with a collar. Dov wore a battledress. Yitzhak had a sweater thrown over his back.
I called, almost shouted, is that you?
And I began to laugh. I laughed like a mad woman, and then we wept. We wept a lot.
They said, Sarah. They choked, Sarah, Sarah, and I touched them, murmuring, I’ve found my brothers, I’ve found them. We embraced. Held hands. A lot of people stood around us. They held notes in their hands and wept with us. Beside my brothers I felt like a small happy woman. Dov said, Sarah, we’ve come to take you, and I agreed, yes, yes, and I stood between them and we began to walk. They had large steps, my brothers, one was a soldier, the other a tractor driver and responsible for a post with a gun. They spoke fluent, strong Hebrew to each other, I said, wait a minute, have you forgotten Hungarian? They both laughed and shifted to Hungarian but they spoke quietly.
Dov took me to the little moshav where he worked, Yitzhak returned to the army. I lived with Dov in his room. He had a lot of food in a cupboard and he persisted, eat, eat, I couldn’t eat because of the blockage in my belly. At night I couldn’t sleep, the quiet in my brother’s room made an explosion in my ears.
The next day Dov went to work, not before he set out on the table five canned foods, two loaves of bread, a jar of jam and a jug of milk. I ate a little and went back to sleep. That evening, Dov said, Sarah, there’s a fellow on the moshav who wants to marry you, come and meet him. I didn’t want to meet an Israeli fellow and I didn’t want to get married.
A few weeks later I went to Tel Aviv and met Mordecai the soldier. He’d emigrated to Israel on Altalena. I married Mordecai because of his eyes. When he stopped near me I’d feel a pleasant warmth in my body. Mordecai was in the camps. I didn’t tell him where I was and Mordecai didn’t say where he’d been. After a few months we moved to Be’er Sheva. I worked in a kindergarten. I was a kindergarten teacher’s aide. I had experience with my brothers at home. We didn’t manage financially. We barely had enough to eat. We ate bread and radishes. In 1952 we left Israel for Canada, we said, maybe we’ll manage better in Canada. A few years later, we moved to the United States and our two sons were born, and I never ever fell again. Even when I had images in my mind, every day with its images, for instance, the image of a woman my height who hid a baby under her coat. She tucked him into the elastic of her trousers and he began to cry. A German soldier with a hole in his chin ran in her direction and looked for the baby. He went from one woman to the next until her reached her. He held the rifle in both hands, took a step back and thrust the butt of the rifle into her belly. The crying of the baby stopped. The woman’s face went green, but she didn’t move and the soldier walked away. The woman took a tiny bundle out of her trousers, threw it onto the pile of suitcases and stood in a line of four.
There were other images that returned again and again like a giant wheel turning very very slowly in my dream, and sitting in a chair, I’d want to flee, but couldn’t get up.
I spent a year in the camps.
Since then I don’t trust people. It doesn’t matter what people say, I don’t trust. I don’t trust the government, I don’t trust strangers. I decided that I would never ever trust anyone, only myself and my closest family. I live frugally. If I grow old and ill I will take care of myself. I try to be a good Jewess. For me being a good Jewess is eating kosher food, keeping the Sabbath, celebrating the Jewish holidays. I give as much as I can to charity, even the Arabs in Queens have learned to go past the houses calling, charity, charity. I try and stay in touch with good friends nearby.
I haven’t talked to my two sons about the camps.
I don’t know why I’ve kept silent all these years. Lately, my grandchildren want to know. They say, Grandma, Grandma, tell us about the camps, and I tell them, a little. I only began to take reparations two years ago, 200 dollars a month. I live primarily on social security.
When I was in the camps with other young women, we said revenge! Revenge will be bringing Jewish children into the world. I have children, thank God, and that’s the revenge.
Chapter 55
Yitzhak: They killed six million Jews, six million!
Could three million of them have fought?
Of course they could. But they told us
wait for the Messiah, and the Messiah didn’t come.
Dov: That’s why I don’t want to speak Yiddish.
I want to forget Yiddish and the Messiah.
Yitzhak
Today, I know: We should never have left our home.
We should either have died at home or escaped to the forest. If I had known of the plan to annihilate my people I would never have gotten on any train. But the rabbi took the Bible and led us in rows, yes. He led us, as if the walk to the gas chambers was the most normal thing in the world. What, didn’t the rabbis know what they were doing to the Jews? We stood at the entrance to the shower in Auschwitz, two lines of naked men, and instead of shouting, resist, the rabbi shouted Shema Israel. We should have attacked them. We should have caused havoc, stopped those convoys walking and walking to the crematorium as if they were handing out candies on sticks in there. They’d have fired their rifles, so what, was gas any better? At least we’d have stopped the pace of death, I think about that and go mad. Sometimes two SSmen led a thousand hungry Jews. What, couldn’t we have killed two SSmen? And if a hundred had come, couldn’t we have kicked them to death? We were many thousands and they were only a few, we could have. Before the hunger we could have risen against them. The hunger weakened our minds. A hungry person can’t think about anything, his mind is stupid. The Germans took care to make us stupid in the camps, so we wouldn’t notice the convoys going to the crematorium, is it any wonder that we were silent? People didn’t even have the strength to commit suicide. The mind needs a lot of strength to think it’s better to die. We preserved our remaining strength to survive the hunger and the frost, not in order to think. It was the strong who committed suicide. The strong ran and threw themselves on the fence, or hanged themselves with a rope. The strong stopped eating because they’d decided to die. Do you know how much strength it takes to step out of line and do things alone?
I remember having only one thing on my mind: More bread in order to live. I wanted to get more bread so my brother Dov wouldn’t die beside me.
Chapter 56
Dov
I try not to think about what happened to me in the camps.
I have friends who have lived with the camps every night for over fifty years.
I don’t dream. When I open my eyes in the morning, I don’t pass my hand over my body to see if I have a leg, or nails on my fingers. And at night when I go to bed, I don’t see a cart with the dead, their arms dangling down over the sides. But what I went through at sixteen still affects me today. Let’s say, when I see a television program about food in which the chef produces goose with a special spice from Spain, I watch and am eaten up inside. My fingers immediately begin to tap on the table and my coffee spills, and cake crumbs drop on the carpet and I feel like firing a bullet into the middle of the screen because I can’t bear talk of special spices. In the camps every stinking rotten peel helped me live for two days. I’d pray to God to give me bread ten times a day. When I found moldy bread, it was as if God was telling me, Dov, you will live. And here they are, talking to me about a powder from China, grains from Paris, and mushrooms from the Himalayas, why are they telling me this? I can’t hear chatter like that. Sometimes I see a movie in whi
ch a child throws dough at another child. It kills me, I can’t bear to see food being thrown around. Sometimes they throw whole cakes in someone’s face, just like that, for a laugh, and it irritates me. Isn’t that a waste of a cake? How many people could have eaten pieces of it?
At home I’d die rather than throw food. Sometimes the girls can eat a third of a pita and throw the rest into the garbage. It affects me. I feel my blood pressure rising, my forehead gets moist and I boil inside. And nonetheless I explain to the girls that food shouldn’t be thrown away. Sometimes I call them to come and watch a television program about children in the world who are dying of hunger, and here we are throwing food in the garbage. Not sure they know what I’m talking about.
Hotels are the hardest of all for me.
I am incapable of going into a hotel and being waited on. My wife says to me, everyone goes away for a weekend, let’s go to a hotel. I don’t want to go, don’t like someone serving me food at a table. Those waiters stand at my table and say, it’s special food, and that’s a delicacy, and this is imported wine, and I want to get up and leave. I get nervous right at the entrance to the hotel. The reception clerks tell me, you’ll sleep in a luxury room with air-conditioning, a Jacuzzi, a view of the sea, and a bar, and your own private dressing gown for the pool, and I feel a heat in my body. Don’t enjoy talk like that. I say, as long as I have bread and a tomato and a roof over my head, I’m in paradise. Not long ago we were dying of hunger and now I miss a liquor bar? If I had to live for a week in a hotel I wouldn’t be able to bear it. I went overseas once in my life, my wife wanted to, I was in Turkey on behalf of the company I worked for, all the luxury I saw there got on my nerves.
