Last week I celebrated Shabbes in Berlin with my family. Today in a stuffy cattle car and the middle of nowhere.
No one would have heard the words "Shabbat Shalom" that I had uttered for years as a matter of course, and the words suddenly seemed a bit more foreign to me. The memories of the remaining peacefulness that had withstood every jolt until seven days ago seemed a bit more distant. Even those of maminke's fragrant cholent, which despite all its shortcomings had lost nothing of its deliciousness since the war, I could not revive in the stench of sweat, fear, and other bodily excretions.
It was better that way, I knew because otherwise, it would have reminded me too much of the painful emptiness in my stomach. And if I had succeeded in transferring myself back to the table with my parents, I would have left much of the courage to live there when I returned.
"I see buildings!" exclaimed a young woman whom I thought I recognized as Miriam from our train ride from Berlin. Heads jerked in her direction, people pushed towards the windows. This time not to escape the oppressive air in the wagon, but to get a glimpse as well.
Only the old man showed no reaction. Not even an opening of the eyes or twitching of the corners of his mouth. In the pit of my stomach, the desire to check on him stirred, but the dark foreboding that struck me kept me firmly in my place.
An image of ashes, shards, blood, and dead eyes flashed through my mind – shadows of a night I had long wanted to forget.
With them, fear crept back into my thoughts. All these people brought, carrying their stolen cross over their heads and hearts and its message on their lips was destruction. And never did it seem enough for them. They had stopped at nothing even then. How far were they willing to go now?
I forced the pictures out of my head and banished that memory back into the depths of my mind, from where it had just erupted. It refused to succeed.
The train braked abruptly, causing those who were standing on tiptoes trying to make out as much of the new surroundings as possible to stagger and tumble to the ground for lack of grip. Finally, it stopped, emitting the hiss of a beast.
Someone stumbled backward, trampling ungently on my feet, and regained his balance at the last moment before he could have fallen on top of me. Immediately I bent over Leah to protect her. A woman did the same with her child.
The jerking made the seated man fall over to the side. But he immediately disappeared from my view. In front of him, the others, helping each other back to their feet, shifted in a flurry of coats, hats, headscarves, and disheveled hairstyles. I thought I heard the dull thud of his head on the wood.
"Have we arrived already?" murmured Leah softly, still blinking the sleep out of her eyes, unable to dispel the fatigue with it.
"I think so," I croaked harshly.
She frowned in concern.
"The cold," I answered her silent question, coughed as if in confirmation, and twisted away.
In front of whom are you ashamed of your lie? In front of me or in front of you?, my mother's words came to my mind without me remembering the circumstances. I could not recall what I had lied about and why. Only this question remained in my memory. Back then, I could face it.
As if in answer, the doors opened, allowing the cold air that hit us to now entirely fill the room.
"Out! Out!"
My legs ached as I rose, but dizziness immediately swallowed the feeling. Payback for the hasty movement. The interior of the cattle car swayed precariously and finally became riddled with black dots that pushed in front of my vision like crawling ants.
"Khana!"
I felt a supporting arm around my waist, keeping me on my feet until the surroundings regained their shape.
Nevertheless, I thought for a moment that the skinny man in striped clothes who leaned into the carriage could only be imagination. Being illuminated by the almost blinding light streaming in through the door, he appeared like a ghost. The skin hung limply over his sunken cheeks, and from deep, shadowy hollows eyes peered dully out like two pieces of coal. It was the face of a dead man.
I only recoiled inwardly from the sight, my body pausing in place, still too weak, for such movement.
"If they ask you, tell them you're healthy," the man murmured as he passed.
Before I could even think to probe what that was supposed to mean, he had already disappeared among the others. However, he did not take with him the gnawing fear that his appearance left behind.
On the contrary. My mind cleared and comprehended what I had just seen. Not a ghostly apparition, but a half-starved man; a glimpse into our future.
Slowly the crowd in the wagon pushed forward and out, and finally, we too let it carry us along – accompanied by the soldiers' voices that grew more impatient with every word.
The uniformed men were our only welcome besides the cold and a few occasional raindrops. Behind them, the outlines of a few, invariably identical, rooftops stood out against the leaden sky. Otherwise, I found nothing that reminded me of civilization. No train station, no stores or houses, no ordinary people.
But –
Watchtowers.
Was this place like that one in Łódź?
I thought I could feel the blood draining from my body. A chill chased through me.
"You're freezing! Come on, I'll give you my –," Leah started.
"No," I interrupted her immediately, "it's nothing."
"You don't have to play the strong one. Not here." The protest came in quietly, but no less sharply because of it. Her words hit me harder than she had probably intended. My scalp tingled with shame.
I was supposed to be looking out for Leah, and it was supposed to be me who cared about her. Not the other way around.
"Leyele – "
"Line up the luggage here! Each suitcase must be clearly marked with a name," an SS man demanded sternly but indifferently as if he was doing this all day. The nose of the German shepherd that rested at his feet twitched sniffingly, but like his owner, he otherwise remained completely calm.
The grip on my suitcase tightened.
In the crowd that formed in front of the wagons, everything merged into a loud, stifling scenery. Shouted orders, the barking of dogs, and the unsettled murmurs of the rest of the people from the train.
Without even realizing it, my eyes had begun searching among the heads, ears listening for familiar voices, hoping to find my parents or Elias in the chaos. In vain.
Somewhere behind me, a woman hissed a protest. "They can wait a long time for me to voluntarily give them the last of my belongings. I won't let them steal any more from me."
"Don't you hear, they want us to label the suitcases. That means they want to be able to give them back," another replied reassuringly, but I heard the fear resonating in her voice. Fear that one of the SS men had heard her resistance.
"I don't want this," Leah now whispered as well.
"I'm sure we'll get everything we need here."
This time I knew my answer must sound hollow and ridiculous, because not only did I not believe it myself, but inside me the same feelings were raging.
They had reduced my possessions to the capacity of a tiny suitcase, and without it - what remained? Nothing. Except what I carried on my body.
Maybe.
But I had managed to smuggle things past the SS before. Why not again this time? I looked around furtively to see if anyone was watching us, weighing how long it would take my hand to go from the side to the suitcase, to the buckle, in, out again, and finally to my coat pocket.
Briefly, my gaze lingered on a woman next to the soldiers. Like them, she wore military greenish gray, only instead of breeches she wore a skirt and not a peaked cap, but a side cap. Just then she leaned over to one of the SS men, who was as blond as her, murmured something to him, and laughed.
I didn't know whether I found the sight of such merriment disconcerting or a little reassuring. After all, we wouldn't be alone here under the care of these men - and how cruel could a place be with a young woman still laughing like that?
But none of them looked in our direction.
Now!
"Los, Los! Put the suitcases here!" a uniformed man yelled so loudly that you would think his voice was about to break, while dogs joined in with their barking, making me flinch. Nothing about him had the cool blasé quality of his colleague.
He stood up in front of a young man and let his riding whip snap warningly against his boot. That the SS soldier was clearly towered over by the other did not take away a bit of his menace. His chest was jutting out in pride over his uniform, as if bursting from it as was the fabric that stretched across his massive belly. The suspicious redness in his shapeless, bloated face betrayed him not merely as a choleric man, but also as an alcoholic.
"Get it done today!" he growled. "And hats off when an SS soldier talks to you, son of a bitch."
Before the other could have pulled it off, surely out of fear rather than true respect, the riding-whip had already swept it from his head.
Mockingly, the SS man turned to his blond comrade, "This scum has no manners, huh Wilken?"
"We'll teach them, Herr Rottenführer," the other seriously replied.
My fellow passenger wanted to take the opportunity to lift his hat and walk on, but the soldier's shiny polished boot loomed over it, ready to crush his hand at a moment's notice.
"C'mon, hurry," the Rottenführer hissed before spitting at the man's feet. "Saujud."
The stranger rushed to the suitcases and the riding crop described a gesture in his direction to urge him on. His hat remained in front of the train.
Disgust and rebellion raged inside me, with nothing of it visible beyond a nauseated clenching of my lips. What could I have done about it? What more than silently despise and hope that someday there would be justice for such people who felt most comfortable where others suffered?
But I wanted to do something; I wanted ...
Then, as if he had sensed my thoughts, the Rottenführer's gaze turned to Leah and me. Even from here, I thought I saw hatred sparkling in his eyes and, even more frightening, a small smirk lifting the corners of his mouth.
The smoldering anger in my stomach cooled instantly. I winced and clutched my suitcase tighter, only to let go of it a little later. For good this time. I urged Leah to do the same, so as not to attract further attention.
"I'm sure we'll get it back when we're allowed to leave again," I assured her - or rather us. Go, where to? Of where?
I didn't even know what kind of place this was, or what paths led out of it. But much more cruel were the doubts that hung on that one, small word: when. Maybe the right word was "if".
But in the face of the corpulent Rottenführer, who continued to watch us, riding whip in hand, and eyeing my sister in a sickening way, appeasement came frighteningly easily to my lips, and the guilt that otherwise pressed against my ribcage did not weigh so heavily.
Leah's delicate fingers released their grip more quickly than I would have expected.
"You're right."
I gave up on the idea of taking anything with me. It would have been impossible to hide from that piercing gaze. So I left behind clothes, photos, Kafka, and Kaléko, whose words wouldn't be able to comfort me now on dark nights.
"Line up in rows of five! Move!"
The SS man with his dog stoically watched as the chaos ordered itself and started moving, while the blonde one, Wilken, and the Rottenführer seemed to be just waiting to vent their impatience on someone.
"What are they going to do to us now?", I heard Leah's voice softly beside me.
Inside me, realization and denial fought for the upper hand. The images of November 1938 mingled with the whispered account of a customer of my father's whom I had overheard years ago. A story of the cruelty of the camps, where opponents of the regime like her and Jews like us were tortured. But there remained this voice that said it simply wasn't possible, that they couldn't send us all to our deaths, and the entire world stood idly by.
In the end, neither won, but simply indecision. I could not promise Leah life as we approached our deaths, and even less did I have had the heart to dash her hopes. Which was worse: knowing nothing or knowing everything?
I did not know and did not dare to make this decision. It was selfish, there was no other way to call it, that I pushed away the responsibility I didn't want to bear, wasn't it?
"I don't know," I confessed quietly, hiding behind the thought that it was true after all, but knowing inside that half the truth was a sister to a lie.
We passed two small, unadorned signs reading "Konitz" and "Halt!", disconcertingly unremarkable compared to the massive lettering that, following the curve of the stone archway, was emblazoned above our heads. Arbeit macht frei. Work sets you free.
Konitz. I had never heard of the place, but that meant nothing.
Poland was after all only like the grandmother for me, whom they said I took after. And although her blood ran through my veins, I spoke with her words and her traditions also determined my life; I had never met her. She lived in me and yet was a bit of a stranger to me.
Perhaps Maminke would have known where we were.
"Keep going! Keep going!", I heard a roar with an almost inhuman metallic undertone very close to me, followed by a dog barking - and the sudden thundering of shoes on stone, falling out of rhythm with the others. Something abruptly jostled me on the shoulder and was gone just as quickly.
"Hey, you there! Get back in line!"
"Freeze!" another voice commanded, but the footsteps did not silence.
The dogs growled.
A bang cut through the air.
Then there was silence.
A woman cried out, which seamlessly faded into sobs.
"Look what happens when someone tries to run away."
Who had said that? Where was he even standing? The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, and from far, far away.
My legs just moved forward. I didn't feel it in my numb muscles, but that the world didn't stop moving around me told me it had to be that way. Abulic, more out of reflex, my gaze fluttered back over my shoulder.
Just ahead of the platoon lay a man in a fine dark coat, face down in a pool of rusty red. The Rottenführer roughly dragged the woman, who knelt trembling at his side, sobbing the same words over and over, back into line. As if two completely incongruous scenes that did not happen at the same time stitched together, the man in striped clothes dragged a figure out of our wagon and put it down like others their suitcases before disappearing once again into the train. Strangely untouched by all this, the hat lay in the middle of the scene.
I saw and yet looked through it all, for I did not understand. A wall pushed itself between me and the world, separating what otherwise connected me with it.
Leah tried to speak haltingly but did not produce a sound. Before she could look back herself, my hand mechanically forced her head in the other direction.
"Look ahead. Always look ahead." My lips did not move, the voice was foreign.
A nascent breeze sweeping across the grounds made my fingers reflexively wrap the coat tighter around my body, though it was completely futile as I was already shivering violently from the cold. The fabric didn't seem to offer me a bit of protection or warmth. Nevertheless, I kept pulling at it.
"Nice shot, well done!" The Rottenführer's laughter echoed painfully in my ears.
"Just a pity about the bullet," Wilken replied, shrugging his shoulders and putting the pistol back in its leather holster.
Always look ahead, I repeated silently. As often as I could, until I succeeded.
Bathed in the pale evening light, a large open square stretched in front of me, flanked by wooden barracks and a gray building complex that gave off anything but a homey impression. It seemed threatening despite its usualness. Bare, functional, gloomy.
Behind it, in disconcerting contrast, I glimpsed the façade of a common dwelling, just as it might have stood in Berlin. With the exposed bricks below, the beige-painted wall above, and the central avant-corpse, it looked almost like my grandparents', awakening unexpected memories of shared holidays, childhood play in the garden, and conversations over steaming cups of tea.
They snapped me out of my haze and back into reality.
But I shooed them away with a little shake of my head. Not only because the thought of something so familiar admits this hostile place seemed ridiculous, but also because I feared that too long exposed to the present, its cruelty would taint this beautiful past. I did not want to allow the shadows of gray uniforms, fear, and death to attach themselves to it.
I averted my eyes from the building, which seemed to belong here as little as the memories of a normal life.
At the other end of the square stood a gallows.
What a breathtaking view the occupant of this building must have. From the balcony, as from a loge, he could watch the gruesome spectacle down here without having to descend to it. Like Hitler himself, who enjoyed from residences how his servants executed his will.
I almost expected to see someone standing up there now, looking down on us small, dispossessed, fearful beings in an elegant uniform. I glanced up again - and recognized a silhouette at that very spot. But it disappeared so quickly that I must have been mistaken. Only my expectations had projected this image there.
A strange stench wavered in the air that I couldn't place, but it seemed to settle in my nose after the first little breath, and even on my tongue. In disgust, I now buried my face even deeper in the collar, ignoring the anxious voice in my head that wondered what could be its cause. For not with all my imagination could I have thought of a pacifying explanation.
There was a disturbing order to everything in this place. It was like a crude manifestation of SS's own precision: the mechanical orders that now separated women from men and made us line up in rows; the precisely aligned buildings; every step; every movement. A well-oiled machine.
"Attention!"
Sudden silence, which immediately settled over the square followed the command. There was not a single voice, even the SS men and women fell silent and the dogs rested obediently and quietly at their feet. Nothing but the wind and a few suppressed coughs broke this eerie silence, which tightened like a noose around my neck.
The world was holding its breath.
And we waited.
For the next order. For whatever would follow now. For an answer.
We waited, and nothing happened.
There is a path to freedom. Its milestones are: obedience, diligence, honesty, order, cleanliness, sobriety, truthfulness, a sense of sacrifice, and love of the Fatherland! a sign from the building opposite taunted us. Whether and from which of Hitler's highest servants - if not from himself - the words came, I did not know. They all sounded the same, anyway.
A cruel irony considering how many were here despite these virtues, or more perfidiously - precisely because of them. Those who loved their homeland and fought for it were arrested. For the fatherland had ceased to love them as well.
All at once lamps tore apart the pale twilight and bathed the square in a cold light that hurt the eyes. We were in the middle of spotlights. I lowered my gaze to the ground.
In a perfidious way, it reminded me of a play, only the roles had reversed. A small audience was looking at us, standing on their stage and, unlike them, did not know what was being performed today. Or maybe it was different, and we were spectators and background actors for their act at the same time.
Self-staging - after all, that was what they were good at, wasn't it?
When they marched in step through Berlin with burning torches and shouted their songs of great battle into the night.
When they burned German books in the name of German culture.
When they presented themselves as the master race in their brown, black, and gray uniforms, while underneath was still the same baker, policeman, or tailor; only now with power over the fate of others.
When they named a night of harsh destruction after something refined like "crystal".
None of this changed their crimes, and that there was nothing proud, grand, or superior about them.
What would it be this time?
Whatever it was, as always, it had an effect. My hands clenched tighter around the fabric of the coat. Even if one wanted to mock their grandstanding and cowardly lies, fear accompanied every derision. For behind it all there was nothing laughable at all.
And then steps broke the silence.