A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy (17 page)

Knowing that it would take some time before I would be able to leave the orphanage for Palestine, I tried to avoid thinking
about my parents by spending more and more time playing soccer and table tennis. Then, one afternoon, while I was in the midst
of an exciting soccer game, the director came running out of her office, waving a letter. I looked at it and immediately recognized
my mother’s unmistakable handwriting. It began, “
Mein liebster
Tommyli” — My dearest Tommyli. Right then and there I knew that she was alive. “She is alive!” I kept repeating to myself.
It was the happiest moment of my life. I began to cry and laugh all at once, casting off the self-control and tough-guy attitude
I sought to cultivate at the orphanage. I had a mother, and that meant that I could be a child again.

If it had been today, rather than in 1946, that my mother had learned I was alive, she would immediately have gotten on a
plane or a train, traveled to Poland, and taken me back to Göttingen, her hometown, where she had returned after the war.
But none of that was possible in 1946, nor was it possible for her to telephone me from Germany. Also, it would have taken
my mother many months to obtain proper documents for travel to Poland. And since I had no passport, nor any other documents
allowing me to leave Poland, more time would have been lost. It was thus readily apparent that other, less traditional travel
plans had to be put together to get me to her in Göttingen.

In the meantime, mail was the only way for us to communicate. But in those days it was slow and not always reliable. It took
some four to six weeks for a letter from Germany to reach me in Otwock, if not longer, which meant that we were probably not
able to exchange more than a few letters before we were reunited. Once I knew that she was alive, I was naturally getting
more impatient and frustrated waiting to be with her. I can only imagine what she must have been going through at that same
time. Oh, how I would have loved at least to have been able to hear her voice!

It took more than three or four months for us to be reunited. Many people were involved in getting me from Otwock to Göttingen:
the director of our orphanage, who was magnificent at pulling all necessary bureaucratic strings, and various Jewish organizations,
among them the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Bricha. The latter was a secretive Jewish organization that
smuggled survivors from Europe to Palestine and, in the process, also helped reunite families dispersed throughout Europe.
To this day, I don’t really know who coordinated the various roles these organizations performed in getting me to my destination.
What I do know is that my journey from Otwock, via Prague in Czechoslovakia and the American Zone in Germany, to Göttingen
in the British Zone, with various stopovers along the way, was executed with admirable precision and without any hitches that
I was aware of. It must have taken at least three weeks.

Such a voyage, even under normal circumstances, would have required considerable coordination, since I was passed from one
group or individual to another at different stages of the trip. Not only did I have to cross a number of borders, I had to
cross them illegally because I lacked the proper papers. Some people were responsible for the border crossings, others for
putting me up in temporary or clandestine Jewish transit centers and at times even in hotels. On the whole, the border crossings
were not very perilous and were sometimes effected in plain view of border guards who must have been bribed. Only one border
crossing involved trudging in deep snow in the dark through a forest while trying not to get caught. I am no longer sure whether
it was the Polish-Czech frontier or the border between Czechoslovakia and the American Zone in Germany. What I remember most
clearly to this day, though, is the cold. This particular border crossing took place either in late November or early December,
and my feet, sensitive to the cold because of my earlier frostbite and amputations, hurt and made walking difficult. That,
in turn, brought back unpleasant memories of the Auschwitz death march. Fortunately, it took only a few hours to make this
crossing before we arrived at a warm transit center.

With the exception of one border crossing, where I was the only person being brought over, I usually traveled in a group of
between ten and twenty people — a “transport,” as our Bricha guides called it. The composition of these groups and their size
changed from way station to way station. For example, we would arrive at a transit center after we had crossed a border and
find others already waiting there. That group would have priority over us in moving to the next destination, while we had
to wait a few days more for our turn. Although it was all very efficiently organized, it took a lot of time to transport us
from country to country.

One event from that voyage was vividly brought back to me in a most dramatic way more than half a century later. In 1946,
after having been smuggled from Poland to Czechoslovakia, I was detached from my group and taken to Prague. There, I was placed
in the care of a young American woman who put me up for about a week in an elegant hotel where she lived. She was very kind
to me, took me to nice places to eat, and showed me many interesting sights in the city. When the time came for me to leave
Prague in order to join the transport that would take me to the American Zone of Germany, I promised that I would stay in
touch. But I was not able to because, in the excitement of my anticipated reunion with my mother, I lost the piece of paper
on which she had written her name and address. Then, on March 19, 2000, while working on my computer, an e-mail with the subject
heading “Is it you?” flashed on my screen. The e-mail began with the following words: “I read in the
Jerusalem Post
of March 6 about your election to serve as World Court judge.” After congratulating me, the writer continued:

I am wondering whether you are the same “Tommy Buergenthal,” who during the year 1946 or 1947 was brought from Poland to Prague,
by special escort, and had to spend a few days in Prague, waiting…to rejoin his mother in Germany. If so, I was the welfare
worker of the American Joint Distribution Committee, with whom you stayed and who took care of you. My name then was “Freda
Cohen.”…Although more than 50 years have elapsed, I have never forgotten the child or the name “Tommy Buergenthal,” and often
wondered about your whereabouts. Seeing your name in print was a most exciting experience for me, and I would be very happy
to hear whether you are in fact the same “Tommy Buergenthal.”

The e-mail was signed “Freda (Cohen) Koren” and it came from Tel Aviv. Of course, I replied immediately. We corresponded for
about a year and a half and made plans to get together as soon as possible. Then, shortly after she advised me that she intended
to visit me in the Netherlands, I received the sad news of her sudden death; by then she was in her mideighties and had lived
a full life. At the very least, I had still been given the opportunity, after all these many years, to thank her for taking
such good care of me in 1946. While I had forgotten her name, I had of course never forgotten how kind she had been to me.
I had also thought of her frequently, particularly when walking through revolving doors. This incongruous association between
revolving doors and Freda, I explained in my first e-mail to her, was prompted by an experience I had when she brought me
to her hotel. At the entrance of the hotel, I came to an abrupt stop in front of its revolving door. I had never before seen
a revolving door, and it took me a while to figure out how one passed through such a contraption. “That was obviously one
piece of information I did not need to know in order to survive in the concentration camps,” I commented to her in that e-mail,
as we tried to catch up on developments in our lives that spanned a period of more than fifty-five years.

After I left Prague, I crossed the Czech frontier with another transport and entered the American Zone near the Bavarian city
of Hof, where another transit center awaited us. One more border remained, the one separating the British from the American
Zone, before I would be reunited with my mother in Göttingen. I passed through that border in a U.S. military train, accompanied
by another representative of the American Joint. The date was December 29, 1946. Göttingen was only some twenty kilometers
away.

Once we had passed this last border, I got up from my seat and stood by the window until we rolled into the Göttingen railroad
station. I could not contain my excitement. I spotted my mother even before the train came to a stop. As I try to describe
the emotions of that moment, I realize that I am incapable of putting into words what I felt. And even now, so many years
later, tears well up in my eyes as I see her standing there, nervously scanning the slowing railroad cars for a glimpse of
me. While the train was still moving, I jumped out and raced over to her. We fell into each others’ arms and stood there long
after the train had moved out of the station, hugging each other and trying in just a few minutes to recount all that had
happened to us since that August day in 1944 when we were separated in Auschwitz. “
Und
Papa?” I finally asked. She did not answer right away but kept shaking her head as tears ran down her cheeks. Right then,
I knew that my father had not survived the war that was now finally over for my mother and me.

AS SOON AS WE WERE TOGETHER AGAIN
, Mutti and I talked and talked for days on end about everything that had happened to each of us during the two and a half
years we were separated. That is how I learned that in the fall of 1944 she had been sent from Auschwitz to the notorious
women’s concentration camp of Ravensbrück, located about ninety kilometers from Berlin. Ravensbrück was evacuated by the SS
ahead of the approaching Soviet troops toward the end of April 1945. Mutti and the other camp inmates able to walk were marched
in a westerly direction until they reached Malchow, a satellite camp of Ravensbrück. Many of the women died on that march.
On April 28, 1945, Malchow was liberated by advancing Soviet troops. Ironically, at that point, a mere sixty-odd kilometers
separated Mutti and me, yet it took about another year and a half for us to be reunited.

During the first week following her liberation, Mutti, together with a small group of her friends, rested in various deserted
German houses they came across. There they also helped themselves to the clothing they needed and to food. Since, with the
exception of Mutti, these women were all born in Poland, they decided to return to their hometowns as soon as possible in
the hope of finding surviving relatives. Mutti joined them in order to get to Kielce, which was one of the meeting places
she and my father had agreed on if they survived the war. She also assumed, correctly as it turned out, that others who had
survived the Ghetto of Kielce would be returning to that city and would be able to provide information about my father and
me in case we were not yet there.

Mutti reached Kielce after a horrendous journey on foot and by truck and rail that lasted almost two weeks. With no money
and no food other than what little she could scavenge or beg from farmers along the way, she made it to Kielce totally exhausted.
During the trip, particularly after her little group had split up, she had to be very careful not to be taken for a German.
Since she spoke little Polish, she decided to claim that she was Hungarian whenever asked where she came from. She did not
know a single word of Hungarian, though, and could only hope that she would not run into someone who would address her in
that language. She was lucky on that score but, nevertheless, gave away her German origin on one occasion. That happened when
someone stepped on her foot in the back of a very crowded truck. At that moment, a mild German curse escaped her lips. Before
she knew it, she was pushed off the truck, fortunate not to have been beaten or worse.

A few dozen survivors had in the meantime returned to Kielce and established a Jewish community organization. Mutti was welcomed
with open arms, since most of the people knew her from the labor camp and the Henryków factory. Provided with temporary shelter
and food, she began to make inquiries about my father and me. She soon learned that my father had not survived. After he and
I were separated in Auschwitz, he was sent to Flossenbürg, another German concentration camp. He died there a few days before
the liberation of the camp, executed with many other inmates the SS leadership did not want to fall into Allied hands. For
days, Mutti walked around in a stupor, unwilling to believe what she had been told. But as more and more survivors who had
been with my father in Flossenbürg returned to Kielce and confirmed the news of his death, she had no choice but to accept
it.

None of the returnees whom Mutti approached could tell her for sure what had happened to me. Many of them knew me well from
Kielce and Auschwitz, but no one had seen me after the liberation or near that time. One man thought he had seen me either
on the Auschwitz Death Transport or in Sachsenhausen but was not really sure. As Mutti kept prodding them to remember whether
they might have seen me after the liberation of Sachsenhausen, they tried to convince her that I could not possibly be alive.
“None of the children survived,” they would tell her. “How could he have survived?” they asked gently. “After all, he was
by far the youngest from Kielce.” “Now you must think of yourself and your health,” they would add, concerned about her fragile
condition and her nervous exhaustion. But she would have none of it. She knew that I was alive, for hadn’t the fortune-teller
proclaimed that I was a “lucky child”?

When her search in Kielce yielded no further useful information, Mutti decided that the time had come to travel to Göttingen,
which was another of the meeting places she and my father had agreed on. Returning to Germany was no easier than her earlier
trip from there to Poland. Conditions along the roads were still as chaotic and as dangerous as before, and transportation
equally difficult to find. But with the help of some money she had received from the Jewish community in Kielce, Mutti eventually
made it to Göttingen. She reached Göttingen totally exhausted and lapsed into a depression. She was hospitalized shortly after
her arrival and treated for her now acute thyroid condition. The doctors also concluded that she needed total rest. In those
pretranquilizer days, Mutti was placed on an extended regimen of sleep medication. She remained in the hospital for quite
a number of weeks.