I Have Lived a Thousand Years (21 page)

F
REEDOM, AT
L
AST

SEESHAUPT, APRIL 30, 1945

Perhaps our guards no longer care whether we escape or not. The doors of the boxcar stand wide open. It is bitter cold in the wagon. Most of us are wounded, some critically. The others are too weak to move.

We roll with a steady, loud clatter amid high mountains and deep forests. The train moves on all day. All night. We have been in the cattle car a whole week, without food, without water. The night seems endless. The rattle of the train goes on forever.

Lakes glisten with eerie gray light. There is deadly silence in the boxcar. My brother is lying with closed eyes, his head in Mommy’s lap. Mommy sits propped against the wall in the corner, her head hanging to one side, her eyes half closed, her mouth wide open. I know she’s asleep.

Lilli is silent now. She stopped whimpering some time ago. I touch her. She is very hot.

Beth is silent, too. She’s not asleep, though. She leans against the wall quite upright, staring ahead. Her eyes seem enormous in the shadowy darkness of the car.

The two remaining sisters from the small Hungarian village huddle together, asleep. Judy, the girl from Budapest with the injured shoulder, also sits upright, and seems wide awake. She wheezes very loudly, the only human sound in the
wagon. Sometimes she gasps for air, and then Mommy trembles in her sleep, raises her head and opens her eyes for a second, then closes them and lets her head fall to one side again. Judy must have been shot in the lungs. That is why she has trouble breathing. I hope we will be liberated soon. She needs urgent medical attention.

The two cousins, Irene and Martha, are lying near me, asleep. Irene was injured in the face and Martha bandaged her wound with the cherished scarf she had received from her father across the barbwire fence in Dachau. The scarf was Martha’s talisman, and now it is a blood-stained wrapping on her cousin’s face.

Suddenly, Irene grows restless. She lifts her head and rips the scarf off her face. She sits up abruptly and shrieks, “Martha! I can’t see! I can’t see anything!”

Martha awakens. “Don’t take off the bandage. Your face is still bleeding.”

“But I can’t see! The bandage is off and I can’t see anything! I’m blind! Martha, I’m blind! My God, I’m blind! I’m blind! I’m blind!”

Her screams wake the wagon. Words of comfort emerge from every corner. It’s dark in the car; no one can see. Your blindness may be temporary, caused by the sudden flash you saw. You lost too much blood; your lack of vision is a sign of weakness. Your face and eyelids are swollen, blocking your sight. Finally Irene quiets down and all sink again into lethargic silence.

But Irene does not rest. She launches into a low-pitched monologue describing every detail of the machine-gun barrage on the wagon ... the blinding flash which hurled her to the ground and caused her to bleed profusely, the pain,
the noise, the blood, the blood.... With each repetition her voice grows more hoarse. Her words begin to slur. Her sentences crumble into phrases, disjointed, confused. But she talks on, incessantly, feverishly.

Martha attempts to quiet her, to no avail. Irene is beyond hearing. I touch her gesticulating arm. It is very hot.

Irene no longer describes the carnage caused by the strafing attack. She is talking about her family now, her hometown in Czechoslovakia, her mother, her father . . . her sisters.

Pale light filters into the wagon. I look at Irene’s face. Two empty eye sockets stare back at me. I cover my face with both hands. God! Oh, God! God!

Irene grabs my arm. “Look there! Do you see it? What a beautiful meadow! Beautiful! Do you see it? There! There!”

She gesticulates wildly. She points at the dark wall of the wagon. “There! Beautiful meadow . . . trees, birds . . . beautiful ...”

Then she falls silent.

Now Lilli begins to whimper again. “Are you in pain?” I ask, but she does not respond. Her lips are dry. Her leg stump is no longer bleeding.

“Water ...” she whispers in a barely audible tone.

With the brightening light I see she is very pale. I touch her brow. It is cool. I stroke her face gently. I have no strength to cry. I have no tears, no tears at all. Yet I hold a sob deep within. Not in my mind. My mind is blank. In my stomach. I’m sobbing in my stomach as I am stroking the cooling forehead of pretty little Lilli lying next to the ravaged face of gentle Irene.

“Mommy,” Lilli whispers. “Mommy ...” Her head hits the floor of the wagon with a thump. She is dead.

During the morning hours Irene dies, too.

The train rolls on. All day. All night.

The first flickers of dawn pierce the car, and I realize that we have been standing for some time. I must have dozed off after all. In the cattle car everyone is asleep, the dead and the living dead.

Judy is no longer wheezing, no longer gasping for air. The blood on the floor of the wagon has long dried.

Where are we? I want to peer between the slats but I cannot move. My limbs seem frozen. Better lie still and wait. Wait for the train to move again. Wait for the familiar rattle, which has become the only rhythm of life.

Slowly, eyes open all around. No one moves. No one breaks the numb compulsion of motionlessness. We lie still and wait.

In mid-morning sounds reach us. Human voices.

A shadow is cast into the wagon. Then another. The voices seem quite near now. With effort, I lift my head.

Two tall men in strange uniforms stand in the doorway. They look at us with a curious expression. One of them shakes his head and says something to the other. I do not understand what he says. I am very tired. It is difficult to concentrate. Then the two tall men in the strange uniforms leave the wagon.

In a few minutes a heavyset officer with reddish cheeks appears. He speaks very loud in a strange Yiddish, “Who are you? Are you Jews?” Then he repeats, “Who are you? Do you understand me? Can you hear me? Can you speak Yiddish? Who can understand me?”

We all stare without answering. Finally Martha, nearest to the entrance, whispers, “Who are you?”

“We are Americans. But who are you? Are you Jews? Are you men or women?”

“Americans?!”

We all struggle into a sitting position. “Americans!” So it has come. We are liberated. It is all over. We are free. The Americans have finally come. We are free. They’ve come at last. At last.

“Are you really American? Where are the Germans?”

“The Germans surrendered. We’ve arrested your guards. But who are you? What prison camp do you come from? Are you men or women?”

“We are Jewish women from the concentration camp Dachau. We are unable to walk. Most of us are badly wounded . . . machine-gun fire. Two days ago this train was strafed by American fighter planes. There are many dead among us.”

“We’ve not eaten for many days. Many days,” I manage to speak. I am speaking German. The American seems to understand. “We’re very thirsty.”

“You’ll get food soon. But first we must get you off the train. Can you get off the train?”

He gives me a hand, and helps me off the wagon. Then he helps Mother. Two German civilians carry my brother out of the wagon, and place him on the ground near the train tracks. They carry the bodies of Lilli, Irene, Judy, and all the others out of the wagon, and place them beside the tracks. The entire station, every platform, is filled with the dead and wounded, and the living dead, all covered with blood. A sprawling horizontal multitude.

A large group of German civilians stand near the station house. They are the only vertical bodies. Except for the heavyset American officer. He is making a speech to the “Leading citizens of Seeshaupt ...” Seeshaupt? That’s a resort in Bavaria, an exclusive resort. “Have you ever seen such horror? Such atrocities . . . maimed skeletons . . . Your government. . . your people bear responsibility ...”

So this is it. Liberation. It’s come. I am cold. The trembling in my stomach . . . Too much air . . . it’s too light. I am very tired.

A middle-aged German woman approaches me. “We didn’t know anything. We had no idea. You must believe me. Did you have to work hard also?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“At your age, it must’ve been difficult.”

At my age. What does she mean? “We didn’t get enough to eat. Because of starvation. Not because of my age.”

“I meant, it must have been harder for the older people.”

For older people? “How old do you think I am?”

She looks at me uncertainly. “Sixty? Sixty-two?”

“Sixty? I am fourteen. Fourteen years old.”

She gives a little shriek and makes the sign of the cross. In horror and disbelief she walks away, and joins the crowd of German civilians near the station house.

So this is liberation. It’s come.

I am fourteen years old, and I have lived a thousand years.

I’m numb with cold. With hunger. With death and blood, and the rattle of the train rolling on and on. . . . Freedom, at last.

Why don’t I feel it? Why don’t I feel it?

H
OMECOMING

ŠAMORIN, JUNE 1945

The large military trucks are driven by handsome young Americans with shiny black faces and quick flashes of brilliant, white teeth. They must be good-hearted men, these young black Americans—their smiles give them away.

In the middle of June the “repatriation” began. Hundreds of thousands are waiting to leave the refugee camps and return home. The first transports went to various parts in Germany and Austria. And now our turn has come: We are being “repatriated” to Czechoslovakia. Most of our friends are staying behind. Their turn is next, transports to Hungary and Rumania.

We climb onto the huge military transport, Mommy, Bubi, and I, and are seated on metal planks flanking the three sides of the open vehicle. Our new belongings, a gray duffel bag and two smaller bundles made of sheets and three green army blankets, are tossed on top of a luggage heap in the middle of the truck.

Then, the roar of the engine, a sudden rush of open air, frenzied waving, and we are off in twelve enormous, noisy vehicles. Very soon the transit camp recedes into a bluish haze and the hills come racing to meet the curving road. We race ahead, suspended between sky and Bavarian Alps. Wide-open sky. Unbridled charge of savage wind. Freedom;
exhilarating, intoxicating, threatening. I hold on to Bubi’s arm with a firm grip. With eyes closed, chin raised, Bubi is thirstily drinking it all in through wide-open nostrils.

“Fast, isn’t it?” My voice vibrates against the oncoming air current.

“Wonderful. Just wonderful. These black Americans, they call them Negroes, they are the best drivers in the world!”

“How do you know that?”

“I remember reading it somewhere.”

My brother Bubi knows everything. The road spirals upward on a narrow path. I’m not going to be afraid. I’m not going to be afraid.

The trucks race nonstop all night. Stars hang against a brilliant sky. The chill night air paralyzes my body even under the blankets. My jaw is stiff from a thousand shivers. Aren’t they ever going to stop? Don’t they have to rest? They have been driving since yesterday morning.

“There are two of them. They are taking turns.”

By noon the next day the army vehicles come to a screeching halt in the center square of a Gothic town. Thank God. Finally we can rest our weary limbs for a while here, I hope.

The drivers come to the back of the truck, and greet us with wan smiles. One of them says something in English, and then they begin to unload the luggage. With waves of their arms they indicate for us to get off the truck. We oblige, somewhat uncomprehending. As soon as the trucks are empty, the engines are revved up, and the vehicles take off in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

What’s this? We stand, a lost bunch of worn travelers, in
the midst of nowhere. Dusty cargo of the mighty American machines, we are dumped unceremoniously in the center of a strange town. Where are we? What will become of us?

We find out that we are in Pilsen. Pilsen is Czechoslovakia. We are home. Our little crowd begins to scatter in every direction. Mommy, Bubi, and I have to get to Bratislava in Slovakia, much farther east, and the only transportation is by freight train. We head for the train station.

It is getting warm. Our duffel bag is much too heavy. Bubi and I are dragging it on rough roads, sweat soaking the new American army surplus clothes we received in the transit camp. With our free hands we are helping Mommy carry the smaller bundles.

At the station there is a freight train ready to leave for Bratislava tomorrow morning. The station master allows us to move into one of the cars and spend the night. Mommy finds a wicker broom, and sweeps the freight car clean. We spread our blankets, open our ration kit, and dine in the spacious luxury of an empty, cool wagon. What a stroke of good fortune!

By nightfall several other passengers find their way into our wagon. They are all refugees of the war, heading home. Soon the wagon is full of people, and there is a pervading mood of expectation. For tomorrow.

It is noon when wheels stir into motion and the wagon begins to roll. We are moving at last.

Mountains mellow into rolling hills then flatten into wide-open stretches of green meadow. We are heading east toward the lowlands of the Danube Valley. The foliage is becoming familiar.

The train moves in sparse installments, and it is only on the fourth day that we arrive at the outskirts of Bratislava. The train stops for several minutes, just long enough for the three of us to scamper off, dragging our bulky belongings. Our traveling companions wave frantically from the belly of the wagon as the train picks up speed and vanishes into the blinding sunshine.

Mommy, Bubi, and I spend several days in Bratislava, until a farmer traveling east consents to give us a ride to our hometown in his cart. It is called Šamorin now.

My first sight of Šamorin is obliterated by a hot summer haze and dust churned up by the horse’s hooves. The dull ache in my stomach changes to sharp stabs. The peasant cart turns the corner. There, on the small elevation of the deserted square, stands our house, now faded yellow with large patches of gray. A battered sign hangs above the shuttered store front: FRIEDMANN—GENERAL STORE. The windows are dark. The gate is ajar.