Outcasts (33 page)
Suti realized his cousin's offer would take him closer to his dream of making
aliyah
to Palestine, the place his mother often talked about. He needed to get to the sea, where ships could be boarded that would transport him to the land of his dreams. The Zionist organization Bricha established a network to help Holocaust survivors flee from Europe and arrive in Palestine, which was at the time under British mandate.
In the fall of 1945 Suti and a group of seventy young people were sent off on their journey by foot toward Szentgotthard in western Hungary. Their first obstacle was to get from the Russian zone to the British zone. With the assistance of a guide, they made it to Graz, where they were caught and taken to a camp for displaced persons in a small town named Judenberg near Stiermark. They spent two months in this place, receiving medical help and three meals a day. A doctor determined that Sandor Weisz was to receive double portions because he was so thin. Suti enjoyed this, and spent the time slowly gaining weight, but by November, he and twelve others decided it was time to move on.
Again with the help of the Zionist network, they hired a truck to take them to the Austrian-Italian border, over the Alps. The truck broke down and the driver, who had already taken their money, disappeared, leaving them stranded. Austrian border guards caught the group and took them to a small local prison. It was November 6 and very cold. They were hungry and ill-prepared for the plunging temperatures. Without blankets or mattresses, they slept fitfully on the stone prison floor.
Before dawn, Suti awoke to the most incredible sound of high-pitched yelling. Never in his life had he heard anything like this sound. It sounded like human barking. The Austrians unlocked the cell and abruptly ordered them out. When they were led outside, they saw that a British officer was yelling his head off. The officer looked and sounded very intimidating: he pointed to a truck and ordered them to climb into the back, all the while yelling at the Austrians. Suti and his friends didn't know where they were going or why the Austrians were handing them over to this British officer as they didn't understand a single word of English, but they had little choice - they had to go. When the truck drove away from the police station there were two officers in the front seat: the driver at the wheel, and the sergeant major who had until then been barking. Just two kilometres down the road the sergeant major pulled back the curtain separating the front cabin from the back, smiled, and quietly said: "Shalom." The until-then fear-inspiring officer introduced himself as Sergeant Major Leon Ostreicher, head of the transportation unit of the Palestinian contingent of the British army. Ostreicher took the twelve youngsters to his company near Klagenfurt. When they arrived, he ushered the group to the front of the line of soldiers waiting for breakfast, cut into the line, and told the youngsters to eat as much as they wanted. In the next few days, Ostreicher arranged papers for the twelve - papers that would grant them safe passage into Italy. The British army unit transported them with trucks as far as Mestre (near Venice) where they boarded the train to Milano.
As the train rambled through the mountainous region of northern Italy - the Dolomites - Suti felt as if all the cruelty and hatred he had experienced in the past year was melting away, drifting further and further from his mind as the distance increased and kilometres clicked past. For the first time in his short life he sat and marvelled at the breathtaking scenery unfolding around him.
The train stopped frequently between Mestre and Milan. There was nothing to eat along the way and Suti was starting to feel quite famished. At one station, the train stopped for a longer layover. Suti heard one of the food vendors yelling: "olivero, olivero!" A vendor was selling what looked like black, bite-sized round objects soaking in an oily tub. It must have been the curious look on Suti's face as he stared at the giant containers of produce that compelled the vendor to ask him if he would like a taste.
Suti didn't know what to say, as he didn't understand Italian. Whereupon the vendor took a bit of newspaper, wrapped it into a cone shape, and plopped about a half kilo of black oily beads into the cone. While handing it to Suti, he announced his produce with pride: "olivero!" Suti pulled out his pants pockets to show the vendor he had no money to give him, but the vendor insisted he take the olives gratis.
Suti never tasted anything so wonderful.
In Milan the group went to the headquarters of the Zionists at Via Unione 5. Here Suti was separated from the rest and sent to Selvino, where an organization had established a boarding school for orphans of the Holocaust. The rest of his group were determined to be too old and were sent on to Rome.
The military truck made its way slowly up the winding, snake-like narrow road, through the dense forest, to an altitude of more than nine hundred metres above sea level. There the road let to a small village of Selvino, north of the Milan-Venice highway. A few hundred metres beyond the village, on the mountain's slope, stood an elegant, four-storey villa.
The truck stopped in front of the villa and Suti stared at the magnificent garden extending down the slope with pine, cedar, and cypress trees and showy pink and yellow flowering shrubs. The Italian Alps peaked out from behind the trees.
As they started to disembark from the truck, someone started yelling from one of the upstairs windows: "Suti, Suti!" Suti turned and saw his old friend Vili Teszler came bounding out of the house toward him. Suti couldn't believe it - the last time they saw each other was in Mauthausen. Suti was elated: here he was alone again in a strange place, a bit lost in this world. Meeting Vili was like being reunited with a family member.
Selvino was created to prepare orphaned children of the Holocaust for the transition to life in Palestine. The school was established by Raffaele Cantoni, an Italian Jew and ardent Zionist, Mathilde Cassin, his partner who travelled from convent to convent looking for Jewish children, and Moshe Ze'iri, a member of an agricultural collective in Palestine. There was an incredible mix of children: those who had been with the partisans during the war, children who had been hidden in convents and forests, and children who had survived the concentration camps. All were orphans. Most had not attended school during the war, so there was a tremendous gap in their education.
The students slept thirty to a room - dormitory style. After lights-out, Suti occasionally saw a girl crawling out of her bed, kneeling down, making the sign of the cross to pray. It was obvious she had spent the war hiding with a Christian family or in a convent. Suti was shocked to find some boys and girls who weren't able to read or write - it turned out they had been hiding in the forests in Ukraine for four or five years. Other children had nightmares and cried out in terror night after night while dreaming.
Food was scarce. Everything was rationed out in small portions. No support was being sent from Palestine. The food came from UN rations for refugees and from the Jewish Brigades, who sent flour, sugar, rice, and dried beans.
The children had one roll at each meal. There was little variety: jam, margarine, soup, gruel, small portions of army bully beef, and small amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables from the nearby villages.
It was cold in the house. By the time Suti arrived in late November, heavy rains were falling and winds were raging through the mountains. There weren't enough warm clothes or adequate blankets for every child.
Moshe Ze'iri, who was in charge of the home, directed it according to his own principles as a kibbutz member who had been educated in a movement based on "self-fulfillment through co-operation." The school was run on the principles of self-sufficiency, shared responsibility, and shared property. Every activity around the school, whether scholarly or leisurely, was infused with the principles of life of the kibbutz system. The daily chores were divided between the children themselves: cleaning, kitchen duty, serving food, keeping the house heated, doing the laundry, sewing, caring for the garden and plants, and guard duty at night. The older children were entrusted with the care of the younger ones.
All classes were taught in Hebrew and even when they were not in class, the children were expected to speak among themselves only in Hebrew. The day began with morning roll call and raising the blue and white flag of the Jewish people, while everyone sang "Hatikvah."
After a full day of classes and chores around the house, the late afternoon was left free for games in the courtyard, in the garden, on the football field, at the ping-pong table, at the chess board. After supper, everyone would gather for singing, dancing, storytelling, and parties. The chorus, conducted by Moshe Ze'iri, became the focal point of the cultural activities of the house. The motto of the choir became "We sing not of blood and battles; we sing of life and creation." Other teenagers started their own school newspaper, called
Nivenu
.
There was no talking about the past, about the concentration camps, about the horrible things so many of them had experienced. The future was what counted, and preparing for the future in Palestine was the focus of all their work in Selvino. The personalities, character, and entire being of these children had been permanently affected by the traumatic events of the past five years, yet they couldn't talk about this trauma. Occasionally, a few children went crazy. One boy tried to hang himself in a nearby forest. Another couldn't sleep and convinced himself he was going insane. He was sent off to a sanatorium in Milan. When he came back with his head shaved, he never spoke again of his past.
Suti spent his days learning Hebrew and learning as much as he could about his new homeland, Palestine. At night, he also had nightmares, but mainly, he dreamt of life back in their home with his mother and father and sisters and brother. He missed them all tremendously - there was an ache in his heart that he could never quell. In Jewish tradition, the one-year anniversary of the death of a parent was marked in a special way. It was called
Jahrzeit
in Yiddish. Suti couldn't mark the one year anniversary - he was in Auschwitz on his way to Mauthausen in January 1945. But the second anniversary of the death of Terez Weisz was fast approaching. Suti quietly, clandestinely wrote a poem to commemorate the anniversary of her death.
H
EDY LAY ON A
straw-filled mattress - awake, but keeping her eyes shut tight. She pulled the blanket closer, trying to remain in her semiconscious dream state, immersed in memories of Tibor. Images of sitting behind him on his motorcycle - her arms wrapped around his waist, her face buried in his back to shield it from the wind. As he was driving, Tibor grabbed one of her hands every once in a while and kissed it. At least in her daydream, she was going somewhere ... anywhere.
Her sister, Aliz, kept intruding on this most pleasant daydream, sitting on the side of her bed, talking to her gently, trying to rouse her. Hedy knew if she opened her eyes the wonderful images would vanish.
She resisted opening her eyes.
Back in Nagyszollos again, with Tibor - walking along the pebbled shore of the river Tisza hand in hand. A small groundhog lay on the pebbles in front of them. They almost missed it as the rodent blended in among the brown and grey stones. It remained motionless, but opened its eyes and raised its head a bit when the two of them approached. It didn't flee. Hedy had a few scraps of bread in her knapsack; she tossed them gently near the groundhog's mouth. The animal didn't react to the bits of bread. There weren't any visible wounds on the fur. After watching it for a little while, the two of them surmised the creature had simply lost its will to live.
Hedy finally acknowledged her sister's attempts to wake her. She pushed the covers back and slowly crawled out of bed. A little hand mirror was hanging on the wall and, unintentionally, she caught a glimpse of herself in it.
What would Tibor say if he saw her now? Her hair had grown back somewhat -not blond anymore, but a dull brown. It was still barely long enough to comb out. She ran her fingers through it and decided it didn't matter how she combed it, it always looked unkempt. Possibly it was the water they used to bathe or that awful-smelling soap in the showers, but she felt her hair would never be soft and shiny again.
She had lost so much weight she felt like a skeleton of her former self. The only clothes they were provided were drab, over-washed army issue coats and pants - all uniform, all ugly. No matter how many times she looked in that tiny mirror, she couldn't believe the face reflecting back at her was her own. In her reflection, she saw a much aged, tired-looking woman staring back at her. She honestly felt that no man could ever be attracted to her again.
In her pants pocket was a small, folded-up postcard, still with her after almost a year. The postcard had arrived at Auschwitz, addressed to her at a fictitious place called Ebensee. She only received it because her friend had worked in the sorting area of the camp. Hedy had no idea how the note from Tibor had arrived at Auschwitz. On the postcard he had written, "I am waiting for news from my wife, I hope she is well." Nothing else. A message from him had filtered through - a message that he still loved her.
If Tibor still loved her, Hedy thought, he was in love with a woman who no longer existed. She realized he could never understand all that she had been through. Hedy could never, no matter how well he listened, explain to him the unbelievably dreadful events that had taken place since they had last seen each other. The environment they had to endure. The human deprivation and cruelty. There were no words to describe it. She had been irrevocably changed.
Hedy and Aliz last saw their brother, Suti, on January 18, 1945, when they were separated while being ordered out of Auschwitz. They didn't know his fate, or the fate of their father or Bandi.
After three days of marching in freezing cold and snowy conditions, they were put onto open cattle cars and ended up at another concentration camp called Neustadt Glewe near Mecklenburg in northern Germany. They continued to work there under dreadful conditions until the Americans liberated them in early May 1945. Within a few days the Russians took over the administration of the camp and transferred them all to another camp called Prenzlau, near Stettin. Following liberation, an overwhelming exhaustion enveloped Hedy, followed by the unspeakable hollow feeling of depression. All the rules of survival changed; she simply couldn't garner the strength to go on.
