Rena's Promise (49 page)

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Authors: Rena Kornreich Gelissen,Heather Dune Macadam

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical, #test

BOOK: Rena's Promise
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The mound of bodies does not get smaller very quickly. The first week we bury about eighty bodies, but new ones have been added to the top of the heap.
The SS men who take us to the burial site are old and tired and mean. We do not fear them as much as we feared the younger, stronger SS men in Auschwitz-Birkenau, though. "I think we should devise a plan to overcome them. Knock them out," one of the girls from our kommando suggests.
"We could hit them on the head with our shovels and throw them in a really deep grave so they couldn't get out. Then we could escape!"
"Yah!" Their eyes dance with the thought of rebellion.
"I can't kill anyone," I whisper.
"Not killwe'll just stun them."
"Think about it." I look at their fervored faces. "First of all, think how hard it'd be to make a hole that deepwe'd kill ourselves trying. Second, we're in Germany. There's not one German in this town who would help a Pole, let alone a Jew. Do you think it will be different elsewhere in this country? They hate us. If we were in Poland it would be different, we might be able to count on our own people to help us escape. But we're not. We don't even know where we are. How far is it to the Polish border? Which way should we walk?" No one can answer my questions. "We would be caught and killed by villagers, or by the SS. Besides, my guess is we're far from any borders."
Their faces fall with disappointment.
"Maybe the Italians are right and it won't be long now. Maybe we'll be freed soon."
"Maybe." No one really believes it, though.
We have started putting two or three bodies in each grave. Our strength is failing fast with the lack of food and the terrible conditions in camp. Pushing the cart up the hill is a chore we can barely accomplish. The chance of overpowering the old men is slipping away as quickly as our weight and our hope that liberation will

 

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come soon. The lower the pile of bodies gets, the worse it gets for us, because it is spring and the bodies are beginning to decompose. There are fresh bodies on top now, too, so it's hard to tell until you touch one how long it's been lying there. Some of them we have to leave or they will fall apart. We're very careful not to disturb the very old, decaying bodies.
I wake, huddling in our bunk alone. Was it another nightmare that woke me? Rain falls on the roof overhead. The sky above us rumbles and clashes as violently as if God were at war rather than mankind. Where is Danka? She is terrified of thunderstorms. Mama used to light candles and say a prayer during electrical storms in Tylicz. There are no candles here. I stare through the darkness, unable to tell whether she is in the block or not. Other eyes shine in the dark. Finally the storm overhead moves on. I wonder if its rain has fallen on Allied as well German heads. The door creaks open and my sister steps inside. Like a mirage she glimmers in the dark. Her red hair, finally growing back after several months of not being shaved, frames her face.
''Where have you been?" I cannot tell if her cheeks are wet from tears or rain. She shakes her head, silent. "Danka, what were you doing?" I demand.
"Praying," she whispers hoarsely. "I was outside praying that the lightning would strike me dead so I wouldn't be hungry anymore."
We get in late one night, after the bread has been handed out, and there is nothing left for those of us who have worked all day. I volunteer to get a bucket of coals for the block elder to put in the stove. Danka and Dina send me a warning glance. I ignore them both. At the pile of coal I check the vicinity, grab two potatoes, and thrust them under the coal in the bucket. Head forward, eyes down, I walk slowly across the compound.
"Let me see you empty that bucket on the ground." I freeze.

 

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Turning slowly around, I come face to face with the camp elder herself. "Well?"
Trembling, I spill the contents out, hoping the potatoes are covered by enough coal dust to be masked amidst the odd-shaped lumps of coal.
"You stole potatoes!" She hits me in the left eye before I can even think to duck. She throws me on the ground, kicking me, stomping on me with her boots, trying to tear the flesh from my bones with her fingernails. I cannot see anything but the blazing hatred in her face; it is the face of Death itself. She loses her grasp on me for a second. I scramble away, fleeing across camp. "Thief! Thief!
Scheiss-Jude!
Get back here you filthy dog!" Her voice follows my tracks like a bloodhound hot on the trail. I vanish behind the blocks, dodging searchlights and the madwoman's screaming voice. Under the cover of darkness I slip into one of the other blocks.
"I stole a potato and she's going to kill me for sure," I whisper into the dark.
"Come here." I hear a friendly anonymous voice and quickly crawl in between two bodies, hiding under their blanket. We can hear her for at least an hour yelling, "Come out you miserable
mist biene!
Come out here! You can't hide forever. I'm going to get you!" Finally she quiets down. I wait for a little bit longer just to make sure she's not hiding somewhere and then slip out of the bunk I've hidden in. ''Thank you for saving my life," I whisper to the girls whose faces I do not know, then creep back across camp so she won't know which block has hidden me. I cannot see out of my left eye at all. Stealthily I thread my way through shadows and along walls until I reach our block. I slip into bed with Danka.
"Oh, Rena. What's going to happen?"
"I don't know." We hold each other all night, sobbing, both of us shaking in terror. This is it. I am done for. That is all I know and all either of us can think about. There is nothing we can do but cling to each other for the last time. I will never survive roll call

 

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with this black eye. My teeth chatter from the chill of fear, the fear of death itself. Liberation is so close, and now this. Danka will be alone in the world after the camp elder gets through with me. We do not sleep at all.
"
Raus! Raus!
"
Danka and I line up in the very back of the rows. The camp elder stalks across the front rows, screaming and cursing us.
"Anyone who knows who stole the potatoes last night should turn the prisoner in immediately. If I find out you are withholding information from me I will kill you instead. Who knows who stole the potatoes?" No one moves, no one makes a sound. The SS women walk up and down the rows counting each prisoner, looking for me. Surely the camp elder saw my face and recognized me as the one from the leichenkommando. She'll see me and kill me. I stand in the back trying not to tremble, trying to be brave.
"You'd better turn yourself in! You'd better come out!" the SS yell. No one says a word, no one lets them know where I am. An SS woman comes down our row, counting us, inspecting us, looking for me.
Suddenly I feel very calm and warm. There is the slightest tingle on my cheek as if someone has touched my face.
Mama?
She is just a few prisoners away. I am warm and comforted.
Remember how you escaped Mengele
. I rememberI told Danka we were invisible and we were. All of my fear drains through the heels of my feet into the earth and I stand confident that I am imperceptible.
Mama is here, standing next to me, holding her hand over my eye
. The SS woman looks at me, counts me, and turns away. Danka sighs.
Protect me through the gate, Mama
, I pray. I still have to march out with the bodies, and the camp elder is always standing there, counting the bodies, checking our numbers. I pretend to be rearranging the bodies in the back of the cart, making sure there is an arm obscuring my eye so she can't see my face and won't recognize me.

 

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Every morning I feel a warm tingle on my cheeks as the SS walk right past my black-and-blue, swollen eye. Every morning I fumble with the bodies while we take them out the gate, and every morning I pass unseen under the nose of the camp elder.
How long can this go on? For six days I hide from the murderess, and she never sees my face. They don't see me because they are blinded by prejudice. We all look alike to them. We have the identity of shit
scheiss-Judes, mist bienes
.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
May 2, 1945.
Four
A.M
. We wake up automatically and step into the dawn nervously, wondering what new trick this is that our captors are playing. There is no roll call. There is no one but us in camp, just one lone guard still in the watchtower. Not one SS woman, no wardress, no camp elder anywhere to be seen. We stand on the camp road gazing at the guard in the watchtower, wondering what to do. He is the only thing between us and freedom, and his gun is aimed directly at us. I look at my watch. It's ten o'clock. How long must we wait here when freedom is laughing just on the other side of these gates?
A mother and daughter decide they are hungry enough to brave getting to the pile of potatoes. They run across camp toward the only food left. A gunshot rips through the girl's heart. She collapses. Her mother screams, rending her clothes and cursing God. No one dares to go comfort her. A second shot rips her throat out. Lamentations. Their bodies taint that fatal pile of potatoes. The sweet taste of freedom grows bitter in our mouths.
The SS in the watchtower finally climbs down and disappears. At eleven o'clock the Italians from the prison camp down the road shout outside our fences: "We're free!"
They have rubber gloves and wire cutters. "Come on! Storm the gates!" They sever the wires, breaking the electrical current and leaving a hole big enough for us to tear through. I grab

 

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Danka's hand, dragging her through the fence. We have bloody hands from the barbs we push out of the way. My sweater catches on the wire. I do not stop. It rips. I do not care.
Suddenly we are on the road. We blink, unable to believe our eyes. Soldiers dressed in dark green and olive, Russian and American soldiers are coming toward us.
"We're free!" We hug each other, crying. "We are free!" My heart is a stone in a river of tears.
The girls from camp disperse down the roads. There are girls going this way and that, all in confusion, all lost, trying to decide which way is home. Danka and a small group of girl-women watch me as if I should know what to do.
We walk for a little while until we reach a crossroads. Danka, Dina, and I stop and look down the two paths. One goes east, to the Russians and eventually to Poland; the other goes west, to the Americans. I do not know which way to turn. The sun is gold and brilliant, burning through the layers of obscurity in my mind. My fog begins to lift.
I see Mama's figure in the distance. Her babushka has fallen from her head, her arm is waving more slowly now. Which way should we go, Mama? . . . She is no longer running through the snow; the long winter has melted into spring. Go west, Rena. She pulls her babushka back up around her head and blows me a kiss. Don't go, Mama. Wait for me. I brought you the baby back!
. . .
Good-bye, Rena. You are a good daughter. I stand in the middle of the crossroads waving to the vision that has kept me alive. Mama!
She stands there for one brief moment, her arm still in the air. Good-bye. Her image shatters into a thousand shards of light. My eyes wince with pain as the slivers of glass fall from my eyes. The dream is gone. There is no one to go home to anymore
.

 

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