The Plum Tree (40 page)

“We are the United States Army,” he shouted in heavily accented German. “We’re here to help you. Before we can let you out, we need to assess the situation. We need to attend to the sick and vaccinate against disease. We will use DDT on everyone to get rid of lice. Please be patient. Don’t be afraid. You’re going to be all right.”

Prisoners fell to their knees and held their arms up to the sky, thanking God. One woman ran toward the exit, not willing to stay even one more second. Two soldiers caught her by the arms and held her. She pleaded with them to let her pass, to please let her out, if only to step to the other side of the iron gate. Several more inmates followed, frantic to escape. When the soldiers drew their guns, the prisoners fell into each other’s arms, weeping. Other prisoners wandered throughout the growing multitudes, searching for family members, hoping by some miracle they might have survived. They zigzagged through the crowd, crying out their loved ones’ names, hurrying to people they thought they recognized, putting a hand on their shoulders, only to wilt in disappointment when the person turned. When Christine saw a middle-aged couple run into each other’s arms, a swell of grief ignited her chest. She felt dizzy and wanted to sit down.

“Stay calm,” the officer with the bullhorn said. “As soon as the tracks are repaired, we’ll send trains to pick you up.”

From where she stood, Christine could see a line of deserted boxcars. Four Americans pushed up an iron bar and heaved on a rusty door, their faces straining as they slid one of the boxcars open. When the grisly contents of the train were revealed, the soldiers recoiled and turned away. Two of them bent over and vomited on the ground. Inside the boxcar, five and six deep, dead bodies were piled like reams of tattered rugs, hair and hands and feet sticking from the ends of every roll. Christine closed her eyes.

Then there was an angry shout, and a torrent of submachine gunfire ripped through the air. The Americans who’d corralled the group of guards next to the watchtower had opened fire. The captured guards grimaced as bullets tore into their flesh, blood spurting from their chests and mouths and foreheads as they fell on top of each other in a pile of black uniforms. When the shooting stopped, the guards had fallen still.
Blood and soil,
Christine thought.
If that’s what the Nazis stood for, then they got their wish.

“Christine!” a voice shouted behind her. She whirled around, her hand over her heart.

C
HAPTER
27

H
anna limped toward Christine, arm in arm with a thin, dark-eyed man who appeared to be holding her up. Christine swayed. Isaac? Could it all have been a nightmare? But the man coming toward her was wearing regular clothes, not a prisoner’s uniform.

“Christine!” Hanna cried. “I found my brother!”

Christine swallowed. “Hanna!” she managed.

They hugged, and Christine felt thin bones jutting from Hanna’s back, as if she could crush her skeleton with the slightest increase in pressure. Then they drew apart and looked at each other, tears filling their eyes. Hanna’s cheeks were razor sharp, her face a kaleidoscope of purple and yellow bruises, the veins around her irises broken and red, her lips swollen and scabbed where they had split and healed, split and healed.

“Can you believe we’ve been rescued?” Hanna asked. “And all this time, my brother was working in the factory.”

“Where have you been?” Christine asked. “I thought you were dead!”

Hanna dropped her eyes for a fraction of a second, then looked up with fresh tears. “They kept me locked in a storage room off the main guardhouse, and . . .”

“It’s all right.” Christine squeezed Hanna’s hands in hers. “You don’t have to tell me. It’s over now.”

Hanna sniffed and straightened. “This is my brother, Heinz,” she said. “Have you found Isaac?”

“He was taken into the woods yesterday, with a group of other prisoners, and . . . they didn’t come out.”

“Ach nein,”
Hanna said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Just one more day,” Christine whispered, her voice breaking. “If he would have survived just one more day . . .” Hanna put her arms around Christine and made soft, murmuring sounds, like a mother comforting a crying infant. Christine pulled away and wiped at her face. “I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. It’s my fault.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They said you were caught looking in the male prisoners’ files.”

“You risked your life to bring me food, didn’t you? Besides, I was looking for Heinz too. It was only a matter of time before the
Blockschreiber
found a reason to pull me out of there. He had been watching me for some time. If it hadn’t been that, he would have pulled me out for something else.”

“At least now he’ll pay,” Christine said, glancing toward the trucks filled with
Unterscharführers, Blockführers,
and guards.

“I’m afraid a lot of the officers and guards got away,” Heinz said. “When we were getting clothes from the storage sheds, we saw a group of them running into the woods.”

Hanna closed her eyes and leaned against her brother. For a second, Christine thought she was going to collapse. But Heinz put an arm around her, holding her upright, and Hanna opened her eyes again, putting all her weight on one leg. Christine looked down and gasped. Hanna’s ankle was raw and swollen, ringed by an angry wound. Streaks of purple crawled up the side of her calf.

“What happened to your leg?” Christine asked.

Hanna put the injured leg forward and looked down at the wound circling her ankle like a thick, red sock. “The guards chained me to the bed during the day.”

“Let’s go,” Heinz said, his voice a monotone. “From what I’ve heard, the food storage building has a stockpile. And we should go to the storeroom to get you some warmer clothes.”

Mobs of prisoners swarmed the food storage building. They had broken down doors and shattered windows, breaking the frames and throwing them out of the way in their rush to get inside. Like a fire brigade, they formed lines to pass the food to the growing crowd. From one pair of thin arms to the next went box after box of biscuits, crackers, dry milk, rolls, and bread. Crate after crate of potatoes, lettuce, turnips, carrots, and beans were split open and passed around. A shout of victory went up as everyone converged on a group of men holding up hard sausages and dried meat. Before long, piles of smoked hams, cases of canned liverwurst, and towers of cheese wheels looked like the inventory of a hundred butcher shops on display in the muddy yard.

“Be careful,” Heinz told Hanna, Christine, and anyone else who would listen. “Or you’ll make yourself sick.”

The more insightful prisoners ate only biscuits, crackers, and bread, warning everyone else that their starved bodies wouldn’t be able to handle liverwurst, smoked pork, and rich cheese. But some didn’t listen. They stuffed themselves, then lay bloated and sick, their bellies distended.

Christine ate four biscuits and a wedge of hard cheese, while Hanna and her brother ripped off hunks of rye bread until an entire loaf was gone. Heinz grabbed more bread and several tins of crackers, then followed Hanna and Christine to the clothes-sorting building on the female side of the camp. He waited outside while Hanna and Christine rummaged through the mountains of dresses, skirts, blouses, and shoes. Christine took off her filthy uniform and put on a cranberry-colored dress, the faint smell of perfume still clinging to the lace collar. She slipped her arms into the soft, thick sleeves of a blue knitted sweater, her shoulders and the backs of her arms covered and warm for the first time in eight months. On the edge of the pile, Hanna was on her knees in a full-length slip, pulling a brown dress over her head.

It wasn’t long before they found everything they needed, including a pair of slip-on fur-lined boots that fit over Hanna’s swollen ankle and a nearly new pair of black leather shoes that fit Christine perfectly. Christine pushed her calloused feet and bare legs into a stretchy pair of brown stockings and laced up the shoes, thinking it felt strange to be fully clothed, her arms and legs snug and comfortable, like a newborn swaddled in a cozy, soft blanket for the first time.

She looked at the other prisoners taking off their soiled uniforms and putting on actual clothes, watching each other in wonder and awe, as if dresses and shirts were a new discovery or a recent invention. They ran their hands along the arms of sleeves and the lengths of skirts, as if the fabric were made of gold and silk, not simple broadcloth and cotton. And even though it was spring, Hanna and Christine each took a long, wool coat, if only to use as a blanket during their last nights in hell. Christine put her coat on, not because she was cold, but to feel the weight of it on her shoulders. A tall woman wearing a cherry-colored dress pounded her fist against the wall to hush the crowd.

“We must say
danke
to our voiceless providers,” she shouted. “And we must say Kaddish for all who have died in this terrible place.”

The room grew silent as everyone bowed her head to pray. Christine didn’t know how to say Kaddish, but she closed her eyes and prayed for the dead in her own way. She prayed for the souls who had died there, and for Opa and Isaac. She prayed that they had at last found peace, their suffering and tears forever ceased. She said a silent good-bye to Isaac, feeling the manacle of grief tighten around her heart, locking eternally into place with a solid, final thud. Tears found their way down her cheeks. When she finished her prayer, she lifted her head and saw rivulets of moisture on every pale and sunken face.

Two days later, the growl of incoming army trucks jarred Christine from her sleep. Her body jerked awake, her skull and every joint aching. She took a deep, shuddering breath, turned her head, and opened her eyes. Her first thought was of Isaac, and her stomach twisted with grief.

“Maybe they’ve sent trucks to pick us up instead of trains,” Hanna said.

“I don’t care what they send,” Christine said. She sat up and coughed, her chest aching with every bark. “As long as they hurry up and get us out of here.” She crawled out of the bunk and helped Hanna to her feet. With one arm steadying Hanna, she followed the other women outside, trying not to get her hopes up that at last they would be freed.

During the past two days, the entire camp population had been vaccinated by American army doctors; once again they were forced to strip naked so they could be disinfected with DDT. Hanna’s ankle had been cleaned and dressed, and Heinz had found a pair of crutches in the camp hospital. The need to get away from the camp forever was swelling in Christine’s mind, at times making her feel as if she would start screaming and never stop. If the Americans didn’t send the trains to pick them up soon, she’d start walking home.

Now, over a dozen U.S. Army trucks had pulled to a stop outside the barracks. Soldiers jumped down from the front seats and went around to the back, rifles in hand, to open the tailgates. As the prisoners watched, elderly men and women, adolescent females, and mothers with young children climbed out of the backs of the trucks. Nearly every person was holding something: a loaf of bread, a wheel of cheese, a basket of eggs, a tin of milk.

“What’s going on?” Christine said to Hanna.

“I have no idea,” Hanna said.

In heavily accented German, an officer ordered the people to line up in pairs. A familiar fear quickened Christine’s breathing.
What are they doing with these people?
she thought. The German civilians looked at each other and the soldiers, confusion and fear crumpling their brows. They stared at the gathering prisoners, their mouths open in shock. The young children pointed at the ragtag assembly of emaciated captives in mismatched clothing, then looked up at their mothers for answers. After the last truck was emptied, the officer used a bullhorn to address the more than two hundred civilians.

“Leave your donations for the prisoners of Dachau with the soldiers at the rear of this truck,” he said in German, pointing at two waiting soldiers. “Afterward, remain in line and follow me. Prisoners, line up behind the civilians, and my men will distribute the food to you.”

“That’s probably all the food those people had,” Christine whispered to Hanna.

“Maybe they’re locking them up,” Hanna said.

“But why?” Christine said. Hanna shrugged.

The German civilians handed the food to the soldiers, then fell in line behind the officer and four other soldiers. By then, the male prisoners had joined the women, and the majority of inmates were already lining up to get food before returning to their quarters. The rest, including Heinz, Hanna, and Christine, followed the civilians as the Americans took them into the camp.

The soldiers led the civilians through the stench-filled barracks and the cement shower rooms, past the overflowing piles of shoes, suitcases, eyeglasses, hair, and gold teeth. The women held their aprons over their mouths, weeping and covering the children’s eyes. The old men stared, their wrinkled faces rigid with grief and shock. As they moved closer to the gas chambers and crematorium, Christine heard the growl of a giant engine. A huge bulldozer was pushing dirt from a wide trench. Beside the trench, male prisoners had loaded horse-drawn wagons and pushcarts with rotting corpses. The civilian women screamed and moaned, pushing their children’s faces into the folds of their skirts. The old men wept silently and tried to hold the women up, but some fainted.

The soldiers said nothing. They held their rifles to their chests with both hands, looking straight ahead, and took the civilians into the gas chambers. They took them past the blood-spattered carts used to transfer the dead bodies into the fires. On the carts, piles of skeletal bodies still lay naked and twisted, abandoned and forgotten on their journey to the crematorium. From there, the soldiers took the civilians into the crematorium, past the giant brick ovens filled with ashes and pieces of bone.

Christine, Hanna, and the rest of the prisoners didn’t enter the gas chambers or the crematorium. Just being close to the buildings made Christine nauseous. When the civilians came out the other side, the soldiers handed shovels to the men and to any female who wasn’t carrying a child.