The Brothers of Auschwitz
That night I felt so good and full I couldn’t sleep.
It drove me mad, all that goodness. My heart understood that maybe the little girl saw something the Germans didn’t have time to see. Maybe she saw that I was also a child, that all the men had black bristles on their cheeks and I didn’t. I’d pass my hand over my face, and it was smooth. And maybe she thought they were big and I was little.
Those two stuck in my mind like a silent movie. I saw them waiting in the distance, I approach, closer, closer, the two are looking at me, looking, looking, looking, and hop, I have a package in my hands. I eat. And back again. Closer, closer, closer, they give me a package, and hop, I’m eating, and eating, and eating. I couldn’t stop crying. I missed mother. I missed father. I missed my brothers and sister. Particularly Dov. I wanted to tell him what had happened to me. I wanted to give him half my potato. I barely slept that night.
Morning. I’m the first outside.
From the corner of my eye I see someone running towards the fence. I know him. He slept in my bunk. His brother had watched him for two days. I saw his brother running after him. Talking. I even heard, Nathan, stop, stop, Nathan. Wait. What are you doing, stop. Caught hold of his garment. Wanted to pull him away from the electricity in the fence. Nathan was the first to fall on the fence. His brother who tried to fall back was caught in the fence and was finished. He didn’t really want to die.
In a second, I turned my back on the fence. Didn’t want to see, not that morning. I wanted to go out to work, quickly. Wanted to get to the road in front of the village. Maybe, maybe, again, and maybe not.
Pains started in my belly. I remember as if it was happening now. Pains started in my pelvis, my head. I wanted to run. The file progressed slowly, slowly. A cold wind cut into the flesh. A prisoner with a swollen foot halted. His body rocked in the wind. He slightly widened his bent knees, stuck his heels into the road. Prisoners behind him halted, waiting for him without moving. SSman picked up a stone and threw it at him. It hit him on the leg. The prisoner sighed and continued to walk. The gap remained. We passed a bend in the road, another one, the village was in front of us, aaah. The two were standing there. The tall one and the little one. The little one in a fire-red coat. They stood there, like yesterday. Aligned with a water tower on which hung a rope ladder.
It took all my strength not to step out of the line, not to make any sign. I made an effort to walk slowly like everyone else but inside, my body was jumping, bloomp, bloomp. As I approach them my heart beats like a sledge-hammer. I cough. Want to scratch myself and don’t move my hand. Another small step and the little girl points at me. Aaah. We stop. I hear myself crying like a baby, Mama, Mama. Aaah. The mother approaches the SSman from yesterday, smiles at him. He responds with a smile. She speaks to him in German. She says, the girl wants to give, ja. She speaks long and fast. I understand a bit. I understand she’s a widow, the wife of Officer Michael Schroder, yes. She was alone, waiting for the train to the city, ja. The SSman pinches the little girl’s cheek; the little girl wipes her cheek afterwards. The mother and the SSman laugh, ja. Ja. Ja. Mother gives SSman a package. SSman approaches me. God, God, God. SSman signals to me, open it. I glance at the prisoners. They have huge eyes and ears and they have a large mouth, a black mouth. Four prisoners close in on me. I am paralyzed. SSman raises his rifle. SSman signals the prisoners, back off, immediately. Prisoners take a step back. I hear them breathing fast. I feel as if my hands are on fire. I open the package and can’t believe my eyes. I am holding a sausage sandwich. A whole sandwich with sausage, for me. Two thick pieces of bread, and a fat slice of sausage. Two prisoners jump at me. They have yellow saliva on the chin. SSman fires a single bullet into the air. They halt. I swallow the sandwich all at once and feel as if there is a bone stuck in my throat, I swallow saliva, more saliva, and more, and the sandwich goes down slowly, slowly, hurting my esophagus. I am overjoyed. SSman shouts, march, march.
I stride on, my head turning backwards.
She has blue eyes that are looking at me. She has two light braids. One shorter. Her face is full of brown freckles and she smiles at me, and blushes. It took all I had to hold back a scream. Queen, my queen, beautiful queen. I pinch my leg, my ear too. I have a sharp prickling in my ear. Impossible, I’m dreaming. I’m asleep in the barracks and there’s a movie in my mind. I bite my tongue, it’s hot and it hurts. Another bite and I see the SSman bowing to the two. They nod and say thank you. Mother winks at the SSman. She comes to stand with the girl who has no scarf on her head. Her long hair swells like a gold ball. The SSman laughs, his cheeks reddening. The blue in his eyes glitters.
The file progresses. The wind increases, the cold even more. The trees bend to one side, the prisoners pull their shirts over their ears, it doesn’t help. I glance back. The distance between me and the red coat increases. The prisoner behind me hits me with a sharp elbow. He is tall. I am small. Don’t care. I want to call out to the girl, wave to her, throw my hat off, kick an imaginary, explosive goal between posts, doesn’t matter what posts, even the gate posts of the camp, I want to call to the sun to chase off the wind and clouds and warm the girl’s path to the house, I want to find a field of flowers, make her a huge bunch of flowers, want to run hand in hand with her through the fields, her braids flying from side to side, one shorter, one longer, find a white horse in the meadow, toss her up on the horse, sit behind her, hold her hips, reach the forest, scream, gallop, horse, gallop, laugh wildly, I’m alive, I’m alive, Mama, where am I, Mamaaa.
The Kapo’s screams made me jump. Two days had gone by and it was morning. The Kapo screams, get up, get up, outside, get in line. I don’t get up. Stay with the picture from the dream. I am kicked to my feet. And c-c-c-cold, so cold.
On the path, near the village, there she was again. A girl with braids, her mother beside her. I choked. The little girl pointed to me. Mother approached the regular SSman. They smile and play in German. SSman bends to hear the mother more clearly. The mother catches him by the arm, turns towards the village and shows him a house. He doesn’t see well. She gives him a package, he says, a moment please, gives me the package and walks off with the mother to see better. The girl looks at the mother and the SSman. Eight prisoners jump on me. I hold tightly to the package and feel fingers sticking in my ears, nose, neck, belly, I can’t see a thing, and then came the burst of fire, Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta. Am I dead? No, I was completely alive. In front of me stood SSman with a rifle in his hands and beside me, smeared on the asphalt were three prisoners in pools of blood. I looked down at myself and saw that I was alive. Looked at them – and they were dead.
I got up with the package in my hands. The tall SSman approached at a run, the mother after him. The SSman shooter pointed at us irritably. That is, at me and the newly dead. The SSman shooter walked away shouting, kicking at nothing. The regular SSman glared at me with an evil face. The girl came up, and he immediately signaled to her to halt. He was ashamed in front of the mother. As if saying to her, what can I do, they’re animals. Then he said to me, eat now. Eat. He had a low and hateful voice. And I didn’t want the mother to agree to marry him. I was mainly worried about the girl with the braids.
Inside the damp paper was a cooked carrot. I swallowed it, heard march. March.
They waited for me with food every day or two until the first snows fell. I ate sandwiches, cooked vegetables, fruit, and cake, sometimes they gave me an uncooked potato. I’d hide it in my pocket and wait for the moment they’d send me to fix things for the work manager. I had a tin box there. I would pour steam on the gas and cook a potato for myself. For long weeks they waited for me, the mother and the girl, and there was also the regular SSman who laughed with the mother. He didn’t kill me in the evenings at the camp. He didn’t throw me into another group. The regular SSman guarded me from other prisoners with the rifle and it turned out that a German girl saved my life.
I didn’t stop thinking about her for many years. I wanted to meet her after the war. I wanted to pull stars down from the sky for her. Make her a queen. I wanted, wanted. But I didn’t ask her name. I didn’t know that one day, one more day, I’d walk through the snow and no one would be standing there.
Three months went by. We were willing to die in the gas, body and soul.
Israel, 2001
7:35 at the Beit Yehoshua Train Station.
The muzzle of a rifle aimed at me. Yes, aimed at the pelvis. The rifle of a sergeant in the armored corps, by the color and design of the cap on the shoulder. The sergeant’s face is sunburned and he sleeps with his back to a pole, a distance of about four-five meters from me. He looks like coffee on the stove. I miss hot chocolate. Sunburn fattens his lips, a broad jaw, impressive, looks like Kirk Douglas without the dimple in his chin. His hair is cut short, short, and the rifle is pointing straight at me, the magazine inside, ugh. I don’t have the energy for a rifle so early in the morning. Because of the rifles in the morning news I want to change my newspaper. I’m tired of reading it with the first coffee.
No rain, just the smell and fat clouds that hadn’t thinned for an hour. The eucalyptus trees stand tall as if on parade.
I take a small step back.
My ass is cold and I’m on my way to Nahariya. Yitzhak would say, what are you worried about, people have to walk around today with a rifle, hard times in Israel, and he’d laugh, say he was sorry, and get up to make a call about work. Dov would say, trust the soldier, he knows what a rifle is, he’s had training, he can sleep with an automatic in his hand, don’t worry and, in the meantime, why didn’t you go in for a drink. A small espresso?
If he’d asked, I’d have said, there isn’t even a kiosk, and I can’t stop worrying, each day and its own tragedy, and Dov would jump up, not even a tiny kiosk? No, Dov. Yitzhak would say, Beit Yehoshua isn’t important, come and see ours in Nahariya. There we’ve an organized buffet with wafer cookies and juice and sandwiches freshly prepared by the woman every morning, yes. But Yitzhak, how come you know what a train buffet has, you don’t travel by train.
If Yitzhak had heard Dov he’d scratch his neck and say, right. Can’t bear ramps, can’t bear them.
Ramps are a bad place for Jews.
A fast train cuts the wind in the opposite direction. A brief whoosh, and it’s gone. On the opposite platform is a young man in a good suit with a laptop on his knees. His eyes are alerted by a young woman who appears to be successful, judging by her jacket, small mini, nylon stockings and high heels. A cute woman. She notices him, straightens up, sticks out. He stares at her and immediately returns to his computer. Idiot. The cute woman with the mini drops her purse, waits. The laptop closes. The young man gets up, bends down to pick it up and points to the bench. They both sit down. He’s silent. She thinks. He opens the laptop and explains something to her. She has no patience. She pulls a mobile phone out of her bag and taps in a number. He blushes. A female soldier arrives with her rifle and stands to one side. Glances at the computer. She has a question. He’s glad. The soldier peers at the computer, and he explains. The cute woman with the mini closes her phone, glances briefly at the soldier, crosses her legs with an expansive gesture, and then the laptop falls. The young man jumps first and then the soldier. They pick up the computer together, not noticing how pretty the cute woman is when she’s smiling into nowhere.
The train enters the station opposite and the sunburned soldier’s rifle muzzle is still pointing at people in the station. I get up quickly, straighten dark glasses and check the clock. Eight. Where is the train to Nahariya, why should I wait for the sergeant to come in my direction. I just hope he doesn’t fire by mistake like the report in this morning’s newspaper. No reason. Someone was walking along and unintentionally shot someone else.
The train crawled into the station. Everyone pushes forward, I’m dragged forward and smell a sharp after-shave mixed with sweat. His gun presses into my arm, I feel its pressure against my coat. I move my arm, trying to push the gun away, but people are pushing from behind. He sticks to me like Velcro. The door to the carriage is closed. That’s it, I can no longer bear the press. I pull back forcibly, and the sergeant is pressed to a young girl who was standing beside me in a sheep wool coat, and the rifle disappears in the wool.
The door to the carriage opens with a sigh and I wait for people to enter before me. Enter last. The seats are taken. I quickly pass through a second carriage, a third, fourth, fifth, stop. An elderly man snores, beside him is an empty seat. About to sit down, I notice a revolver stuck in the belt under his gray battledress.
Lady, sit down.
Lady, sit down please. Nu, sit down. Tickets please.
Don’t want to sit down. A state like a weapon depot. Yitzhak would say, better that way, if I’d had a rifle during the war, I’d have killed a few Germans, and maybe I’d have killed myself. Dov would say, you don’t know what it’s like being small in a camp of adults. I wish I’d had a gun, I wish I had.
Chapter 10
Yitzhak
At Camp Zeiss they prepared us for death by gas.
Three months of hard labor. In the middle, snow fell and everything was covered in white. The girl and the mother no longer stood anywhere. I’d walk to the factory feeling as if I was sinking into bottomless mud. My skin itched and bled and I had sores on my legs. The sores stuck to the shoe didn’t hurt. My mind was empty. I was like an automaton. They said walk, I walked. They said stop. I stopped. They said ten minutes for your needs, I sat over the hole and nothing came out. I felt my body was as thin as dirty glass. I looked at other prisoners and knew how I looked. Yellow and thin like a disease, the mouth falling inward, the chin without flesh. Everyone’s pajamas were all a uniform color, mustard brown like baby’s poop. We were on the ramp, waiting to be replaced, standing crowded in the fresh snow. We waited for the train to Auschwitz.
There were rumors of a change. The dogs of the SSmen barked halfheartedly. The SSmen irritably tapped their boots on the snow. For hours we stood on our feet and there was no pity and no chariots of angels.
A cattle train with large lights and a face like a hyena slowly, slowly approached us, I heard wheezing and whistles like suffering, Choo. Choo. Choo. Choo-oo. I remember thinking, the train doesn’t have any strength either. Prisoners saw the train and slowly began to move back, slowly, like a dark oily stain that doesn’t spread out. A prisoner near me began to tremble where he stood, said, the Germans have gone mad, they don’t know what to do with the stuff for the fire. Another prisoner with one eye closed, said, who knows if the train can take the whole ramp to Auschwitz. I knew that the fresh transport had already taken over our barracks, and I said, don’t worry, they don’t lack a thing, trains either, damn them.
Prisoners began to call out to God, to Mama, Papa, three fainted together, hop, hop, hop, they fell like dominoes. After them, two more intentionally fell to the floor. I heard whimpers, don’t want to die, don’t want to go to the cattle car, Mamaaa, Mamaaa. Rifle blows brought us quiet. Some tried to escape, jumping from the ramp, skipping over the track, running in a zigzag, I heard shouts, and a series of shots then silence and immediately God. Oy-vey God. God save us, save us, and Shema Israel, and weeping like a stormy sea, hummm hummm. And curses, a lot of curses in German.
The car door opened with a loud boom. I couldn’t climb up. Prisoners pushed me from behind. The Germans’ blows helped us advance, fast, fast. Prisoners grabbed one another’s clothing, grabbed the door, rifle butts beating their fingers, I heard terrible weeping, don’t want to, leave me alone, don’t want to, I fell on the floor of the car. I barely managed to crawl to the wall and stand up. The eyelids of a nearby prisoner were trembling, his head fell forward, dragging his shoulders, and he vanished. At the door they continued to force people in. I felt a trembling below. The door to the car slammed shut. The train didn’t move.
I couldn’t breathe. A large broad prisoner stood with his back to me. I saw his hand going into the pocket of another prisoner. He waited a moment, removed his hand, put it in his mouth. Swallowed potato peels. Then he pulled down the prisoner’s trousers, grabbed his ass, and rubbed and rubbed, rubbed, more and more. The prisoner in front of him didn’t move. I wanted to die.
We stood shut up in the car for maybe two hours. The train didn’t move. It was suffocating. People were screaming. Vomiting. Shitting in their pants. I heard the whine of airplanes above us. Planes dropped bombs and disappeared. I prayed that a bomb would reach the roof of my car, and that would be that. I prayed for machine gun bullets right to the middle of my face. Leave this life of garbage with one blow, but it didn’t happen.
The door to the car opened. The loudspeaker called, get down. Fast. Get down. Fast. We saw that the track to Auschwitz had been broken in the bombing and I realized we weren’t going to Auschwitz. We stood on the ramp for an hour or two. We stood stuck together, shivering. We breathed the stink that passed from mouth to mouth. We didn’t warm up. Snow fell as if they hadn’t bombed the place. I was sure my teeth were breaking in my mouth, I felt with my tongue, didn’t find any spaces. Meanwhile the Germans were running about, shouting, and I was afraid, maybe they’d take us to Auschwitz in motor cars, and maybe they’d take us on foot to some forest and we’d have to dig a deep pit with plenty of space for this whole ramp.
Finally they put us on a side train with open cars. I realized that the Germans were looking for an alternative crematorium. We were good for nothing but gas and burning.
The ice consumed us in the open car, sticking us to the floor. We lay on one another like a pile of wet rags. The clothes I was wearing disintegrated at the seams. The shoes too. I pulled some string out of my pocket and tied the sole to my foot, even though I knew the shoe wouldn’t fall off because it was stuck to my foot by the scabs of my sores. Snow fell and fell, mixing with snot, vomit, and blood, it was colorful and shiny, like decorations in the sukkah our neighbor made every year for her and her husband because the children had gone to America and they were left alone and wretched. Those neighbors from the farm had also been on the ramp for a long time, also on the floor of the cars, yes, yes.
We traveled from Zeiss as if in a clean, white sheet, it was only disgusting and stank inside.
The train slowly slowly entered Schwandorf.
Again came the whining of planes and boom, a bombing. The Germans jumped down to find shelter. Some of the prisoners jumped after them, me among them. We rushed about like hungry mice in a burning house. We looked for food. We ran from door to door. Building to building. We didn’t find anything. We came to the window of a rather dark cellar the size of a largish room. The cellar floor was filled with closed suitcases. The window was narrow and barred. I stood next to the window with a group as finished as I was, but of all of them I was the smallest and thinnest. Prisoners standing next to me looked at me. At the suitcases. At me. At the suitcases. I understood. I was most afraid of death by gas, least afraid of dying from bullets or bombs. I grasped the bars and put my leg inside. Slid my body in. Passed in my other leg and hung in the air. One two, boom, I jumped. I landed on a full, brown suitcase. I opened it quickly. Shook out clothes, threw aside silver dishes, books, pictures, dolls, sweaters, glasses, slippers, shoe-laces, toiletries, didn’t find any food. I opened another suitcase. Looked in coat pockets, dug into the sides, found nothing. Tossed everything out of a third suitcase. Fourth. Fifth. The prisoners guarded me from above. Didn’t make a sound. I turned out tens of suitcases, nothing.
I wanted to get out.
The distance from the cellar floor to the window looked scary. A prisoner above called to me, put one suitcase on another and climb up. The prisoner’s voice was like my father’s. The voice of someone who knows things. I threw clothes into several suitcases, shut them quickly and stood one on top the other like a tower. I climbed up onto the pile. The suitcases sank under my feet. I fell down. The prisoner yelled to me, the bombing is over, hurry, hurry. I felt a dryness in my throat. I felt my legs melting like butter in the sun. I looked for solid objects among the belongings. I shoved books and silver objects on top of the clothes. I made a taller pile. Climbed up carefully. My body rocked, my legs trembled, I straightened up very slowly, raised my head. I heard my father’s voice, Yitzhak, jump, jump. Thin pale hands slid in through the bars. Skinny fingers signaled to me to come, to jump. Slowly, slowly, I raised my hands. I was far from them. The prisoner called in alarm, jump, jump. I jumped. Fell to the floor.
The sharp siren of a train paralyzed my entire body. I wanted to get up. My body was as heavy as a sack of flour. I knew, if I couldn’t get up, I’d die like a miserable rat in that cellar. I raised my head and screamed to the prisoners above me, I can’t die here like this, noooo! Help me to get out, I have to get out of here. The prisoners above knocked on the bars. I saw white fingers pressing on the bars. I leaned against a suitcase and pulled myself up. The cellar door was in front of me at the top of stairs. I ran to the door and pressed the handle. Locked. I’d forgotten, we’d tried to open it from above. I banged on my head like a madman, shouted, Yitzhak, think, think, otherwise you’ll rot here among the suitcases of the dead. Father’s voice called to me: Go back to the suitcases. Try, quickly, SSman coming. I’m waiting for you.
I felt stronger.
I took a deep breath. Wiped my wet hands on my shirt. Looked for the largest suitcases in the pile. Stood one on top of the other in a straight line. Climbed carefully, slowly straightening up, slowly. I barely moved. From above I heard, Yitzhak, jump, jump. I bent my knees slightly. Gathered momentum and jumped in the direction of the bars. Two hands held me fast, God, where did he get the strength, I heard Father’s voice breathing heavily from above, hold fast, hold, I’m pulling you out, hold, several more hands grasped me, and pulled, and pulled, I pushed my feet against the wall, I felt my arms were ripping from my body, my head fell back and I didn’t have a chance.
The prisoners didn’t let go. I reached the bars, got out and heard another siren and heavy wheezing from the direction of the train engine. SSman with a rifle approached the window and found nothing. The prisoners dispersed like hay in the wind.
I ran to the nearest car.
I managed to climb up. The open train left the station as the snow stopped falling. A cold wind whistled in my ears, I was hot. I gathered a fistful of snow from the floor and wiped my face. Until Buchenwald I vomited stomach juices. Until Buchenwald my knees shook and I heard that father’s voice, Yitzhak, jump. During all the days in the camps I’d hear, Yitzhak, jump. To this day I still hear it in my ears, Yitzhak, jump, jump.
Chapter 11
Dov: Many people wanted me to tell them