All But My Life Read online

  We had all assembled.

  Why? Why did we walk like meek sheep to the slaughterhouse? Why did we not fight back? What had we to lose? Nothing but our lives. Why did we not run away and hide? We might have had a chance to survive. Why did we walk deliberately and obediently into their clutches?

  I know why. Because we had faith in humanity. Because we did not really think that human beings were capable of committing such crimes.

  It cleared up and then it rained again. I was tired and hungry, hot and cold, and still we stood at attention, losing track of time.

  Finally, certain trucks were loaded and driven off amid crying and screaming. Mama kept looking into my eyes. Her courage gave me strength. Those of us who remained were lined up in rows of four and ordered to march to the station. Instead of marching us across the meadow directly to the station, we were marched all around town. Oh God, I asked, I prayed, oh God, are they going to do to us what they did to Erika’s mother? Will we dig our own grave? Oh God, no, no, NO! Don’t let it happen–don’t! I am afraid. I don’t want to die. Don’t hurt Mama. Don’t–

  I saw Bielitz, my dear childhood town. Here and there from behind a curtain a familiar face looked out. We kept on marching. People went marketing. Guards beat stragglers with rubber truncheons. Oh God, I prayed, don’t let it happen!

  Someone pushed a baby carriage. Workmen were repairing a street. On the butcher shop they were painting a new sign. We were marching. A dry goods store was decorating its show window. We had bought the flowered fabric for my dress there, but it was not colorfast. Oh God, don’t let it happen, don’t, I prayed, don’t! At the movie theater they were putting up a sign announcing a new feature–and we were marching.

  I noticed Mama grow pale. She was gripping her suitcase tightly. I jerked it out of her hand.

  “You hurt my hand,” she said in a whisper.

  Finally we approached the railroad station on the opposite side of town. Beyond the station were open meadows where the annual circus set up its tents. There we waited again.

  From mouth to mouth the news traveled: “Merin!” Merin was here. The king of the Jews, as he was called, had arrived. His headquarters had been at Sosnowitz where there were the biggest Jewish congregation, the largest factories and shops in which Jews worked.

  Customarily the Nazis established someone such as Merin as head of Jewish communities and gave him the job of liquidating them. It was said that Merin lived in luxury, that he had visited Goebbels, that he was the only Jew to own a car, that he was indescribably wealthy. I imagine these things were true. Certainly he was master of life and death.

  I looked at him now. He was short, perhaps a bit over five feet, pale and thin; he had watery eyes, dull brown hair, and he was clad in a brown raincoat. He talked in a hoarse whisper. He pulled a bottle of schnapps from his pocket, drank first and then handed it to the SS men about him. They drank after him. I saw it all and marveled. Yes, he was all right for them, he was their kind.

  “I am glad you took the suitcase,” Mama said very quietly. We were no longer standing at attention. “I would have fainted,” she continued.

  “Why didn’t you throw it away?”

  Her voice was without tone as she answered, “Arthur’s picture is in it.”

  Merin was walking in our direction. Mama prompted me, “Go ask him if we are going to Wadowitz.”

  I asked him in Polish–it was known that his German was very poor.

  He looked at me, his eyes without expression.

  “Are you crazy?” was his hoarse reply.

  Mama asked me what he had said, but I had no time to answer, for “All march down this way” came the command.

  In our clenched fists we held our working cards from the shop, those sacred cards that we thought meant security. As we marched along in pairs we heard cries and screams ahead of us. Mama and I held hands tightly. A cane hit our hands. They unclasped. The cane pointed at me, a voice shouted, “How old?” My answer came, “Eighteen.” The cane shoved me aside. Like a puppet I went. I knew Mama was marching on–in the opposite direction. I did not turn around. I could not. I knew she was looking at me as Papa had looked at us from the platform of the train. I knew that if I turned around we would have to run to each other–and that they would beat us or shoot us. We had to go on alone.

  I was herded toward a group where my friends Ilse, Rita, and Ruth stood. Our parents were led to the other side of the meadow where a barbed wire enclosure had been set up. I did not see Mama, but we saw how earrings were torn out of ears, rings from fingers, and all thrown into a pail. I pictured Mama’s wide wedding band with Papa’s inscription in it among them, and I pictured the SS men digging greedily into the gold. Digging into people’s love and pledges … .

  I saw a couple we knew. With their baby in their arms they walked up to the SS man, the judge of life and death. He told them to give the baby to those marching to the right, and motioned them to the group to the left. I saw the couple look at each other. Then I turned away, feeling the wide field revolving around me. When I looked again, sick and limp, I saw the couple embracing their baby–and walking slowly toward the right … .

  We had assumed all along that we were going on a train, but now a truck came for us. I was the last one to enter it. Then I screamed, “I want to go to my mother!” and jumped down. Just then Merin passed. He looked at me, and with strength unsuspected in that little man, he picked me up and threw me back on the truck.

  “You are too young to die,” he said tonelessly.

  I glared at him. “I hate you,” I screamed. “I hate you!”

  His eyes were without expression; there was a faint smile on his pale thin lips. It would have been easy for him to order me down and send me with my mother. Why did he not? Strange that the man who sent my mother to death had pushed me into the arms of life!

  Someone fastened the canvas across the back of the truck and Merin walked away. Then above all the screams coming from behind the barbed wire I heard my mother. “Where to?” she called. I spread my arms and leaned out of the truck. I did not know the answer.

  “Mama! Mama!” I called, as if the word could convey all I felt. Above all the confused, painful cries I heard Mama’s voice again.

  “Be strong!” And I heard it again like an echo: “Be strong.” Those were my mother’s last words to me.

  As the trucks pulled away, the late afternoon sun came through the gray clouds for a moment. Its rays touched the roof of the church, glistening wet. The church bells were ringing. And then the sun disappeared.

  Once more Bielitz was gray and dark, and as the truck rolled on, the city disappeared before my misty eyes.

  Part Two

  Chapter 1

  THE TRUCK ROLLED ON FOR PERHAPS AN HOUR OR TWO; I HARDLY bothered to wonder where they were taking us. My thoughts were with Papa. I feared what might happen to him when he heard about Mama. His heart would not stand the shock.

  Our truck, and the others, stopped at a little station and we were put on a passenger train. For hours the train stood on a siding. I looked out of the window, pressing my forehead against the cool glass, and wondered where Mama might be. I prayed, lost in thought, clinging to the faint hope that she had been taken to Wadowitz to work in the shop, after all.

  As the evening shadows crept over the little station I felt the jolt that precedes the starting of a train, and then we rolled toward our unknown destination. A vivid picture formed in my brain … . Mama sitting on a crowded floor in the corner of a dirty freight car, also in motion. I could see her hands pressed together, her face white, her beautiful eyes filled with tears. I knew she would be praying with all her might; praying for Papa and her children, praying for our strength because she herself was no longer afraid. I felt the serenity that had come over her, the strength that had emanated from her during our last hour together. And then a picture, cruel and unthinkable, started to revolve in my mind: about the tortures she might have to endure, about the heat that m
ight burn her to ashes, which would then be scattered to the winds. My beloved mother … I felt both the heat and the cold of the horror. Finally, I could suffer no longer. My eyes remained dry. I felt my features turn stony.

  “Now I have to live,” I said to myself, “because I am alone and nothing can hurt me any more.” And the picture of Papa’s and Mama’s mute farewells–those two faces suffering without uttering a cry–was imprinted in my heart forever.

  Ilse sat next to me at the window, her lips repeating “Mama, Mama, Kitty, Kitty,” tears running down her face. None of the girls spoke. Each was alone with her tragedy, suffering in her own way, as the train sped on through the evening.

  I felt remote and alone. A piece of broken bottle was lying under a seat. I picked it up and played with it. Then I drove its sharp edge into my palm. The blood trickled onto my cuff, but the wound did not hurt. There was no pain.

  It does not matter, I am going to live. Mama and Papa are going to live. I am going to live to be with them. And if … if it happens to them–I am going to live for revenge. I am going to live! The wheels of the train, beating in rhythm, were saying over and over, “I am going to live, I am going to live.”

  We passed through Kattowitz and I knew that we had traveled fifty-six kilometers to the north of Bielitz. We were not going to Auschwitz … . But where then? After another twenty kilometers the train slowed to a stop and we read a faintly illuminated station sign: Sosnowitz. Our guards ordered us off the train and marched us through dark, empty streets. It occurred to me that Abek’s family lived in Sosnowitz. Abek? I had not thought of him at all: he now seemed as far away as someone I had known a long time ago. I wondered fleetingly if I would be able to see his family.

  Finally, exhausted, we halted in front of a tall building that turned out to be the headquarters of the Militz. The Militz, an auxiliary police, was a Jewish force established by the Germans, headed by a notorious SS commander and a subordinate Jewish commander. Young Jews were conscripted to fill its ranks. We were marched inside, led through dim passages, and finally into a large hall upstairs. Everywhere Militz men were milling about and an excited exchange of questions followed. They were curious to know where we came from and we in turn asked anxiously where we were going. A shrug of the shoulders and “Probably to camp”–this was our small satisfaction.

  “Come lie down,” Ilse whispered. She had spread her coat on the floor near a window. I lay down but sleep would not come. After a while I got up and started to walk about again. On a shelf I spotted a stack of paper. I took a sheet. Under the faint light of the single bulb, hardly conscious that I had taken a pencil from my pocket, I wrote these words, “My beloved brother.” Then slowly it trickled into my mind that I had to write him and tell him … and the wish that was dearest to my heart and which I could not consciously express wrote itself down in the letter. I told Arthur that Papa was in Sucha and Mama in Wadowitz, that I was on my way to a camp, and that he had no cause to worry. I reminded him that our parents were young, that they would be able to stand the hardships, and that we would soon be together again at home. “Young? Yes, young,” I answered myself. Mama was barely forty-five and Papa fifty-five. They were young people, much too young to die, but too old to bear more suffering. They had already suffered too much. “But they are young,” I answered myself in defiance. “They must live”–and I continued my letter to Arthur.

  When I had finished it I put it in my bosom and felt comforted. There now was a link with Arthur, a link with Papa, Mama, and home. I lay down next to Ilse and instantly fell asleep.

  There were gray shadows in the room when I opened my eyes, and on the opposite walls the naked bulb gleamed dimly. I heard whispers around me, some stifled crying. The picture of yesterday’s events came into my mind. I was in Sosnowitz. And Mama?

  I looked out of the window into the misty street below. In the bleak light of dawn shadowy figures were going somewhere. Then I distinguished their yellow stars of David. I marveled at how many Jews I saw. There had been so very few in Bielitz. Sosnowitz, I had been told, had the largest Jewish community in all of Germany. There had been a large Jewish population before the war, but now all the shops and factories in which Jews worked were located here. Sosnowitz was just inside the border of the Gouvernement and many Jews had fled here, in the hope of finding work and safety.

  I decided to try and see Abek’s parents and I asked one of the Militz men how to get permission to leave the building.

  “You have to go to the Commander,” he said.

  “Where is he?”

  “Here in the building.”

  “When can I see him?”

  “Listen,” the Militz man said, obviously tired of my questions and lack of comprehension, “you have to register ahead for an appointment. Do you think you can just walk in and see him?”

  “I am going to see him this morning,” I said quietly, more to myself. The guard shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

  I walked out into the corridor. We were not restricted within the building but I noted through a glass panel that the outside door was guarded by Militz men and one SS man. Walking along the corridor, I suddenly felt a new freedom born from the realization that no matter what action I might take, only I would have to bear the consequences. Nothing that I might do now could harm Papa and Mama. I felt elated.

  A long line of fearful people with a hunted look on their faces stood in front of a door that was blocked by a guard, begging, offering money to get an appointment with the Commander. I stood there, hardly believing what I saw. Still, I was sure that I was going to see the Commander. I noticed a second door marked PRIVATE and decided that it was the one to try. I went back to our room and told Ilse my plan.

  “Please don’t do it,” she begged.

  “But Ilse, I am not afraid,” I told her. “I will be all right.” I went out into the corridor again. The air of excitement indicated that the Commander had arrived. The guard was frantically driving people away from the door. Thinking fleetingly that Papa and Mama would scarcely recognize their shy little girl of yesterday, I went quietly to the door marked PRIVATE, turned the knob, and entered.

  There, at a littered desk, sat a fat, bald man, his forehead shining, his eyes small and piercing. His fleshy lips curled in a vulgar, greedy manner toward the glass of tea he was lifting.

  He turned to me, startled, amused, a bit angry. “Yes?”

  What a picture I must have made in my heavy ski boots and schoolgirlish tweed suit and with long black braids falling over my shoulders.

  “Are you the Commander?” I asked pleasantly in German.

  “I certainly am,” he answered in Polish, then checked himself and repeated it in German, which I noted at once was faulty. The few words he had spoken betrayed the fact that he spoke neither language correctly. I felt that this man hated his ignorance, and that my mastery of both Polish and German somewhat compensated for the power of his position. I chose my words with care and spoke slowly in German.

  “I would like a permit to visit my relatives who are living here in town. Their name is Feigenblatt. Could you please give me one?”

  I said it without begging in my voice. He leaned back in his chair and scrutinized me, his fleshy lips twisting into a smile. I went on.

  “And I might as well tell you that I have neither money nor jewels to pay for it.” What was dictating my words? I felt like an actress on a stage.

  His smile vanished. He was sitting upright now. I sensed that nobody had spoken to him like that in a long time. Apparently I had caught him off guard. He opened his mouth and closed it again.

  “Can I see your Ausweis?”

  “I have no identification,” I answered. “Why do you have people crying outside your door? Do you like it? You can’t like it.” He stared at me. I wondered if I had gone too far. Staring right back at him, I lowered my glance to the star of David on his chest.

  “Could I have the permit, please?” I repeated, my voice soft and steady
now.

  He was still looking at me when his fingers pressed a bell. A young Militz man came in. The Commander wrote something on a piece of paper.

  “Your name?” he asked, his voice gruff; then, after a moment, he added, “Please.”

  Silently he handed me the permit. “Thank you.” My voice held although my knees felt weak and I was shaking. The Commander told the guard to accompany me. Then he did me an honor that he probably accorded no one else but the SS: he got up and stood while I left the room.

  I was thoroughly shaken. I hardly knew myself. I had never spoken like that. I had never felt like that. I was different in a thousand ways from yesterday. But the knowledge that such strength was within me gave me the courage to go on.

  Chapter 2

  IT WAS A BRIGHT, WARM, SUNNY DAY AND I WALKED ALONG THE streets of Sosnowitz, the Militz man at my side. Almost everyone I saw wore the yellow star, and this gave me a feeling of comfort.

  After perhaps half an hour’s walk we came to a large apartment house on which I saw an enameled sign which read BESKIDENSTRASSE. Under it was a small number 6. I rubbed my eyes. This looked quite different from what I had imagined while writing to Abek at this address. To me, home meant a house like ours, with a garden and flowers. I couldn’t associate a large apartment building on an unshaded street with “home.”

  As we walked up the stairs I rehearsed what I was going to say–how I would explain who I was–but before I could knock, the door was thrown open and Abek’s dark-haired, pretty sisters, Paula and Lola, rushed out to embrace me. They seemed to be expecting me.

  A tall, gaunt, erect woman in black came forward. Her resemblance to Abek was striking, though her features were softer. Her face was pale, her eyes red as though she had been crying. She embraced me without a word and slowly stroked my hair.