All but My Life: A Memoir (24 page)

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Authors: Gerda Weissmann Klein

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical, #Women, #History, #Holocaust

BOOK: All but My Life: A Memoir
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Kurt took both my hands and held them.
“All I can say is: I shall see you as soon and as much as I can.” Then he turned and walked away quickly.
Once in my bunk I started to cry. I cried because there was nothing to look forward to. Kurt would not come; I might never see him again.
I heard Ida, a simple girl with a shrill voice, call out, “You know, girls, Gerda is crying because her lieutenant left.”
Someone else said, “Don’t be a fool, Gerda. You knew he would leave sooner or later. Did you think he would take you with him?”
I fumbled in my dress and took out Kurt’s picture. On the back it said: “To Gerda, at the start of a new life!”
The inscription was in English but I understood it completely.
 
The night was never ending. I tossed around, my throat was parched, my temples throbbed furiously. When the night nurse came she felt my hand.
“Why, you are burning!” she exclaimed. After checking my pulse she disappeared, almost instantly returning with a doctor.
I was undressed and wrapped in a cold wet sheet. I lost consciousness.
Days passed. Sometimes I did not really feel ill, though I knew that I must be. My temperature remained high. I slept most of the time, or was semiconscious.
One afternoon I opened my eyes to find a nurse peering at me. “You are awake at last,” she said, holding ice water to my lips. How good, how refreshing!
Then I saw Kurt. He was smiling at me. After the nurse left he took my hand. My bony fingers felt at peace in that cool strong hand.
I lay there happy and tired. Kurt’s voice was softly teasing.
“What’s the idea? The minute I turn my back, you get yourself sick!”
The scolding felt good. I smiled. I learned that I had been sick a week.
“I am quite excited,” Kurt said. “Just before I came here today I got a letter from my sister in New York. I am going to become an uncle. They didn’t let me know before. I wonder what Barbara will have to say.”
“And who is Barbara?” I asked.
“My niece, of course.” He pulled a picture out of his pocket.
I looked at a little girl with pigtails, in a light dress and sweater, a child about three years of age.
I had learned to associate children with death. Children were not permitted to live, to laugh. This child was standing among trees.
“What is she doing with that flower?” I asked, to mask my emotions.
“That is not a flower, that is a lollipop!”
I did not understand the word. Kurt tried to say it in German, and finally made it clear.
“Let me look at the lollipop again,” I said, ashamed to tell him that I wanted to see the child.
Barbara had a special place in Kurt’s heart, and he delighted in telling me about her–about a game called “Make like a birdie” which he had taught her: he would hold her in his arms and fly around the room, much to the alarm of his sister.
I could see Kurt holding that child in his arms, laughing and enjoying the game as much as the child did. Another picture sprang to my mind: Abek talking about his little niece –full of love too, yes, but with sadness. I could never picture Abek so fully enjoying and sharing the child’s play, laughing with her, being so happy.
Before I could check myself, the words tumbled out. “I wish that I had a little niece or a little baby!”
“You,” Kurt said, using for the first time the German
du,
instead of
sie
–“You are just a silly little girl yourself, not much older or bigger than Barbara.”
It felt wonderfully good and peaceful to be thought of as a little girl, a silly little girl with no worries or problems. With Kurt’s hand still holding mine, I drifted off to a strength-giving sleep.
I felt much better the next morning, although my temperature was still up. I asked for paper and pencil. The nurse brought them to me, and I began to make a drawing of the flowers that Kurt had brought me.
Kurt found me at this project when he called. He had spent the night in Volary, but now had to return to Pfarrkirchen,
five hours’ ride by jeep. He left around noon, promising to come again as soon as he could get away.
The doctors told me that I had come through both pneumonia and typhus, and that I was now out of danger. However, there seemed to be some complications about my feet. I still had no strength in them, and I knew that beneath the bandages they were not healing properly.
Sometimes the doctor who had most to do with me would find time for a chat. He was Austrian. It was never clear to me if he had been in the German army. We spoke about other things. Once he said he would like to write a medical book about concentration camps, about the body and mind under conditions of extreme duress. He asked me if I would help him. I said of course, rather looking forward to contributing my experiences. He seemed vitally interested in people’s minds.
One particular evening he asked me again and again how much I thought a mind could stand. I knew he was driving at something. Then, very subtly, he told me that he had had to operate on a number of girls with frozen limbs. As he spoke, he watched me. I knew he was speaking about me.
“Never!” I shouted.
He had expected resistance: there was sympathy in his eyes, and determination.
I have been told many times in my life that I have an instinctive approach to a situation. It happened at that moment too. From the medical viewpoint, amputation of my feet must have been right or it would not have been proposed. But I had greater faith in my own judgment.
“We don’t have to do it right away,” the doctor continued, “but I wanted you to have the thought in mind in case there is no improvement.”
Before he went home that night, the doctor came again to see me. I hardly recognized him in civilian clothes, having seen him only in white.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “we shall try something.” His voice was impersonal. “We will bathe your feet alternately in hot
water and cold water. It may be very painful. Perhaps you know better.”
The treatments started. The hot water was boiling hot; the cold was ice water. At first there was not much sensation. Later the hot and the cold were equally excruciating, but I rejoiced in the pain, for it meant that I had life in my legs, that I would be able to walk.
 
Kurt came again, bringing me roses. He was glad to see me recovering so fast.
Next day, noting that my temperature was up, my doctor laughed and remarked, “Nothing like being in love to raise one’s temperature!”
In love, in love–I tasted the sound of the words and liked them. Yet I knew that it was not that simple, even though I cared deeply for Kurt.
One of the nurses had given me a little mirror, and I began to use it more and more. My hair was by now back to its original black. As I combed it daily, it felt thicker and the natural wave returned to it. My cheeks filled out. The dimples that I used to have reappeared.
“You look different, Gerda,” the girls told me. “My, what a man at your bedside can’t do.”
I hardly recognized myself … My sallowness was gone. My eyes looked lively rather than tragic. Involuntarily, I smiled: I looked younger than my twenty-one years.
Kurt had told me that too. He said, “When I first met you, you looked forty. Now you are back to sixteen, that’s not fair!”
He laughed and I joined in. I was happy and young and gay when he was with me, and I tried not to think of anything else. I was happy for the moment, that was all that mattered.
In the course of conversation, I learned that his birthday would fall on a Sunday–his day to visit me. The previous Sunday I was allowed to get up and take my first steps alone. I planned to take a walk with Kurt when he came, and as a present I wrote a few short essays for him. I told him in advance about the walk we would be taking.
Starting Wednesday, I practiced hard. I actually had to
learn to walk again. The first steps were difficult and frightening. I felt dizzy and longed for bed, but I walked first to the adjacent bed, then to the window, to the door, then once around the room, twice around the room. Finally, I ventured into the corridor. By Saturday I hesitatingly tried the stairs. Sunday came, and I was ready.
Kurt usually came in the morning. He started from Pfarrkirchen at daybreak to arrive around eleven. But this was a special Sunday: I watched the door each time it opened. Lunch time came, and no sign of Kurt! I watched from the window, my heart beating faster as each jeep approached.
The noon hour passed. Perhaps he could not get away, I thought. I went out into the yard behind the hospital.
I heard another jeep approach. I thought I would stay a while before returning to my room. Although Kurt knew I would be up today, he would be surprised to find my bed empty. I counted to five hundred, then went inside. Kurt was not there. I asked the girl in the bed next to mine. No, Kurt had not been there. I could not stand it.
“I am going for a walk,” I stammered.
Across from the hospital was a meadow. I had yearned to walk in it for weeks and so I left the hospital and headed for it.
A group of people approached as I crossed the street. I had the desire to run away, and found myself instinctively panic-stricken about the absence of my Jewish star.
I sat down on a slope under a pine tree, and tried to think of my new freedom, but all my thoughts were of Kurt.
Why did he not come? A new fear gripped me: could he have been sent to Japan? No, this couldn’t be–he would have come to say good-by.
Then, all of a sudden, it seemed clear. Today, for the first time, I was to walk. That was all that Kurt wanted to achieve. In his kindness he wanted to help me get well. But once I was well … ?
Perhaps the whispers and jokes about us had reached his ears. The girls and nurses were constantly saying that we were in love. I searched my heart and came to the conclusion that I cared deeply for Kurt in a silent, suppressed way.
Why should I not? I asked myself. He was kind, understanding, intelligent, and handsome. There was an aura of heroism about him. He had liberated me. He was for me the incorporation of freedom and understanding: Why should I not love him?
Yet, how did Kurt feel about me? He liked me, I knew that. Why else would he come hundreds of miles to see me? He wanted to help me. But what did he think about me as a girl? That I did not know …
I certainly couldn’t look pretty to him. I recalled the pictures of beautiful American girls in the magazines he had brought me. Those were the girls he knew. Surely I could never compare with those girls. Besides, he must always remember me the way I looked when he met me, more like an animal than a human being.
He is kind not to come again. It is probably for the best.
Yet the thought that I might never see him again became unbearable. One thing I resolved: if I saw him again, he would never know my feelings for him. I would never be a burden for him. And then I realized that he might be married–or engaged. He had never said.
I returned to the hospital, utterly miserable. I just could not believe that on the first day out of bed I could feel so sad and forlorn. The girls teased me–good–naturedly, but it hurt.
Monday came. The week crept slowly by. Saturday, Sunday. I waited, I hoped, but Kurt didn’t come. Nor did he send word.
The Knebels took great interest in me. They invited me for dinner frequently and even asked me to stay in their home. I considered doing so, but since I was not yet discharged from the hospital or strong enough to work for my room and board, I declined.
One day I found Mrs. Von Garnier, one of the daughters, sewing a new dress for me, a really beautiful, silky thing with fine stripes of navy and deep pink. Simple in style, with a tiny white collar, it really looked elegant.
Even the new dress did not give me any joy. Kurt would not see it, and I could not pay for it. It was charity and I hated charity.
I told Mrs. Von Garnier my feelings.
“You must not feel it is charity,” she said. “Perhaps you can help us someday.”
“Help you? How?”
“Well–” She did not finish. I wondered what was behind her remarks.
The Knebels had a well-stocked library. I borrowed books by the armful, and at the hospital I often read late into the night.
I should have been happy. I was free, not hungry (although most of the time I could have eaten more–food was by no means plentiful yet). I was free of lice, had a clean bed to sleep in, and books to read. Yet–and I would never have believed it possible–I was not happy. For I was sure now that I should not see Kurt again. As the other girls put it, it was time to look for a new boy friend. They were plentiful: a whole American division was stationed in the area.
But I wanted to speak to no one. My thoughts were constantly with Kurt. I worried about his safety. Perhaps he had caught my typhus! I woke up one night with that terrible thought.

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