Four Scraps of Bread (3 page)
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Authors: Anthony T.; Magda; Fuller Hollander-Lafon
Kindness often visited me. On this occasion its face was repulsive, full of smallpox scars. Its dark eyes shot terrifying flames, and its voice was thunderous and rough. Deep down, I could not stand this huge, crude, crushingly powerful body.
We were nailing rails into place and unloading wagons full of ties. We had arrived at our destination after several days of travel. We were surrounded by guards, themselves workers, and all of us were closely supervised by the black uniforms which bore the sign of the death head.
For several days I had had trouble following the others, and I looked with envy at the feet of those who still had shoes. Mine had been stolen. They had been very valuable to me; their soles were lined with notes I had taken in secret, on scraps of cement sacks I had salvaged. Thefts were frequent. In exchange I had been left with a pair of boots that were too wide and had gaping holes that sucked the cold in. It was life itself that had been snatched from me. I walked but saw nothing, my eyes riveted to the feet dragging in front of me. An aggressive and powerful voice reminded me to speed up.
I cried from the cold and the tears ran down my face. The pain in my frozen feet was very real to me.
On the job, I hammered the nails with rage and despair.
The hideous face with the booming voice had seen everything; without warning he snatched the hammer from my hands and ordered me to follow him. He led me near to a wood fire where no one could see us. With wicked yells belied by a look of kindness, he gesticulated wildly and rubbed my feet with newspapers.
He took out of his bag a pair of galoshes that he slipped onto my feet.
With this act of generosity he gave me back my life, and at the same time put his own at risk.
My good guard became for four months a hidden, caring, and compassionate friend. During these one hundred twenty days, work was less hard and days were less long, because I could see in his eyes my own human face.
When he left I could cry once more and still hope in the kindness of people.
It was twenty-eight years before I could listen again to Brahms's
Concerto for Violin
. Each sound tears through my flesh and drags out from me the image of a scorching, shadeless day in Auschwitz.
At about two o'clock, thousands of deportees gathered around a rostrum made from planks in the middle of the main road. The lucky ones were in the front rows. Those at the back jostled each other and edged their way toward the front. The only place of shade, under the stage, was completely sealed off by the guards and their dogs. Slowly, in procession, walking somewhat tensely but with dignity, the musiciansâfirst-rate artists from different countriesâtook their assigned seats. Their heads were shaved, and they were wearing blue and gray striped trousers paired with a formal black jacket over their uniform tops.
With the crowd pressing all around me, I was carried away as they struck up the first movement. Crouched down and trembling with emotion, I found myself drawn into a fairy-tale world where suffering was clothed in a magical beauty. Through small, gentle waves the music soaked into me like the breath of life.
The beginning of the second movement was just as pure and rich: it laughed and cried in us.
Time stood still, but the sun was there, breathing us in.
I grew ill from the swarming of insects around my head and my ears. To this day, when I think of the third movement I have a paralyzing image of venomous stings. I was in and out of consciousness. Little by little the music became disjointed, ending with the pathetic note of an instrument landing on the rostrum, followed by another, and then another. All I could make out was the strain of a violin through a kind of fog. The sun and its arrows had gotten the better of us. The orchestra became like an ageing fabric, wearing out before our very eyes: holes appeared, and it crumbled into dust.
Although my senses were dulled, I understood the diabolical game of the SS. The pack of dogs arrived. In less than an hour the great ceremony was over. Those of us who still could got up and made our way like drunkards back to the barracks. The dogs sniffed around the others who, dead or dying, lay on the ground like dead leaves after a gust of wind.
The sun must have shuddered at this sight. I swore that day that I wanted to stay alive. To tell those who forget to remain vigilant.
How could I forget the great flames of the crematorium which devoured my childhood?
Despair gave way to emptiness. Inhuman fatigue took possession of me, and almost made me forget everything. A day, a week, a night, an eternity ⦠all became a blur in my mind. I was alone, and I was nothing. Where did my tears come from? Were they still mine? What a strange sensation, to not belong to myself: reality, dream, and despair overlapped. How easy it would have been to give up, to be swept away by the lure of death.
Everything had been set up to create this life of despair. Fear, uncertainty, and lies were carefully cultivated around us and in us to push us into madness or death. I cannot forget several of my fellow prisoners who would help each other at night to hang themselves in the toilets at the end of the barracks, using scraps of their clothing as a noose. Our entire identity was stripped away from us: mementoes, clothes, even hair or teeth if they were crowned with gold. However, fraternity lived on in the hearts of some of us, and shone forth.
I can still hear the warm voice of a fellow prisoner, who had been in the camp for five years. She would say to us, “Trust in life. Let us chase away despair. Let us
cultivate friendship among us. Let us gather our forces. Let us not lose courage; the weak do not live here. We need to survive. We need witnesses.”
These words came from an unknown sister. They took root in me and have long since helped me to get through moments of exhaustion.
If today, though aching all over, I am crossing the bridge of memory, I do so to keep alive the memory of those women and men whose lives were stolen but who, right until the end, wanted to give us the courage to live.
I will not forget Christmas 1944. Two days' break from our work at the time as weavers. The first time in a year of deportations ⦠Two days without working, far from that damned factory, where from morning to night I threaded bobbins!
I had no gift for that job, and I did nothing to apply myself to it. I did display plenty of false enthusiasm, dazzling with innocence; for once my guards were taken in by it. I did not get hit one time in three months, which was quite a record.
A great surprise awaited us on the evening of Christmas Day. The factory presented us with a banquet: a little block of margarine, two slices of dried sausage, and, to make our joy complete, two tablespoons of granulated sugar. What a lot of stars in a wooden spoon.
We savored this feast slowly to make it last longer. It was good. It was a party for our palates, and a warm sense of well-being took hold in us. It took so little to encourage our taste for living, our survival instinct.
We became poetic and talked about our favorite menus. We recited poems. The momentary sweetness of the present put us back in touch with our past. “Do you remember that friend? That place? The man who sold roasted sunflower seeds at the corner of the road
where the school is? That book I loved?” For a few minutes we became human beings again, with a story that went beyond these moments that we had snatched from both the past and our uncertain future.
My friend saw me as someone; we had memories in common and thoughts to share. Not everything was dead in us. There was a past, even if rather brief. These were privileged moments, so fragile and so measured. We grabbed them and locked them away in our hearts like an extraordinary gift.
The wait is so long
In the depth of winter,
The sweltering heat of summer
Full of the unknown, menacing
For worn-out seconds
Crushed minutes
Endless hours
We await
Bread
Gray soup
Day
Night
We wait
With eyes
Which defy
Plead
Put up
Die
We wait in silence
With hands ready to take in
To stretch out
To hold tight
To give up
We wait for the end
Of an exhausting job
With our legs swollen
Tense
Heavy
Painful
From forced marches
From roll calls prolonged for the sake of it
We wait
Behind the barbed wire
With our hearts ready to burst
Breathless with impatience
Beaten down with anger and impotence
With hatred and anxiety
We wait
With a glimmer of hope
The Allies were advancing.
Behind us the sound of heavy gunfire was getting closer and closer.
Where were we going?
The exodus is long before liberation.
How many tens or hundreds of miles?
I measured the distance by the effort it took.
I dragged my footsteps, each of which was an effort in the fog and deprivation.
I marched
without seeing anything.
I tripped on stones
with one thought only:
do not fall.
I no longer had the strength to be scared nor to hope.
For several days we had been living on nothing
We had been sleeping outside in the sticky mud
Our convoy had grown thinner every hour.
All that was left were shadows spattered with grime and mud.
With great, dead eyes.
Owl faces.
I marched with my head down to focus my efforts.
I wanted to come back from this other world.
To stay standing.
My existence had no place in time.
It was out of my reach.
I marched.
Long after I came back, I studied people's faces.
I would question their hearts.
I would weigh people by the measure of their kindness:
Who would have helped us to march?
Who would have shared their bread?
I was desperate to read kindness on the faces of the living.
I no longer remember the time when I met you. I have often been abandoned by my memory. I know that our friendship, formed in a moment when time stood still, in suffering, continues, alive today.
Do you remember the entire loaves stolen from the stores in Frankfurt? More aware of the danger I was facing, you were very scared for me.
And our awkwardness in front of that huge weaving machine in Zillertal whose noise and speed made our heads spin? But in fact that was the one place in all those years where we were not treated like nothing but useless numbers.
You were so good at reciting poems, with that great dreamer's look of yours. I would listen to you ardently, so little did I know compared to you.
I can still hear the lice cracking under our nails, and our teeth chattering with cold and with fear, under the frozen tent in Ravensbrück. Death was grasping our hand so powerfully.
Whenever courage let me down, your look would call me back to life.
Do you remember, on our journey of exodus, how our hearts were beating when we left the convoy? There should have been three of us, but five of us gathered in the thick brambles, waiting for our liberators.
We spent six long days without food in the forest of Bischofferode.
7
There, you were scared that I would abandon you. You doubted my friendship, but you were so weak, consumed with fever and scabies.
After the Liberation we did not see each other much, but time does not exist for us. We need no excuses or explanations. We have learned to read closed lips.
How many feelings I could never have expressed or which would never have had the same life in me without your friendship.
I am carried away with joy and hope by a smile or a look. This friendship remains a source of energy in me, and I still drink from those living waters.
Our journey back to rebirth stretched out over two days. We were numbed by fatigue and hunger. The Paris of which we dreamed was still far off. Here was Namur.
8
Curiosity, the delicious smell of bread, sharp and smooth, pulled us out of our numbness. We got off, we ate, and we stayed.
Bread ⦠Sun ⦠Life ⦠The light was stunning. We were happy and worried. What were we going to do with this new life? We still had no path.
Having barely had our fill, there we were already being mixed up, counted, and passed around. Astonished or blank looksâwhatever expression was appropriate; we were surrounded by superficial pity and easy emotion. We wanted to run away. But we had to talk, to justify our presence. “Name? Age?” Memory gap, silence. “Come on, speed up. You're not the only one ⦔ We had to remember at all costs. Come back to our senses quickly. Say something, at any rate.
It was tiring to come back to life in a world that was already moving on. The speed was dizzying. I was out of breath. No sooner had my eyes opened than I wanted to close them again.
The advantage of my ageâseventeen yearsâand my rundown state earned me some rest and individual care along with four of my companions. We had three
months ahead of us in the beautiful countryside around Namur. I was neither happy nor sad. I let myself sink into a protective half-consciousness. Come on, we'll see later â¦
Our landlady was an old woman bent double. She had a pyramidlike nose, and washed-out blue eyes sunk deep into their sockets. Her face was streaked with dirty wrinkles. Behind her tight lips she hid her bad mood and her completely toothless mouth.