BIT BY BIT I PIECED TOGETHER THE STORY OF ABEK’S COMING to Landeshut. When the camp in Bielitz had been disbanded, all the men went to Blechhammer since the Dulag in Sosnowitz was no longer in existence. In Blechhammer Abek met a former classmate of his who held the position comparable to Mrs. Berger’s in our camp. Through him Abek got into portrait painting again and his lot in Blechhammer became an easy one. One day he overheard two SS men say that Bolkenhain was being dissolved. From that day on he knew no more peace. Aided by his painting and through his friend’s influence, he somehow persuaded one of the guards to check the rosters. Thus he learned that I was in Landeshut.
Later, when he heard that a men’s camp had been opened in Landeshut, he begged to be sent there in a transport, much against the advice of his friend, who knew of the camp’s reputation.
No longer did I look forward to dawn, to going to sleep, grateful that another night of work was over. Now each night seemed never-ending. I waited for Abek every morning and Ilse waited up with me. She insisted on doing everything for Abek that I did. For her he was truly a shining hero, an ideal. Each morning that we saw Abek we threw one of our breakfasts down to him and shared the other. Ilse was usually animated and happy when we had seen him, but I was just glad that another day had passed in which no harm had come to him.
At about four in the afternoon the men would march back to the Burgberg and I usually waited downstairs near the outhouses. Abek would steal away from his group for a moment and run to the fence and I would hand him some bread
or a potato. Then he would touch me gently. It was a new pain each day, that little caress through the barbed wire, and I would be glad when his column marched away. Sometimes he would turn and wave, and then he would become lost in the gray, tired column, walking away in the dusk.
Toward the middle of December we saw something new on the factory grounds: dark-haired, dark-eyed foreign men, in bright green uniforms, with funny green felt hats, elegantly slanted to one side. Such smart uniforms! We caught snatches of their conversation. They were Italian prisoners. We knew now that the war had taken a different turn. Apparently the Italians were no longer gallant Axis partners. New hope rose high. Had we known, that winter, that the war would last another year and a half, we would not have been so cheered by the sight of the Duce’s subjects in their new role.
The Italians did not last long. We saw them eating out of garbage cans in the factory, shivering in the frost of the mountain winter. Soon their uniforms were soiled, their gay hats crumpled. The sparkle left their eyes. Their numbers decreased rapidly.
I pictured them under the sunny skies of Italy, at grape harvests, singing in gondolas in Venice, walking through the Forum in Rome. How they must have missed their land.
On Christmas Day, as we cleaned the factory, we heard a running to and fro in one of the halls beneath us. We caught sight of a lifeless body in a bright green uniform. Accident? Suicide? Nobody seemed sure. His family would never know that he died without glory on Christmas morning in a place called Landeshut.
Things were getting worse at Burgberg; we could see it in the faces of the men when they marched by. Whenever the dentist came, which was not often these days, he told us of new horrors. In January there was an epidemic of pneumonia. Day after day I waited apprehensively for Abek, grateful when I saw him, fearful and in despair when I missed him. During the long nights at my looms the fear gnawed at me that he might become ill.
A few days after the epidemic started we heard that we
were going to do laundry from the Burgberg camp in our factory laundry. Each Monday morning eight girls were assigned to the laundry; those chosen went without sleep all that day and the following night. I always volunteered for this detail for there was a strong possibility that Abek would be among the men who brought the clothes and he usually was.
I looked forward to those Mondays and dreaded them at the same time. I was somehow ashamed to meet Abek. I was ashamed of my clean clothes, ashamed and pained by the kiss that he planted on my cheek when he could. And always there were the dirty, bloody, vermin-filled bundles of clothes between us. I looked for Abek’s clothes, and at the same time I hoped that I would not find them. I sought opportunities to see him and dreaded the moment that I would have to face him. I was sure now that I would marry him, although I did not want to. Yet I was comforted by the knowledge that through that long and frightful winter he never doubted my love for an instant.
Day by day, night by night, the weeks passed. Toward the end of April, 1944, spring showed signs of coming. Then it was upon us. The snow melted, the sky turned blue, grass and flowers seemed to come out overnight. It was as if nature wanted to compensate for that cruel, long winter with one sudden, generous gesture.
I was so glad for that spring, yet with its coming Abek’s outlook seemed gloomier rather than better. Whenever I could, I wrote him cheerful notes, but he either began to sense my true feelings about him or like so many others, he was losing the desire to live.
I begged him to pull himself together for my sake–the winter was over, the worst part of the battle over–but a shroud of resignation was closing upon him. His replies were halfhearted.
On May 6, without warning, Frau Kügler told us that we were to be transferred to a large concentration camp. We were to leave Landeshut in two groups, on the eighth and the ninth. The news filled us with horror.
In the first group to leave was Suse. As we embraced, I felt devoid of tears. We had cried too often. Ilse, Lotte, Mrs. Berger, Litzi, and I were to go in the second transport. I desperately wanted to see Abek again and with Frau Kügler’s consent, it was arranged that Ilse and I should deliver some laundry to the Burgberg. Acting as our official escort, Frau Kügler planned it so that we would arrive at the camp shortly before the men came back from work.
Thus, on May 8, my twentieth birthday, I saw the dreaded Burgberg for the first time. The place spelled horror to me, from the machine gun over the entrance to the tomblike, windowless walls that housed the men. In the yard we encountered Dr. Goldstein, and I had a few words with him while Frau Kügler talked to the SS guards in charge. I begged him to look after Abek and he promised that he would. I saw Frau Kügler glancing at her watch. Trying to delay our departure, she suggested that she would like to see the whole camp.
“You’d better stay right where you are,” she barked at Ilse and me. As she left she winked at us.
Suddenly I knew that I couldn’t face him. I feared that he might break down. I didn’t want to see him. I drew a piece of paper out of my pocket and while Ilse and the dentist stood guard I huddled against the grim stone wall of the Burgberg and wrote a few last words to Abek, begging him to be strong for my sake. I gave the note to the dentist.
A few minutes later Frau Kügler and the SS men returned. There was a question in her eyes and I realized that she intended to stall some more in order that I might see Abek.
“I would rather go now,” I whispered.
She did not seem to understand. She pointed to the ground to indicate that we would stay. I shook my head. She understood.
Descending the hill from the Burgberg we heard the men coming up another road, heard the shouting of the guards, the noise of the whips. Abek was there in that marching column. Was it possible the news had reached him about our departure? How would he take it? For a second I hesitated.
Should I beg Frau Kügler to return for just a moment under some pretext? No, I had already taken the best course.
I had a glimpse of the men marching into the camp.
“Good-by, Abek,” I whispered.
At dawn we went one by one through the narrow corridor just off our barracks to be counted and turned over to the SS. Frau Kügler stood in the corridor, under the pretext of searching our meager bundles, but in reality she did not look at any of them. She stood there to speak to each of us. Her face was wet with tears.
“Good-by, Gerda,” she murmured under her breath. “Don’t forget me.”
In the courtyard, as she handed over our papers to the SS, I saw her battling with tears. She stood there grim, her voice barking as it had on the first day when we met her in Bolkenhain twenty-two months before.
She was supposed to withdraw after the SS took over but she went to the station with us. She stood there, a solitary figure, and waved a soundless farewell. I think I have described her with justice. She was a good woman. She made the time that we spent in her charge as bearable as possible. She displayed humanity, she gave us hope that perhaps not all Germans were cruel.
LANDESHUT DISAPPEARED. THE IMPERSONAL TRAIN CREATED A welcome sense of isolation for me. Sitting in the tiny compartment I belonged to myself, my thoughts had more freedom, my dreams became keener. It was a May morning in all its glory of dewy, fresh grass and budding trees. This was a setting for love, for romance, for a young, gay heart. And–I was twenty years old.
We were traveling in a northerly direction. The rumor was that we were going to Grünberg, about two hundred kilometers from Landeshut. In the early afternoon we reached a large city whose name I no longer remember, where we had to change trains. They herded us onto the station platform. Porters were running to and fro, people streamed past, and the green-gray uniforms of German soldiers were everywhere. Life was going on, a war was being fought, and many people walked about in their busy, free lives. Only we were slaves.
I yearned to mingle with the crowds that had homes and families. Instead, I stood next to Ilse, hugging my bundle of threadbare belongings, waiting to be shipped somewhere, the yellow star ablaze on my breast, back, and head.
People stared at us curiously. A porter approached, carrying luggage and a neatly folded traveling blanket. Following him was a young girl, perhaps my age, slender, tall, in a gray suit and a fresh white blouse. She wore a white beret on her carefully groomed hair. She walked rapidly toward the compartment of her train. I watched her enter it, saw the porter put her luggage into the net over her seat, saw her give him a tip. I heard the porter’s muffled, “
Danke, Fräulein!
”
The girl looked out the window as if searching for someone. With fascination I followed her every move. An older
man approached. She waved and called, “
Hier bin ich, Papa!
”
I felt a quick, stabbing pain. How many years was it since I had said those magic words, since I heard anyone say “Papa”?
The man entered the compartment. As the girl turned toward him, for a fleeting moment our eyes met. I saw her picture in a thousand fragments, I saw her snowy blouse a hundredfold reflected, I saw her blurred, for now I saw her through tears.
The engine of her train started to puff, the train moved. Daughter and father started toward their destination. I would never know their names, their lives, their lot, but at that moment I would willingly have exchanged my life for hers. How foolish we are!
A few minutes later we boarded our new train. In my imagination I tried to re-create the scene I had just witnessed, I reached into an imaginary purse, looked out the window searchingly, knowing that the beret sat perfectly on my hair, but when I came to the part where I should call, “Here I am, Papa!” the spell was broken. In silence we rolled toward Grünberg.
When I think of Grünberg I grow very sad. It was cruelty set against a backdrop of beauty. The gentle vineyard-covered hills silhouetted against the sapphire sky seemed to mock us.
The vast camp had been built as part of a textile mill not long before the war. The sun shone through the glass roof. The camp was modern, well scrubbed, clean, and filled with suffering.
That day in 1944, when we arrived, there were approximately a thousand girls there. Some were bursting with health and color, others were half-starved and walked about with bent backs, decaying teeth, the pallor of death already on their faces. Those who worked outdoors looked healthy and fresh, the others seemed to be gray, moving parts of the infernal machines. Though clean, the camp was badly run. The staff, appointed by the factory authorities in the days when the plant had first become a camp, consisted of a particularly evil and stupid group of girls who feasted while the rest
starved as they wove and spun. The contrast was sharp; there was no in-between.
There was one SS man who guarded the entrance, one
Lagerführerin,
very different from Frau Kügler, and several helpers, vicious and ignorant. The SS guard and the
Lagerführerin
checked and double-checked us in the yard in front of the building in which we were to be housed. Finally, when they had established to their satisfaction that all were present, we were admitted to the building, which consisted of three enormous halls with concrete floors. Two of the halls contained our bunks. The third was the dining hall. It was isolated from the kitchen by a partition with a window through which the food was handed.
Suse came running to embrace Ilse and me. “I have saved you bunks next to mine,” she said. “I met a. friend here, a girl I used to know back home. You will like her.”
We approached the bunks and there stood a beautiful girl. She held out both her hands.
“I am Liesel Stepper,” she said in a silvery voice, and as we clasped hands I knew we would be friends. Liesel, who was from Czechoslovakia, told us about herself. She smiled a great deal and when she did her round eyes, brown and soft, always lit up. She reminded me of a fairy-tale princess. When she walked, her movements were so graceful that she hardly seemed to touch the ground.
The conversation inevitably got around to conditions in camp and so we learned about the horrors of Grünberg, and the part of the camp that spelled disaster and death, the
Spinnerei
. Whoever worked there did not last very long.
In the morning we girls from Landeshut assembled in the courtyard. Again we stood
Appell
for a long time, and were snapped to attention when the
Betriebsleiter,
as the director was called here, arrived. The girls had told us about him already. I looked curiously at the man who was so feared. He was tall and slender. His face was large and pale, with a square look and hollow cheeks. His eyes were deep set and water-blue. They seemed to have no lashes at all. He had grotesquely
long arms and large hands; on his right hand he wore a large signet ring.
“That must be the ring,” I thought–the girls had told us how he would make a first and beat his victim with the ring until her face or body was covered with blood. It was not long before I had to witness such a scene.
Every two weeks we took showers. On that first morning we waited in line in the long corridor, which was dimly lit, warm and moist. We could hear the hiss of the water and the steam knocking in the pipes overhead. I looked forward to having the warm clean water touching my body. I pressed tightly against the moist wall when I saw the
Betriebsleiter
coming, like a huge, soft-footed cat. The girls who saw him froze into silence, but those with their backs turned continued talking. We could not warn the girls. I saw him stand motionless, like a snake eyeing his prey. Then he leaped forward, digging his fingers into a girl’s face. I saw it all, I did not turn away. I was hypnotized, frozen with horror and rage. I felt that I could have killed the man and enjoyed the sight of his blood. Then he walked away swiftly without wiping his hands.
After it was over, it seemed like a nightmare. There was deathly silence. The beaten girl pressed her torn face toward the wall without a sound.
When I got into the shower and felt the warm water on my skin, I started to shiver. My teeth chattered. I leaned against the tiled wall of the cubicle and vomited while the water ran over me. When my stomach was empty, I carefully washed the floor. I prayed that I should never be assaulted, for I knew I would strike back, even though I would have to pay for it with life itself.
But this was still our first morning in Grünberg. We stood in the courtyard, waiting to be picked for our first jobs.
“Spinnerei!”
the
Betriebsleiter
announced, and I felt a shiver go through my body.
Suse was the first one to go. A few more of the tallest and prettiest girls were chosen next. Then he pointed to me. I detached myself from my group, and walked over to where Suse and the others were standing.
A dozen or more girls followed–then Ilse. Our eyes met. The worst had happened, but somehow now I was not afraid. It was always uncertainty that I feared most.
We were marched to the factory. It was a model German factory. In previous years, it was said, they had brought foreign visitors to see it. The architecture, layout, and machinery were beautiful, I had to agree. The office building in front, with its multitude of spotless windows, overlooked vast star-shaped flower beds, and against the factory walls were hundreds of rose bushes. Along the paths were beds of tulips in full bloom.
We were taken to the spinning room. There I saw the girls, living skeletons with yellowish-gray skin drawn tight over prominent cheekbones; there were gaping holes in their mouths where teeth had either been knocked out or rotted out. These girls ran to and from huge spinning machines, repairing broken threads with nimble fingers. Their tired eyes and sallow jaws seemed to belie the swiftly running feet and dexterous fingers.
I was put to tending one of those monstrous machines. I thought I would never learn to operate it, to tie the knots before the machine, which moved rapidly, could smash my fingers. Wherever I looked, the threads tore. I kept running from one break to another until I reached a point of complete exhaustion. Worst of all, my throat felt dry and itchy from the dust and lint in the air. But time went fast. Before I knew it, we were marching back to camp. After another long roll call we fell on our bunks.
The next day the work went more smoothly, and in less than a week I mastered the machine. However, my throat continued to bother me, as did my ankles, which had been swollen for several days. But I preferred the spinning room to staying in camp, where one did not know what might happen from one minute to the next.
About every two months the spinning-room girls were X-rayed. Each time a number were found to have contracted tuberculosis; they were immediately sent to Auschwitz. The
spinning room had the greatest turnover of girls, and these bimonthly examinations came to be dreaded by all of us.
May passed, and June came. Thousands of roses burst open in a marvelous range of colors. In the early morning, when we marched to the factory, the dew was still on the fragrant petals. Sometimes the first rays of the sun would make the drops glitter like diamonds. Day after day I had to resist the desire to run out of line and touch those beautiful blossoms.
The day we all feared most came toward the end of July. We were called to have our X-rays taken. We marched through the factory gates and out into the street. I felt a strange animation, felt color shooting to my cheeks. I remembered the girl in Sosnowitz to whom I had given the bowl of food, the first girl whom I had met from a slave camp. I could still see the two red spots glowing on her cheeks and I felt spots burning on mine.
This must be it, I thought. This is the end! I want to live, I want to live!
In the physician’s office we were told to strip to the waist. I removed the little sack from my neck, with the piece of broken glass and charred wood that Arthur and I gathered from our Temple the day before he left Bielitz. It might show as a dark spot on my chest. I kept the sack in my hand.
“Arthur,” I whispered, “be with me, I am so afraid.”
I shivered in the summer heat. Slowly the line crept forward.
“Your name?” a female voice asked.
“Gerda Weissmann.” My voice sounded high and unnatural. I heard it trail off in the dark room and there was the sound of the pencil scratching over the paper, checking my name.
As in a dream, I stepped onto a platform. From far away I heard the doctor’s voice directing me how to stand. The cold plate touching my bare breast roused a familiar sensation of horror, reminding me of the time when the SS man had pointed his gun at my chest, demanding to know where Papa was. I closed my eyes. I held my lids tightly shut. There was the clicking of a switch, then another.
I waited in another line while my plate was developed.
Why did it take so long? Then I heard the doctor snap. “Clear!”
I saw him pointing at me. “Clear! Clear!” he said, pointing to others.
We returned to camp. Ilse was sitting on the bunk, her face white.
“Ilse!” I called frantically.
She jumped up.
“Are you all right?” she whispered hoarsely.
I nodded. “And you?”
She nodded too.
We embraced. We had a lease on life for another two months!
A week later the tubercular girls departed. There was one among them whom I had gotten to know fairly well. I went to see her before she left. We embraced, there was nothing to say. What does one say to someone who knows that in a few days she won’t be alive any more?
It is often said that it is best that we cannot know the future, but this case was an exception. About two years later, when I was working in Munich, I was in the German Museum, looking through some lists of refugees that were published there daily, when I heard a gay voice call to me.
“Isn’t that Gerda? It’s me, not my ghost,” said a rosy girl in a blue sweater.
As she came closer, I remembered our sad farewell in Grünberg before she had left for Auschwitz. As she embraced me, we both started to cry. Then she told me what had happened. When her group reached Auschwitz they were taken to the death house, but traffic was heavy there. Things were so busy, they had to wait for death. As she sat on the ground she idly dug into the soil of which she was soon to become a part. The gesture was her salvation, for she unearthed a handful of gems. To what forgotten soul had they belonged?