Eva's Story (12 page)

Every night the two toilet buckets at each end of the barracks were used continuously. Anyone who was unlucky enough to get to the buckets and find them already full was compelled to take them to the toilet block to empty them. That meant you had to walk ten blocks with buckets overflowing with excrement. This dreadful task was, of course, left by everybody until the last possible minute when the buckets were full to the brims and very often it was I who had to carry this revolting load. I would struggle along trying to avoid spilling any over my feet. The buckets were so heavy that you had to be very strong to carry them. The weaker women were unable to get very far so they would sometimes secretly empty the contents outside, near to our block.

On this particular morning, a German SS woman had noticed the mess on the ground outside. She stormed into the barrack just as we were waking up.

‘Verfluchte Mistbienen!'
Can't you even carry your own shit where it belongs?' she screamed at us.

Then she grabbed hold of my mug and shovelled up the contents from the bucket nearby, throwing it over as many of us as she could. The filth landed all over my skirt and legs and I knew there was no way of cleaning myself until the end of the week. We were left stinking until the next shower.

That was when I felt the greatest kind of despair and degradation. I winced inside as I thought of Pappy and all his good advice about keeping clean. I was powerless against the sadistic treatment of the Kappos. Nothing made me feel more truly alone and frightened.

24 October 1944 Aachen captured by US First Army

Feeling totally deserted, I was now losing the courage and hope that had kept me alive. I knew I had lost Mutti and I longed desperately for Pappy. I needed someone to encourage me to live; without loving help I could not fight on for survival. I was full of self-pity. I was too young to be left on my own. There was no one I wanted to talk to or confide in. Everyone around me seemed so much older than I was. Even Franzi, who was twenty-five, seemed ancient to me.

Before this time I had been driven by a consuming urge to survive, a spirit fuelled by my close bond with Mutti, my need to live for her sake as well as my own, and by the early training in survival I had received from Pappy. Now I began to realize I could no longer cling to the past. Even if I were to survive, I could not envisage any kind of future for myself. I didn't see how I could cope in a world without my family.

And so, suffering the horrors of the present and seeing no hope in the future, I began to resign myself to death.

I sat at the bench for fourteen hours a day, hungry, cold and lonely, working on my quota of plaits. I became acutely depressed and often cried – though I rarely spoke. I cut out all thoughts except black ones.

At about ten o'clock one morning a Kappo entered the workroom; she seemed to be looking around for somebody. We were deadly scared. Often when someone was picked out it was because they had done something wrong and were about to suffer immediate punishment or even death. The Kappo strolled up and down the workshop searching the rows of frightened faces and when I felt her standing behind me I froze with fear. Though I kept my head down my hands were shaking so much that I could hardly continue with the plaiting. I waited to feel a heavy blow across my back but, to my utter astonishment, she spoke in a tone quite out of keeping with what I had come to expect from Kappos.

‘Go outside,' she said in a friendly voice. ‘There's someone to see you.'

I simply could not imagine who would ever come to see me and I was terrified. Perhaps I had caught the eye of an SS man who wanted me for sex? I was extremely unwilling to move but she insisted and kept prodding me in the back saying, ‘Hurry up now!'

Slowly and reluctantly I shuffled outside in my ill-fitting shoes, my eyes cast down – I did not dare to look up at the person who was waiting for me. When I finally lifted my head I could hardly believe my eyes.

‘Pappy!' I cried. There he was, dressed in a striped blue and grey prison suit with a beret on his shaven head. He looked very thin and much older than I remembered him but his eyes were full of an immense love for me. I threw myself into his arms and felt his warmth and strength flow into me and pull me back to life.

I wanted to whoop with joy but instead I burst into tears. I sobbed uncontrollably while he held me close to him as if he would never let me go. He must have felt as happy as I did, to have his little daughter in his arms once more.

At last he pushed me slowly from him. ‘Evertje, don't cry,' he said. ‘Everything will be alright. Where is Mutti? I will try and see her too.'

And then I had to tell him. My body was shaking with anguish as I cried out, ‘Oh Pappy! She has been selected and gassed!'

He reeled backwards as if I had hit him. He tried not to break down in front of me but his eyes filled with tears and I could see that his world had been destroyed.

He managed to pull himself together for my sake and talked to me quietly but insistently. He told me to be brave and not to give up. ‘We'll soon be free, Evertje,' he promised, squeezing me tightly, ‘and we will be together again. You, me and Heinz.'

‘How is Heinz?' I said. I had not dared to ask about him before.

‘He's fine,' Pappy said. ‘He's working in the vegetable gardens growing tomatoes. The fresh air and exercise are doing him good.'

I was sure he was lying.

‘And you should see how tall he has grown,' Pappy went on.

There was nothing I wanted more!

‘I have a good job,' he said, trying to reassure me. ‘I'm still in charge of the office in the wood factory near here and you can see I've gained permission from the SS boss to come and find you.'

I looked up at him, marvelling at his ability to inspire such confidence. He was quite remarkable. He had managed to engineer the situation to our advantage. I adored him and idolized him.

‘I'll come again,' he promised. ‘Now I have to go to the kitchen and speak to one of the cooks.' He held my face in his hands for a moment and then kissed me tenderly on the cheek. ‘I am going to arrange for her to let you have a little extra food here and there,' he said, then he turned me around and nudged me gently towards the barrack door and was gone.

I walked back to my place on the bench in a dream. It was the first time I had seen him since ‘Canada'.

Everyone had stopped work and was looking at me with awe. I felt radiant and must have shone with happiness because all the other women were smiling back at me. They were genuinely glad that something good could happen even in that terrible place.

I had absolute faith in Pappy. I was convinced that at last everything would start to improve and that he would be able to arrange for me to have some extra potatoes, anything to relieve the hollow feeling of intense hunger that gnawed at my insides all day and night.

That evening after work, I walked tentatively towards the kitchen barrack. As I showed my face at the door a friendly, buxom Polish girl spotted me.

‘What a man your father is!' she said smugly, clucking her tongue and rolling her eyes to the ceiling, ‘and he has arranged this for you.'

She handed me a bowl of warm vegetables which I grabbed and devoured on the spot, while she stood smiling at me. It was heaven.

Every evening after that I went to the kitchen door for some delicious scraps. But the most satisfying dish of all was a steaming bowl of salty left-over potato water. It was the best thing I had ever tasted. How stupid we had been in the past, I thought, to have thrown this nourishing and delicious meal straight down the drain!

I was so proud of Pappy. Even in prison uniform with his shaven head, my father still radiated a charm that women found quite irresistible. Even to see a male prisoner was an experience for any woman in the camp, so the story got around that my father and I were somehow protected by the SS. It was not true of course, but this reputation ensured that from that time onwards the Kappos treated me with a certain amount of respect and refrained from bullying me.

Each time an SS woman or Kappo came round to inspect my work she would stop and say, half-sarcastically, ‘And how is your father?'

At the end of October, I was called out again. There was Pappy once more, assuring me that Heinz was alright, and that news was coming in of the Allied Offensive.

‘Evertje, I'm convinced the war cannot last much longer,' he said. ‘Have hope – it will soon be all over.'

We exchanged looks of such yearning and love that I still see his face like this in my dreams.

November 1944

The chill of the Polish autumn replaced the long hot summer and then the cold of winter began to creep up on us. Appel was still called twice a day, at dawn and in the evening. As the north winds blew across the plains the SS guards clothed themselves with thick overcoats, the Kappos wrapped themselves up with extra layers of clothing, but we were given nothing more. The issue was still just a pair of knickers and one overgarment, and the shuffling shoes that made us look even more feeble than we already were. We shivered to stay alive.

Although the barracks where I worked at my plaits was an enclosed wooden hut, there was no flooring, just bare earth through which seeped the damp and cold. We sat all day working at trestle tables with our feet on the icy ground. Sometimes I put a piece of cloth under my numbed feet but if a Kappo noticed I would be forced to pick it up. I longed for a pair of snug, warm socks.

I started to develop frostbite in my toes. During the night when the warmth from my sleeping companions began to thaw my icy feet the excruciating pain would wake me up. I would lie there sobbing, praying for Pappy to come again and save me. Each day the cold in the work barracks and the sleeping quarters became more unbearable. But Pappy did not come.

By now my toes had large septic holes in them so that I could hardly walk. During the nights, as the blood returned to my feet, I lay moaning in agony. Franzi kept repeating, ‘You must go to the hospital.'

I was too frightened to agree. Selections were being held all the time. Though they were losing the war, the Nazis were pressing on with their meticulously planned annihilation of the Jewish people. The inhuman regime of the SS, the lack of hygiene and the intense cold hastened our deaths. Once people went into hospital most of them were never seen again.

‘I don't want to go to hospital,' I said stubbornly. ‘I know I'll be kept there and then selected.'

After work that same evening when forty or so of us were due for our weekly shower we were told that the usual showers were out of order and we would have to use others in a different camp. We were horrified, we were sure that it was a ruse to get us into the gas-chambers.

As we were marched along we believed that these were our last moments on earth. We all stayed very close together. Franzi held my hand for comfort. We entered the ante-chamber to the showers without saying a word. When the command came to take our clothes off, we all stood absolutely still and made no attempt to undress. The entire group of women refused to cooperate. None of us was going to walk willingly into a gas-chamber.

The Kappos started to yell at us.

‘Filthy Jew pigs – get yourselves ready.'

But this time, since we were convinced that we were being ordered to get ready to die, none of us moved an inch. No matter how much the Kappos screamed at us or beat us with their truncheons we remained passive and uncooperative.

The Kappos were completely nonplussed. This was the first group resistance they had encountered from us and they did not know how to handle it.

These are showers, you fools,' they shouted. ‘You will be shot if you don't go in.'

Still we did not move. It was a moment of defiance. Although I did not feel very brave, I said to myself,
When I die, Mutti and I will be together again
.

Eventually they called for reinforcements. The building was surrounded by dozens of armed Germans with Alsatian dogs. Several soldiers stepped inside and pointed rifles at us but still we stood quietly, resisting our fate.

An officer strode in, quickly took in the situation and called out in polite German, ‘I can assure you that you have nothing to fear. If one of you will inspect the showers you will see that we mean you no harm.'

This time it was true! They opened the doors and we could see hot water raining down. We cried and laughed with relief but we also felt a little proud of ourselves. We had stood up to their threats with a courage that had surprised us all.

After the shower we were at last issued with warmer clothes. I was handed some knickers, two odd shoes and a heavy man's overcoat which was so long and cumbersome that I could hardly walk in it, but it was a shelter around my naked body and kept me a little warmer that night.

It must have been about noon the next day when a new group of women arrived at our workhuts. I recognized some of them because they were Dutch and had been in our transport train from Westerbork to Auschwitz. We had suffered our quarantine weeks together.

Suddenly one of them saw me sitting there and called to the others. They rushed over to me and all began speaking at once -

‘Eva! – Thank God you are alive!'

‘We have something to tell you!'

‘We have some wonderful news for you!'

‘We have been staying in the hospital block…'

I was so confused, everyone was talking to me at the same time but I understood just one thing.

Mutti was alive! She was lying in the hospital, breathing and alive. Minni had saved her.

Early October 1944

My last glimpse of Eva as I was taken away with the other women who had been selected, was of her standing there naked, in tears, with Franzi's arms around her. As armed guards led us away I felt that I had just forsaken my daughter at the moment when she needed me most. I had never ever felt so desperate.