Read The End of Days Online

Authors: Helen Sendyk

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

The End of Days (29 page)

 
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front of us. She was a stocky woman of about fifty, her thick blond wavy hair worn shoulder length. Her stern face unmistakenly belonged to a prison guard. She wore high black boots and a long black leather coat like the Gestapo men. Her gloved hands clutched a sturdy leather whip, which she used to punctuate her loud, shrill sentences. Her
Judenälteste
was to perform like a soldier. The poor
Judenälteste
scrambled around counting the girls feverishly as Frau Kaufman stiffly stood there with a satanic grin on her face. Once inside the factory we were the sole property of the
Meisters
, who were just as sadistic but less poised than our
Lagerführerin
.
One day in May, with the German workers in spring clothes and I still squeezed into my shrunken winter dress, I stood at the machine tormented by a toothache. The monotonous pain drilling in my head affected my work and my sleep. There was nothing my sister Nachcia could do for me, and the pain was growing more severe. I could not even eat my miserable portion of soup, which I gave to Nachcia, who always insisted on sharing her own meager portion with me. There was no medication of any sort in camp; the
Judenälteste
could only render a report to the Germans that she had a sick prisoner. The fate of a sick prisoner was uncertain, and Nachcia was afraid to seek help for me. I eventually succumbed to the pain, staying in my cot when unable to drag myself downstairs. Horrified of what might happen to me, Nachcia had no choice but to hurry down herself for morning roll call. She trembled at her machines that day at the thought of not finding me when she returned.
All alone in the vast hall I cringed in my cot, trying to sleep away the pain, when suddenly I woke to see Frau Kaufman standing in front of me, her sleek black leather coat shining in the light, her whip at her side. I could not decide if my fear were stronger than my pain, but I wished to be dead and rid of both. Still, I sprung to my feet when Kaufman addressed me. Her voice was not as shrill as usual when she declared that I would be sent to a dentist the next day. I kept lying there after Frau Kaufman left, trying to convince myself that I wasn't
 
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going to be sent away somewhere and never see Nachcia again.
A relieved Nachcia shared my hope that I might actually get treated. If I were to have been taken out and eliminated, the efficient Germans would have done so that morning. After drinking Nachcia's soup, I spent the night pretending to sleep. The excruciating pain did not allow me a moment's rest. I could hear the girls stirring, snoring. The piercing scream of someone having a nightmare occasionally broke the stillness. I wanted to scream in pain, but some of the girls would probably strangle me. I lay on my cot whimpering softly like a wounded animal.
When the girls hurried out to roll call at daybreak, I started praying. I begged the Almighty to spare me, if only for Nachcia's sake. I was alone again in the large, frighteningly quiet hall densely packed with wooden three-tier bunks. In the forest of bunks, my mind spun back to playing hide-and-seek in the woods with my brothers. Should I hide between cots when they came for me now? All my thoughts were interrupted when the door opened and the
Judenälteste
called for Stapler to go downstairs quickly. Usually a prisoner would be addressed by a number, or more commonly, "You Jewish pig."
Dressed and ready, I scrambled down to the yard, where an armed male guard in a green uniform commanded me to march in front of him. My heart hammered away, and my knees buckled as I marched. The fresh air was shockingly refreshing, but it did not lessen my pain or fear. Was he really taking me to a dentist, or was he bringing me to the railroad station to be shipped away? We reached the railroad station and boarded an ordinary passenger train. He sat across from me, observing me watchfully. He did not utter a word throughout the journey. We soon disembarked in a town with small residential houses surrounded by gardens. The air was warm, but I shivered with pain, exhaustion, and fear. I kept my eyes on the road, avoiding the people who stared at the prisoner. I was a marked person, wearing three stars of David sewn onto my dress: one on my chest, one on the back of my left shoul-
 
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der, and one at the bottom of my dress near my knee. I would be easily recognized and apprehended should I try to escape, but I lacked the strength and destination to make an attempt anyway.
I was led into a barbed wire compound with female prisoners, where I was turned over to the local guard. I was then taken into a big room and made to sit on a chair. An inmate there was introduced as the dentist, but someone whispered to me that the "dentist" was only a woman who'd learned a few things from her dentist father. I saw the prison dentist take up a pair of dental tongs for pulling teeth. She had five prisoners hold me down, while I opened my mouth. She grabbed hold of the aching tooth with the dental pliers and pulled. The tooth was not yielding. She turned the tool, tugging and wrenching, pulling, jerking, and twisting. I felt as though she were tearing my head off my shoulders. Eventually, the tooth was yanked out, with a fountain of blood streaming from my mouth. With rags stuffed into my mouth to stop the bleeding, I rested several achy minutes before being turned over to the constable for the trip back to the factory. The stinging pain was gone now, but the throbbing in my head did not stop. I could not swallow my soup ration, but I was back in the factory with my sister and prayerfully optimistic that my pain would go away. For the first time in many nights I fell into a deep sleep.
I woke up feeling that I was choking. In the total dark I crawled out of my cot fighting for breath. Groggy with exhaustion, I touched my hands to my mouth, suddenly becoming aware of a solid substance filling my mouth. Had someone stuffed something into my mouth to choke me? In the dim light of the bathroom I saw that my hands were covered with blood. I stood over the toilet bowl ripping out piece after piece of coagulated blood that filled the whole cavity of my mouth. I stood in the little toilet room with hot tears of frustration and pain mixing with the blood that smeared my face. I decided not to wake poor Nachcia, who was weak from denying herself food so she could give it to me. I slunk back to my cot, feeling the warm liquid seeping into my mouth. I spat and swallowed it and soon fell back asleep. Before dawn, when we were
 
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awakened, I had a mouthful of blood again. I slipped to the toilet and cleaned myself up. During the day in the factory I managed to keep the blood from coagulating by swallowing and spitting. Nachcia was terribly worried when she saw that I could not even eat my soup that night. I fell asleep exhausted, only to wake up several hours later choking again from blood. For two more weeks I suffered from severe bleeding and from the abuse of the cruel
Meisters
because of my resultant weakness.
 
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Chapter 17
I had finally recovered when we were all made to move again. The order came with no preliminary preparations or prior instructions. After the day's work was finished and the roll call completed, the usual order to disperse into the loft did not come. Instead, the gates of the factory yard were opened. Placing one guard in front of the row and one in back of it, Kaufman shouted the order to march. Pacing up and down the column of prisoners, liberally dispensing lashes with her whip, she marched her troops in a straight line, five abreast, down the main street of Reichenbach. On both sidewalks people lined up to watch the
Juda Mädla
, Jewish girls, in the local dialect. No one waved or smiled to us circus animals on display. Apprehensive about our fate, we left the city perimeter,
 
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marching along a main road through fields and gardens. Whenever a passing car forced the marchers to the roadside ditches, Kaufman was there whipping us back into a perfectly straight line. The sinking sun dropped below the horizon, and a gray dusk signaled our obscure future.
Into the dark night we marched, finally reaching a camp. We were stopped in front of a gate. An armed guard opened the gate, which led to a dark yard with searchlights flashing from a center tower. We were divided into groups of forty and led towards the barracks.
Langenbielau, a small town hardly on the map of Germany, became home to over a thousand Jewish female prisoners. Stumbling over each other, we were rushed into barracks, where cots had been erected by previous prisoners. We tired girls scrambled into the cots, quickly settling among ourselves which berth to take. In hushed voices we speculated about our new surroundings and how they might affect our lives. The murmurs gradually dissipated into exhausted sleep.
Before dawn we were awakened by the shrill sound of a whistle, and by harsh German voices which drove us out into the yard. The sky was ink blue, but we could discern the shapes of women coming out of the barracks on all sides. We stood in the middle of the yard for roll call as floodlights lit up the open gate. Groups of prisoners were being marched outside. Sleepily, we marched into the rising dawn. We kept on marching as the local population rose for the day's activity. Here and there people appeared, riding their bicycles, their lunch boxes stashed in attached baskets. Rushing to their work, they would still stop a moment to stare at the Jewish slaves.
Soon we reached the city of Reichenbach, whose streets were filled with eager onlookers. We had marched to the same factory we'd been working at, we discovered, it was just our accommodations that had been changed. We were marched into the yard, before the factory bell rang. Lined up at attention, we stood until the eight o'clock bell announced the beginning of the shift. In we promptly went to begin our day's slavery.
 
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It was not until Sunday that we saw our new home camp for the first time in daylight. Similar to our first camp in Gogolin, the transit camp, this was a large rectangular lot cleared in the middle of a forest. The barracks were erected in single rows all around the lot, facing the center. There were four barracks shoulder to shoulder on the short sides, eight on the long sides. On the outside of the gate was a small house, which served as quarters for the
Lagerführerin
and her watchmen. On the inside near the gate was a barracks housing the few privileged Jewish prisoners. These included the
Judenälteste
, the cook, the dentist, the nurse, the shoemaker, and the seamstress. Surrounded by barbed wire, the camp was watched and patrolled by armed SS. In the middle of the uneven ground of the camp were the lavatories and washrooms, primitive outhouses with long rows of metal pipes and faucets sticking out over deep bins. They probably had previously served as animal feeders. Thirty-nine to forty-two women lived in each barracks, sleeping in three-tier wooden cots. In the middle of the room stood a rough wooden table of unfinished boards; there was just enough space to pass between the table and the cots. Next to the table stood an iron potbellied stove. Two windows in the room looked out on the fence and the camp grounds. The bare windows facilitated the guards watching the prisoners even in their barracks.
A wagon of straw was hauled into camp by the prisoners, and sacks were distributed. We were allowed to fill the sacks with straw for use as mattresses. The open sacks were a constant nuisance, spilling straw onto the floor. Every Sunday the sacks had to be brought outside the barracks to be aired so that "the dirty Jews do not contaminate the place." The cots had to be scrubbed down, and the last two girls on cleaning duty had to scrub down the table and floor. Even though we were not marched to work on Sunday, the prisoners would wake up before dawn to grab hold of the only pail and brush. From that moment on there was anxious waiting to get hold of that precious pail. We had to wash our hair and our underwear and get our cleaning duty done, so we would all beg and yell and cajole and fight for the one pail.
 
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On Sunday mornings when the whistle would sound for roll call, we would all have to scramble into our places even if we were wet or half naked. For long hours we were kept standing in the baking sun or pouring rain while the barracks were inspected. As in the army, our straw sacks had to be flattened straight and even like a tabletop. A blade of straw found on the floor could mean that the whole camp would be left standing for an extra two hours, or the entire barracks made to kneel for several hours.
If we were lucky and an inspection proved faultless, we were permitted to line up in the early evening in front of the kitchen window to get our soup. Then we were free to go back into the barracks. It felt like a holiday to suddenly be able to sprawl on the straw, luxuriously stretching out our aching bodies, going to sleep early or just lying there quietly thinking. Some would talk about their homes, their parents, their siblings, and their shattered lives.
Of course, Nachcia and I were a unit. There were four other girls, not related but all from the same neighborhood, who formed a family. Hadassah, at the tender age of fifteen, was the mother figure who took charge. Her short dark hair bounced on her head with every aggressive, nimble move. Her round face, pink cheeks, and lively eyes radiated authority and decisiveness. She was in the middle bunk next to ours. On the bottom was Sabina. Tall, with long, ever growing limbs, she was a tough tomboy. Her thick, golden blond hair gave her something of an Aryan look, but it did not help ease her constant hunger. Hadassah had to keep her bread portions safe from Sabina's mouth. Petite Rachelka was on the top bed. She was mature for sixteen and served as our mentor and peacemaker. The fourth girl, on the cot above Nachcia and me, was the fragile young Bronia. Always protected by her friends, the sweet, smart, and childish Bronia walked limply on broomstick legs with swinging, ropelike arms.
The aisle between the two cots, about two feet wide, had to accommodate six girls, so it was important to cooperate. With all of us rising in the morning, returning, eating, and climbing up for the night all at the same time, activities had to be closely

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