Karin
At four
o'clock in the morning Aufseherin Grese kicks my bunk. I struggle to get up quickly because when I
don't wake fast enough, she hits the bottoms of my feet with her baton so
bruises won't show on my body. Kapitan
Dieter would beat her if she left a
mark that he could see, but he doesn't seem to take notice when I hobble around
for days with swollen feet.
"Number
811993, get up!" Grese
growls. "Kapitan Dieter wants
you! NOW!" She sharply pokes me in the ribs and shines a
flashlight in my eyes. I hate her...everyone
does...and not only because she smiles when she thrashes one of us for not moving
faster. For not washing thoroughly.
For still
being alive.
Kapitan Dieter
always calls for me before Appellplatz where I must stand and be counted,
sometimes waiting for hours to make sure all of the calculations are
correct. The dead must be accounted for,
the bodies hauled from the barracks by unlucky prisoners while I wait in
agony. But this morning I'm not sure
what will happen, if we will have to meet for roll call or not. There's been gunfire in the distance, and
everything is different since the S.S. ordered most of the prisoners to be
evacuated, since the officers started packing their belongings, rushing around
the camp yelling, "Schnell!
Schnell!"
Faster, faster.
Even the
executions are done hastily, then the bodies piled up near open pits or stacked
in wagons. For weeks the unholy flames
of the crematorium never seem to stop and cannot keep up with the countless
corpses littering the camp.
When Grese
pokes me once more, I rub my eyes and rise to my feet, careful not to wake
Simka, my friend who traveled with Mutti and me from Buchenwald a few months
ago. We share the bunk, one of the
better ones that's lined with straw, yet filled with bugs. Mutti says I'm lucky to have it. Lucky to be near the door where I can breathe
better air, unlike so many others crammed into their bunks where the air is
dank and rotten and heavy.
I don't sleep
well anymore as I dream of steam whistles screaming in the distance that startle
me awake. I dream of boxcars crammed
with too many men, women, and children all crying out for water, for bread, for
air. I have nightmares in which spruce
and pine trees are set afire, their elongated branches bursting into flames so
the endless piles of corpses can keep burning.
I used to love the scent of the forest, but now the sweet smell of
evergreen will be forever tangled with the odor of death.
Before Grese
can stomp on my feet, I quickly shove them into a pair of worn-out wooden shoes
and follow her out of the barracks. I
don't say a word, don't make a sound as we pass the piles of corpses, left to rot
in the open air. I pretend I'm walking
past vegetables harvested from Mutti's vegetable garden, that the corpses
rotting on the earth are piles of corn she will soon grind into flour.
The stench is
unbearable. The sight, even more so. I no longer remember the smell of clean air
as the cloying odor of burning flesh remains lodged in my throat, smothering me
with a relentless warning. I know that
with one swift decision, my life could also be snuffed out. Every night, I close my eyes and say to
myself, If God wills it, I will wake
again tomorrow. But I don't know what is the real
nightmare...what I see in my dreams or what I experience upon waking.
As we pass the
Appellplatz, corpses still hang in the gallows - a warning to us all about the
dangers of escape. Leah's body swings
from the rope and I remember what she had told me last week...that she would
rather die trying to escape than die waiting for the war to end. But death is an every day occurrence here and
my mind has become as tough as shoe leather so I can bear it.
When we reach
the disinfection building, I strip, then stand in the scalding shower, my raw
skin all but numb to the the hot water which feels like sharp pins and needles. I gag as Grese throws a cup of delousing
powder on my head which stings my eyes and mouth.
"WASCH
DU! SCHNELLER! SCHNELLER!"
she shrieks.
Wash...faster...faster!
Frantically, I
rinse my legs and arms, scrubbing harder at the tattoo on my left arm. It should have been six numbers long, but the
S.S. officer took pity on me when my mother shouted, "Wir sind Deutsch Christen! Deutsch Frauen! Meine Schwester is Deutsch!""
We are German
Christians...German women. My sister is German!
Mutti lied when
we arrived at Auschwitz. She knew we
would be separated if the S.S. thought she was my mother, so she told the guard
we were sisters and he let her live, let her walk with me to a room where we
were ordered to strip naked and shower, let her watch as a guard laughed while
shaving my head and body, then endured the same humiliation herself before we
were taken to be tattooed.
The S.S. who
had a death grip on my arm put down the needle, then shoved me out the door,
but I was left with 811 inked in
bluish gray over the triangle of freckles near my wrist. Now I will never again be simply Karin Vogel,
my mother's oldest child. Even if I do survive
this war, there will always be a truncated number to remind me of what I've
become.
There's no
towel to dry myself, so I quickly throw a thin dress over my head, then tie a
kerchief around my head, thankful for even that bit of warmth. The wooden shoes rub layers of blisters on my
heels and toes. I can't walk properly in
them, so trying to get from the barrack to the workhouse or the Appellplatz or Kapitan
Dieter's room is hell on earth. It's
been an uncommonly frigid winter, and even though I work making lace near a
cast iron stove, I'm never warm enough.
I'm never full enough, though I eat more than most because Kapitan Dieter
is an important man and always gets what he wants. He doesn't want me to be skinny and dirty
like so many of the poor girls in the camp left to rot and die in their own
filth.
I don't speak
in his presence, but I know his name - Herman.
And I know I'm nothing more than his prostitute because he tells me,
"Your payment is you get to live."
I'm supposed
to feel grateful, but I don't know why I've survived for years while so many
others have died. Perhaps now I won't
live that much longer either.
Mutti says I have
to. She says I have to do whatever the
guards want. Whatever Kapitan Dieter
wants. Whatever Kommandant Kramer
wants. Whatever Grese wants. I have to do what they say in order to stay
alive so I can bring more food to Simka.
"You're
young and pretty, and that's what they all want," Mutti once told me.
So I lie in
Herman's bed, a hollow shell, all the while staring at the wall or the ceiling
or the knobs on the small glass cupboard that's filled with cans of evaporated
milk and chocolates and creamy caramels...the one Herman said I must never
touch. I know he wouldn't hesitate to
shoot me with the pistol he keeps strapped to his leg. I've seen him use it more than once, and he's
deadly when he's angry and drunk.
"You can
take bread and cheese from the trunk," Herman told me the first time I was
ordered to his room. "But if you
touch that cabinet, you'll be dead before you can turn around."
Herman digusts
me, yet I owe him for saving Mutti's life and my own. Often in the middle of what he does to me I think,
How can a man be both a sadist and a
savior?
This morning,
Herman is quick about it, his tight, angry body all at once on top of me and
then not. He doesn't make me sing before
or after, neither does he mock me by calling me his little songbird. I stare at
the calendar on the wall while Herman gets dressed and wonder why the compound
is so busy at this hour. The living are
made to carry corpses for burial or burning while the S.S. rush here and there,
yelling at each other to be prepared for the end.
The end of what? I think.
The war? This camp?
The end of our misery or the end of our lives?
“I’ve been
good to you, 811993...Karin,” Herman
says as he buttons his coat. “You will
say how good I’ve been to you, yes?”
I frown. He's never called me by my name and I'm
surprised he even knows it...or cares to.
“I’ve never
beat you or hurt you,” Herman insists.
“I let you take extra food whenever you wanted it. I protected you from the other
prisoners. I saved you and your sister from
the gas.”
I nod, my eyes
swollen with shameful tears.
He knots his
tie. “So if anyone asks, you will tell
them I am a good man, won't you?”
Why is he asking this? I
wonder. No one in power asks me anything. Not who I am.
Not what I want.
When I say
nothing, Herman comes to the bed where I sit pulling my dress over my
head. He kneels, then gently strokes my
face. “I’ve always been good to you.” He kisses my forehead, then whispers my name.
I cringe and
curl away from him, but Herman presses his warm, damp lips to my ear. “Remember what I said," he says. "If you tell anyone about what happens
in this room, I can't be responsible for what happens to you.”
I look at the
floor and nod my head in compliance.
“Good girl,”
Herman says, rising. Then he struts out
the door as if he has won the silent war between us.
A gray light
gradually fills the room where I've been making lace for more than three
hours...waiting for orders from the guards.
For almost four months I've spent eight hours a day, six days a week
knitting hats and mittens and scarves. I
knit cable-knit sweaters and woolen socks.
I knit yards and yards of lace that are sewn into curtains and sent to
all corners of Germany where the S.S. live in luxury while those of us slaving in
the camps can barely remember what our parents' faces look like.
I shiver in my
threadbare dress and wonder, How many
girls wore this rag before me? Are they
all dead? Will I be soon? My shawl slips to the back of chair, and
as I pull it up over my shoulders, I study the other women's faces as we endure
the harsh silence of this cold, dank room, our knitting needles clicking and
clacking while we do our duty for the Fuhrer.
They've all become shadows of their former selves...and I know I have as
well.
Simka sniffs
and wipes her nose. Dark circles shadow
her eyes as she pushes a curl behind her ear.
Kapitan Dieter let all of us grow our hair back so we would look more
presentable. He says women in his
service are to look like women, and yet my breasts and curves aren't like
Simka's. We've only been here since
January, but the food her friend, Vitya, steals from the kitchen and the bread
I bring from Kapitan Dieter's room keep her healthier than the rest of us. Even though I long to taste the sweet yams
and mashed potatoes Vitya smuggles to her in little tin cans, I cannot ask
Simka for even one bite.
The baby
hidden inside of her needs it more than I do.
Still, my gnawing
hunger never goes away. When we were in
Auschwitz, my mother used to slip me her bread before the guards could
see. Before any one else could grab it
out of my hands and shove into their eager mouth. If there were a stray pea at the bottom of
her soup bowl, Mutti would press it into my palm and beg me to swallow it. "Eat, Karin. Survive,
Karin. Live one more day. Then live another. One day when we are liberated, we will
remember what we saw here and tell others so that this madness will never
happen again."
Now Simka
winces, holding her stomach, and I'm afraid of what will happen when the pain
gets worse. I've seen what the S.S. do
to people who can't work, who show any type of weakness. I try to forget as I mindlessly work the yarn
back and forth. My hands ache, but the
bony knuckles and tissue-paper skin toil until I can no longer feel my joints. Instinctively, I work the needles back and
forth in a rhythm that still has the power to calm me, even now when everything
is so uncertain.
I think back
to more than ten years ago when Mutti taught me how to knit. At that time, everyone was worried about the
uprising of the Nazi Party. In 1935,
work was scarce. Money even more
so. It was cheaper to light the stove
with the paper money my father had hidden in his fishing tackle box than to use
it to buy kindling. Vati worked hard at
the theater he owned with his friend, Herr Zweig, whom he had known since the Great
War.
Herr and Frau
Zweig had three boys of their own, Heinrich, who was my age, Georg, who was
seven, and Fritz, who was only three.
They usually visited on Sundays after we came home from church. The Zweigs went to Temple on Saturdays, so
they arrived with a nice brisket or a basket of freshly baked apple dumplings
while we were changing out of our good clothes.
My parents
visted with Herr and Frau Zweig while I played
tag in our backyard with Heinrich and Georg.
Fritz preferred to hunt for worms, bugs, and other dirty things in
Mutti's garden. She gave him a small
trowel and a metal pail, saying, "Just make sure you don't harm my
vegetables."
In the evening
all of us went to the theater for an evening of Volkslieder...folk songs. Vati invited a host of people from the
neighborhood and welcomed them warmly at the door. Mutti played the piano, Frau Zweig the
violin, and I would lead everyone in song.
Vati especially
loved to hear me sing "In stiller Nacht" to end the evening. Tears filled his eyes, and like Mutti who
loves twilight, he was carried away into the imminent darkness of the words,
the sorrow in the lyrics that foretold what our lives would soon become.
In
the quiet night, at the first watch,
a
voice began to lament; sweetly, gently,
the
night wind carried to me its sound.
And
from such bitter sorrow and grief
my
heart has melted.
The
little flowers - with my pure tears -
I
have watered them all.
Back then, Mutti
was expecting a baby. My brother,
Jurgen, was tucked inside her belly and I loved to feel his little hands and
feet kick and punch through Mutti's dress.
I sang Guten Abend, Gute Nacht
to him, leaning against our mother's side, rubbing the little knobs and bumps
of his elbows and knees.
When Mutti saw
how much I loved Jurgen, even before he was born, she gave me a ball of yarn and
a pair of knitting needles, saying, "Karin, let's make something for our
baby."
For years I
had sat by Mutti, watching her create intricate pieces of lace which filled our
modest home with lovely tablecloths, placemats, and doilies. Several delicate shawls hung on a peg near
the door so Mutti and I could wrap one around our shoulders when we walked into
the garden at sunset. My favorite was a Queen
Anne's Lace pattern interwoven with open stitching that Mutti had created all
by herself.
So I was
overjoyed when she placed the polished rosewood needles in my hands. First she taught me how to cast on, then how
to knit and purl. After that I learned
how to make little hats and booties.
Next came a simple sweater for Vati.
Then a pair of socks for my baby brother. By the time Jurgen was two, I asked Mutti to
teach me how to make lace. Under her
gentle guidance, I learned how to yarn over and knit two together. To pick up stitches and create tiny hearts
and leaves and shells.
Mutti marveled
at how quickly I garnered the skill. "Wie
deine Gesangstalent, deines Stricken ist auch ein Geschenk," she said
proudly.
Like your singing talent, your knitting is also a gift.
Now this gift
is saving my life...and Mutti's as well...such as it is. But I know that without her, I won't survive
either.
So I make lace
like my mother taught me, and with every stitch, with every row, I weave in the
memory of those who are gone forever. A
stitch for Olga. One for Anne and Mary
and Elisabet. A stitch for the woman who
died of typhus in the bunk above me two days ago. A whole row for Frau Daiga and her daughter. Rows and rows for the Zweig family who perished
long before I came to this place.
Countless
stitches for my father and Jurgen.
And
always...every stitch for Bruno.
No comments:
Post a Comment