The Fighter Page 13

  They line us in rows of five. It is a trick. They want to convince us we’re going on a march, the better to slaughter us. Several comrades try to run away. The soldiers shoot them down like rabbits. We resign ourselves to our fate. We obey the soldiers and follow the tracks. Over the first two or three hundred feet, the rails are broken after the air raid, or bent and twisted as if they were made of tin. Then the tracks are okay again. A freight train comes for us. They lock us inside closed cars, without even the tiny openings of the cattle cars. We suffocate. Some clever comrades pull small pieces of steel, which they “organized” in Krähwinkel, out of their pockets. They begin to widen the tiny gaps between the floorboards. We work in turns. A guy I don’t know suggests we escape together.

  “They won’t catch me. I’ll go west and meet the Americans. Are you coming?”

  “Look at me. I wouldn’t get very far.”

  After several hours, we remove a piece of wood, so at least we can breathe. We go on working and dislodge a couple more boards. Comrades climb into the opening and drop under the train, which is not moving fast. If I stuck to my principles, I would do it, too, but I can’t. They hold on to the floor with their arms and slide down slowly to control their fall. I am too weak to even try. I have no more willpower. I’m waiting for the end.

  I won’t be able to narrate my adventures to my son. My comrades are dying silently around me. When the train finally stops (where is it going? to Pitchipoï?), whoever opens the door of this car will find only corpses inside.

  A comrade is too close for comfort.

  “You’re sticking your elbow into my ribs, man! Stop banging your head on my back!”

  He doesn’t answer. I turn toward him and shake him. I was talking to a dead man.

  Chapter 29

  They say “ghetto”

  The train stops, the door of our car opens. We are not all dead. Out of two thousand comrades who left the Jawischowitz mine, two hundred are still alive.

  I hear vague calls or shouts. Do they say “gâteau”p ? No, it is “ghetto.” What does it mean? I crawl as slowly as a snail and tumble down from the car. Although my strength is gone, there is still some curiosity left in me. We are not in a camp, but in a city. It may have been a garrison long ago: the tall buildings that line the street look like barracks. Jews who are not as thin as skeletons, who wear a yellow star but no number, welcome us and help us. They carry the sick away on stretchers. I see no SS, no dogs, no kapos.

  What’s really strange is that these Jews with a yellow star are old. I mean, really old. In Auschwitz, we called a man of forty der Alter (the old one). There was no way he could survive.

  Our hosts are troubled because nobody told them we were coming. They open a kind of large basement for us. Tiny windows, close to the ceiling, let a little light in. We ask them where we are.

  “The Germans call this place Theresienstadt, but its real name is Terezin. Before they invaded, it was Czechoslovakia.”

  “They created a model ghetto here. They needed it to show the Red Cross how well they treated the Jews.”

  “They shot a propaganda film. Suppose someone in the French government asked them where the Jews had disappeared. They could show the film. But I don’t think anybody ever asked.”

  “As soon as the film was ready, they put all the actors on a train. We don’t know where it went.”

  We tell them that we know.

  We lie down on the cold ground of the basement. The old Jews lock the door and go away. Only now do we discover that a dull pain, which the fear of death had hidden so far, keeps us from sleeping. We’re starving! We haven’t eaten anything for several days. When will the old Jews come again? After an hour or so, we decide to go out and see. We hoist a shaky chair on top of a dusty table. Not so long ago, my wasted body was waiting for death in a freight car. Now it climbs up on the table and the chair, opens a window, and crawls outside. Three or four other acrobats follow me. We explore a paved court, find a long wooden shed, open a door…. The shed is full of clothes and suitcases.

  “This is Canada!” one of my comrades exclaims.

  I had worked in a clothes room in Auschwitz. Later, the SS built a much bigger one, where the clothes, toys, and violins left on the trains by a million Jews were sorted. The prisoners called this place Canada, nobody knows why.

  Instead of undoing the seams of the jackets to find diamonds, we look for food. We find shiny surgical tools, paint tubes and brushes, sewing machines that remind me of my mother. At last, under a mountain of woolen pants: potatoes! Then elsewhere in the shed: carrots, turnips, leeks, onions. As we head back to our window, I see Brod peering out of it.

  “You know, Wisniak, this place must have been a school or some institution where a lot of people lived. We’ve found a big kitchen at the end of the basement, with gigantic cooking pots.”

  “Is there water?”

  “Yes. At least five sinks.”

  “Then we’ll cook a soup!”

  We cut and slice the vegetables as fine as we can so they’ll cook faster. We do not bother peeling them. In fact, we are so hungry that we could eat vegetable peels. We find wood, matches, bowls, spoons. Fifteen of us share this feast.

  “Say, Wisniak, do you remember camping on the banks of the Marne River?”

  “Very dimly. As if it had happened in another life…. I do remember that the soup wasn’t as good as this one. Far from it!”

  Our soup’s aroma seems to revive other comrades. We tell them where we found the vegetables. Just then, the old Jews open the door of the basement and bring warm potatoes. They’re not half as tasty as our soup!

  The old Jews are surprised to see that we have already found the stockroom full of clothes.

  “Even yesterday, you couldn’t have gone there, because of the SS. They vanished last night.”

  The ghetto’s leaders show us dormitories we can use. There are empty buildings everywhere. Their inhabitants have turned into wisps of gray smoke that rose into the sky above Auschwitz. We regroup according to the countries we’ll soon go back to. I share a dormitory with fifty Jews who came from France. I see Gelber again. There’s a question I want to ask him. “Where did you find your prayer book?”

  “Do you remember the infirmary in Krähwinkel? Gamkhi, the Greek doctor, gave it to me. He had taken it from a poor dead guy.”

  I find Gamkhi in the ghetto’s infirmary. He isn’t there as a doctor, but as a patient. He seems very happy to see me:

  “Ah, Wisniak, I must thank you. You saved my life!”

  “Me? I saved your life?”

  “Yes, in the freight car. I had a fever, I was half-conscious. You saw that some of the guys were smothering me. You pulled me away and propped me under some kind of ledge where I could breathe….”

  “You know, that’s strange, I don’t remember it at all.”

  …

  The comrades in my dormitory could also benefit from a stay in the infirmary. They’re all quite ill. Our old enemy, diarrhea, is tormenting us. I seem to be the healthiest one: at least I can crawl as far as the toilet. After a few days we each receive a ten-pound parcel from the Red Cross. We don’t need a doctor to tell us that eating an entire dry sausage in our condition is dangerous, but hunger overwhelms our good sense. We swallow the whole parcel in minutes. As a result, our diarrhea gets worse. The corridor that leads to the toilet is as full of shit as the septic tank I threw Fat Yatché’s goat into.

  “Can you help us?” I ask the old Jews. “Maybe you could offer a little something to the guys willing to clean up this mess.”

  “We can offer bread and coffee.”

  For a few minutes, we picture ourselves drinking real coffee. It’s the usual brown water, of course, but it still tastes delicious.

  Four or five days after we’ve arrived in Theresienstadt, they bring men in on stretchers. We recognize the comrades who escaped through the floor of the railway car.

  “We hid in a hut,” they say. “When we wante
d to move on, we found that we were too weak. A peasant discovered us. We thought we’d be shot. But no, a truck came, full of stretchers. They said they’d take us to the best place for Jews.”

  Chapter 30

  On May 8, 1945, we hear that the war is over

  We find a radio set in a suitcase in the clothes shed. On May 8, 1945, we hear that the war is over. All the comrades who can stand gather in the courtyard. The war is over! We survived! We feel like drinking champagne, singing, dancing with glee…. Suddenly, bursts of gunfire spray the courtyard. Some SS haven’t left, it seems. The bullets come from a distant building. These last shots break a few windows and wound several old Jews.

  It would be stupid to die today. We return to our dormitory and wait until we feel safe.

  The next morning, we hear motorbikes. We look out of the window. Russian soldiers! They give away chocolate bars, cigarettes, bacon. This time I’ll be careful. Yesterday’s bullets didn’t kill me; now, I don’t want diarrhea to do the job. I just nibble on some dry biscuits.

  According to a rumor, the Russians say we are so sick that they need to quarantine us. Spend more weeks here? I want to move, to cross borders, to see Rachel and Élie as soon as possible. On May 10, I start southward on the Prague road with Brod and three other comrades. We meet six more comrades on the road. We do not walk as fast as we did when the SS encouraged us with their whips and their dogs.

  “Tell me, Wisniak, is Prague far from here? What do you think?”

  “One of the old Jews told me fifty miles.”

  “We’ll never make it. We’d better stay in the ghetto and wait for the Russians to drive us there.”

  “Look, we’re lucky…!”

  A horse cart is coming. A well-dressed woman drives the two horses. She’s no peasant. We stop her and ask her where she’s going. We speak Czech, a language similar to Polish, but she doesn’t seem to understand. We expected it, since she’s heading away from Prague and toward Germany. We switch to German.

  “Are you fleeing Prague before the Russians come?”

  “Leave me alone, you scum!”

  She threatens us with her whip. Brod laughs.

  “There are some Soviet soldiers nearby. Would you like us to take you to them or would you prefer to give us your cart? In which case, we’ll let you go free….”

  Her face turns quite white when Brod mentions the Soviet soldiers. She steps down and runs away! We are delighted with our luck, we slap each other on the back, we jump into the cart.

  “Hey, what’s wrong with these horses?”

  “They don’t want to go back to Prague.”

  “German horses?”

  “Giddap! Hop! Hop!”

  “They’re just exhausted.”

  While my comrades are clicking their tongues and shouting, I remember I worked in a stable.

  “Let me give it a try, men….”

  I slacken the reins and I speak to the horses softly, tenderly, in Polish, while patting their necks—just like I used to when I prepared an oat-and-potato mush with my brother Anschel for the horses in our courtyard. They agree to turn around and walk toward Prague. The others applaud me and elect me to be the driver. The poor beasts have probably eaten nothing since Prague. They were not very strong to begin with. As we say in Yiddish, “The cart rests in winter, the sleigh in summer, the horses never….”

  I often ask my friends to step down and walk. Me, I am the driver, so I remain on my seat like a prince!

  After a few hours, we meet some Czech underground fighters. When they see our emaciated faces, our bulging eyes, and our striped pajamas, they can tell who we are.

  “This road is dangerous,” they say. “We’re looking for groups of SS. There are also Russian deserters who could attack you. You should turn left after the bridge and hit the main road. Look, here are some armbands. With these on, nobody will bother you.”

  On the main road, we pass long columns of German soldiers flanked by Russian guards. They don’t resemble yesterday’s Germans, so proud and so stiff in their beautiful uniforms. They look tired and dejected. They’re dirty. Fear distorts their faces. They shuffle their feet. They’re not used to walking thirty miles. They’re so weak that they can’t carry their bags anymore, so they leave them on the side of the road.

  “Say, men, we need to feed the horses. Let’s look inside the Germans’ bags. We may find some nice things, which we can trade for oats in the next village.”

  You’d think these German soldiers looted the city of Prague. In their bags we find gold jewelry, sheets, brand-new clothes. I find a bag full of striped costumes similar to ours, except they’re woolen and quite thick. In what kind of camp did prisoners wear these? And why would a German soldier carry them? I exchange my old torn clothes for one of these gorgeous pairs. I don’t want to wear civilian clothes. I want the world to see us as we are. Otherwise, the good people who abstained from helping us during the war might forget we even existed.

  When he sees me, Brod laughs.

  “You nearly fooled me. I was wondering who the new guy was. This reminds me of a story. The rabbi’s disciple, you know—”

  “What rabbi’s disciple?”

  “He spends the night in an inn with his master. The innkeeper wakes him up at dawn because he must take a train. He dresses in the dark, so as not to disturb the rabbi’s sleep. He is a clumsy guy, so he picks up the wrong clothes. He runs to the station. There is a mirror near the ticket booth. He doesn’t recognize himself. ‘This innkeeper is such a fool,’ he laments. ‘He woke up my master instead of me. So now I’m still asleep in the inn and I’ll miss my train!’ “

  We show our bounty in the first village. The villagers are willing to trade, although our looks frighten them somewhat. The kids keep their distance. They ask their parents whether we are ghosts. The villagers prepare a thick soup for us. One of them looks at our horses.

  “Feeding them won’t be enough. They need to rest overnight.”

  We sleep in a stable and start again in the morning.

  We pass new processions of German prisoners. We can’t help calling them shitbags, Hirenzine, pigs’ asses. At sunset, as we are approaching Prague, we see several hundred prisoners resting on the side of the road. Brod is furious.

  “These gentlemen are sitting on the grass! Did they let us rest? When we were tired, they offered us eternal rest!”

  He runs toward them and shouts: “Are you tired, shitheads? Get up! Kneel! Get up! Kneel! Faster!”

  It warms our hearts to see hundreds of tall Germans obey a tiny Jew wearing striped rags. I wonder whether their submissiveness is due to guilt or to fear. Guilt? What guilt? One thing is obvious at least: like the villagers, they know exactly who we are and where we come from. On May 11, 1945, all the people we meet know very well. In a few years, though, they’ll say they never heard of camps where Jews were exterminated.

  In Prague, gigantic Russian women soldiers, who direct street traffic, point us toward a center for French prisoners. The cooks welcome us like saviors.

  “Your horses are just what we need, fellas. We were beginning to be very hungry. The cupboard was bare!”

  We enter a drugstore because we see a scale inside. Brod weighs sixty-eight pounds. I weigh seventy-seven.

  “Say, Wisniak, you put on weight!”

  “You remember, in Theresienstadt, when I cleaned all the shit in the corridor? The old Jews gave me extra food to thank me.”

  “In Paris, I’ll gorge myself. Oh boy! I’ll catch up with you and even overtake you, believe me….!”

  Chapter 31

  Hitler didn’t kill everybody

  Once more, we’re traveling in a cattle car. Except this time the door is open, which makes a hell of a difference. We take turns sitting at the door, with our legs hanging outside, just for the fun of it. The Red Cross gives us water and canned meat whenever we stop in a station. I decline the meat and ask for biscuits. I nibble them slowly to reeducate my digestive tract.

/>   There is so much destruction that the train takes several days to reach the French border. We’re relieved to be alive but worried when we think about our families. Rachel sent me three letters and three parcels. Then no more. Is it because the Germans decided we’d received enough mail, or has something happened to her? The closer we get to Paris, the darker Brod’s face becomes.

  “You, Wisniak, your wife was French. Besides, one child is easy to hide. Mine was Polish, and we had four kids. Do you think a woman with four kids could escape the Germans?”

  After we reach the border, we do not see the Red Cross in the stations anymore, but instead there are women who offer us tea and cakes. These women speak French! I barely remember that language. Otherwise, I would tell them that everybody would certainly prefer coffee and buttered bread.

  I am coming to Paris in a train—just like in May 1929, exactly sixteen years ago. We pass orchards with blooming trees. The flowers seem to sneer at me: “So you’re back? How long will you stay this time?”

  Buses take us from the station to Hôtel Lutétia, which serves as a welcoming center for concentration camp survivors. Nurses wash us and disinfect us. Doctors examine us. We have to answer questions: “When were you arrested? In what camps did you stay?”

  They serve a light meal. Brod doesn’t want to eat.

  “I want to see my wife and kids. They’ve grown, of course. I hope I’ll recognize them.”

  After we fill out some papers, they let us go. A crowd of women and children is waiting in front of the hotel. Although I look carefully, I don’t see Rachel and Élie. Brod is livid.

  “You see, Wisniak, you lost your wife and your son…. Me, I lost my wife and my four little ones.”

  “They can’t come to this hotel every day. Hitler didn’t kill everybody. I’m sure they’re alive. Let’s go to my place, then I’ll go with you to yours.”

  My concierge (doorkeeper) smiles broadly when she sees me. This is a good sign. I thought I had forgotten all my French, but some words come back.