Kanada (11 page)

Tuesday, January 9, 1945 –
Friday, January 19, 1945

T
he camp was shrouded in darkness by the time I left Agi.

I didn't have anywhere else to go, so I returned to my barracks. My feet were frozen, and I couldn't feel my toes. I stumbled over the body of a woman lying in the snow across the entrance. I crouched down and pulled off her shoes. They were too small, but they felt wonderful on my feet. My toes burned as they began to thaw.

At least a dozen women had died that morning. The rest of us were too dispirited to talk. Two or three were crying softly. Others lay mute on their bunks, staring into the air. I had trouble falling asleep that night, and when I did sleep I kept on reliving the nightmare. Over and over again I was staring into the barrel of the
SS
rifle. Over and over again
Agi was sacrificing herself for me.
Please, God, let my dear friend recover! Let her be whole again!

The next morning there was Appell at dawn as usual. After, we were allowed to return to the block, I sat on my bunk and tried to think of a way to see Agi. I would have to bribe the Kapo, and I had nothing left to give her.

Suddenly, the door flew open and a dozen
SS
rushed in.

“Raus! Raus! Los! Los!”

We climbed down from our bunks, no questions asked. Before I left the barracks, I slipped the metal bowl that held my food in the daytime and served as a bedpan at night under my shirt. It was all I had left.

Outside, the other blocks in the Lager were also being evacuated. I became part of a long line of prisoners leaving Auschwitz-Birkenau. As we were herded past the barracks where I had left Agi, my eyes searched the crowd gathered in front of the building. She wasn't there. I tried to reassure myself that this meant nothing, that her wound was too fresh for her to get out of bed.

We marched out of Auschwitz, passing under a large sign declaring,
ARBEIT MACHT FREI,
Work Makes You Free.
SS
men with weapons and fierce dogs forced us west-ward on the icy road. Anyone who faltered or slipped lost their lives. After a while, I stopped wondering where they were taking us and focused all of my energies on keeping up with the others. It was so cold that I was afraid my lungs would burst.

When night fell, we stopped for a few hours in farmers' fields and rested on the frozen ground. We'd been walking for days when we finally arrived at a railway station. A loco-motive was throbbing on the rails, with a long row of cattle cars attached to it. With their rifle butts, the
SS
shoved more than a hundred of us into each wagon. There was no room to move, barely enough air to breathe. The doors shut, and the train pulled out of the station.

“We won't be here long,” I heard someone say. “The Americans will be coming soon!”

“The Nazis are going to exchange us for the German prisoners of war who were captured by the Americans,” said another Häftling.

The train kept going. We had no water to drink or food to eat. There were no windows, so it was hard to know when the day ended and the night began.

Finally, the train stopped for a while, but the doors of the wagon remained closed. We were too weak to talk. I kept drifting off into jumbled dreams. I saw Agi lying on the icy snow with the
SS
rifle pointed at her head. Then I was traveling in a sleigh pulled by white horses galloping toward a city of bright spires. I was back in Kanada jumping for joy as I found the gold coins in the lining of Mama's coat. Suddenly, the buzzing noise of airplanes overhead woke me. There was loud banging outside.

“The Americans must be bombing the train!” somebody cried.

Then there was a scraping noise, and the doors of the cattle car slid open. Two Polish prisoners dressed in bedraggled striped pajamas stood at the entrance. A Häftling translated what they were saying.

“The Americans bombed the train!” they cried. “Our wagon was hit and caught fire. We managed to break down the door. Run for your lives!”

The cold air streaming into the cattle car revived me. I struggled to my feet and followed the others to the open door.

The platform was filling up with prisoners. Two or three ss, their heads bent, walked by us without raising their eyes.

“Do you know where we are?” I asked an emaciated Häftling.

“I have no idea,” he replied in Hungarian, “but we must be somewhere in Austria or Germany.” He pointed to the German signs on the station wall.

Something about the prisoner seemed familiar. I looked at him more closely. He was the man who had helped Jonah bring a table into the barracks, a million years ago, it seemed.

“You are Jonah Goldberg's friend, aren't you?” I asked.

He laughed. “I plead guilty.” He extended a bony hand. “I am Sandor.”

“My name is Jutka. I am Agi's friend.”

“Where is Agi? Is she with you?”

I explained to him how Agi had saved my life. “I don't know if she'll recover.”

“You must hope for the best,” he said. “I was separated from Jonah during the march. I hope he is all right.”

An unarmed
SS
passed us silently, his eyes fixed on the ground.

“What's the matter with them?”

Sandor laughed again, and I realized that beneath the grime covering his face he was still a young man, only a few years older than me. Blond stubble covered his head, and the knowing look in his piercing blue eyes was far beyond his years. He turned to one of the ss.

“Hey! What's going on?”

“We heard the war might be over,” the
SS
mumbled, “but we're not sure.”

Someone shouted for joy.

“Let's be careful,” warned Sandor. “We don't know what's going on.”

“Look at them!” An older Häftling pointed at the silent ss. He spat on the ground. “The war must be over!”

“We don't know for sure,” repeated Sandor. “Let's wait before we do anything.”

“You're too cautious, Sandor,” said the older man.

Sandor grinned. “I am not impulsive like you, that's for sure.”

“Let's get them!” cried another Häftling.

The
SS
men broke into a run with a group of prisoners in pursuit. Sandor grabbed my hand. “Let's go!”

We ran into the station house. It was deserted. Dust motes danced over an empty desk covered by an open ledger.
On one side of the ledger stood a bottle of ink with a pen dipped into it. There was a cup of coffee on the other side of it. I picked up the cup. It felt warm under my fingers, so I drank half of it. It took all of my willpower to give Sandor his share.

We went into the bathroom. There was not a soul in sight.

“Real toilets!” said Sandor. “What luxury!”

I washed my hands, marveling at the warm water, and glanced in the mirror hanging above the chipped sink. The gaunt, grimy, bald stranger with hollow eyes staring back at me was frightening.

“Stop primping!” joked Sandor. “We have to get out of here.”

We crossed the empty field behind the station house and found a village, consisting of a church and a dozen dilapidated houses, built around a central square covered with dirty snow. We did not see a single person.

We knocked at the first house and rattled the lock, but the door remained closed. The door of the second house gave way under the weight of our shoulders. We searched the entire house, calling for the owners, but nobody answered until I noticed the tip of a boot sticking out from underneath one of the beds. Sandor grabbed hold of it and out came a farmer. His wife crawled out behind him. She shrank close to her husband, holding on to his arm. The couple stared at us with eyes filled with loathing and fear.

“What can you give us to eat?” barked Sandor in German.

“We have nothing except some milk and bacon,” said the old lady.

“I can't eat bacon,” I whispered in Sandor's ear. “I have never eaten pork.”

“That was then,” said Sandor.

“Give us whatever you have,” he said to the farmer and his wife.

The woman scurried into the kitchen, reappearing with an earthenware pitcher and a slab of bacon. She pushed the food into our hands.

Sandor poured the milk into two tankards and cut two generous slices from the bacon. We sat down at the table and motioned to the man and his wife to join us. They remained standing, their faces full of resentment.

My hands trembled so badly that I spilled the milk down the front of my uniform. I couldn't taste the bacon as I jammed it into my mouth.

“Slowly,” warned Sandor, “you must eat slowly, or you'll be sick.”

When we were finished, Sandor divided the remainder of the slab of bacon in half. He tied his own portion around his waist with a string the man gave him. I put my share into the metal bowl in my shirt and tucked it away again.

A loud shot cracked outside. I grabbed Sandor's arm.

“They've found us!”

“Don't worry,” he said. “One of the Polish boys must be
evening the score. Let's see what's going on.” We stepped outside.

“Get down on the ground, Jews!” an angry voice shouted as soon as the door closed behind us. It was the Volkssturm, the local volunteer militia. We lay on our stomachs in the snow with at least two dozen other Häftlings, surrounded by a mob of armed farmers, their weapons pointed at our heads. One of the Volkssturm shot his rifle into the air.

A few minutes passed. The farmers seemed to be having a muted but furious argument.

Finally, their leader growled, “Get up!”

We struggled to our feet.

“Go!” He waved his rifle in the direction of a small forest behind the church.

Sandor grabbed my arm. “No! If we go to the forest with them, they'll kill us!”

The Häftlings took up the cry: “Not the forest! Not the forest!”

“Have it your way!” The leader of the farmers spat on the ground. “Back to the train with you!”

The armed men herded us at a trot in the direction of the cattle cars. When we got to the railway station, the
SS
were waiting, lined up in a single row in front of the station house. They fired their rifles at us.

“Dear God, what should we do, Sandor?”

“Run as close to the line as you can! If you're close enough, they won't be able to shoot you.”

It took all of my courage to run right in front of the line of
SS
men and their rifles. I prayed, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” I thought I was about to die. Something banged into me with great force, knocking me sideways. It felt as if I had been struck by lightning. The
SS
man closest to me had a bloody bayonet in his hand. He laughed in my face.

“You want freedom, bitch, I'll give you freedom!” he yelled.

I woke up in the dark, struggling to breathe. I was wedged between two cold masses. I pushed and pushed until I was finally able to crawl forward. My back was throbbing. Suddenly, I felt fresh air on my face, and I rolled down a bumpy hill. I lay on the snow, panting. When the full moon emerged from behind a cloud, I realized that I had just crawled out of the center of a mountain of corpses. I began to retch.

When I could breathe more calmly, I washed my face with snow. I heard a faint sound in the distance. I tried to get up, but the pain in my back was so intense that I couldn't stand. I began to crawl in the direction of the sound. The noise grew louder and louder. I could hear people speaking and was finally able to see the cattle cars on the railway track. When I reached the first wagon, a hand reached down from the opening and pulled me up. I fainted.

Friday, January 19, 1945 –
Thursday, February 15, 1945

S
andor's blue eyes were the first thing I saw when I regained consciousness.

“Welcome back,” he said. “I was afraid I had lost you.”

“Oh, I'm not that easy to get rid of!”

I realized I was cradled in his arms, and I started to feel self-conscious. I was filthy and I reeked. I drew away from him, sat up, and flexed my legs and arms. Everything seemed to be in working order, but the left side of my body and my entire back was throbbing. A large dressing made of a piece of uniform had been wrapped around my waist.

“What is this?”

“You were bleeding,” said Sandor. “The metal dish you had tucked under your shirt saved your life.” He picked up the bowl I had brought with me from Auschwitz. “See how
deeply it's dented? It deflected the bayonet. You should heal in a few days.”

That's when I noticed that his striped pajamas were missing a sleeve.

He looked around the wagon furtively, and when he saw that nobody was listening, he said, “I filled up my dish with snow before the train left and saved you some of the water.” He held his bowl to my lips. “Slowly,” he said, “drink slowly.”

I drank down the tepid liquid, then ate what was left of the bacon. There were a lot fewer of us than before. Only a handful of Häftlings were stretched out on the wagon floor. The rest must have died or run away.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I have no idea, but we've been traveling for three or four days. We haven't been given water or food. I felt mean not sharing my rations, but I wanted to save them for you. Lean on me and rest.”

I did as I was told and fell asleep immediately. When I awoke the next morning, I felt stronger. However, with each passing hour, I became more and more thirsty. It was a tremendous relief when the train came to a stop.

We climbed out of the wagon and found ourselves in a bustling railway station. Long lines of trains were coming and going despite the late hour. Damaged locomotives and passenger cars lay overturned on the tracks. Armed
SS
were everywhere.

“The station has been bombed,” said Sandor.

A sign by the station house read,
MAUTHAUSEN
.

“Be careful,” he said. “I've heard about this place. It's a Vernichtungslager. There are ovens here.”

An
SS
soldier approached our group: “Schweig! Men on the left! Women on the right!”

“Don't tell them that you're injured,” said Sandor.

I squeezed his arm in farewell, and he was gone.

They made us climb a steep hill, where we lined up for registration that seemed to last forever. I was so focused on staying upright so that I'd look strong and energetic that I barely noticed the Häftling who collapsed beside me.

We were given a bowl of watery soup. Despite my raging thirst, I forced myself to drink slowly.

Next, we were put into quarantine in a large, empty barracks with wooden floors. Each of us was given a rough blanket from a pile in a corner of the room. We lay down on the floor until every centimeter was covered by our bodies.

The days that followed were sadly familiar Appell, brutality, starvation, and misery until we were moved into yet another Lager.

I spent the days sitting on the ground in a corner. My thoughts were more real to me than the wretchedness surrounding me. My mind wandered, and at times I would find myself in Canada, dressed in furs, riding a glossy, black horse while Agi rode on a white horse. Mama and Grandmama, in their warm winter coats, stood by the side of the road, waving to us. Papa and Dezso were there. Klari, Miri, and Tamas gathered on the other side of the road. The horses vanished,
and I was driving in a luxurious car through streets lined with tall buildings and bustling with happy people in summer clothes. Agi kept repeating, “Everything is much nicer in real life than in the pictures in your Canada book!”

Then I would find myself back in the Lager and would begin to weep. Only the thought of Sandor gave me a vestige of hope. In the middle of February, I saw him again.

The Americans had begun to bomb the Mauthausen railway station, and we were taken there to repair the damage. We cleared debris from the tracks while male Häftlings from another Lager turned the train cars upright.

I was so weak that all of my attention was focused on the task before me. I was filling my arms with rocks when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I dropped my load, and I fixed my eyes on the ground. Not only was I too tired to lift my head, I also wanted to spare myself the sight of the grinning face of an
SS
soldier before he struck me down.

“Have you forgotten me already?”

My heart jumped. It was Sandor an even more skeletal, more bedraggled Sandor, with one of his front teeth missing, but a Sandor whose blue eyes were burning as brightly as ever despite his grimy face. I laughed and cried at the same time. We embraced before a truncheon could part us. Sandor picked up a few rocks. I helped him clear the tracks.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

All of a sudden, the misery filling my heart poured out of my mouth the way water escapes an overturned bottle. I began to cry.

“I can't go on! Everyone I ever loved is gone! This hell will last forever!”

Sandor dropped the rocks and took my face between his hands. By some miracle, none of the
SS
guards was looking in our direction.

“You can't give up!” he said. “The Americans are getting closer every day. They bombed this station! I heard that the Soviet prisoners of war scaled the walls of the Lager and escaped. Some of them got away!

“Be strong! Look, I need you. I don't have anyone either,” he whispered. “They made us work in the quarry and in the tunnels. We are less than animals in their eyes. The thought of seeing you kept me going,” he said shyly.

He let go of me and melted into the crowd as an
SS
soldier came toward us. I went the opposite way.

In the evening when we trudged up the hill, I searched the crowd, but I could not see him anywhere.