Without being told, I understood what I had to do. I jumped behind her and tried to minimize my profile behind her skirt, keeping my arms by my sides and breathing as gently as I could. I can’t remember the nature of the conversation over the threshold, but it continued for an agonizingly long time. I could sense my mother’s relief when the soldier turned on his heel and she was able to close the door. I have no idea to this day whether I truly was hidden from view, or whether the soldier had seen me and had chosen not to notice. Either way, it was yet another close call.
The next day, Mama didn’t return to work again. When I asked her why, she replied, “They are closing the camp”.
My heart soared. At last, I could leave the darkness. I savored the thought of stepping over the threshold in the morning, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my face and the breeze in my hair.
Then my radar kicked in. I noticed my mother was unusually quiet. She had begun packing a small suitcase. I studied her face. Her eyes weren’t focusing on clothes but on an image somewhere inside her head. She looked stunned and shocked. Clearly, the imminent change in our circumstances was not benign.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Auschwitz”.
Chapter Nine. Into the Abyss
After nearly five years of Nazi Germany’s occupation of Poland, they came for us with the trains of Europe’s death railway. The Soviet Red Army was moving in from the east and it wouldn’t be long before they were within striking distance of the munitions factory at Starachowice. The Germans were shutting it down and moving production closer to the Fatherland. They were being squeezed. And now so were we.
“We’re going to have to let them see her”, said my father, with anxiety etched across his face. “We can’t keep her hidden any longer”.
“There’s nothing more we can do”, my mother replied. “I don’t think they’ll do anything to us or her. Why would they bother now, as we’re going to Auschwitz?”
I knew my parents were talking about me. And I sensed the terror coursing between them as they tried to come to terms with the realization that this time, they really were trapped. We’d had an extraordinary run of good fortune — better than millions of others — but now, as slave laborers, my parents had reached their expiry date. For them, and therefore for me, there could only be one outcome, the one-way journey that millions of others had taken.
I’d heard the name Auschwitz before. And I knew it brimmed with evil connotations. People enunciated the word with a combination of fear and awe. They used the same tone when they spoke the names Treblinka or Majdanek, another extermination camp east of Starachowice where an estimated 80,000 perished. I was smart enough to know that when people went to those places they vanished. But nobody seemed to know how. I had overheard whispered conversations where the word “gassing” was mentioned. But I didn’t know what it meant. And Mama had taught me that if you obeyed the rules and didn’t do anything stupid like staring at an SS officer in the eyes, you would survive. And so going to Auschwitz didn’t hold any horrors for me. Imbued with the innocence and optimism of childhood, I believed that we would be fine.
Anything, even Auschwitz, had to be better than staying in the darkness in a single room for weeks on end, not being able to look out of the window past the blanket. Besides, it was a beautiful day. Mama had brushed my light brown hair, which now reached down beyond my shoulders. She had created a center parting and twisted the back into two braids. I could feel their weight as they bounced around behind my head while I skipped outside our building in the labor camp. It was the first time in months that I had been outside.
Mama carried on doing chores inside. She had packed the one small suitcase we were allowed to bring. She’d selected clothes, some other essentials and a few small black-and-white photographs of her family that she cherished. No matter where we ever went, Mama always carried her family with her.
Mama performed one last chore before we left. She took a broom and swept the floor. We were about to travel to the deadliest place on the planet and she was cleaning a room to which we would never return. Why did she do that? Did she find sweeping therapeutic? Did she need to do something to divert her mind from the journey we were about to make? No, I think she was doing it for me. She was trying to portray an air of normality. She was displaying remarkable composure at a time of unimaginable stress.
Mama was putting on a bold front for the benefit of her husband and me. Women are the glue that binds families together. When they crack, families fall apart. That image of Mama with a broom will stay with me forever. She had my best interests at heart, every minute of every dark day.
Too soon, the soldiers came. My playtime in the sunshine ended.
The three of us began walking to the railhead. From every corner of the camp, clutching small suitcases, other inmates emerged from their barracks and headed in the same direction, as if lured by some magnetic force. Some were on their own. Others were with their spouses. I looked for other children. But there were none. Perhaps I was indeed the last Jewish child on earth. I suddenly found myself wanting to be invisible. After all, I wasn’t supposed to exist.
Yet none of the guards covering our progress with their machine guns seemed to register surprise or concern that a lone child was at large. My parents had been worried about attracting attention, but if anything, the soldiers manifested an air of studied boredom.
The roundup was going to plan. There was no drama. The Jews were obediently heading toward the black engine snorting steam and cinders into a cloudless Polish sky.
Over the years, I’ve often wondered why they didn’t shoot me on the spot. They probably just assumed that within a few hours we would all be turned to ashes and asked themselves, why waste a bullet?
After walking for maybe fifteen minutes, we approached the train, and my courage faltered. It wasn’t the sight of the cattle cars stretching endlessly behind the locomotive that shook me. And I knew the power of guns — they had my respect, but they didn’t intimidate me.
I was unnerved by the dogs. Those German shepherds. Beneath the fur, there was nothing but muscle. They were lean because they were permanently hungry. The dogs were straining on their leashes, baring teeth, panting in the heat and salivating. They wanted nothing more than to be let loose. They smelled our fear and wanted to feast on it. When one barked, they all barked, and they never stopped. My ears rang from the endless loop of their snarling.
I didn’t dare catch the eye of any of the soldiers surrounding the cattle cars, but I observed expressions from oblique angles. They were facilitating genocide, yet their faces revealed no hint of sorrow or empathy for the doleful creatures before them, not a trace of shame that their battle honors included herding defenseless slaves onto cars that were barely fit for cattle. But of course, their consciences — if by chance they had any — had an escape clause. They were only following orders.
Mama picked me up and I wrapped my legs around her. My mother’s chest was heaving as she gripped me. I looked up at my father for reassurance and saw something I had never seen before, except when he had helped his parents to their own deaths. He was crying. He was kissing my hair and whispering to me to be good. With tears cascading down his cheeks, he kissed Mama goodbye. They were convinced they were being sent to oblivion. And to make it worse, they were going to be forced apart, separated for the first time since their marriage in 1936.