If we weren’t waiting in line for the cesspit, we were lining up to be fed. There was no good place to be in the food line. Near the front, the gruel was warmer than when you were at the rear. But if you were among the last to be fed, there might be more chunks of lukewarm or cold turnip at the bottom of the tureen.
I was always hungry. But despite the malnutrition, my body was growing, as was my appetite. Mama tried to alleviate the pangs by giving me her bread ration. I rarely saw her eat. She seemed to survive on air. Life improved slightly when she was put to work in a potato warehouse. Occasionally, she stole a potato and I would eat it raw. Supplementing our diets in this way was perilous: if she’d been caught with a potato in the fold of her dress, she could have faced summary execution. But Mama was wily and got away with it. Sometimes she would trade a potato for a hunk of bread, which she would always give to me.
Our routine rarely varied. Life was a blur of basic functions. Sleep, wake, latrine, eat, Appell. Repeat. It’s extraordinary what you can become accustomed to and how much hardship you can endure. Luxuries were little things: an extra mouthful of bread could improve your day, an unexpected smile would lift the misery for an hour or more. This was my world and I accepted it, along with its all-pervasive stench of roasting flesh from the crematoria. I even got used to that.
But the stink of the latrine was hard to take. Once, I was bursting to breaking point. I ran to the latrine and jumped up onto the wooden platform. I was in such a hurry that I misjudged my leap, and because I was so small, I slipped backward through a hole and into the slurry. The indignity and stench were bad enough, but worst of all, I couldn’t climb out. I was stuck up to my knees and surrounded by squealing rats swimming through the waste. My screams alerted Mama, who was never far away. She was horrified. Other women came to help. I was wedged beneath the wooden plank for what seemed an eternity. After several attempts, the women gripped me under the shoulders and pulled me to safety. Mama hosed me down, but without soap, the smell lingered for days. It was horrible.
Not long after my dip in the latrine, I fell sick. There must have been all manner of bacteria and germs down there. I woke up one morning and was shocked to realize I couldn’t see. A solidified crust of pus had superglued my eyelashes together. I worked away at one eye and managed to free it a touch.
Then, a couple of days later, I woke up and my throat felt like it was on fire, it was so dry and swollen. And my teeth seemed to be bolted together and my jaw had locked up, making it impossible to eat. I started to fret. I might have only been five, but I was smart enough to know that sick people were killed. I was so scared that I didn’t even tell Mama. I was afraid someone would overhear our conversation and I’d disappear. My eyes were stuck together with pus again, and I was holding on to the bunks to move around.
Mama soon noticed that I wasn’t well. But for the first time in her life, she was unable to control what happened to me next. Matters were taken out of her hands when other women in the block also realized that I was sick. In their weakened state, they were afraid of contagion, and I was taken away.
Chapter Twelve. On My Own
I had no idea where I was when I woke up. I could feel my body. I could see and I could hear. But I felt strange. It was warm and I was comfortable. And I was alone in a single bed. The last time I had been conscious, I couldn’t open my eyelids, but now they moved freely. That was a relief. And that terrible feeling of having my mouth locked had also subsided.
“So you are awake at last”, said a kindly female voice.
“Where am I?”
“You are in the infirmary. You’ve been very sick. But now you are on the mend”.
“Mama?”
“She’s not far away. You’ve got to stay in bed for a while, until you get your strength back”.
I don’t know how long I was delirious. It could have been days. It could have been a week or more. But now it appeared that I was through the crisis. I had been struck down by a combination of scarlet fever and diphtheria. Both were common childhood ailments in the first half of the last century. Scarlet fever is contagious, caused by bacteria and generates a high temperature and sore throat. Diphtheria is also triggered by bacteria. It attacks the respiratory system and it’s nicknamed “the strangling angel” because, in the worst cases, it does just that — it chokes you to death.
I was fortunate to be alive on two counts: I had survived two potentially fatal illnesses. More significantly, I had also survived being sick; given the Nazis’ practice of culling the weak and infirm, and their ruthless slaughter of children, I was amazed that I was still breathing.
But history has taught us that infirmaries in camps like Birkenau were often staffed by Jewish prisoners who had been medics in their prewar lives. And despite being under constant threat of being murdered, nurses and doctors in the camps upheld the sacred Hippocratic oath to treat patients to the best of their ability. Where possible, they masked the symptoms of the sick and shielded them from their Nazi overseers so that, against the odds, their patients could leave the infirmaries, and had a chance of survival. It was an act of compassion and resistance.
I stayed at the infirmary a week longer to recuperate, and then it was time for me to leave. I donned the cotton shift dress that I was issued with when I arrived at the camp. But I had lost the uncomfortable shoes. The nurse went in search of a replacement pair and returned with some white lace-up high-top shoes. I slipped my feet into them and stood by the bed, perplexed.
The nurse looked at me quizzically.
“You don’t know how to put them on, do you?”
I nodded. I had put the right shoe on the left foot and vice versa.
“How old are you? Five and a half? A girl of your age should be able to put shoes on”.
She showed me how to do it. Then she took my hand. “Come with me. We’re going to your new barrack”.
“Are you taking me back to Mama?” I asked.
“No, you are going to the Kinderlager”. (The children’s camp.)
My heart started pounding. I was distressed by the news that Mama and I would be apart. I had become accustomed to being by myself in the hospital. But that was easy. The atmosphere was benign. I couldn’t comprehend the enormity of what being totally alone would mean.
My war was about to take on an entirely different complexion. Little did I know that everything I had been through over the past four years had been preparation for this moment. The only weapons I possessed were the things I had seen and the lessons I had learned. I had my wits. My powers of observation and self-preservation. I had no alternative but to be self-sufficient and resilient. I remember being sad that I wouldn’t be returned to Mama, but I didn’t cry. I wasn’t about to share my emotions with anyone else.
We left the infirmary and walked toward the chimneys spewing fumes. I felt as if everyone was staring at me as I walked with the nurse in my white lace-ups. I didn’t like the direction we were taking. The smell was getting stronger.
But then we turned right, crossed a road and cut across the railway tracks in front of a steam engine puffing away. We reached a barbed-wire fence with a big wooden gate. The nurse spoke to the guard, showed him a paper, and we were nodded through. I didn’t know where we were. But I do now. We were in what had been the Zigeunerfamilienlager—the Roma family camp. We walked in a straight line for about five minutes or so. There were anonymous barnlike barracks on either side of me. I wondered how far we would go because the camp seemed to stretch forever. But after we walked past a laundry on our right and a latrine reeking in the midsummer heat on our left, we reached our destination. Barrack Number Eleven in the Kinderlager. The nurse led me in, turned abruptly and walked out.