The soldiers hugged the frail stick people in rags and returned the kisses. A giant of a soldier picked me up and, with a big grin on his face, held me over his head. He said something that I didn’t understand. I looked at Mama and she was smiling, too. So I told myself that what he was doing was okay.
Until then, I’d thought that all soldiers wore the intimidating steel helmets and black and gray uniforms of the SS. The Russians were clad in dark green trench coats. Some had helmets, others had squat fur hats decorated with unfamiliar insignia. What distinguished the Russians was their demeanor and empathy. Contempt and hatred had filled German eyes. The Russians’ were full of joy. But their expressions quickly changed from jubilation to shock at what they had stumbled upon. Even I could tell that they couldn’t quite believe what their eyes were seeing.
As night fell, the Red Army troops pitched tents inside the barbed wire. Some occupied empty buildings. Days after the Germans had set them on fire, some blocks were still burning, and the Russians extinguished the flames. The soldiers gave everyone something from their ration pack. It was one of the most extraordinary nights I’ve ever known. I’ve always regarded January 27, the date of the official liberation of Auschwitz, as my alternative birthday, because it was the first day of the rest of my life.
I had something to eat. I was warm. I felt safe. And I was with Mama.
The Russians, having recovered from the shock, were raucous and the camp was filled with the unfamiliar ripple of laughter. Those young men radiated the happiness of being alive. Their laughter was a lullaby that rocked us to a deep, untroubled sleep.
At first light, I awoke to an aroma I couldn’t identify. The Russians had set up a field kitchen near their makeshift hospital and the cooks were baking bread. The smell was incredibly enticing. Everyone lined up and was given a warm loaf. It was beyond delicious. I wolfed it down as fast as I could. Once I had finished, I raced back to the line. I told the cook I was an orphan and hadn’t received any bread. He recognized me, grinned and handed me another. Mama saw me with the second loaf and gave me one of her silent, all-knowing looks.
“Somebody gave it to me”, I fibbed.
My eyes were bigger than my stomach, and I only managed to eat a couple of mouthfuls because I was so full. But I hid the loaf beneath a blanket to consume later. Not long afterward, the mouthwatering smell of simmering meat wafted through the camp, overpowering the lingering stench from the crematoria lodged in my olfactory nerves. The cooks were stirring huge vats of pork stew that was a staple for the Russian soldiers. I was itching to run toward the new food line, but Mama stopped me.
“We can’t eat this. Our stomachs aren’t ready yet. If we eat it, we’ll get sick. For the next few days, it’s bread only for us, I’m afraid”.
Although I was disappointed, I was too disciplined to contradict Mama. So while many of the other inmates threw caution to the wind and devoured the stew, we ate only bread for two days. On the third day after liberation, Mama slathered butter on the bread. It was wonderful. By day five, I’d graduated to bread with butter and sugar. Life was definitely improving.
Several days later, she allowed me to sample the stew. Although pork is forbidden in Judaism, if you are starving and only nonkosher food is available, then it’s permissible. I devoured the stew — a real meal for possibly the first time in my life. I sensed the nourishment percolating through my core. And Mama’s wisdom was validated once again: I managed to keep the food down, but as we wandered around the camp, we saw scores of starving people whose stomachs were in turmoil. Most were convulsing, vomiting uncontrollably or suffering from dysentery or diarrhea. In the worst cases, the reaction to the very ordinary Russian rations was fatal. How tragic that people who had survived the starvation of the Holocaust should be killed by food as freedom beckoned.
That winter was one of the coldest of the twentieth century. Temperatures hovered well below freezing point. Mama needed warmer clothes. I had a coat that was barely adequate for the conditions. Along with other survivors, we tramped through the snow to the warehouses in the pine trees known as Kanada. Some of the buildings had been destroyed during the Germans’ scorched-earth retreat. But six blocks remained standing. They were filled with the contents of all the suitcases that more than a million people had carried on their final journey to Birkenau. Who knows — perhaps the possessions I had guarded in vain six months earlier were in there? If so, it would have been impossible to find them. The cornucopia of belongings was staggering in its scale. The Sammlungstelle in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, where Mama and I had sorted clothes, was minuscule in comparison.
Many of the garments lying in heaps in the warehouses had clearly been expensive when purchased. After wearing rags for six months, it was tempting to take the prettiest clothes, but Mama maintained her principles of frugality and propriety.
“I need a warm coat”, she said. “But I’m not going to take a fur or anything else that looks expensive. We will not benefit from the murder of someone else”.
Mama sifted through a pile of clothes and emerged with a man’s dark overcoat that swamped her and reached all the way to the ground. Although it was far from glamorous, I thought Mama looked beautiful. My eyes then caught a rag doll poking out from between some clothes.
“Can I have that, Mama?” I pleaded.
“No, Tola, I’m afraid you can’t. It was taken from a little girl who died. We are only taking what we need to protect us against the cold”.
A week or so later, I left Birkenau for the first time. Along with other children, we were transported in a truck by the Russians to the main Auschwitz camp, the one with the famous arched metal sign saying ARBEIT MACHT FREI. The Russians had summoned a film crew to record for posterity the horrors they had discovered.
Shepherded by nurses and a Russian commissar in a fur hat, I held hands with two of the youngest children, and we walked along a narrow path with now harmless electrified barbed-wire fences on either side. Then the Russians told us to roll up our sleeves and reveal our tattoos. That sequence became one of the most iconic of the Second World War. I’m the girl in the left of frame in the tattoo shot, in a dark coat and wearing a tightly tied headscarf.
Unlike the adults in the same Russian film, who were little more than skeletons, none of the children looked gaunt. A few days of eating decent Red Army food had enabled us to get our weight back on track. The footage was testimony to the natural resilience of children. When filming was over, I was taken back to Birkenau.
Seventy-five years later, three of us from that famous picture, including Michael and Sarah, standing to the left of me, found each other in New Jersey. By coincidence, Sarah taught my grandchildren. What a small world.
The first few weeks of our liberation were exhilarating, such was the bliss of no longer being scared, cold or hungry. But life under the Red Army’s protection soon palled, thanks to a combination of vodka and testosterone. The Russians became rowdier and aggressive, toward each other and especially toward women. They roamed the camp at night in packs, pushing, shoving, shouting and occasionally brawling. I noticed that Mama tried to avoid them whenever possible. Other women weren’t so fortunate. I couldn’t understand the change in their behavior.
Nights became nerve-racking experiences once again. They reminded me of the ghetto when the Germans turned up full of malice.
Russians would enter our block when we were sleeping. As soon as Mama heard their steps, she’d wake me up, dress me quickly, and we’d run out and find another barrack to sleep in. Some nights, we’d be pursued and would race from building to building to avoid them. Ever watchful, Mama lay awake for hours, listening, just in case. The need for constant vigilance was exhausting.