On my way to Majdanek, Mai 1943 Umschlagplatz. For the second time! Mother, Hilek, Hela, Halina, and I. Again we were rushed into the same police building as before, the former school. They herded us on the floor in one of the classrooms. Here, we were to wait for a train for the whole night, fully conscious of what going to work in the East meant. This fact did not decrease our helplessness, but even such a near and indisputable future was still far away compared to the nightmare we had gone through prior to this train to be. With the threats of being shot dead on the spot, we were forbidden to move at all. Time to time, a German showed up and then the one he would have chosen must give to him money, gold, or jewelry! One of the Germans came in with empty bottles in his hands. I sank my head into Mothers knees and plugged my ears with my fingers. Mother bent over to shield me. - Has it lasted the eternity or have I already died, and am not seeing and not hearing anymore? Suddenly, above me, I felt Mothers body shake in a spasm. Never before had Mother broken down, never cried. I unplugged my ears. Blows of a whip were interrupting a dead silence. I lifted my head. My brother! I saw Hileks face, beaten, bleeding, his eyes narrowed with pain behind his smashed glasses. Not even once did he groan, when a German was beating him. Then he sat quietly down next to Hela and Mother. He asked for water, but in her basket Mother had nothing but a bottle of cooking oil... Next morning, they burst into the building like enraged, savage, bloodthirsty beasts. With blows and shots they rushed us towards the cattle railcars. On the steps I pushed through the people trampling each other. I was desperately clinging to Mother in order not to get lost. A short distance from the buildings exit to the train, while stepping on dead bodies, lasted an entire lifetime. I will never be able to describe from which circle of the epochs subsequent one to the other it started. We ended up in a wagon. No miracle was able to change it. The Germans did not become less powerful or less brutal after their defeats in the Eastern front; heaven and earth did not rupture with grief, mercy or even compassion over the mass murder of my entire nation. But who would think about all that now? There was no place to put the legs, to protect the body against the pushing crowd and to avoid being crushed. The SS-men kept hitting people squashed in the wagons door with riffle butts until they fell down on others already inside or glued each to the other to make more room for next ones... Finally, wagon doors were shut and latched from the outside, but only when even a needle would not fit in. The train started to move. The strongest plugged the narrow wagon windows with their bodies thus blocking the airflow. People fought for every centimeter of space, they argued, were trampling and suffocating each other with their sheer weights. Bottles of water, sometimes on the way tossed in by Poles from near the rails, were being ripped away from hands, from mouths - until the strongest have conquered them. I stood on all this pile, cuddled up to my mother, looking in despair at the dreadful bottle of oil in her small basket - liquid, but not a drinkable one!!! I had already known about Treblinka but Mother kept reassuring me that we were going somewhere else to work. I was grateful to her for any lie, only not to hear this horrible station name. And later, I was not bothered by anything simply because I could not stand it anymore. I fell down. Others fell on me. I sank into darkness. I did not feel anything anymore. Suddenly, somebody fell on my face, on my nose. I could not breathe! I began to struggle with a superhuman force until I freed myself from under this suffocating heap of human flesh and released from my own, laced shoes that painfully hurt and bloodied my feet. I stripped away almost all my clothes and - atop the pile of the dying and the dead -- I reached one of the small windows. I put out my head at the window. The riffle barrel of an SS-man who was standing on the wagons steps touched my throat. But I could breathe! I was breathing with all my being! Then the train came to a stop at a station. It was night and it was raining. Blows and yelling: Rauss!!! Out! We moved in a big column of people, wading in the mud. I wanted to lick this mud out of the terrible thirst. I had on me only a mans overcoat that I had found in the darkness the wagon. But I was together with Mother, my brother, my sister-in-law and my cousin, and we did not loose each other in this pressing crowd! It turned out that we were in Lublin. Rejoicing, we kissed each other - it was not Treblinka... Leaning on Hilek, I waded barefoot in the mud. The Germans shot dead all those unable to walk. On the way, Mother picked up high-healed shoes of a dead woman that was just killed. I had to look as a 17 year old! Hilek broke off the heal of one shoe because I was unable to walk, but he did not have time to do it with the other one as we have reached a place where men were forcibly separated from women, with blows and shooting. People said that the children and the elderly would be taken away. I told Mother not to follow me should they take me away. Mother looked deeply into my eyes and asked me if I really believed she would leave me. Hilek managed to embrace us before an SS-man whipped him and broke him off from us forever. In the last moment, warned me lean on Mother because this could make her collapse. Later, in Birkenau, I learned that he was gassed in Auschwitz. I even do not have a picture of him. Cold wind was blowing. Mother covered me with her coat amidst the female crowd on the square. She said that soon we would go to a bathroom, would be given different clothes, and then would warm up and nourish in a barrack. I listened to her impatiently. A nail left from the broken heal and the high heal of the other shoe were killing me. Yet, I did not know that soon these shoes would save my life during a selection in Majdanek. There, SS-women (Aufseherinen) while herding female prisoners for a roll call, pushed the sick ones and those with injured legs out and onto a truck that took them straight to the gas chamber. One of the SS-women indeed stopped me at the barrack door with a rifle, but seeing that I had one heal missing she apparently thought it was the reason for my limping, and she let me through. Luckily enough she neither did nor see my trampled, painful feet and the nail-injured heel, covered with pus... But it all was to happen later on. Now, women were still being picked from the group brought here from the train and then led away. Unavoidably, our turn came. Remembering Hileks warning, I leaned on my cousin Halina; Mother and Hela (my sister-in-law) walked behind me. The pain in my foot made me blunt to everything else. I was only thinking how to make the next step. Suddenly, I found myself inside a huge barrack, full of clothes, where we were ordered to take all our clothes except for shoes. And finally a bath! There were dozens of naked women under the showers - among them Halina and Hela. Mother was right - they have not killed us, we shall all live and work! - I thought. I wanted to embrace and hug her... With the increasing panic I searched for her amongst the naked women. I could not take my eyes from the door. - She will came in at a while, shes got to come! I could still feel the warmth of her body under her coat with which she was covering me just minutes ago. She did not enter though! I was afraid to ask my sister-in-law about her since I did not want to hear the answer. Suddenly, I sank into a huge and endless emptiness, with no exit, and with no meaning. Mother is no more. Then, the incomprehensive Helas voice said, Now, I am your mother... I did not comprehend her words. I kept walking in the room in rounds repeating in dullness - Mother is no more, no Mother! My mind refused to accept it. They pushed us into another unheated room, hitting us all over our naked and wet bodies, swearing at us vulgarly. In there, they threw at us some clothes, too large, or too small - like in a circus. I happened to get an elegant, long, black gown with lace... Hela put it on me and tied it up around my waist to make it shorter so that I could walk. While doing that she begged me: Halina, please, dont look at me. I fear your eyes!... What eyes did I have at that moment? Why were they so terrifying? And who was I then?
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 09:55:04 +0000