The text is not a short story, it is not a biography, it is part of my memories. It is truly a testimony of a soul, of a child, who for the first time dares to bring out the few memories he has. I almost feel guilty that I can't remember more, get more pain out of me.
I dedicate the text to my grandson and the family he will have, so that they may learn as much truth as possible about the Holocaust. I'm not a writer. I just want to record my childhood memories because, strangely enough, the older I get, the bigger the problem. I thought it would fade away at some point. The opposite. It is getting bigger and the more I feel it is being questioned, the more I feel the obligation to put a stone in the awareness of this tragedy that I pray this suffering people will not experience again. I hope this testimony carries the charge with which it was written and will be read by my descendants and a few friends as a tribute to those lost.
Camp Bergen Belsen.
I can't remember if they were tin tols or wooden shacks. But they were long narrow buildings, semi-dark with rows of three-legged beds, right and left. Upstairs, in the last bed, a narrow skylight gave a little light, even a nightmarish one, to this mournful landscape. In the middle, a small stove did its best to put out some heat. In beds, sick, sometimes huddled for warmth, with huge frightened eyes, staring at nothing. I was permanently lying on the last bed, looking out at infinity.
As the men were separated from the women, I was with my mother and grandmother, who were away all day mending shoes. Dad was in another camp, in charge of feeding. Sometimes, he managed to slip out at night, to bring me a piece of bread. So I always had a morsel of rotting bread in my mouth, because I never swallowed it. Cough and tithes were my constant companion and my mother was afraid I would become paralyzed because I never got out of that bed. We had a very nice doctor, our fellow inmate, Alalouf, to whom mom would tell her worries. "How do you want her to get up, since she has no stimulus and is afraid of what might happen to her?", he always told her good-naturedly. At some point in my life, centuries later, in an interview, I was asked: “Were there other children there? Were you playing at all?' Even the word seemed unfamiliar to me. "Game;" What does this mean; It was just another little girl, a little older, who was supposed to be watching over me. From what? Since I was not moving from my nest.
Another image that appears in front of me without even knowing where... We are on a train, normal and I am on a box near the window. Suddenly in the distance I see three planes approaching at full speed. "What are these?" I asked and before I could finish my sentence a barrage of bombs rained down on us. The train stopped, opened the doors and suddenly, I was like a package under dad's arm, jumping into the unknown. Rocks, stones, thorns, there was no time to choose. Since then, dad's armpit became my refuge. Whenever my father wasn't on set, no matter how calm it was, I had uncontrollable diarrhea. Even now, as an adult, this diarrhea follows me when I am very afraid. It is my signal that, my fear overcame my will.
I never found out where we were, I never asked, and no one told me, about this incident. For many years, the inmates of the camps did not speak or narrate, nothing related. A sealed secret, until plays began to be filmed, books to be written. And suddenly, all this pain that was kept sealed, unknown why, came pouring out. Because I was a child and quite young, no one ever asked me what I remembered or feared from this nightmare. Big mistake, because however few the memories were, they sealed my character and my entire life.
It wasn't until many years later, when Steven Spielberg created Shoah, a foundation dedicated to the Holocaust, that a horrifying image and memories unfolded that people didn't even want to share. Then, for the first time, my generation was called "Child Survivor" and they searched inside us, to find unacknowledged fears and anxieties. I played a question and answer game, by myself, for many years. What would you rather break your leg or have your dad taken by the Germans and a bunch of other nightmare scenarios. When I saw Tarzan in the cinema when I was older, I compared him to my father. Except that instead of a knife in the mouth, to kill the crocodile, he had a child in his armpit who neither saw nor understood what was happening.
My limitless mind tries to connect the unconnected. We said. Memories have no order. They come without you expecting them and sometimes, they leave quickly, also frightened by their ferocity. Back in the skylight, in the nest with the flea-bitten straw mattress, I counted the bedbugs on the wall. For many years and on our way back, I counted the endless lines of bed bugs. Small, shriveled, brown bugs, in military formation, climbed the walls.
Opposite the camp, was another male labor camp. From my skylight, I see a huge cart with high wooden sides and horses pulling it. Below, two workers are throwing with order and discipline, naked, skeletal, corpses of men, into the cart. When at some point the cart was full, an officer, in a black leather boot, got up and started jumping on the corpses to sit down and fit more. I don't know what I understood but that was my worst memory I started crying. They were trying to comfort me. From what? However, I have never worn a black leather boot in my life.
I didn't remember the trees at all. I was in Poland from very young to quite old. The phrase "they took him to Poland" meant to me they took him to his death. Even grown up, knowing that Poland was a state, it still reminded me of death.
I'm trying to bring back images. Impossible. What was my daily life like? Was I even getting out of this mess? The mind holds tightly to what scared and hurt it so much. One day, I wake up with a fever of 40. No wonder, since my cough wouldn't stop. My mother was a very beautiful woman, very fragile and delicate. Because he couldn't stay with me and take care of me, he did something that marked my entire life. She went to our friend the doctor and asked him to remove the nail from her first toe. So, she would be sick next to me. I say it and get emotional. An act of incredible love. Without drugs, without anesthesia, pulling out a fingernail was unthinkable. And my delicate mother, with her enormous strength, as I would later learn, did it in cold blood. Many years later, when she was old, I would caress her hands, my fingers playing with the removed nail that was thicker and curlier than the others. An act that only a mother could do. She stayed in bed next to me after they made sure she couldn't work and slowly, with her hug and warmth from her body, I came to my senses.
Another very vivid memory was the outposts around the camp. Two rows of electric wires, two meters apart, and at frequent intervals high sentries with armed soldiers and searchlights, who went round every minute. Because there were rumors that they would separate parents from their children, they tried in every way to find out my name, where I'm from, what my parents were called, what my father did. I answered firmly that dad divides the bread. Impossible to get off.
I wonder now, didn't they know that if they separated us it was the final end of us all? I don't know and never found out if they knew what was going on in the rest of the world and the strange thing was we never discussed it. If e.g. they knew that near or far from them there were countless death camps with gas chambers and crematoria. I think the rumors were circulating, but maybe as a survival need, they didn't want to believe them. In our prison, there were also many Dutch prisoners, so I became fluent in Dutch and German. At some point, as an adult, many years later, I started taking German lessons because, I was told, memory brings them back. I like languages and unfortunately it is a necessary language. I don't know in which drawer, in which safe, of my mind they are ditched, because despite all the efforts, nothing came back to me. So, not liking the language for obvious reasons, I gave up.
In the end, the only memory that stayed with me like a burning torch was the cart with the dead skeleton workers. And of course, the train bombing and my father's somersault. Bergen Belsen was a forced labor camp. It had no gas chambers, no crematoria. The fact that it did not have gas chambers did not mean that it did not have countless dead from starvation, from epidemics and the incredibly bad living conditions.
Every morning before the Harama, a procession of men would start, in their striped uniforms, often barefoot, and they would go in rows to break stones. For what reason, no one knew. And, correspondingly, the women were leaving for the shoe factory. In the evening, the famous "appel" took place: everyone was lined up in front of the stalls, after they were left for a long time in the rain and frost, officers with dogs checked if everyone had returned. Some things I don't know if I really remember them, if they are from short stories or from countless works or books that I saw and read later. Rumors, of course, that the war was ending, that the allies were advancing, raged. Maybe they were also "strength pills", to make them last. Once, near a barbed wire fence, a soldier gave me a piece of chocolate. I didn't even know what it was, but it tasted smooth and sweet. When I recounted it, I ate a nice potluck. “You'll never come close again. They play nice now that they're losing, to curry favor with the prisoners later. To me, of course, this was all Chinese, but the taste of chocolate remained sweet and I never spoke to anyone again.
It's awkward to search through the chaos of your mind and collect obscurity, darkness, half-light, and nightmarish trees. One night, great commotion. They collect prisoners in trucks, in trains, they run up and down the "Raus" and "Schnell", they come and go, frighteningly. They all pile into the trains, their throats dry, expecting the worst. Is it our turn for what we have been hearing for so long? Are we going to become smoke that smells awful? Huddled together on the train, perhaps looking to the person next to them for a little warmth, maybe a little protection, maybe finally, a little human contact. At some point, the train jolts, slower, slower and finally stops. They are images that I remember a little, I have learned a little by heart. Someone opens the heavy doors of the train and a few braves get off, expecting dogs to pounce on them. Nothing. In the distance, noises, shouts and the neighing of horses are heard. Soon, alien soldiers are in front of us. No less scary, but in a different way. They open the doors, urge people to get off and speak another language: Russian.
At that moment, there was an explosion between these living dead and their liberators. No one understood anything, but nothing could be worse than what they went through. The train lines were filled with food, which no one knew what it was. They all fell up, for hunger had reaped them two years without end. I clearly remember an enamel bucket, pale, yellow, with two bouquets of flowers on the right and left. I remember him for years we should have taken him home. The bucket was full of sugar and zingers. They were trying to give me something and I had a restrained disgust for everything. Before long, this entire crowd was throwing up on the lines. After so long a famine, no stomach could bear so much food gathered. Neither the night nor the frost seemed to affect anyone.
The train whistled and everyone turned around with mixed feelings as you never know what is going to happen to you. They took us nearby, to a German village, Troebits. There we settled, with as much fear as we came. Fear sticks to your skin and is hard to get rid of. We live in a two-story house. His owners moved to the ground floor, us in the middle and a friendly family on the top floor. When I say we, I mean my father, my mother, my grandparents, from my mom and her brother, a young teenager who was also my idol. I remember a large kitchen with a marble trough, a room with slanted windows, which finally let us see the rare sun. This whole scene, after the misery of the camp, was for all of us the greatest step of luxury.
Everyone was searching among the new arrivals for news of the large family of uncles, brothers, cousins who literally vanished. All without exception were looking for someone, begging for a news that would give them courage. The fact was that we had been freed from the Russians, who were an enemy army to the one we were leaving, with the difference that they did not overrun us. All the women were terrified, because they were raping, a second captivity. For the first time, I saw my mother and grandmother with scarves worn deep on their heads and going out as little as possible. The house had a small garden with various vegetables and fruits planted. One day, I went out with a basket to pick some strawberries, because I didn't even know what they tasted like. Suddenly, the landlady appeared at the entrance, on the ground floor. A typical example of a German woman, fat, blond, with a plait in her hair, she put both hands on her waist, a gesture that is still horrible and unbearable to me, and in the typical "German cuteness" way, she says to me: "You are not ashamed to steal strawberries;" I turn around unperturbed, as I hardly opened my mouth, and answer her in fluent German: "Should I be ashamed of picking a few strawberries, or should you be ashamed of separating children from their parents and leaving them unprotected?" All my family and friends were at the windows speechless, more so than the coolness and seriousness with which I answered her. I remember that, at that moment, from the height of my five years, I felt superior to the little woman with her hands on her waist and looked down on her. Finally, it seemed that the endless lessons about my ancestry and my entire family, took hold, even though I took so long to realize it.
This scene, with various variations, was to be repeated countless times in my life, and my answers hardened as I grew older and as the red-hot iron entered my flesh. In our camp, they did not put numbers on the hand, a question I was often asked, but I felt that I was branded like cows with a red-hot iron, not only on the hand, but also on the soul.
At one point I was sitting near those slanted windows that I loved and Marcel, my uncle, started talking nonsense to me. I went to my mother in a panic and told her she was crazy. The fact was that he had a very high fever and typhoid fever and was constantly babbling. Rashes and endless fever, lasted for days, because finally we had an epidemic of typhus. Of course, it was not possible to spare her. One of the same as me. With a high fever, with a climax, five bumps on the head, huge. Result; They had to shave my head to get air, to dry it so it wouldn't get infected. All this, without any medicine, because the reservation we had in the camps was left to us. No one wanted to say they had a patient because they didn't know what would happen next.
I think that, somewhere in the depths of time, beyond kinships and origins, from similarities and simulations, a small spark was lit. The little girl with the chubby cheeks like a candle never imagined it. So this little girl, over there, in the long, long past years, sometimes playing, sometimes trembling, tried to survive. It seems almost impossible, with today's objective eyes, to follow its path. Looking back, I can't help but cringe in retrospect at how she didn't turn off when she was in danger of dying of typhus, when real, not movie, bombs were going off next to her. He survived. It continued on its way, sometimes with a stronger, brighter light and sometimes so weak that you said it was going out. Life is not given to anyone. How much more, in a wick that comes from a weak candle, not from a wick with oil, but from some unknown source, which kept it alive. At one point, to face the hurricanes she faced, she became a burning torch and even endured the waves and storms of developments, without even realizing where her feedback was coming from. Today, the candle still exists. It lights steadily, without much turbulence, without looking for corners where it does not blow and is protected. Relatively calm, without a burning flame, but always with her light illuminating, basically the inside of her, because this is now her destination and strength.
I go back to the past. Miraculously Marcel and I recovered from this monster of a disease and through various actions, it was decided to send us to our homelands through UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), an organization that arranged the return of prisoners to their place of origin. They gave us clothes. They gave me a green adult coat, which hung down and I stepped on it everywhere. The sleeves were half a meter extra and I had decided that I'm not going anywhere dressed as a clown. Early reaction of female courtship. We had a black car like a big taxi and with it, crossing I don't even know what countries and mountains, we found ourselves in our beloved city. Me in shame because, with a shaved head, five huge bozos in the air and the infamous, nightmarish, green coat, I looked like a freak. Images I will never forget. My handicap, and my shame, prevented me from being happy and I was constantly lounging in the car.
For years, our city has been honoring those "programmed to destruction", as Christianopoulos called them. Every year, on this day, I follow a path that my parents followed before me with a baby in their arms and an endless family that I did not know, except through stories. The so familiar road turns into a silent desert, loaded with ghosts, unknown and at the same time so familiar. So-and-so's uncle, the newly married couples, the children who didn't have time to grow up. I feel an immense loneliness, as if all these relatives urge me to respect them and not to forget them. And I DON'T FORGET. In a way, the time that passes and brings me closer to the due date sharpens the meager childhood memories.
I was captivated by the numerous young Christian and Jewish couples, with their prams and children on their shoulders. United in the common motto, NEVER AGAIN! Outside the old railway station, final destination of the march, the children of PARALAXIS have created an amazing graffiti, depicting prisoners in camps. It is incredibly expressive and every time we got close, I had a racing heart, lest they had desecrated it. Like the monument at the university, on the site of the old cemetery, which is constantly desecrated.
SOURCE: parallaximag.gr, 25.3.2022