Holocaust (14 page)

It was on February 10, 1940, that I slipped across the Czech border at a point about twenty-five kilometers south of Dresden, as nearly as I can place it. Czechoslovakia was occupied, but there were still barriers. I waited until nightfall, hiding in a tool shed at an abandoned construction site. Then I headed south. I made sure to avoid the sentry posts along the road, and slipped under the barbed-wire barrier on my back, using my wire cutters to sever the strands. It was that easy.

Although Czechoslovakia was under Nazi rule—they called it the “Protectorate”—I had heard that the Czechs were less than cooperative with the Germans, and that the Czech police were inclined to take it easy on Jews. I would soon find out.

Prague had a large middle-class Jewish community. Perhaps the Germans would have some reason to ignore these Jews, at least for a while. I hoped to find my way south, if Prague was too dangerous, and make my
way to Yugoslavia, and then perhaps to a coastal town on the Adriatic, where I might sneak aboard a ship.

It was a lonely and bitter life, but I found that the challenge of surviving from day to day, the game of wits I had to play, gave me the strength to go on. It was like a soccer game, those tense moments when everything depends on the right move at the right time—a feint, a kick, a pass, hurling oneself at an opponent, or evading his feet.

On a street in the old Jewish quarter of Prague, I stood in a doorway and looked at the Jews of the city. They reminded me of our Berlin neighbors—educated, middle-class, timid, worried, utterly unaware of the sledgehammer blows that would soon descend upon them.

Two Czech policemen were posting regulations on the doors of a synagogue. They did so—it seemed to me—almost apologetically. The Czechs had never been violent anti-Semites, at least in Prague. They were, my father had said, an easygoing and genial people.

But these regulations, forced upon them by the Nazis, were in no way easygoing or genial. It was Germany all over again.

An old man, to the annoyance of the rest of the crowd, was reading the regulations.

“No more clothing vouchers will be issued to Jews,” he read. “All Jews failing to register with the Jewish Council of Elders will do so at once, or face serious punishment. It is forbidden to sell luggage, knapsacks, valises or leather to Jews.”

The old man turned around. “Hah! Luggage! Where am I going? To America, maybe?”

Someone else resumed reading. “No Jew may carry a valise, trunk or knapsack without prior permission from the police, and a special permit.” And so on. The usual preliminaries. Before arrests, detention, and God knows what else.

The policemen turned. I was a bit slow retreating into the doorway. One of them noticed my knapsack. I started to walk away, acting unconcerned, and they came after me.

“Hey,” one of them said. “You saw the orders. What are you doing with that knapsack?”

I mumbled something about not knowing of the order. To show them my faked ID papers would be a risk. What was a German farm laborer doing in Prague?

I tried to look stupid, gestured with my hands. They backed me against a small store. It was a leather and luggage shop, a rather dingy, run-down place, and one of them took out a pad, while the other squinted at me.

“Give us the knapsack,” one said.

I hesitated. Perhaps I had made a mistake coming to a strange city. Thus far I had survived by hiding in the countryside, blending with trees and forests, meadows, barns.

A young girl was standing behind the glass door of the shop. She looked at me, saw my distress and came out.

“No, he won’t give you the knapsack,” she said. “He’ll give it to
me.”

“You, Miss Slomova?” the cop asked.

“I sold it to him, and he never paid for it. Come on, give it to me. You take it from him, or arrest him, and I’ll never get my money.”

She was very pretty. A small girl, fine features, dark-brown hair. And the darkest brown eyes I had ever seen. She lied very well, too, which I had found was a useful trait.

“You sold him that piece of junk?” the policeman asked.

“It was new when I sold it. I’m furious with him.” She glared at me. “Don’t try to get away with anything. You know that’s mine, and you owe me for it. Things are bad enough here.”

The Czech officers looked at each other. They were evidently local cops, and they knew the pretty girl.

“What do you think?” one asked the other.

“She’s too pretty to argue with. If she says so, I’ll believe her.” He pointed a finger at me. “But you, watch your step. The Germans catch you breaking the rules, you won’t last long around here.”

The girl opened the door and I walked in. Her effrontery, her nerve, impressed me. And she had saved my neck. She watched until the cops were some distance down the street, then practically shoved me through the shop. Here was a girl I could admire, take to my heart. I was deeply grateful to her, this girl with courage, nerve.

“Quick,” she said. “The back room.”

Once more she looked into the darkening cold street. More people had gathered around the list of rules. They were muttering, some of the women crying.

In the rear of the shop, behind a curtain, was a table, some old chairs, and a gas ring, on which tea was brewing. I could smell it, and I craved it. My diet of stolen carrots and stale bread had left me weak. I got dizzy easily.

“Sit,” she said.

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

“You were in trouble. You aren’t a Czech. I’m not sure what.”

“I’m a German.” I paused. Like hell I was. That was behind me. “I’m a Jew.”

“In Prague?”

“I’m on the run. Have been for a long time.”

I looked at the wall. There was an old calendar, with a picture of a seacoast, sandy beach. “Palestine,” she said. “I wish I was there.”

“You’re Jewish also,” I said.

She nodded. “Who isn’t around here? This is the famous Prague ghetto. What is left of it. The rich have left, the poor have vanished.”

My head began to sway and I thought I would faint from hunger, weakness. She knelt in front of me and took my hands.

“My name is Helena Slomova. I’m alone. My parents were arrested two months ago. They said Papa was a Zionist agent. I don’t know where they are.”

“I am Rudi Weiss.” It was the first time I had used my real name in a year, it seemed.

“Oh, God, you’re faint. Here, some tea.”

She gave me a hot mug of tea, apologizing because she had neither sugar nor milk, and I let its warmth creep into my hands, my arms. She stared at me with those luminous dark eyes, and I wondered how people could torment such a girl, subject her to pain and suffering.

Then she took the cup from me and rubbed my hands.

“I haven’t held a woman’s hands for a long time,” I said. “Too busy hiding, running.”

“What will you do now?”

I shook my head. I was exhausted. Maybe there was no place to hide, maybe the Jews were doomed, unwanted anywhere, unsafe anywhere.

Suddenly, as I looked at her small, perfect face, I leaned forward and kissed her. She opened her mouth, and we joined our lips for a long time. Then she stroked my forehead.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I shouldn’t have. But you’re a marvelous girl. So pretty, so brave.”

“It’s all right. I liked it. I’m lonely also. I cry every night, wondering about my mother and father.”

“Maybe they’re all right. I heard they’re shipping Jews to Poland to live in their own cities. My father’s there—he’s a doctor in Warsaw.”

She showed me photographs of her parents—plain shopkeepers, but the mother with the same delicate face and dark eyes that Helena had. “They were ready to go to Palestine, to find passage. But they waited too long.”

We sat and talked, and I found it hard to keep my hands from touching her gently—her arms, her face. I tried not to. We barely knew each other. But she did not object. She was a small girl, but she had a certain sturdiness, a strength in her. And she was beautiful—even in an old white shopkeeper’s smock.

I told her a little about my family, how I had run away, about my wanderings. And I suppose I even bragged a little about my skills as an athlete. Then, sensing that she was receptive, pleased to have saved
me, I drew her to me. She sat on my lap—so small that she was almost weightless. But the softness of her arms, her hips, filled me with passion. Passion that I ill concealed.

“You trust me too easily,” I said. “I’ve been learning to trust no one.”

“You sound honest, Rudi. I believe what you’re telling me.”

“I don’t mean that. I could … I might …”

She put her fingers to my lips.

What was wrong with me? I was breathing as heavily as if I had just run the 200-meter dash. It had been so long since I had been close to a woman; the truth was, I was a bit backward in this respect. She seemed more at ease than I was.

As her hand stroked the back of my neck, and she rested her face against mine, she told me about her parents’ dream of a home in Palestine, of the man named Herzl who started it all, of the slow migration of Jews to the dry country on the edge of Asia. It all sounded terribly foreign and strange to me, and I must have looked dubious, or smiled, as if indulging her.

“What’s so funny?” Helena asked.

“I don’t know. When I think of Zionists, I think of those old guys in beards—kids rattling cans for pennies on the street corners. Not of beautiful young girls like you.”

“Oh, you are a German. Very German.”

“No longer.”

We kissed again, held each other for a moment. The front door bell sounded, and Helena got up and walked through the curtain.

I could hear a man’s voice. He was another shopkeeper, telling her to lock up. The Gestapo, dissatisfied with the policemen’s laxness, was running its own investigation to make sure that the new regulations were obeyed.

I could hear her locking the front door, putting out the lights. In the back room, she took my hand. “You’ll come home with me,” she said.

I told her more about my family, people who now seemed like strangers to me. Once I had written to my mother, but had never dared give her an address. I told her about my kind, overworked father, a man who never lost his temper, and about Karl and Inga. And Anna. And my mother, so pretty, so talented, and so much the boss of our home. I even told her about the Bechstein piano. And I said I would go back only if I could save them, that I was determined to fight back, to keep running.

We talked, and ate a bit, and soon, as naturally as if we had known each other for years, we made love.

I had had some fumbling experiences before—lovemaking of a rapid, pointless kind. And Helena was a virgin. She was only nineteen. But we brought our bodies together that night as if we were meant to be man and wife, as if God had thrust us upon each other. She rested in the crook of my arm, a small, soft girl, with very white skin and dark-brown hair. My own flesh was hard and muscled, and my hands were coarse from work.

“Rudi… hold me … don’t take your arms away.”

“My hands will scratch you.”

“I don’t care.”

“All because of that damned knapsack,” I said. “I’ll never get rid of it.”

She sat up in bed and smiled at me. “And you will never get rid of me.”

I asked if she had a boy friend, relatives, who might find us. She shook her head: no one.

“I wouldn’t care if they did,” she said. “I used to be a proper little schoolgirl. Blouse and skirt, lessons. Now, I just try to live from day to day.”

I kissed her hair, her forehead, her eyes. “Helena Slomova. My savior in a luggage store.”

“We were just lucky the Czech police are so lazy,” she said. “And I flirted a bit with them. They knew me, they knew my family.”

I got out of bed, worried. Where to? What now? I knew it would get worse. I’d seen whole Jewish communities vanish in German towns. It was only a matter
of time before the Germans started emptying Czechoslovakia.

“What will you do now?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’m scared. I’m less scared now that you’re with me, but …”

“Helena, I’ll stay with you. But not here.”

She sat up, pulled the sheet and blanket to her neck. It was freezing in the small bedroom. “There are ways of getting out… through Hungary, Yugoslavia. There are boats that will take you to Palestine, if you can pay.”

We both laughed—we were penniless, without even the hope of buying passage. And frontiers to cross, guards to avoid, the SS and local Fascists on the lookout for people like us.

“You will come with me,” I said.

“With no money? No papers?”

“I got this far.”

“But you traveled alone. I’ll be a hindrance to you.”

I took her in my arms again. “You’ll get healthy on a diet of raw turnips.” Then I buried my head in her breasts, kissed her again and again. “The worst thing in the world is to be alone. I try to act tough, but I’m scared also. I have no family any more. I have the feeling I’ll never see them. I need someone to be near me in the night. Someone warm, to hold me when I touch her. When it’s dark and cold.”

“Oh, Rudi. I need someone too.”

“You’ll sleep in haystacks. Steal from farmers.”

She smiled. “Not really a honeymoon.”

“It will be much worse to stay here and let them take us. They give no hope. They just lie. They have no mercy, no pity, and they want to get rid of all of us. No matter how.”

We held one another closely, and then we made love again, and we were happy.

“Do you know the story of Ruth in the Bible?” she asked.

“I’m not sure I remember. I was a great one for cutting Hebrew school.”

“All you have to remember is one part.” She kissed my cheek. “‘Whither thou goest I will go.’”

Karl remained in Buchenwald.

It was not an extermination camp, but hundreds died there daily—beatings, torture, starvation. He survived by doing his work in the tailoring shop, and listening to old hands like his friend Weinberg, who knew their way around.

You could not survive alone. You needed to be part of a group—Communists, Zionists, whatever. The men in the tailoring shop had their own cadre, and they tried to share extra food, protect one another. But life was always in danger. They lived on thin soup and black bread. Sanitation was dreadful. The worst details were the quarry and the so-called “garden,” where men were beaten to death for the slightest infraction. Burying rebellious prisoners alive was a favorite device of the guards.