I Am a Star (7 page)

Soon after our arrival we were moved to a different area. Most men, women, and children were housed in separate quarters. I had the good fortune to stay with my parents in the disabled war veterans’ section. Life was especially harsh and strange for children. We slept on the floor or, if lucky, on straw-filled mattresses, packed like sardines on double and triple-deck bunk beds. The rooms were smelly and steamy in summer and freezing in winter. We grew up fast and became self-reliant. The most important words in our vocabulary were
bread, potatoes,
and
soup.
I used to took out from the room where some birds had made a nest high up on a ridge. How I envied them. They could fly away from all this misery, while we stayed walled in.

Three times a day we stood in line, our metal dishes in hand, to receive our daily food rations from the community kitchens.

Most of the kitchens were located in the open courtyards of the huge barracks. The lines were always very long. It was especially hard in the winter, waiting in the bitter cold. Breakfast consisted of coffee, a muddy-looking liquid, which always had a horrible taste. Lunch was a watery soup, a potato, and a small portion of turnips or so-called meat sauce; and dinner was soup. By the time the people reached the barrels from which the food was ladled out, they were so hungry and exhausted that they immediately gulped their portion down.

The smell of death was everywhere. Many old people had been sent to Terezin. They could not withstand the terrible conditions and died of starvation or disease. Two-wheeled hand-drawn carts were used alternately to transport our food and to take away the sick and the dead. We hand-pumped most of our water from polluted wells.

There were constant epidemics due to overcrowding and lack of hygiene. Rats, mice, fleas, and bedbugs were a constant menace to us. I contracted scarlet fever soon after we arrived in Terezin and spent four months in the so-called hospital. All the patients were isolated from the rest of the camp. I feared the worst—my parents’ deportation to the East without me. My condition grew worse every day as more complications arose. I was not expected to live. Measles, mumps, and a double middle ear infection followed the scarlet fever in rapid succession. I was infested with worms, I lost my voice, and my body was covered with boils.

I made a new friend in the hospital. Ada was of German Jewish origin. She taught me a new song about Palestine, which is now Israel. Its words spoke of a perpetual paradise where the cedars of Lebanon kiss the sky. She promised me we would soon go to this place. “Just hold on a little longer,” she used to say. Ada’s dream never came true. She died at the age of nine in Auschwitz.

Just before my eighth birthday I was released from the hospital. Before I joined my parents, I was washed in a large bucket containing a disinfecting solution to help remove some of my lice. My hair had been cut very short, and Mama used a small comb with narrow teeth that dug into my scalp to try to rid me of the remaining lice. I still can feel the awful stomach cramps from dysentery, and the long walk to the public toilets, which were always overcrowded and without any privacy.

Most of the adults in the camp were forced to work. Some women were selected to work as slave laborers splicing mica, a product used by the Nazis in their war effort. This was considered a good job, since it sometimes kept a person from being sent to the East. Mama’s first job in the camp was washing laundry from typhus patients. One day she found a very high stack of what appeared to be soiled sheets. As she tried to gather them up, she found to her dismay that they were dead bodies covered with sheets. People died like flies in Terezin.

Mama’s fortune improved when she became a nurse in the old people’s hospital. Often she chose the night shift so as to get an extra ration of bread. I recall those deathly sick people holding sticks to ward off the rats, which sometimes jumped into their beds. Every night someone died, and the staff divided the leftover rations and clothes among themselves.

Papa became a scavenger, rummaging every day in the garbage dump in search of potato peelings and rotten turnips. If he was extra lucky he might find boiled horse bones that we could cook again to extract any leftover fat and grizzle.

I made a bed for my doll in a cardboard box at the head of my upper-level bunk bed. One day I discovered a dead mouse in it, another victim of starvation. Not even a mouse could find enough leftover crumbs of bread to survive.