I Am a Star (8 page)

 

 

 

Some attempts were made to teach us in Beschaeftigung, or keeping-busy classes. School was absolutely forbidden, but some heroic teachers gathered us children in attics and other places where there was a little space. They taught us from memory, since very few schoolbooks were smuggled into the camp. In an English class I learned “I Wish I Were,” which I wrote into a worn notebook and hid from view on one of Eichmann’s visits. It was only recently that I completed this poem with my own thoughts.

I remember vividly the Bohušovice Ravine roll call on November 11, 1943. It was the only time I ever got outside the camp walls. We were told that some inmates were missing and a complete count had to take place outside the camp. At least forty thousand of us were herded very early in the morning onto a large muddy field. It was a cold and rainy day. We did not know what was going to happen to us. Our future seemed uncertain. We were surrounded by soldiers and guns. No food was given to us the entire day. No toilets were available to us. I watched in horror as an SS man smashed the butt of his rifle into my mother’s back. Some people had actually escaped and may have got away. News of our outing leaked out and was broadcast on the English radio. Consequently, direct orders from Berlin halted any further action on that day. We returned to the camp after midnight. Many people died on the field from exhaustion, cold, and severe beatings.

By the end of 1943, rumors of mass murder in the East had begun to circulate. The International Red Cross requested permission to inspect a camp to find out if these accusations were true. The Nazis chose Terezin for this purpose. Many months passed before this request was granted on June 23, 1944. In the meantime Terezin went through a “beautification” program. Certain parts of the camp were cleaned up. Some people were given new clothing and good food to eat. A few children received chocolates and sardine sandwiches just as the commission walked past them. I was not one of the lucky ones. In the center of town an orchestra played in a newly erected band shell. The areas filled with the things that had been stolen from us were carefully locked up. Blind, crippled, and sick people were warned to stay out of sight. Even the most brutal SS officer, Rudolf Haindl, acted friendly on that day. Transport lists to the East were carefully hidden. The International Red Cross inspections team left the camp believing the immense deception that Terezin was a “model” place for Jews to live in. A film was made at this time to document the “good” conditions in Terezin.

Terezin was the antechamber to Auschwitz. Eichmann personally saw to it that there was a constant flow of transports from Terezin to feed the gas chambers at Auschwitz. He and the SS commandant of Terezin determined which groups of people were to be sent East and then ordered the Jewish Council of Elders to draw up a list of one thousand people from the designated groups for each transport. At one time only old people were called up; at another, the most highly decorated war veterans. The selection process depended entirely on the whims of the SS. We lived day and night with the fear of being sent to the East. There were times when transports left every week. The unfortunate people who had been selected were given a number which was tied around their necks, and were told to assemble at a specific barrack. From there they were forced to enter the cattle cars. The doors were bolted and not opened until their arrival in Auschwitz. Most of the camp Elders eventually suffered the same fate: they, too, were killed in the gas chambers in Auschwitz. When the last selection to the East was made in 1944, all remaining disabled war veterans had to appear at SS headquarters. A red circle was drawn around our names. We had been spared from certain death.

No, no, don’t look at the chimneys
—
see the blue sky,
My arm is around you to protect you; don’t cry.
Come close
—
let the blows fall on me,
There’ll be a day when again we’ll be free.

Give all your belongings to them, quickly undress,
One day soon we will again have happiness.
Sleep my child
—
I have no more to give,
Oh, God, Oh, God
—
we are not going to live!

My best friend Ruth and her parents, who had shared our bunks in a tiny room for two years, were in these last transports to the death camp. She was also an only child, just two months older than I. We were like sisters and shared our daydreams and secrets with each other. She had beautiful blond hair. Her greatest pleasure was to draw pictures on scraps of paper with colored pencils that she had smuggled into the camp. She had hopes of becoming an artist. Ruth and her parents came from Berlin. Her father walked with a limp caused by a World War I injury. We both found it strange to live with and see around us so many disabled men with missing arms, legs, and other war injuries. Ruth and I owned identical dolls. Before she embarked on her final journey, she entrusted me with all of her doll’s clothing, which her mother had carefully sewn from rags. Ruth’s father was half Christian and half Jewish, and Ruth was raised as a Christian.

Ruth died because of her Jewish heritage, even though she never considered herself Jewish. She would never live to see her tenth birthday. In “Hold Me Tight,” my heart still cries out to her and so many other children as they marched with their mothers to the gas chambers in Auschwitz and the other extermination camps.