You Saved Me, Too: What a Holocaust Survivor Taught Me about Living, Dying, Fighting, Loving, and Swearing in Yiddish (15 page)

I imagined them laughing at us as we paid money the next morning to board a train that would take us to Dachau. Suckas! You’re going there
again?
The train was supposedly the only way for us to get to this tourist destination. Why, I wondered, couldn’t they provide buses
or limos so no one would ever have to ride a train to a concentration camp again? The irony of it seemed too masochistic to be an oversight.

I had trouble breathing during the hour-long ride. I wanted to climb out the wide windows just because they were open. I wanted a drink of water, just because it wasn’t forbidden. I couldn’t imagine how I would endure the tour of the camp if I felt this anxious before arriving.

The train doors opened and we walked past the chalky-white guard towers and onto the grounds. The sign over the gates still says
ARBEIT MACHT FREI
, “Work will set you free,” in iron letters. A couple of years ago some guys stole the sign over the Auschwitz gate, which says the same thing in a much larger, fancier font. The cops soon found it and jailed at least one of the culprits, whose motives were never clear. He was either a neo-Nazi or a recovering Nazi trying to reform current practitioners of their philosophy. But even before the museum got the sign back, they replaced it with a substitute, which seemed weird to me. I understand the importance of preserving artifacts from the Holocaust and using them to tell the true story, but I couldn’t help feeling glad when the sign was down.
Good
, I thought.
Take it
. I’m sick of looking at it, and I’m sure the survivors could live without it, too.

Past the gate there’s that wide gravel path that leads to the buildings. It reminded me of a country lane. The air was mild and plentiful. I could breathe. In fact, I didn’t feel anxious at all. It was as if by walking into that prison willingly, I’d shaken something loose. I traipsed around the bunkers and the crematorium as if I’d been there a hundred times. My steps were light and bold; I felt impatient to see everything, and lighthearted as I discovered the reconstructed barracks and sterile gas chamber. I was so oblivious to the creepiness of the place that I abandoned Joe at the ovens and took off by myself. But I didn’t feel alone at all. And a line kept going through my head like a repeating song lyric.
They can’t hurt you anymore
, I thought, over and over. Not:
They can’t hurt you
or
They can’t hurt you
now. But these exact words:
They can’t hurt you
anymore. I knew it was kooky to think these words, but they felt comforting.

On the train ride back to Munich, I relaxed into my seat and watched the pleasant village slide by as we pulled away. Joe, like a normal person, was shaken and tense. I leaned my forehead against the window glass and saw a face. It was a twelve-year-old girl. She was hollow-eyed and silent and I knew she was me. Then an older couple entered the picture. I knew I wasn’t really seeing these people, but it didn’t feel like the work of my imagination, either. The images were popping up on a screen in my head as if from my subconscious, though I wasn’t asleep. The man and the woman, who I knew to be the girl’s parents, gave me an order: Go on and live your life.

Because she hadn’t be able to.

I never told you this for a few reasons.

1. It’s crazy!
   
2. It seems made-up.
   
3. It’s crazy.
   

And yet, there are those who believe that people of my generation are the reincarnated souls of Holocaust victims. Maybe I really was there as a twelve-year-old girl, and my vision was one of those other-realm things that never make sense. Maybe the reason we’ve seemed so familiar to each other from the beginning is that I knew you back then, either at Dachau or before. Your baby sister was close to age twelve the last time you saw her. Her name was Sarah, which just happens to be my Hebrew name. Am I her? Does that explain why you dropped into my life?

No.

That’s crazy. That seems made-up.

David hates when I use the word JAP. He thinks I’m a self-hating Jew. I’m really not. If anything, I’m an other-hating Jew. And I don’t even hate the people I’m referring to when I use the abbreviation for Jewish American Princess. I’m just so disappointed in them for personifying clichés. And I’m afraid that they’re putting the rest of us in danger.

Think about it. Hitler got away with all of his shit for so long because he convinced ignorant people that the Jews were rich and controlling and deserved to be taken down. Tyrants throughout history have used the moneylender argument to try to get rid of us. I’m not saying it’s a correct assessment, of course. Plenty of Jews aren’t wealthy. Plenty of flashy people aren’t Jews. And plenty of wealthy Jews do the right thing, no matter what the social risk. Most important, no amount of obnoxious behavior or perceived abuse of power justifies genocide. But I’m saying if the anti-Semites insist on continuing the game, we should play a little defense. That means, stop handing them ammunition.

Whenever I see a person who happens to be Jewish flaunting his or her wealth and status, I get pissed. Especially if she’s acting like a privileged jerk while doing so. Like the time the woman wearing Chanel sunglasses and carrying a Gucci bag threw a fit in the post office because the clerk couldn’t make change for a $100 bill, the only form of payment the customer had with her. Or the time a local temple pushed the gold metaphor too far.

I learned about it in an e-mail that announced, in bold letters and with great excitement, the upcoming gold buyback event to raise money for the congregation.

“With gold at historic highs, this may be the right time to ‘cash in,’ ” the e-mail announced. “Sell your old, broken, and unwanted gold (and silver) jewelry (including broken chains, single earrings, etc.) and receive immediate cash payment.”

You have got to be fucking kidding me
, I thought.

Nope. It was real. A jeweler would be on hand at the upcoming craft fair to
BUY GOLD FOR CASH
. He would donate some of his profits to the temple. He would be “paying on the spot.”

“Enjoy the craft fair and make real money while you shop!”

And we wonder why they hate us.

My favorite part was the word
unwanted
. Because, you know, we have such an excess of gold that it’s starting to block light from coming through the windows.

Would I have been this offended if a church were holding the same fund-raiser? Probably not. I still would have found it tacky for a group to associate such blatant commerce with a place of religion, but not threatening. Non-Jews don’t have to worry about being stung by this stereotype. But come on, Jews. A gold fund-raising event? Should we also bring the blood of a Christian neighbor child for matzo baking? How about hiring an artisan to sell knit caps for our horns?

One could argue that letting such things upset me means I believe the stereotypes to be true, which I don’t. But I know that other people still believe them. Your family died because their fellow citizens were gullible to stories of Jewish evils.

I know I shouldn’t use the term JAP; that gives the bad guys fodder, too. I should just say what I feel: Tone it down.

I’m still scared.

And then you seized power for the first and last time. No wonder you remember these years as the greatest of your life.

After the Americans saved you, they sent you to a displaced persons (DP) camp close to Munich. You and refugees from all countries, and of all religions, ate and rested, but you weren’t crazy about the setup. You’d heard about a DP camp where almost everyone was Jewish, so you requested a transfer. That got you four years of fun and frolic in Feldafing.

Here’s what was so good about it: You were twenty-six years old and got to act it. There was sex and dancing and money earned furtively. You rode the train wherever you wanted. You made payback and love.

Here’s what was bad about it, in your mind: nothing.

Yet Feldafing was far from a palace. The one-time Nazi training school was overcrowded. There wasn’t enough food or clothing, so former prisoners were still wearing their striped camp uniforms, or they had switched to brown pajamas left behind by the thirteen-year-old
schoolboys. Though the guards now spoke English, you were still expected to obey.

It’s not surprising that you weren’t treated like kings. The attitude from the top was atrocious.

Big shot General George Patton, responding to a famous report on the despicable conditions, wrote in his diary: “[He] and his ilk believe that the Displaced Person is a human being, which he is not, and this applied particularly to the Jews, who are lower than animals.”

Nice.

Even Jewish organizations did less than they could have done to help, at least, at the beginning. When an American military rabbi—who made the first stink about DP camp conditions—asked the World Jewish Congress for help reuniting people with their families, the Congress gave him bureaucratic excuses for withholding assistance. I believe this is called foreshadowing.

Eventually, conditions in the DP camp improved. Truckloads of clothing arrived. Schools, theater troupes, and newspapers materialized. Jewish organizations made your well-being a priority, and General Dwight D. Eisenhower himself inspected Feldafing to make sure it was decently habitable.

But you don’t remember celebrity visits. You remember teaching another displaced man how to flirt. You remember the big cakes they made every Sunday. You remember having enough money to pay a tailor in the DP camp to make you a black pin-striped suit. You remember teaching people how to dance.

The steps came right back to you. Or maybe they’d never left. Maybe you waltzed in your imagination to get through the hours of emptying dead people’s pockets. I’ll have to ask you about that when you wake up.

You had always danced in Zychlin.

“Everyone in my family could dance,” you said. “Before the war we would walk a few miles to another town. Some fellow would be playing the fiddle. The couples would get up and dance.”

Your aunt and uncle were dance instructors, though you don’t remember them teaching you. You just figured out how to tango, foxtrot, waltz—all the steps.

“People are born knowing all kinds of things,” you said.

I’m a horrible dancer, but I asked you to show me your skills one day. There in your tiny apartment, you jumped up from your chair and held out your tattooed arm. I stood in front of you. You took my hand, put an arm around my waist, and began to count: One, two, three, four,
onetwothreefour
. Your steps were fluid. You held your head high, looked down at me and giggled, becoming for a moment a boy again on a dance floor in Poland. So many bad things had happened since those days, yet your body never forgot how to twirl, how to glide through an imaginary box, and how to sweep a girl off her feet. I wonder how many of the leftover humans in that DP camp remembered how to live again because you taught them the same steps you were trying to teach me. I wonder how many of them wanted to swoon like I did at that moment.

Let’s not forget that you got handsome in the middle of these wonder years. A Jewish surgeon at the nearby hospital clipped something behind your eyeball, and just like that, you weren’t cross-eyed anymore. The operation cost you nothing except two weeks in a bandage. The new you was even happier than the old you, if that was possible.

“We were living like there was no tomorrow. We didn’t know what would happen next.”

Love, perhaps?

You met Leah on the dance floor in Feldafing. She had a round face, pretty black hair, and brown eyes. She wasn’t too thin or too fat, too tall or too short. Just right, Goldilocks. The band played and you asked her to dance. Then you talked.

She was a few years younger than you, also from Poland, and also alone in the world. You shared stories about what you’d been through. There was chemistry, but no proper place to act on it. You both lived with roommates, but even if you’d had a swinging bachelor pad, you wouldn’t have slept with her. She was a nice Jewish girl; you took care of your needs by sleeping with the enemy.

People who plied their prewar trades of making shoes and clothes in the DP camp earned cigarettes and, sometimes, money, but you never got paid for giving dance lessons. It didn’t matter, though. The black market kept you flush enough.

You remember the routine. You’d wake up in your own bed in the room you shared with a couple of guys. After breakfast in a cafeteria, you’d head to the train station and take a short ride to the farms or the city. The black market consisted of the Jews trading camp supplies, such as food, cigarettes, clothing, or material, to German farmers for eggs, chicken, or butter that was then sold at a markup back to the Jews or to other Germans. Then you’d take the money you earned and buy more farmers’ goods and repeat the cycle.

One farmer, a lady in her seventies, claimed she had nothing to sell you.

“Do you know who I am?” you asked. “I am Jewish. Do you know what happened to the Jews?”

The old lady realized she had something to sell after all.

“What do you want?” she asked.

The next time you visited, she acted like you were best friends. She insisted she hadn’t known anything about what the Jews were going through during the war.

“Did you read the paper?” you asked.

But chickens weren’t the only things the guilt-ridden Germans gave up. After years of living like a eunuch, you had no trouble shoving a length of fabric or pair of stockings at a girl and convincing her to spread her legs. It must have felt even better emotionally than it did physically. Screwing those girls, back in the day when no one admitted to premarital sex, stole their dignity. A minuscule percentage of the dignity their people stole from you, but still, something.

“I wasn’t the only one to be with Germans, even if we hated them. It was almost like revenge, taking advantage of those girls.”