Life's a Scream Read online

  Time was unimportant. Pain was what counted. Pain from sitting on the ice-cold ground, pain from bruises and cuts picked up along the way, pain from the separation from family and pain from hunger. I’d never been a particularly great eater but my small appetite hadn’t been satisfied for many hours. I swayed in and out of consciousness, so cold that I couldn’t even cry. A man in a Nazi uniform stopped in front of my parents and ordered them to follow him. My mother tried to pull me to my feet and I fought against the unrelenting pressure. I wanted to stay where I was, movement meant pain and I had had enough. My mother picked me up and we followed the man in uniform who seemed to know where he was going. He took us to a truck waiting by the side of the platform and my mother put me on board and then, with the help of the man, heaved my father in beside me. I was terrified that we would leave without Matka and tried to jump down. Papa attempted to stop me but he was too weak. A stinging slap to my bare, ice-cold leg brought me momentarily to my senses. My mother climbed in beside me and took me in her arms. Two guards followed us on and one of them banged on the cab with the flat of his hand.

  The truck moved off immediately into the pitch-dark night. Naked to the elements, we sat shivering as the snow fell on us. Papa pulled me on to his lap and covered me totally with his coat. We bumped and thrashed along for some time, the engine straining and the tyres trying to keep traction until we got to an area with bright lights, a big iron gate and barbed-wire fences with watch towers at intervals. Soldiers with guns stood on the watch towers, pointing their weapons at us. The truck passed through the gate and stopped outside a brick building with lots of tall glass windows.

  Cold, hungry and miserable, I started crying again. My father’s wound frightened me. Who would take care of us if Papa couldn’t? My father had always been so positive, sure in what he did and what he wanted. To see him sitting on the floor listless, not making his mark on the surroundings, was terrifying.

  We went inside the building and were told to sit and wait in the corridor. Mama pulled me up on to her lap and, out of the snow, I began to feel comforted. We sat there for hours. Mascha made a little nest with her coat and I dropped off to sleep.

  Heavy footsteps woke me up. The Kommandant of the camp, Max Pauly, wearing an impressive uniform and an overbearing manner, stopped in front of my father. He tried to get to his feet but the effort was too much. Matka was on her feet, speaking fast and persuasively. I couldn’t follow what she was saying but I could tell it was important. But not as important as my hunger. I started whining again in the hope that the big man would be more sympathetic than my parents and give me some food. Nobody took any notice.

  That night we were ordered to sleep in a hut, empty except for cubicles with rows of rough wooden bunks three high. Mascha put me on one and I thought it was the most luxurious place I had ever known. It was out of the icy wind and snow, and I had a thin mattress, a blanket and even a wonky pillow. I snuggled down and fell asleep at once.

  At dawn, still hungry and miserable, I noticed a terrible stench, and the cots that had appeared so wonderful the night before were damp and unyielding. There was also a loudspeaker shouting a few inches from my ear – enough to make anyone cry. Mama tried to go in search of food but was stopped at the door by a couple of men in ‘pyjamas’. Shortly after, I learned that they were prisoners. Everyone in pyjamas was a prisoner and those who weren’t were to be feared and avoided.

  I needed to go to the loo and left my poor mother in no doubt that if I didn’t go immediately the result would be all her fault. One of the prisoners offered to take me. That first encounter with a camp latrine was memorable. It was open on three sides with a long seat with round holes roughly cut at equal distance along the whole length. The stink was eye-watering but the companionable seating appealed to me. And it’s surprising how easy it is to get used to vomit-inducing odours.

  Back at the hut, Mascha was trying to light the pot-belly stove but without dry tinder her efforts were getting her nowhere. Later in the day we were taken back to the warm offices with the big windows. My mother sat on a bench, very upright, very tense. I was bored and tried to persuade her to play with me but she wasn’t in the mood. She sat staring at the door through which my father had vanished as if our lives depended on it. And they probably did. What seemed like hours later my father suddenly appeared. He seemed better now – more confident. He grabbed me by the hand and hustled us both outside as if he was afraid that his good fortune might leak away if he hung around too long. We went back to the hut. It was still empty. My father settled down on one of the bunks and pulled me in beside him. I felt warm and protected. My mama had gone off somewhere. I was just explaining my hunger to him when she returned. She had some bread and a tin pot containing a dark liquid. I hated both but Matka’s patience was wearing thin after listening to my non-stop whining and she gave me a take-it-or-starve alternative and I took the former.

  I was lying in the crook of my father’s arm on the bunk, almost asleep, when the door opened and a man entered. My father gently extricated himself and stood up. My mama was crying and seemed to be on the point of collapse. I was embarrassed. Until recently I had never seen my mother cry – now she never seemed to stop. My father cuddled her and then came back to me and gave me a quick kiss. I was amazed. He also seemed close to tears. He turned away abruptly and followed the man out of the hut. Matka picked me up and held me so that I could see out of the window. A car stood a little way up the path between rows of huts. It was big and shiny and black. My father turned and waved, then climbed into the back. As the car sped off I could see my papa’s white face staring back at us through the little window. Mama was crying openly now, not making any attempt to hide her sorrow. She didn’t seem to know what to do. It was the only time I can remember her appearing hopeless. I didn’t really know what was going on but I joined in her tears anyway.

  A man in a uniform came into the hut and spoke to my mother. I was fascinated by his black shiny boots and the way he kept swatting them with his riding crop. The man saw my interest and flicked me gently on the arm. I didn’t like that and glared at him. He patted me on the cheek with the floppy end of the whip. Angry, I grabbed at it. He teasingly flicked it away, then pushed it back again. Again I tried to grab it but he was too quick. He laughed, nodded to my mother and left. She picked me up and wept into my hair. I didn’t know what it was all about and struggled to get down. She held on tightly. So far, my whining and sniffling had been about normal for a healthy five-year-old. My mother’s tears and seeing my father being forced to leave us opened the dam, and I sank to the ground, shrieking and crying. Perhaps our situation had finally sunk in: Welcome to Stutthof concentration camp, my home for the next three years.

  Three

  We were taken to Block 5. There were two doors in the hut. Just inside the main door was a little cubicle that was inhabited by an ogre in human form: the Kapo – overseer. She looked and sounded just like everyone else but was to be avoided. She handed us our camp uniform, wooden clogs, leggings and striped shift.

  Behind the huts there was a double line of latrines. The huts were locked at night and admission to the latrines outside the normal hours was by direct permission of the ogre only. Not to be allowed to go to the latrine, with diarrhoea rampant in the camp, was torture. If anyone messed herself or her bunk, she would be badly beaten, which could result in death. The washing facilities were spartan and I tried to avoid them at all cost. To wash with cold water in the wind and draft was hell. But the latrines were a lot worse. This dark, stinking corrugated hut built on pressed earth concentrated an odour which, mixed with the stink from the smoking chimney, could be smelled all over the camp. Nowhere was free of it, especially on the days when the latrines were cleaned out. That was the day to have a streaming cold. The method for cleaning them was quite interesting. There were no cubicles and the seats were just a row of holes in a wooden plank, cut so close together that you actually touched the next bottom when you sat down. To
clean the latrines the plank was taken off to reveal an awesome pit below, filled with bubbling excrement. The recommended method of emptying it out was to drop a bucket in and then carry it to the pits near the barbed-wire fence which had already been dug by a more fortunate group of prisoners. But it didn’t work – a fact that everyone recognised as soon as they got on the job. The only way, and the cleanest, was to jump in the pit, scoop out a bucketful and hand it to someone else to dispose of.

  My mother was detailed to work in the camp laundry. In the morning, which was 4 a.m., the alarm bell went and everybody rushed to get ready for roll-call. On the first day I woke up in our bunk squashed in beside my mother and another woman. It was still pitch dark and the noise of over a hundred or so women banging around was terrifying. I tried to cuddle up to my mother but she had already got the idea that lying around in the bunk might not be the healthiest way to spend the morning. The door at the end of the hut crashed open and I could hear a dog snapping and snarling. It was so horrifying I don’t think I even cried.

  My mother gripped my jaw, put her mouth close to my ear and told me to stay in the bunk, to keep out of the way, not to be seen. That got the tear ducts going. I demanded she take me with her. For once she wasn’t going to be seduced by tears. I tried to cling to her back but she broke my grip and was gone. I lay there sobbing to myself.

  A new sound distracted me from my tears: a rustling and high-pitched squealing. The big room was lighter now and hanging over the side of the bunk I could see dark shapes scampering across the floor. Rats. That did it. No more tears. I pulled the blanket over my head and just quaked – with an occasional convulsive kick when I thought my area was being invaded.

  The day passed slowly. Occasionally I heard a sound outside and hoped it was my mother coming back. Once someone entered the hut and walked through it. I knew it wasn’t my mother and lay as still as a straw doll under my protective blanket. As the day dragged on I became a little more adventurous. I came out of my nest and wiped the glass window-pane above my bunk with my sleeve. Outside was a barbed-wire enclosure which was empty. I guessed they would bring cattle and horses there in the spring. I would love that.

  As the days passed I began to develop a routine. Matka had been told that children in the camp were groomed to be given to childless Germans. She was terrified that she would lose me. When prisoners brought new straw I hid under one of the bunks in the far corner and watched their legs go to and fro until they left. My mother had drilled it into me: no one must be aware of me. When I asked her why not, she told me that if I were found they would send me away and I would never see her again. I asked if I would be with my father. She just took me in her skinny arms and rocked me backwards and forwards. I didn’t ask her about going away or my father after that. I was too frightened of her reaction.

  Somehow I got through the days, sitting on the bunk and awaiting my mother’s return. How long this went on I have no idea. Probably not as endlessly as it seemed. It was long enough for me to shrug off my original fears and become almost daring. Even the rats no longer bothered me. They represented life, of a sort, and, if the opportunity had arisen, I would have had a bedful of rats as playmates.

  Then everything changed. One morning the doors to our block were thrown open, uniformed guards charged in and screamed at everybody to get up and get out. This morning there was no comforting chatter as the women prepared for the day, no reassuring hug from my mother. There was barely time for her to hide me. Everything was confusion, dogs, shouts, cries, stomping feet. It was so frightening that I forgot I was supposed to stay quiet and added to the cacophony with wild yells and entreaties of my own. I still might have been overlooked – there was so much general noise – if it hadn’t been for the dogs. Drawn by my high-pitched screaming, they tugged at their chains until their handlers pulled aside the blanket that my mother had draped across me. Terrified by the dogs, I screamed for Matka, who came running into the hut, weeping and begging them not to hurt me. I hung on to Mascha’s legs with all my strength but they pulled me off her, marched her off with her work detail, and one of the guards, who seemed to find the situation amusing, bore me off, still shouting and crying.

  Where I finished up was a surprise. All the time I had been hiding in the barrack hut I had not seen anyone near my age. Now I was carried through a little gate and into a hut: the Kinderschuppen – children’s shed. A tall woman in a white coat was sitting at a desk. The guard put me on my feet, said something to her and left. She asked me my name but I wasn’t in a talkative mood. She shrugged, went to the door and called to someone. A woman with a hump appeared in the doorway. I was terrified. I had been brought up on Babi Yaga fairy tales and standing in the doorway with the sun low behind her she reminded me of a witch. She came forward and bent to pick me up. I tried to seek protection from the woman in white but she just pushed me into the arms of the witch. It took me a long time to calm down but when I did I reassessed my opinion of my new ‘keeper’. She was gentle and kind. She asked me if I wanted to pick a place to sleep where I’d feel at home. I went straight to the back where the little window was in the old block and found there was one there, too. And it had a better view of the field where they would be putting cattle and horses soon, when the spring came, when the sun would shine and the grass would look green, not grey and cold like now.

  I soon decided that Fräulein Gloge was nice, not like the other Kapos. She didn’t shout and at times she even smiled. In truth, she was more of a nanny than a Kapo. I soon forgot her hump. When I kept crying for my mother and peeing in the bunk, she whispered that my mother was all right, she was in the laundry, nice and warm . . . She would soon come and see me. As I began to calm down I was amazed to find that the little area set aside from the main camp was full of children. They all appeared to be more or less my age. I was given a smock and a bunk, with a proper mattress and two blankets. But the best thing was the toilets, which were four low buckets that we could use day and night and that hardly smelled at all and were emptied regularly by prisoners from the main camp.

  We were sleeping three to a bunk, head to toe, a great luxury compared with the other hut where there was even less room. And I had my little window. It almost felt like home. To indoctrinate and prepare us for our future glory deep in the bosom of a truly teutonic family we were given German lessons. Although we were from many different countries and spoke different languages, we were forced to talk to each other in German. Sometimes Fräulein Gloge took us off to play in the wired enclosure, which was magical because there was no restriction on noise making or running around. There was even a see-saw of sorts and Fräulein Gloge would sit on a wooden plank left over from building the watch towers and occasionally smile if you did something she liked. I must admit I loved her a little. I used to show off like mad whenever I thought she was watching.

  Fräulein Gloge came to my bunk one morning and told me I could expect a visitor. My mother, along with several others, was being allowed to come. I had the unworthy thought that Matka might spoil it and take me away with her. It was pouring with rain when she arrived so we sat on my bunk and she hugged me until I wished she’d stop. Later the Fräulein brought a piece of bread. It was a real treat. I can still remember the taste. After we had eaten we were all told to go out for a ‘routine inspection.’

  Outside, the mud was up to our ankles, sucking at the clogs we had to wear. I noticed that my mother was shaking all over and knew it was a bad sign. A couple of men in uniforms with another in a long leather coat arrived. My mother became even more agitated and I could hear her keening to herself, which scared me. The three men walked along the line. Occasionally they stopped and the man with the leather coat looked at one of the children while a guard made notes in a book. They came to me. I was curious. The one with the long leather coat smiled at me. He looked quite nice. I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. He turned my head from side to side and looked at my knees. He was particularly taken with my head. It was a
lot better now but the lice in the main camp had done a good job on it and my endless scratching when my mother wasn’t there to stop me had produced some really impressive scabs. Evidently the leather-coated one wasn’t a scab fan and gave a negative shake of his head. The trio got to the end of the line, said something to the woman in the white coat, and left. She walked over and with the help of Fräulein Gloge separated the selected children from their mothers, who howled and screamed and tried to hang on to them by force.

  My mother stopped shaking. She hurriedly bent down, held me for an instant so tight it took my breath away and whispered ‘Lucky day . . . !’ and hurried off to her work.

  The selected children were bundled aboard a truck which left at once. These chosen ones were going to German families who wanted children and couldn’t have any of their own. It’s a sobering thought that with my almost white-blonde hair I would have been carted off to be brought up as a staunch supporter of the Third Reich if it hadn’t been for a particularly virulent attack of scabies.

  Later they took dark-haired children too. Like my best friend Rachel who was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. I envied her dark curly hair and black eyes, and the way she could dance. She told me she was a gypsy. We’d entertain the guards sometimes, she would dance and I would sing. We had rehearsed a routine with Fräulein Gloge. What a riot it must have been. I didn’t really know any songs and just made them up. We’d laugh a lot and the guards would give us an apple or chocolate.

  We were playing something like ‘Round the Mulberry Bush’ outside the Kinderschuppen. We were seven that day, sometimes we’d be more. If we were less we wouldn’t play ‘Ringel Ringel Reihe, wir sind der Kinder Dreie – one has gone to breathe the gas – jetzt sind wir nur noch zweie!’