A Survivor's Guide to Eternity (23 page)

“Yes, I know but it’s very powerful. Terrifying to see how normality can drift into chaos and hatred in no time at all.”

“Yes, a slow painful process leading to me hiding in that cramped space with Ellie,” replied Yedida, as the duo came to an intersection in the tunnels. Ed followed Yedida’s lead as she steered them onto the right fork and they continued without a pause.

“How long were you there for?” queried Ed.

“I lost track of time. It was definitely years. It was strange because it got more intense as time went on. Fritz, the baker, got more and more uptight about the whole situation and in the end it started to get really difficult. We thought he was going to throw us out but then figured he wouldn’t risk it in case we told the Germans who had hidden us. It carried on incessantly until one day we heard the allied bombers overhead. The bombs got closer and closer and Ellie and I huddled together in the corner, terrified. Then there was a deafening explosion right next to the house and it blew the wall clean off, exposing us and our secret little lair. As we got up and dusted ourselves down we were exposed for all to see.

“I could see the smoking bomb crater with bits of wood, brick, plaster and pottery mixed up in a confused and nasty mess all around. I could see the bloodied severed arm of a German soldier lying neatly on top of a small pile of random rubble, balanced delicately as if by design. Then as the smoke cleared further, to our amazement we were suddenly face to face with two young German soldiers, also dusting themselves down and staring in disbelief at what had been uncovered. Ellie was still half-asleep. She panicked and freed herself from my clasp and then started to run around the crater. One soldier clumsily tried to pull his rifle from over his shoulder as if he had never had to do it before and started vomiting the word HALT over and over again with guttural disgust, waving his gun angrily in the direction of the tiny girl.

“She continued to run and stumble in panic and then BANG! She was gone with a single shot in the middle of the back, ripping right through to the front and dropping her on the spot in a pool of blood. It was total horror for me. This sweet little girl who had been such a close friend for that period suddenly vaporised in a moment of mindless impurity. I was devastated and resigned. The tears ripped out my lungs and heart as I stood up, put my hands behind my head and walked out towards the soldiers. They grabbed me, shook me back and forth and shouted abuse in my face.”

“We’ve got a black one here, my first black Jew. Might get a promotion for this one.”

“It was just a joke to them. They tied my hands behind my back and marched me through the rubble of the streets like a wild animal on display. I could see though from the tatty look of the soldiers and the rubble everywhere, this was a war they definitely were not winning. It filled me with joy, even though I knew I likely had only a very short time to live.”

“Do you know when this was?”

“Not exactly, but I do know that the fighting ended a few weeks after my capture, at least in the area that I was finally taken to.”

“What happened next?”

“They were very disorganised. I thought I would be interrogated or taken to a nasty police station but there was none of that. They kept me locked up for one night and then bundled me on a train, a wooden cattle train absolutely jam-packed with people, all with their little yellow stars. I wore mine proudly. I would have chosen being one of the persecuted every day of the week over and above becoming a mindless animal destroying human souls like disposable crockery.”

“That’s so incredibly brave.”

“It’s just standing up for what you believe in. If you honestly believe it then you have no choice anyway because you couldn’t suddenly start believing the opposite.”

“Well your father did,” replied Ed, wondering if he had pushed the boat out a bit too far, nervously aware of the sound of their feet squelching along in the sand. There was a brief silence before she replied.

“You’re right. In fact that became incredibly clear to me when, after two days of agonising discomfort in the train, we arrived at our destination and started to be unpacked like a delivery of coal bags. We jumped down from the train in little clumps of people, some falling and getting crushed by the next group that jumped down. Then we were funnelled like sheep into lines, all facing the train. Inside the carriages you could see the corpses lying motionless, the faeces and urine running between their pained bodies, dripping across the slats and out from the open doors onto those lucky enough to be trampled to death. That was our dignity and pride draining from those carriages right there.

“All around the vicious dogs barked on their strained leads and the guards shouted with terrifying violence. Then I saw my father in his Nazi uniform, rifle in hand. I cried out to him,

“VATER! VATER! It’s me, Yedida, Yedida.”

“He looked away instantly, focussing on another part of the line, whilst another guard came over and started laughing.

“Father? He’s your father is he, you fucking piece of shit. I’ve heard it all now. SHUT THE FUCK UP,” he yelled as he smacked me in the kidney as hard as he could with the butt of his rifle. It crippled me, doubling me up in two but luckily the people either side caught my arms and held me upright. One whispered in my ear in German mixed with Hungarian. ‘Don’t fall over, you’ll be dead. I managed to keep hold of myself with their help and by the time they had marched us over for selection, I was able to stand on my own. I had to walk past my father in the array of guards. I just looked ahead and ignored him.”

“I really have no idea how you survived this, Yedida.”

“It wasn’t easy. Anyway, soon I was in a big wooden hut and dressed in a revolting itchy, stripy uniform. It was disgusting. Every day we got up at the crack of dawn, marched for two hours, worked until dusk and then marched back. People were dying everywhere, all around at every point during the day. It was simply terrifying. These people had been stripped of every ounce of dignity. Everything eroded away at them, from the cold and cramped discomfort of the hut, the agonisingly humiliating open-plan toilets, the slave labour and the cruelty. It chipped away at one’s deepest psyche leaving only a shell, a zombie of death.”

“I cannot imagine all that, on such a grand scale as well,” replied Ed, looking down at his feet as they indented the fine grained red sand, one after the other. He glanced behind him to see them disappear into a perfectly smooth surface, just like he remembered from one of his previous communities. Yedida continued,

“It might have been on a grand scale but we all experienced it as individuals. People who I’ve met since tend to refer to the macro rather than the micro view. They refer to it like it was a school of fish or something. It’s much more horrific if you start to think about every single individual story. Everybody had their own very personal tale and they were all as heartbreaking as the next,” said Yedida emotionally.

“There was one middle-aged woman I met early on. She was quieter than the rest, very solitary and defensive. I never knew her name but she told me her story one day in the strictest confidence. She used to sit alone outside the hut on the uncomfortable ground for hours, staring into space like someone in a trance. Winter was coming in and it was starting to get much colder. One day I went over and sat beside her.

“It’s cold out here, you’re not helping yourself. Come inside, at least there’s a tiny bit of warmth from the stove and the other people.”

“She sat motionless, not even turning her head. I put my arm on her shoulder and reassuringly tried to lure her inside. She turned to look at me, her piercing eyes looking even more pronounced with her prominent malnourished cheek bones and shaved head.

“I don’t even deserve that. The hut is more than I am worth. You people are at least noble victims. Maybe you’ll get gassed finally, but at least you would be able to do that with innocence and pride.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, “We’re all equal now - we stand together in the face of this adversity. Come inside.”

“I can’t, really. I should be alone. If I told you my story you would agree,” she replied.

“What story?”

“I’ll tell you but you must promise that you’ll tell no one else. Please?” begged the frail individual.

“Okay, but only if you feel it’ll help you. I don’t want to know for knowing’s sake. I just want to help you.”

“Up until a few months ago I was a regular German woman. My husband was a war hero, killed at
Stalingrad
and my son, my beloved son, Jürgen was living his dream.”

“Your husband was a soldier, a German soldier?”

“Yes. Worse though, was my son. He was doing very well in the
Hitler-Jugend and I was supporting his dream. I believed in the whole thing, his training and development as someone who could be a servant of the Fuhrer. I was as fanatical as him and Hitler was my hero, even though I was covering up the basic fact that I had a Jewish grandparent. We had framed photos of Hitler in every room and went to all the rallies and events. We were devout to the religion, seduced by the powerful illusion. Then
Jürgen came home one day and told me he had been funnelled off into the Wafen SS. He told me how the authorities had identified him as a ‘big, tall, strong Aryan boy’ and complimented him on how ruthless he had been in his training. He was to report for duty at the end of the month. In the meantime he’d been given some time off to be with his family.

“I was so happy and yet so extraordinarily sad. I didn’t want him to join such a brutal section of the German army. I knew about the camps and what went on there from my husband’s gossip and really didn’t want to see Jürgen involved in all that. I burst into tears and didn’t know what to say to him. I hugged him with all my being, grabbed him by the shoulders, looked into his eyes and told him how much I loved him. He didn’t respond at all, totally cold and unemotional, not at all like he had been as a little boy years earlier. That training had changed him into a monster. It was ruthless and dehumanising. The stuff they had to do was unbelievable, from barbaric bare fist fights to competitions to see who could kill the most animals. They would put chickens and rabbits into an enclosure and send the boys in one by one. They each got a minute and the one who killed the most was the winner. Jürgen won every time, sometimes proudly bringing his blood stained shirt home to show me. That’s why we don’t stand a chance in here. That is how they are trained and we’re the chickens. They have had every vestige of emotion, compassion and fairness pounded out of them in their Fuhrer training. They are nothing more than heartless killers now.”

“But this doesn’t make sense. How did you end up in here?”

“I just got to a point where I couldn’t live the lie anymore. Not only was I suffering but my son had been converted into a machine whilst tens of thousands of people were being deported every week. I knew where they were going and I just cracked. I went down to the police station and handed myself in. I knew that would at least stop one SS officer from being recruited. Maybe it could have also saved his life, I don’t know. I do know he was arrested as well though. I saw him being taken into the cells as I was being led out to the train station. He spat at me and tried to ‘SIEG HEIL’ as much as he could in handcuffs. I just told him he was as Jewish as me and that now he could see the lie we had been living for the last ten years. Reality would overcome illusion finally.”

“I didn’t know what to say to her. It was such an extraordinary story. I just comforted her as best I could, told her a little of my life and advised her to go inside. She didn’t come in until much later.”

“Did she tell anyone else?”

“No, not to my knowledge. I certainly didn’t pass it around either. She wasn’t around for much longer anyway. A few days later I saw her running away from the hut towards the fence. ‘HALT’ ‘HALT’ ‘HALT’ rang out before a single shot burst into her head as she approached the fence. At least that was an end for her. I’m sure she felt better for having purged and offloaded her story. I had no idea how she lived with that at all.”

“To be honest, Yedida, I have no idea how you lived with all that either. What a view of humanity in a very short period of time,” replied Ed.

“Yes, it wasn’t easy. When I was a young girl I read a lot of novels and really looked forward to discovering the moral of the story or finding out how the characters were rescued, enlightened or gained salvation. In the camps, however, it was completely different, tragedy following tragedy, day after day, month after month, and year after year. No happy ending. It was truly devastating, a real book of horrors. I tried to be strong and tried to keep going and be positive. I put everything into it, losing count of time, day after day after day. Then one morning, they were all gone, every one those SS pigs. We were left roaming around the camp stepping over meatless shrivelled bodies, all with our yellow stars and stripy uniforms. It was like a surreal scene from another planet. We had got so used to the tormentors and then to suddenly not have them there was like walking without a floor. It was a complete shock. Then the Russians came and started to feed us and assess the situation. They raided the local town for clothes and we all got much more comfortable outfits to wear. Hence, this white trouser suit I am wearing now, and for the rest of eternity.”