Kanada (6 page)

“Get out of my sight!” he spat. I took the stool. He waved us away without checking Mama's knapsack.

“You're a brave girl,” said Grandmama.

“At least we won't starve for now,” said Mama. Her eyes were bright with tears. “What will Papa say when he finds out that my bracelet is gone?”

“He'll buy you another one when the war is over,” said Grandmama.

Next, we were lined up for a humiliating body search.

That night, our reserve of dry salami and bread long gone, we tossed and turned as we tried to sleep on the prickly hay. We were jarred awake by the screams of women, children, and old men who were being beaten most cruelly for withholding prized possessions. Early the next morning, the chug-chug of a steam engine pulling a long line of cattle cars woke me from a fitful sleep. The train came through the gates right into the fertilizer factory.

Friday, June 30, 1944 –
Monday, July 3, 1944

I
could sense the fear that ran through the crowd of terrified women and bewildered children as they caught sight of the train. The gendarmes yelled at us to line up in rows of five, and then they prodded, kicked, and shoved us into the cattle cars. Seventy or eighty people were herded into each cattle car that would have comfortably held thirty. Mama and I sat on the floor, leaning against her suitcase. Grandmama was leaning awkwardly against her wooden stool. She was the one suffering the most, but she did not utter a word of complaint. Only the pallor of her lips bore testament to her pain.

I felt faint from the press of sticky bodies against my skin, the stench of human flesh, and the staleness of the air in the
overcrowded box. The summer sun cutting through the barred window high up on the wall of the car was so intense that I felt my bones would melt.

Before long, my muscles were screaming for relief. Every inch of the floor was taken up by human bodies except for a circle around two pails at opposite ends of the car. One pail was empty. The tepid drinking water that had filled it was long gone. The other pail was the toilet.

“I'd die before I'd use that bucket with all these people looking on,” I said to Agi.

“We might not have a choice,” she answered.

She was right. Some of the younger women piled their luggage around the pail to create an illusion of privacy and dignity for the poor wretches who had to use the bucket.

At first, people chatted to help pass the time. Young mothers comforted their crying children and soothed their restless babies. Agi had a wonderful singing voice. She stood on top of her suitcase and began to sing a song we'd learned at school. The wagon resonated with sweet voices as women and children joined in:

Agi's pure notes broke at the end of the song. In the silence of the next moment, we remembered what we had
lost, until Mrs. Grazer's lament brought us back to reality.

“What will happen to us? What will happen to us?”

As time crawled by, no one had the strength to talk. I sat scrunched up or lay crookedly in the gloom hour after monotonous hour. My mind began to play tricks on me. I began to imagine the wooden sides of the cattle car and its ceiling moving in closer and closer, pressing my body tighter and tighter against the other bodies, until all our flesh was melded into one flesh, and the cattle car became a traveling communal coffin.

The train slowly rolled through the countryside, stop-ping randomly in the middle of the fertile wheat fields. Whenever this happened, the people closest to the doors beat on them with all of their might but to no avail. The doors stayed closed, and one of the buckets remained empty while the other filled to overflowing with its foul contents.

I felt a raging thirst. My whole being was concentrated on the desire for a drink. I would have given anything, done anything, just to feel for an instant the cool, refreshing slip-periness of water on my tongue.

It was growing dark outside. We could only see patches of dusky sky through the barred window. The train suddenly stopped and the doors were flung open. Three Germans in black
SS
uniforms appeared in the open doorway, their rifles aimed at us. A few paces behind them stood a Hungarian peasant with a handlebar mustache. He was dressed in traditional wide pantaloons.

“Oh my God … Germans!” whispered Mama. “They must be handing us over to the Germans.”

“We're in Kassa!” said Grandmama, pointing to a large sign hanging on the station wall. Kassa was on the Slovakian border.

“Where could they be taking us?” I asked my mother. “Didn't Chief Magyar say we were going to a work camp?”

Mama shook her head helplessly. “They're all liars.”

A blond
SS
soldier, with the face of a bulldog, stepped forward. “Buckets! Give buckets!” he snarled in broken Hungarian.

We passed the two buckets to him, and he handed them to the peasant, who took them away. Then the three
SS
men stepped back, their rifles still pointed at us, and the doors of the cattle car clanged shut.

“They must be getting water for us. That's why they wanted the buckets,” somebody said.

We waited and waited, but the Germans did not return. Finally, the door of the car was partially opened, and the
SS
man with the bulldog face reappeared just long enough to throw in an empty pail, narrowly missing a woman. The wagon doors banged shut again.

“Water! Water! Please! Give us water! Open the door! We need water!”

We pounded on the doors, but no one came. Mama and Grandmama were slumped over our luggage, eyes closed. I was desperate to look outside to see what was happening.
The wagon was so crowded that it was impossible to walk, so I crawled over prone, complaining bodies. A mound of luggage was piled up below the window. Someone gave me a boost so I could see the entire station. The normalcy of the scene stunned me. Nearby, two peasants were sitting on a wooden bench in front of the station house. One was munching on dark bread. He took a knife out of his pocket and cut off a slice. My mouth watered as I watched him offer it to his companion. A well-dressed couple with their little son stood on the platform waiting for a train. The young husband was leaning toward his wife, and her head was thrown back in laughter. The boy was hanging on to his mother's skirt as if his life depended on it. There were Hungarian soldiers, gendarmes, and
SS
men everywhere, chatting and laughing, as if they belonged to a different species than the cruel trio that had just left us.

The swishing sound of steam being released made me look down the tracks. Separated from our train by half-a-dozen railway tracks was a locomotive being filled with water. Long hoses attached to taps on the side of the station house were pouring water into an open valve on the top of the engine, making it come to life with hissing and rattling noises. I couldn't take my eyes off the throbbing engine slaking its thirst. I licked my parched lips. At first, I was filled with envy of the drinking monster, and then I was consumed by a greater grief than I have ever felt as I realized to what depths I had been reduced.

Two men in overalls and peaked caps were talking next to the locomotive. I forced my arms through the bars on the window and waved at them.

“Water! Please, please, give me some water!” I called.

One of the men looked in my direction. He stooped down and picked something up from the ground. I couldn't see what it was because the thick hoses obscured my line of vision. I felt faint with relief. He must have been picking up a container to fill it up with water for me. Suddenly, he pitched the object my way. A searing pain tore through my arm, and I fell backward onto the human carpet below me. It must have been a stone. My arm ballooned up and turned purple later on.

As we traveled through the dark countryside, only an occasional moan or cry interrupted the stillness. The blackness of the night outside mirrored our deepening desperation. When dawn finally stole into the wagon, it cast bars of shadow onto our faces.

“How long can this go on?” asked Grandmama softly. She hadn't spoken since we left Kassa.

“Not long, I hope,” replied Mama. “We can't last much longer like this.”

Agi nodded. Her mother was silent, her eyes blank.

The train rolled on and on through the wheat fields under a scorching, merciless sun. Day turned into night and night into day again before we arrived at another railway station. A sign in black letters read,
AUSCHWITZ
. We remained in the cattle car without moving for a full day. We waited and waited, but the doors of the wagon did not open. We were silent, too weak to protest. At noon the next day, the loco-motive came to life again. A half-hour later, the train stopped, and the doors of
the cattle car clanged open. The sudden brightness blinded me. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. Several figures dressed in striped pajamas with matching caps appeared in the doorway. They were followed by a dozen German soldiers in the
SS
uniform. Their rifles were pointed at us.

“Los! Los! Out! Out!” they yelled.

Monday, July 3, 1944

P
etrified. Turned to stone. Everything happened so fast that I had no time to think. I understood nothing. Who were the men in the striped pajamas? What did the Germans want from us? They were armed, so there was no choice but to obey their shouted orders: “Los! Los! Raus! Raus!”

An officer stepped forward. “Do not panic! You're in a good place.” He sounded friendly, and he spoke perfect Hungarian. “You will be given food, water, and a comfortable bed to sleep in. You will be reunited with members of your families who were transported before you.” A happy murmur broke through the crowd. Suddenly, without warning, the man screamed, “Los! Los! Get out of here!”

We linked arms with Grandmama and helped her climb down. I was holding her stool in my free hand. The men in
the striped pajamas tossed our suitcases out of the train.

“My coat!” cried Mama. “I must get my coat back!”

“Forget it, Mama! Don't call attention to yourself. It's gone.”

One of the men in stripes tried to take Grandmama's stool away from me.

“Please, sir! Let me keep it!” I pleaded. “My grandmother has a heart condition. She has to put her feet up so they don't swell. She might need her stool.”

“She won't need it where she is going,” he muttered in Hungarian, but he let go of it. Sweat ran down my face and trickled down my back. The cruel brightness of the sun highlighted Grandmama's pinched expression and the whiteness of her lips. It etched every line in Mama's tired face, making her look much older than her forty years. I was so exhausted and weak that I had to lean against the train.

“Hold on, Jutka,” said Mama. “We'll soon get something to eat and a comfortable bed. And we'll see Papa and Dezso!”

Grandmama wasn't listening. She was looking around. “We must be in hell!” she said.

There was barbed wire everywhere. Men in
SS
uniforms and high shiny boots held the leashes of snarling dogs. Two watchtowers loomed behind us. Brick huts stood to our left and rows of wooden stables to our right. Ahead, several tall chimneys were belching black smoke into the air. An acrid, burning smell filled our lungs, making it difficult to breathe. Agi and I covered our noses with our hands.

“Men and women separate! The women's group goes first, with the men following them, five prisoners in each row!”

The guns pointed at us were incentive enough for us to move through the steps of this strange dance quickly and quietly. The eerie silence on the platform was only interrupted by the wails of young children in their mothers' arms and the barking of the dogs. I walked beside Grandmama, her stool still clutched in my hand. Mama was next to Agi and her mother.

A few minutes later the same officer yelled, “Form a single line!”

Mama went first. Behind her was Grandmama, then Mrs. Grazer, me, and Agi. We passed in front of an
SS
officer standing on a slightly elevated podium. He was a youngish man, tall and handsome. He held a short rubber stick. As the people passed him, he pointed his baton in the direction each person was supposed to go. Mama tried to tell him that the five of us were together. He did not answer her but pointed to the left. Mama obeyed his order. As Grandmama went by him, he pointed in the same direction. Mama slowed her steps to allow Grandmama to catch up to her. They joined the large group heading toward the belching chimneys. They looked back, trying to see where the rest of us were being sent. Mrs. Grazer was ordered left and followed them. Then it was my turn.
Please, God, please, God, let me go with Mama and Grandmama!
The
SS
officer's eyes raked over me, head to toe.

“Please, sir! Please, sir! Let me go with my mother and grandmother,” I begged.

“How old are you, girl?” he asked. A man in stripes, standing behind him, translated.

I opened my mouth to tell him I was fourteen years old.

“Tell him that you are sixteen,” the translator said to me in Hungarian before I could speak.

I did as he said. I held up all ten of my fingers, then six more.

The baton pointed to the right.

I obeyed. There was nothing else I could do. I saw that Mrs. Grazer had caught up with Mama and Grandmama just as Agi was sent to my group. I suddenly realized that I was still holding on to Grandmama's wooden stool. I could see the three women in the distance, near the back of the crowd.

“I'll be right back,” I told Agi. “I have to give the stool to Grandmama!”

Without thinking, I ran after them. The
SS
guards did not stop me. The three women were walking slowly, with arms linked.

“You forgot the stool!” I gave it to Mama to carry.

“Be careful!” Grandmama said.

I turned around and ran back to my group. It didn't occur to me to kiss them good-bye or to stay with them. Mama's quiet “I love you!” followed after me floating in the foul air.