The End of Days (31 page)

Read The End of Days Online

Authors: Helen Sendyk

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical, #History, #Holocaust, #test

BOOK: The End of Days
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only the local constables were around. The selected girls stood at attention for hours. When they were finally marched towards the gate for their departure, Fanny simply pushed Nachcia out of line. In the commotion I grabbed my sister's hand and pulled her along into the barracks. We hid, crouching in the corner on our cots, and sat there stunned for hours. With bitter weeping we poured out our anxiety and gratitude to God for this one more time that we had been spared.
Two years had passed since we were first incarcerated in this labor camp. Our limbs grew weaker, the labor felt harder, our stomachs were emptier and the emotional suffering became more severe. Hardest hit were the Hungarian girls, who were totally without resources. To still their hunger pangs, they scavenged through the garbage, picking out whatever was edible. Sometimes some were lucky enough to find peals from potatoes or other vegetables prepared in the camp kitchen for the staff. The few less moral prisoners cheated by going on the soup line twice, often not being noticed in the line of over a thousand people. There was a danger of taking away the portion of the last one on line, so no decent individuals tried to get doubles.
After food, clothing was our greatest problem. Our shoes were wearing out from all the marching. Business deals developed, and the going currency was our bread ration. A discarded belt from a factory motor would be concealed and carried back to camp. It might be bartered tot three portions of bread. Another portion would buy the services of the prison's shoemaker, who would use the leather belt to resole a pair of worn shoes. Now the girl would have the shoes to save her feet, but it would have cost her stomach four days of bread rations.
Others were not so lucky. Their shoes were gone altogether by now, and the camp provided them with clogs. Those thick wooden soles with cloth uppers offered poor protection for their weary feet. Heavy and abrasive, they made marching a torture. During the summer many prisoners carried the clogs
 
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over their shoulders and marched in bare feet, but in freezing winter weather this was impossible.
The long march in the heavy clogs was devastating for Nachcia, whose original shoes had been rendered useless. Nachcia's general situation was worsening. Her headaches were severe, and her eyesight was so impaired that she could not properly handle the machines. She was getting into constant trouble with her
Meister
, Paluch. I was panicky for my sister's welfare. Again I went pleading to Fanny to do whatever she could for my sister. My imploring finally brought results when Nachcia was placed in the kitchen. It was a glorious morning when she was marched away together with the kitchen staff. Nachcia felt grateful to me for my courage; she knew she could never have secured the job for herself. She finally appreciated her little sister's newfound aggressiveness.
The kitchen work itself turned out to be harder than the factory work. From before dawn till late into the night, Nachcia was in the kitchen hauling barrels of water, carrying pails full of potatoes, and scrubbing the big pots, sinks, and floors. For hours she sat hunched on a low stool, cutting potatoes. She hosed them down and transferred them into pots for cooking, but she was not allowed to be close to the cooked food. She was not the one ladling out the portions at the window when the girls lined up for dinner. Although Nachcia's job involved hard physical labor, she thought of herself as lucky to be out of the factory. Her gratitude toward Fanny was immeasurable, and her faith in God was stronger than ever. The Lord had spared her the long marches and the sadistic
Meisters
and was leading her to safety, holding her under his protective wing until that time when she could safely return home to Mama and Papa and her family. In return, Nachcia pledged to help others the best she could, having been placed in the vicinity of that precious life-giving substance, food.
Winter was fast approaching. The days were shorter. We again stood at attention in the pitch-dark morning hours with the wind cutting through our meager clothes. The long march over the dark roads in the pouring rain was debilitating. Now
 
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I was marching alone, without my sister. Stumbling in my clumsy clogs, soaked to the bone, I was now hit much more often by the German whip. Nachcia was not there to shield me from the German boot. By the time we reached the factory, my cold wet body ached all over. With no chance to change or get dry, I would rush to start the machine as Bezdupny hovered over me like a dark demon. I shivered with discomfort for hours. Finally, I would go to Fräulein Knaner to ask permission to go to the toilet and rest a minute. But I often had to rush back when another girl would come in with the horrible news that Bezdupny was again at my machines, looking for me. I knew immediately that I was in trouble. A few blows from the
Meister
on my return crumbled my remaining reservoir of resistance. Totally devastated, I would push the machine's lever into the slot with all my strength, only to fail and create a
Schützenschlag
, a tear in the material. Now Bezdupny would get enraged. He would kick me and threaten to report me.
Devastated after such a day, I would drag myself back to the camp wanting to be dead. I simply could not endure any longer. Tears would be choking me when I finally saw my sister at night, but I knew I must not cry. I must not let Nachcia see my suffering. Having gone through the search at the gate and the long line at the kitchen window, I would go to Nachcia in the kitchen when all the other prisoners were finally in the barracks. Nachcia would be sitting hunched on a little stool, her hair mussed, her clothes wet and dirty. She was feverishly cutting the horse beets into tiny cubes.
"I have two more barrels to do," she would say apologetically. "Go to sleep," she urged me. "I will come when I am finished. It will take a while. I still want to hose these down. I cannot stand what they feed our people. These beets are for animals anyway, and on top of that we have to put them in with the skin and dirt and rotten parts. I cannot do that. I cut away what is rotten, so it takes me longer. I also hose them down more to remove all that heavy dirt and soil."
She was apologetic to me for not doing her job faster and having more time to be with me. I would see her sad eyes and tired face, the fingers of her swollen hands slowed by pain. I
 
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was exhausted myself, but I could not leave my sister. I loved her too much to let her sit there by herself. She kept me alive; she was all I had to hold on to.
''No, Nachcia, I am not going. We will finish together and go to the barracks together."
Nachcia knew I was frightened to be without her, having to get through the day now on my own. She did not send me away.
"Sit here beside me, then," she said. "And wait until I finish."
"I did not just come because I'm afraid," I protested. "I came to help you."
Together now we worked cutting, washing, until the required thirteen barrels were full. It was just minutes before curfew when we ran together back to the barracks, with just enough time to slip into our cots before inspection. We fell asleep immediately, exhausted after a wearying day. In my sleep I could feel the ticks crawling on my face, biting my skin. Too tired to open my eyes, I just brushed them away, scratching my skin until it bled.
In the dim morning light Nachcia would see my bitten, scratched-up face. Like a loving mother she would kiss my swollen face before rushing away for another grueling day of kitchen work.
During the day, when all the prisoners were at the factories and the camp was empty, the kitchen staff was able to move around. Nachcia would wait till after barracks inspection was over to work on her scheme. It was a big and dangerous undertaking, but she had promised herself to help others, since God had spared her. She herself nibbled and picked at whatever she could get in the kitchen. She hid things tot me in the kitchen under the pile of potatoes or beets that she was working on. I now came daily to help her after my own day's work. Nachcia would smuggle her own soup ration out of the kitchen. Carefully watching out for German guards, she would shoot over to the barracks and hide the bowl under the bed. If a constable ever found the soup under our bed, all six occupants of the aisle would be punished.
 
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When I showed up after work in the evening, Nachcia quickly dispatched me to the barracks with instructions. Nachcia gave the extra portion of soup to different people each night. Even though the soup was ice cold and often had bed bugs floating in it, it was a blessed treasure. The recipient would praise Nachcia, gulping it down hungrily. The feeling of alleviating the gnawing hunger of her friends helped Nachcia bear her own hunger and torment.
There were often fierce fights over the distribution of the bread rations. After the prisoners returned from work and got their meager soup supper, they all piled into the barracks to obtain their
kaltverpflegung
, their dry food portion. There would be five round loaves of dark bread, which would be divided equally into forty portions. Everyone stood around the table where the
stubenälteste
(eldest person in the room) measured them out. There were loud complaints and quiet murmurs about how she favored friends with larger pieces. There were also exchanges between good friends and relatives, with the older ones giving the younger ones the larger piece. Crazed by hunger, we bickered over every crumb. One set of sisters actually fought and insulted each other, to the profound embarrassment of the rest of us. Sometimes a spoonful of jam or a cube of margarine was distributed with the bread ration. Every prisoner had a strategy for her precious bit of bread. There were those who slowly licked off' the jam in heavenly delight and then hid the bread for the following day. Others just wolfed it down fiercely, trying to quell their hunger now, although it meant having to fast all the next day.
It was now the winter of 1944. The hard frozen earth beyond the camp's barbed wire fence was blanketed with snow. It was a known fact, murmured among the prisoners, that those dark fields held a gigantic treasurepotato storehouses. The potatoes were stored in a large pit covered with soil. In hushed voices, girls talked about risking their lives to steal potatoes from the field. It would be a most hazardous venture, as the camp was surrounded with barbed wire and armed SS guards. By ten o'clock curfew the whole camp was in pitch darkness, with a single searchlight trained on the gate. After bed inspec-
 
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tion by the German guards, the room became silent and dark.
One night after the guards left, two brave girls waited for absolute quiet. Sabina and Bronia slipped on their coats and listened at the door for the marching footsteps of the German guard. When they heard him pass the barracks, they noiselessly sneaked out of the room. They ran across the yard like frightened mice, hunched close to the ground in the pitch dark, managing to reach the other side of camp before the constable did. They hid in the dark alley between the barracks, pressing their bodies against the wooden planks.
Their hearts in their mouths, they panted for breath. If discovered they surely would have been shot on sight. Hearing the guard march past, the two scurried along the barbed wire fence to find the hole that had been made by previous prisoners. They raised the wire over the hole, and crawling on their bellies like snakes, they pushed themselves through without getting snagged.
They were outside the camp. They carefully covered up the hole with the protruding wire. Then they made their way across the field in the deep snow, erasing their footsteps with their hands. Finally, they reached the location where they had hungrily imagined making their death-defying potato dig. With their bare hands, they dug out the heavy snow. The earth beneath was frozen solid. Like wild animals, they scratched the hard earth with their numbed fingers, their hearts thudding in their chests. When they finally felt potatoes in their hands, they wanted to scream with excitement. Slipping the potatoes into the linings of their coats, they carefully filled in the hole they'd dug and tried to replace the snow to cover any traces of their work. They now had to make the terrifying return journey back to their barracks. Totally spent, they staggered into the dark room. There they found Hadassah and Rachelka standing at the door, shivering, crying, and praying for their safety. There were hugs and kisses from Nachcia and me as well, and a united effort to conceal the potatoes in the sacks of straw that were our mattresses.
It wasn't until Sunday, when we weren't marched out of the camp, that the girls could cook the potatoes that they had

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