Too Many Men (62 page)

“This was very funny,” Edek said to Jerzy.

“We walk to the museum shop,” Jerzy said. Ruth and Edek walked to the shop, still laughing.

The shop sold postcards, slides, books, and videos. Ruth didn’t want to buy anything. Two collections of postcards in folders were on sale. One was labeled
Auschwitz I
, the other
Auschwitz II—Birkenau
. Ruth opened the package of Birkenau cards. Every shot of Birkenau had a poetic hue, including the electrified wire fence. The railway tracks were photographed with yellow flowers growing in the grass at the side of the tracks.

On the back of the postcard of the International Monument to the Victims of Auschwitz, the postcard said that the memorial was located between the ruins of “two mass genocide devices.” Ruth was struck by the strange, detached wording used to describe the gas chambers and the ovens of the crematoriums. There was also a photograph of the guard towers. It was a mid-distance shot. The towers and electrified fencing beside them looked too innocuous. Ruth felt flat. Nothing, not the most detailed graphic photographic enlargements, would ever be enough. Nothing was adequate enough to express a fraction of what should be expressed.

She bought the postcards, eight books, two videos, and a box of slides.

“I’ll have to leave these in the car,” she said to Jerzy. Jerzy was beaming at the woman who was wrapping Ruth’s goods. Ruth hoped Jerzy wasn’t going to get a commission from this sale.

“What for did you buy all this stuff?” Edek said.

“I wanted it,” she said.

“Have you not got enough stuff like this?” Edek said. “Your apartment has got plenty of stuff like this. You got books, videos. Is it not enough?”

“It’s never enough,” Ruth said.

Edek shrugged his shoulders.

[
3 9 8
]

L I L Y B R E T T

“I am not sure this stuff is good for you,” he said. “It could hurt you to read too much stuff like this.”

“Oh yeah?” Ruth said. “You could live through it, but it’s too dangerous for me to read about. The real danger is not reading about it. Isn’t ignorance the real danger?”

“Maybe you are right,” he said.

“I am right,” she said.

“Okay,” Edek said.

“Can you put this stuff in our taxi for us please?” Edek asked Jerzy.

“Of course,” Jerzy said.

“Put it in the backseat,” Ruth said to Jerzy, “not in the trunk. I don’t want to forget it.”

“I do not think that our driver would want to keep this stuff,” Edek said, and laughed.

Ruth laughed. “I don’t think he would want to either,” she said.

“I will drive you to Birkenau in my car,” Jerzy said. “Then I will bring you back to your taxi.”

“Are you up to Birkenau, Dad?” Ruth said.

“I am up to anything,” Edek said. Ruth looked at him. He looked quite robust. In good spirits. His resilience reassured her. They drove the two miles to Birkenau. Auschwitz II.

“Survivors have the privilege of driving into Birkenau,” Jerzy said.

“Everybody else must walk.”

“Wow,” said Ruth, sarcastically. Edek silenced her with his look. “It is not necessary, Ruthie,” he said quietly. They drove inside the entrance gate.

“You would like to drive to the monument?” Jerzy asked.

“We didn’t come here to see the monument,” Ruth said.

They got out of the car. Birkenau was deserted. It was an eerie and ghostly place. Ruth shivered. She felt cold. She felt she could sense shrouds and shapes and presences. She felt she could feel haunted visions. Tormented prophets. She wasn’t sure why she was so sure of this. She felt frightened. What she could feel was what she was able to imagine, she decided.

There were very few people in Birkenau. There were no exhibitions, no shops, no central heating. Just the bleak fields dotted with run-down barracks. The fields and broken barracks seemed to stretch for miles. Ruth T O O M A N Y M E N

[
3 9 9
]

knew that Birkenau covered four hundred and twenty-five acres. It had contained over three hundred buildings. She knew there had been four crematoriums with gas chambers, two makeshift gas chambers in farmhouses that had been specially converted for the job, and large cremation pyres and pits for when the job became too large for all the gas chambers and all the ovens.

A mournful mist hung low in the sky. Above the mist were dismal, grim clouds. Were the clouds permanently blackened and soiled by soot? Ruth wondered. Everything was as deserted and abandoned as it must have been when the Nazis fled. Partly destroyed buildings had been left in their relative states of destruction. Empty patches of earth marked where barracks and buildings had been torn down. Wrenched out of the earth by Nazis who were trying to cover up their tracks. It was so still. So quiet.

“How do you feel, Dad?” she said.

“I am all right,” he said. He looked very subdued. She took his hand.

“We’re here together, you and me,” she said. He nodded. Together in Auschwitz-Birkenau, she thought. Not a location most people would choose to share with each other.

“Here is where the prisoners were unloaded from the trains,” Jerzy said.

Edek looked bewildered.

“Here?” he said.

“Yes, here,” Jerzy said. “The prisoners did often come in sealed cattle wagons. Jammed together like cattle.”

“We know that,” Ruth said. “My father was one of them. So was my mother and two of her sisters and her mother and father.”

“Of course,” Jerzy said.

“It was not here,” Edek said to Jerzy.

“What?” said Jerzy.

“The place where the train did arrive and stop,” Edek said.

“It was here,” Jerzy said.

“It was not here,” said Edek, agitated.

“It was here where the prisoners were unloaded from the trains,” Jerzy said.

“Don’t begin your speech again,” Ruth said to Jerzy, in what she hoped was a menacing tone.

“It was not here,” Edek said. “I was here. This was not where I was

[
4 0 0
]

L I L Y B R E T T

pushed out of the cattle wagon. This is not something what a person does forget.” Edek looked distressed.

“This was the only place where the prisoners were unloaded,” Jerzy said. “The train came into the gates and stopped here.”

“It was not here,” Edek said. He looked close to tears.

“They get old,” Jerzy said to Ruth. He had turned away from Edek so Edek wouldn’t hear him. “They get old,” he said. “And they forget.”

“They?” said Ruth. “Say that one more time and I’ll punch you.” She clenched her fists. Garth had taught her to punch effectively. He had grown up boxing with his father.

Jerzy looked completely startled. “I’ll punch you,” Ruth said, “if you say that again. I’d like you to walk behind us now. My father and I will find the location my father is looking for.” She felt livid. How dare he refer to her father as “they.” As though he wasn’t there. As though Edek was one of the dead Jews that the guides were trained to talk about. The guides in Auschwitz were supposed to have completed a course of study not only on the facts but on how to present the facts, on how to conduct the guided tours. What sort of a course could it be? Ruth thought. She wished she could tell Jerzy to piss off. But she didn’t want Edek to have to walk the two miles back to Auschwitz to their taxi.

“There were transports that were unloaded outside the gate, many times,” Ruth said to Jerzy. They were both now facing Edek again. “Especially in 1944,” she said, “when they were overloaded with prisoners. Prisoners were arriving faster than it was possible to gas and burn them. Trains stopped at different places. Sometimes there were several trains that were backed up. Not everything was working like clockwork in those days.”

“Let’s walk, Dad,” she said to Edek. Jerzy walked behind them.

“You are a clever girl, Ruthie,” Edek said. “You do know many things.”

Edek looked to the right and to the left as he walked. “I did walk straight ahead from the train and then I did turn left,” Edek said. He looked flustered. “I have to find it,” he said, “I was here. I know where I was.”

“Of course you do,” Ruth said. Suddenly Edek sped up. He walked across a field and into an area to the left. He signaled to Ruth to hurry.

“Look,” he said. “Here is the tracks, and here is where I did get off the train.” He looked triumphant.

T O O M A N Y M E N

[
4 0 1
]

“That asshole doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Ruth said.

“Please, Ruthie, don’t speak like that.”

“I knew you would find where you were unloaded,” she said.

Jerzy had caught up to them.

“The ramp in Birkenau was built in 1944,” he said. “Previously all of the trains were unloaded in Auschwitz.” Edek dismissed Jerzy with a wave of his hand. A curt gesture, as though he was getting rid of a bad smell.

“We do not want to hear this, please,” Edek said.

“Could you allow us some privacy, please,” Ruth said to Jerzy. Jerzy looked angry. He walked a few feet away.

Ruth started thinking about her mother. Her mother had first been in Birkenau before she had been transferred to Auschwitz.

“I was separated from Mum here,” Edek said. He looked miserable. “I will show you where my barracks was,” he said. “I do remember every step I did take from this train to the barracks. I did know when I was walking away from Mum that my life would never be the same again.”

Nobody who was on one of those transports ever had the same life again. And they were the lucky ones, Ruth thought. The ones who still had a life. Rooshka had told her that the first thing she had been told, when she was still in the unloading area, was that there were no questions. “There are no questions,” a German officer had shouted at her. “And no answers.”

Ruth felt fearful.

“Don’t cry, Ruthie,” Edek said. “Let me show you the barracks.”

“I hope they’re still there,” she said. She followed Edek. They walked for several minutes, and then Edek broke into a run. “Don’t run, Dad,” she shouted. “It’s raining and you could slip.” Edek kept running. He ran across a vast empty field. He ran, with his small, short steps. Ruth ran behind him. She was terrified he would fall. She looked behind her. Jerzy was running, too. She could hear his breathlessness.

A group of teenagers suddenly materialized. They had been in one of the barracks. They were Israeli, Ruth realized. They all looked very subdued.

One of them was carrying a large Israeli flag. It was almost an act of defiance to carry this flag, Ruth thought. They were defying anyone to object.

Ruth was glad the Israeli kids were there. She felt calmed by their presence.

Edek was waving to her. He was standing outside one of the wooden barracks. Ruth started to tremble. Was this where Edek was housed? Was

[
4 0 2
]

L I L Y B R E T T

this the barracks he had lived in, if “lived” was the right word for the days and nights that he existed in this netherworld. These decrepit wooden barracks, which were built to house fifty-two horses, housed up to a thousand men. The men slept on a bare concrete floor, squashed together, in rows and rows. Edek was standing at the doorway shaking his head. “This was my barracks, Ruthie,” he said. He shook his head again. “I did not think I would come again, here, to these barracks,” he said. He paused. “Come in,” he said. Edek issued his invitation to her almost in the manner of a host inviting a guest into his house.

Ruth stepped in. Edek walked in behind her. As soon he was inside the door, he let out a loud gasp. Ruth was startled. She turned around. “It is everything exactly the same,” Edek said. “Exactly the same.” Ruth looked around her. She couldn’t believe she was standing in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in the very barracks her father had been in. The long rectangular barracks had large wooden doors at each end. There were several holes in the doors.

The wind was coming through the holes. “The doors was like this when I was here,” Edek said. “In winter it was shocking.”

The light in the barracks came from a small skylight high up on the walls, near the ceiling. There was one fireplace and a chimney at each end of the barracks. A brick flue ran down the length of the barracks. “The smoke from the fireplace was supposed to pass through here,” Edek said, pointing to the flue, “and it was supposed to heat up the barracks.”

“Did it?” said Ruth.

Edek laughed, grimly. “Of course not,” he said. “We was frozen. Every morning there was many dead frozen men.” Ruth started shivering. Edek ran to the far end of the barracks. “I did sleep here, Ruthie,” he said, pointing to a spot in the middle of the left side of the barracks. He stood there, staring at the empty spot where he had slept as a twenty-six-year-old. A tall, five foot ten twenty-six-year-old, who already weighed less than eighty pounds and was going to weigh even less. Ruth felt overwhelmed.

It was very quiet in the barracks. Ruth could feel the absence. And the presence. The presence of all of those poor young men. She knew they were young. Mostly under forty. She knew the older ones had been weeded out in the selection process on their arrival. Ruth couldn’t stop shivering.

She could feel the calamity in the air.

The rain leaked through the wooden roof. Everything was as gray as it T O O M A N Y M E N

[
4 0 3
]

must have been then. These barracks still held the horror. She could hear the horror in the silence. It was palpable. It hadn’t vanished. A four- or five-inch gap was at the top of the doors at the back and front of the barracks.

Edek was standing at the back door. “It was just like this,” he said. “I remember it like it was yesterday. I did sleep in the middle not to be so close to the door. I was lucky.”

Ruth wanted to ask him how he managed to hold on to his spot on the floor in the middle of the barracks, but she didn’t want to bother him with small questions. “Nobody did want to sleep in the middle,” Edek said.

“You could get badly crushed.” He must have read her mind, Ruth thought. He must have known what she was thinking. The wooden walls were damp with rain. Puddles of water were on the floor. “It was not so wet in the middle,” Edek said.