The May Beetles Read online

  It was the same with the other women: the stronger supported the weaker, and exhorted them to keep going. But not everyone could be saved. I looked back once and saw an SS guard holding a woman down while another soldier shot her in the head. Then the body was thrown to the side of the road. I felt sick. We passed many bodies lying on the roadside – executed women from groups ahead of ours.

  On each side of the roads we walked, the dormant paddocks of winter stretched away, and farmhouses appeared every so often. In the freezing cold our rows often became muddled, and I had to scan around for sight of my mother, Marta and Erna. My mother never let me get too far from her, fortunately. At one point I looked around again for Csopi and Barbara and failed to spot them. This meant that they were now dead on the roadside. At some time during the previous half-hour, they had given up the struggle. Perhaps it was Barbara who fell – that would seem likely – and Csopi who had refused to go on without her sister. After meeting Dora Cohen in Tel Aviv, I suffered deep guilt over Csopi’s death. I felt it was my fault, since I had encouraged her to join the evacuation.

  Then Annushka disappeared – frail, timid Annushka Zeger, who had become part of our family. Amid the snow and the bitter cold, walking with our heads drawn into our shoulders, we had lost track of her. She had lost her spectacles a day or so earlier, and without them she was almost blind. We had to guide her, straighten her path when she began to meander. She knew she had become a burden, and I suspected she had sat down of her own accord and waited for an SS guard. Poor Annushka – I despair.

  CHAPTER 17

  Escape

  We sometimes passed civilians on the roadside as we trudged along on our journey to nowhere. Some were curious, but most were indifferent. One day our wretchedness roused the pity of an onlooker, who thrust a container of soup into the hands of one of our number. The woman took it, but a fight broke out immediately as others descended on her like a flock of ravens. It was horrible to watch – all sense of solidarity cast aside. The disputed soup container fell to the frozen ground and spilt. The women who’d been fighting threw themselves down and licked the soup from the ground before it could freeze.

  We spent our nights in hay barns commandeered by the SS along the route. We always had to squeeze in; there was never enough space. Fights often broke out: ‘Why are you stealing my space? Why are you pushing?’ I didn’t listen, so far as I could avoid it. I was still grieving for Csopi and Barbara.

  On the twenty-fifth of January, a Thursday, we turned west and crossed the Vistula River. At the head of our column of slaves strode an SS officer in his great-coat, the collar turned up for warmth. The river was frozen and we walked across its surface with careful steps. The ice shone like a mirror in the winter sunshine, and even in the midst of my distress – frozen to the bone, weak, famished almost to the point of madness – a part of me thrilled to the sight.

  Across the river, the roads were packed with ethnic Germans and Poles escaping west, towards Germany. The Russians were advancing, and although they were still east of the Vistula, it was feared that their progress would be rapid. Both the Poles and Germans dreaded the Russians, I knew. The ethnic Germans of the region considered themselves German citizens, of course, so that helped to explain their panic, but the Poles regarded Russia as a historical enemy and wanted to find a home in the eastern regions of Germany. Horse-drawn carriages made up most of the traffic on the roads. Carts were piled high with belongings, and on top sat bewildered and frightened children. These fleeing people barely acknowledged us; our ragged appearance would have repelled them, but in any case they had their own troubles. This was a retreat, or even a rout: an entire population was on the move.

  The soldiers of the regular German armed forces were retreating too, but they were not amongst us. All we saw of the mighty German war machine that had swept everything before it a few years earlier was the handful of SS guards trudging along with their prisoners. All along the route of our march, dead bodies lay stiffened by the cold. Some seemed curled up, as if sleeping; others had died more violently, their arms thrown wide and their eyes looking upwards in a frozen stare.

  We came at last to a large estate that was to serve as our camp for the night. We were told that we would rest for the following day. I doubt there was any charity in this; the SS officer in charge of us may have wanted a rest himself. We were sent to sleep in a large barn. We slumped onto the straw, drawing it over us for warmth.

  Many women were now no longer with us. Marta was ill and growing steadily weaker. I was desperately worried about her. What would be the use of my own survival if I spent all the years of my life mourning my sister? I prayed for Marta’s life to be spared, and I silently exhorted Marta herself to keep fighting. It was in that barn that my mother first spoke of a plan of escape. She and Erna and a Lithuanian woman were whispering together, close to where I lay in the straw. It was only gradually that I grasped what was being proposed.

  Erna was adamant that we must try to run away. ‘If we keep marching, we will all die,’ she said.

  My sister was not a woman who experienced rushes of blood to the head. She was, in all situations, cool, calm and collected. And yet here she was endorsing a plan that seemed to me madness. I butted in to say my piece: ‘Are you all out of your minds? Where would we go? And how?’

  My mother, Erna and the Lithuanian clearly considered me unqualified to offer an opinion: their glance at me was brief, patient and dismissive. Then they went back to their planning. Offended, I huddled back into the straw, muttering to myself: ‘They are crazy, mad! Where would we head? It’s all enemy land!’

  That night I was wakened by cries: ‘Fire!’ The SS guards were rousing us and ordering us to leave the warmth of the barn for the wintry cold outside. We stood shivering in the darkness while the fire was extinguished. Once back inside the barn and again covered in straw, my mother and Erna and the Lithuanian woman returned to their escape plans.

  When daylight came we were not kept in the barn; we were permitted to look around. The homestead of the farm was some distance away, and I could just make out the farm workers going about their business. As Erna wandered about that morning she discovered the opening to an empty cellar. The floor of the cellar was concrete, and the space was divided into cubicles by metre-high concrete walls. Possibly it was for storing grain. Erna showed the cellar to my mother and the Lithuanian woman, and also to me, despite my scepticism.

  My mother, who had the final say on everything, said that the cellar was as suitable a hiding place as we were likely to find. ‘We’ll do it,’ she said. ‘In the morning, before we start marching again, we’ll come here and hide. When everyone has gone, we’ll steal back to the road and return the way we came.’ My mother hoped we would come upon the Russians and seek their protection.

  The entire escape plan depended on us waking early the next morning, but we did not. The whole camp was in motion by the time we emerged from our warm nests in the straw. We gathered our few possessions and were about to join the rest of the women outside the barn when one of the SS guards, Sturmscharführer Augele, told my mother to move a straw bale, then turned his back and left the barn. My mother moved the bale, and as she did so whispered to us, ‘Follow me – we’re going to the cellar.’

  We slipped out of the barn, skirting the area where the women who were about to begin the day’s march were hurrying into formation, found the cellar and climbed down into it. We huddled together in one of the cubicles and prayed. Our prayer was the Yevarechecha Hashem blessing: ‘May the Lord bless us and watch over us, may God show us favour and be gracious to us …’ We prayed over and over in that cubicle, huddled together.

  When we finally ceased praying, we listened. Barely any light found its way into the cellar, and I could just make out the shadowed faces of my sisters and my mother, the glitter of their eyes. We heard not a single voice, not the slightest suggestion of movement, and so at last my mother opened the trapdoor and waited cautiously for a furth
er few minutes.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘But quietly.’

  Before we could move, we heard someone approaching. My mother closed the trapdoor hurriedly. It was opened again, this time by one of the Polish farm workers – not every Pole had fled the Russians. He was perfectly sanguine about finding four ragged women sheltering in the cellar. He asked us in German what the matter was: did we not realise that the other women had departed? My mother answered that her youngest daughter was stricken with illness and suffering from chilblains, and we’d been resting here in the cellar.

  Mother’s story was absurd, but the fellow listened calmly, without judgement. He advised us to make haste and catch up with the others. He said that they were not so far ahead. ‘I’ll show you which way to go,’ he assured us. And so he did, still urging us to hurry, as if he thought we were desperate to be reunited with the other women. We had to play along: ‘Thank you, thank you so much.’ After a while he left us and went to attend to his work. We shuffled in the direction he’d indicated for a short time, but when he was out of view my mother began looking for another hiding place.

  This was the first time in eight months that we had been alone: no guards, no instructions, just four Hungarian women on the run in northern Poland. The experience was frightening but exhilarating.

  We found a stable that appeared to be deserted; it was on the grounds of the estate but distant from all the other buildings. A ladder rose from the floor to a loft. We climbed it and covered ourselves with hay. Then we discussed our situation: what should we do next? The front could not be far away. Return to our original plan and walk back the way we’d come, into the arms of the Russians?

  ‘Listen,’ my mother said, ‘between us and the Russians is the German army. We might meet up with the Germans before we find the Russians.’

  ‘Then we should stay here, where we are,’ said Erna. ‘The Germans will pass by, heading west for their homeland. Then the Russians will come, and we’ll show ourselves.’

  ‘How long will that take?’ I asked. ‘How long can we stay alive here?’

  ‘Here we’re sheltered and warm,’ Erna insisted. ‘If we leave this stable, we might not find such a place again.’

  Mother had a few scraps of bread left in her bag and a tiny amount of sugar that she’d scavenged from somewhere. We also had a small canteen filled with water; it was frozen, so we had to thaw it with our body heat when we wanted to wet our mouths. But even if we were somehow able to find the same amount of food and water each day, we would surely die from hunger. We had to hope that the Russians would quickly find us and free us.

  We lay close to each other in our nest of hay, sleeping now and again, trading a few sentences, listening to every sound, judging it for some signal of relief on its way. There was, of course, little to hear: birdsong, the muffled throb of an aircraft passing high overhead, the breathing of my mother and sisters.

  A day later the German army arrived and stabled their horses below us. We listened in silence to the racket of the soldiers as they settled their horses into the stalls, and to the stamping and neighing and snorting of the beasts. We exchanged glances of fear, and although we said not a word, I mouthed the message: ‘We’re trapped.’

  My mother nodded, then beckoned for Marta and Erna and me to come closer. ‘We’ll wait,’ she whispered. ‘Surely they won’t stay for long. They’ll want to keep ahead of the Russians.’

  Two more days passed, and still the horses and the soldiers could be heard below. We were by this time desperately hungry, and thirsty too. We’d exhausted our canteen of water, and we knew that another day up in the loft might finish us off.

  ‘Erna, Baba, go down to the stable and show yourselves,’ my mother whispered. ‘If they kill us, then that is our fate. But we cannot stay up here and die without attempting something.’

  We nodded. The plan was very risky, of course, in more ways than one. The soldiers were men, and we were women – bedraggled, but women nonetheless. But starvation encouraged us to take the risk. We shook off the hay, crawled to the ladder and began to descend. Glancing down, I saw amazed expressions on the upturned faces of the German soldiers. Soon Erna and I were standing on the floor of the stable, not knowing what look to adopt, or what to say.

  One of the soldiers gazing at us was holding a wooden pail filled with water; he’d frozen in the act of offering it to the horses. Without a second’s hesitation, I took two steps, raised the pail to my lips and drank deeply. The soldier kept hold of the pail and made no attempt to restrain me. When I had drunk my fill, Erna took my place and drank. The soldiers were grinning in a somewhat foolish way, saying nothing.

  I explained in German that we had been left behind by our companions, all women, who were heading west, and that one of our number, still up in the loft, was sick and unable to walk. The soldiers merely nodded and shrugged. They had little interest in the stories of two ragged young women. We were told to head west and see if we could catch up with our ‘transport’; if we couldn’t, perhaps we would find another that would take us to our ‘destination’. We called to Mother and Marta to come down from the loft, and they drank too. We thanked the soldiers for the water and headed west – the direction in which the soldiers had pointed us. Once we were beyond the gates of the estate, however, we turned east.

  We had escaped the slave army and the SS on the twenty-eighth of January, and it was now the fourth morning after, so it was on the first of February, 1945, that we went out through the estate gates. We walked down the road that had brought us here, scanning the fields left and right for a farmhouse that we might approach. Our temporary home in the hay of the loft began to seem more and more luxurious with every step we took, our faces against the bitter north-east wind blowing down from Siberia. The ground underfoot was frozen solid. Marta was suffering greatly, but did not complain.

  At around midday Erna saw a farmhouse a way across a paddock, and we trudged towards it with a kind of hope. My mother went to the front door and knocked while Erna, Marta and I stood a little further back. The door was opened by a gaunt man in his fifties. From behind him peered a number of other faces, men and women. They were all Poles, to judge from their clothing, and the gaunt man confirmed this. We knew enough Polish by now to understand what he was saying: they were all refugees. ‘Madam, there is no room here,’ he said. ‘We are a large number. I am sorry, but there is no room.’

  ‘Could you at least spare some food?’ my mother asked, but the man was reluctant to give away the food of the crowded household.

  At this point I was mortified by my mother’s behaviour. Had she turned into a beggar? She lifted her hands and stepped a little closer to the man at the door. ‘Please give us just a few scraps – please, just a few scraps. These are my daughters, you can see how wretched they are … For me I don’t care, but the girls, sir, please …’

  The man relented and gave us some bread, which was soft and not stale. It tasted like food of the gods. We weren’t given a whole loaf, but what those good people spared was enough to fortify us for the rest of the day.

  CHAPTER 18

  A Roof over Our Heads

  Some of the fields we passed still had the remnants of crops that had been harvested in summer and autumn. We could see the bulbs of sugar beets in one field, so we uprooted them and stored them inside our clothing, against our chests. Once they had thawed, we chewed on them for sustenance.

  We also had to find shelter. We were looking out for another barn that might have a bed of straw. The sun was shining but it didn’t provide much warmth. Soon evening would come, and if we were still out in the open we would doubtless freeze. In the distance I saw the wooden buildings of a hamlet. ‘Over there!’ I cried. We took the track up to the buildings, but as we came closer we saw a group of German soldiers by the barn. We tried to slip by but it was too late: we’d been seen.

  ‘Where are you going?’ one of the soldiers called.

  ‘We’re searching for lodgings for th
e night,’ my mother replied.

  The soldier, who was not SS, did not seem hostile. ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.

  My mother paused. If we were to tell the soldier just how hungry we were, he might see that we were Jewish runaways. Most refugees from the fighting carried some bags with a few possessions; we had absolutely nothing. Nevertheless, my mother conceded that we were all hungry.

  ‘Come in and have something to eat,’ the soldier said. We followed him into the house, where a field kitchen had been set up for the soldiers. Four were sitting in the kitchen, enjoying warm soup, and they offered each of us a bowl.

  I swallowed a spoonful of my soup – and fainted. Usually, my fainting spells had no physiological cause; they just came and went. This time, the warmth of the kitchen overwhelmed me. When I regained consciousness I was sitting on the bottom step of some stairs that led up from the kitchen; my mother was beside me, deep concern on her face. The soldier who’d invited us into the farmhouse was attempting to untie the string that was wound around my waist as a belt – it was holding my scrap of blanket in place – so that I might breathe more easily. My mother strove to prevent him from untying the string; the indelible red star on the back of my Auschwitz dress would immediately reveal me as a Jew. I also had some sugar beets thawing against my flesh.

  Despite my mother’s best efforts, the German soldier found the beets. ‘Girl, what are you eating?’ He was plainly distressed that I should be relying on the dirt-caked roots of beet for sustenance. I could see the concern on his face, and indeed on the faces of the other German soldiers. Unlikely as it seemed, these Germans had hearts.

  They said we could work in their kitchen, peeling potatoes and things like that, and in return we would have shelter and protection. Also we would have a big bed in which to sleep, a bed with a mattress and blankets. The soldiers would sleep on the floor. We were happy to accept the hospitality of these German soldiers, but we realised we must always keep our red stars concealed. For the time being, we were simply four destitute women, not four destitute Jewish women.