The May Beetles Read online

  We were counted every morning. We stood in long lines out in the open, maintaining our groups of five. All of us still wore the garments we’d been given after we were disinfected and shorn. I was able to recognise others as much by their clothing as their faces. The roll call was indicative of the orderliness of the Nazis. They hated chaos and it was their great priority to avoid it. We were not tattooed with numbers, as victims at other times and places were, which perhaps suggested that by mid 1944 the Germans’ rigid system was beginning to break down. The mass transportation of Hungary’s Jews had come all at once: many thousands of people over a period of four months. Our group of five numbered off: Boeske, Erna, Baba and Marta Keimovits, and Annushka Zeger. Annushka was the quietest of the five of us, her head always bowed, shy even here where all shyness had been abandoned.

  After the counting, we were fed. Breakfast amounted to no more than a small slice of black bread, smeared with some version of margarine. None of us would have eaten this bread in the days and years before we came to Auschwitz. But there, who could disdain food of any sort? The bread was doled out in the mornings by stubendiensten, a German word meaning ‘room maids’. Each shed had its own stubendienst, and all were Polish prisoners of long standing. Of all the Jews in the camp, these Polish women were the most wretched, for they had seen so much suffering and death, and had been so often forced to accept that they could change nothing, ever, that they had become unfeeling. Our stubendienst had survived at Auschwitz for five years. Once in our shed I heard her answering an urgent, whispered question from a woman: ‘Where in the camp are my sister’s children?’ The stubendienst jerked her head in the direction of the crematoriums. ‘Up the chimney,’ she said in a voice without any inflection.

  In the evening we were fed again – a vile brown liquid that stank, and tasted even worse than it smelt. Each of us had her own metal dish and spoon, part of the parcels of possessions we’d brought with us to Auschwitz. One of the properties of this brown stuff was that, once you’d swallowed it down, you felt more famished than before. The sound all around in our shed was of metal spoons clattering and scraping against plates. As disgusting as it was, though, not a drop of food was left behind. The most persistent in our group at cleaning her bowl was little Annushka, who looked for a final tiny drop even when her plate was as clean as if washed. The poor child couldn’t help herself. It was as if the action of bringing the spoon to her mouth consoled her somehow. Pampered as she had been in her life back in Nyírbátor, she never seemed to fully understand the situation she was in. My mother pitied her, as did I, and watched her obsessive scraping of her bowl with pain and concern.

  The idea behind preserving the able-bodied and the unencumbered from the gas chamber was that they would be available for various sorts of forced labour. The particular tasks depended on what needed doing. My mother, sisters and I were ordered to work in the feather factory. All the bedding that had been brought to the camp by the Jewish captives – cushions, doonas, pillows – was confiscated on arrival and delivered to a big warehouse, where we tore the covers open and emptied the feathers into big wooden containers. I expect that the feathers were used as filling for quilted cold-weather military coats.

  There were few places at Auschwitz where we could put our hands on something that would ease the burden of captivity, but the feather factory was one. We were able to make aprons of the cotton or calico covers of the pillows and doonas by tearing or cutting them to shape, then we would wear them back to our shed. We would also take scissors from the feather factory, hidden in the folds of our garments. The next step was to fashion headscarves from the aprons. In the early mornings, when we were counted, the chill in the air was intense, and some women would trade a thin slice of their morning ration of black bread for such a scarf. Many also wished to improve their appearance; this wasn’t vanity so much as a desire to look more human.

  At the time, I had no misgivings about trading what we made from the pillow covers for extra bread, but it was a selfish act. We saw a chance to improve our own chances of survival, and we took it.

  On our second day in the feather factory, Erna found a Hebrew prayer book inside a pillowcase. She brought it back to our shed, full of excitement. The prayer book connected us to the life we had known in years past. It evoked Shabbat, and our Seders at Pesach, my father’s prayers, the lighting of the candles. This prayer book became our great treasure and solace. Another find was a small, round dish with some dried gravy stuck to it. Why it should have been hidden amongst the pillows, I cannot say. I picked at the gravy with my fingers, and ate. It was delectable.

  A few days later, one of us found a challah cover while we were at work in the feather factory. The cover was embroidered with the Hebrew blessing of the bread. This find raised our spirits further. My mother said, ‘I’ll make a bag of this cover. We will keep our bread in it, so our bread will be blessed, always.’ My sister Marta kept the shreds of this bag, discovered in the feather factory of Auschwitz, until her death.

  CHAPTER 14

  Selection

  All illnesses at Auschwitz were terminal. The guards watched us closely for signs of weakness. If you showed any symptoms of sickness, you would be separated from your group of five and taken to the gas chambers. We understood this: we had seen women taken away to be killed and cremated. We knew that we mustn’t cough too loudly, or falter when we were being counted in the early morning.

  Even though I was perfectly aware of the likely consequences, one morning at the counting I fainted. I always knew when a fainting spell was imminent. I was standing in our group of five with my mother, Erna, Marta and Annushka. My mother and Erna, dreading what would happen if I fell to the ground, pressed close to me on each side and held me upright until I regained consciousness, and so I was spared. For that brief period of unconsciousness, I was not at Auschwitz but in some blissful realm with the sun shining. It was a jolt to awake to the bitter cold, to the sight of the assembled women in their ragged garments, and to hear my mother whispering urgently: ‘Baba, wake up!’

  New trainloads of prisoners arrived in their everyday clothes, their scalps unshorn. We saw them enter the camp. They stared at us through the electrified wire fence: some were visibly horrified at what they saw, some baffled. They did not know that they were looking at themselves a day into the future. We gazed back at them, feeling a type of pity. A day later, when we met these newcomers in the sheds and at the morning count, their heads bare, their clothing replaced by the same rags we wore, they seemed abashed. One of the new women said to my mother, ‘When we saw you through the wire, we thought you were all lunatics kept separate from normal folk. That’s what you looked like to us – lunatics, with your big eyes in your faces staring at us. And we thought: “See, they keep these mad women alive, so they will surely not kill sane people like us!”’

  Always present in the air was the reek of human flesh being cremated. Ten days of breathing in that smell made me feel that it would be with me forever, even if I lived for another hundred years. The black smoke rose from the chimney stacks into the Polish sky. I didn’t focus on the smoke; no one did. It quickly lost its power to shock or appal, and was just something that was happening – that was all.

  We kept the black bread we were given in the morning in the bag my mother had made from the challah cover we had found. We ate it during the day. We cared for each other. If one of us was given more bread than another, she would protest that she had been given too much. All of us kept a close watch on little Annushka, who seemed so frail. Not all families in the camp were as devoted to each other, and I witnessed some bitter arguments. But it came naturally to us to care for each other, even if the most we could do was share an extra morsel of black bread.

  Mengele came to our shed, in his impeccable uniform and his polished boots. He stood on the walkway with SS guards on either side. He looked just as cheerful as when I first saw him on our arrival at the camp. One of the guards called for silence, and in an i
nstant every murmur ceased. The women and girls on the platforms listened intently, although no one expected to hear anything good. Mengele spoke in German, and what he said was translated into Hungarian by a man in a uniform different to that of the SS soldiers.

  ‘Has anyone here had a baby taken away?’ the translator said. ‘Now the mother can join her child to suckle her. Speak up.’

  If any mother had been separated from her baby on arrival at Auschwitz, we knew, that baby would now be dead. What did Mengele want the mother for? Perhaps some mistake had been made, because normally a mother would not be separated from her baby; both mother and infant would be sent to the gas chambers. But we did not know about the ‘experiments’ Mengele was conducting in his Auschwitz surgery. He must have required the mother for some reason.

  The beautiful Magda Reiner spoke up. ‘Yes, my baby was taken from me,’ she said. She must have known that she would die, but she did not want to go on living without her child. Magda was from Nyírbátor, and still a young woman. She made her way to the walkway, much to the satisfaction of Mengele, to judge from his expression.

  I gazed at Magda with pity, but with admiration too. Her face was impassive.

  The most terrifying of all the experiences we endured at Auschwitz were the regular ‘selections’, when all the women and girls in our part of the camp were compelled to show themselves naked to the inspecting SS officers. They were looking for symptoms of disease, or weakness, or anything that might restrict a prisoner in her role as a slave. To stand unclothed before the merciless gaze of the SS officers was humiliating, but we all knew that those judged ill or weak would be escorted to the gas chambers. A rash on the skin was enough to have you taken away. A cough. Even a dull look in your eyes or a stooped posture.

  We stood erect, opening our eyes wide. An SS officer wearing an expression of mild disgust or sometimes boredom would stop before each of us and look us up and down. He would lean closer if he saw something that needed closer inspection: an abrasion, trembling lips, beads of sweat on the forehead that might suggest a fever. The smallest sign of infirmity was enough, since it was the intention of the SS to kill us all in time.

  Often there was a struggle when the officers sent a woman to the line of those who would die. She herself might refuse to go, or her family members might scream in horror and try to pull their relation back. There were never any reprieves. The officers would signal to the soldiers, and the soldiers would roughly separate the woman or girl from the others in her group and drag her away, naked as she was. She would remain naked in the line of selected women, and within a short time would be shuffling towards the doors of the gas chambers. We who had not been selected watched in pity, but perhaps also with a feeling of relief that the woman was not our sister, mother or daughter.

  I prayed that my mother, my sisters and Annushka would remain strong and free from disease. But at a selection three weeks after we arrived at Auschwitz, Marta was sent to the line of those destined for the gas chamber. She must have looked too young for hard labour. My mother, Erna and I whispered together in a panic. The group to which Marta had been sent comprised older women and other young girls of Marta’s age. Someone must go with Marta, we decided.

  ‘Me,’ I said. ‘I’ll go with her. I won’t let her go alone.’

  But as I was uttering those words, Marta herself tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Go nowhere, Baba,’ she whispered. ‘I am here.’ She had seen a chance when the guards were not looking and darted back to her mother and sisters. I reached out and took her hand. We waited in silence while the SS officers completed their selection. And we watched as the selected women were torn away from their families, screaming, resisting. That Marta was not amongst them was the joy of our silence. But of course there was no such relief for many other mothers and sisters.

  When selection was over, we resumed our daily existence. We ate bread from our bread bag; we held the hand of a sister or mother; we checked each other for signs of illness; we talked. Sometimes we even laughed. I met girls from other parts of Hungary who had interesting stories to tell of their regions, their towns. We would chat about our lives before Auschwitz. I had as much to say as anyone. I told girls my age about the movies I’d seen, the books I’d read, the dresses I’d owned, the boys I’d fancied. It was the same for the other girls.

  Sometimes we sat together and sang songs we’d heard on the radio back home – often quite cheerful songs. Even at Auschwitz, we wished to sing. Human beings can feel pain and hunger and terrible fear, but we must also give vent to our feelings of joy.

  CHAPTER 15

  Stutthof

  After we’d been at Auschwitz for five weeks, my body had become used to the bunks of our shed. It was now no great chore to fall asleep on any flat surface. There was only one window in the entire building, high up, and I gazed through it before I went to sleep. The night sky over Auschwitz was always filled with stars.

  As I looked up, I whispered the words of a Hungarian poem, a great favourite of mine. It was called ‘From Soul to Soul’, and the poet was Árpád Tóth.

  I stand by my window late at night,

  And through endless vistas, from afar,

  Into my eyes I collect the rays

  Of a remote, pale and trembling star.

  From a million leagues this light has come,

  Through icy, barren and the bare

  Darknesses undeterred. For how long?

  Who knows how many thousand years?

  At last the old message has found me,

  My eyes were its perpetual aim.

  Content, it dies there; my tired eyelids

  Cover it like a shroud on a coffin.

  I once learnt that by screening through

  The scientists’ finest crystal instruments,

  These lights from above bring us tidings

  Of innate kinships, fraternal elements.

  I close it into myself, drink it into my blood,

  And secretly observe, listening, attending:

  What ancient grief cries from light to blood,

  From heaven to earth, from element to element?

  Is the star sad and hurt because it is lonely,

  Scattered as we are, orphans of the cosmos?

  And because we shall never meet, never,

  Through the night, the ice, the limitless reaches?

  Oh star, do not cry! You’re not more distant

  Than are the terrestrial hearts here on earth.

  Is Sirius farther or my friends and neighbours?

  Who can tell, who can tell?

  Oh, weep for friendship, weep and grieve for true love,

  And cry over the path that leads from soul to soul;

  We send one another feeble rays from our eyes,

  And between us dwells an unfathomed, icy void.

  One morning we were assembled and packed into open cattle wagons. They were to take us to a railway station – this was revealed to us by Jews who had been given positions of authority within the camp, the feared and despised ‘kapos’. Our true destination, we were told, was Danzig – a port known to the Poles as Gdańsk. ‘Then you will go across the water by boat,’ the kapos said, ‘maybe to Germany.’ Despite everything, I was excited. I was to behold the sea for the first time in my life!

  Other trains passed us on railway lines that ran parallel to the ones on which our train was travelling. We saw the passengers on those trains – normal citizens, men, women and children – and they saw us. I did not notice a single appalled expression. They were smiling, chatting to each other, reading newspapers and magazines, as if the war were a mere fairy story. How it hurt me to see these free and cheerful people. They did not care about us: that was what so wounded me.

  At the waterfront in Danzig we climbed down from the carriages and were herded onto boats, below deck. Of the sea I noticed nothing at all. The journey had exhausted me and I fell asleep amidst the huddled mass of fellow prisoners, and I slept all the way to the port of our dest
ination: Stutthof. We were marched through farming country to the town’s concentration camp, a vast array of timber buildings enclosed by tall, barbed-wire fences, like those at Auschwitz.

  The sight of the Stutthof camp was not quite as forbidding as Auschwitz, although it should have been. It was a death camp where at least eighty-five thousand people died from 1939 onwards, either murdered or after succumbing to hunger or illness. Auschwitz had shown us how far the Nazis would go to deal with their ‘Jewish problem’: they were prepared to commit mass murder. We had endured this shock already, and could not be shocked again.

  Once again, we were housed in big timber sheds, only this time the sleeping platforms accommodated only four to a bunk. The food was better at Stutthof – we were given actual soup. But the ‘latrines’ were no more than lengths of timber above ditches.

  A certain Magda, whose family name I never knew, was amongst the women in our shed. She was pretty but quite uneducated, and happy to indulge the Polish kapo, Max. He was tall, fair-haired, good-looking and vicious, and he fell in love with Magda. She would go off with Max to make love. Since Magda enjoyed the affections of the kapo, she was treated with deference by the rest of us, and it delighted her. She reigned in our shed as a queen. If you wished to stay in Max’s good books, you were courteous to Magda, as he had the authority to punish prisoners, and to give or withhold favours. Max genuinely wished to please Magda, as if her consent was important to him.

  Erna and I paid close attention to Magda – with smiles and flattery – in the hope of persuading Max to appoint us as stubendiensten. We had no great revulsion for Max. We discerned in him a number of unpleasant features, but we saw him as a resource that could be crucial to our survival.

  And after a short time we did become stubendiensten. My chores in this role were restricted to serving the meal in the evenings. The soup was carried to our shed in a big black cauldron. We stood beside it while long rows of women waited with their bowls. I ladled an equal quantity of the soup into each bowl, painstaking in my efforts to ensure that no woman could complain that she had received less than her share. In the eyes of those girls and women I knew in Nyírbátor, and who knew me, there was always an imploring look: Baba, it’s me, from Nyírbátor – please, a little more. But if I went along with such appeals, the soup would have run out before everyone was fed.