999, page 14
“Data is lacking concerning the female prisoners,” writes historian and chronicler of Auschwitz, Danuta Czech. But then in a brilliant move, she provides a clue by looking at the records of men that were preserved.
On April 17, 1942, the sixth Slovak transport included 973 Jews, mostly young men. In the footnotes, Czech begins a series of notations: as of “August 15, 1942, only eighty-eight of these deportees are still alive; i.e. within seventeen weeks, 885 people die.” Two days later, when the seventh Slovak transport arrived carrying 464 young men and 536 young women, Czech notes, “by August 15, 1942, only ten of these men are still alive.”
Time and again, Czech reiterates that we have no death tally of Jewish women in early 1942; if their survival rate was anything like that of the Jewish men, they were dying in droves. It is important to remember that all deaths at this point were caused by disease, starvation, or outright murder—there were no mass gassings of prisoners yet. Only by using Czech’s calculations of Jewish men’s deaths throughout the spring and summer of 1942, can we hope to unveil these early women’s shrouded history.
Chapter Fourteen
[The Exodus narrative] taught the great lesson of
human Solidarity, that we cannot enjoy the food of af-
fluence, while others eat the bread of oppression.
—JONATHAN SACKS, The Jonathan Sacks Haggada
ON THURSDAY, APRIL 2, the third transport arrived in Auschwitz carrying 965 unmarried Jewish young women. Like the girls of the first transport, this group had been gathered from the eastern part of Slovakia and held in Poprad, many related to, or friends of, girls on the first transport. Among them was Edith’s soon-to-be best friend, sixteen-year-old Elsa Rosenthal.
As the sun sank below the horizon and the guard towers loomed up dark and threatening, Block 5 was once again full of girls being attacked by fleas and bedbugs. It was the one-week anniversary of the first transport and the first night of Passover. In honor of the holiday, the SS sent everyone out to work in a “damp hole like you never saw before,” Margie Becker says. The swamp detail entailed clearing refuse from the ponds and streams around the compound. Eventually, it would become a punishment detail, but on Passover it was yet another means of deculturalization. “There was that one girl, Ruzena Gross . . . she was all drenched. We came home and lay down, and there’s no blanket, no nothing. We were shivering something awful.”
Soaking wet, twenty-six-year old Klary Atles, the daughter of one of Humenné’s rabbis, got up off her bunk and spoke fervently to the girls as they shivered and wept. “At home, everybody would get pneumonia,” she told them, trying to raise their spirits, just as she had the day the train had taken them from home. “You will see, God will help us. Nobody will get sick.” Speaking as passionately as her father, she told them how God would free them, just as he had freed the Jews from Egypt. God had protected them from the plagues, and He would protect them now. God had slain their ancestors’ slavers, and He would slay them now. All they had to do was invite Elijah into their hearts. If only they had enough cups to leave one for the prophet. If only they could open the door without getting killed. Klary’s conviction spread through the block, and soon some of the girls were holding tiny Seders on their bunks. Others simply fell into sleep.
Somehow, Bertha Berkowitz (#1048) had gotten hold of a Hebrew prayer book. There was no kosher wine to drink and no need of bitter herbs—the sour taste of slavery was already sharp on their tongues. Bertha whispered the text of the Haggadah to Peshy Steiner and a few of their friends from home who had gathered together on bunk beds. Without fathers or brothers to conduct the ceremonies, the girls had to step in and say the Kaddish blessing memorialized in their hearts through the time-honored tradition. In the dark, some of them raised their empty red bowls over their heads and whispered, “Bivhilu yatzanu mimitzrayim, halahma anya b’nei horin. In haste we went out of Egypt [with our] bread of affliction, [now we are] free people.”
—Why is this night different from all other nights?
It is hard to imagine how they could answer. Their tears were shed in the darkness.
Without matzo to break, without matzo to eat, their Passover limped, but devout girls like Bertha avoided eating leavened bread for the entire week. “I did it out of respect for my parents. This was my defiance—it was the only thing I was able to do for them.” She did give in and eat the vile, unkosher horsemeat soup, but she prayed that God would forgive her.
One part of the Passover ritual asks questions that teach the laws, ethics, and history of the Jewish people. The questions are asked of four sons of Israel. But there were only daughters of Israel in their block in Auschwitz, so the first question, “What are the statutes, the testimonies, and the laws that God has commanded you to do?” had to be asked of the wise daughter instead of the wise son. Then the wicked daughter is asked, “What is this service to you?” And here we pause, because in this saga there were no wicked girls, yet. That was still to come. This instruction reminded Bertha, Peshy and their friends of the importance of not standing aside from those they loved, not acting with detachment and antipathy, and not isolating themselves from each other. To deserve freedom, one needs to participate in one’s community and help others. Abiding by these statutes would help them survive Auschwitz.
The last two questions remind participants that there are some who lack intelligence and need help finding answers through God and family in order to be freed of bondage. If only it were still that simple.
In 1942, there had been no Shoah yet. It was only after World War II that Seders began to add a fifth child to represent all of the Jewish children who did not survive and a final, fifth, question to ponder.
On the eve of the Holocaust, many of the girls holding secret Seders with Bertha and elsewhere in the blocks were about to become that fifth child . . . and already asking the question with no answer.
“Why?”
EXHAUSTED FROM CLEANING SWAMPS, demolishing buildings, clearing snow, carrying manure, and digging ditches, most of the first 997 girls sank into sleep long before the Pesach prayers were finished. This is not unusual at any Seder. Children are always falling asleep in their chairs; even adults occasionally nod. A few soft voices recited the ten plagues, dipping their fingers into a thimbleful of water in their red bowls or simply imagining water spilling, a ritual drop for each plague and for those who still suffer in the world. Was anyone suffering more than they were at that moment? Helena Citron’s statement that “Auschwitz was like ten plagues in one day” resonated in the dark as a few tired voices sang “Dayenu” without gusto or joy, the meaning of the word—“it would have been enough” or “sufficient”—no salve for the spiritual wounds of the newly enslaved.
In traditional Seders, the participants are so hungry (and sometimes so drunk) by the time the prayers are finished that everyone dives into the food laid out on the table with gusto. In Auschwitz, prayers were met with more hunger and an empty longing for their families. “We were ready to give our lives to see our parents one more time,” Bertha says.
There was no door to open and invite Elijah into their lives. What prophet would enter Auschwitz, anyway? With what little conscious energy they had left, a few may have meditated on the future arrival of the messiah, but most fell into a hard, exhausted sleep. Remembering her father’s blessing, Bertha’s soft voice whispered the psalms over those slumbering around her:
I love the Lord, for he heard my voice;
He heard my cry for mercy.
Because he turned his ear to me,
I will call on him as long as I live.
The cords of death entangled me,
the anguish of the grave came over me;
I was overcome by distress and Sorrow.
Then I called on the name of the Lord:
“Lord, Save me!”
The solemn silence of Block 10 was shattered by gunshots ringing through the night as eleven Polish prisoners were shot against the execution wall outside. The next morning—Good Friday—the fourth transport of 997 unmarried Jewish girls and young women arrived in camp. “On Easter Sunday, eighty-nine prisoners and thirty-one Russian POWs” died. We do not know how many, if any, of those eighty-nine prisoners were female, but it was becoming clear that the Nazis had no qualms about defiling either Christian or Jewish religions.
Chapter Fifteen
I want to be the last girl in the world with a Story like
mine.
—NADIA MURAD, The Last Girl
BACK AT HOME, parents were increasingly worried. Not only had they not heard from their daughters, but a few days after the first train left Poprad for regions unknown, one of the local railwaymen returned with a scrap of cardboard from one of the girls. How she got the note to the engineer no one knows, but he clearly knew who she was and cared enough to risk smuggling the note back to her family:
Whatever you do, don’t get caught and deported. Here we are being killed.
Her signature was beneath the warning.
Shocked by the news, some righteous gentiles immediately took action to help their neighbors. In Poprad, nineteen-year-old Valika Ernejová was taken into a family friend’s home, where they were able to forge an identification certificate for her. Jan Kadlecik and his family successfully hid “Stefánia Gregusová, born 24 March 1923” for the rest of the war.
As news of the smuggled note radiated out from Poprad to neighboring villages, other families took action to hide their girls or send them to Hungary. For those beyond the reach of the news a sense of foreboding lurked. All they could do was hope their daughters were safe working at the shoe factory.
Then postcards began to arrive.
It was Shabbat when the girls were first forced to write home. Bertha Berkowitz refused to write to her parents because it was Shabbat. A friend wrote the lies for her. The words were scripted and false, designed to assuage fears and assure future victims, the girls’ families, that everything was fine, they had plenty to eat. Hope to See you Soon . . .
By now, all of the girls knew what that last line meant—their families were going to be brought to Auschwitz, too. It was the last thing any of them wanted. In the margins, many of the girls sneaked in warnings in Slovak, Polish, Hungarian, or Yiddish—anything to warn their families about being deported that could not be deciphered by the Germans.
Not every family got postcards. Kapo Bertel Teege was told to throw out hundreds of postcards after she collected them. Among those that she destroyed must have been Magduska’s and Nusi’s—the Hartmanns never received any cards from their daughters.
A few weeks later, when the girls were forced to write cards again, they were given several to write at once and told to postdate them in advance: three months, six months, nine months. It was a ruse to ensure that families still in Slovakia would get cards at home and think their girls were alive and well. And if they heard anything to the contrary, they would say, “How is that possible? We just heard from her!’”
Parents who did get cards wondered about the postmarks. How had their daughters ended up in Poland? Why didn’t they sound like their normal effusive selves? Where was Owicim, anyway?
Despite the paper assurances, many mothers must have begun to feel a deep sense of unease, anguish, and desperation. There is scientific evidence that a mother’s brain carries her child’s DNA in her brain after the child is born. Who hasn’t had that experience of their mother knowing when they are in danger, upset, or doing something naughty? Moments after you’ve gotten bad news, been in an accident, or had your heart broken, your mom texts or calls. I was just thinking about you. Are you okay?
This seems like a coincidental phenomenon, but as science discovers more and more about the brain and DNA, one wonders if this invisible, conscious link might someday be explained. Take the bamboo plant. Bamboo blooms rarely, maybe every sixty to one hundred years, but when the parent plant flowers, its offspring—no matter where in the world they are—also bloom. Perhaps a mother’s intuition is like bamboo. No matter where you are in the world, she is still somehow connected to you.
As mothers across Slovakia prayed for their daughters on that first Shabbat after their departure, did those prayers somehow reach their daughters through the microchimeric cells from the mothers’ brains and, like bamboo, flower into strength and courage?
The girls needed all the fortitude and determination they could acquire because the real rigors of camp life—work—were about to begin. This was “not work with meaning.” It was work meant to destroy body, mind, and spirit. The girls did not know that at first, though. Lining up to be assigned for labor details, they were told they could do agricultural, cooking, building, or cleaning work. Madge Hellinger (#2318) thought working in the agricultural detail would be pleasant and rushed to join it, but one of the German kapos, who had taken a shine to Madge, grabbed her out of the detail, giving her a firm slap on the face and announcing, “I need this one here.”
Shocked by the slap, Madge immediately distrusted the kapo who promptly promoted her to being a room helper, cleaning the blocks, serving tea and bread. Only when the girls returned at the end of their first day of work did Madge realize how lucky she had been to stay inside.
Linda Reich (#1173) describes the agricultural detail as filthy, degrading, and exhausting. Forced to spread manure with their bare hands, the girls carried armfuls of cow droppings across frozen fields thick with snow while wearing nothing but their open-toed “clappers.” Edith and Lea found newspaper scraps in camp with which to wrap their feet in hopes that the newsprint would help keep their toes warm, but “it was snowing,” and the wet paper disintegrated rapidly. It was disgusting work. There was also no way to get clean afterward.
The main detail the girls were forced to work in was the “construction” detail. Their job? To demolish houses with nothing but their bare hands. Literally.
These were the houses that had been confiscated from local Poles in order to expand the Auschwitz complex. “We were the machines that had to dismantle the buildings to their foundations,” Helena Citron (#1971) explains.
After male prisoners weakened the structures with explosives, the young women “were supposed to raze [the bombed houses] to the ground . . . hitting walls with long and very heavy iron rods,” Bertel Teege confirms. It took fifty girls to wield these very long, very heavy metal rods, which had metal circles welded onto them to serve as handles. Grabbing hold of these “handles,” the girls would “hammer the wall,” says Helena Citron. “The minute the wall would collapse, the first row of girls were squashed and buried, and died.”
Sometimes, the girls were divided into two groups: those who climbed up to the second floor of the weakened houses to throw shingles and bricks down to the ground and those on the ground, who picked up the debris while simultaneously trying to avoid being hit by falling bricks. “If you were too careful about throwing bricks down below [and tried to avoid hurting the girls below], the kapo might very likely change your place, so you worked under the hail of bricks coming from the top of the buildings.”
Hauling the bricks away was another part of this work. Loading the bricks onto trucks, the girls had to push cumbersome wagonloads to a wasteland a few miles away, where a few surviving Russian POWs were being held in wooden shacks. What the women did not know was that the bricks they were unloading were being used to build new prison blocks for women, in an open expanse on the edge of a birch forest—Birkenau.
The work of these demolition teams should have been for hardened, strong men—not women and girls, many of whom weighed no more than one hundred pounds and were as short as four feet, ten inches. In the evening, the girls from the demolition work details returned to the blocks bruised and bleeding from cuts. Those at the front of the roll call in the morning were the most likely to be chosen for the demolition details. “Each morning, we would push our best friends into the front,” Helena admits, “since we wanted to live. We very quickly turned into animals. Everyone looked after themselves. It was very sad.”
The other choices of work were not much better.
Bertha Berkowitz (#1048) remembers marching five kilometers to an area where they had to dig ditches. “I have no idea what they used them for but this was our work, day in and day out.” The worst part was their superiors’ absolute refusal to allow the girls to take even the slightest break. Even standing up to straighten their backs after shoveling the heavy clay that made up the Polish earth was cause for an SS whip, or worse. SS woman Juana Bormann delighted in setting her German shepherd on girls who paused for even a moment. “It was harsh work. It was continuous digging,” Linda Reich says.
There was still so much snow on the roads that the SS assigned some girls to snow removal. After working in the fields, Edith and Lea ended up on that detail. “No brooms. No shovels. Everything was by hand,” Edith recalls. “We used our bare hands to pile snow onto cardboard and old newspapers, and then carried those to the side of the road.” At night, she and her sister fell onto their straw mattresses, disheartened and “so frozen and so tired that we didn’t want to go to pick up the bread.” Hardier than Edith, Lea made her little sister get up and stand in line to get her bread ration. Without food, they would never survive, and Edith was tiny to begin with. Lea had to keep her sister going even if the bread was dry and tasteless, made, as many prisoners surmised, with sawdust as well as flour.
The staple of their diet, the bread ration was no larger than the palm of a small woman’s hand, about three inches across. Since just one portion was doled out once a day to the women—men received two portions—some girls devised a way to make it last longer by eating half at night and saving the rest for morning. Having something solid in their stomach before drinking the tea and going to work helped stretch the meager meals.
