Chapter 7: V-1
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In the night, Esther dreamed of Henrik. They were back in Amsterdam before the war, before he’d left home. He was wearing his new Luftwaffe uniform and she was wearing her favorite blue dress. He took her to the cinema to see a German war film, and when Hitler appeared on the screen, Henrik stood up and exclaimed, “Heil Hitler” with a stiff salute. Then the lights went out and he was gone. She searched the dark theatre looking from face to face but he had simply disappeared. She began crying uncontrollably like a little girl.
She awoke to find Sarah sobbing beside her.
“It’s all right,” she said automatically, but then she followed her gaze up to the ceiling. In the night, someone had tied the dead woman’s left boot to the rafters above them. Sarah was looking at the boot as if it were a statue. Esther became suddenly angry. She climbed up on the edge of a nearby cot and pulled down the boot, breaking its weathered laces.
“Who did this?” she screamed. The morning sun crept in through the cracks in the walls casting yellow stripes on the pathetic mass of women’s bodies. “Who did this?” Esther repeated. After an unbearable few seconds, an anonymous voice spoke in the semi-darkness.
“Murderer,” it said coldly. Esther reeled from the accusation almost as if she’d been shot, and then her face became hard.
“Yes, I am a murderer. But it was me.” She held the boot high above her head. “I stole this woman’s boot, and she was a kind woman, a good woman, and now she is dead.” She threw the boot against the wall. It bounced off dully and landed on the wooden floor with a thud. “And God will judge me for it.”
Esther stared into the sea of women’s faces daring them to answer her, but no one spoke. After a while, they could no longer hold her gaze and fell into shielded whispers. Sarah was still crying on the floor. Esther felt the rage leave her and a wave of fatigue overcome her. She fell down onto the floor and cradled her sister in her arms.
They marched on a country road for most of the day, an army of ragged, unwashed Jewish women, and although their effort increased, their progress decreased. The lack of a proper food had left them chronically tired. They were approaching the Harz Mountains. Esther could see them in the distance, rising sharply from the horizon. From time to time, villagers would pass them along the road.
“Filthy Jew,” some would venture to say in hushed German voices, but most just looked on with a mild apprehension, or ignored them entirely. By evening, they arrived at an old country farmhouse and slept in the open field. The rain began around midnight and continued all the next day, but this did not halt their journey. On they marched up the base of the Harz Mountains through the cold and mud. No one spoke of the stolen boot. Who wouldn’t steal a boot?
Sarah cried less now and Esther worried more. At least when she cried, she cared about something. She was alive. Now she just stared off into nothingness with dead eyes. She seemed to have no appetite and Esther practically had to force her to eat the morning gruel. She no longer asked about father or grandfather. She did not speak about anything.
One afternoon as they were passing through a dense, pine forest, Esther noticed blood dripping from Sarah’s arm. She must have cut herself on one of the sharp pine branches, but she had said nothing, nor did she attempt to stop the bleeding. Esther washed the wound in the rain and dressed it as best she could with a piece of her dress until the bull guard caught her with the end of his whip.
“Keep moving,” he barked, drawing back his arm for another blow. Even the guards were becoming drained by the long journey and they were eager to reach their final destination. They would broach no delay. Esther gathered up her sister and pushed forward through the forest hoping to escape another painful sting from the guard’s cruel whip. By evening, they reached Dora-Mittelbau, a grim village of smoky sod shacks and low-ceilinged bunkhouses surrounded by barbed-wire fences and armed guard towers. Esther could hear the sound of dogs baying and the repetitive pounding of hammers striking stone.
“Look, Sarah. We’re here. No more marching,” Esther said hopefully.
“Good. I hope our furniture has arrived.” Sarah looked up with vacant eyes. Esther almost laughed, but then she realized her sister wasn’t joking. She was delirious.
When they arrived at the camp, they were forced to wait outside in the yard. Apparently the camp was already overcrowded. Space must be made for them. Esther cuddled up with her sister, but even between the two of them, there was no warmth to be had in the spring rain. As darkness approached, a horn sounded and the residents filed out of their sod shacks. They were like human skeletons, the walking dead. They formed long lines and waited patiently for their inspection.
After some time, a doctor in a white coat emerged from one of the wooden bunkhouses and approached the prisoners with an armed soldier flanking him on either side. He held a clipboard and inspected the prisoners in the same way the doctor had at Westerbork. Esther wondered if he was the same man. Some of the prisoners were taken out of the line by the soldiers and separated. Esther noticed that this new group seemed weaker than the rest. Some of them had visible signs of infection and disease, boils on their faces, discoloration of their skin, hair loss and patches of white on their scalp. There were about a hundred of them.
After the doctor’s inspection was finished, they were led onto a train car to await whatever fate had been prearranged for them. There was no sign of a train engine, but if there were tracks and train cars, then Esther assumed that train engines must pass this way eventually. So why then had the women prisoners been forced to walk nearly to their deaths the whole way from Westerbork? Esther could not fathom a reason except perhaps to inflict greater suffering.
“Welcome to Dora-Mittelbau, your new home in hell.” The bull guard was addressing the group of women. He liked to talk and fancied himself a leader among his fellow NCOs. This was not because of his rank. He was a junior sergeant and there were two other senior sergeants above him. But the bull had size in his favor and a particularly cruel temperament that served him well in this hell. Esther got the impression that even his seniors feared him. The prisoners certainly did. “If you are lucky, you will work here until you die. If you are not, you will follow those skeletons to a far greater horror.”
By now, darkness had descended upon the camp. The prisoners were dismissed without a meal and Esther and Sarah followed the crowd of women wearily into the mud huts. They were smoky, damp buildings that stank of sweat, urine and feces, but at least they were warm. Esther curled up next to her sister and, for the first night in days, fell immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep.
In the morning, the women were assembled outside and inspected by the doctor before they were allowed to eat. Esther could see that he was indeed the same doctor from Westerbork. The train cars were still on the tracks, untouched, and she wondered if he would single out the weaker women to be added to the group already in the cars. Was it better to be in the train or to stay at Dora-Mittelbau? There was no way to know.
“Open your mouth,” the doctor said softly in German, and Esther complied. She wanted to remind him of Westerbork, to tell him that she had already been chosen, but chosen for what? “Yes,” the doctor said as if noticing something significant. “You two are sisters, no? Are you twins?”
Esther nodded hopefully. Sarah said nothing, staring blankly down into the mud. They were not twins, of course. Sarah was two years younger than Esther, but she was tall for her age and her breasts had sprouted early. She had already begun to turn the heads of grown men. Physically, at least, she was already a woman, but not mentally or emotionally. She could not fathom what was happening to her. Esther feared she was not old enough or strong enough to survive the trauma of this horrible war. And if she did survive, what scars would she carry with her for the rest of her adult life?
“Come with me,” the doctor said kindly to Esther
and Sarah. Then he turned to address the bull guard and now his tone was much more abrupt and forceful. “The rest can go. Come back for these two in an hour,” he said. Unlike the rest of the Germans, the doctor seemed to have no fear of the bull, or anyone else. In fact, he seemed very much at home in this godforsaken camp. He reminded Esther, in an odd way, of her own family doctor in Amsterdam, gentle, soft-spoken and kind. He was even about the same age. But how could a man like that work in a place like this?
Esther took her sister’s hand and followed the doctor into bunkhouse 101. Behind her, she could hear the hideous crack of the bull’s whip and the whimper of the unlucky women as they were marched away to some unknown location. How they must hate her and Sarah?
Inside the bunkhouse, there were two rows of hospital beds, an operating table, sinks, and glass medicine cabinets, everything that a modern hospital would have. And it was clean and warm. It was as if everything outside the bunkhouse—the war, the prison camps, the suffering—was just some horrible nightmare and not real at all. An idea occurred to Esther. Perhaps they had been chosen to help the doctor, to be his nurses or assistants. Maybe they would stay here for the rest of the war in this nice, clean bunkhouse. The hope was almost unbearable.
“All right, frauleins,” the doctor said kindly. “Please remove of your clothing and lie down on the bed. I will be with you in a moment.”