Tell Me Who I Am

  Amelia spent the rest of the day praying to herself that she would be able to find strength to withstand Winkler. She knew that the colonel would take her to the limits of pain to make her talk, and, whether or not he succeeded, he would kill her.

  When she completely recovered consciousness, she was given therapy to try to make her talk. Dr. Groener decided to tell her how her bloodied body has been discovered on the road where a German army convoy had been attacked by a small group of terrorists.

  They had taken her to a hospital along with the rest of the wounded soldiers, and it was there that they had operated on her. A bullet had gone through one of her lungs. They thought she would not survive, but she survived. It was Colonel Winkler who asked the doctors to do what they could to save her, because it was of vital importance that they interrogate her. So they pulled her from the far side of the river of death back to the land of the living.

  That afternoon, Colonel Winkler arrived at the hospital, and Dr. Groener took him to Amelia’s room and advised him not to put her under too much pressure because she was still convalescing.

  “You do your job, Doctor, and I’ll do mine. This woman is a murderer, a terrorist, a spy.”

  Dr. Groener did not say another word.

  Two of Winkler’s men took her to the hospital basement, to a room guarded by two more uniformed men. On a table by the wall, torture instruments were lined up in perfect order.

  They sat Amelia in the center of the room and Colonel Winkler shut the door. He sat behind a desk and the room fell into darkness, apart from a powerful cone of light shining onto the prisoner’s face.

  First they stripped her, then they asked her for the names of members of the Resistance, the ones who had helped her, then for the names of her contacts in London, and they even tried to make her denounce Max as a traitor. Every question came with a blow, and they hit her so often that she regularly lost consciousness.

  Amelia wanted them to hit her hard so that she would fall into darkness and not be able to speak. But she could not resist the pain and she screamed, screamed with every blow, and screamed even more when one of the torturers, using a scalpel, started to peel the skin from the back of her neck as if she were an animal to be skinned. They took up patches of skin and then poured salt and vinegar into the open wounds, while she carried on screaming. But she did not speak, she merely screamed and screamed until she was hoarse and had no voice left.

  She lost all sense of time, she didn’t know if it was night or day, didn’t know if they had spent a long time torturing her or if they were taking a rest. The pain was so great that she could not bear it; she wanted only to die, and prayed for that moment to come.

  The only word Winkler got out of Amelia was when she shouted “Mama!”

  When they sent her back to Dr. Groener, he seemed not at all surprised to see her once again closer to death than to life.

  “I told you that she had suffered a concussion and that it would be some time before she got better and would be able to speak. If you believe that what she has to tell you is truly important, then you need to give her this time.”

  “She’s not going to stay here.”

  “Where are you going to send her? Germany?”

  “Yes.”

  “To a camp?”

  “She’ll be with people of her kind, criminals like her, until she is able to speak.”

  “And what if she never speaks?”

  “Then we will hang her for being a spy and a terrorist. Tell me how long it will take for her to be able to speak again.”

  “I don’t know, with the proper treatment... perhaps a few months, perhaps never.”

  “In that case, the murderer doesn’t have much time left to live.”

  The next day they put her in a cattle wagon. Winkler had personally made sure that they would send her to Ravensbrück, ninety kilometers north of Berlin. The instructions sent to the camp doctor were very specific: If, after six months, he could not send word that Amelia was ready to talk, then she was to be hanged.

  Major William Hurley paused in his narrative to light his pipe.

  “Please, carry on,” I begged.

  “Our archives show that Amelia was taken to that place and stayed there to the end of the war.”

  “So she survived,” I said with relief.

  “Yes, she survived.”

  “When exactly did she reach the camp?”

  “At the end of August 1944.”

  “Can you get me information about Ravensbrück?”

  “Not in sufficient detail, for that you will need to go to Jerusalem.”

  “Jerusalem? Why Jerusalem?”

  “Because the Holocaust Museum is there, and that is where they have the best information about what happened in Germany during those horrible years. They have a database about the survivors, who they were and which camp they were sent to; they have been able to use this to reconstruct the hell that was in each of the camps.”

  “My great-grandmother wasn’t Jewish.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with it: The Holocaust Museum has information about all the camps and who was in them.”

  “What happened when the war was over?”

  My question upset Major Hurley, who cleared his throat.

  “There is still a great deal of classified information to which I do not have access.”

  “You could give me some kind of clue, some idea at least about where my great-grandmother went.”

  “I will try to help you as much as I can. But I need to get in touch with my superiors and ask them if such information as has been declassified can be handed over to individuals such as yourself, especially with your being a journalist as well.”

  “You know that I have no journalistic interest in this story, I only want to find out about my great-grandmother.”

  “In any case, I need to consult with my superiors. Call me in a few days.”

  I accepted without complaint. I was shaken by Major Hurley’s story. I tried to imagine what it must have felt for my great-grandmother to believe herself responsible for the death of the man she had loved.

  I went back to the hotel and called Doña Laura.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I think that the investigation is getting more and more complicated, whenever I think I’m coming to an end I find something that forces me to carry on.”

  “So carry on.”

  “Carry on?”

  “Yes. Do you have a problem with doing so? Do you need more money? I’ll send word to the bank today for them to make another transfer.”

  “No, it’s not just that, but... I don’t know, I feel that the more I know about Amelia Garayoa, the less I move forward.”

  “Do your job, Guillermo, although... well, we’re very old and maybe don’t have that much time.”

  “I’ll do what I can, I promise.”

  Then I called Professor Soler, but he was not at home. His wife said that her husband was at a conference in Salamanca.

  “Call his mobile, he won’t mind, but do it in the evening, he doesn’t like people to disturb him while he’s working.”

  When I finally managed to get through to Professor Soler, I told him about my worries.

  “I don’t think I’m ever going to finish, Amelia’s life is a continual tragedy. You always think you’re near the end, and then something else happens. I have to go to Jerusalem. Do you know anyone at the Holocaust Museum?”

  I think that Professor Soler was curious about what it was that took me to Jerusalem, but he forbore to ask me. He didn’t know anyone at the Holocaust Museum, but he gave me the telephone number of a friend, a professor at Jerusalem University.

  “Avi Meir is a Pole, he survived Auschwitz. He has retired, he’s an emeritus professor, he can help you find what you’re looking for.”

  “Amelia, I am looking for Amelia,” I replied, resignedly.

  “In Jerusalem?”

  “No, but I think that they can give me some news of her t
here.”

  Pablo Soler didn’t ask anything else. He had given himself the stricture of not knowing more than the Garayoas wanted him to know. He owed them a great deal, he owed them everything that he was.

  I decided not to call my mother to tell her that I was going to Jerusalem. Instead I would call her from there. I wasn’t in the mood for another maternal scolding. But I thought I would calm her down by sending her some flowers. I ordered them at the hotel reception. She couldn’t complain now that I was forgetting about her.

  12

  My arrival in Tel Aviv did not get off on the right foot. I was irritated by the interrogation they put me through at customs.

  “Why have you come to Israel?”

  “Tourism.”

  “Do you know anyone here?”

  “Nope.”

  “Have you been given any present for anyone in Israel or the Territories?”

  “No, no one has given me anything and I’m not bringing any presents.”

  Then I had to say where I was going to stay and what my intended itinerary was.

  Already in a bad mood, I rented a car, thinking all the while that as far as security was concerned the Israelis were a little paranoid, even more so than the Americans.

  The Jerusalem Sheraton, in the center of the city, was not that far from the historic King David, although it was quite a walk if I wanted to see the old town. Although I told myself that I was not there to be a tourist, I said that I would go to the Holy Sites after my business here was done, to get some souvenirs for my mother. I thought about how contradictory she was, so modern about some things, so Catholic and traditional about others.

  Professor Avi Meir was a charming old man who was ready to see me straight away.

  “Professor Soler called me yesterday to tell me that you were coming. If you don’t have any other appointments, then I’ll expect you for dinner at eight.”

  I accepted gratefully. Apart from three cups of coffee, I hadn’t had anything all day, and I was starving. After having a shower, I asked the concierge to tell me how to get to the address Professor Meir had given me.

  The professor lived on the second floor of a three-story house. He opened the door himself and gave me a handshake that surprised me by its strength, given that the owner of the hand was a man of advanced age. I thought that he must be around ninety, but he moved as if he were much younger.

  His house was simple, with bookcases on all the walls, and books piled on the floor. There was a table in the middle of the living room, perfectly laid for dinner.

  “Sit down, you must be hungry after your journey. I don’t know about you, but I never eat on airplanes.”

  We set to with gusto. There was a baked fish, and the professor had laid out several salads, hummus, and a basket of flatbreads.

  “You’ll like the fish, it’s called Tilapia galilaea, but I think you call it St. Peter’s fish; it’s from the Sea of Galilee, a friend brought it over today.”

  We gave a good account of ourselves with the meal, while I told him that I needed to find out information about Ravensbrück concentration camp, and especially to find out if my great-grandmother had been a prisoner there.

  “We are not Jews, but my great-grandmother was very involved in the war, working for the Allies. If you could arrange a meeting for me with someone from the Holocaust Museum, it would be extremely welcome. Almost as welcome as this magnificent dinner,” I joked.

  The professor sat in silence, looking straight at me, as if he were trying to read my most intimate thoughts. Then he smiled before replying.

  “I’ll do something better, I’ll introduce you to someone who actually was in Ravensbrück.”

  “It’s not possible! Are there still survivors?”

  “We grow fewer every day, but we are not all dead yet. You know what? Sometimes I think that when the last one of us dies, there will no longer be any testimony of what it was like, because the world tends to forget, does not want to remember.”

  “But there are books, documentaries, the Holocaust Museum... The memory of what happened will never be lost,” I said, trying to cheer him up.

  “Bah! All these testimonies are nothing but a drop in an immense ocean. Men need to forget their crimes... Anyway, going back to what interests us, I will introduce you tomorrow to someone who can help you, someone who survived Ravensbrück just as I survived Auschwitz.”

  “Thank you, Professor, it’s much more than I could have hoped for.”

  “I will come to find you at twelve at your hotel, but I would like you to do something first. Go to the Holocaust Museum, first thing tomorrow morning. Then it will be easier to understand.”

  When I was back at the hotel, I felt that I needed to talk to someone to explain that I had just met an exceptional man. The long conversation I had had with Avi Meir had impressed me. He had barely mentioned his time in Auschwitz, but he had explained what Europe had been like before the war, and we then got into a discussion about the existence of Israel; I felt so comfortable that evening that I even allowed myself to criticize the policies Israel enacted toward the Palestinians.

  Avi Meir didn’t accept any of my criticism and we argued with the confidence that only comes between people who are going to be good friends. I felt at home.

  The next morning I got up early. I wanted to make the most of the day, so I took a map of Jerusalem and, thanks once again to the receptionist, found the Holocaust Museum fairly easily.

  When I arrived, I found myself behind a group of American Jews and a school party. There was a Spanish tour group as well, waiting for their guide. I stayed close to them to hear the tour.

  I was overwhelmed when I left the museum, my stomach turning over and a sensation of nausea gripping me. How was it possible that a whole nation had gone mad enough to kill millions of people simply because they belonged to another race, another religion? Why hadn’t they rebelled against their leaders? I remembered Max von Schumann and his friends; they were not in favor of Hitler, but their opposition was entirely intellectual. How many Germans had really risked their lives fighting against Hitler?

  I got back to the hotel at the same time as Professor Meir arrived. Surprisingly, he still drove, an old truck.

  “Get in. Are you coming from the Museum? The place we’re going is not that far away, about twelve kilometers, you’ll see.”

  We left the city without the professor telling me anything about where he was taking me, and I didn’t ask him either. I thought that we were heading out into the desert, until suddenly I saw a green oasis in the distance. It looked like a village, a little village with a wall around it and armed men and women patrolling the perimeter. They weren’t soldiers, they looked like normal people, civilians, wearing comfortable clothes, without any military insignia.

  “This is Kiryat Anavim, a kibbutz, there are mostly Russian Jews here. It was founded by Jews who came from Russia in 1919. There are ever fewer kibbutzim in Israel; it is very difficult to live here, pure Communism.”

  “Communism?”

  “Private property does not exist, everything is held in common, and the community provides for everyone’s needs; the children are educated communally, and they share the work, everyone doing everything: You can be an engineer or a doctor, but you have to cook and plough as well. The only difference from Soviet Communism is that there is freedom here: If someone wants to go, then they’re free to go; everything is voluntary. It is very hard to live in a kibbutz, especially for the newer generations, young people today are very spoiled and can’t cope with a Spartan life.”

  “I’m not surprised,” I said, with a sudden attack of sincerity.

  “I lived in a kibbutz for a few years when I first came to Israel, I met my wife there and spent the happiest years of my life.”

  “Your wife?”

  “My wife died years ago. It was cancer that took her. She was Russian, a Russian Jew. She came here with her parents as a child. They were the first pioneers and they came h
ere, to Kiryat Anavim.”

  “Do you have children?”

  “Yes, four. Two of them are dead. Daniel, the oldest, was killed in the ’67 war, and Esther in a terrorist attack on the kibbutz where she lived in the north of the country, near the border with Lebanon. I have two left: Gideon lives in Tel Aviv and is about to retire, he’s a television producer, he’s got three children and two grandchildren, so I’m a great-grandfather; Ariel, the youngest, lives in New York. He married a New Yorker and left. I’ve got two New York grandchildren who did their duty and did military service here. Good kids, they got married and have children as well.”

  He stopped the truck at the door of a modest little house. All the houses were the same, made of stone, built in a line with very little to tell them apart.

  The door to the house was open and Avi Meir walked in as if it were his own house.

  “Sofia! Sofia! I’m here!”

  An elderly woman appeared, smiling, and she held out her hand to us.

  “Avi! Come in, come in! I was so happy when you called me this morning. You haven’t come for too long. And what about your children? Have you heard from Ariel? I’ll never understand why children want to run off to America so much nowadays. And this young man is... ?”

  “Guillermo, the young Spaniard I told you about. He’s a journalist, but he’s here to write a book about his great-grandmother.”

  “When you called me to ask if I knew a Spaniard called Amelia Garayoa in Ravensbrück, my heart skipped a beat. Amelia, poor thing!”

  Sofia asked us to sit down and brought me a jug of lemonade with mint, then she looked me up and down as if trying to find some trace of Amelia in my face, but seemed to be disappointed.

  “Tell us all you know, I’d like to hear it as well,” Professor Meir asked.

  Sofia didn’t need to be asked twice and started to tell her story.