The Death of Helena
A Short Story
Steven Moore
“To forget a holocaust is to kill twice.”
- Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel
03rd January, 1943
4:30 a.m.
In the darkest dead of night, the shock of whistles and screams punctuated the silence, like all of my nightmares come alive. We had been expecting the imminent raid for many weeks, but despite the threat, in the ghetto we tried to remain as civilized as possible, and life continued on as usual. Just that previous evening, a few of the last remaining musicians had gathered together and played some songs and, if only for a couple of hours, the dark and skittish mood of the Podgorze ghetto was lighter. With rare joy in our cold hearts and music in our ears, we all returned to our overcrowded and dilapidated apartments, each doing their best to forgot about their plights. And all were unprepared.
With no time for families to hide their children or their elders, every single resident of our run-down block was wrenched violently from their beds and marched down onto the ugly, empty street below. Any resistance was met with a bullet. The elderly were gunned down indiscriminately, and crying babies were silenced by a single, callous shot to the head. It was our turn to suffer the insufferable; The Nazi liquidation of our ghetto.
In our apartment, a cramped space we shared with other displaced Jewish families, were a total of twenty one people. There were the Hellers; Itzac and Rita, and their young children. Three generations of the Goldman family occupied the largest room; Mr. Jan and his mother, his wife and her parents, and their five children. There were also three orphans that we took care of together, their parents deported to who knows where in an earlier round up.
And we were the Ackermans, or what was left of us; my husband’s father, Abram, my five year old daughter, Anna, and me.
My name is Helena. And this is the story of my death.
5:30 a.m.
With lightning efficiency that thrived on the untapped terror, we were roughly bundled along icy streets, half dressed and freezing in flimsy nightclothes. There was no time to dress, such was the speed of the round-up. We walked, many of our elders dying from cold and, under pain of our own deaths, discarded where they fell. Finally we reached the gray platform of Prokocim Station, the eerie glow of orange street lamps casting sickly, slanted shadows all about. In the turmoil and chaos, a father’s anger got him summarily shot, while all around mothers clung on to their children with desperate and surprising strength, just as I was doing with my beautiful Anna. A mother’s arms are strong when her child is in danger.
Like lowly cattle, we were prodded and herded into wagons that would take us away. To where, we knew not. Actually, we weren’t at all like cattle, come to think of it. No, because cattle are tended to and well fed. Cattle have a use in the world. Each life has value. In reality, we’d become less than cattle, so dehumanized as we were after nearly a year of sickness and disease and food rationing in the ghetto.
From the shadowy darkness, random blows rained down upon us from SS clubs or rifle butts, and the screams of the young guards were the screams of brainwashed lunatics. Giant dogs, starved and trained to kill, strained for a piece of Jewish meat. Oh, how they’d be disappointed with our group of emaciated living dead, though it didn’t deter them, snapping and snarling amid the putrid scent of fear and death. And then came the worst moment of my life.
Just as I was lifting little Anna onto the wagon, I was beaten to the ground by two rifle wielding SS men. I screamed for my baby as the blows kept coming, unable to stand and too weak to fight. I was so desperate, and yet completely helpless. I couldn’t do anything. Through stinging tears I could see my baby, crying for her mother, the tears of a thousand lost children streaming down her pale and innocent cheeks. Then, peering at me through the madness I saw a familiar face, as a pair of strong arms lifted Anna upwards into them. It was Itzac Heller from the apartment. Over the screams and the bedlam, I heard Itzac shout that he would take care of Anna. He smiled weakly, a smile that told me not to worry, that she was with his family for now, and she would be safe. I was trying to stand, at last finding my feet, when the doors of the wagon were slammed shut with a metallic echo that vibrated through my stomach. And in a second, my baby was gone. That was the moment my heart was finally broken.
After several months of staying strong for Anna and showing false courage to those around me since my husband had been taken, I finally realized beyond any doubt that our world was being ripped apart and destroyed, and that the simple yet happy life we had known would never, ever be the same again.
In the next moment I felt rough but gentle arms around me, dragging me up from the cold concrete platform towards another wagon, the orange glow blurry through piquant tears. But by now I was oblivious, utterly lost in my own grief.
I closed my eyes and wished I would die, praying that the nightmare would end.
7:15 a.m.
I eventually came to my senses just as the long line of transports slowly pulled away from the grizzly platform, an insensate concrete canvas of blood and pain, and we the latest in a constant flow of human cargo after continuous rounds of liquidation. One ghetto after another. Littering the concrete were the bodies of the dying or dead, irrelevant as it was to the psychotic SS. If you were too weak to climb aboard the wagon, you were as good as dead to those guards, and ruthlessly executed on the spot. Despite the barbaric horror of what we were witnessing, those victims were the lucky ones. It was just that none of us knew that yet.
I don’t know who it was that thought they were saving me on that platform, for I would surely have been shot had I just lain there as I wanted to. But I am not grateful, not at the moment. I wanted to die back there, having lost everything that I had ever loved.
My dear husband and my little angel.
What has become of them?
What will become of me?
9:30 a.m.
After an hour or so the screams of terror and cries of confusion subsided, to be replaced by an eerie disquiet as resignation of the situation settled over us. It was calmer, but in a way, it was much worse. The adults in the wagon began to talk in hushed tones, speculating about our destination, and discussing the rumours we had heard over many months back in Podgorze. We are bound for the labor camp in Belzec, one elder said, where we will work until we die. One younger woman suggested that we were being relocated for work, and would receive new jobs and even a new home. That was surely better than the ghetto, she believed. Opinions differed greatly, and many believed what the woman had said, that we would be better off out of the ghetto, wherever that might be. But then another man, a well-known and respected figure in pre-war Krakow, and now a leader of sorts in our ghetto, spoke up.
“My fellow Jews,” Rabbi Blaszkowski began, “I believe that from where we are going there will be no return. We will arrive there, and we will die there. Some of us will die quickly, while others will be put to work until death, but we will die, each and every one of us. I suggest you take the time in this wagon to pray for your families, and pray for the Jewish people, for we will be no more.”
Another man spoke up now, clearly scared, and his voice was weak and trembling. “Where is this place you speak of? What is the name? Surely no such place exists, and it is just a rumour to scare us.”
The elder replied. “My son, and to all of you, this place is not a myth. It is real, and it is where we are going to die.”
“And the name?” a woman asked softly.
The Rabbi, with a pained look of love and sorrow etched across his wizened old face, replied.
“Auschwitz.”
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br /> Softly, Rabbi Blaszkowski began reciting the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. As others began to join in, speaking as tears streamed from frightened eyes, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who believed we were saying the prayer of death for ourselves.
It was at this time that I regained a little composure, strangely becalmed by the Rabbi’s voice and focusing on the words of the Kaddish. I didn’t know where we were going, neither believing nor disbelieving the Rabbi, and I had no idea what would happen to us. But I vowed there and then that I would see my little Anna again. I couldn’t imagine not ever looking into those beautiful brown eyes one more time, eyes that so many had told me were the mirror images of my own. I had to look into those eyes again, and tell my angel that I loved her. I must stay alive long enough to do this, I breathed; I will survive this journey. Internally I spoke this mantra to myself, over and over again, whispering, ‘I will survive; I must survive.’
That new resolve did keep me alive through that night, I am sure of it. It would have been the easy option to give in and close my eyes, never to wake up again. But, it was the only thing I lived for from that moment on. To survive long enough to hold my Anna tight, and tell my baby I loved her.
2:00 p.m.
Hours later, and a thick and deathly silence had descended over the wagon. Punctured only by the occasional sobbing child and the squeal of overworked wheels on steel tracks, the dense quiet was forced upon us. The fact that we were so tightly packed in, simply breathing became our only objective. I don’t know how many of us were crammed into that wagon; two hundred? Five hundred? But I know that it was inhumane, just another Nazi ploy to terrorize us Jews.
Many of our number were already at death’s door, and it was no surprise after so many months of sickness and starvation in the ghetto. The weakest of them didn’t last the day in that wagon, and by nightfall twenty-seven had died. It was mostly the elderly, but devastatingly, many of the children had succumbed. Hunger and exhaustion had taken their dreadful toll, leaving childless mothers and motherless children.
But not me. I refused to believe I wouldn’t see Anna again, and with stoic vigilance I recanted my mantra, forcing myself to fight the desire to sleep, unwilling to let death take me too.
11:00 a.m.
Time was eternal as the minutes passed like hours and the hours like weeks. Only the crush of those around you prevented collapse from exhaustion, and with no space to sit down or even to stretch, it was a living hell. Sometime late that night our transport was stopped. We were not given any food, and were told nothing of our destination. We were simply left alone, ignored, tormented by our hunger, and worse, by our imaginations. People spoke in nervous, hushed whispers about their families. Children cried from fear and thirst, a mother’s soothing voice failing to cover her own terror. The air in the wagon was icy, despite the fetid crush of humanity, and the sound of the sick coughing was the portent of their imminent death.
By around three in the morning, all was quiet and still, as if time itself had stopped. In spite of my own resolve, and my constant incantations of survival, it was the longest and most difficult night of my life.
04th January
9:23 a.m.
We couldn’t see a lot beyond the tight wooden slats that kept us entombed within our wagon, but if we could have, at precisely 09:23 on the morning of January 4th, 1943, we would have seen ourselves pass through a large, red-brick gatehouse onto a long and snow covered platform. We didn’t know it then, but the gates we had entered were the gates of hell; Death Camp Birkenau, Auschwitz, where the faint orange glow of death clouded the air.
That half of our carriage had died throughout the journey was no accident; it was expected, and simply one tactic in the final solution, of which many of us were still unaware, despite Rabbi Blaszkowski’s tragic statement. When the SS finally opened the doors to the wagon on that dismal platform, some twenty six hours after being dragged aboard, I was blinded by the glaring daylight, and as I stumbled and fell to the harsh ground below, I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing. Those of us that hadn’t made it alive were simply thrown into nearby pits like garbage, adding to the growing piles of corpses. Those too weak to climb down unaided were mindlessly executed where they stood, and subsequently fed to the SS guard’s ferocious German Shepherds, though no shepherding is needed when your quarry is served up on a stony plate. It was sickening, and I’d never been so horrified in all my life. Those guards were clearly as dehumanized as us as they tossed the remains into the pits of death, and despite the sub-zero temperatures, the rotting bodies were lost beneath a shroud of swarming, feasting flies.
9:45 a.m.
With the SS screaming at us through ever-present loudspeakers, we were ordered into separate lines, one of men, and another line of women and children. They yelled that we were ready to undergo our first ‘selection,’ though selection for what we didn’t yet know. I could see this same process happening up and down the mile long platform, as more than four thousand Jews had arrived in one single transport. It’s why we had awaited the night nearby. There just wasn’t enough room to enter the gates of Birkenau, with the machinations of death in full swing.
Amid the frenzy, entire families were wrenched apart, oblivious to the reality that they’d never again set eyes upon each other. Chaos and confusion ruled our lives in those panic ridden few minutes, as we were swiftly shoved and bullied into our respective groups. Anybody that showed resistance was beaten to death, or if they were lucky, shot in the head. With incredible speed and efficiency, the mass of hysterical humanity had been pacified, while unrestricted brutality and terror reigned supreme. Impossible as it was to believe, an SS guard told us that everything would soon be alright, though the callous smirk on his young, pasty face betrayed his now obvious lie. That boy could only have been sixteen years old, and there he was wielding a rifle like a toy. He was enjoying himself. Such hatred in someone so young. I wonder how many Jews he had beaten or shot? I couldn’t hate him back, though I wanted to. I pitied the kid, brainwashed as he surely was by his Führer.
10:05 a.m.
In a dream-like state, the women and children that now formed my group were barged and beaten away from the others, and lead through a series of high, barbed wire fences. They were terrifying in their simplicity, and the screeching guards and snarling dogs were our constant nemeses. We were marched into a plain looking structure, frozen from the cold and sapped of energy. Here we were told we‘d have our hair cut off. For sanitation reasons, they barked. As a proud Jewish woman, I had always treasured my long, wavy brown hair, but within a couple of seconds I had been shaved to the scalp, just the latest of a series of callous actions to dominate and humiliate us. “It’s for your own good,” the smiling SS woman guard said, though it was the cold and heartless smile of a maniac.
This, though, was just a pre-cursor of what was to follow, the ultimate humiliation for a female Jew. Under the very real threat of death, everyone was forced to strip off all of our clothes. In all of my thirteen years of marriage, even my own husband had never seen me naked with the lights on. And there I was now, bald, exposed and terrified beneath the indifferent looks of the SS. But although we were naked, the male guards didn’t look at us in a sexual way. We were just Jews, after all, dirty, contagious Jews. Mere animals in Nazi eyes.
A few of the women around me refused, unable to do that most dehumanizing of acts, and were summarily beaten and executed on the spot, their bodies falling to the unforgiving concrete with a dull thud. The young guards took great pleasure with the beatings, cursing as they smashed their heavy rifles into the helpless victims. “Filthy fucking Jewess,” they screamed, “Dirty Jewish pigs.” Unbelievably, myself and the others were ordered to strip their dead bodies anyway. It was barbaric, and under threat of suffering the same demise, we had little choice, clinging as we did to the shredded hope of survival.
That cold-hearted extermination of innocent lives did not seem real,
the whole thing like some kind of abstract event. It was beyond reality, a nightmarish and visceral vision that couldn't even be imagined.
10:30 a.m.
Despite the depraved violence against those that resisted, the guards at that stage were jovial and quiet, almost dignified. In some way that was even more frightening to me than the screaming and beatings we’d endured. You knew that they would harm you, those psyched-up guards on the railway platforms. Here, the apprehension of what may yet follow was unbearable. It was a deliberate ploy, of course, a calculated method of pacifying the masses, many of whom, while still unaware of what was to come, may have revolted from sheer desperation.
Next they told us that we would be showered and deloused and, after that, moved into our comfortable barracks from where we would begin our new jobs…our new lives. We were even told we should remember the individual peg number for our clothes, to make it easier to locate them again after our showers. This information, though not good news…we Jews are no longer slaves…did a lot to pacify the group. The crying and wailing lessened into sobs and words of comfort. Some of the women even began to whisper about their hope of surviving that hell.
We were slowly, gently even, ushered into a second underground room, numbingly cold and windowless, and ripe with unusual smells. But just as we had been told, hundreds of shower heads protruded from the low ceiling. The sight of those showers lightened the mood even further, as word spread back along the long lines of filthy, walking skeletons. We really were about to have showers, it seemed, beneath water with which we could wash away the horrors of the previous twenty six hours, and maybe even scrub away the years of the occupation.
10:55 a.m.
As the last of more than seven hundred women and children were huddled inside the shower block, bumping each other in the near darkness but glad of the warming contact, the heavy steel doors were finally closed. This was followed by a minute or two of nervous but excited chatter, anticipation of the coming shower evident. But as the seconds went by uneventfully, the noise level dropped to barely a murmur. Nerves and apprehension of the unknown grew, weighing down heavily upon each of us as we wrestled with our composure.
Looking around about me at the hundreds of skinny, hollow eyed women and the few remaining children, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There, just a few meters away and crouching by another group of ladies, head shaved and barely distinguishable from the other kids, I saw my angel. My Anna. Those huge brown eyes, eyes that could melt any heart, were unmistakable. In a flood of tears I swept over and took her up in my arms, relief surging over me in a wave of unabashed emotion.
I had prayed to see my baby alive again, long hours aboard the wagon praying to a God that had seemed to forget us, and there she was, her dirty face puffy from crying, a bewildered look dominating her delicate features. But I was confused. Why didn’t she cry out ‘mama, mama?’ Of course! She just didn’t recognize me. With no clothes on, and my hair gone, I looked just like every other broken woman in that room.
“My baby, it’s me, your mama. I’m here now, and I love you. I love you so much.” When at last she realized who I was, the smile that broke on her face seemed to light up the entire room and causing many of those around me to shed tears of their own. Finally, as she cried out, “mama,” I knew that whatever happened to us now, we would be together forever, never to be torn apart again. I would hold her tight in my mother’s arms until the very end of time.