Excerpts from the
Book
Somehow I imagined that Pappy would be able to send someone to
rescue us, but he had no way of knowing that Mutti and I had been
left behind. We would have to find help ourselves. The thought was
terrifying. It was the dead of winter and we were in a foreign land
in the midst of a war zone. Nonetheless, we covered ourselves in a
mound of warm clothing and, wrapped in blankets, moved in a huddles
mass outside the front gate of Birkenau. We followed a road that was
barely visible as snow had drifted over the path. The icy wind made
it nearly impossible to stay upright while we moved ever so slowly
in what we desperately hoped was the right direction. Finally, after
hours that felt like days, we arrived at the men’s camp of
Auschwitz. The Russians had set up a temporary headquarters there.
Right away I asked everyone if they had seen Pappy and Heinz, or if
they had heard their names, ‘Erich and Heinz Geiringer,’ but they
sadly shook their heads.
___
As
groups of survivors arrived from different places, I looked for
Pappy and Heinz. I asked everyone, ‘Have you heard the names Erich
and Heinz? I am looking for my father and brother.’ I wondered how
tall Heinz had grown, and if he would look more like a man than a
boy. Would he think that I had changed? Would he look at me and
know that I was different, that I had grown up...
___
‘Why
did I survive when most children my age were sent directly to the
gas chambers?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know Evi,’ Mutti replied.
___
‘How
can we live without Pappy and Heinz,’ I cried.‘Nothing matters now
that they are gone.’
___
Our
community changed overnight. Some acquaintances acted openly hostile
to us, as if they were looking at us through different eyes…They
criticized us and made derogatory remarks because we had not shown
allegiance to the Nazi party. I learned that one of my friend’s
parents didn’t want their daughter to play with me anymore, as if a
nine-year-old girl like me could be dangerous.
___
Our
grandparents’ departure brought on another wave of loneliness and
longing for the way things used to be… I wished I could see my
friends, Kitty and Martin, and all my cousins. I wished we were
planning a trip to the mountains. I was miserable, with hundreds of
wishes floating around in my head.
___
Mutti worried about the danger of our position as stateless
refugees. I heard her talking with another mother from Austria about
how we had no rights, no state to help us in any way. She also
worried about our separation from Pappy. He tried to come every
weekend, but sometimes it was impossible. Mutti knew it was hard for
us to be without our father. We longed for his good night hugs, his
words of reassurance and the security of having him near.
___
The
dangers around us increase… The Nazis were everywhere… They watched
us with glaring eyes and said cruel and threatening things when we
walked past. They posted signs: Jews are not aloud to take the tram
or the train. Jews are not permitted to walk on the pavement, sit in
the park, take photographs or visit the zoo. Jews cannot go to
certain shops, restaurants, libraries or concert halls. Jews have to
be home by 8 p.m.
The
Nazis took away our bicycles and Heinz’s sailing boat… Then we had
to turn in our radios… Many of our Jewish friends had been rounded
up and taken away to unknown destinations. Escape seemed impossible.
___
The
Jews were not the only ones in danger. The Nazis deported and
imprisoned political opponents, communists in particular, gypsies,
Jehovah’s witnesses, the mentally handicapped and disabled were all
at risk of imprisonment and deportation…Hitler wanted a superior
race of perfect men and women to make Germany great again…
___
The
Nazis began rounding up Jewish teenage boys, supposedly to send them
off to work in labor camps to help Germany with the war effort.
Their families left behind never knew what happened. In fact, most
were taken to concentration camps, then on to death camps.
___
The
time has come for us to disappear,’ Pappy said…We spent the last two
hours as a family at the kitchen table. Mutti made tea and Pappy
retold happy stories about the past… Heinz gave me a few words of
brotherly advice. We wept and hugged… Then Mutti and I walked out of
the front door of our home, on to the street and away from our
family’s haven. The morning light dawned on one of the saddest days
I would ever see. My eyes burned with tears of bitterness.
___
Every moment of every day in hiding we worried about being captured.
There were brief distractions when I was able to concentrate on a
story or lesson or game, but I could never escape the dread, the
weight of worry, the sounds lurking in the back of my head of Nazis
shouting and crashing into our world.
Monotony hung in the air like a grey cloud that wouldn’t lift… I had
to sit still for hours on end. I had no company except Mutti… I
longed for friends who would laugh and joke with me and think of
silly things to do. I wanted to run, play and be free… I ached for
Heinz and Pappy.
___
In a
single glance the Nazi guard decided if a person would live or
die...‘You go to the right, you to the left,’ he indicated with his
little baton. That’s all it took for someone to be condemned to
death. All of the older people and children and most of the girls my
age were told to stand on the left. Eventually this entire group was
marched unsuspectingly to gas chambers that they thought were shower
rooms. They were handed bars of soap, a final brutal trick to
mislead them. Within a few minutes everyone was dead.
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