Early on the second day I began to suffer from violent stomach cramps. I had very bad diarrhoea and needed to relieve myself almost immediately. I could hardly contain myself as I went to ask the Kappo at the end of the barrack if I could go to the latrines.
‘Verfluchte Mistbiene, 1 it is not your turn,’ she spat at me.
‘But I have to go!’ I was quite desperate.
‘You must wait for your turn like everyone else!’ she said.
I could hardly believe that she would refuse me and I did not know what to do. I had terrible cramps that doubled me up and it was impossible for me to hold on for even two more minutes. I got outside the barrack just in time to crouch down and use a corner of the yard.
But the Kappo had followed me out and she stormed over, yanked me up and cursed, ‘You filthy Jew!’ She slapped me around the head as hard as she could, yelling, ‘This is the way you will all die! Infected with dysentery and typhus – because you animals can’t control yourselves!’
She had a firm grip on my dress. She dragged me forward hitting me viciously across my face, first on the right side and then on the left until my ears rang and I felt even sicker than I was already.
‘Here is a bad example to you all,’ she shouted to the others. ‘Her thoughtless action will give you all contagious illnesses. She is a typical specimen of you pigs and we will punish her!’
Everyone was called out to witness my degradation. I had to fetch a heavy wooden stool, then kneel down and hold it above my head. All the members of the barrack had to stand in a circle around me. As I sank to kneel in the dust, terrible stomach cramps gripped me again.
The heat became unbearable as the sun beat down on my shaven head, severely burning the back of my neck and ears. I was plagued with thirst. My arms ached as I struggled to keep the stool above my head. If I flagged and tried to rest a bit with the seat on my head to release the tension in my arms the Kappo would come over and kick me. I was in agony.
Mutti had placed herself right in front of me and she was crying, her face showed me her heart was nearly breaking with anguish at the sight of my plight. But as I knelt there in the centre of the crowd they started to whisper encouraging words to support me.
‘Come on, Eva!’
‘It won’t be much longer!’
‘Don’t give in, Eva!’
But no Kappo was going to have the satisfaction of seeing me do that! Somehow I got through the next two hours until I heard the voice of the Kappo saying, ‘That will teach you to obey orders in future.’
My ordeal was over. Everyone crowded around and made a great fuss of me for having been so brave and tough – even though, they said, I was so young. They supported me, half fainting, back to the barrack and I was left to lie on the bunk for the rest of the day. By the evening the stomach cramps had gone and I was feeling much better.
At first I seemed to recover because for a time I became a little heroine and it boosted my morale. Many women yearned so desperately for their own children that they poured all their maternal love on me and I became quite a pet.
However, the ailment had got hold of me. I awoke a few days later shaking with fever, and burning with such a high temperature that I could hardly stand up. But I knew I had to go out on Appel because otherwise the count would not be correct; it would last for hours and it would all be my fault.
My teeth were chattering so much I could hardly speak. ‘Help me, Mutti,’ I moaned.
She lifted me against her, supporting me until we were outside. Franzi stayed close by to help hold me up and we managed to position ourselves in the last row so that when no SS women or Kappos were near enough to see I could lean against the wall. It was early dawn again. By now I was only semi-conscious. Once or twice I sank on to my heels after Mutti or Franzi told me my head had been counted. Throughout that day I lay in the compound barely conscious of anything around and by the next day I was still no better.
Any inmate with a high fever was a dangerous bunkfellow. By now the others were beginning to complain that I should not be there. ‘Take her to the hospital block,’ they kept nagging Mutti, but I refused to go. Even though I had not yet faced up to the reality of the gas chambers, I had realized that the hospital block housed the most vulnerable inmates for torture and death. There were many rumours going round that patients were being experimented on, often in the most painful and disgusting ways.
‘I don’t want to die!’ I sobbed. ‘I want to stay with you, Mutti.’ As long as she was there she would protect me.
I cried continuously with sickness and fear but the other prisoners were relentless with their insistence and in some ways they were right.
‘You can get medicine there,’ they argued, ‘that may save your life – not end it!’
They kept up the persuasion because I looked and felt so ill.
‘Do it for us, if not for yourself,’ said Franzi, to add extra weight to their argument.
So in the end I gave in and agreed to go to the surgery. We all suspected that I had typhus.
Mutti applied to the Kappo, giving her my number and her own number so that she could accompany me. It was the system that if anyone needed to go to the surgery, they would put their number forward in the morning and wait to be called to attend, in turn, block by block. I was still shaking and sweating by the time they came for me but managed the ten minute walk to the surgery block hanging onto Mutti’s arm. I thought I was going to pass out, but I remained conscious enough to stand in line with other women who had turned up for ‘treatment’. We were a sad-looking group of bedraggled and dirty human beings.
Although this ‘hospital’ was simply another barrack building, it looked much cleaner than the others. It had an air of professional efficiency about it. Nurses in white aprons bustled around and there were Jewish doctors in white coats. Medical orderlies wore striped blue and grey prison dress and appeared clean and well-fed. The atmosphere was reassuring.
A nurse finally appeared to take the next patient into the surgery. She was fairly tall, with a sturdy pear-shaped body and a full head of hair. I thought she had the face of an angel. She cut an unlikely figure in that place and among the emaciated forms around her she seemed like an Amazon. She moved with a sense of purpose and was obviously the one in charge.
When Mutti saw her she suddenly let out a scream. Even in my sickened state I could sense her thrill of excitement.
‘Minni!’ she shrieked at the top of her voice.
The solid figure of the nurse turned to stare at my mother. ‘Fritzi!’ she yelled in turn as she rushed over to us and threw herself into my mother’s arms. They hugged each other tightly, laughing and crying with joy. This was Minni, our beloved cousin from Prague. It was wonderful luck for us that she was there of all places.
Mutti and Minni were like sisters, they had spent many childhood holidays together. Minni had married a famous skin specialist and, although she had been in Birkenau for several months, she had been able to gain considerable protection because of her husband’s reputation in treating the Germans for skin disorders – and she had often assisted him in his work.
Minni took me in herself to see the doctor, staying to make sure I got the correct drugs. She agreed with him it was probably an attack of typhus. I was extremely ill but even so Minni did not want to see me go into the hospital.
Mutti helped me back to our barrack. That evening as we stood for Appel there were thunderstorms with torrential rain. Mutti later confessed that she had been convinced I would not survive the night. I was burning with fever and delirium. Franzi helped drag and pull me to my place on the bunk where I lay in a drugged sleep with all the humiliations and torture of the past weeks obliterated from my mind.
And then, quite amazingly, when I awoke at dawn for the next Appel my fever had completely gone. I still felt very weak and wobbly but I knew I was going to pull through.
Everyone was pleased. Mutti was overjoyed. I told myself that if Pappy knew about my recovery he would be proud of me. He was fanatical about good health. He had no patience for anyone who made a fuss over minor illness. He had always taught me to be brave.
My illness made me appreciate my father’s wisdom in the way he had brought me up to be tough and fearless because after that episode I realized my body was capable of recovery, even in the most adverse conditions. From that time on I tried not to make a fuss over unimportant things.
My recovery gave me a new view of life and helped make the unbearable bearable. I told myself that it was now up to me. I was determined to survive the war no matter what they did to me.
By now we were all beginning to grasp the truth about the extermination programme and to realize that death lay at the end of the line for us. We came face to face with the reality of elimination during the early days of our three-weeks quarantine, at Appel. One evening a German woman SS guard had appeared holding the hand of an angelic little girl whose long golden curls hung half-way down her back. Her young mother, head shaven and in prison stripes, followed behind as they walked along the lines of standing women. The guard was thoroughly enjoying herself encouraging the child to count along the rows.
‘One, two, three, four and five in a row.’ The guard repeated in a sing-song voice.
The child skipped happily alongside trying her best to keep up with the numbering while we all stood still, heads to the front, hardly daring to move for fear of being beaten.
During the next few days these two made regular appearances at Appel. We speculated amongst ourselves that the mother was probably the girlfriend of an SS officer which was why she was getting preferential treatment. We never found out exactly what happened but, one morning, she and her daughter were no longer there. Nor were they ever seen again in the barrack and the rumour quickly spread that they had been ‘selected’ – that chilling euphemism for ‘put to death’. We started then to realize how vulnerable we all were.
Now that Mutti had made contact with Minni, I felt a bit more secure. From time to time while we were in quarantine she would visit us with a little extra food – a piece of black bread, a bowl of watery soup, sometimes even a portion of cheese. When she came to see us we were always so hungry that we ate anything she gave us on the spot, occasionally saving a morsel to give to Franzi. We had discovered that saving food for later was useless because it was invariably stolen while you were sleeping or off guard. Everyone was always hungry. Neither the black coffee substitute nor the watery soup had much nutritional value, especially when shared between five. Mutti and I agreed that we would exchange some of the food Minni gave us for our own mugs.
Several inmates had noticed Minni giving us extra food and hung around hoping for a share. In fact, there was a good deal of extra food around but not for Jews. Polish prisoners were allowed food parcels from home or the Red Cross. Sometimes they would get some bacon or cheese or a bag of sugar. I was desperate for something sweet to eat.
One morning on my way back from the latrines I saw something white and glittering on the ground.
It’s sugar, I thought, bending down and pushing my finger into the tiny white particles. I wetted my finger so that I could pick up every tiny little grain. It was the first sweet thing I had tasted for weeks.