Life’s a Scream

The hospital was a frightening place for me. I remember glaring white walls, people in white coats with needles and a large cold machine which burred when I was forced to press my chest against it. I thought the machine would kill me and screamed for my mother.

Having survived the X-ray machine, I was put in a big white bed. Matka was in a different ward from me and I kept asking if I could be with her but it wasn’t allowed. I wanted to get upset but I recognised that the Red Cross nurses and doctors were being very kind to me. They brought me paper and picture books, including one called Gebrüder Grimms Märchen. I so wanted to read it, but my education had been patchy and I found it too hard.

It took seven months to get us back on our feet. Once we were strong enough to leave our beds we were given clothes, shoes, blankets and a small parcel of food, mainly lard biscuits made from grits and oats, and told to move on. There were queues of refugees in need of our beds.

The factory was a depressing place. Endless lines of displaced persons queued for days on end to be interviewed by soldiers, only to be told that the army could do nothing for them. We were advised that if we could get to the next Red Cross station we might find help there. So began a long trek between displaced-persons camps.

I admire my mother enormously. In the camp she had been a survivor. She had kept her head down, sheltered me and had done whatever it had taken to live from day to day, from moment to moment. In the forest she had worked all hours of the day to bring some sort of order to the chaos and make sure that we were still around when deliverance came. These were enforced reactions to circumstances. Our odyssey around the displaced-persons camps was a display of sheer guts and determination. She could have given up at any time. Thousands did. We passed them everywhere, sitting in bombed-out houses, staring ahead, all the fight knocked out of them by the lack of food and the gnawing conviction that ‘home’ no longer existed for them. Matka would have none of that. She was determined to find my father. Unfortunately, she had no clear idea how this could be accomplished. Where would he be? Would he come looking for us? Would we pass each other in the night and be separated for ever? I wasn’t much help although I was nine years old now. Life in the camp and my brush with TB had left me as thin as a rake and with about as much energy as a drink of water.

The only transport that could be relied on at that stage of the aftermath of war was Shank’s Pony. From somewhere, however, my mother dug out a battered old cart. The wheels were at crazy angles and it always seemed on the brink of disintegrating but it helped. I was able to rest on it every so often while my poor mama ploughed on to the next camp, pulling me along.

The Red Cross camps were the desert oases which made it possible to carry on. There you could rest for a couple of days, eat hot food, catch up on your medication and, most important, spend hours scanning the boards around the camp which carried thousands of names and messages. The only names we were interested in were my father’s and my grandparents’ but they were never there.

With winter came the snow and I fell ill again. I spent most of the time on the little handcart, wrapped in whatever rags my mother could find. We lived like bag ladies. Anything which might be useful was loaded on to the cart or put into the bundle wrapped in a blanket that my mother carried over her shoulder. How she survived, day after day in freezing temperatures with minimum nourishment, I’ll never know.

Just when it looked as if, in spite of all her efforts, we were going to be defeated by cold and hunger, we met Pani Philipska. Pani Philipska was an anachronism in that shattered world. Everyone around her looked on the verge of death and she was life. She was little and plump, warm and jolly. She was an oasis of elegance in the displaced-persons camp, with her outrageously blonde hair piled on top of her head, and her chic and expensive clothes. She had come to the camp to try to find her brother who had disappeared at the beginning of the war, when he had had the luck to be away when the Gestapo had come for his family. Pani Philipska had been living with her husband but had been widowed just before the end of the war.

My mother was spellbound and a bit in awe of Pani Philipska. We thought it best not to ask where the clothes and hair dye came from, especially as she soon took a bit of a shine to Mascha and, when she saw the state I was in, wanted to help. Out of the blue she asked my mother to come home with her for Christmas. Matka didn’t hesitate. She could see that if I didn’t get some real food, warmth and rest, I would not last much longer.

Pani Philipska’s large, elegant apartment building, just outside Lodz, had been practically untouched by the war. I was so ill now that I wasn’t able to appreciate it fully. But I did appreciate the big dry bed with a cloth-wrapped hot brick in it. Pani Philipska arranged for a doctor to come and see me. When Mama told him about the camp and TB he didn’t give me much chance of survival. At this time TB was a big killer – and the recommended treatment was a long stay on a Swiss mountain top with a fortifying diet.

Christmas came and went, and I just lay in the warm bed, drifting in and out of consciousness. Most of the time Mascha sat beside me but sometimes Pani Philipska would come to give her a break. Pani Philipska gave me a big baby doll with a china head and a long flowing frock. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I pulled it into bed, lay down and looked at the puffy pink cheeks and huge staring blue eyes. Pani Philipska laughed and swept me up into her big soft arms. I loved the mist of exotic perfume that surrounded her and couldn’t get enough of it. When she left the room I took out Sonja, the little Cossack doll that Steiner had given me, and laid her beside the baby doll. For looks there was no contest. The baby doll was so real you half expected it to cry at any moment. Sonja was crude and showed the marks of our adventures, and sweat from my hand where I had clutched her for months. I left Baby Doll on the pillow and hid Sonja down between my legs in the warmth.

Pani Philipska insisted that Matka ate heartily and rested as much as she could. Nevertheless, my mother worried that Pani Philipska would expect us to leave once the Christmas period was over. She went to the displaced-persons camp and tried in vain to get us a place there. When she returned and confessed where she had been Pani Philipska was offended. Did my mama think so little of her that she could imagine that she would throw us out? Especially with me knocking at death’s door?

The food and warmth were having a beneficial effect on me. The doctor even seemed to think I might make it. My recovery was a source of joy to Mama and Pani Philipska. Slowly I began to gain some strength. Pani Philipska by this time had almost forgotten that we weren’t actually part of the family, so took it quite badly when, in the spring, Mama announced that we must be off. I wasn’t too happy about her decision either. I wanted to stay in the big warm apartment with lots of food and dry clothes. Patiently Mascha explained that my father was waiting for us. She said we would leave in two days. Pani Philipska gave us some money to buy food for the journey and Mascha and I walked into the village to get provisions.

The trees were just bursting into bud and the sun was warm and friendly. It was so revitalising I almost forgave Matka for wanting to give up our safe haven and go back to the miseries of the open road. In the middle of the village, which was quiet and orderly and a million miles from the devastation I had been used to, was a baker’s shop. The smell wafting from it was mouth-watering. I stared through the window, mesmerised by the cakes and bread on offer, and was soon whining to my mother, begging her to buy me a cake. She was made of sterner stuff. Although she had devoted her life to me, to my survival, she had a code of discipline and refused to pander to me. She went to buy the basic necessities, leaving me to slaver over the pastries.

A girl about half my age came out of the shop, saw the Baby Doll I held in my arms and tried to grab it. I pulled it fiercely away. The girl promptly burst into tears. Instantly her mother was there, wanting to know what had happened. I was ready to run but I had been so taken with the cakes I hadn’t noticed which way Matka had gone. Before I could make a decision the baker’s wife asked me if I wanted to sell my beautiful doll. Indignantly I said, ‘No!’ The woman had obviously seen me lusting after the pastries. She went into the shop, looked at me through the glass and pointed at a big gooey cake. It was so gorgeous that I hadn’t even considered it. I nodded. It was a deal. Frightened of what Mama would say when she discovered what I had done I stood and woofed the whole cake down on the spot.

I don’t think my mother noticed what I had done with the doll. If she did, she kept quiet about it. She decided that as it was such a lovely day she would give me a chance to try out my legs, for it was a long time since I had walked anywhere. We set off towards the displaced-persons camp, which was a couple of miles outside the village, with the intention of looking through the cards for one last time to see if by some miracle my father’s name had appeared among them. Soon I began not to feel very well. I wanted to go back to Pani Philipska’s apartment and lie on my bed but Mascha ploughed on, ignoring my entreaties. Without warning I was sick. The rich cake was too much for my stomach and it had rejected it. When my mother saw what I had brought up she wasn’t amused. She didn’t question me, just grabbed my arm and dragged me at a fast pace up the road.

By the time we got to the DP camp I had recovered enough to force down the slice of black bread we were handed on arrival. Mama then checked in with the Red Cross officer and, full of optimism, told him that we were setting off and that anyone who might want her could find her at our old house in Berlin.

Finally identifying him and remembering all his kindnesses, I was full of remorse. I pulled Sonja out of my pocket and showed her to him in an effort to overcome my embarrassment at not recognising the man who had constantly saved us. I was dismayed by my seeming ingratitude and it exacerbated the guilty feelings which had weighed me down since I’d been sick. Inside I knew I was a horrid child. I’d so easily been persuaded to give up my beautiful Baby Doll. And for a piece of cake! What if I’d had a mother like me? I’d be dead now. Peter didn’t know about my misdeeds. He put his arm around my mother’s waist, took my hand, found a sheltered spot and sat us all down. The adults had a lot of catching up to do and I needed to sleep.

Bringing Peter Steiner back to Pani Philipska’s house turned out to be an excellent idea. She liked him straight away. He looked like hell but he had twinkling eyes and a great sense of humour, which won her over. He started flirting with her at once.

When he had cleaned himself up and shaved, she asked him where he was staying. ‘In a castle with fountains and paintings inside,’ he replied. Pani Philipska told him to stay the night with us. I went with him to the ‘castle’ to fetch his belongings and when we got back from the hovel he had been sleeping in, we told of the vast riches and treasures he had left behind.

Instead of leaving as planned, Matka and I stayed on in the flat. With Steiner there it felt as if we were a real family. He brought laughter and noise into our home. We would listen to him hammering away on Pani Philipska’s grand piano, trying not to let him see us cringe when he hit a wrong note.

To my disappointment Peter’s arrival didn’t change my mother’s mind about continuing the search for my father. After a couple of weeks she again announced that we had to leave. I was devastated when I found out that Peter wasn’t coming with us. I had already accepted him as a factor in my new life. But he was also a factor in Pani Philipska’s life and we found out later that they married.

For one year we walked in the snow and cold, schlepping mounds of accumulated rags and scraps of deteriorating food from displaced-persons camp to Red Cross station to government office. Occasionally we’d get a lift on an army truck or a farm cart, or the Red Cross would give us a train ticket if a stretch of line had been opened and the rolling stock had been repaired. Mostly, we walked.

I had shoes now, given to me at the hospital by the Red Cross, and a coat. It was a massive ex-army coat that reached to the floor and swept the snow as we walked along the roads. At the displaced-persons camps Matka would read endless lists of names nailed to wooden boards. My papa was never there. On one occasion she found the names of her parents, killed at Treblinka. It set us back. She was so upset that she couldn’t go on. She thought of the time at Bialystok railway station seeing her little mum sitting on a chair like a queen, holding Albert’s hand, while people pushed all around them to get on the train which they thought meant safety. If only they had known what fate awaited them. I hoped that they had managed to stay together . . .

My mother’s need to find my father still obsessed her and eventually gave her the strength to continue. It was now nearly two years since the official ending of hostilities, yet life was still very hard. Even in peacetime much hatred remained and, as refugees and former camp prisoners, we felt it. There weren’t a lot of Pani Philipskas about. Most people saw us coming and shut their doors. Children would throw stones at us and call us names. I became accustomed to it.

Occasionally we found a farmer or a cottager who gave us shelter for a couple of days. The farms were warm and comfy, full of food and milk. Even though it meant leaving the warm hay or the occasional feather bed, I loved getting up at dawn and helping to milk the cows. But with nothing to offer the farmers in return for their hospitality we always felt uncomfortable and would push on as quickly as possible.

At one smallholding the farmer offered to keep me while my mother went on alone to locate my father. She could come back for me when she had settled down. Matka wouldn’t consider it. She hadn’t gone through living hell to leave me behind now. But sometimes I had the tiniest, smallest thought that it might have been a good idea to stay at Pani Philipska’s . . . Then I felt very ashamed of myself. There was no life without Mascha. She had the answer to everything.

On the border with Germany was a large DP camp. I wasn’t keen on entering that country. It seemed to me that all my life I had been running away from the Germans, that every conversation about them had emphasised how terrible they were. So what were we doing putting ourselves at their mercy?

The camp was run by Americans and they seemed keen to help us. Mascha went wearily through all the formalities and was told to return the next day. They gave us some coupons for food and an address where we could stay the night. This turned out to be an old brewery that had been gutted and fitted out with beds in little cubicles. The smell of beer was overpowering but we had smelled far worse and enjoyed a good night’s sleep.

The next day, with still no word about my father, Matka decided we should continue on our way to Berlin. The Red Cross woman was aghast at our precipitous departure. She had expected my mother to accept that there was nothing she could do but sit around and wait until someone arrived with news of my father. She didn’t know my mother. Finally, Mama was persuaded that it would be better for me if we rested a few days, so we waited two more nights before taking a train, courtesy of the Red Cross, over the border.

Walking was now easier. The snow had melted, and the sun warmed our bodies and put new strength in our hearts. In the evenings Matka would call at farms and houses, and ask for shelter from the cold night air. Mostly she was treated to abuse and told to clear off. Once dogs were set upon her and we were vilified as ‘stinking Yids’. Didn’t anyone know about the camps? Didn’t they care?

At last we neared Berlin. I was ill again and needed all my concentration just to keep going. My mother would urge me on – ‘Not much further now, baby. We’re nearly there’ – trying to encourage us both to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

One night we were walking along a dark winding road and it occurred to me that my mother was smaller than me, that her head was nearly level with the earth. She was weighed down with the rucksack and bags, and they dragged her to the ground. ‘Let’s stop and rest, Mama,’ I said. ‘I can’t go on.’

Past a towering burned-out ruin rising up into the dark sky, a driveway lined with beautiful mature trees led to a funny-looking little house with a pointed roof. Matka dropped our bags and leaned on me to catch her breath. Silently, she dragged herself up the few steps to the front door and rang the bell. ‘If there’s no one there I’ll break the back door down, I don’t care,’ she muttered.