Life’s a Scream

Although the war was long over, its shadow still fell on our lives. Control of Berlin at this time was divided between Eastern and Western forces. When the Russians decided they weren’t going to allow Allied supply convoys to pass through their territory, a new war, the Cold War, was teed up.

Food trucks queued at Helmstedt, the border between East and West Berlin, and weren’t allowed into the city. Without food, coal or clothes, Berliners, still in poor health after the war, began to drop like flies. The Allied forces, determined not to give in to bullyboy tactics, decided to airlift supplies into their sector. When they offered to take children out to West Germany on the same planes, Matka was at the front of the queue. I didn’t want to leave my parents, especially my father with whom every day was to be cherished. I wasn’t that hungry. But my mama wouldn’t listen. She would brook no arguments. I tried all kinds of blackmail in an attempt to persuade her to let me stay but to no avail. She knew I had a lot of catching up to do, my health was poor and I was still undernourished. My heart was too small for my long scrawny body, my TB had not cleared up properly and I was underweight. I was going and that was it.

I was flown out of Berlin in a Dakota. It was exciting to make my first flight but I hated leaving. I was homesick from start to finish. The parting from my parents was terrible. My father got his suit out and with my mum took me to Tempelhof airfield. I couldn’t bear to go. To distract me my father talked about the plane, the flight, how great flying was and how one day he wanted me to be a pilot. He got me all excited about the Dakota I was going to fly in and of course brought up the great Spitfires again. Talking about flying made the trip look exciting but I assured him that I could be very happy just hearing him talk about it. I didn’t have to leave to know how good flying was. I could fly later. Papa told me to write to him and tell him every detail of the flight, and to say hello to the pilot if the chance presented itself.

I walked in the little gaggle of evacuees, determined not to cry. I couldn’t believe that after all we had been through my mama was willing to let me go off by myself. I kept looking back. There they stood, my frail father and my brave mother. Why didn’t they run after me, sweep me up in their arms and tell me it was all a mistake? The door of the plane swung shut and they were lost to sight. I wondered if I would ever see them again.

I was surprised to find the seats lined along the wall of the plane. In the middle were stacks of empty sacks. The planes were configured for bringing in food and coal – taking kids out was a bonus. We were strapped in along the benches and soon the plane was heading along the runway and we had lift-off. I was in tears – and not only because I had just left the two people I loved most in the whole world – I’m always in tears at take-off.

Flying was just as my papa had told me it would be and I loved it. I spent the entire flight wrenching my neck round, trying to see out of the window behind me. I saw ugly Berlin disappear below, I saw us climb into the clouds, then break through them and into the sun. ‘Yes!’ I shouted in my head. ‘I love this. Flying is the greatest invention of all time.’ Then I had to go and get airsick. The first time and the last. It didn’t lessen the glory of the flight for me, though, just made me mad that my stupid body wouldn’t behave and was threatening to spoil my enjoyment of those initial magic moments up in the sky. Gliding over the sea of pink cotton wool, seeing the clear blue sky and the sun so near and so large, I thought that perhaps this was what dying was like. To be flying like that seemed like eternal life.

The landing was both exhilarating and sad. It was sad to end the dream but it was as exciting as the take-off. I could feel the flaps come down, the roar as the throttle opened and closed, the thrill of seeing the earth loom larger as the plane lost altitude and that orgasmic moment when the wheels slap down on the tarmac and the plane is captured by the runway. Before climbing out I went to the cockpit and spoke to the pilot. I told him how much I admired him and said that I would learn to fly even if it took years and years. He smiled and patted my cheek, and complimented me on my English. That made me really proud – all the time my father had spent talking to me in English was suddenly worthwhile.

I didn’t want to get on the train. I still dislike them: they bring back bad memories. It’s a bit better now because trains have fundamentally changed: they look and sound different. But then it was not long after the war and they were still pretty much the same as they had always been. I infuriated everybody by throwing a tantrum. Eventually they pushed me on board and I found myself not in a cattle truck but a passenger car, with upholstered seats and window curtains. I was so overcome I threw up all over the plush red carpet. The other kids yelled and called me ‘Sau’ and ‘Schwein’, which I had heard plenty of times before, but I was so frightened and lonely it all seemed very unfair. I wanted others to understand what I felt, to share my pain, so with a scream I leaped upon the nearest kid, scratching, biting and kicking. I was so far gone that even the man in charge of us had difficulty controlling me. Then, all of a sudden, my rage evaporated. All I wanted to do was be alone so that I could savour my sorrows.

When we reached the ‘orphanage’ it was dark. My anger at being parted from my parents rose up again. I shouted that I didn’t want to be in any orphanage. I still had my parents! I still had a home! No one took any notice. They had dealt with it all before. A Kapo-type shouted out a string of instructions. We were lined up and an older girl marched us up the stairs to our dormitories, where I crept into a freezing bed covered with only one thin blanket.

I was calmer now and a little ashamed of my outbursts. I gave myself a good talking to and was determined not to let anyone know how unhappy and scared I was. I tried to take a leaf out of my mother’s book and bear my new tribulations with stoicism. But I was not as strong as my mother. I was cold and lonely – and very, very stubborn. I got up and put all my clothes back on. That felt warmer. When the Kapo woman saw what I was doing she stormed towards me, shouting that I must put my pyjamas back on immediately. It was the regulations. She was not going to let her authority be undermined by an evacuee. For a moment I stood defiantly in front of her but then it was all too much. I put on my PJs and shivered through the rest of the night.

The next day I wrote a letter to my parents demanding to be brought home as soon as possible. This place was another Lager! It was not long before I was called in to see the headmistress. She asked me if I really wanted to worry my poor parents. I burst into tears and screamed at her at the top of my voice that I wasn’t prepared to have people shout at me like an Untermensch ever again. I was cold and I wanted to go home. I was shaking and couldn’t breathe. My TB had got better at the Krakow hospital but whenever I became upset the breathless attacks would return with a vengeance. Frightened by my attack, the headmistress made some concessions. For the time being I would be allowed an extra blanket, and she would talk to the doctor when he came to check on my state of health. She could see how thin I was and even mentioned the possibility of arranging extra rations.

The added blanket had hardly any effect so one day I decided to wear my coat to bed. We’d been to football practice. In reality the boys played football and the daft girls walked around the pitch watching. It was freezing and utterly boring. When we got back to the orphanage I refused dinner and went to bed. The Kapo woman stormed up to the dormitory. Defiantly I stared at her and dared her to hit me. I even thought of hitting her. I wanted to be ‘punished’ by being sent home. Unfortunately we both thought better of physical violence, she contented herself with calling me names and I was forced to come down to dinner, where I was at least allowed to sit next to the big vats which pumped out heat.

When I went back to my bed there was a lump in it. Slightly apprehensive, I slowly rolled back the blanket. Before me lay a big piece of sausage. I ate some at once and wondered who had given it to me. The next day on our daily walk through the countryside a boy sidled up to me and asked if I had liked the sausage. God, I thought, why couldn’t someone like that have looked after my needs in the camp? But he didn’t remind me of Yuri. And if boys didn’t remind me of Yuri they were dead. I was thirteen now and Yuri had become an idealised figure in my mind. Any boy I met paled into insignificance when compared with my idol. I had already decided that I would spend my entire life alone. Or, alternatively, I would become very famous and rich, return to the forest, find Yuri and take him away. Rationally, I knew that Yuri would have left the forest by now but who wants to be rational when day-dreams are better?

The boy with the sausage said his name was Heinz, which didn’t help his cause. One Heinz had already been too many in my life. The poor guy asked if I wanted more sausage. ‘My father’s a butcher and makes them himself . . .’

One day a paediatrician who claimed to be my stepbrother came to visit. My father had asked him to have a look at my heart and lungs. He took me to a hospital and did an X-ray to see if my TB had gone. He told me that I was on the mend but that my heart was still too small. I thought we would go back to the orphanage from the hospital, but instead he took me to his home for the weekend. I didn’t like it there very much. He wasn’t anything like my father and I didn’t acknowledge him as my brother. I couldn’t help wondering what he’d been doing while we’d been going through hell. When he took me back to the orphanage it was all very awkward. He asked me if I would like him to come again. I was fairly non-committal and he said to get in touch if I needed him, kissed me formally on the cheek and left. He did turn up again shortly afterwards and took me to his home for his son’s first birthday party. He had a nice wife and in-laws but I thought I’d get on better on my own. The thought was always there – what did he do in the war? Where was he when our father suffered in Terezina? Had he been a member of the Nazi party?

As is usual when a lot of children of approximately the same age are together, there was a strict hierarchy in the orphanage. At thirteen I was no longer the runt of the pack. I had breasts growing and had learned a lot about survival. My major problem was the boys. Battling with the pimples of puberty and talking about little other than girls and their fantasies, they loved to display their machismo. I couldn’t let them get away with all the crap they were saying and without thinking demanded to be let into their gang, the Lümmel Pack. They said I could join if I passed the initiation test. I don’t think they really had one before the awful prospect of having a girl on the team reared its ugly head. Why I bothered I don’t know.

They insisted that I was blindfolded and then led me to the ruins of an old granary, whipped off the bandage and thrust me towards the edge of a bomb-shattered floor. Across a pit of about three yards or so was a narrow metal beam. I didn’t like the look of it and fervently hoped that I might be saved by somebody rushing on to the scene and driving us away.

The boys were delighted to see my misgivings and rolled around laughing, congratulating themselves on getting one over on the mouthy cow who was always putting them down. If I had been half as confident as I tried to pretend I was I would have laughed and walked away. But I’m not that brave. I stood over the abyss and tried to convince myself that if I got into trouble I could dive for the edge and avert disaster.

I took off my shoes. The boys were still taunting me, making jibes about girls being wimps compared with boys. That did it. I put my foot on the beam and tested it for stability. No problem there. Gradually I transferred my weight on to that foot. The boys were still at it. They even started throwing small chunks of plaster at me. I tried to ignore them and put the other foot on the beam. I wasn’t going to make it. I stepped back to safety, thought for a moment, then lowered myself on to the beam in a sitting position.

The boys were quiet for a moment, stunned into silence. Then, angry at having been outwitted, they noisily protested that I had to walk across the beam and in addition introduced a new rule: I had to take off my clothes. I had been around enough to know that was testosterone talking and refused. ‘That’s it,’ they said. ‘You can’t be a member.’ It was my way out but I was too dumb to take it.

We reached a compromise. I would take off my frock but could keep my vest and knickers on. They eagerly agreed. I think they considered this a major erotic victory. Down to my underclothes, I got back on the beam and swayed dangerously. The boys, giggling and making smart-alec remarks, ran down the stairs to stand below me. I think they had some idea that they might be able to see up my knicker leg or something.

As I started walking across, something flew out of a shattered room and swerved across in front of me. That did it. My arms windmilled ineffectually and I knew I was falling and that it was going to hurt. Even the boys were silent as gravity took over and I began to plummet. Plan B came into operation. Without much hope I launched myself towards the far side of the pit – and missed by a mile. The thought crossed my mind that I was a goner, that I’d never see my parents again.

The fall seemed to take a long time. Luckily I landed in the middle of a large bush, but the jagged end of a branch thrust right up between my legs and buried itself in my vagina. The pain was excruciating. And the blood torrential. The brave boys made themselves scarce, leaving me impaled and screaming.

I lay there, trying to come to terms with the pain. I wasn’t dead, but was that necessarily a bonus? Every movement increased the torture. Again I contemplated death and hated myself for my stupidity in letting the boys goad me on.

At last I managed to extract myself from the bush. The bleeding had stopped but the pain was still horrendous and I couldn’t move. I heard someone coming and managed to give a weak cry. It was Heinz, the sausage boy. Part of the gang, he had returned to the orphanage with the others but his conscience had forced him to come back to see how I was. He told me to lean on him and he’d take me back. I would be all right in a day or two, he reassured me. I screamed that I wouldn’t be all right in a day or two. I needed a doctor – immediately! Even the screaming hurt like mad so I lay down and tried to come to terms with the situation. Heinz ran off and after a while one of the nurses from the orphanage came. She also wanted me to walk back to the dormitory so that the doctor could look at me. She gave up that idea when she tried to help me stand and I passed out.

I woke up in the hospital. The nurse made a joke about going to such extremes to lose my virginity but I didn’t think it was very funny. I had some fancy stitches in very intimate places and they hurt like hell. By the time I got back to the orphanage the whole episode was public knowledge, but nobody talked to me about it. I suppose it was the nature of my injuries. It wasn’t as if they could say, ‘Can I see the scar?’