Life’s a Scream

Shortly after my accident I was put on a plane and flown back to Berlin. The Russians were letting the convoys through again and the airlift was over. It was wonderful to be back with my papa and to schmooz with him again. I was still terribly aware that I was neglecting my mother. I sometimes threw my arms round her neck and said I loved her so much, and she would hold me in her arms and pat me comfortingly on the back. Then she would slap my bum and push me off to go to my dad.

After the airlift, everything got marginally better. Not good, but better. We had become used to the constant sound of bulldozers and the long periods without gas, electricity or water. In fact, we took the periods when any or all three functioned as a bit of a bonus – not to be counted on but wonderful while it lasted. There was still a stigma attached to being a Jew. What Hitler had started, by blaming the economic failure of the Weimar Republic on the Jews, died hard. Most of the Germans still attributed their poverty and hardship to the Jews. But we could cope with that. After Stutthof you could cope with anything.

I’d heard that in the next road was a whore-house, which attracted a lot of American GIs. The GIs seemed never to learn. They would drive up in their jeeps, park, and as soon as the brothel door closed, the local boys would swarm over the car and, quicker than at a Ferrari pit stop, disappear with the wheels. It all seemed like good fun so I started sneaking off and hanging out with the lads. Their den was the ruined house on the corner where they could keep an eye on the bordello for business and make sure there were no ‘Snowdrops’ – as the military police were known because of their white helmets – around to spoil the fun. They’d meet there, hang out and smoke fags, stolen from the GIs’ jeeps. I was still young and pretty skinny, but I was up for anything and could speak English, which was a great asset in post-war Berlin. I’d do my bit with the GIs and they would go through the ‘Have you got an older sister at home?’ routine before giving me chocolate and cigarettes or asking me how old I was, just in case. I was also the cover when the rest were doing their bit of filching. I wasn’t too good at it. I was so focused on what was going on that I didn’t keep a very good look out. One day I was busy watching the boys when they suddenly jumped up and disappeared down the road. Before I could get my brain in gear an enormous black man heaved me into the air by my jacket collar and asked me what I thought I was doing. I lied, said I was just passing and . . . the fact that I was holding several items recently liberated from his jeep was a little awkward to explain. Luckily for me, the GI merely told me to put the wheels back on his jeep. He must have been kidding. I couldn’t lift them let alone get the screws back in. In the end he took pity on me and fixed them himself. He even gave me an orange. It was the first orange I’d ever eaten.

Our lives finally began to settle into a routine. Every Sunday after lunch my father would take me to the Gloria Palast, a cinema not far from where we lived. He would make a big production of putting on his suit to take his teenage dotschka to the cinema, which was always teeming with rowdy children. Most of the kids called him grandpa since they all knew him, but by now it was never malicious and it didn’t bother him. He just winked at them. When I took offence on his behalf and wanted to attack them, he’d grip my hand hard so that I’d get control of myself.

The cinema was the first my father ever took me to. I had never seen a film before, and little did I know that films would become my life. The cinema was a whole new world to me. A world of make believe that I couldn’t imagine existed. (At Stutthof I always tried to close my eyes tight and pretend I was somewhere else. But the sounds would still be there . . .) It was an altogether different world and what an incredible wondrous world it was. There were millions of make-believe lives to be part of: exciting lives and worlds I had never seen. I would ask my father all sorts of questions on the way home. And the following Sunday he had to go through the same thing all over again. I gave him no choice. Our big favourites were The Jungle Book and Elephant Boy starring Sabu, but I also loved Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Johnny Weissmuller.

I was desperate and so was my mother. I refused to go to school. He had got uraemia, poisoning of the bladder. It seemed only a moment since we’d got him back – just five lousy short years. Nothing. I’d been without him for the same amount of time. I believed I should never again be able to live without him. He couldn’t die. He meant everything to me. My mother thought she could will him to get better, but he had suffered too much. A lesser man would have been dead already but his athletic life had made him strong and he could bear more than most people.

Then came the awful day when an ambulance took him away. I cried, wouldn’t let go of his hand. I shouted, ‘No, no, don’t leave me, stay here, Papa, don’t go . . .’ Matka said I was making it worse. When they shoved him inside the dark, black hole of the ambulance he looked towards the garden and said that he knew he would never come back. My mother went with him, but I was not allowed. I was told that I could visit ‘tomorrow’. I hated those people in the white coats.

My mama came back very late at night with red, swollen eyes. She hadn’t wanted to leave my father on his own in that place without a loving face by his side, but the nurses had forced her to go. She was tormented by the thought that he might die when she wasn’t with him, while she lay sleeping at home. She didn’t sleep all that night and we both got up at dawn and took the train to the hospital. He stretched out his arms and smiled when we came into his room. ‘I want to come home . . .’ he said. ‘I don’t want to die here. Take me home.’

The doctor said that although they couldn’t do anything for him he couldn’t leave. I had a fit and they threw me out. Because I couldn’t keep my gob shut my poor mother had to deal with the hospital hierarchy while my father lay dying. In the end they let us into my father’s room again and we stayed there all day. Papa kept mumbling that he had had no right to put us through all the horrors of the camp, that he should have seen it coming earlier, that he should have worked out something to save us . . .

Around midnight my mother told me to go home to get some sleep. I refused. I’ve always been glad I did although I hadn’t really slept for days and was almost comatose. It was the last night I spent with my father. He died at dawn the next day. My mother held him close and whispered in his ear how much she’d always loved him. We stayed with him until they forced us to leave.

Once the funeral was over I made my mother’s life hell. I tried to kill myself. I just couldn’t stand the pain. I still find it difficult to bear, so many years later. But then it burned in my heart like fire and I believed only a bottle of pills would make the agony go away. Only when I had swallowed them all did I begin to think about the misery I would cause my mother. How would she feel burying me too? In a daze I tried to get to the hospital to have my stomach pumped. Apparently I walked in the middle of the road and a car picked me up and took me to Emergency. They pumped the old pot out and saved me.

Mother was incredibly angry. I’d never seen her so mad. She hit me, slapping my face again and again. She had never done that before but I thought she was right to slap sense into my stupid brain. I begged her to forgive me. She knew the argument that would stop me from ever contemplating such a cowardly thing again. Did my father give up? she asked me. Did he ever, once, think that killing himself was the easy option? What would he think of me if he knew what I had done?

After my father’s death everything changed. I didn’t want to go to school. I wanted just to sit on the balcony, not get dressed, and think about him. Not putting on clothes was important because getting dressed meant saying ‘yes’ to life and the future. Not doing it was a sign of giving up. Going to school seemed useless and a waste of time. I wouldn’t learn anything I didn’t already know. My father had taught me everything anyway. He taught me about courage, love, the world, the stars, the universe . . .

Although I considered myself pretty switched on it was a view not shared by my teachers. They were constantly on my back, demanding that I should do better. It all seemed so unimportant. My mother was called to the school and told about my poor performance. When she told the headmaster that I wanted to be a surgeon, he laughed at her. She was so furious that she stalked out wordlessly.

Most of my father’s family were in some branch of the medical profession and Mascha was determined that I should follow them. The fact that none of them had spoken to her since her marriage was hurtful, but she wasn’t going to let their aloofness get in the way of her baby’s success. She wrote to them and got a reply from the paediatrician I had met at the orphanage. Despite my cold behaviour when we’d met, he was willing to do what he could for me. I sat an examination and didn’t do terribly well, but my stepbrother was a member of the medical school faculty and was able to railroad me through. I was offered a place in the school to which he was attached. It meant leaving my mama but we both agreed it was in a good cause.

I was accepted into the medical faculty as a probationer. Having gained my position through the back door, I was the focus of some resentment from the faculty and students. One day I arrived slightly late at a lecture. They were showing a film on vermin, so it was dark in the auditorium. Rushing to my seat I sat down, only to find something already on my seat: something furry and dead. I screamed. The lights came on and I found myself standing with a recently deceased rat in my hand. When I saw the beast swinging in front of my face, my screams tripled in intensity and, instinctively, I threw the rodent into the crowd. That started everyone else screeching in horror, especially the women, although most of them couldn’t have known what they were screaming about. I didn’t care. I stormed out of the place and that was virtually the end of my career in medicine.

Of course my poor mother was summoned to see the Dean. He got all sniffy and told her to take her wretched daughter out of his wonderful establishment. No mention was made of the fact that someone had deliberately put a rat on my seat. Dear old Mum still thought I had a career among the bedpans and pleaded for my reinstatement, but the Dean was unyielding. Matka, however, would not give in. She went to see the Bürgermeister – mayor – and he used his influence to get me reinstated.