The Next Chapter

By Tom Bunzel and Eva Miriam

The Next Chapter describes what it was like to live through the horrors of World War II in occupied Czechoslovakia, endure concentration and labor camps, and then try to resume a “normal” existence in a hostile and alien world.

My mother’s account emphasizes, however, that this is not a Holocaust book but rather an examination of reality under totalitarian oppression. She makes it a point of explaining that the Nazis were not only after the Jews—but wanted to exterminate all dissidents including gypsies, communists and homosexuals. Hers is a story of the inner spirit to recover and to return to a life of love, freedom and personal fulfillment.

The book combines personal anecdotes with psychological insight. My mother survived with the help of an inner alter ego she calls “Miriam” – her middle name. She consults Miriam at various junctures to get the strength to go on and also to try to make sense of a world seemingly gone mad.

The manuscript was accepted by a literary agent shortly before my mother’s death and was well-received though it remained unpublished. My mother did not seek recognition nor did she have a “platform.” However, shortly before her death, concerned by the rise of Revisionists (deniers of her experiences), she visited high schools to discuss her experiences and was warmly received and hugged by students.

The four leaf clovers on the cover are the original ones found by my mother upon her liberation from the Mauthausen labor camp, and preserved in a cigarette package. They are physical evidence that her story is true.

With the advent of electronic scanning and self-publishing, I wanted to finally make her story available to all who might be interested, and who could learn and be moved by it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Bunzel
• Release date: Jun 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781478107224

Eva Miriam

Eva Miriam is the pen name of Eva Bunzel, born outside Prague and a medical student when captured by the Nazis and shipped to Auschwitz. Selected as fit to work, she survived the war as a slave laborer and after the war married Rudolf Bunzel. They defected from Communist Czechoslovakia after the war and their son Tom was born; in 1980 Eva and Rudolf retired to La Jolla, where these memoirs were written on an electric typewriter. Thanks to modern technology including document scanning and the Internet, her work is available for all to read and learn from. Her main lesson is that the Holocaust was not about the Jews, but about all dissidents, and that freedom is the most precious commodity we have, and it must be safeguarded at all costs.

Book preview

THE NEXT CHAPTER

by

Eva Miriam

Copyright 2012 - Tom Bunzel

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved

ISBN-13: 978-1478107224 

ISBN-10: 1478107227 

Cover by Debra Swihart

To those I love, present and gone.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

With my deep thanks to Kitty, for her perception and understanding and, of course, for all her work.

In memory of Marilyn, whose words of encouragement kept me going.

INTRODUCTION

About 20 years ago, when she was about 75 years old, my mother spent about a year typing her memoirs on an electric typewriter, engaging an editor, revising the manuscript, and finding a literary agent in Los Angeles. While she got some nibbles, a conventional publisher did not want to publish another holocaust book.

But what makes my mother’s book unique is that it is not focused on her horrific wartime experiences, but rather on the psychological and emotional aspects of trying to readjust to a life among normal people. And at a time when there were those in her beloved southern California who were actively denying the holocaust, she also wanted to make sure that this threat to historical accuracy and to freedom at large was addressed.

I have long wanted to see her work published but it was only recently, when I learned enough about self-publishing and could combine that with the latest technology in document scanning that I could see her dream realized. Now I am thrilled to be able to share her story, with no embellishment [except a few notes in brackets for clarification], exactly as she wanted it told.

-- Tom Bunzel

PART ONE

This is not a book about the Holocaust. It is about survivors.

In spite of all the persuasive young voices who now vehemently declare that the Holocaust never happened (and those who would like to agree), it happened.

And--as horrid and as gory as it sounds--it was true.

For us, the survivors, the Holocaust did not end on the day of our liberation. Our liberation marked the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next.

This book is about the next chapter.

And without it, the story is incomplete.

During the past forty years, history has been rewritten. If you were not there, you might believe that the Holocaust was simply genocide of the Jews.

Genocide means systematic extermination.

For the eleven million who are dead, the extermination was only the end result. The word conveniently omits the atrocities to which these people were subjected before they were allowed to die. To be excluded from the human race by the Nazis was a compliment, not an offense. Only the consequences weren't too pleasant.

Of the Jews is another falsification.

The victims were by no means limited to Jews; they were any dissidents.

Since the Nazis openly proclaimed their foremost goal as the annihilation of all Jews, they were right to assume that the Jews were dissidents.

It is human nature to refuse your cooperation when someone wants to annihilate you.

But what about the others, the Aryan dissidents, Polish, Czech, Russian, French, German, those who were with us in the camps? They included members of the clergy who refused to worship Hitler instead of God; members of the Underground: young people, guerillas, who fought the Nazis all over Europe and older people who helped young pilots escape to the West.

There were also innocents who had been denounced by a neighbor or even by their own Hitler Jugend [Youth] child for a reward or for spite. There were even some Germans in the camps because they had moral principles and refused to be brainwashed and molded to size.

They were with us, subjected to the same systematic extermination. Some of them must have survived.

But where are they now?

Have they become deaf and dumb when voices proclaim that the Holocaust is nothing but fiction and Jewish propaganda?

Where are the Americans who opened the camps and saw the fiction?

There can be only one explanation: the belief that it only happened to the Jews eases the minds of all non-Jewish people, giving them a feeling of security.

Could anyone truly believe that nothing like this could ever happen again?

It could. And it will unless a voice stronger than mine shakes awake those who slumber in their frightening complacency.

Those who receive freedom as a gift the day they are born and believe they can keep it forever live with a false illusion.

Freedom is indivisible and therefore must be guarded. One small crack --and it dissolves into dust.

It should be labeled FRAGILE. HANDLE WITH CARE.

Dawn came to Mauthausen concentration camp and with it a new day which started just like all the others.

We awoke and knew we were still alive.

So we resumed the hectic activity of yesterday and all the days before as far back as we dared remember. That meant that some of us remained lying in straw, staring blankly at the ceiling. Some sat up and stared at the floor.

Haggard, empty faces, sad and smudged and apathetic; weird-looking zombies in whom only the faintest gleam of life flickered. We were certain that the end was near--either ours or the war's, whichever came first.

There we were, staring, dumb and in a deep stupor, when the message came.

No fanfares, no blowing horns, no salvos announced the message. It came in softly, on tiptoe, careful not to blow out the last spark of life in us. It said:

You are free. The gates are open. You may go out.

We didn't understand and nobody moved.

But the message came again and again:

You are free. The gates are open. You may go out.

We looked around and saw in each others' eyes the same doubt and hope and questions: Is it possible? Can it be true?

Then we ordered our bodies to get up. Keeping close together for support in our little groups, we hobbled to the open door of our barracks. There, outside, we saw other groups like ours and joined them and went wherever they went.

It looked like Judgment Day.

The dead arose from their graves and walked.

We walked between the high walls built of bodies. Here there was no dignity in death. The dead had been piled up haphazardly and in bizarre positions and we always tried to avoid looking at them. We were afraid that we might see a familiar face. And they had earned their peace.

There—but for the grace of God—lay I.

They did not move and arise.

But we were moving and seemed to be alive. But this scene—so eerie and strange—was it real? And the message—was it true?

When we reached the gates we saw that they were open. We passed through and no machine guns waited for us. We passed a stretch of dusty road by which we had come in a century ago, and nothing was there but meadows, fields, trees, flowers and peace.

Free world.

Paradise.

The groups dissolved. Each of us needed to be alone.

I explored for a little while and then found a small green hill. I crawled up and sank, exhausted, under a blossoming tree.

I lay on my back, closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath. I listened to the silence and the soft sounds of nature, smelled the sweet scents and tried to believe it wasn't a dream.

To test it, I carefully stretched my arms and legs as far as I could, keeping my eyes closed, and all I felt was free space. Then I turned onto my stomach, stretched again, and still nobody shoved, kicked or yelled,

Stay on your spot.

I turned and turned and found that I had all this space for myself and privacy: nobody listened in on my thoughts, nobody watched every move, nobody was near me for the first time in three years.

Then I opened my eyes and saw the world again. I saw the beauty of it and allowed it to become a part of me.

Then, suddenly, it struck me with full force:

I survived . . . Did I? . . . Really?

Oh, yes ... I survived.

Look, world, here I come!

Something strange and unfamiliar began to happen inside me. It felt as though a little butterfly were in my solar plexus. Then it became a delicate trembling which grew stronger and rose to my throat and I recognized my soundless laughter which shook me so that tears started rolling down my cheeks.

Look, world, what a gift I am bringing you! Look at me. Aren't you lucky! A bundle of sick bones covered by ugly, scaly, dirty skin, covered by wounds and sores and scars, all beautifully wrapped up in filthy long johns and a T-shirt, topped by a bald head with a stubble of hair instead of a bow.

This is the precious package which I have somehow managed to bring back to you from the sewers. Do you want me? This is all I have to offer. Please, give me another chance! Take me. I am yours.

I let the tranquility of the place flow through me. It enhanced the blissful state of light anesthesia which so mercifully had descended upon us months ago in Auschwitz.

There, within a few days, the Nazis had succeeded in turning our normal, clean bodies into a pitiful, dirty mess of flesh and waste; they had crushed our spirit, and our minds refused to inhabit this filthy slum and moved out.

However, the mind stayed close by and followed what was happening to us with mild interest. We could still feel hunger and thirst and pain, but only from far away. It was like watching oneself from another level, not involved in the whole distasteful process. Our emotions were dead. We knew what was going on, but we did not care.

And here I was now, with my own territory, a spot in the world which was all mine and only mine. I felt as if I were floating. This was a scene from a dream which I remembered from my former life: I was swimming in the air. It was clean and cool and it caressed my skin like the water in a lake. I moved around doing a leisurely breast stroke. There was no gravity. I felt as light as a feather and could dive and swim close over the golden wheat fields and then soar far up again in easy and absolute freedom. Sometimes I joined the larks and listened to their song of joy. Sometimes I swam high over the mountains and glided on the waves of wind with the hawks. At the end of this dream the air turned into water and I was out of air in the depths and had to surface to take a breath.

Now I took a deep breath again and awakened from my dream.

Suddenly it occurred to me that I didn't even know the date of this memorable day. I only knew that it was May and it was even possible that today was my birthday.

I intended to find out but I never did. I forgot. Compared to the importance of the events, the date didn't seem to matter at all. I was free. This time it came to me clearly and distinctly.

I was a free person, not a lump of garbage which could be dumped here or thrown there, buried in a pit or burned on a pile. Not much remained of a person, but at least there was something to work on once I got home.

Home . . . H-O-M-E ?

A shock went through me. Trembling and in a cold sweat I realized that there was no such place to which I could go. What had been home didn't exist anymore. Never mind. There will be home some place, some time, and I can't think about it now. Later . . .

Parents . . . sister . . .

Another thought so shattering that it brought unbearable pain.

No, I can't think about it. Not now. Later. Later, when the right time comes, but not now.

I pushed the thought aside but it kept coming back again and again. No, please, I can't think of it now. Stay away until I am ready.

I hid it in the deepest corner of my mind.

I must have dozed off, drifted away.

I was aware only of a mellow, velvety blackness around me while I rested, snug and comfortable, on a soft cushion of fluffy cloud. It felt so good; no worry, no pain. Oh, my God, let it last!

Then a flicker of memory pierced the darkness. At first it was like a pinpoint of light in the far distance but it was coming closer. I didn't want it. I cried, Stay away from me, but I didn't know how to stop it.

And then I remembered: I was in the hospital, after an appendectomy and I was waking up. The anesthesia was wearing off and I was hurting and feeling miserable.

Out of the darkness I heard a voice calling my name.

Eva, wake up. Do you hear me?

I don't want to hear.

Open your eyes, Eva. Look at me. It's over and you'll be fine.

I hear her voice but I also feel the pain now that I am awake. The pain is bad now and I don't want to feel it; sleep was such a blessing. I am trying to go under again and sleep a while longer. Maybe later I'll be able to face it, but not now, not yet. If I pretend not to hear, maybe she'll go away.

The voice kept talking to me but it grew weaker and, for the moment, I succeeded in keeping it quiet.

I sat up to look at the opulent spring around me and to listen and smell and deeply breathe in the fragrant air. The voice which tried to wake me up to reality gave up and this was much better.

Right now I only wanted to enjoy the perfect beauty of this moment.

I stroked the grass and loved the tickling sensation on my palms and there, next to my foot, I saw them: three four-leaf clovers. I picked them up carefully and held them. They gave me hope.

I managed to get up to return to the camp. I walked very slowly and tried to hold up my head and not limp or hobble. On my way I found an empty cigarette wrapper and, with infinite care, I put my treasures into it. With a tiny, tiny hope I wondered: Is this an omen?

It was. And to this day I still have my three four-leaf clovers--in the original cigarette wrapper.

That evening the barracks were very quiet. We were exhausted, but also afraid of going to sleep because tomorrow, when we awoke, who knew if all this would be true?

We kept together, as always, Heda, Irma, Klara, Martha, and I. We belonged together; we were a group.

In the camps we lived in groups. That way we felt more protected. We could give and receive support from each other. Sometimes giving was a greater blessing than receiving, because then you felt strengthened.

A group was indivisible, except, of course, by circumstances beyond our control. The group lived by unspoken and unwritten law: one for all and all for one. Usually it was composed of from two to five individuals.

I am not sure why the magic number was five. I can only guess that since we were always standing or walking five abreast, a group of five or fewer had a better chance of staying together when we were being counted off for barracks, work, or wagons.

When we arrived in Mauthausen I had been separated from Anka who was my closest—and only--friend from Auschwitz until that day. Without Anka I felt more insecure and exposed to danger and more lost and lonely than ever before.

But I was immediately adopted by Heda, Irma, Klara, and Martha.

There were no words. They just came to me, took me in their midst and walked to the camp with me.

My first good deed for them was getting dysentery.

A young Russian prisoner, who said he was a doctor, told me that the only way I could survive was to avoid liquids. That was a tall order

because if we got anything to eat at all, it was only a thin soup. My four friends then volunteered to join a unit which peeled potatoes for the SS [Secret Police] kitchen and each day one of them managed to steal a raw potato for me, which kept me alive. In exchange, they got my soup to share and, while they were working, I went treasure hunting. Sometimes I found a rotten cabbage leaf, sometimes a baby onion or a few blades of grass. We then divided everything equally into five parts.

The bond formed between us in the few weeks we spent together can never be broken, neither by time nor by thousands of miles. We had been meeting frequently since the war, until another tornado blew us into different corners of the world.

I remember the first evening after our liberation. The day before we had been one big cell with one thought focused on a single point: survival. Tonight, the cell was divided into five parts. Each of us struggled to avoid thinking about the future, hoping that everything would come out well: we would see our loved ones again. For a while, all of us suffered the pains of withdrawal from our merciful lethargy. We anticipated the bridges that would have to be crossed; but these bridges were so long that the end was invisible and even access to the bridges was hazy and uncertain. Only one thing was clear: there was nothing that we could solve tonight.

So we smiled a lot and talked nonsense: How was your day? Nice or I can't believe it, and we felt silly and embarrassed by not having anything better to say on such a significant day.

Then our resolute Martha said, Does anybody have anything to talk about?

Nobody did.

Well, then, Martha said, and closed her eyes.

In the past weeks, when silence had fallen, it was different from tonight. Sometimes the silence had been thick, heavy and ominous, because it threatened to break us. We felt then that it was time to face reality. We could no longer believe that things aren't so bad. They were very bad. Recently, we had found strange comfort in expressing exactly where we stood in the harshest and rudest way we knew. It sounds strange, but it didn't depress us; it made us laugh. When silence lasted too long, somebody said:

Just look at us. Boy, are we a mess.

A chorus answered: Yes, we are a mess.

Are we a big mess?

Yes, we are a big mess.

Are we the biggest mess?

Yes, we are the biggest mess.

No, we are not the biggest mess. We thought last week and the week before, too, that we were the biggest mess. Then we saw that we were wrong, since now we are even a bigger mess! We'll therefore never again say that we are the biggest mess, because who knows what a mess we might be tomorrow!

Chorus: No, we are not the biggest mess.

Laughter . . . relief.

Mila was across the aisle from us and was always alone and independent. She never belonged to a group, never had a close friend and said that she preferred it that way. She was one of the few solitary ones who neither expected nor wanted help from anyone and couldn't perceive anyone depending on them.

We called her our ray of sunshine. She knew how to articulate the most horrible and disgusting facts of our lives, which we didn't dare to face, in a way which sounded funny to us.

"Look around and see the bunch of corpses we are. Walking, stinking corpses. We should have been out on the heap weeks ago. I don't know what we are waiting for here. Miracles?

"Idiots, that's what we are, complete idiots.

We should do ourselves a favor and just lie down and expire. Like elephants. That would at least be neat and clean. Correction: 'neat' is not the most fitting expression, considering all this bloody shit.

This was neither an obscenity nor a dirty word. It was a simple statement of facts pertaining to the raging dysentery. Mila spoke aloud what we all had been thinking about in silence. Her monologue made us scream with laughter. At least for a while, it broke the spell of despair in which we had been wallowing a moment before and pulled us out of a slump.

We saw that the only way out of the gloom was to make fun of ourselves, of our state of health, our appearance and of the futile hope to which we still clung.

We arranged contests: who had the smartest hairdo, the slimmest figure? Who was the best dressed woman? Irma won all of the contests. The stubble on her head was a lovely shade of red; she was tall and had a model's figure before the war. When she made a belt of straw and tied it around her T-shirt, she could even make it look chic.

Such irrational, foolish games had helped to get us through another hour. But on this first evening of freedom there was no laughter or fooling around. The silence tonight was sad but peaceful. We went outside for a long, long

time and saw the stars. There were no sounds of gunfire. Maybe it was peace!

I finally went to sleep, my precious cigarette wrapper and my clover leaves in my closed hand.

In the morning we heard shouts and commands:

Get up! Fast! Fast! Everybody line up against the wall! Closer together. Fast! Fast!

We stood half asleep and bewildered. Odd, suspicious thoughts ran through my head. Did yesterday really happen or did I just dream it? But the cigarette wrapper was in my hand. I hid it under my foot.

This line-up could mean only one thing: execution. But then--why yesterday?

Will you ever stop asking why? Will you ever learn that even if there is logic to why this or why that your mind will never be able to understand?

There has to be a reason for whatever they do, but their perception of reason must be different from yours. So give up your ceaseless efforts to solve the puzzle. Give up--then everything will be so easy and simple--just give up.

Suddenly something became clear and I found an answer to this why?: They didn't want to kill us while we were faint and while we didn't care; that wouldn't have been fun. So that's why they played a little game with us yesterday. First a light shot of hope. Let them feel the sweet smell of freedom first, just for a while, and then--bang, bang. That explains it!

The whole scenario, the soft, understated announcement . . .

You cruel, despicable beasts!

Now it doesn't matter anymore. We'll always be the same stupid, gullible fools. Always? No, this is the end of all the always and all the whys. It won't take long.

Twenty-four hours ago I could have accepted death gratefully as a deliverance. But today I don't want to die. I want to live and be free and recover and see the world and the people I love. Please, God, let me live and be free again.

And then the door flew open and the uniformed men stormed in. But these were not the SS and what they carried weren't machine guns!

They were Americans and each had a canister with a tube or hose attached to it. And then a new command came before we had a chance to catch our breath and say, Hello.

Pants down! Shirts up! Hold them over your heads!

They passed our rows, we heard a hissing sound and felt some spray touch our bodies.

Turn around!

Some of the same on our backs, from head to toe. We heard something about disinfection and they left and it was over.

Shouts and bursts of laughter exploded like fireworks all over the barracks. Explosions of relief and gratitude. It was an execution—but only of the creepy creatures on our bodies. Now we knew that the Americans had taken over the camp.

Mila was the first to recover speech:

"Boy, those poor guys. Imagine what they just saw. Maybe they didn't even realize that we were women. I certainly hope so, for their sakes. We

could spoil their appetites for life!"

This was the first time that we had thought of ourselves as women again. Until this moment all feminine feelings had been submerged. We had become accustomed to the continuous watch of the SS. Even while washing or taking care of other personal needs, we had never been left alone. The fact that we had to do everything in front of each other was more embarrassing, at least in the beginning, than having the SS around. They weren't men for us, only watch-dogs. I remember often thinking, I hope you enjoy this job, you brute. This part of it you deserve fully.

The events of the morning and Mila's remarks made me face the full and horrible truth. We didn't even look human any more, not to people from the civilized world. The soldiers tried to look friendly and pleasant, but I supposed it was the same friendly and pleasant look I wore when I walked through a zoo—no offense meant.

Well, the way back will be long and slow, I thought, but now it seemed that we would be given the chance. Now I almost believed it.

Later that day I went to look for Anka.

I met Anka in Theresienstadt.

Her face was sunny, with the ever-present hint of a smile. The moment Anka saw you, the smile burst out, lighting up her face and you felt you were just the person she wanted to see. When she smiled, the laughter was just around the corner. And how Anka could laugh! She gave herself to it not only with her lips and her heart, but with her whole body. She threw back her head and soft gurgling sounds came bubbling out; not loud, but full of joy, like a little brook jumping over pebbles.

She loved her husband and became pregnant in Theresienstadt. Her baby had died. I didn't know that she and her husband had come to Auschwitz in the same transport as I until I found her again, standing next to me there.

On our second or third day in the camp, we stood five abreast for roll call, going through one of our many torture drills. It was early October and cold. Rain drummed on our freshly shaven skulls. A strong wind glued our cotton rags to our bodies and our bare feet sank into the icy mud. We sank deeper and deeper into the mud and into apathy.

I don't know how long we had been there, but it was well over twenty-four hours. Suddenly Anka fainted. It was dawn, with clouds so heavy, black and low, and visibility so poor, that the four of us around her were able to hide her momentarily. She recovered quickly and looked at me with her big, blue eyes which were sad and frightened.

Eva, I am pregnant again.

Don't speak nonsense, Anka. You mean because you fainted? We are all close to it.

No, Eva. Not because of that. It's different with me. I know it for sure because the first time it happened exactly the same way.

Pregnancy meant a degree of disability, sooner or later, and disability meant instant death.

From that moment on we stayed together but carefully avoided the subject of Anka's pregnancy. At that time none of us were menstruating so there was no way of finding out if Anka was pregnant other than waiting to see.

Some months later, we knew. The belly of her starving body became slightly rounded but fortunately the style of her rags covered it adequately.

We all survived the selection procedure of Auschwitz. This consisted of hot showers followed by a walk to our barracks through the camp, wet and naked, sometimes three times a day. In the showers we never knew if water or gas would come from the spigots. We were not frightened at all, only mildly interested in whether it would be now or tomorrow or the day after. We didn't give a damn.

After ten days of this testing we had apparently been classified as acceptable working material, worthy of the cost of transport to the Reich.

We were taken to an airplane factory in Germany. Our sleeping accommodations were three-story bunk beds, two people on each thirty-inch-wide cot.

Anka, her unborn baby, and I were together. This chance arrangement was a blessing for me and I often think that it might have saved my life.

Anka's condition prevented me from thinking too much about my own situation and feeling sorry for myself. Self-pity was a luxury we couldn't afford. Once you started with that you were finished. Anka kept me warm at night. I was always fearfully cold and Anka was my heating pad. I wrapped my concave belly around her round one and felt comfortably warm.

As time progressed, our shapes complemented each other. The rounder hers became, the more concave mine. We knew that as long as she was able to work, nobody would pay any attention to her pregnancy. What might happen later was always on our minds but we never talked about it. Only once Anka whispered to me: Eva, I know I should never say it aloud, but I am going to confide in you. Sometimes I have such a good, reassuring feeling, like something or somebody was telling me 'don't worry, this time it will be all right.'

I didn't answer. I was so terrified that she dared to put it into words that I pretended not to hear.

Months went by. Instead of working on the airplanes, Anka cleaned the floor of the plant. She shuffled through the enormous halls with a heavy pail of water in each hand. One big belly on two thin legs, topped with an aureole of short light hair, straight as nails and fine as goose down.

Am I a beauty? Anka would ask, smiling.

And laughter was just around the corner.

Then came April 1945, and with it the day our labor camp was evacuated. Anka and I were in the same cattle wagon. Space for the transport of five precious animals had been stuffed to bursting with over sixty human expendables. Our trip took sixteen days. We went from one railway station to another, stopping in each for hours or for days.

Poor people from surrounding villages brought bags of bread and sugar for us, but we saw all that disappear in our guards' wagon. Every morning we got a thin slice of green, rotten bread and a cup of some brown liquid which we used first to rinse our mouths and then to wash our faces and hands.

Bombs fell all around, but they never hit us. Once a day we were permitted to get out and crawl under the train. We called it the dog walking time. We tried to stretch our bodies a little but in a few minutes we had to get back onto the train.

The sun turned the wagon into a roasting oven. There wasn't enough space for all of us to sit down and, when we wanted to sleep at night, we had to lie down in layers. The tiny window of the cattle wagon offered minimal ventilation and light.

Anka was very quiet and now and then she gave me a weak smile which said, All is well . . . still ... She was in the ninth month of her pregnancy.

On April 29th, our train pulled into Mauthausen station. It was to be the last stop of our three-year captivity.

Just then, Anka's labor started. As soon as the train stopped she was carried out with others who were too weak or too sick to walk. She didn't say a word but looked at me, her eyes despairing, saying, It was foolish to believe in miracles, wasn't it?

Losing Anka was like losing half of myself. When you have spent almost eight months with someone in such closeness, pulled through together in such misery and shared your most guarded hopes and fears, you do not become merely friends; you become a part of each other. Now I was alone and half crazy with worry for her.

The morning after liberation, the camp was a beehive in uproar with all the bees dizzy and drunk. Everyone milled around in slow motion, using his last drop of energy in trying to find someone he liked or loved and lost, hoping to find him alive and afraid of not finding him at all, or of finding him dead.

Today, men were also around. When we had passed their camp yesterday they had been holding onto the fence, staring right through us with unseeing eyes, dazed, half-dead. They had not noticed—or cared—that they were naked. Today, some had already found a rag to use as a loincloth, and those who weren't as lucky tried to hide whatever they could with their hands.

Brother, I thought, don't kid yourself. All of us are still only prisoners, inmates, genderless pals; but please, excuse my attire! And in my elegant long johns I felt like an overdressed fool in a nudist camp.

First I tried to locate Anka in the medical barracks. Medical barracks sounds so fine, you might assume that they were hospitals, places where they try to make you well. You would