Fragments Under Glass

By Rebecca Siegel

Living among corpses...a death train destined for the Elbe River...bodies covered with lice...the murder of almost all close relatives...life in the Netherlands before, during, and after the Holocaust is perceptively written by Rebecca Siegel. She not only describes her experiences, but also delves into the effects of that period in time on children, grandchildren and mainly herself. The book touches on her years in the Montessori School in the same class with Anne Frank and her survival in the same concentration camp where Anne died. Interspersed with the prose and at the end of the book are Rebecca’s poems which she wrote not long after the war and which are relative to her narrative. This book is highly recommended reading for adults as well as teens, giving a deeper understanding of that horrendous time period and its after-effects.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rogue Phoenix Press
• Release date: Jun 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781624202568

Book preview

Fragments Under Glass

A Holocaust Survivor Story

Rebecca Siegel

Published by Rogue Phoenix Press for Smashwords

Copyright © 2016

ISBN: 978-1-62420-256-8

Electronic rights reserved by Rogue Phoenix Press, all other rights reserved by the author. The reproduction or other use of any part of this publication without the prior written consent of the rights holder is an infringement of the copyright law. This is a work of fiction. People and locations, even those with real names, have been fictionalized for the purposes of this story.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

My Memories are dedicated to Josh, Jess, and Jonathan

Editing Assistance by Jeffrey Ross, Central Arizona College

Manuscript Preparation Assistance by Melissa K. Ross and Whitney N. Young

On the walls of a cellar in Cologne, Germany, where Jews hid from the Nazis, the following inscription was found:

"I believe in the sun even when it is not shining

I believe in Love even when feeling it not

I believe in God even when He is silent"

Celebration

Who should I send an invitation

To my forthcoming celebration?

A time of joy is one you share

With those you love, with those who care.

My aunts and uncles? No, they died.

My cousins lying side by side in unmarked earth

No symbol dating death or birth.

Who should I send an invitation

To my forthcoming celebration?

Across my mind an image dashes

Of schoolmates who have turned to ashes.

How few of those, I used to treasure,

Can I invite to share my pleasure?

Prologue

I am often asked, Why do we need another book about the Holocaust? And then I hear, It was a long time ago; you should be trying to forget and not look back. Such questions and suggestions are posed in good faith and are meant to help me cleanse my memory of all those lightning streaks of horror that continue to pierce my being at any moment, day or night, and have done so for more than fifty years.

I realize all these well-meaning persons deserve some kind of explanation. To me, this book will serve the purposes of clarifying in my own mind the reasons for putting my words on paper. My intent is not to throw just another manuscript into the now-saturated body of Holocaust memoires.

Certainly, as we age, our recent memories no longer have the same power or the same forceful impact. However, memories from days gone by seem to step forward and present themselves with strength and vibrancy. For example, we can remember the name of our kindergarten teacher, and we can clearly feel the excitement and apprehension of our first school day. Such powerful reminiscing can make our days more joyful. On the other hand, unpleasant recollections can also weave a thread of fear and terror through the days left to us.

So, why am I writing this down in the present, at this late stage of my life? I am not seeking immortality through my words. Delving through the past and trudging through the years is a difficult, at times extremely painful, exercise. Possibly, I am in pursuit of an explanation for the origin of the stressful periods now behind me in an effort to cope with whatever little time may lie ahead.

Perhaps I am trying to express what I was, what I went through, and why I lived on, in the name of so many whose rights to normalcy were thwarted. On the other hand, my words could be an attempt to explain to others, to my children, and to other survivors' children and grandchildren, that certain problems and undulations they are experiencing are undoubtedly the direct result of being the progeny of a survivor.

Finally, and most probably, my words constitute regret for the children of survivors who became second-hand victims before they were born. From birth, the children have been saddled with an uneasy inheritance.

The Fragments

One

The Train April 1945

Two

Return to Amsterdam

Three

Amsterdam Before the Camps

Four

Time in Hell

Five

Amsterdam After the War

Six

American Dreams

Seven

Art and Healing

Eight

Poetry

One

The Train April 1945

Slowly, the evening was getting colder and darker. During this part of the day, surroundings seemed alien, losing the proper size and shape necessary for recognition, and faded into one, ominous-looking shadow.

I concentrated on trying to get some sleep, making myself as small as possible in an attempt to fit on the narrow, slatted luggage shelf suspended over the seats of the passenger compartment. This ledge had been my wooden perch for the past week. No, it had only been six days and five nights of riding and standing still.

Ours was just one car within a train made up of cattle and passenger cars, a long, slow-moving snake containing its wretched load of about twenty-five hundred prisoners.

Time had lost all meaning. We had left the camp on April 6, and now it was April 11, but my body felt as if it had always been twisted in this strange position, contorted in an effort to fit the narrow ledge. I attempted to stretch and look down. On the wooden bench below sat my mother, quiet and unmoving, next to my brother. Eddie, just eighteen, was very ill and seemed to have a high fever. His weight had dwindled down to about eighty pounds.

Many years later I would remember this moment very clearly, standing out in my memory as the last part of a nightmare that had finally, necessarily, given way to the relief of waking.

The very last car of the train was filled with explosives, anti-aircraft artillery, and the German guards who had been with us sine we left the Bergen-Belsen camp. They were no longer yelling and cursing, and their relative silence was unusual, even though we could hear from far away the faint noises of artillery fire. We realized we were caught between two fronts: The Russians were coming from the east, while the Allies were advancing from the west. Suddenly, the German army was desperately fighting on both battle grounds but seemed unable to contain the advancing armies.

Looking out of the window, I strained to see the vast, empty grassland at my right. At my left, at the bottom of a hill, was a lake. We had been standing still here for at least two days, the last forty-eight hours of a journey which had taken us through a devastated Germany. The train was static during the day and traveled mainly during the darkness of night. German pride did not allow us to observe their bombed-out railroad stations and devastated cities in the stark light of day. As usual, the Germans had an indisputable method to their madness.

This night, though, was different from the previous ones. I remember the time as a night during which I was more petrified than ever before in my fifteen years of life. Clearly, the train with its pitiful human cargo had been doomed from the start. Our final destination was to be the bottom of the Elbe River in East Germany. However, the Russian forces had crossed the river and, with the Allies advancing from the west, we had been brought to a standstill.

The German soldiers on guard had made desperate attempts to destroy us at any cost. They had activated the explosives at the back of the train, setting them to go off in the middle of the night, thereby blowing up the train and passengers. Our night was filled with overpowering fear. We were waiting and waiting and expecting every second to be our last. Hours and minutes did not pass by, only one terrifying moment after another. We prayed silently, thought about what might happen, and reached a point where a kind of numbness set in. Then, we thought about nothing at all.

There's no more shadow I can see.

Only my thoughts I hear

The daylight slipped away from me

And suddenly there's fear.

I'm sure my life will stay this way

My reaching out in air;

No easing up, no carefree day,

No one with whom to share.

Why so much night to stumble through?

Praying, praying, relief will come;

I'm more than tired, nothing else to do

Where did the morning go?

Slowly the morning dawned. I looked around at the skeletal forms of the somewhat healthy, the sick, the dying, and the dead, and experienced a burst of euphoria at the certain knowledge I was still alive and part of the community. No German guards were to be seen any longer. They had fled, and somehow the explosives had been deactivated.

At this point, we could have just walked away, but nobody moved. Most of us were too weak to walk any distance. Besides, where would we have gone in the middle of a country whose aim for the last decade had been to wipe us off the earth? Who would help us? So, we waited while listening to explosions in the distance.

We had no food, but after almost two years of constant hunger pains, starvation had become part of our existence. Medicine was not available to relieve the pain of the open, festering sores that covered our emaciated bodies. We felt no shame. Whenever the train had stopped, we (or at least those among us who could still walk) had used the outdoors to relieve ourselves. The sick and the dying had been continually denied a gulp of fresh air. They were still lying in their own excrement and did not realize their condition.

Hours passed, and nothing meaningful happened. To me, it seemed I had always lived this way: hungry, dirty, sick, and degraded. Maybe if I had been an adult when the war broke out in 1940, if I had been in possession of a mature value system, it would have been clear to me my situation was abnormal, that these conditions were inhumane. However, I had only been ten years old in 1940, a mere child, receptive to the pervasive climate of slow, persistent degradation. Just looking at myself, I felt so very