The Roma Chavi: The Gypsy Girl

By Eva Fischer-Dixon

The hopelessness and fear among the gypsies was running high as the train moved towards the unknown. All eyes in the darkness of the wagon focused on one person, an incredibly beautiful woman who called herself Salome, and who appeared out of nowhere at the detention area before their deportation. Her magical beauty was noticed right away by everyone upon their arrival to Auschwitz-Birkenau, including the young SS Colonel, Helmut von Clausen. Ignoring the objections from every cell of his body, he simply could not resist the effects of Salomes beauty. As his dark past surfaced and intertwined with Salomes magic, an unexpected metamorphosis takes place that changes everything in Helmuts life. As Helmut searches for answers, he must come to terms with his inner evil and the possibility that finding the answer to his quest for truth may cost him the ultimate price, his very own life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493155170

Eva Fischer-Dixon

I came into this troubled world during the early morning hours of June 17, 1950, in the city of Budapest, Hungary. I was the first and last child of my 41-year-old mother and my father who was 45 years old at the time of my birth. As I did not know any better, I could not possibly understand that we were living in poverty, as I was growing up with loving parents and there was always a bite to eat. My childhood was poor and saddened with tragedies. As a six-year-old child I witnessed the bloody 1956 revolution and received the first taste of true prejudice by those of whom I thought liked us, yet turned against my family. That tragedy did not match the untimely death of my beloved father when I was not yet seven years old, on February 14, 1957. My mother remarried in 1959 and our financial situation was upgraded from poverty to poor. After finishing elementary school I made a decision to earn money as soon as possible to ease our financial situation and I enrolled in a two-year business college (high school diploma was not required). I received my Associate Degree in 1966 and I began to work as a 16-year-old certified secretary/bookkeeper. During the same period I began my high-school education, which I completed while working full-time and attending night school. I discovered my love for writing when I was 11 years old after a movie that my childhood friend and I saw in the movie theater. We were not pleased with the ending and Steven suggested that I should write a different ending that we both liked. Voila, a writer was born. With my family’s encouragement, I entered a writing contest given by a youth oriented magazine and to my genuine surprise, I won second price. My desire to live in a free country and to improve my life was so great, that in 1972, leaving everything, including my aging parents behind, I managed to escape from Hungary during a tour to Austria, (then) Yugoslavia and Italy. I spent almost nine long months in a rat infested refugee camp, located Capua, Italy, while I waited for official permission to immigrate to the country of my dreams, to the USA. In 1975 I met and married a wonderful man, my husband Guy. Thanks to his everlasting patience, he assisted me in my task of learning the English language. He is truly my partner for life and I remain forever grateful to him for standing by me in some tough times. It is difficult for me to describe my love for writing. I cannot think of a bigger emotional joy for an author than to see a published novel in somebody’s hand and to see a story come alive on the screen. I yearn to experience that joy.

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Eva Fischer-Dixon.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 01/06/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

144595

Contents

Dedication

BOOK ONE

The Transport

The Arrival

Salome

The Welcome

Colonel Helmut von Clausen

HSSSSSSSSSS

The Birthday Party

The Lockdown

The New Batch

Skin and Bones

Good Bye Old Man

The Shower

The Magical Night

The Reckoning

Heaven or Hell

BOOK TWO

GI Joe-Helmut/Michael

New York, New York

A New Life

Emolas

Saturday Morning

The Surprise

Awakenings

Helmut von Clausen

A New Life?

The Final Reckoning

Epilog

Also available from Eva Fischer-Dixon:

The Third Cloud

One Last Time (Previously Titled: For the Last Time)

A Song for Hannah (Previously Titled: Hannah’s Song)

A Journey to Destiny (Previously Titled: A Journey to Passion)

The Discovery

The Forbidden

Fata Morgana

Eighteen

The Chava Diamond Chronicles: The Shades of Love and Hate

The Bestseller

A Town by the River

Five ’til Midnight

Thy Neighbor’s Wife

Dedication

While the story in this book is fiction, of my imagination, the suffering endured by those who lived through or died during the Holocaust is not. May G.d Bless their Souls and grant them eternal rest.

BOOK ONE

The Transport

The train moved steadily and evenly with releasing whistles once in a while for several seconds. The whistle sounded sharp in the night and would last only long enough to wake those who somehow managed to fall asleep in the bitter cold that sipped through the cracks of the wagon. A wagon that once carried animals to be slaughtered or to be braised.

It was a group consisting of 126 men, women, and children who endured a second miserable night on the train which only stopped four times to pick up more coal for the engine. The train pulled the personal compartments as well as the other 17 wagons, filled with Hungarian and Romanian gypsy families. From those four occasions when the train stopped for twenty minutes or so, the door only opened once at which time they managed to unload the waste bucket, but disappointingly, they did receive neither food nor water.

It was extremely difficult to breath inside the cattle car and only two small windows allowed enough air inside to keep them at least semi-conscious. Because of her, the young woman who stood by the window, all of them arrived alive to Auschwitz-Birkenau, unlike many of the less fortunate gypsy families in other cattle cars. The gypsies in that particular cattle car had more oxygen because when the situation began to worsen, the young woman began to blow air into the cattle car and amazingly the air became easier to breathe again.

All of them were very hungry and extremely thirsty. Food was something the young woman could not provide for her charges. When she heard the cry of the children and their words when they begged their parents for food, she began to sing some unknown songs in a language that not a single soul in the moving cattle car could understand. The children immediately stopped crying and their parents felt hope hearing her voice as she sang.

The German soldier who walked by their wagon car on the occasion of their third stop, during the night hours, completely ignored their pleas, especially for water, even when they shouted that people may die of hunger and exhaustion. He did not even glance toward the voices that echoed nothing less than a desperate attempt to prove that they were human and they had basic needs. Although, the questions that formed in the young gypsy woman’s thoughts were; who are we if we are not humans? Were those Germans or the Hungarians human, those who crammed so many innocent people in a cattle car and shipped them to their unknown destination?

On the last and final day of their transport, the young woman could barely keep everyone alive, some of them collapsed to the floor of the crowded cattle wagon where most people had to stand throughout the unwanted journey. There was only one trait common they all had in that particular cattle car, they all stared at one person who tried to have a glance outside through the narrow window of the wagon, to get a general idea as where they were. Not that she could have guessed it, she just tried to see if it was a city, or if they were still passing bare, snow covered fields.

"Pooker Pakvora (Talk to us beautiful)," she heard the whispers around her. She turned around and smiled.

Danger is waiting for us, the devil himself is waiting in person, she said and although it was dark inside the cattle wagon, she wanted to make sure that she would look at as many of her people as possible. Her eyes were shining from either tears or anger. Very likely we may all die tonight, but if I survive by some miracle, God is my witness, that I will take revenge on anyone who lifts as much as a little finger on any of you, she promised and everyone of her travelling companions knew that she was going to keep her word, because all of her companions also knew that she would survive. So as it was told thousands of years earlier.

The Arrival

SS Standartenfuhrer (SS Colonel) Helmut von Clausen stood motionlessly exactly at the spot where he knew that the locomotive would make a complete stop. It was the end of the line, literarily and truthfully speaking, not only for the train, but for most of the lives that it carried like squeezed sardines to their final destination.

He glanced down at his immaculately shiny boots and watched as his men were directing prisoners in striped uniforms to get ready when the wagon doors were opened. Day in and day out, mostly at nights, it was all the same routine, the stench that emerged when the prisoners left the wagon followed them, but apparently it no longer bothered his men and the prisoners’ feelings. The new arrivals’ hygiene did not even cross his mind.

He gently moved his whip against his boots and waited for the scene to unfold. Colonel von Clause did his duties without questions and he had full authority to do as he saw it fit, more likely to do as he pleased. He only had one regret; it was that his request to join his original regiment at the Russian front was denied. The letter that he received from Himmler himself told him that he was much too valuable at his present job at Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, and that he shall remain there until further notice. That did bother him.

Himmler, he didn’t even like that pitiful farmer. How dare he keep me here in this hell hole when I could be useful in Russia, he often thought. If von Clausen would not have been as stubborn as he was, he would have written or called his father, Prince Wilhelm von Clausen, who knew just about everybody everywhere in the government, and who had frequent lunches with the Fuhrer, Hitler himself. He knew that he would not be serving in Poland. It was just that; he would not ask his father. He was much too stubborn to acknowledge that he was bored to death, that the smell of the place was eating itself into the pores of his skin, and that he missed cultural events and going out to dinner with friends. Even when he got his commission and fought along with his regiments during the occupation of Poland, he always made certain that his closest friends would have the best of everything. And now, it was the beginning of his third year in Auschwitz and he hated every moment of it.

Colonel von Clausen’s hatred did not stop at the platform of Birkenau, it continued into his everyday life against those who made him live in a place as Auschwitz was. Being a single high ranking officer, he had his own room and he made it as comfortable as he could, he even had a Jew working for him who kept his clothing in impeccable order. He had to whip him almost every day, but it was worth it. He believed that no matter where he served, on the front, or in Auschwitz, an SS officer must always show an example of how a German officer, especially SS officer was supposed to look like.

He blamed the Jews for all of his misery, and his icy cold blue eyes searched for anything out of order, but his men did their jobs and they did it well. Colonel von Clausen, said of one of his SS men, a Sergeant. They are five minutes out. von Clausen nodded and the man left to join his comrades.

The train arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau on time, just passed midnight and when it stopped, the flood of lights brought almost day time lightness into the area. As soon as the wagon doors were opened, the German Sheppard dogs began to bark viciously and it almost always worked, the fear and uncertainty was immediately implanted into people’s minds. Since they did not know where they were and what was waiting for them, they had become prisoners of their own fear. The lights, the uniforms, the men in striped uniforms, the dogs barking and the soldiers constant yelling was nothing less than part of a sheer intimidation process.

Colonel von Clausen watched the scene unfold almost in slow motion. This transport was somewhat different, they were not Jews, they were gypsies, Sinis and Romas from all parts of Hungary and Romania. He actually had pleasant memories of Hungary where his aristocratic family took him to visit a distant relative when he was twelve years old.

He finally moved and very slowly he began to approach the thousands of newly arrived prisoners. His men and the Jews in striped clothes already made the arrivals stand five in each line, in columns. Unlike the Jews, upon disembarking there were no selections, all of the men, women and children remained together, at least for the time being. When the first time Helmut witnessed the arrival of a transport, two years earlier, their stench was intimidating but he got so used to it, he didn’t even notice the stench anymore. Those prisoners were locked up in cattle cars for days, of course there was a stench, besides, they were unclean people from the beginning, so they were told through the well oiled propaganda machine.

Half way through his usual walk between the columns of people, he turned back around and he noticed the officer who normally conducted the selection, SS Dr. Sturmbannfuhrer (Major) Hauptmann. With one movement of his head, Major Hauptmann knew that his expertise would not be put to use that night. Of course, Hauptmann enjoyed the scene, so he remained at the platform and watched it unfold.

Von Clausen watched motionlessly as the columns were shortened in relatively quick speed, he supposed that practice made his men’s work more perfect. There were only five women left as the columns made their way toward the three designated barracks for gypsies. Von Clausen noticed that the woman in the middle had her head covered with a large shawl and she tried to cover her face as her column approached the selective SS officer for a quick review. Helmut lifted his hand with the whip and while the two women of each side of the middle one was allowed to join the others, von Clausen stepped in front of the woman and with his whip he lifted her shawl so he could see her face.

Under normal circumstances the prisoners were forbidden from making eye contact with any of the German soldiers, especially with the officers. Colonel Helmut von Clausen was loved, admired, hated, but mostly feared by his men. He was fair with everyone as long as they followed his instructions, most of all, his orders.

Helmut treated soldiers for rounds of drinks more times than they could remember, but at the same token, when one of the most trustworthy SS Guard was caught stealing something that was taken from a Jewish prisoner, and what was supposed to be sent to the central budget office, von Clausen did not hesitate to report the soldier. After all, he was the adjutant to Hoess, the Commandant of Auschwitz. He could not afford to allow insubordination, not even from one of the soldiers, because he was convinced that another would shortly follow. They called him the Ice Prince; because his eyes were ice cold blue and he could kill several people in a row without blinking an eye. The Prince title was his family inheritance, which he never used, did neither mention, nor that he ever deny.

Major Hauptmann turned his attention to his superior who was much younger than him, yet outranked him. As the Colonel stopped in front of the young gypsy woman, not only the Major, but at least three dozen various grades of SS soldiers watched his every move and they certainly would not question what he was doing.

What unfolded in front of Helmut von Clausen made him to take a step back. The word beauty would have done injustice to the woman; she had goddess like features, so much so that he immediately acknowledged to himself that he had never seen anyone like her. Her skin, unlike almost all gypsies Helmut had ever seen, was milky white, and her eyes, instead of the usual dark brown, were light emerald green. They were shining from anger, or something that he did not recognize, although he knew that it was not fear. When he later thought about the woman’s eyes, he realized that more than anything, they were defiant. Her lips were perfect and unnaturally red as if she was wearing lipstick, although she had no make-up on. Her face was round but not large, or wide, and the way she looked at him was nothing less than challenging, moreover, provocative. He motioned to her to remove her shawl but she did not move. He lifted his whip and was about to hit her when one of the newly arrived gypsy men from the second all male column, rushed von Clausen to stop him from hitting her. He was immediately shot by one of the SS soldiers. Helmut lifted the whip again when another gypsy man began to run towards him, he was killed, too. Von Clausen looked at the woman and wondered who she was to have two young men sacrifice their lives for her. He tried for the third time, and that time an entire group of men leaped out of the column that were waiting for departure to their barracks, naturally shots rang out. Some of the men fell dead to the ground, only steps from von Clausen and the woman.

The woman shook her head as a signal to others not to move and she deliberately slowly removed her shawl from around her head. Her thick raven black hair fell down on her back, almost touching the ground. Her hair was shiny and healthy, something that the SS soldiers standing around had not seen for a long time.

Colonel von Clausen had his share of romantic interests in his almost 30 years of life, but nobody, no other woman had such an effect on him as the young gypsy