A ruckus ensued and Rachel was shoved, pushed and knocked against the railing, until everyone’s energy was exhausted and the agitation petered out like the ripples from a stone cast into a puddle.
As always, rumors and speculation about their destiny abounded, and the women who prided themselves on being in the know tossed names of sub-camps and work details around the truck, arguing about which one was preferable.
Rachel didn’t care either way. All she wanted was to go back and find her sister. She knocked her head against the canvas of the truck in desperation, but there was nothing she could do.
Almost an hour later, the vehicle stopped and the SS screamed, “Los! Raus! Schneller!”
She had no idea why they were always urging them to move fast, when on the other hand they dawdled hour upon hour during roll call. But since the SS had the whips, she quickly jumped off the platform and lined up behind the other women. The wrought-iron gate was similar to the one in Bergen and read, “Arbeit macht frei.” Work brings freedom.
She sneered at the words. Did working hard on the farm all her life count? Maybe she should ask those bigoted Nazis to let her go.
“Prisoner number?”
Rachel rattled off her number. In the transit camps where she’d been before, the Nazis had at least appeared to consider the inmates human, but in Bergen-Belsen everyone had been given a number and they’d been told it was verboten to use their names.
“Nationality?”
“German.”
The guard spit at her. “You’re not German, you’re a filthy Jew. Do you hear me? Next time someone asks for your nationality you say ‘filthy Jew’. Do you understand?”
Rachel nodded.
The guard gave a vile grin. “Nationality?”
“Filthy Jew,” she answered without flinching. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore. For a moment she considered attacking him in the hopes he’d shoot her dead, but of course she couldn’t. She had a baby sister to find.
“You’re a quick study,” the guard said with a satisfied grin. “I’ll reward you with a nice job. Get over there.”
She hurried to follow his commands and walked in the direction of his pointed finger to a small group of women forming another line. The line turned out to be for fitting them out and each woman received a prisoner dress, a plate and a spoon, and was assigned a bunk. Within less than a minute Rachel had multiplied the possessions she owned.
After being processed they were ordered to line up in front of the kitchen where each woman was given two ladles of broth and a dry piece of bread. Rachel wasn’t even sure the bread was made with actual flour and the stinking liquid smelled and tasted the same as in Bergen-Belsen, but at least it was twice as much and Rachel found a few potato peels, a one-inch-piece of carrot and some indefinable rubber-like chunk in her bowl.
Information as always was hard to come by, but when the resident inmates returned from their work details in the evening Rachel found out that she was now in the village of Tannenberg, about twenty-five miles east of Bergen-Belsen, and her group was designated to work in the Rheinmetall ammunition factory, located half an hour’s walk from the camp.
As it turned out, the guard had indeed rewarded her for her obedience, because the residents all agreed that the Rheinmetall work detail was preferable over the alternatives of lumberjack work or road construction.
Rachel involuntarily shuddered at the thought of wielding a heavy axe to cut a tree in her weakened and emaciated condition. She pushed the thoughts away and – alone – climbed into her bunk, which was fitted with a scratchy straw mattress and a blanket, a huge improvement over her sleeping arrangements at the main camp.
She sent a prayer to heaven for her three younger siblings, hoping against hope her brothers had made it to safety and that Mindel had found a kind soul to take care of her. Her belief in God had all but vanished during these past months, experiencing atrocities she never could have imagined, but even if a prayer didn’t help, it wouldn’t hurt either.
Rachel sighed and closed her eyes. She dreamed of happier times with plenty of food, sunshine to enjoy, and the smell of flowers and grass. She saw her mother smiling as she watched her children play and slowly drifted off to sleep, hoping that one day those happier times would return.
7
Summer 1944
Spring had come and gone, and the sun scorched the dry ground in the camp, making it dusty and difficult to breathe.
Mindel still thought of Rachel once in a while, but had accepted the truth that her sister wasn’t going to come back. She was gone, probably dead. Mindel shrugged. These things happened. Here at the camp they happened with surprising frequency. One day a person was there, the next day she was gone.
Struggling from day to day, she hung out with the gang, not answering to anyone except to Laszlo and the SS. Naturally the gang members steered clear of them as much as they could and avoided confrontation at all cost.
But the other adults? They were weak and couldn’t make the kids do anything. In a way it was better than at home, where her mother had always bossed her around and forbidden everything that was fun. Here she could do what she wanted, as long as the SS didn’t catch them.
Her only gripes were the roll calls and the lack of food. But even that could be helped up to a certain
