or German. I guess that figuring that out that will be step one.
SALMA
It’s cold and I’m only vaguely aware of the nurse at my bed, doing something, straightening my blanket, I think. Did I say something to her? I’ve been drifting in and out of a fitful sleep, losing track of where I am. The nurse asks me if I am in pain and I mumble an answer as I feel myself drifting off somewhere else, a place I remember.
It’s cold and rainy. I’m in the woods. The smell of the wet ground, the dead leaves and the smoke of small fires all deluge my senses. There are people in little groups huddling together and a soft buzz of quiet conversation.
Suddenly there’s noise, gunfire and shouting, a lot of it. Everybody scrambles. Someone grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet. Everyone starts to run. It’s like a stampede to get away. Yet, although I’m in a panic, I muffle the sound of my running footsteps, as I’ve learned to do. Even at a run, I’m careful where I step, using the soft, wet, rotting leaves to deaden the sound.
I’ve come to recognize gunfire by now, and death too; the violent death of war and the slow tortuous death of starvation.
I’m trying to remember, but it all dissolves and it disappears as I fall into a deeper sleep.
I waken again and find myself alone this time. The pain isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, probably because of the medicine they’re giving me.
I think of Clara and the letter I gave her, of drawing her into my unhappy past. It had to be her. If I can’t finish the task, she is capable of doing it. More than that, I trust her.
Money doesn’t mean that much to her. The others, when I die they’ll turn greedy, as if they’re owed my money. Not Clara. She’ll honor my wishes. She’s never really asked me for anything. She’s done for herself, been self reliant, kind of like me. She’s not a grabber.
I hope she’ll find them. Not Lisette, I know it’s too late for that, but whoever is left. God willing, someone is left! If it hadn’t been for me…she might have lived. I retreat to bitter memories, an old ache. I feel that I caused her death. That’s one thing you can’t ever undo. There’s no way. There’s no return from it.
I know money can’t make up for it. How do you compensate for a loss like that? Restitution, compensation, how? That’s why I never applied for any of it. How can someone pay me for my losses, for the loss of my childhood, for my parents, for my lost innocence, for turning me into, a thief and more?
Yet, somehow, I’m driven. I can’t explain it, neither to Clara nor to myself.
****
I remember Lisette. She was a small wiry woman whose hands were always busy at some worthwhile task. They were never idle. She saved my life. When my aunt died, Lisette was without a job and times were tough for everybody.
Her only child, her son, was not that much older than I, just into his twenties and married and already he was in the army. Lisette was alone, taking care of me as best she could. Her faith was a great comfort to her. I remember going to church with her sometimes. It’s not like she was trying to convert me. Her religion was just a big part of her life. She lived it fully. I haven’t found many like her, Jew or Gentile.
Her husband had been a Polish Catholic. How he came to Belgium I never heard. He had died by the time I knew her. As a widow, she had to go to work. That’s how she came to be the housekeeper in my Aunt Dora’s home.
At my great-aunt Dora’s death, Lisette was unemployed again. Yet, she took responsibility for me, to bring me home to whatever part of my family she could find.
Jews in Belgium were already being sent to concentration camps by that time, so it was dangerous for me to remain in Antwerp, even more so without legal papers.
When my parents sent me to safety in Belgium, there had been no question of getting a Visa or other legal documents. It was impossible. I was smuggled in.
Lisette even tried going back to her hometown, Willebroek, thinking she might find safety for us there. What she found instead was that the Military Fort, just outside of town, had been converted into an Auffangslagen, a waiting camp, where Jews were kept before their transport to Germany’s Death Camps. It was dangerous to stay.
Moving between countries during the war was a nightmare. She didn’t have money to pay bribes to border guards, but somehow she managed to get us into Poland.
Her husband’s family, in Poland, didn’t offer us much of a welcome. She parried their questions about me. She couldn’t say too much. The apartment we stayed in was small, overcrowded and poor. They couldn’t feed two extra people. It was easy to see that.
Lisette also worried about nosy neighbors. I was a Jew after all, and some people might remember me or figure things out. It wasn’t safe, not for us, not for the family. The feeling of being safe was something I had forgotten long ago.
Her efforts to find my parents in Lublin were fruitless. Other people, strangers were living in our family’s home and questions weren’t welcome. They were generally met with resentment and hostile stares.
Lisette didn’t say much to me about what she was finding out, but even at fourteen, I realized there was profound destruction everywhere. There was no sign of my family, my neighbors, nor much of anything familiar.
People talk about the smell of fear; dogs can sense it and they react to it. I could sense it too. I was reeking of it myself. So was everyone around me.
Taking me back to Belgium with no legal documents was not a realistic possibility and leaving me alone in Poland was not something Lisette would consider.
We couldn’t stay in Lublin with the Majdanek Concentration Camp practically in the heart of the city. I didn’t know what went on there at the time, but other people did, and talking about the subject was taboo.
Because of the way the townspeople behaved, you would think that not talking about it could make the hideous thoughts and terrible smells and the sight of human ashes raining down, all vanish somehow…become invisible.
Some distance East of the city, in the Parczew Forest, were a group of Partisans, Jewish Resistance fighters. I don’t remember how we made our way there or how she got them to take us in, what wiles or threats or pleas she used. Somehow she managed it.
We weren’t too welcome, being strangers and outsiders. We were possible collaborators, for all they knew! The Partisan groups constantly survived on a knife’s edge. Yet, they did take us in. With them, we were able to stay alive. At least I was.
As I remember it, I start to shiver and my hands shake.
****
A nurse walks into my room and sees the tears on my face and asks if I am in pain and if I want some medication.
“This kind of pain, medicine won’t help.” I tell her, and get a puzzled look in return.
She looks at my chart, gives me some water to sip and I settle back into a half sleep, disturbed by other memories. I think of the years when my children were little. It was hard for me to give them the nurturing I’d had so little of in my life. I’ve passed on a bitter legacy, I’m afraid. Lucy…her children are
