Read an Excerpt
Auschwitz and After
By Charlotte Delbo, Rosette C. Lamont Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1995 Yale University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-19512-5
CHAPTER 1
None of Us Will Return
Today, I am not sure that what I wrote is true. I am certain it is truthful.
Arrivals, Departures
People arrive. They look through the crowd of those who are waiting, those who await them. They kiss them and say the trip exhausted them.
People leave. They say good-bye to those who are not leaving and hug the children.
There is a street for people who arrive and a street for people who leave.
There is a café called "Arrivals" and a café called "Departures."
There are people who arrive and people who leave.
But there is a station where those who arrive are those who are leaving
a station where those who arrive have never arrived, where those who have left never came back.
It is the largest station in the world.
This is the station they reach, from wherever they came.
They get here after days and nights
having crossed many countries
they reach it together with their children, even the little ones who
were not to be part of this journey.
They took the children because for this kind of trip you do not leave without them.
Those who had some took gold because they believed gold might come in handy.
All of them took what they loved most because you do not leave your dearest possessions when
you set out for far-distant lands.
Each one brought his life along, since what you must take with you, above all, is your life.
And when they have gotten there
they think they've arrived in Hell
maybe. And yet they did not believe in it.
They had no idea you could take a train to Hell but since they were there they took their courage in their hands ready to face what's corning
together with their children, their wives and their aged parents with family mementoes and family papers.
They do not know there is no arriving in this station.
They expect the worst—not the unthinkable.
And when the guards shout to line up five by five, the men on one side, women and children on the other, in a language they do not understand, the truncheon blows convey the message so they line up by fives ready for anything.
Mothers keep a tight hold on their children—trembling at the thought they might be taken away—because the children are hungry and thirsty and disheveled by lack of sleep after crossing so many countries. At last they have reached their destination, they will be able to take care of them now.
And when the guards shout to leave their bundles, comforters and keepsakes on the platform, they do so since they are ready for the worst and do not wish to be taken aback by anything. They say: "We shall see." They have already seen so much and they are weary from the journey.
The station is not a railroad station. It is the end of the line. They stare, distressed by the surrounding desolation.
In the morning, the mist veils the marshes.
In the evening floodlights reveal the white barbed wire with the sharpness of astrophotography. They believe this is where they are being taken, and are filled with fear.
At night they wait for the day with the small children heavy in their mothers' arms. They wait and wonder.
With the coming of daylight there is no more waiting. The columns start out at once. Women and children first, they are the most exhausted. After that the men. They are weary too but relieved that their women and children should go first.
For women and children are made to go first.
In the winter they are chilled to the bone. Particularly those who come from Herakleion, snow is new to them.
In the summer the sun blinds them when they step out of the cattle cars locked tight on departure.
Departure from France and Ukraine Albania Belgium Slovakia Italy Hungary Peloponnesos Holland Macedonia Austria Herzegovina from the shores of the Black Sea the shores of the Mediterranean the banks of the Vistula.
They would like to know where they are. They have no idea that this is the center of Europe. They look for the station's name. This is a station that has no name.
A station that will remain nameless for them.
Some of them are traveling for the first time in their lives.
Some of them have traveled in all the countries in the world, businessmen.
They were familiar with all manner of landscape, but they do not recognize this one.
They look. Later on they will be able to describe how it was.
All wish to remember the impression they had and how they felt they would never return.
This is a feeling one might have had earlier in one's life. They know you should not trust feelings.
Some came from Warsaw wearing large shawls and with tied-up bundles
some from Zagreb, the women their heads covered by scarves
some from the Danube wearing multicolored woolen sweaters knitted through long night hours
some from Greece, they took with them black olives and loukoums
some came from Monte Carlo
they were in the casino
they are still wearing tails and stiff shirt fronts mangled from the trip
paunchy and bald
fat bankers who played keep the bank
there are married couples who stepped out of the synagogue the bride all in white wrapped in her veil wrinkled from having slept on the floor of the cattle car
the bridegroom in black wearing a top hat his gloves soiled
parents and guests, women holding pearl-embroidered handbags
all of them regretting they could not have stopped home to change into something less dainty
The rabbi holds himself straight, heading the line. He has always been a model for the rest.
There are boarding-school girls wearing identical pleated skirts, their hats trailing blue ribbons. They pull up their knee socks carefully as they clamber down, and walk neatly five by five, holding hands, unaware, as though on a regular Thursday school outing. After all, what can they do to boarding-school girls shepherded by their teacher? She tells them, "Be good, children!" They don't have the slightest desire not to be good.
There are old people who used to get letters from their children in America. Their idea of foreign lands comes from postcards. Nothing ever looked like what they see here. Their children will never believe it.
There are intellectuals: doctors, architects, composers, poets. You can tell them by the way they walk, by their glasses. They too have seen a great deal in their lifetimes, studied much. Many made use of their imagination to write books, yet nothing they imagined ever came close to what they see now.
All the furriers of large cities are gathered here, as well as the men's and women's tailors and the manufacturers of ready-to-wear who had moved to western Europe. They do not recognize in this place the land of their forebears.
There is the inexhaustible crowd of those who live in cities where each one occupies his own cell in the beehive. Looking at the endless lines you wonder how they ever fit into the stacked-up cubicles of a metropolis.
There is a mother who's boxing her five-year-old's ears because he won't hold her by the hand and she expects him to stay quietly by her side. You run the risk of getting lost if you're separated in a strange, crowded place. She hits her child, and we who know cannot forgive her for it. Yet, were she to smother him with kisses, it would all be the same in the end.
There are those who having journeyed for eighteen days lost their minds, murdering one another inside the boxcars and
those who suffocated during the trip when they were tightly packed together
they will not step out.
There's a little girl who hugs her doll against her chest, dolls can be smothered too.
There are two sisters wearing white coats. They went out for a stroll and never got back for dinner. Their parents still await their return anxiously.
Five by five they walk down the street of arrivals. It is actually the street of departures but no one knows it. This is a one-way street.
They proceed in orderly fashion so as not to be faulted for anything.
They reach a building and heave a sigh. They have reached their destination at last.
And when the soldiers bark their orders, shouting for the women to strip, they undress the children first, cautiously, not to wake them all at once. After days and nights of travel the little ones are edgy and cranky
then the women shed their own clothing in front of their children, nothing to be done
and when each is handed a towel they worry whether the shower will be warm because the children could catch cold
and when the men enter the shower room through another door, stark naked, the women hide the children against their bodies.
Perhaps at that moment all of them understand.
But understanding doesn't do any good since they cannot tell those waiting on the railway platform
those riding in the dark boxcars across many countries only to end up here
those held in detention camps who fear leaving, wondering about the climate, the working conditions, or being parted from their few possessions
those hiding in the mountains and forests who have grown weary of concealment. Come what may they'll head home. Why should anyone come looking for them who have harmed no one
those who imagined they found a safe place for their children in a Catholic convent school where the sisters are so kind.
A band will be dressed in the girls' pleated skirts. The camp commandant wishes Viennese waltzes to be played every Sunday morning.
A blockhova will cut homey curtains from the holy vestments worn by the rabbi to celebrate the sabbath no matter what, in whatever place.
A kapo will masquerade by donning the bridegroom's morning coat and top hat, with her girlfriend wrapped in the bride's veil. They'll play "wedding" all night while the prisoners, dead tired, lie in their bunks. Kapos can have fun since they're not exhausted at the end of the day
Black Calamata olives and Turkish delight cubes will be sent to ailing German hausfrauen who couldn't care less for Calamata olives, nor olives of any kind.
All day all night
every day every night the chimneys smoke, fed by this fuel dispatched from every part of Europe
standing at the mouth of the crematoria men sift through ashes to find gold melted from gold teeth. All those Jews have mouths full of gold, and since there are so many of them it all adds up to tons and tons.
In the spring men and women sprinkle ashes on drained marshland plowed for the first time. They fertilize the soil with human phosphates.
From bags tied round their bellies they draw human bone meal which they sow upon the furrows. By the end of the day their faces are covered with white dust blown back up by the wind. Sweat trickling down their faces over the white powder traces their wrinkles.
They need not fear running short of fertilizer since train after train gets here every day and every night, every hour of every day and every night.
This is the largest station in the world for arrivals and for departures.
Only those who enter the camp find out what happened to the others. They cry at the thought of having parted from them at the station the day an officer ordered the young prisoners to line up separately
people are needed to drain the marshes and cover them with the others' ashes.
They tell themselves it would have been far better never to have entered, never to have found out.
You who have wept two thousand years
for one who agonized for three days and three nights
what tears will you have left
for those who agonized
far more than three hundred nights and far more than three hundred
days
how hard
shall you weep
for those who agonized through so many agonies
and they were countless
They did not believe in resurrection to eternal life
and knew you would not weep.
O you who know
did you know that hunger makes the eyes sparkle that thirst dims
them
O you who know
did you know that you can see your mother dead
and not shed a tear
O you who know
did you know that in the morning you wish for death
and in the evening you fear it
O you who know
did you know that a day is longer than a year
a minute longer than a lifetime
O you who know
did you know that legs are more vulnerable than eyes
nerves harder than bones
the heart firmer than steel
Did you know that the stones of the road do not weep
that there is one word only for dread
one for anguish
Did you know that suffering is limitless
that horror cannot be circumscribed
Did you know this
You who know.
My mother
she was hands, a face
They made our mothers strip in front of us
Here mothers are no longer mothers to their children.
All were marked on their arm with an indelible number
All were destined to die naked
The tattoos identified the dead men the dead women
It was a desolate plain
on the edge of town
The plain was covered with ice
and the town
was nameless.
Dialogue
"You're French?"
"Yes."
"So am I"
She has no F on her chest. A star.
"From where?"
"Paris."
"YouVe been here a long time?"
"Five weeks"
"I've been here sixteen days."
"That's already a long time, I know"
"Five weeks ... How can it be?"
"Just like this."
"And you think we can survive this?"
She is begging.
"We've got to try."
"For you perhaps there's hope, but for us ..."
She points to my striped jacket and then to her coat, a coat much too big, much too dirty, much too tattered.
"Oh, come on, it's the same odds for both of us."
"For us, there's no hope."
She gestures with her hand, mimics rising smoke.
"We've got to keep up our courage "
"Why bother ... Why keep on struggling when all of us are to ..."
The gesture of her hand completes her sentence. Rising smoke.
"No, we've got to keep on struggling."
"How can we hope to get out of here. How will anyone ever get out of here. It would be better to throw ourselves on the barbed wire immediately."
What can one say to her? She's small, frail. And I can't even convince myself. All argument is senseless. I'm struggling against my reason. One struggles against all reason.
The chimney smokes. The sky is low. Smoke sweeps across the camp weighing upon us and enveloping us with the odor of burning flesh.
The Dummies
"Look. Look."
We were crouching on our tier, on the boards which were used by us as bed, table, floor. The roof was very low You could only fit there sitting down, head lowered. There were eight of us, perched on a narrow platform, a group of friends death would separate. Soup had been dealt out. We had waited a long time outside to file one by one past the bucket steaming into the face of the stubhova. Her right sleeve rolled up, she dipped the ladle into the bucket to dish out the gruel. She was yelling from behind the cloud of steam. The vapor dampened her voice. She was yelling because of the shoving and talking. Sluggish, we waited, our numb hands holding our tin cups. Now we ate, our soup in our laps. The soup was murky, but it had the taste of hot.
"Look, did you see, in the yard ..."
"Oh!" Yvonne P. drops her spoon. She's not hungry any more.
The barred window looks out on the yard of block 25, a courtyard enclosed by walls. There is a door that leads into the camp, but if it opens when you're passing by, you run fast, you take off, you don't try to look at the door, or see what's on the other side. But we can see, right through the window. However, we never turn our heads in that direction.
"Look. Look"
At first, we doubt that we've seen what we've seen. It's hard to tell them from the snow. The yard is full of them. Naked. Stacked side by side. White, a bluish whiteness against the snow. Heads shaved, pubic hair straight and stiff. The corpses are frozen. White with brown toenails. There is something ridiculous about these cocked-up toes. Horrifyingly laughable.
Boulevard de Courtais in Montlu9on. I was waiting for my father at the Nouvelles Galeries. It was summer, the sun was hot on the asphalt. A parked truck was being unloaded. They were delivering dummies for the display window. Each man grabbed a dummy in his arms and set it down in front of the store's entrance. The dummies were bare, their joints clearly visible. The men carried them carefully, laying them down near the wall on the hot sidewalk.
I couldn't take my eyes off them, embarrassed by the nakedness of these dummies. I had often seen dummies in the store windows, wearing a dress, shoes, a wig, their arms folded in affected gestures. I had never thought of them as naked, without hair, I had never imagined them outside the display window, without electricity to highlight their poses. To discover them thus made me as uneasy as seeing a dead person for the first time.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Auschwitz and After by Charlotte Delbo, Rosette C. Lamont. Copyright © 1995 Yale University. Excerpted by permission of Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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