“You don’t work here anymore,” the woman on the floor answers reluctantly. “You just survive for as long as you can.”
They’ve heard the sound of explosions from Allied planes throughout the day, and at night they can see the glow of detonating bombs. The front is already very close; they can almost touch it. It spreads a certain euphoria among the prisoners. The noise from the Allied bombs sounds like an ever-approaching storm. Some of the women discuss what they’ll do when the war is over. One woman without any teeth says she’ll replant her entire garden with tulips.
“Don’t be stupid,” replies a bitter voice. “If I had a garden, I’d plant potatoes so I never spend another day of my life feeling hungry.”
In the morning Dita and her mother understand what the internee meant when she said that you don’t work in Bergen-Belsen, you just survive. A pair of SS guards wakes them up with kicks and shouts, and they rush outside to line up. The guards disappear, however, and the new inmates stand at the door for a long time awaiting instructions that never arrive. Some of the old hands haven’t even got up from their blankets and stoically put up with the kicks without moving.
More than an hour later, a guard appears and shouts at them to line up for roll call, but immediately notices that there is no list of names. So the guard asks for the hut Kapo. Nobody answers. She asks three more times, getting angrier with each one.
“You damned bitches! Where the devil is the Kapo of this fucking hut?”
Nobody answers. Red with rage, the guard furiously grabs a prisoner by the neck and asks her where the Kapo is. The victim is a new arrival and tells her she doesn’t know. Then the guard turns to a veteran, who’s easily recognizable because she’s almost a walking skeleton, and repeats her question while aiming at her with her club.
“Well?”
“She died two days ago.”
“And the new Kapo?”
The inmate shrugs her shoulders.
“There isn’t one.”
The guard thinks this over and doesn’t know what to do. She could name any one of these women Kapo, but there isn’t a single regular prisoner among them. They’re all Jews in this hut, and she could be looking for trouble. Eventually, she turns around and leaves. The veteran prisoners break ranks of their own accord and go back inside the hut. The newcomers, still standing by the entrance to the hut, exchange looks. Dita almost prefers to remain outside, as she’s constantly bombarded by fleas and lice inside and she feels an intense itchiness over her entire body. But her mother is tired and gestures inside with her head.
Once there, they ask a veteran what time breakfast appears. The huge grimace, which hides a bitter smile, is eloquent.
“Breakfast time?” says another woman. “Let’s pray we have a dinnertime today.”
They spend the whole morning doing nothing until someone shouts a harsh “Achtung,” which makes everyone quickly stand. The supervisor comes into the hut, followed by a couple of assistants. She points her club at one of the veterans and asks if there are any deaths. The prisoner points to the back of the hut, and another inmate in the area points to the ground. A woman hasn’t gotten up at the sound of the shout. She’s dead.
Volkenrath looks around quickly and signals to four prisoners, two veterans and two newcomers. She doesn’t say a word, but the old hands already know what has to be done. They hurry over to the corpse with unexpected enthusiasm, and each of them grabs a leg. They know they have to get hold of the right part: The legs of a corpse weigh less, and that end is sometimes less unpleasant. Rigor mortis has already dislocated the jaw, and the woman’s mouth and eyes are open excessively wide. With a nod of their heads, they indicate that the other two prisoners should grab the shoulders. Between the four of them, they make their way to the door, carrying the dead woman.
The guards disappear again, and nobody else comes into the hut until evening. Then a guard looks inside and signals to four inmates to go to the kitchen to get the pot with the soup. That causes a stir, and there are shouts of joy.
“Dinner’s on!”
“Thank you, God!”
The inmates reappear carrying the pot with the help of two long planks so they won’t burn themselves, and that night they dine on soup.
“This cook studied at the same school as the one in Birkenau,” says Dita between sips.
And Liesl ruffles her daughter’s shoulder-length hair, which is starting to turn up at the ends.
In the days that follow, anarchy will increase. There’ll be days when they eat a bowl of soup at lunchtime, but there’ll be no breakfast or dinner; on the odd day they’ll have lunch and dinner, but at other times they won’t get any food at all. Hunger becomes a form of torture and a source of anxiety that blocks the mind and doesn’t allow for thought; there’s just the agonized wait for the next meal. All that free time, combined with the anxiety caused by hunger, turns the mind into mush, and everything starts to fall apart.
29.
More prisoners arrive in the weeks that follow, and the gaps between meals becomes longer. The mortality rate grows exponentially. Even without gas chambers, Bergen-Belsen becomes a killing machine. Half a dozen bodies have to be removed from Dita’s hut every day. The deaths are officially listed as due to natural causes.
Whenever the guards arrive to pick the prisoners assigned to remove the dead, all the women freeze and hope it’s not their day to win the lottery. Dita tries to blend in with the others.
But today is her lucky day.
The SS guard unmistakably points at her with the club. She’s the last one selected, so when she reaches the corpse, the positions at the feet are already taken. She and a very dark woman who looks like a Gypsy pick up the dead woman by her shoulders. Dita has seen many dead bodies over these years, but she has never touched one. She can’t avoid brushing against this woman’s hand, and its marble-like coldness makes her shiver.
Dita and the Gypsy woman support the bulk of the weight. But she worries about the dead woman’s arms, how to keep them from swinging.