“Why have you taken so long?”
The British troops were expecting to be received by a euphoric populace. They were expecting smiles and cheers. They weren’t expecting to be met with complaints, sighs, and death rattles, people crying with a mixture of joy for having been saved and deep sorrow for husbands, brothers, uncles, friends, neighbors—so many people who haven’t been liberated.
There are some soldiers whose faces show compassion; others, incredulity; and many, disgust. They never thought an internment camp for Jews could be this quagmire of bodies. The living are even more skeletal than the dead. The English thought they were going to liberate a camp full of prisoners, but what they’ve found is a cemetery.
There are voices still capable of giving a modest cheer at the news, although most of the women who are alive have only the strength to stare incredulously. And they stare even harder when they see a party of prisoners walk past them. Dita has to look twice before she believes it. For the first time in her life, those under arrest are not Jews. At the front, guarded by armed British soldiers and walking with her head held high, is Elisabeth Volkenrath, her topknot spilling over her face.
31.
The first days of freedom have been strange. There have been scenes that Dita, even in her wildest dreams, could never have imagined: Nazi guards dragging the dead with their own hands; Volkenrath, always so impeccable, carrying corpses in her arms to the pit in a muddy uniform and with greasy hair. The British have put Dr. Klein to work lowering the bodies that the SS guards, now prisoners sentenced to hard labor, are passing to him.
Freedom has arrived, but nobody in Bergen-Belsen is happy. The number of deaths is devastating. The British soon realize that they can’t be as respectful toward the dead as they would like; the spread of diseases is too rapid. In the end, they order the SS guards to pile up the bodies, and a bulldozer pushes them as far as the pit. Peace is very demanding: It has to wipe out the effects of war as quickly as possible.
Margit is in line waiting for the midday ration when she feels a hand on her shoulder. It’s an insignificant gesture. But there’s something in it that suddenly makes her life expand. Before she turns around, she knows the hand belongs to her father.
Dita and Liesl are really happy for Margit. Seeing her happy makes them happy. When she tells them that the English have already assigned her father a place on the train for Prague and he has made arrangements for her to accompany him, they wish her luck in her new life. Everything is changing at dizzying speed.
Margit becomes very serious and gives them an intense look.
“My home will be your home.”
She not just being polite. Dita knows that it’s a sister’s declaration of love. Margit’s father jots down the address of some Czech friends who are not Jewish on a scrap of paper. He hopes they’re still all right, and that he and Margit can stay with them.
“We’ll see each other in Prague!” Dita tells him as they hold hands and say good-bye.
This time it’s a more hopeful farewell. A farewell where it finally makes sense to say, “See you soon!”
Confusion reigns for the first few days. The British were trained to fight, not to look after hundreds of thousands of disoriented people with no personal documentation, many of them sick or malnourished. The English battalion has an office to deal with the repatriation of the prisoners, but it’s overwhelmed and the assignment of provisional papers is unbearably slow. At least the inmates have received food rations and clean blankets again, and field hospitals have been set up for the thousands of sick people.
Dita didn’t want to spoil Margit’s day by telling her that she was worried about Liesl: She isn’t well. Although she’s eating, she’s not gaining weight and has the beginning of a fever. There’s no other option but to admit her to the field hospital, which means Dita and her mother will have to delay their transfer to Prague. In the field hospital, set up by the Allies in the former camp hospital to look after the survivors of Bergen-Belsen, there is little evidence that the war has ended. The German army has surrendered. Hitler has committed suicide in his own bunker, and the SS officers have either become prisoners awaiting summary trial or they’ve gone into hiding. But in the hospital, war is stubbornly refusing to give in. The armistice doesn’t make the amputated limbs of the mutilated grow back; it doesn’t cure the pain of the wounded; it doesn’t eradicate typhus; it doesn’t rescue the dying from their decline; it doesn’t return those who have marched on. Peace doesn’t cure everything, at least not that quickly.
Liesl Adler, who has resisted all the deprivations, tragedies, and miseries of these years, becomes gravely ill with the arrival of peace. Dita can’t believe that after all she has overcome, she isn’t going to live in peace. It’s not fair.
Liesl is lying on a field bed, but at least the sheets are clean compared to the last few years. Dita takes her mother’s hand and whispers words of encouragement in her ear. The medication keeps Liesl sedated.
As the days pass, the nurses become accustomed to the presence of the Czech girl with the face of a mischievous angel, who doesn’t leave her mother’s bedside. To the extent that it’s possible, they try to look after Dita as well: They make sure she eats her food ration and periodically gets out of the hospital, that she doesn’t stay with her mother for too many hours at a time, and that she wears a mask when she’s sitting beside her.
One afternoon, Dita spots one of the nurses—a round-faced young man with freckles called Francis—reading a novel. She walks over and stares avidly at the title. It’s a Western, and the front cover has a picture of an Indian chief with a striking feather headdress, war paint on his cheeks, and a gun in his hand. Feeling himself under intense scrutiny, the nurse looks up from the book and asks Dita if she likes Westerns. Dita has read a novel by Karl May, and she really likes Old Shatterhand and his Apache friend Winnetou, whom she imagined experiencing amazing adventures on the never-ending plains of North America. Dita touches the book as if she were stroking it, and then runs a finger very slowly up and down the spine. Puzzled, the soldier watches her. He thinks the girl might be a little disturbed. After living in that hell, it wouldn’t surprise anyone.
“Francis…”