Shattered Crystals - Mia Amalia Kanner (that summer book TXT) 📗

“The odor of excrement permeated the grounds.”

The path on which Sal and I were walking led to a low concrete building. He stayed close to me, but we did not talk. I wanted to say something to him but instinct told me it would be unwise. I forced myself to take in my surroundings, noting the high barbed wire fences and the watch towers. Then the gendarme ordered us into the building.

Even inside, I continued to shiver. My wool scarf was tied around my head and neck, my coat collar was turned up, and still I shivered. A Nazi sat behind a desk. On the wall behind him was a map. Sal squinted surreptitiously at it, and I followed his gaze. My eyes were drawn to a blue circle around a five-letter word that spelled Nexon. The Nazi looked over the papers the gendarme had handed him. “Barracks 54 for him,” he said curtly. “77 for her.” He was addressing a thin young man I had not noticed before. He spoke in German, which I found unsettling.

“Follow me,” the thin one said.

Outside again, I felt my knees wobble; I could not say why. Was it the cold, was it exhaustion, or was it fear? Fifty-four. I repeated the number to myself. I had to be certain I would remember where my husband was being taken. I followed the thin man, walking on frozen ground, passing flat-roofed wooden barracks, each like the other. My guard stopped before one and opened the door. “In there,” he said.

I was in a long narrow building with about thirty cots along each wall. In the middle of the room stood a stove. I hugged the blanket around myself, thankful that I had been permitted to bring it with me from Le Couret. For several minutes I stared at the women occupying the beds. Not one of them paid any attention to me.

Eventually, a middle-aged woman rose from one of the cots near the center of the room. She had short, gray hair and a scab on her left cheek. A button was missing from her cardigan, and the hem of her wrinkled skirt was uneven. Yet an air of authority emanated from her as she beckoned me to approach. I made my way down the narrow aisle between the cots and stood in front of her.

“Hennie is my name,” she said in German. “I am the barracks chairman. There is an empty cot near the door. Come.” We walked down the aisle, skirting the stove in the center. “We eat at four,” Hennie said. “What’s your name?”

“Amalia Kanner,” I answered, speaking for the first time since I had come to the camp of Nexon.

We reached a narrow canvas cot next to the far door of the barracks. “You are tired, no?” Hennie said. “Lie down for a while and perhaps you will feel better.”

I looked around, trying to see where I could put my few things. There was no storage space, so I stuck my comb and piece of soap in my coat pocket and pushed my musette under the cot. I took off my coat and my shoes and stretched out on my new bed. The barracks was cold and drafty, so I pulled my coat and blanket over myself. It had been twenty-four hours since my arrest, and I had been awake as long. My head pounded and pain radiated from my neck down to my back. Did the pain come from weariness, I wondered, or from spending the night in the ancient dungeon that the rulers from Vichy had revived as a prison?

I rubbed my eyes, opened them and saw that the women were filling the aisle, walking toward the stove that now had a pot sitting on top. I rose, put my shoes on and joined the slow-moving line. It was warmer toward the center of the barracks.

Hennie stood next to the stove, while another woman dipped a ladle into the pot.

“Did you bring a cup, Frau Kanner?” Hennie asked.

“No.”

Hennie found a dented, metal cup in a box next to the stove. I held it out and watched the server ladle in some sort of liquid.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Cabbage soup,” Hennie said, handing me a chunk of bread. “It’s not much, but we won’t get anything else until morning.”

The inmates ate their food sitting on their bunks, so I followed suit. When I reached my cot, my neighbor asked, “Where did you come from?”

“From a home for Jewish children. I was the cook there.”

“Oh, then you’ve been free. Everyone here came from the camp at Gurs. I was there for two years.”

Another woman down the aisle joined the conversation. “Gurs was a paradise compared to this place,” she said. “I never thought I would long to be back in Gurs. We had three meals a day and an enclosed toilet. And we could heat water for washing.”

“We won’t stay here much longer,” the first woman said. “We will be sent to Germany soon.”

I had begun to feel warm from the soup, but now I was shivering again. I remembered Sal’s words: “If we are returned to Germany, we will die.”

“Germany, ah, Germany,” sighed another nearby inmate. “In Frankfurt, I had a seven-room house. You see this wool coat? It was my everyday coat. For the theater, I had a gray Persian jacket and a hat to match.”

“Do you know the Opera House in Berlin?” my neighbor asked. “My husband and I attended regularly. We had a subscription. We had such beautiful times.”

The woman from Frankfurt excused herself to go to the toilet. I slipped on my coat and followed her outside. As we neared a large pit, the smell of human waste reached my nostrils. I felt ill, but I followed my companion to the edge of a depression in the ground. Overwhelmed by the horrendous odor, I staggered back toward the barracks. I could not rid myself of the awful stench and discovered I had fouled my shoes. I had been terrified, exhausted, and in pain. Now all those feelings evaporated into fury. I stamped my feet and rubbed my shoe against the rough, hard ground. When the sole of my shoe was clean, I went back to the barracks. An hour later, I returned to the pit and used it. Tears streaming down my face, I made my way back to my cot and fell into an exhausted sleep.

Our existence was worse than anything I could have imagined. A bowl of soup, two lumps of stale bread and a cup of warm liquid that was neither tea nor coffee, but brewed from some sort of grass—that was the sum of our daily ration. The soup gave me diarrhea and forced me constantly to the pit. I developed a horror of stepping into excrement, the odor of which permeated the grounds.

No one stopped us from walking around the camp. It was cold, and few people ventured out, but I walked along the paths every day to look for Barracks 54. The search gave me something to do. I was sure that before long I would find Sal, and that gave me hope. On my fourth day at the camp, I stepped out of my barracks and saw Sal walking towards me.

He stared at me for a few moments and said, “I have been out every day, looking for you.”

“And I, you.”

Oh, it was good to see him. We walked next to each other, and I assured Sal I was managing.

“The food is not so good,” he said.

“The food is awful. I wouldn’t feed that slop to a pig,” I said.

“Tell me, Mia, is it true that the women have cots?” Sal asked.

I nodded.

“Good,” he said. “We sleep on wooden planks, two levels, one on top of the other, like a shelf in the wall. I guess it’s better than sleeping on the floor.” He wanted to know everything. “How are the other women?” he asked next.

“Some of them sit on their cots, staring at the wall, and never speak a word,” I said. “Others talk constantly about the good life they had before the war, about their clothes, their houses, and their maids. What good does that do?”

He moved closer and whispered, ” I found out that there is a special section in Nexon. It’s for black marketeers and criminals and for people in the Resistance. They’re locked up and tortured. I tell you this because I don’t want you to do anything to merit punishment. I want to make sure you don’t go to that special area. And don’t walk near the fence, under any circumstances. It’s not safe.”

“Yes, Sal, I understand. But maybe we’ve been together too long now and had better go back.”

We agreed to meet the following day. “About one o’clock would be best. That’s the warmest part of the day.”

I returned to the barracks and sat on my cot. Each time the door was opened, I felt a cold draft. My place next to the door was the worst spot in the long building. I imagined that if a bed became available closer to the center, the women closest to the door would take it; or perhaps everyone moved over one place, like children playing musical chairs in slow motion.

I wondered what my children were doing, while I was locked up in this hell-hole. Ruth and Eva had each other. I worried most about Lea, because she was alone. I was sure the Underground was right in being excessively secretive, but I hated not knowing where my little one was.

The conversations of the women around me annoyed me. Complaining or boasting, they lived in the past. What good did it do to dwell on that? I did not talk about Leipzig or Halle. It was history. I thought instead of the past year. How naive we had been. We should have known after the first time the police came looking for us at Le Couret that we would be arrested sooner or later. We should have demanded the Resistance help us and hide us. I prayed that I would not lose hope and become filled with bitterness.

During the second week at Nexon, a visitor came to Barracks 77. The most notable thing about this middle-aged woman was the Red Cross insignia sewn on her coat and her hat. Her name was Meder, and she was the camp nurse. She conferred quietly with Hennie for a few minutes. Then she spoke to all of us.

“Ladies, good day. I hear that none of you is seriously ill. Please continue to do the best to take care of yourselves. I urge you to keep as warm as you can. I wish I could do more for you, but I myself have a problem. I think you are aware that I am the only nurse for this entire camp. There is no doctor with me. What I