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20
Gisela
JANUARY 1945
It was hard to keep track of what day or month it was in Buchenwald. The only way we knew that the year was now 1945 was because we heard a few of the guards toasting the New Year one bitterly cold winter night. We had nothing to celebrate. Everyone was dying. The little bit of food that we ate went straight through us.
“Still hanging on to hope?” Ada would ask me from time to time. The vaccine experiments had been halted, and there were rumors that all the female prisoners, including the nurses, would be moved to a satellite camp soon.
“Yes, I still have hope,” I replied. And my hope sometimes came through very strange means. When thousands of exhausted, dying prisoners arrived in Buchenwald after the New Year, we learned through camp gossip that these prisoners had been forced to march here from a concentration camp in Poland called Auschwitz. The Nazis had evacuated them because the Soviet Army was approaching, closing in on Berlin from the east.
The Nazis quickly set up what they called the “little camp” inside Buchenwald, housing these newcomers in tents and a windowless horse stable. There was only one latrine for thousands of men, no water, no heat, and little food. We were glad that the Allies were inching closer, but it didn’t change the fact that we were all starving to death. Corpses littered the ground, piling up faster than they could be taken away. Gritty ash fell on us every day, turning the snow gray, but the crematorium still couldn’t keep up with the demand. Prisoners continued to be used as slave labor in the nearby stone quarry or were forced to work twelve-hour shifts in the munitions plant. It was our job in the infirmary to keep as many of them alive as we could so they could continue to be worked to death.
Spring arrived, but the only difference was that fewer of us froze to death. We were still starving. When we learned that thousands of prisoners were now going to be evacuated from Buchenwald, we knew it could mean only one thing—Allied troops must be approaching from the west. The Nazis were being squeezed from both directions. I had learned of an underground Resistance group operating inside Buchenwald, and those brave souls did whatever they could to hinder the Nazis’ plans and delay our evacuation. Weak as we were from hunger and illness, most of us wouldn’t have survived a forced march.
But even as the Allied armies marched closer, so did the angel of death. I wondered which of the two would reach me first. Ada, Lotti, and I, along with most of the women in our barracks, fell ill with fevers and dysentery. Our bodies were too weak to fight off illness, too weak to stand in line for our meager food rations, too weak to move the bodies of the women who had died during the night out of our overcrowded bunks. Hope came in the form of artillery fire, which we could hear in the distance. It meant help was coming closer. When the sun set each day, I would remember what Sam and I used to say to each other, and I would whisper, “We’re another day closer.” I could only hope that help didn’t arrive too late.
My fever soared. One minute I was shivering; the next I was burning up. My fitful sleep was haunted by nightmares of torture and death, yet each time I awoke, I discovered that the nightmares were real. I was still a prisoner. I was still in Buchenwald. I still wanted to survive, but I was slowly forgetting the reason why. At least death would bring relief.
I wasn’t sure how many days I lay on my bunk, delirious and dying, before I became aware of shouting outside. I thought I heard the word Americans. Someone was shouting that the Americans were here. I didn’t know whether to rejoice or not. Were these the same Americans who had called out to us from the Coast Guard cutter off the coast of Florida, telling us to go away, saying we weren’t wanted? Or the same Americans who had clumsily dropped tons of bombs on innocent civilians in Mortsel? I wanted to ask these Americans if they were really going to help us this time or turn their backs on us again.
I summoned my strength and managed to roll over and drop from my bunk to the floor. I could see blue sky beyond the open door, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to walk. I crawled instead, pulling my way forward, holding on to whatever I could grasp, until I was outside. The commotion was louder now—voices and shouts and the sound of motor vehicles. I had managed to drag myself only a few feet forward in the dirt before I collapsed, facedown. I heard footsteps approaching, then a man’s voice above me saying, “Looks like we got here just in time.” The man crouched in the dust and gently rolled me over. I opened my eyes and looked up.
Sam! It was Sam!
I smiled and whispered his name. He was still as handsome as a film star with hair the color of honey and eyes the same greenish-blue as the ocean. I remembered the first time we met, just as the St.Louis began to steam out of the harbor in Hamburg. I had heard a voice saying, “Right on time,” and I’d turned to see a young man about my age standing behind me, studying his pocket watch. “Germans are always on time,” he’d said. He’d closed the lid and returned the watch to his pant pocket, then smiled and held out his hand. “I’m Sam Shapiro.” And now Sam was bending over me and reaching for my hand again, not to shake it but to feel for my pulse.
“Sam,” I whispered again.
“What’s your name?” he asked me in English. Sam and I used to practice speaking English on board the ship. We had taken English lessons together in Antwerp.
I smiled up at him. Sam knew my name but I whispered it anyway. “Gisela.”
“I’m Jim,” he said. “And I’m going to take good care of you, Gisela.”
* * *
I was one of the lucky ones. My body responded to the food and medicine I received. Maybe it was because I had been in Buchenwald less than a year, while others had been there for a lifetime, laboring in the quarries. But when my fever broke and I was able to sit up by myself for the first time, I saw a Nazi guard tower and strings of barbed wire outside the window. Tears filled my eyes as I sank down in bed again. I was still in Buchenwald. This hospital and the care I’d received had been only a dream. Soon I would awaken to the nightmare that my life had become.
“Are you all right, Gisela? Is something wrong?” I opened my eyes and saw the soldier who had first rescued me. The soldier I had mistaken for Sam. I thought I remembered him feeding me in my feverish dreams, giving me medicine and kind, tender care. His face had often been the first one I saw when I startled awake from a nightmare. Even so, I was disappointed to realize that he wasn’t Sam after all. I rose up on my elbows again and looked around at the rows of beds crowded together, filled with hundreds of patients like me. Many had IV bottles dangling from stands by their cots.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“In the hospital. I’m an American soldier, and we set up this hospital after we liberated the camp.” He had replied in English but his words were clear and easy to understand.
“So I am still in Buchenwald?” I asked, also in English.
“Yes, but you’re no longer a prisoner. We turned the former SS barracks into a hospital for now. We believe you have typhoid fever but you’re getting better, Gisela. I’m so glad.”
“How long have I been sick?”
“We arrived at this camp almost a month ago. And I have more good news for you. The Nazis have surrendered. Hitler killed himself. The war is over.”
“Is that really true?”
“Yes. It’s really true.” I closed my eyes as they filled with tears. “You’ll be strong enough to leave this place pretty soon, Gisela. You’re a real fighter. I admire your courage.”
He had called me by my real name, not Ella Maes and not by the number tattooed on my arm. “How did you know my name?” I asked.
