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22
Gisela
JULY 1945
Izaak had become one of my favorite patients. He was young, only sixteen years old. Too young to even shave or grow a beard. He had been near death when Jim found him in the “little camp” among the prisoners who had been forced to march to Buchenwald from Auschwitz. He was a Polish Jew, captured while fighting with the partisans. Izaak always had a smile for me, even when he was in pain. I helped him read through the lists of names every day, searching for his family and for fifteen-year-old Rivka, the rabbi’s daughter, whom he’d loved since he was a boy. But then Izaak’s condition worsened, complicated by an infection after losing his toes to frostbite. The doctors did everything they could, but they couldn’t save him. Jim and I were at his bedside when he died.
Many of our patients had died in spite of everything we did to save them, but this loss was too much for Jim. Everyone in the barracks could hear him weeping. It was as if Izaak’s death had unleashed the floodgates of his grief, and he wept for every person who had died in Buchenwald. I did my best to console Jim, but I was grieving for young Izaak, too. Later that afternoon, the major in charge of the camp sent for Jim.
“Come with me, Gisela,” Jim begged. “He’s probably having me transferred, and I need your help to convince him to let me stay.”
I looked at Jim’s gray face and red-rimmed eyes and said, “Maybe you should get away from this awful place for a while.”
He shook his head. “There’s still work to do here.”
I went with him.
The major was using the same office in the former barracks that the SS had used, and even though all the swastikas and other insignias had been removed, the place still made me uneasy. It reminded me of how powerless I and all the people I loved had been—and still were, for that matter. I was dependent on others for my food and shelter and even for restoring my health. Jim had talked Major Cleveland into allowing me to work here, as if he knew that the work would help restore my dignity. Now I pushed aside my queasiness to help Jim in return.
“I’m worried about you, Corporal Barnett,” Major Cleveland said.
“I’m sorry for breaking down, sir. It won’t happen again.”
The major banged his fist on his desk. “It should happen again, Corporal! Every one of us should be weeping rivers of tears over what went on in this camp! That said, I believe it’s time I transferred you back to your unit.”
“Please don’t do that, sir,” I said. “Every patient in the hospital heard the corporal weeping today. Do you have any idea how long it has been since a Jew heard someone weeping for him? We’ve been despised, spat upon, degraded in every way. Jim showed us that we’re still worthy of someone’s tears.”
The major leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Is that what you want, Corporal? Do you want to stay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well. But you still need to take a break from this place.” He removed a pen from its marble holder and started writing on one of the papers in front of him. “I’m issuing you a seven-day leave and ordering you to take it.”
Jim lifted his hands. “Where would I go, sir?”
“That’s up to you. Anywhere! As long as it’s out of this godforsaken place.”
Jim stared at the floor without replying. I couldn’t guess what was going through his mind, but when he finally spoke, I wasn’t surprised to learn that he’d been thinking of others, not himself. “Nurse Wolff has been working just as hard as me, Major, and I know that she’s anxious to search for her loved ones in Belgium. With your permission and with your help, I would like to spend my leave escorting Gisela to Antwerp, along with any other Belgians who want to go. A military escort, of sorts.”
“As long as you take time to rest, Corporal.”
“I’ll make sure of it, sir,” I said.
“Very well. I believe the trip can be arranged.”
We left the major’s office with the papers we would need. I would be leaving the camp for the first time, and with memories of Nazi persecution still haunting me, I was glad that I wasn’t making the journey alone. My friend Jim, who would wear his US Army uniform, was committed to helping me search for Sam and Ruthie. I was both excited and terrified.
Jewish relief agencies and the Red Cross supplied clothes and shoes to former prisoners like me, and they also provided food for our trip. Together with a group of nine recovered prisoners who also wanted to make the journey, we boarded an Army vehicle for the ride to the train station in Weimar.
“We learned about the city of Weimar in school,” I told Jim as we waited there in the train station. “It was the home of Johann von Goethe, one of Germany’s treasured authors. But after what happened nearby in Buchenwald, I wonder if the city will ever seem noble again.”
“In the first weeks after the surrender,” Jim said, “when you were still very ill in the hospital, our Army forced the citizens of Weimar to take a tour of Buchenwald. We wanted them to see for themselves the dirty little secret they had allowed to happen in their backyard.”
“How did they react?”
“They seemed shocked. Many claimed they didn’t know what was happening there, but I think they chose not to know. In my mind, that makes them just as guilty.”
* * *
