Chapter Thirty Buchenwald Concentration Camp Amira
Chapter Thirty
Buchenwald Concentration Camp
Amira
Amira had held her head high when she’d been admitted to the camp, but it had very much been an act of bravery, for she’d been sick with worry ever since she found Fred. Since arriving, she’d heard from everyone, including her husband, what they were doing to the Jews in the main camp, and she kept expecting a guard to come rushing in, screaming her name as he dragged her out by the hair.
‘Shhh,’ Fred whispered, rubbing her back as she bent over and retched again.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered back. ‘I just can’t seem to stop.’
‘It’s a shock, that’s all,’ he said. ‘If you could have seen me, if you’d seen the state I was in when I arrived at Auschwitz and then here...’
Amira swung her legs back into bed and huddled against Fred for warmth, grateful that he didn’t mind. Although she could feel from his skin that he was as chilled as her, and no doubt yearning for the contact to raise his body temperature, as she was.
They whispered all through the night, him telling her pieces of what he’d been through and how he’d come to end up at Buchenwald, and as horrific as it all sounded, she had the distinct feeling that he was holding back the worst of it to spare her.
‘If you’d been admitted to the main camp, or any other camp, they would have shaved your head and sent you through a disinfectant bath,’ he said. ‘The way we’re treated in here, it’s as if we’re being detained perhaps as hostages of sorts, rather than prisoners.’
‘I was so worried about you, Fred. I had the most horrible thoughts that you weren’t coming home. That by the time I got here, it would be too late.’
‘I have had the same thoughts,’ he murmured back. ‘After the death I’ve witnessed, after everything—’
‘Fred, there’s something I have to tell you,’ she said, interrupting him, knowing that she couldn’t sit on the information any longer.
He stilled beside her, even his teeth no longer chattering as he listened in the darkness.
‘Hans found out why you were arrested,’ she said, wishing there was some way she could soften the blow of what was to come. She’d wrestled with whether to tell him or not, but she knew she couldn’t keep it from him. ‘He discovered what happened to Christoph.’
Fred didn’t reply, and Amira continued, knowing that he needed to hear the truth, no matter how hard it would be for her to say the words.
‘I’m so sorry to tell you that Christoph didn’t make it,’ she said. ‘He lost his life—’ Her voice caught. ‘Fred, he lost his life here at Buchenwald.’
‘He was the one who gave me up to the authorities?’ Fred’s voice was raspy, as if he could barely expel the air in his lungs, let alone his words. ‘Who gave all of us up?’
‘From what Hans told me, Christoph was hurt by the guards, before he said anything,’ she said, her heart breaking for him. ‘A man can only suffer so much.’
Fred cried quietly, and she held him through it all, understanding the depth of his pain and wishing she could take some of it from him. It wasn’t until he was still that she whispered to him again.
‘There’s something else.’
‘Gisele?’ he asked.
‘No, not Gisele. I’m, well...’ She stopped, and had to force herself to keep talking. ‘Fred, I’m—’
There was a loud bang as the door to their building swung open.
‘Schulz!’ the guard yelled, indicating that Fred should rise.
He stood, but as he did so he bent low. ‘What were you going to tell me?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘I’ll tell you when you get back.’
She helped him unbandage his hand, and she held her smile until he disappeared out of the door. Then she collapsed into a ball and fought a wave of tears, wishing she’d been brave enough to tell him before he left.
Amira had quickly begun to think of the men, women and children who lived in the special barracks with them as an extended family of sorts, and although she spent much of her time terrified at what might happen next, she was trying her best to keep herself occupied. It was a diverse group of people, and even those who didn’t share a language did their best to communicate with one another. She’d learned from the former mayor of Prague that they were considered guests of the Nazis, which at least gave them all something to laugh about – they were hardly being put up at the Ritz, after all. And they certainly weren’t willing guests.
But mostly Amira busied herself with the children or talking to Janot, who’d become a friend, especially when Fred was summoned to play the piano, as he was almost daily now, performing for the commanders and their families, as well as teaching their children how to play.
Amira had set up a little school, where they told stories and taught lessons as best they could, but there was only so much they could do. And she found herself spending most of her time worrying about Fred and how they could convince people that their marriage was real. Tonight when he arrived back, he was in better spirits, as he always was after playing. It sometimes only lasted a few minutes, other times an hour or more, but even playing for the SS seemed to brighten his outlook – before he reverted back to his withdrawn self. And to make matters worse, she still hadn’t told him about the baby after missing her opportunity that first night.
‘Fred, come over here,’ she called out when she saw him.
He came over and sat cross-legged on the floor beside her and the three children who’d stayed with her to listen to a story after dinner.
‘We’ve decided that we want to learn the piano,’ she said.
He looked at her as if she were mad. ‘I don’t think that even special guests can request a piano to practise on,’ he said.
‘Ahh, but that’s where you’re wrong,’ she said with a grin. ‘We are going to pretend we each have a piano of our own. That will make it easier to play.’
Fred laughed, and when he laughed, the children laughed. It was the first time she’d seen his face light up like that since she’d arrived. ‘We are going to play in the air?’
‘No, silly. We are going to play on the floor, like this.’ She spread her fingers out and made a show of pressing her fingers up and down across the keys.
‘Well, if we’re going to play, then we need to hear the music, too,’ he said, and within seconds he was playing for the children, humming the tune to a song she recognised from hearing him practise.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered, as the children giggled and tried to mimic his humming.
Amira smiled, not sure if he was thanking her for a moment of humour or for being there at all. Regardless, she was happy to be the one to make him smile, when most of the time any inch of happiness had been stripped from his features as if it hadn’t existed in the first place.