Chapter Nineteen Aletta
Chapter Nineteen
Aletta
‘We’re alive, Aletta. That’s all that matters.’
Aletta heard her mother’s words once they’d finally been processed.
They ran through her like shivers, her voice brushing across her skin but barely acknowledged.
When she looked down, she couldn’t stop staring at the oversized, striped dress she was wearing – it felt like it was swallowing her.
It was so baggy that it did nothing to stave off the cold that whipped up her legs, and she yearned for the warm coat hanging in her wardrobe at home, for the soft woollen socks her father had given her at Christmas.
Papa.
A gasp passed her lips as she saw him in her mind, as the memories of him made her forget everything else.
‘Aletta!’ her mother hissed, her fingers digging into Aletta’s arm.
She didn’t even bother to yank away. Everything else was numb, but at least she could feel the sharp press of her mother’s nails.
They hurt enough to pull her from her thoughts.
Aletta squinted against the sunlight. Her eyes were sore and scratchy, dry from shedding so many tears, and her throat felt the same.
But her mother’s hold was tight and unrelenting, forcing her to listen, to answer her.
‘Listen to me, Aletta. We cannot show any signs of weakness, do you hear me?’
She nodded. It was barely a move of her head, but her mother released her.
She kept walking close to her, their shoulders almost brushing with every step.
Her mother, whom she’d expected to be as broken as she was, was somehow, miraculously, holding it together and being strong enough for both of them.
Aletta wanted to hate her for her strength, but she couldn’t.
They were walking with a never-ending line of other women, all of whom had arrived by train and been processed together – deloused as if they were nothing more than animals, stripped naked for an invasive medical examination by a female doctor with rough fingers and a smile that had made her shudder – all wearing the same striped dress as Aletta.
Some had been split into another group, but almost all had been shoved and prodded and sent in the same direction.
Aletta swallowed, her throat like sandpaper, wondering how long it had been since she’d last gulped down water.
At their apartment? Had it been before .
. . a pain akin to a blade being plunged into her chest at the memory of her father slumping forward pierced her thoughts; of the desperation in Harry’s voice as he’d screamed her name.
It didn’t matter how hard she tried to push them away, the memories just kept on crashing back into her thoughts, wave after wave reminding her of what had happened, what their final moments as a family had been like.
Aletta stumbled, barely catching herself with her hands as dust rose to greet her and made her cough. Something hard smacked her around the back of her legs then, and she almost fell down as she turned to look.
A guard, a female guard, smirked and held her baton up again, as if taunting her to do something, anything so that she could use it again.
But her mother’s steady hand grasped hers, tugging her along, not letting her stumble once more as they were marched towards a long wooden building.
There were so many of them, row after row stretching out across the grounds; it was like nothing she’d ever seen before.
Was this to be where they would live now?
Were there truly enough women, enough prisoners, to fill so many houses?
It took everything Aletta had not to vomit again, even though she doubted there was anything left inside her.
The door to a barracks was flung open then and shouts followed, and Aletta found herself being roughly shoved inside, forgetting about her stomach as she blinked in the dimly lit room.
There were rows of bunk-style beds, only there were no sheets or pillows, just filthy mattresses that she couldn’t have even imagined would be fit for a dog to sleep on, let alone a human.
And to describe the quarters as cramped would have been a gross understatement – there appeared to be three times as many women as the space was designed for, and she saw some straw bedding on the floor in one corner, quickly realising that someone slept down there on the cold floor.
I want to go home. A sob erupted in her chest then, and her mother’s hand found hers once more, holding tightly, reminding her that she wasn’t alone.
The guard who’d hit her earlier barked orders at them, and Aletta shuffled forward again, being pulled by her mother who was the only thing stopping her from collapsing to the floor.
And once they were on the too-hard bed, her mother curled Aletta to her body, holding her so tightly it was as if she were a child again, needing to be cuddled after a nightmare.
Only this was no nightmare, and the worst thing was that she didn’t know when it would end.
‘We’re going to survive this, Aletta,’ her mother whispered against her hair. ‘Do you hear me? We’re going to survive.’
Aletta nodded, even though she wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not.
‘Say it, Aletta,’ her mother urged. ‘I need to hear you say it.’
‘We’re going to survive,’ she whispered back.
We have to survive. This can’t be the last place I see. This cannot be my final memory. This cannot be the end of my story, of my mother’s story.
Her skin itched immediately from the bedding, as if there were bugs biting at her flesh, and the cries of women felt like they were engulfing her, almost impossible to drown out.
Aletta burrowed against her mother as more women climbed in beside them.
There was barely room for the two of them in the wooden bunk, let alone more, and there was a cry from someone near that she’d found a cockroach.
But Aletta blocked it all out, caring only for her mother’s embrace, not wanting to let go of her.
‘We’re going to survive. Say it again, Aletta. Say it now and every time you start to doubt yourself.’
‘We’re going to survive,’ she murmured, her voice barely audible.
She couldn’t say it any louder. Because the truth was she simply didn’t believe it.
And the worst thing was, she’d heard the rumours. She’d heard her father talk about the camps, she’d known they existed, but she’d never thought that they could end up here, that anyone other than the Jews could be imprisoned in one.
How wrong she’d been. Because of all the women she’d seen so far, only a handful had worn the yellow star, most of them wearing the red triangle just as she did, which meant that the Nazis were not just imprisoning Jews.
They were imprisoning those who helped them too, just as her father had thought. Political prisoners, they called them.
I miss you, Papa. I miss you so much.
And when she began to cry again, she needn’t have bothered to smother her sobs, because cries echoed all around her, the only noise in the otherwise silent bunkroom from hell as every woman there remembered what she’d lost.
Aletta had never known how cold rain could be in summer.
She remembered not so long ago running down the street with Cecilia, holding hands as they laughed and raindrops drenched their hair, but within minutes they’d been inside towelling off and making coffee.
Here, the rain seeped through her thin clothes and left her hair hanging in wet sheets, her body beginning to shiver violently as she gritted her teeth and tried to stop it, with nowhere to shelter from the cold.
They stood in rows of ten, all trying to stand tall when their instinct was to huddle together and fold their bodies inwards in an impossible attempt to stay warm.
It was also impossible to know just how long they’d been standing for, because it felt like hours, and every time the guards lost count of how many prisoners were there, they started again.
When they were finally yelled at to move, Aletta’s toes painfully curled as she tried to force them to obey.
She was barefoot, and the mud sunk around her toes as she turned, her skin numb.
She longed for the shoes they’d taken from her when they’d arrived, and she silently wondered how some of the women had boots or mismatched shoes.
Just when she thought they were done with standing, as they started to walk in a group, two women in the front were singled out and ordered to do something.
Aletta stood, shaking violently now, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle, wondering what they’d been sent to do, when they returned with a wooden barrel.
It was then she remembered that a tin mug dangled from her fingers – they were so cold she’d forgotten she was even clasping it, the one thing they were given other than their striped clothes.
She was curious about what was happening as they slowly edged forward and were told to dip their cups inside the barrel, which Aletta did, following the lead of the others in front of her.
‘What is this?’ she heard her mother ask no one in particular, her nose wrinkling as she smelt whatever the cup contained.
‘Breakfast,’ came one lonely whisper.
It turned out it was a watery substitute for coffee – it tasted putrid, but Aletta still swallowed it, forcing it down her throat.
She saw her mother doing the same, her eyes meeting Aletta’s in quiet horror, and she knew that her mother’s stomach would be growling just as desperately from hunger as her own was.
But right now, she was so hungry, her throat so dry, that she would have eaten or drunk almost anything.
‘Beeil dich! Beweg dich!’
Hurry! Move!