The Seven Year Dress: A Novel Read online

  The day a young girl, Sarah, came to the camp popped into my mind. She was no more than thirteen, and entered the barrack much like I did: crying and shaking.

  I watched her look for an empty bunk. She stopped, put her hands to her shaven head, and turned in circles. Heartache, apprehension, fear, and devastation were written all over her. She didn’t know what to do. Neither had I when I first arrived.

  I went to her and gently put my hand on her shoulder. “Let me help you.”

  Her glazed-over, red, swollen eyes focused on me. Unable to utter a sound, she fell in my arms.

  “I understand,” I whispered in her ear as she clung to me.

  When she was able to speak, all she did was moan “Why? Why? Why?”

  There was that insufferable word again! My taut neck grew stiffer as the last word Lawrence spoke before he was killed rang in my head. “Breathe,” I whispered, trying to calm her. Her delicate upper body rested heavily against my chest, so I knew her breathing had slowed down. She was calmer. So was I as the image of Lawrence eased away. “Good, that’s good. A few more deep breaths.” I rubbed her back.

  Stepping back from my embrace, she was composed.

  “My name is Helen. Yours?”

  “Sarah.”

  “Let’s find you a place to sleep, Sarah.” I glanced away and noticed that Ester had been watching. We shared a knowing look and whisper-soft smile.

  My friendship with Ester grew. I gave thanks for her and her companionship every day. Although we were not able to talk much, the affection was ever present in smiles, gentle touches, stolen hugs and a kiss on my forehead in the dark confines of the barrack before we went to sleep, and looks of understanding when tears could not be stopped. I loved my friend, but we had to be careful not to express our mutual fondness overtly. Jealously, greed, and even schadenfreude existed among my Jewish barrack-mates. Our closeness could have prompted someone to try to win favor with the SS by reporting a lie about us. Since informers were rewarded, hunger, weariness, and emotional distress drove a few of the weaker inmates to turn other prisoners in, even if they had to devise false accusations. The Nazis didn’t care if the information was fictitious or real. They savored any reason to punish us.

  Wanting to help Sarah acclimate, I was distraught when a horrible event occurred in our barracks a few nights after she arrived. After a very long evening roll call, three men slumped to their death, and a fourth man was shot because he attempted to help someone else who was struggling. I stood next to Sarah and, using subtle, stolen glances, tried to keep her focused on her shoes. The SS guards finally released us to our bunks after making us stand still for hours in the bitter cold. I gave Sarah’s hand a furtive squeeze—a sign that we were now safe enough. I was wrong.

  There was a couple, Samuel and Edith, who favored each other and occasionally risked sleeping together for warmth…and other reasons. On that night, Samuel must have waited until the snores in his barrack grew so loud that he felt it was relatively safe to sneak in and go to Edith’s bed. Shortly after they settled in together, the barrack door flew open. The lights flooded the building, startling everyone awake. Two barbarous, tight-shouldered SS officers entered with their guns drawn. With them was the kapo, Saul, from Samuel’s barrack.

  “Where are they?” the taller Nazi demanded while the shorter one smiled.

  Saul pointed to the couple clutching each other.

  The short SS officer aimed his gun. Bang! Bang! The bullets hit their groin areas. Those heartless Nazi fiends left the two innocent lovers there to bleed to death while we watched in terror. Sarah started to move toward me with a horrified puzzled look in her eyes, the same look she had when she moaned, “why” upon her arrival. I gently shook my head and indicated with my hand for her to stay put. I feared the rampage would continue and we’d all be killed.

  When the couple appeared lifeless, the shorter officer motioned to Saul. “Go check their pulse. Make sure the pigs are dead.”

  A bowing sycophant, Saul said, “Yes, yes,” as he lumbered to the motionless bodies. He lowered his shoulders to put his head on Edith’s chest, listening for a heartbeat. After doing the same for the Samuel, he shook his head, indicating they were gone.

  “Good!” The taller officer smiled and dusted his hands together as if finishing a job. “For your snitching.” He threw Saul a piece of stale bread. “Now go back to your barrack.”

  We all knew that if Saul were harmed, the entire camp would be punished. Samuel and Edith would get no justice. I hated that. I hated explaining that to Sarah even more.

  The SS took their time in leaving. I feared that they had changed their minds and would start checking all the beds. When their backs turned, I bit my lip and discreetly made sure my blanket covered the dress Max gave me. After that night, it remained stashed in the mattress.

  Before exiting, the tall SS officer ordered us to clean the bloody mess and get rid of the bodies. A few of the stronger women removed the remains of Samuel and Edith to be dumped in one of the mass graves around a kilometer away. Those who carried the couple got no sleep that night. Neither did those of us who cleaned the blood and excrement—all that remained of two human beings.

  I spent the rest of the night with Sarah, rubbing her back, letting her cry, and staying by her side when she finally slept. I wanted her to see me when she woke up. She wanted that, too.

  Dawn finally broke. Sarah opened her eyes and said, “Bless you, Helen.” I knew she’d be okay. For that day she was. I only wished that poor Sarah had been blessed, for several weeks later, unable to contain her emotions in front of an SS officer, she was beaten to death.

  Exhausted, the next day—after the execution of Samuel and Edith—I marched to work as usual, but that day would prove to be anything but routine.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Enervated from lack of sleep, I willed myself not to think about what had happened last night and tried to fold clothes at my normal pace. The SS imposed a daily quota for the volume of garments each prisoner must sort. Falling below the quota was dangerous. As the day moved on, I felt as if I was being watched closer than usual. Glancing at the SS officer who was staring at me, I grew self-conscious and quickly turned my attention back to my work. I struggled to keep focused on my job, but something familiar about him haunted me. Since he had never been in the building before, I tried to figure out where I’d seen him. After a long while, he came closer.

  Pretending to be overly involved in the task at hand, I felt his breath on my neck. The fine hairs on my arms stood on end. Something about him and his aggressive proximity made me move my knees together in a protective gesture. I wished that his inspection was only transitory. But when he came even closer, my gut twisted and I could feel my heart pound faster. Harder. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught his eyes scanning my breasts. I blushed. I sorted more quickly. I prayed to God that I could disappear.

  “You do a fine job, Fräulein.”

  When he spoke, I knew where I had seen him. He stood with the SS officer who shot my brother. This scoundrel, this SS monster, did nothing but laugh and joke when my brother was assassinated right before my eyes. And now this! Just as my anxiety level rose to a panic, he put his hand on mine. Nausea clutched my throat, and I took a hard swallow. When he rubbed his hand across my dry, cracked skin in a suggestive manner, I held my breath. I clenched my knees tighter, kept my head lowered, and, fearful of what would happen next, I waited.

  “You’re the one who sews,” he said, removing his hand.

  I started breathing again but remained silent and stock-still. Did he ask me a question or not? Should I answer? I didn’t know what to do and feared that anything I did or didn’t do would end badly for me.

  When I said nothing, he repeated, “You are the seamstress? Yes?”

  Still afraid to speak, I nodded.

  He moved his mouth closer to me, his breath now grazing my cheek. “Good.” Then, as surprisingly as it all began, he backed off and le
ft.

  Looking back on that, I see it was a watershed moment for me at Auschwitz. It was the day when my father’s wisdom that “life is precious” and my mother’s practicality to “learn a useful trade like sewing” grew from seeds into a tree. And although what was to follow became more of a living hell, I endured and grew stronger. I believed that God was testing my fortitude. Having learned to sew would save my life, but could my heart and soul withstand what my life would become?

  That evening, overly exhausted from no sleep the night before and unable to stop the replay from that repugnant encounter with the SS officer, my mind was abuzz. I kept thinking of what Max had told us about liaisons between Germans and Jews being illegal, but I also remembered the rumors that Ester had shared with me. Working in the kitchen, she overheard the slip-of-the-tongue remarks that came from women’s hushed-tone venting. In a camp the size of Auschwitz, there were a plethora of men without spouses or girlfriends. Men with carnal urges. I saw that hunger in the eyes of the SS who watched me stripped naked after I arrived. The only women available to satisfy their needs were the prisoners. Sex between Jewish women and the men running the camp—the SS and even the Nazi commanding officers—was illegal but happened all the time. Any doubt I had about the rumors vanished. I knew that officer who visited me had lust on his mind; it was as clear as daylight. But would he act on his impulses, and how would having sex with him impact my life?

  Two days later I had my answers when SS officer Claus Schüler returned. He loomed over me, all five feet, ten inches of him. He had a repugnant swine paunch. And he called Jews pigs? Fie! He looked like one himself. He was disgusting to look at with greasy hair and an overly round face that flaunted a tiny mustache, like Hitler’s. Just the comparison of the two ogres made my stomach lurch. He found me at my workbench and said he would like to have a word with to me.

  A word? What the hell does that mean? I turned to face him, avoiding eye contact and waited for him to speak.

  He placed his hand firmly on my back. “Not here,” he said as he moved me along the aisle to the exit. I felt sweat forming under the heat of his fat palm as he walked me down a long corridor. We stopped in front of a locked door. He took out a crowded ring of keys, found the correct one for the small lock and click! He pushed the door open. I entered a room approximately ten feet by ten feet. The first thing I noticed was the table with a sewing machine. Nazi uniforms were piled on top of it. A twin-size mattress, a blanket, and a pillow rested on the floor next to the table. He moved to the back of the room and opened another door, revealing a private bathroom. The sink was rusted and filthy, and the toilet looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in months. “How do you like it?” he asked.

  Flabbergasted and frightened, I remained silent.

  “Sit,” he forcefully insisted, pointing to the chair by the sewing machine. He softened his commanding tone and repeated “Come and sit,” when I failed to move.

  The chair was comfortable and a perfect height for working at the Pfaff sewing machine. I slid my hand over the cold metal of the head and inspected the presser foot, spool pin, pulley, thread needle, and other parts. Closing my eyes, I was momentarily back home in Berlin, mending clothes with Mamma. Schüler made a guttural sound to clear his throat, ending my brief reverie. I looked up and made eye contact with him for the first time. His empty, dark eyes made my blood run cold. “Is this for me to use?” My voice sounded small, child-like.

  “Yes. Do you like it?” He licked beaded sweat that had dripped onto his upper lip.

  Before the horror of Hitler’s regime, I loved to sew; now, I was afraid to enjoy anything that could be taken from me. I didn’t want to experience another loss. It was typical of these sadistic Nazis to tempt me with the promise of something pleasant only to rip it away from me and watch me suffer. I had learned never to lose sight of where I was and with whom I was dealing. I politely responded, “It’s very nice.”

  “Good. You now have a new job. You will sew officers’ uniforms. And any other items I bring to you. You will work alone here and keep to yourself. No conversations with anyone. You can leave this room for meals and to return to your bunk at night. Your shift time is the same. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And,” he smirked, “you will do favors for me in return.”

  My heart sank. There it was, the sexual insinuation. I was trapped. If I refused to work here, he’d kill me; if I agreed, I knew he’d rape me. Either way, my choice was death—literal or figurative. I had always dreamed that my first sexual encounter would be memorable. I imagined tender, loving, warm intimacy with a man I adored—the kind of lovemaking my parents must have enjoyed. I never envisioned rape with someone like him as my first unforgettable sexual experience. I didn’t know how or when it would happen. I only knew that my naïve teenager daydreams about romantic love would soon become a nightmare that would scar my soul forever.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I knew the gossip would spread quickly when the women I worked with saw Officer Schüler touching me in such a personal way as he escorted me out of the clothing room. When I didn’t return to work, the rumors must have been flying. In the barrack that night, I was too scared to talk for fear of being overheard. I didn’t want to be seen as someone who was favored by the SS. Hesitant to say anything even to Ester, I avoided her and feigned feeling sleepy. I climbed into my bed, but I couldn’t rest. There was no stopping the gibbering going on between my ears. Images of being pinned down by a lecherous monster made my skin crawl. My life had become a Shakespearean tragedy that had taken an ominous turn.

  Ester, also unable to sleep, came to my bunk in the middle of the night. “What is it, Helen?” she softly asked.

  No longer able to contain the tears I had withheld since the predator first looked at my breasts, I burst out crying. “What gives a man the right to…” I choked out my whispered half-question. With Ester’s hand upon mine, my intense, anxious speculations ran rampant. Were Hitler and his band of criminals like Macbeth, who received a prophecy from witches and sank into the realm of arrogance and madness? But where was the guilt and remorse Macbeth felt? I couldn’t believe that I was envisioning my life as a Shakespearean play. It felt so unreal. Perhaps it was the only way to help me face what I desperately wanted to avoid. There are people in the world who engage in evil acts without remorse. Indeed, they seem to derive pleasure from making others suffer. And I was under the control of such people. “Ester, I don’t want to go to this new job, only to march into the arms of that beast.” I covered my face with my hands, ashamed to think about what would surely happen.

  “I heard about it,” whispered Ester. “Be careful, Helen.” She caressed my face and softly kissed my forehead.

  Sensing there was more that she wasn’t saying, I watched her as she went to her bed. We both knew traitors lived among us, and talking wasn’t safe. Although nearly everything that happened in the camp was fodder for reports to the SS in exchange for meager rewards, there was one verboten subject the Nazis refused to acknowledge from prisoners: sexual violence. Rassenschande laws that prohibited Aryans from having sex with inferior races—especially Jews—didn’t stop Nazis from touching and defiling Jewish women. Because such abuses were against the law, they were considered invisible in the camps.

  Lying in my bunk, dreading the dawn and my new duties, I remembered Miriam. She was a young, beautiful Jewish girl who was roused from her bunk under some trumped-up reason to do work in the middle of the night. Marched barefoot in freezing weather, her attacker ostensibly told her if she screamed or spoke a word, he would kill her. She was shoved behind a bush and violently raped. The blood from her lost virginity left a stain on her dress, the one she lived and slept in. The next morning, she was visibly subdued and in shock. As we stood in morning roll call, I could see the angry bruises on her body. She couldn’t stand up straight. Unable to bear her own weight the three hours in the snow, she succumbed to the pain and fell to the gro
und. When another woman tried to help her up, they were both shot. Miriam was only fourteen-years-old. Just as I had done with countless other deaths and beatings, I had expunged her trauma from my psyche, until my current threat loomed over me. I could only pray that officer Claus Schüler had an iota of decency in him.

  The next day, I took inventory of my new workroom without my captor scrutinizing me. The sewing machine. A pile of uniforms. A basket of thread spools. A fresh, clean towel. A pair of scissors. My first thought was of the blades of the shears buried to the handle in Schüler’s back. My shaking hand moved to touch them. I looked around, making sure no saw me eying the scissors. Then I giggled nervously. Even when was alone, I felt as if was being watched! Who had I become? Was this what Papa had in mind when he taught me to stay alive? Attacking an SS officer was insane. I knew if I lifted them in a menacing gesture, it would be the last move I would ever make.

  Shaking my head to clear it, I went to check out the washroom. The hot water faucet should have been labeled “cold.” I let the wetness run over my hands and arms before picking up a dirty bar of soap to cleanse myself. Deciding I only needed clean hands to avoid soiling the uniforms, I didn’t dare to indulge in the luxury of washing my entire body. I noticed the grimy, foul toilet and flushed it. The sludge remained. When a wisp of cool air hit me, I startled. Peering back through the door to the other room, I assured myself that no one had entered. The source of the draft was high above me on the wall; it was a vent. I gently, quietly closed the toilet seat lid with trembling hands and climbed on top for an eye-level view through a louver. My knees knocked together as the jitters spread up and down my body. If Schüler caught me doing this, he’d kill me. What I saw did nothing to calm my fears. Guards were marching prisoners at gunpoint. I quickly got down and went to work. I thought of those prisoners throughout the day, and I wondered if they were in formation, en route to the gas chamber.