Work Text:
'Don't call me Primrose anymore.' she said to me. 'Call me
74451.'
‘But I’ll always call you Prim, Little Duck.’ I teased her.
I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead into a
hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had become a number. But I was fine with it as long as it was me rather than Prim, who was just seven.
Sweet, Innocent Prim.
Soon, my sister and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald's
sub-camps near Berlin.
One morning I thought I heard my father's voice, 'Catnip,' he said
softly but clearly, I am going to send you an angel.' Then I woke up.
Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could be no angels. There
was only work. And hunger. And fear.
A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp singing to myself, around the
barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone: a boy with light, almost luminous blond curls. He was half-hidden behind an apple tree.
I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to him softly in
German.
'Do you have something to eat?' He didn't understand. I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish. He stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, dull lifeless grey eyes, with my father’s hunting jacket wrapped around me, but the boy looked unafraid. In his bright blue eyes, I saw life. He pulled out a loaf of bread from his woollen jacket and threw it over the fence. I stared at the loaf in disbelief. They were fine, perfect really, except for some burned areas. Did he mean for me to have them? He must have. Because there they were at my feet. Before anyone else could witness what had happened I grabbed the bread loaf , shoved them up under my shirt, wrapped the hunting jacket tightly about me and, as I started to run away, I heard him say faintly, 'I'll see you tomorrow.'
I shared the loaf with Prim. We ate the entire loaf, slice by slice. It was good hearty bread, filed with raisins and nuts. I feel into dreamless sleep. When I woke up, I have a brief, delicious feeling of happiness that was somehow connected with the boy by the fence.
I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day.
He was always there with something for me to eat - a loaf of bread or an apple or,
better yet, a cheesebun. We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would
mean death for us both. I didn't know anything about him, just a kind boy, except that he understood Polish. What was his name? Why was he risking his life for me? Hope was in such short supply, and this boy on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread.
Hope.
The only thing stronger than fear.
Nearly seven months later, Prim and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia. 'Don't return,' I told the boy that day. 'We're leaving.' I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the boy whose name I'd never learned.
The boy with the bread.
We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM. In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over. I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.
But at 8 A.M. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through camp. I caught up with my sister. Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I grabbed Prim and we did too.
Amazingly, my birthday wish did come true, both of us had survived; I'm not sure how. But I knew that the boy with the bread had been the key to my survival. In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none. My father had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.
-kpkpkpkp-
Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other girls who had survived the Holocaust and trained to become a nurse. Then I came to America, with Prim. By August 1957 I was a nurse at Bronx hospital.
One day, my friend Annie who worked with me at Bronx called me. 'I've got a date. He's got a Polish friend. Let's double date.'
A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me. But Annie kept pestering me, and a few days later after our shift at the Bronx, Finnick came to pick us up with his friend Peeta. I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn't so bad. Peeta was an artist. He served for the US Army in the Korean war and now had his own studio. He was kind and smart. Handsome, too, with broad shoulder, ash blond curls and sky blue eyes that sparkled with life.
The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Peeta was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out he was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favour. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. We talked about our favourite colours, green like the forest and orange like the sunset. Our hobbies, hunting and baking. Other mundane habits. I couldn't remember having a better time.
We piled back into Finnick's car, Peeta and I sharing the backseat. As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. He broached the subject, 'Where were you,' he asked softly, 'during the war?'
'The camps,' I said, the terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you can never forget.
He nodded. 'My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from Berlin,' he told me. 'My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers.' I imagined how he must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were, both survivors, in a new world.
'There was a camp next to the farm.' Peeta continued. 'I saw a girl
there and I would throw her bread every day.'
What an amazing coincidence that he had helped some other girl. 'What did she look like?’ I asked. ‘She was skinny, and hungry. She had dark brown hair which she wore in a braid. And she had eyes like molten mercury. Her voice made the birds fall silent. I must have seen her every day for six months.'
My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it. This couldn't be. 'Did she tell you one day not to come back because she was leaving Schlieben?'
Peeta looked at me in amazement. 'Yes,' That was me! ' I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn't believe it! My angel.
'I'm not letting you go.' I said to Peeta. And in the back of the car on that blind date, he proposed to me. He didn't want to wait. Well neither did I.
'You're crazy!' I said. But I did accept his invitation to meet his parents for Shabbat dinner the following week. There was so much I looked forward to learning about Peeta, but the most important things I always knew: his steadfastness, his goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, he had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I'd found him again, I could never let him go.
And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren I have never let him go.
My Angel. My boy with the bread.