Annelies

1945

Konzentrationslager (KL)

BERGEN-BELSEN

Kleines Frauenlager

The Lüneburg Heath

THE GERMAN REICH

Final months of the war

The women’s camp at Belsen is already packed to bursting by the time the wretched transport arrives from Birkenau. A tide of starving, freezing inmates is pouring into Belsen from camps all across the east, evacuated as the Red Army drums through Poland. No more room in the Belsen barracks, no more room in the sardine tins, so the Germans set up a Zeltlager. A tent city with perimeters drawn by ropes of barbed wire. It is November, and the tents billow in the bitter wind. This is where Anne and Margot huddle for warmth. But after four days the most vicious storm yet shreds the canvas and rips the tent wires from the ground. The screams of many hundreds of women are fused into a single shriek that is sucked from their bellies as the immense canvas roof collapses upon them like a shroud. How hard they fight to free themselves of it, Anne gripping Margot’s arm by the wrist, shouting her name over and over. But beyond the tent is only the storm, frigid rain driving down like nails, like a shower of needles. Quickly, Anne and Margot join the women who have just fought their way free and climb back under the shroud for shelter. Those women who don’t, die. Those who do, will die later. Those are the choices left at Bergen-Belsen.

The nights turn frigid. The living from the tent camp are condemned to the ramshackle wooden barracks of the Kleines Frauenlager, Anne and Margot among them. But they are billeted near the door, so that every time it opens, a punishing blast of icy wind bites into them. Close the door! they beg over and over. Please, close the door!

The latrines are overflowing with shit. The water is infected, and the dead are a swelling population. Bodies pile up. They freeze solid into grotesque sculptures.

By the time the snow comes, both Anne and Margot are boiling with fever. They pull apart old shoes in a work barracks. They suffer the unpredictable blows of the Kapos like everyone and stand for roll call until they can stand no longer and finally surrender to the sick block. But the Krankenlager at Belsen is not only putrid, it’s an icehouse. Anne shivers, a frozen little animal. “At least we will be left alone here,” she whispers to Margot, watching her breath frost. “We can be together and lie down in peace.” But peace is elusive. Typhus kills Germans, too, so the moffen are afraid to come near them and leave the inmates of the Krankenlager to rot. Corpses are dragged to the edge of the burial pits or, if nobody has the energy, simply abandoned outside the doors of the barracks.

A grayness overcomes everything. Anne finally finds sleep on a pallet, curled next to her sister on the fetid straw. Margot has moved beyond words. Instead she communicates with shivering groans, glottal intestinal grunts, and her ruthless cough. The cough, that vicious, goddamned beast. Anne tries to cover both of them with her horse blanket, but really she’s mad that Margot has shit on it again. Maybe it wasn’t really Margot’s fault—of course, no one can control their shitting in Belsen—but still she is mad, even while her exhaustion smothers her as she clings to Margot’s bony body.

And then comes her dream.

A wonderful dream. Wonderful and dreadful. She is back in the hiding place and following Peter. They are running. Laughing. He has challenged her to a race up the stairs to the kitchen, and now he is threatening to eat all the strawberries before she gets there. She is sure she is going to beat him, though, sure of it. Until the stairs elongate and there are more and more of them, and soon Peter is far ahead of her. So far ahead that she can’t see him at all. So far ahead that she can only hear his voice calling to her. Come on, slowpoke! Come on!

That’s when something wakes her. It is Margot, or rather Margot’s ghastly cough. She is coughing so loudly it’s as if she’s turning herself inside out, so sharply that it’s like a blade chopping at Anne’s ear, and all Anne wants to do is stay in that dream just a moment longer. Just a moment, because she is still so sure she can catch up to Peter. Still so sure she could, if it were not for Margot, who won’t let her. Her sister’s clawing cough has pried her from sleep and dragged her back to their filthy pallet.

Anne burns. “Can’t you be quiet? Can’t you for God’s sake shut up?” She is shouting this in her head. It’s hard to tell if it’s actually coming out as a shout or if it’s coming out at all, but it doesn’t matter. She is so angry that Peter has surely finished every strawberry by now.

• • •

She bolts up, shivering, her nightdress soaked through with sweat, desperate to find her breath. Someone is rapping on the door and calling her name with a chill of panic.

“Anne, Anne!”

She is trembling, balled up on her bed.

“Anne!” her father calls.

But she does not answer him. Only rocks slowly forward, hugging herself, feeling the shudder of her heartbeat.

The truth is, she can’t forgive him, because the truth is, she doesn’t want to forgive. She despises forgiveness.