The Daughter of Auschwitz. My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope

Chapter Seventeen. Sleepwalking in Berlin

The night terrors began with a vengeance in our new home overlooking Checkpoint Charlie in the American sector of postwar Berlin. I dreamed that I was being chased. I had to run away and save myself. My nightmares were so intense that they took me over and I started sleepwalking. I got out of bed in our two-bedroom, second-floor apartment, went downstairs and continued to flee along Friedrichstrasse, one of the main streets in the area. It was the front line of the embryonic Cold War, where US and Russian troops faced off against each other in the tense, divided German capital.

My sleepwalking dismayed my parents. Sometimes they heard me get up and could catch me in the street and take me back to bed. When I awoke later, I had no recollection of what I’d done.

I was eight and a half years old at the time. Sleepwalking was not uncommon among child survivors of the Holocaust. After everything I had experienced, it was not surprising that my sleep was disturbed. Mama and Papa did everything they could to alleviate my suffering, as they were worried that my nightly excursions could do me considerable harm. A doctor assured them that sleepwalking could be easily disrupted by putting wet sheets and towels on the floor by my bed. His theory was that when I got up, I’d feel the cold, wake up and go straight back to sleep. But his suggestion didn’t work. Then he recommended placing big bowls of water by the bed to wake me up. That failed as well. I just knocked the bowls over as I fled from the people pursuing me in my dreams, flooding the floor in the process. Thankfully, the area where we lived was safe, and during my nocturnal escapades, I never strayed too far before being rescued.

My parents didn’t always catch me in the act, however. Sometimes they slept through. Once, I was found near the checkpoint in a trancelike state by a friendly American soldier called Jim, whom I had met before when he was on patrol. Jim carried me back upstairs to my parents. They had no idea that I’d vanished.

A few days after we’d settled into the Berlin apartment, together with Aunt Elka and Monyak, Mama allowed me to explore. Although bomb-and shell-damaged buildings bestowed the neighborhood with a somewhat ghostly air, she judged it to be safe. The presence of patrolling American soldiers generated confidence that I would come to no harm in daylight hours. For the first time in my life, I encountered troops who behaved in a civilized manner, and Jim’s kindness made him stand out. The first time he saw me, he offered me an orange and followed it up with a piece of chocolate. Then he gave me chewing gum, which I swallowed immediately. We smiled at each other, and I rushed home with the rest of my treats. Neither of us understood what the other was saying, but whenever we saw one another thereafter, we always waved.

The night terrors, however, curtailed my daytime activities. I was exhausted from sleepwalking and often compensated by snoozing through daylight hours. Although the American GIs weren’t intimidating, my parents felt strongly that we should move to a place with a minimal military presence. Berlin was teeming with soldiers. Besides the Russians, there were also French and British troops guarding their sectors of the city. Mama and Papa thought that the presence of uniforms and guns was contributing to my trauma. My parents didn’t need to take me to a string of consultants to be assessed. My mother’s intuition was unerring. She knew exactly what I required. A tranquil, secure environment.

Ironically, my healing process began in the pretty medieval Bavarian lakeside town where Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, his blueprint for controlling the European continent and exterminating Jews.

Mama, Papa and I moved to the Displaced Persons (DP) camp in Landsberg am Lech, west of Munich in the American zone. Ita and Adam had joined us in Berlin but now both aunts moved to the Leipzig DP camp with their partners. During the war, Landsberg was an annex of the Dachau concentration-camp complex, forty-five minutes away, where Papa had been incarcerated. Landsberg had a dark history of slave labor, starvation, disease and executions. Jewish prisoners were put to work digging massive underground bunkers intended for aircraft production. An estimated 15,000 Jews died, amid terrible conditions. American troops who liberated Landsberg in April 1945 found 5,000 survivors. Physically and emotionally, they were too sick to leave. They had nowhere else to go and so they stayed.

Liberation did not bring instant relief. Conditions inside Landsberg remained deplorable for some time. The survivors’ psychological and physical welfare were neglected, until the administration of the camp was transferred to the relief agency of the fledgling United Nations. By the time we arrived in early 1948, Landsberg DP camp had been transformed into a model community, full of hope, energy and optimism.

Similar camps were established across Germany, Austria and Italy to provide temporary safe havens for 250,000 dispossessed European Jews. Being stateless and homeless were the only entry requirements.

Everything about Landsberg was conducive to healing and recovery, especially for children. We had very pleasant family accommodation in the stout former military barracks. The communal kitchen had a gigantic oven where we prepared meals for the Sabbath, which is such an important element of Jewish life.

For the first time, I went to school and didn’t object. There were only about ten children in my class. We learned the Hebrew alphabet, not Latin script. Our teachers were volunteers from Israel who were psychologically trained to be aware of the traumas we had experienced and knew how to relate to us. I have especially fond memories of one called Rena, who was extremely sensitive to our emotional state. She framed her questions in a way that encouraged us to concentrate on the present and future instead of mourning the past. Rena didn’t want us to forget what had happened. Far from it. But she wanted us to have a new perspective on life.

I considered myself fortunate to have both parents. Every child in my class had a tragic story to tell. Some of my fellow pupils were orphans and were cared for by relatives. Others had lost entire families and were being nurtured before starting new lives in Israel.

I met my best friend, Clara, in Rena’s class. Clara was a year older than me and lived in the DP camp with her father. Clara, her little sister and their parents had spent much of the war hiding with a Polish farmer whom they paid well. But then a neighbor had discovered them and informed the Gestapo. Clara and her father had run into a forest and escaped, but her mother and little sister were caught. Clara clung to the hope that her mama and sister had also been liberated from a camp somewhere and that eventually they would all be reunited. Their plight reminded me of my mama’s never-ending quest to trace her lost relatives. We were all still searching and hoping, all too frequently in vain.

Landsberg’s secure, peaceful atmosphere was designed to facilitate the renaissance of a people who had been crushed physically, emotionally and spiritually. Our Jewish pride was restored. We began the process of metamorphosis from victims to survivors to thrivers, helped by an education system that offered classes from preschool to college level. The camp also contained a ritual bath, kosher kitchen, cinema, theater, radio station and newspaper. A premium was placed on physical well-being and people who a few years earlier were little more than skeletons found themselves participating in sports competitions. The aim of the camp hierarchy was to prepare displaced people for life in what was called Eretz Israel, or the Land of Israel. Because despite everything we had faced, Jewish refugees remained unwelcome in many countries around the world, and if it had not been for Israel, many would have had no place to go. The need for the Jewish people to have their own homeland, where they could live free from persecution and rejection, was now beyond question.

My family’s passion for Zionism was reinvigorated. I remember walking in a parade on May 16, 1948, a few days after the new State of Israel was formally inaugurated. I was nine years old and all the other children were lined up with Israeli flags. At last, the Star of David was no longer a symbol that marked us out for destruction. How times had changed. It was on display in Germany, and of all places in a town that was strongly associated with Hitler’s tyranny.

In Landsberg we were able to breathe again. We were among our own people. No longer persecuted, we could revive our traditions and reassert our values free from fear. Everyone benefited from an experience akin to summer camp for families. My parents weren’t required to work. Papa regained his strength after Dachau. He resumed acting, his great love. Mama recuperated physically, although she still suffered headaches as a result of the beating she received in Birkenau for stealing a potato. The agony of losing her family had not diminished. But through her pain, Mama devoted herself to raising me. My night terrors abated and I stopped sleepwalking.

Mama began reading and listening to music again. Her favorite instrument was the piano and she decided I should learn as well.

“You’ve seen such terrible things”, Mama said. “I want you to see that life can also be beautiful”.

She found a piano teacher for me about five blocks away from the DP camp. A nice, young married German with long hair and three small children, he was classically trained and had no interest in popular music. He spoke to me softly in German. It was significant because at last the language wasn’t accompanied by the threat of violence. The teacher insisted on practice, practice, practice. It was hard work, but I persevered and made good progress. And the tables had turned: the music teacher and his family were hungry, as Germany was in ruins and food was in short supply. He was grateful that we paid for the lessons with cans of peas and carrots that we received from the Americans.

Papa was also determined that our family should embrace culture once more and he introduced me to the theater. He adored Shakespeare. Mama and I basked in pride and reflected glory as we watched him on stage in the roles of Othello and King Lear in Yiddish productions. The journey to the theater in Munich to watch him perform was also memorable as the train from Landsberg was very posh.

Although the DP camp was preparing us for life in Israel, Mama and Papa decided to emigrate to the United States, as the economic conditions in Israel were difficult. But their plans were interrupted by the discovery that I was suffering from tuberculosis (TB), a bacterial disease that scars the lungs and can be fatal if untreated. TB is contagious and the American authorities wouldn’t permit our family to enter the country until I was cured. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was the main cause of premature death in the United States and was still a problem in the postwar United States.

Mama took me to a sanatorium in Bad Wörishofen, a small town renowned for the healing properties of its waters. I went there to breathe the pure mountain air. Today, TB can be cured by a sustained course of antibiotics. In Central Europe in the late 1940s, however, treatment followed the methodology advocated by Hermann Brehmer, a nineteenth-century German physician. Brehmer theorized that the cardiovascular capacity of tuberculosis sufferers could be improved by breathing air at high altitude, where there was less oxygen. The lungs could be repaired by a combination of cleaner, thinner air and the extra effort required to breathe. Bad Wörishofen lay two thousand feet above sea level. At that altitude, there is 10 percent less oxygen in the air. The oxygen depletion wasn’t so extreme that I felt woozy, but it was sufficient to get my heart pumping.

My treatment is brilliantly described in the novel The Magic Mountain by the German Nobel laureate Thomas Mann. Vigorous hikes were prescribed, complemented by extended periods lying down in the fresh air while swaddled, like a newborn, in blankets. The Dominican nuns who ran the sanatorium bound our blankets so tightly that it was virtually impossible to move, and we had to lie on beds outside for three or four hours at a time, no matter the weather. If the temperature dipped, more blankets were applied. Lying there in my cocoon, I pictured the other places where I’d had to lie still and was unable to communicate with anyone.

Once again, I was separated from my parents. I tried to push the thoughts away, but I desperately wanted my mother. However, the trip from Landsberg was quite expensive and I was only able to see her twice in my nine months of treatment.

After being released from bed rest one day, I took a walk that led to my second flirtation with Christianity. I have always loved to wander and explore. Birkenau taught me self-reliance, and consequently, I felt comfortable investigating on my own. As I strolled through the narrow streets of Bad Wörishofen, I was captivated by a Catholic church attached to the nuns’ monastery. The sisters were charming. They served me breakfast, and afterward, one of them fashioned my hair into braids, like Mama used to do. When the nun left me, saying she had to go to chapel, I was intrigued. Although Poland was, and still is, a very Catholic country, I had never entered a church before.

I followed the nun and was enchanted by the interior. Beautiful frescoes decorated the ceiling. The story of the Nativity was conveyed by a display of mechanical dolls, and at the push of a button, along came Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the Three Wise Men. I didn’t know who any of these people were, but the nun who wove my braids promised to teach me the story.

She spoke to me in German and taught me the catechism, which is a summary of Christianity in the form of questions and answers. The nun practiced with me every day, until my responses were perfect. She also started to teach me the Latin alphabet. Until then, I had only learned the Hebrew alphabet. I found the High German script hard to grasp, not least because the Gothic handwriting was so flowery and complicated.

I was in the sanatorium for so long that the Jewish education from Landsberg started to wane in my mind. I missed my classmate Clara and I made no friends at the sanatorium. I was also very lonely without my parents, so it wasn’t surprising that I gravitated toward the nun because of her warmth and kindness.

One day Mama paid a visit. She brought a large bottle of carrot juice, which she was told would help to cure my TB. We sat down together, and as I was drinking the carrot juice, I regaled Mama with what was happening in my life.

“The food is delicious”, I said. “And I go to this place where they’ve got somebody called Jesus, and someone called Joseph”.

“What place is this?” Mama asked.

“I don’t know what it’s called, but I’ll take you there, and it’s beautiful”.

We walked to the church and went inside. We came out almost straight away and Mama confronted me.

“What on earth do you think you are doing?” she demanded.

I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong. I had forgotten the conversation we’d had in Tomaszów Mazowiecki after I bought the crucifix to try to blend in with my Christian classmates.

Mama complained to the sanatorium administration about the apparent attempt to convert me to Christianity. It transpired that I hadn’t been correctly registered as a Jewish child, but from that moment on, I was schooled in Judaism by a rabbi.

Rabbi Asher, who was also a Holocaust survivor, somehow instinctively knew how to reach me. And I was drawn to him. He introduced me to our Torah, the Old Testament, and laid the groundwork for my love of Judaism. I enjoyed listening to the classic tales of biblical heroes Abraham and Sarah, and stories like Noah and the Flood. I especially loved the tale of baby Moses, who grew up to deliver the Jews from slavery. Although I never mentioned it, I always wondered where was our Moses when we needed him. I went to the synagogue and did everything the rabbi told me to reinforce my Jewish identity. I felt guilty about having upset Mama. And the more I learned about Judaism, the more I loved it.

After about nine months in Bad Wörishofen, the doctors determined that I was no longer contagious. I returned to Landsberg, where my parents were finalizing the paperwork that would enable us to join my aunt Elka, who had emigrated to the United States just a few months after arriving at the DP camp in Leipzig.

My best friend, Clara, and her father didn’t have a relative like my Aunt Elka to sponsor them for emigration to America but were instead heading to Israel.

Clara hugged and kissed me on the day we left for Bremerhaven in Northern Germany for the voyage to New York. As a farewell gift, she gave me a box of matzah.

“Don’t forget”, she said. “You will be celebrating Passover on the ship”.

We hugged once more and never saw each other again.