So strong is the love Liliana feels for her daughter that sometimes it scares her.
It is as though the whole world has shrunk into the small face. For Liliana, the sun rises when her daughter opens her eyes. She gets up to the baby at night, sits down in the armchair in her silk dressing gown, gentle lamplight on the window. Zuzana nurses with unwavering gusto, her little fist on her mother’s bosom, sucking and sucking until Liliana is empty. Above her crib hangs a shaggy woollen bunny; pull on its string and it will start to play. Liliana lays the child down to sleep and makes up words to the melody. She wipes the drying milk from the corners of Zuzana’s mouth, strokes the little head with its soft crown.
The child is embraced by love on all sides, as hoops embrace a barrel. As well as by her mother and father, she is loved by Liliana’s parents, the Heckels and Abraham’s father, Leopold.
Every day, Abraham Liebeskind hurries home from the office to be with his daughter. The Heckels come over from Prague every second day.
Zuzana is passed from hand to hand, like a talisman, much to her displeasure. She screws up her face and screams. Liliana puts her in her pram and pushes it to the building site beyond the sugar factory, where their new house is taking shape. Her face shielded by a parasol, Liliana walks among the bricklayers. Abraham sits in his work suit on a low wall, inspecting the plans with the master mason.
The villa will have two floors and a balcony, bathroom tiles of Italian marble, and floors of American oak. The space around the house will be landscaped and joined with the existing garden and orchard.
Liliana longs for a lily pond. She will get one. What is more, Abraham will have a willow planted next to it.
3
The first six years of Zuzana’s life are filled with roundness and tenderness.
So much about them is soft: mother’s breasts and belly, father’s whiskers. The world is bordered and secure; nothing appears in it that could harm Zuzana, and she treats her surroundings with vigour and without fear. The milk from her mother is sweet and warm; her father brings her caramel from work.
Zuzana gains strength and weight. Aged seven months, her head is heavy on her small body. By the time she is one and a half, her bodily proportions have evened out. She learns to walk, from her mother’s open arms to her father’s. She has a strong grip; she grabs Abraham’s beard and pulls. She turns and turns, then staggers to Liliana and buries her nose in her mother’s armpit; Liliana lifts her and carries her to the window, where a van has just arrived with furniture for the Liebeskinds’ new house.
Zuzana doesn’t learn to talk for a long time. To communicate, she makes simple sounds. She points. She has striking, lively, nearly black eyes, and a large mouth, in which, in her first two years, sharp white teeth appear.
Only when these teeth are firmly settled in her gums does Zuzana utter her first words, much to her mother’s relief. These first utterances are clumsy, as if translated from a foreign language. Before long, however, Zuzana is grasping her words with confidence; not only does she speak, but she sings, plays with her voice, and recites, too.
At Christmas 1925, Abraham has a large spruce brought into the parlour. This is their final Christmas in the old apartment; next time around, they will be at the villa.
Although the owner of the sugar factory is a Jew, he has no difficulty in celebrating the Saviour’s birth; indeed, many Christian holidays are closer to him than the Jewish ones. There is more to rejoice in this Christmas than ever before: the war has been over for seven years, the sugar factory is doing well, Abraham Liebeskind has outstanding engineers on his staff, and these engineers build him excellent machines. Liebeskind’s sugar is a household name, and it transcends national borders in all its forms (cubes, granulated, powdered; his sugarloaves went out of production a year ago).
As the century enters its second quarter, Abraham is hoping it will bring him as much success as the first. His wife is sitting at the piano going through sheet music, about to play. He is treating himself to a cigar as he awaits the arrival of Liliana’s parents and the meal they will share. Zuzana, not yet two, is admiring the tree. She is wearing a white dress, and her hair is dressed with a ribbon. As she walks around the tree, she is whispering to herself. Her hand shoots out and pulls off a bauble. She stuffs it into her mouth and bites into the frail glass. Seconds later, there is a trail of blood on Zuzana’s chin. Father and mother run to her. Liliana squats and holds the child’s mouth open as she gathers the shards in a handkerchief. Abraham wonders why Zuzana isn’t crying. Her gaze fixed above her mother’s head, she shows no impatience as she allows herself to be examined. Obediently, she spits bloody saliva and thrusts out her tongue for Liliana to inspect.
This event becomes a story told for the amusement of company. A child and shards of glass. Nothing serious, just a few drops of blood. Abraham will never forget Zuzana’s hard, shining, remorseless eyes.
One shard remains in Zuzana’s gum, becoming gradually encased in flesh. From time to time she will test it with her tongue; when she does, pain will shoot through her whole body, and she will feel alive. Later, she will learn to love and hate this reminder of her childhood.
94
It occurs to Zuzana that it is like being back in Mama’s tummy.
She luxuriates in the word.
Mama.
She and her father are closed in a small space, breathing the same air, pressed against each other in the dense gloom. Zuzana checks off each passing day with a chalk mark on the wooden wall.
Sometimes she thinks she will go mad in here. She stands on tiptoe to a hole in the roof, gulping in fresh air. Her fingernails are broken from clinging to the beam.
She doesn’t want to hide, and she tells her father so. But Liebeskind rules otherwise: it is not safe outside.
At first, Zuzana and her father speak in hushed tones. But silence soon settles between them. There is nothing to talk about. They grow wan and weak.
Their bodies soften as the muscle melts away.
They smell bad.
They don’t wash, only wipe their bodies with a damp cloth. Zuzana moans into the pillow. Liebeskind strokes her hair.
This can’t go on forever, he says.
Every day without Jan is a day lost for Zuzana.
Then, suddenly, they are torn from this slow dying in Mrs Tomášová’s attic.
*
They hear banging.
The moving of furniture.
The thud of a hammer against the planks of their wall.
The light gets stronger until their hiding place is flooded with it.
Zuzana and her father cower on the mattress, their hands over their eyes. In the gap through her fingers, Zuzana sees Mrs Tomášová. She has a hand in front of her mouth and is bleeding from one nostril.
For hiding Jews, she and her husband can expect to go to prison. Maybe they will be put in one of the labour camps.
Zuzana rises slowly. There are two Czech police officers and a man in a raincoat. The policemen have dogs. A German shepherd runs to Zuzana, shoves its muzzle between her legs, sniffs.
Zuzana yells.
And keeps yelling, her voice rising to the roof. Her fists pound the dog’s head. She feels its teeth dig into her thigh. Liebeskind pulls the dog off her. A police officer strikes him with the butt of a rifle.
Zuzana stops yelling. She leans over her father, strokes his face and whispers to him.
They are led out, shoved into a car, taken to Prague.
They are locked up in cells, Zuzana with Mrs Tomášová, Liebeskind with her husband.
Zuzana takes deep breaths, as her mother told her to, drawing in the air through her nose.
It is the end of September; the air is still warm.
Mrs Tomášová sits with her head bowed, two fingers pressed against her nose, intoning Hail Marys in a hoarse voice.
*
Liebeskind is separated from Mr Tomáš and taken for interrogation.
The office of the secret police looks like any other.
Typewriters, desk lamps.
On the walls, framed decrees and a portrait of Hitler.
Bakelite telephones, creaking furniture, an ashtray containing a smouldering cigar.
Liebeskind is dealt a blow to the head and a rap across the knuckles with a ruler. His knees will be black and blue.
His foolish games with the Gestapo will cost him dear, it is explained.
Liebeskind is convinced he will die here.
Nothing is done or said to make him believe otherwise.
We’ll kill your daughter first, they tell him. Liebeskind feels his sphincter relax.
They take him back to the cell. He is filthy and desperate. Day after day, the same procedure: they bring him out and beat him.
Liebeskind loses track of time. He doesn’t know how long he has been here. He takes no interest in his appearance. He is forever bleeding from somewhere. His teeth are loose in his mouth.
You’re in luck, the interrogating officer tells him one day. You can be of use. You will be put to work.
The guard standing next to Liebeskind grabs his head and jerks it up.
Did you hear? he bellows.
Liebeskind stammers some reply. The interrogating officer stands, straightens his jacket, briskly smooths his cuffs.
You’re leaving, he announces.
Before Liebeskind can ask about Zuzana, the guard kicks him towards the door.
They walk down a long corridor, past offices and secretaries who look away from Liebeskind.
Liebeskind’s cell is in the basement. There is no bed for Liebeskind to curl up on, just a concrete base. When the guard isn’t looking, he licks the blood from the broken skin over his joints.
The next day, Liebeskind and Zuzana are taken to the railway station. They look around for Mrs Tomášová and her husband—Zuzana stands on tiptoe—but they aren’t there.
The escort hands the Liebeskinds over to a German guard.
Zuzana and her father each have a sign around their neck with their name and a number. The guard copies these onto his list. Then he shoves the Liebeskinds into the carriage.
The carriage is so full that, but for a few lucky ones, everyone is jammed together. Most crowd into the corridors. Zuzana seems to have lost the power of speech. Taking quick gulps of air, in the dim light of early morning she examines her father’s wounds—the gash in the brow, the swollen mouth.
Through the open doors, the flood of involuntary travellers continues. Small children scream. Someone curses.
Then a long whistle sounds and the train eases into motion.
Zuzana fingers the string around her neck before tugging the name tag off. She wants to do the same with her father’s, but Abraham shakes his head.
The train plods through the autumn landscape, in no hurry. But for the maples, which are starting to turn red, the trees are still green.
The track makes a ringing sound. Steam rises from the engine.
The fields have been ploughed. The threads of an Indian summer gleam.
The journey to Terezín takes a little under three hours.
100
Zuzana leaves Terezín in March.
The journey to Auschwitz is a torturous pilgrimage from wretched being to total non-being, a transition to the void.
The occupants of the truck cry out as they are thrown about.
The purpose of Transport X is liquidation: the Red Cross is thought to be coming to the ghetto, so its population must be cleared.
The trucks are filthy and stinking.
The pain is concentrated between sheets of metal—a roof, a floor, sides; there is a lock and a chain, and a small window of wire-mesh glass.
Here, too, is Zuzana Liebeskindová, beloved daughter of the erstwhile owner of a sugar factory, who was brought up on the best of everything. Zuzana Liebeskindová, who in the ghetto worked with beads.
In the dark, she breathes as her mother taught her, beyond the stink of sweat and urine. It is like re-entering the world through the birth canal; at journey’s end there will be an open embrace, bottomless and hungry, then another and another—an embrace with jaws that crush.
This can’t end well, Liebeskind’s daughter says to herself. The train shakes, brakes, judders back into motion, passes through daylight into darkness. Body against body, gasping for breath, the last flashes of pure, unclouded thought.
Zuzana doesn’t know if her father is on this train. She hopes he is. She calls his name, but her voice can’t get through the cries and moans of others.
We’re going to work, someone says. A mutter of agreement passes through the crowd.
Zuzana knows that this is nonsense. This train is going straight to hell. Sometimes still she is amazed at how she came to be on it. She, who once upon a time wore silk dresses, and kissed and caressed the hot, agitated body of a boy called Jan. Before something broke.
What does it mean to be a Jew? the child Zuzana had asked her teacher Mr Nachtigal. Now she knows that to be a Jew means taking a train to the unknown.
The trucks skip on the uneven track. Outside, day becomes night, and probably the season changes. They have been shut in here for an eternity.
Breathe, her mother tells Zuzana, and Zuzana obeys. Rotten air enters her lungs. A foot treads on hers. An elbow strikes her hip. She wets herself without shame; she is only doing what is necessary.
The train stops at last.
Light everywhere. It bursts into the truck through the open door.
German.
The barking of dogs. Cold and piercing.
Clowns in striped clothing.
They have reached their destination. In a night violated by powerful searchlights.
Everyone out!
The truck is emptied. The engine is reassigned, to fetch a new load.
Breathe, her mother tells her.
Zuzana jumps from the train to the platform. Her legs are shaking. She lifts her head and sees him, her beloved Papa.
She pushes her way through, catches a few blows in the back, groans. But at last she is with him, slipping her hand into his. Liebeskind is more dead than alive, but he knows her. Zuzana, he sighs. They are beaten apart. Men to the right, women to the left. At this camp, orders are obeyed instantly. This new world of fire and shadows.
101
This night splits everything in two.
From now on, there will be two lives.
Life before the camp and life after.
Sturmbannführer Schenke is sitting at a small desk, squinting as he searches for something special—a dwarf, twins, a hunchback. At his ease, he points right or left. His mind is sharp even at night; nothing escapes him. He is helped by Scharführer Schulz, on whom he can rely not to be heedlessly cruel. Schenke is glad of this, for heedless cruelty is a waste of time.
At one point, Schenke throws back his head and thinks he sees—beyond the powerful searchlights—the flash of a star. He is almost moved. When you see a falling star, make a wish, he was told as a child. Spontaneously, he wraps his fingers around his thumb.
May I get something pretty, he thinks. And Fate places Zuzana Liebeskindová in his path.
She is taller than the other women, and well built. The physician in Schenke sees straight away that she has strong bones. He likes Zuzana so much that he stands up, flicks his knee boots with his short whip, and goes over to her.
Mund offen! he says, and she obeys. He runs the grip of the whip along her teeth.
A motion of his hand sends her to the special group, which is forming behind his desk. She stands between two men with bent backs and a young woman with a disfigured face.
As she takes her place, she can have no idea that Schenke has just saved her life, and that before long her forearm will be marked with a tattoo, as proof that she has a future.
Schenke returns to his desk. It is almost three in the morning. He yawns. His perfect teeth glint in the light of the desk lamp. Then his whip returns to action, pointing this way to life and that way to death.
Abraham Liebeskind, the erstwhile factory owner who launched a completely new line of sugar products, stands alongside men of his own age. All have been selected for gassing. Liebeskind’s gaze searches the crowd for Zuzana. He thinks he sees her among some hunchbacks, towering over the others of her group.
He is about to call to her when things start moving. People stream away. To the showers, say the German guards. But Liebeskind doesn’t want to shower, he is trying to find someone. Who should he tell? He stops a German and lays a friendly hand on his shoulder. Move on, friend, says the man, and Liebeskind turns one last time to where he thought he saw Zuzana. All he sees there now is a uniform stream of grey faces.
An hour later, it’s all over. Liebeskind has been poisoned by Zyklon B. His naked body is pulled from the gas chamber by men of the Sonderkommando. Before the corpse is taken to the crematorium, the mouth is checked for gold teeth.
Zuzana stands before the prisoner who is about to tattoo her. As she inspects the scars on his shaven head, she tries to ask where her father has been taken. Quiet! says the man. Then he pinches her arm before branding the skin with a six-digit number.
102
There is no comforting roundness at Auschwitz.
Everything is angular. Everything has its place, its column, its number.
Zuzana is made to undress. She is deloused. She receives an injection of what she is told are vitamins. She is given new clothes: a well-worn skirt, a man’s shirt, a coat with holes in it. She is shoved towards a pile of shoes and told to find a matching pair for herself. Zuzana stays where she is. A stranger forces some fur-lined winter boots on her.
Zuzana puts the boots on. They are too tight, but she doesn’t say anything.
Block 10a is a low, two-storey building. It is for women undergoing medical experiments. Zuzana will spend almost a year here.
The upper floor comprises two large rooms. On the ground floor are toilets (always clogged), a few consulting rooms, an operating theatre, a common room for nurses and SS guards, and offices.
The rooms to which Zuzana is led have a room leader. A Pole, her name is Eliza Babiak, and she is one of the kinder ones. Her tattoo number is quite low: she has survived over two years in the camp. She arrived pregnant and gave birth here. Her child is dead, starved by one of the physicians.
Zuzana lives in a room with about one hundred other women. There are about two hundred and fifty of them in the block altogether; the number goes up and down.
The plank beds are three-tiered. The windows are barred. Use of the toilets at night is forbidden; the needy use a metal pail. Food is given out three times a day. Women prisoners receive the most nutritional diet. They have no regimen; their only duty is to be on hand at all times.
They are spared the cruelty of the kapos, but in return they are closely acquainted with typhoid fever, phlegmons and smallpox.
Several of the physicians here test the boundaries of medicine, from young Schneider to seventy-year-old Voigt. The chief physician is Schenke, whose pet project is experimentation with the changing of eye colour.
Jungwirth removes blood vessels from the legs of girls and tries to implant them in old women.
Hartmann seals ovaries.
There are a thousand and one things for the women to swallow or absorb into the bloodstream.
Internal organs are removed. Teeth are extracted. Mechanisms of conception are investigated. Many unfortunates are fertilized; at one time, the building is overflowing with pregnancies. When a child is born, it is taken from the mother immediately.
In some cases the foetus is removed from the womb, soused in formaldehyde like some rare fruit, and sent to a German university.
