We Are Here Read online

  When we left the last concentration camp, we had hope that life would be normal again and we would see the family, so we felt like happy people. The guards were not there, so we walked out. At moments like that, it’s instinct. We were young. You don’t like to think when you have a broken leg that you can’t walk. You think, now I can walk, I will run.

  We came home with nothing. We had lost most things when we went to Terezín. When we got to Auschwitz, we had lost even more. And when we came out of Auschwitz, we had nothing. Then when we came home, we found our friend; our mother had put in a suitcase some pictures from our past life, the good times, and left them with her. That was the biggest gift we could get. Diamonds you can buy, but not those photographs.

  After the war, no one wanted to listen to what had happened, because they wouldn’t believe us. And we didn’t want to tell them. There was no help, no counselling. It was only Štěpa and I alive. All the family was gone. Very often, we would see a girl in the street and wonder if she was our sister, for years and years.

  We didn’t talk much about what happened. And we wanted to start a new life. I feel that I missed a lot, my childhood was stolen, I missed education. So we tried to absorb everything that was missing. We wanted to get somewhere and to be something.

  We didn’t know how to accept everything about the normal way of life. It was a nice surprise always when I had toilet paper, and I could think about my day and not be burdened with what bad things would happen. Somehow, I was like a bird running out of its cage.

  Because we saw so much suffering and we couldn’t help our mother, we wanted to help other people. I worked as a nurse until I came here. If I hadn’t gone to a concentration camp, maybe I could have had a career. I don’t know. If you go from cold to warm, you don’t think about how cold you were. You are happy you are warm.

  I couldn’t be a nurse here because I didn’t know English, so I was working as a cleaning lady. I liked it, actually. I was working for a sister-in-law of the prime minister Robert Menzies. She was so nice when the Czechoslovakian uprising was on, putting on Smetana records for me. She was always saying, ‘I admire you because you know other languages.’

  After the war, everyone looked for someone to make a new life. I wanted to get married and have a family. I had met my husband in a concentration camp; he was carrying dead bodies. I was lucky because we had a common language; he was Czech and I was Czech. We could talk about everything. And we had so many friends who went through the same.

  He was very good looking and he was nice. We had a good life, but he was seventeen years older and he had lived a life already, and I was like a little colt kicking and I wanted to change him and I couldn’t.

  If I would have him today, I would appreciate him better and I would treat him better. I would give my last piece of bread to my husband, but I wasn’t telling him each day ‘I love you’ like people do now, or kissing all the time — maybe because of the circumstances we were brought up in.

  He was always third. My sister came first, and then my children, and he was the third. He knew it. We would sometimes quarrel about Štěpa. I did put her first — because she was my blood. I loved him my way, but always Stephanie came first.

  The happiest time in my life was when our son was born in 1948. It was a new life after so much loss. And the same when the others were born. I would do everything for them, tried to give them everything possible: fresh air and good food. It was my world being a mother. I was so happy. I would jump in the sea for them.

  Many people can’t understand, after the problems we went through, how we could start a new life and have joy. I missed so much, so I wanted to fill it in. It wasn’t always easy, but I was happy. I accepted life as it came and I tried not to be burdened with all the memories.

  Stephanie started speaking to students about the war. She is maybe stronger in that way, and she knows English fluently. Sometimes, she wanted me to come and talk to groups with her, but I didn’t feel that I could give them more than they already knew. And I was a little bit more emotional. Even now when I listen to my recorded testimony, which I made years ago, I cry.

  I had nightmares at the start, of course. I suffered from migraines until menopause. I had a lot of tummy pain. They said it was psychological. It wasn’t. If they don’t know what to say, they say it’s psychological.

  The Holocaust is still deep in one corner of the brain, but you avoid it. You go around it. You don’t have to go in. You have to harden yourself not to get the pain or bad feelings because only that way can you get through life. If you put your mind to it, it’s easy.

  I cry mostly when I think about my mother. Not because of me. I am so sorry that my mother couldn’t achieve anything. She was the main support in my life. I remember everything she was saying: ‘Think of those people who are worse off,’ things like that. That was a big help in my life.

  She was very strong, very intelligent, very gentle, amazing, a very special person and ahead of her time. She loved us. She gave life to us. She had to be the strong one in the family. I regret that I couldn’t help my mother when she needed it. And I couldn’t enjoy her life and she couldn’t enjoy everything that I have now. That’s my big regret.

  Our mother always told us to look at the bright side. And I do. My grandson had an accident yesterday. It could be worse. You appreciate what you have. That’s actually the point of my life, why I try to keep my family together. Until recently, I was having them for Friday dinner every week. Štěpa and I didn’t have family. But they have family, and I want them to keep together.

  I have three children, eight grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and one on the way. I am afraid only when someone in my family is sick; I am afraid of losing someone. But otherwise I am not afraid of the world.

  It’s a different time today. If you pity yourself and think how much was lost, it doesn’t help anyone. I don’t want my children to pity me, and they know it. You should be big enough to forgive. If you don’t forgive, you punish yourself, too. If you leave it behind, you can start from new.

  I am lucky. I achieved a lot. If you take it the right way, it’s possible to have a good life. If my mother saw me now, she would be very happy. She would be saying, ‘Annetta, you managed well.’

  Stephanie

  In Kenya, I knew nobody who would have been in a concentration camp. I didn’t want to talk about it, because I couldn’t explain it to them properly. And I didn’t think it was correct for me to talk. If they didn’t know anything about it, I wouldn’t start to tell them. Sometimes, I would have liked to tell them: ‘You make so much fuss about this broken plate and we didn’t even have a spoon.’ But I kept myself back. I didn’t want my husband to feel sorry for me. I told him most things, but I noticed that he started to be so sorry for me, and actually didn’t like to hear it.

  I didn’t forget about it, but I somehow put the past behind me. I was clinging to the normal way of life. When I thought of the past, it was always about my mother and my sister.

  There was a great bond between our mother and us. She was the most important person in our lives. She was showing us her love by telling us what we should do to have a better way of life. I think she might have had an idea when we said goodbye in Prague that we were seeing each other for the last time, because she didn’t talk much. She just kissed us. ‘Look after each other,’ she said, and that was it.

  When my mother-in-law was sick in Mombasa, the family chose me, because I was a nurse, to fly there and be with her. That was awful; after she died, some ladies made me join them to wash her body and dress her in the orthodox way. And I was thinking, it might have been my mother. That was dreadful. At the funeral, I cried; I couldn’t stop, because I thought of my mother. I was lucky that I was able to cry, it occurred to me. And then I cried more. It was the first time I was really able to.

  I felt very guilty that we survived and Maminka, our moth
er, and our little sister didn’t. I used to have nightmares, very vivid. I was frightened something would happen to the children. I used to cry in my dreams occasionally, but, it was so bad, I forgot it when I woke up.

  I was always worried about my children. When they were born, I was very protective and very strict with hygiene, because I had seen so much death that I was worried if I wasn’t careful they might get sick, too.

  In Kenya, I didn’t let anyone do anything for them. I wouldn’t let them take them out of the cot. I let them wash nappies and hang them up, but later I ironed them to get rid of viruses. I was always worrying. I didn’t want them to touch things. And later, I didn’t let them run around barefoot. I was always after them. I was always cleaning their hands, everything possible so that they wouldn’t get some sickness. I was probably more frightened for my children than other mothers, more fussy.

  I didn’t worry before I was a mother, because I had no one to worry about. I had a sister, she was with me, and I never worried about her, because I knew she was strong.

  I had nightmares about Mengele only later. He was the most important to us in the camp, because if you think about it he saved our lives — for his purpose. He didn’t save us for us. We were his guinea pigs. You don’t kill your guinea pigs if you want to continue your research.

  I actually liked him at the beginning. He was not unpleasant. He was not shouting at us. We understood that he wanted to study twins. It made us pleased that we had been chosen for experiments. We didn’t know about his plan. We didn’t know that everybody was to be killed.

  I never thought I wouldn’t be with Annetta. I always took it for granted that we wouldn’t die. That was just luck. And we were lucky that we weren’t experimented on so that it would make trouble for life; a friend of ours was X-rayed and couldn’t have children. There were many of them who were crippled.

  We have seen good and bad in people. When we came back from the war, we had nowhere to go; we had nothing. There was one suitcase, which our mother had left with a neighbour during the war with photographs and documents. She had kept it under her bed the whole time; could you imagine if she had been caught?

  Another neighbour, my mother gave her a new electric iron, and said, ‘Can you look after it?’ When we returned and wanted to have it, she said Mother gave it to her. She was not pleasant at all. All of a sudden, she was a stranger. If I have something from somebody and that somebody has nothing else, for goodness sake I can be without it.

  I am not hard, but I don’t show so much emotion. I try to keep it to myself. I learned not to cry at the beginning when I started talking to students. I didn’t like to show my weakness. I took it for weakness. And most probably other people thought that I felt sorry for myself.

  I saw a girl who was crying at the Jewish museum in Melbourne once. I went to her and I asked her what’s the matter. She said, ‘I am worried that my grandfather was in Germany during the war.’ Was he fighting? She didn’t know. But she was ashamed that she was German. And I hugged her and I said she didn’t have to worry. I said to her, ‘I don’t blame you. You are the granddaughter of that man, but you are not responsible for his doing. That’s the past. It has nothing to do with you.’

  I wanted to make her feel better. And I thought, how could I prove to her really that I have nothing against her? So I took the girl and her teacher and two friends, and I brought them home for dinner. She is the second generation. I wanted to show her I have no hard feelings towards them.

  I like to please people and help them because somehow I had the feeling I lost so much education in life, I was never sure if what I was doing was correct. At parties, I couldn’t talk about cinema or theatre. I was behind in culture, because we didn’t have the chance. I never read Shakespeare in Czechoslovakia. When did we have time? I learned to cook from my mother-in-law.

  I was always feeling that I didn’t have enough education. After the Holocaust, I tried to get what I didn’t have the chance to have. I didn’t have sunshine, so I went to where there was sunshine. We didn’t know how to dance; I still don’t know how to dance. But education was the first thing.

  My husband and my children could speak very good English. I wanted to prove to them that I could do what they could do. So I went to school on Saturdays to matriculate. I did prove it to them. And they were quite happy that their mother was not such a dumpling.

  Apart from my son and daughter, I have seven grandchildren, one great-grandchild and soon two. Time goes by and you have a different way of life and you have other people to love. I realise I didn’t love my first husband so much. I was a young girl, and he was my first love. He married me all of a sudden. Maybe he just felt he wanted to have somebody because the future was uncertain. I know he didn’t love me enough, because half a year after we were married he was having an affair.

  If he would be here now, I wouldn’t want him. If we had both survived, we couldn’t have lived together. And my second husband, I don’t know why I married him. Robby, my third husband, was my only love.

  We had a plan for euthanasia, but I don’t think I could have gone through with it, because I’m clumsy and I don’t understand much. He fell down on the street and dropped dead. It was a merciful death. He died the way he and I wanted to, without too much fuss. I cried afterwards, but I was relieved for him.

  Annetta says sometimes, and I think she might be right, that she was the romantic girl, and I was the factual one. I am matter of fact. I am very upset if something happens and I wish it hadn’t happened. But I can’t do much about it.

  Before she was married, she was under my wing. I wanted to protect her from anything bad. Now she’s in charge. Now she is the stronger one because I had four operations with my back and some falls, and she tells me always what to do and what not to do, and that irritates me. Several times lately, I told her, ‘I am just as old as you, I can do what I want.’

  Annetta had her number removed from her arm a long time ago. I still have my number. When people asked me, I said it was my boyfriend’s telephone number. It’s part of me now. It belongs to my past.

  I didn’t want to show people at the beginning. I felt a little bit embarrassed. I was wearing long sleeves. Now I am not embarrassed. I am not squeamish about what was.

  I know that I was there. I don’t think about it every day. Sometimes, it might be even a week that I don’t think about it. And sometimes, it hits me with some small memory: if I see a film and there’s a nice child like my sister. When a child cries, and I haven’t got anything to give them, that makes me a bit soft, because they don’t have what they need.

  There are a lot of things in life that I like. I could stand under the shower for twenty minutes. It has to be nice and hot. Fresh bread with butter. If I could have coffee whenever I want, and put as many spoons of sugar, that’s wonderful. We had something in the camps in the morning that was just coloured water. They called it coffee. That was not coffee. Now I have coffee.

  I get my hair done every week. It’s the only thing I do for myself to spend money. I do my nails myself. I don’t buy expensive things, because I was always careful that we had enough money as a reserve. But I always like to have extra underwear. When we go on holidays I take more than I need, because I have it, and somehow that’s a luxury.

  I have been thinking quite often that we were quite lucky when we came to Australia, not just because we had each other. Kenya was good fun. I didn’t even think of going to Prague to visit. There was nothing there, only stones. But I only feel at home here. This is the place I have lived most of my life, for more than fifty years.

  Life turned out nice. What was bad and sad, we tried to get over and live quite a full and hopeful life. If somebody asks me, ‘Are you happy?’ Yes, I am.

  Zygmunt Swistak

  BORN: 5 September 1924

  Działdowo, Poland

  Zygmunt Swistak lives with his past in a
small suburban apartment in Melbourne, a minimally decorated space of eclectic belongings that track his long and varied life. A portrait of an old Polish man hangs in the entrance hall, opposite some of the carefully executed paintings he has produced in his never-ending quest to calm his soul. A framed photo of his grandchild sits on a low bookcase. Outside, in the tiny courtyard, clusters of plants that he has expertly propagated grow in the spring sunshine.

  Not all of his history is on display. His war medals, which he proudly dons each Anzac Day as a member of the Polish Resistance during World War II, are wrapped in an old shopping bag, and his Polish army uniform, which he wears on the same march, hangs in his wardrobe.

  Mostly, though, his story remains confined to his memory, his haunting tale of survival tinged with a sad sense of solitude. There has rarely been anyone with whom he has sought to share his past, and even fewer who remember it.

  History has rendered him a man of minimal emotions. Apart from choral singing, which continues to rouse his spirit, he is mostly sombre, and the only time his mood visibly lifts, through hours of interviews, is when he talks about becoming a father.

  His past remains a significant part of his present, trailing his waking hours and increasingly intruding on his sleep. But while the Holocaust is the defining element of his life, it is a term he rarely utters. And when he does, it is almost invariably about someone else’s story. Because he is not Jewish, he says he is not entitled to be counted among its survivors. His story, though, is still hellish.

  He was born in a Polish town near the German border, the location of his arrival an unintended quirk of geography that would have devastating consequences later.

  When he was one, he moved with his parents and his older brother, Tadeusz, to Warsaw, where his father worked as a police officer at the State Mint. He was an adventurous boy, a scout, and he was very inquisitive, often questioning aspects of life that others around him simply accepted, not least the religion that was practised by ninety per cent of his compatriots, including his mother, a devout Catholic.