by D. A. Hosek.
They smell it before they see it: the reek of the monkey house mingled with the stench of death. They glimpse emaciated bodies of the barely distinguishable living and dead, yellow-grey skin in dirty blue and white striped unforms before the order comes down from Lieutenant Perry: The squad is to continue down the road to investigate the condition of the women’s camp.
Surely the Krauts wouldn’t treat women the way they treated these men. Private Moran talks of his hope of grateful women eager to reward the handsome young men—or at least one handsome young man in particular—who have come to liberate them. Private Cushman has his doubts. What he saw at the camp has left him unsettled.
“It was all Jews,” Private Wachtel whispers to Cushman.
“How do you know?” Cushman asks.
“Didn’t you see the yellow Stars of David on their uniforms? God, we’ve all heard Hitler was mistreating our people, but damn, if somebody told me about that camp and I hadn’t seen it myself—I wouldn’t of believed it.”
Cushman nods grimly. He tries to shake Wachtel from his side. Wachtel is one of two other Jews in their squad. Him and Glass are always trying to be all chummy with Cushman, but Cushman’s determined to be an American in the army, not a Jew.
They reach the women’s camp. It is worse than the first camp they saw if such a thing is possible. The Germans stacked the dead like cordwood before they abandoned the camp; the more recently deceased lie discarded about the grounds of the camp. Many of the living have shaved heads, like the male prisoners. They gaze disinterestedly at the arriving soldiers through the high wire fence topped with barbed wire. Private Farrell retches at the sight and smell.
Sergeant Busse steps to the front of the squad and cuts the chain locking the gates with a pair of long-handled bolt cutters. A woman walks through the gates and throws her arms around him and begins to cry. Her legs go limp and her full weight hangs from his shoulders. He braces himself to support her and is surprised to discover she weighs nearly nothing. Her stench makes him gag.
He pushes away and reaches into his pocket and unwraps a bar of hard chocolate. “Here, take this.”
The sergeant’s words are meaningless to the woman. But she sees the chocolate bar and grabs it from his fingers. She expresses no gratitude. She shuffles away to the edge of the gate and crouches over the chocolate batting away anyone who comes too close.
More women approach Sergeant Busse hoping he will feed them as well. He has nothing left to give them.
“Private Benson,” he yells, “gather up food from the men. D-rations, K-rations, anything they might have. We’re going to feed these women. Get Private Farrell to help you.”
“Yes, sergeant.
“Cushman!”
Cushman runs over.
“You speak Kraut, right?” Sergeant Busse asks.
“Yes, sergeant.” He also speaks Yiddish, which will be more helpful in speaking with the Jewish women who make up at least half the women in the camp. They’re easy to distinguish, even without the yellow stars on their uniforms: they’re the ones with shorn hair. But mentioning this to the sergeant will only emphasize Cushman’s difference. He’ll say whatever the sergeant wants in both languages. Glass and Wachtel have no Yiddish beyond the usual swears, so no one will be any wiser.
“Good, I need you to tell these women to line up so we can feed them one at a time.”
Cushman calls out the sergeant’s instructions in German and Yiddish. Some of the women line up for the food Benson and Farrell have collected. Some keep approaching Sergeant Busse. Other women don’t move at all. A handful walk right past the men into the road.
“Oh hell,” the sergeant says. “Someone get those women out of the road before they get run over by a halftrack!”
The woman with the chocolate bar struggles to bite into the hard chocolate. It hadn’t occurred to the sergeant to look at the women’s teeth. He realizes many of the women are missing at least half their teeth and those they have are probably about to fall out. The D-bar he gave her, which tastes like a soggy overcooked potato sprinkled with cocoa, is as hard as a chunk of wood. Even the biscuits from the K-rations might be too hard for these women. Maybe they can eat the canned cheese from the C-rations.
“Christ on a crawdad,” Sergeant Busse mutters. “Moran, Glass, get over here and start cutting up the food before Farrell and Benson hand it out so these women can actually eat it. Open those goddamn cans of cheese first.”
He turns to the first woman and gestures for her to return the bar so he can cut it up. She grabs it tighter and turns her back to him.
“Cushman,” the sergeant says, “tell this woman I’ll give her back the damn chocolate bar, I just want to cut it up into smaller piece so she can eat it.”
Cushman approaches the woman. She’s young, barely more than a girl. He can tell from her shaved head and the star on her uniform she’s Jewish so he speaks to her in Yiddish. She stares at him uncomprehending. He tries German, and she panics at the sound of the language. “Polski?” he tries.
Her terror subsides.
“Shit,” Cushman mutters to himself. He went to high school with Polacks back in Chicago, but his knowledge of Polish begins and ends with pączki. “Sergeant,” he says, “she doesn’t understand.”
“What the hell?”
“She doesn’t speak German. I think she might only speak Polish.”
“Do you speak any Polack?”
“No, sergeant.”
“Jesus.” The sergeant yells to the other men, “Do any of you speak Polack?” They all shake their heads. Moran unhelpfully offers that he speaks Pig Latin and Farrell slaps him on the back of the head.
“Cushman,” Sergeant Busse says, “see if you can find some woman among the prisoners to translate for you. There’s gotta be someone who can talk to her.”
Cushman approaches another woman with a shaved head and yellow star and speaks to her in Yiddish. He explains what he needs, and she talks to the girl with the chocolate in Polish. Her words are soft and palatalized in comparison to the harshness of the Yiddish gutturals, hamburger next to beef flank. The girl shakes her head and turns away from her would-be translator. The translator touches her on her shoulder and says more. Cushman doesn’t understand the words, but he feels the tenderness in her speech. This time the girl answers before returning to gnawing at the chocolate bar. This girl could have been pretty. She has a nice voice and if she had hair—his thoughts are interrupted by the other woman who explains the girl’s response to Cushman who in turn relays the situation back to the sergeant: the girl will not give up the chocolate bar. She prefers to keep doing her best to chew at it on her own.
Sergeant Busse rolls his eyes. If that’s what this woman wants, she can have it. He has other things to worry about: the road is filling with inmates. He would hate to see these women live to see liberation only to be struck down by the fucking U.S. Army when the rest of the company comes.
Captain Parker arrives in his jeep seated in the back as far opposite his Black driver as possible. The driver expertly weaves through the dazed women on the gravel road.
“Sergeant!” the captain calls from his jeep.
“Yes, sir!”
“Are you feeding these women?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Well, you need to stop.”
“Sir?”
“You could start a riot passing out food. Plus, we have orders from the battalion command. The prisoners are in no shape to be eating the food you’re giving them.”
“I don’t understand, sir. Are you saying we should leave them to starve?”
“Of course not. We’re not monsters, we’re Americans. Apparently, the Brits have developed a protocol for feeding the camp inmates. They’ve been doing it for a couple weeks now up at Belsen. They know all about how to do this from oppressing the natives over in India. If you feed these women those biscuits and chocolate, they’ll get sick and die that much faster. We’ll be sending a squad later to feed them properly.”
Sergeant Busse turns to Moran, Glass, Farrell and Benson. “You heard the captain. Stop passing out that food!”
The soldiers stare at the sergeant.
“Now!”
They close the knapsack with the food and walk out the camp gates. The women trail after them.
“Where’s Cushman?” Sergeant Busse demands.
“Here, sergeant.”
“Tell these women we can’t give them any more food right now, that the food we have will make them sick, but we’ll bring other food later, no, wait, make that better food.”
Cushman starts yelling out what the sergeant has told him, but the women continue to follow the soldiers with the knapsack of food.
“One more thing, sergeant,” Captain Parker says from his idling jeep.
“Yes, sir.”
“These women—” the captain gestures at the women scattered in the road. “These women are probably infected with typhus and tuberculosis and God only knows what else. We can’t let them wander the countryside spreading disease. We need to keep them enclosed.” Captain Parker’s eyes turn towards the fenced-in camp.
“You want me to put them back into that, sir?”
Captain Parker takes a breath and exhales slowly. He coughs at the stench from the decaying bodies. “It’s only temporary, until we can get the manpower to clean things up. But first, we need to move into Landsberg and secure the town. Intelligence reports there’s a Wehrmacht training camp there. It’s probably abandoned, but we’re going to need your squad to help make sure there aren’t any Krauts lurking about.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get these women back inside the fence and leave behind a couple men to make sure the women stay there. Take the rest down the road and meet up with Lieutenant Perry and the rest of your platoon. And I want it done an hour ago.”
Before the sergeant can say his final “yes, sir” Captain Parker has already ordered his driver to drive away. Sergeant Busse turns to his squad. “You heard the captain,” he shouts. “Get these women inside the fence!”
The women resist their return to captivity. When they understand what the soldiers are doing, they collapse sobbing into the arms of whoever is trying to herd them.
“Jesus,” Farrell mutters, “this is awful.”
“Eh, it’s gotta be done,” Moran says. “I just hope they don’t get us sick doin’ it. Can you believe how bad they stink?” He picks up the woman who has fallen at his feet in tears and carries her through the gate, dropping her unceremoniously into the mud.
“Hold on!” Sergeant Busse yells. The soldiers stop. “They’re walking out as fast as you’re putting them in. Lewis, Moran, block the gate so they can’t get out.”
The two men rush to the gate fail to keep the women inside. With a disgusted expression on his face, Lewis, backs away from each woman as soon as she gets near him. Moran pushes the women back in but spends so much time doing it that for each woman he pushes inside, two more escape.
The sergeant shakes his head. He unholsters his sidearm, points it in the air and pulls the trigger. Everyone freezes at the sound.
“Cushman! Tell these women if they keep coming out that gate, I won’t point the gun in the air for the next bullet.”
Cushman has been carrying a woman towards the gate. He puts her down. She collapses in a heap at his feet. He shouts in German and Yiddish what the sergeant has said. The women keep coming.
“What’s going on, private? Why are these women still coming out?”
“I don’t know, sergeant.”
“Are they all Polacks or something?”
“No. I know at least some them should understand. They responded when I explained about the food distribution.” Cushman talks to the women. They ignore him. Finally, one answers Cushman. “They don’t want to be inside the camp,” Cushman tells the sergeant.
“It’s for their own damned good. Tell them— Oh Christ, forget it. let’s just get them back inside that goddamn fence.”
Sergeant Busse turns to the gate. Are all the women are trying to leave now? He walks up to one woman and grabs her by the shoulders. “Spreken zee doitch?” he yells in her face. She says nothing. She stares back with sunken lifeless eyes. “Fucking Polack,” he mutters and shoves her towards the gate. She stumbles and falls on her back, then gets back up and staggers towards the road.
“Moran! Lewis! What the hell are you two doing at that gate? I told you to keep those women from leaving. Use your rifles!”
“You mean shoot ’em, sarge?” Moran asks.
“Jesus, Christ, no. What the hell is wrong with you? Hold your rifles sideways like this so you can block more of the gate. Use the rifles to push the women back. And the rest of you bums, double-time it getting these women inside.”
The soldiers scurry to comply with Sergeant Busse’s orders. It takes an eternity to return the women to the camp. The sergeant wraps the chain around the gate and sticks a peg through the links to keep it tight. “Moran, you and Cushman will stand guard. Cushman can speak the language to these women so they shouldn’t give you too much trouble.”
Cushman and Moran stand awkwardly at the gate. The sergeant organizes the rest of the squad to continue their march to Landsberg per the captain’s orders.
“Damn, I wanted to get a chance of killing Nazis instead of being stuck here,” Moran says. He mocks a shooting gesture with his hands. He turns to the women inside the fence. “Ah, will you look at this? It’s really something, ain’t it? I mean, these dames, they’re nothing but animals.”
“That’s how the Nazis treated their prisoners.”
“Oh, come on, it’s more than that, Cushman. You should get it. They’re your people, ain’t they? Normal people wouldn’t be this way.”
“What are you getting at, Moran? Are you saying they’re like this because they’re Jewish?”
“Nah, I’m just sayin’ there’s more going on beyond being kept prisoner by the Krauts. It ain’t normal. Look, that one there ain’t even wearing clothes and she don’t even give a damn. What kind of broad would stand there all naked like that? A normal gal’d at least be coverin’ herself up with something—her hands at least—not that this one’s anything to look at. She ain’t got no tits at all. Who’d’a thunk you could have a naked broad right in front of you and you’d just be disgusted by the sight of it? It’s crazy.”
Cushman balls his fist and relaxes it. Moran is as dumb as a left-handed screwdriver, but Cushman is smart enough not to start a fight with him.
“Moran, come on,” Cushman says, “you gotta see they’re only like this because of how they’ve been treated. I carried a bunch of them from the road and you did too; they’re practically starved to death.”
“I’ll give you that they’re starved but it’s not like the POWs we’ve seen were this bad. It’s something wrong with your people.”
“That’s because the Nazis treated the Jews worse.”
“Yeah, but they had to have some reason to do it didn’t they? They wouldn’t treat them worse for no reason.”
Cushman has heard it all before. Even in his old neighborhood in Chicago where the Jews lived across the Burlington tracks from the Polacks and the Bohunks and everybody worked and shopped and went to school together, the gentile neighbors felt they were better than the Jews. Sure, they would be subtle about it; sometimes they’d pretend they were friends with you, but Cushman knew the second they were on their own it would be all “kike” and “hebe” and other crap. And going too far out of North Lawndale was inviting a beating at the hands of the Christians who didn’t care for Jews to so much as pass through their neighborhoods.
Cushman was ten years old, sitting on the front stoop of the three-flat where he lived with his parents and older brothers in the top-floor apartment. Two men were walking along Spaulding Avenue going door to door selling something. One was about to go up to the door of Cushman’s building and the other stopped him. “Look at that kike kid on the front steps. It’s all Jews in that building. Don’t bother. Shit, that means this whole neighborhood is full of ’em.” The two men moved on not bothering to approach any other buildings on the block. That was the first time Cushman heard the word “kike.” He was able to figure out it meant “Jew” and it wasn’t a nice way of saying it. What bothered him more than that was how the men felt free to say all this right in front of him as if he wasn’t there.
It would take years for Cushman to understand the way things were, why nobody Jewish lived south of the Burlington tracks, why the other two apartments in his building were filled with aunts and uncles and cousins, why the Bohunk girls who went school at St Agatha’s snickered when they saw him waiting in line to go to see a Sunday matinee with his cousins. He’d hoped being in the army would leave this all behind. The sergeant himself had said they were all soldiers now, none better than the other and yet somehow it didn’t work out that way. He’d seen how Sergeant Busse treated him and Glass and Wachtel different from the others.
Cushman wants to say to Moran, “You make me sick.” Instead he remains silent. Moran is six-four and has fifty pounds easy on Cushman, plus he’s impervious to logic. Cushman averts his eyes from a woman squatting out a pile of diarrhea next to one of the buried huts and hopes Moran doesn’t notice.
Moran lights a cigarette and offers one to Cushman. Cushman waves away the offer. He doesn’t want to be chummy with Moran.
“You know, you ain’t so bad, for a Jew,” Moran says.
There’s something about the way Moran says “Jew” which in his mouth sounds as much of an insult as “Hebe” or “Kike.” Cushman’s noticed this before from other people. He’s never been able to put his finger on what it is. “You know a lot of Jews?” Cushman asks.
“Only you and the other two in our squad. Can’t say I ever cared to meet any Jews before Uncle Sam gave me this job.”
“What’d Jews ever do to you?”
“Nothing. I just don’t trust ’em.”
“You mean me and Glass and Wachtel?”
“Nah, you guys are alright.”
“But you just said you don’t know any other Jews than us.”
“And I wanna to keep it that way. Your people are sneaky and you cheat any Christians you do business with. You control everything behind the scenes and you’re all a bunch of damned reds.”
“I’m no communist.”
“You know what I mean, your people are.”
Cushman shakes his head imperceptibly.
“Look, I know about Jews,” Moran says. “I ain’t stupid, you know. I read the papers and I see what’s what. I could tell you three were Jews just by looking at you. I didn’t need no one telling me what you were and sure, you three are alright, but you’re exceptions.
“My father works for a bank, you know. He’d be a lot higher up at the bank if he hadn’t of been stabbed in the back so many times by the Jews who run the place. I tell ya, if it weren’t for the Jews, my pop’d probably be president of the place or something by now.”
“I thought you said we Jews were all communists? What are a bunch of communists doing running a bank?”
“I dunno. Maybe it’s so good Christians like my pop won’t be able to run the place good and stuff. Keep the Americans down so Russia can get ahead.”
“You’re really something, Moran, really something.”
“Thanks, that means a lot coming from you.”
Cushman can’t tell if Moran missed his sarcasm or if he’s missing Moran’s or what the hell is going on. A viscous silence falls between them.
Moran stubs out his cigarette on his boot heel. He picks up a straight branch, tosses it from one hand to the other, then uses it as a baseball bat to hit rocks he tosses up in the air across the road. At least half his swings are strikes and half of the ones he does hit go in random directions. Cushman moves a bit out of the way to avoid any errant foul balls.
Inside the fence, the women have settled into groups seated on the ground, nearly motionless. Only a few move at all. One woman meets Cushman’s gaze and stares at him until Cushman, unable to bear the discomfort, turns away. How could God have let this happen to these women?
God was never a major element of Cushman’s life. When Cushman and his sister went to synagogue with their mother on Saturdays as children, his father worked at his store to sell to the gentiles. After Cushman had been Bar Mitzvah’d, he stopped going himself and his mother never said a word about it. The only time he found himself in a synagogue anymore was when one of his cousins got married or when his zayde died when he was in high school. There had been a couple times when his squad was stationed with a unit which had a rabbi as its chaplain and Glass and Wachtel had tried to persuade Cushman to go to Shabbat services with them—“after it all, it ain’t like there’ll be a boatload of Jews as it is to fill the benches for the poor guy”—but Cushman had declined. Cushman wasn’t opposed to God, per se, he just had other things to do with his time.
But now, Cushman faces the idea that there is something wrong with the picture of God he has been trained to believe in, of a God who had chosen the Jews as his own people. The same God who had allowed this to happen. He’s heard about the extermination camps the Russians have found in the East. Can they be worse than what he’s seeing here?
“Hey, watch this!” Moran says. He tosses a rock up into the air and connects solidly with his swing. But instead of hitting the rock into the road, Moran connects for a solid line drive into the camp, narrowly missing one of the groups of women sitting by the huts.
“What the hell’s wrong with you, Moran? You could of hit her.”
“That’s what I was trying ta do.”
Cushman swings at Moran without realizing he’d made a fist. He is all animal fury but connects with nothing but air. Then Cushman is lying on his back, blood pouring from his nose, Moran staring down at him.
“Jeeze, whatcha do that for?” Moran asks. He is genuinely perplexed at Cushman’s sudden rage towards him.
Cushman doesn’t answer. Is Moran really that stupid? Anything he’d say now would be an invitation for Moran to punch him again.
“C’mon Cushman, get up,” Moran says. “We’ll hafta figure out what we’ll tell the sarge when he comes back. He’s gonna wanna know what happened to your nose. It might be broke. Goddamn, it’s even bigger than it was before.”
This is an excerpt from D. A. Hosek’s novel in progress, We, the Rescued.