- The Memoir – Remedy For Nightmares
- Gestapo’s interrogation
- The gates of hell
- I Rather Die Then Lose My Soul
The Memoir – Remedy For Nightmares
I wrote my memoir about the concentration camp in July of 1945. It was immediately upon my return home. Then until January 1961, it was sitting in my drawer, at first meant not to be published. It had been written for a different reason, which I will explain to justify its very personal nature.
I returned home on 28 May 1945 after a journey lasting 20 days, And immediately on the first night, I had realized a horrifying thing that every day or rather every night that followed, I was dreaming about Ravensbrück. Dreams with lucid and highly vivid images to such a degree that I could not distinguish between whether it was a dream or a continuation of the camp. Over there, I had rarely dreamt about home, and a wake-up was one of the worst camp experiences. Now, upon my return, the situation was reversed. I was at home and had the camp nightmares. In every dream, I was reliving in sequence day after day that I had spent over there. So it was inconceivable that I could dream about so many events in one night.
Consequently, I could not drag myself to bed at night without telling anybody about it. The nightmares became so tense that I decided not to sleep at all – I could not bear dreams about the camp. It lasted several days. Finally, one day, I felt so exhausted that I decided to do something to survive a nervous breakdown. I spent a long time thinking with whom I could share the problem. I could not confide it to my closest family. I had burdened them with enough sorrow caused by my arrest then incarceration in the camp.
On 23 June, the day of my name day, many people came by, and I got a sea of flowers. A lovely old lady with grey hair visited me. She was my former teacher. I told her that I did not comprehend that I had survived the camp, and now I could not stand dreaming, and that seemed abnormal. She did not respond, but she visited me the next day and told me that she had talked to her old friend’s psychiatrist about the issue. He advised that I should tell someone I trusted about life in the camp. I counted many people but could not talk to them about the concentration camp. I shook my head, “No, it is not possible to tell, to whom?” My aging parents, my sisters. If I had a brother, a strong man, maybe, otherwise? My teacher with grey hair did not give up. After a while, being lost in her thoughts, she said, you know, why not write a memoir? It may help. At first, I did not want to do it.
However, later on, at night, when I was scared of an upcoming nightmare, I started writing. From that moment on, I was writing only at night. One morning, sometime in July or August of 1945, I finished my memoir and put it in a drawer. Indeed, at that moment, the first time after my return home, I fell asleep without nightmares. I wrote a small note to my grey-haired teacher that her advice helped.
Later on, I often had nightmares about the camp as vividly as initially, but it only happened when I was tired. Up to now, it has been a signal for me to get rest. After ten years since the memoir had been written and put in a drawer, I confessed to someone about it, after fifteen years, someone convinced me to publish it. I reviewed it; the memoir seemed too intimate and distressing. I stroke out some fragments betraying obvious gaps in narration. In a couple of days, will be an anniversary of my arrest, which took place on 17 February 1941. From the twenty years perspective, I look at it calmly.
Kraków, 10 February 1961
Gestapo’s interrogation
“Which of you is Wanda Wojtasik?” This is how it started. I got up and left home. And only came back now, after four years in a camp and in a half-year prison. Two men came to pick me up in the hall, and two more were waiting at the gate. “Four for one girl” – I thought with some disdain that accompanied me all the time during the interrogation and which, I believed, somehow my main patron in heaven was furious about it.
I came out victorious from the cruel interrogation. It only lasted a few days. I left with a clear conscience. I didn’t say a word more than I wanted, and no one was implicated. So, I felt that I was in charge of the investigation, not them all the time. But, after a cruel cross-questioning, the Germans adopted the principle of faith in what I said; They apparently thought that the girl had to tell the truth after a brutal beating. I tried not to say anything beforehand. Admittedly, once I had to stumble and say nothing because, finally, there was no probable topic, and I did not know what to say. I did, however, survive tortures. I will not describe it because it was disgusting.
They also tried a softer method. My tormentor leaned over me and said: “My dear, it’s a pity for you, I could be your father, if you are good for me, I’ll be good to you- he always spoke to me per ‘Sie.’ I was silent. It lasted for several hours, and it seemed to be a very long time. Finally, when he got bored of all these methods, I was led into a dark room, and the door to a bright room was opened, where other arrested people were interrogated. My tormentor – that’s what I called him in my thoughts – put a handgun to my back and said that if I say one word, he will shoot me. I didn’t mean to say anything; on the contrary, I wanted to hear everything. In this way, I found out exactly who said what and why they arrested me, and my friend still does not know that I listened to her testimony.
I was thrilled because I finally knew how to testify further. Prone to youthful idealization, I suspected my torturer that he had led me there to make things easier for me. The further course of events did not confirm my naive assumptions. On my way back from this “examination,” I met Mrs. Marylka Walciszewska. Tall, slender, she looked at me and said aloud, “Remember, everything on me.” I smiled. I didn’t need to talk about anyone; I knew what they knew about me. But she repeated with great dignity: “On me, on me, pass it on.” So I tried to disseminate this message. It wasn’t until the next day that I understood what it meant. Mrs. Marylka – my former scoutmaster and my authority – was executed.
They took me to the Zamek prison. Today I remember the rattle of a heavy, forged, antique door. When I heard the door slam shut, I realized that I had lost my freedom.
The gates of hell
In the morning, 23rd September 1941, we read a new, empty word for us: Fürstenberg. Well, a nondescript name. And today? What does this mean for you today? Will, you never say that word calmly again? will you always feel this thrill for the rest of your life? We shivered; we were cold, hungry and sleepless; two nights without sleep.
We saw the female overseers for the first time. They packed us five to a row. It is impossible to describe how terrible these women were, our new authorities. They looked at us with contempt: female crows and ravens, so we called them afterward. Huge, tall blondes with a mindless, cold-eyed stare and fierce lips, in black, hooded cape cloaks; sharp, ear-irritating voices and enormous German Shepherds by their sides.
We stood in silence, motionless, surrounded by a group of dogs and, worse than them, hostile people-nonhumans.
Brutal voices, gestures, kicks, strokes, slaps, all this fell like stones in our hearts at first. We were silent; we began to realize what awaited us in the coming days or even months. We didn’t think about the years then.
I stood with clenched teeth so hard that it hurt my jaws. I couldn’t say a word. Every attempt to whisper invariably triggered kicks and roars of “Maul halten!”
Silence, menacing silence. Many a time later, we experienced the horror of the collective silence. Still, that first moment seemed to be the most dreadful.
It was so unexpected, surprising, new, full of panic, the first silence we were ashamed of. We were terrified, fearing that it was depriving us of the most precious thing: the sense of humanity.
I clearly saw all the faces that suddenly became different. The same, yet unrecognizable, pale eyes fixed on the ground. Why did we avoid our own glances? Why did I not rush to these terrible women with my bare hands when they struck the first of us in the face? We were overwhelmed by the feeling of shame. The feeling of helplessness and humiliation, the nightmare of the days of the camp – of powerlessness. We stood there, waiting for cars, abused female prisoners, and outcasts without any rights.
I Rather Die Then Lose My Soul
In the distance, women packed in five passed by, all uniformly dressed in blue and gray striped clothes. We looked at them with interest, myself even with all-consuming curiosity. I was struck by the frightening uniformity and thoughtlessness of their faces; they were almost indistinguishable. Already then, I realized that it was much worse than prison dirt. Those clean equally combed or shaved heads, those soulless, expressionless faces, passed by indifferently, without looking, without speaking a word, without reacting. They didn’t have a face at all! “Hulls” – I thought, and there, in that square, quiet words of prayer escaped me: “God, if you are still over this world, let us keep our face in this terrible place – not life, but souls.”
I thought: – Numbers, nothing else, no surname, no name, no affection; They are already killed. Krysia grabbed my hand and, frightened, whispered: “They are all the same.” I understood her fear immediately and quickly said: – “You know, only those shaved heads give such an impression” – she breathed a sigh of relief, but I knew that we were afraid of the same thing. However, not all of them passed without a word. There were “live” Polish women, those with red triangles. (We did not know then that red means a political prisoner). So they passed, secretly smiling at us; they instructed us to throw the little things far – that maybe they could collect them for us later. They all whispered: – Sondertransport, Sontertransport. We did not know what it meant, why they said that about us. We later found out that Sondertransport means transport with the death sentence. We were just set aside to be “finished,” some on a particular date, some with an unknown one. But, as it turned out – without trial and defence – we all got the same death penalty. The Lublin Gestapo was known for high penalties, imposed regardless of age and type of “offence.”
But on September 23, 1941, all this was unknown to us. On that first day, nothing special was noticed in the treatment of our transport. We were admitted to Baden – the shower room – one by one. So we stood waiting for our turn; members of our intelligentsia, teachers, and many young girls, especially the girl guides of “Szare Szeregi” – Gray Ranks – the youngest was fifteen years old. Most women were arrested for conscious participation in the resistance movement. I watched them about to throw off their “civilian dresses.” They were all vigilant. I looked at them and wondered how many would survive and keep their “faces”?
Already strangers were coming out of the Baden, they looked terrible, but it’s easier to have a sense of humour when you are a teenager. We burst out laughing and looked at the next ten coming out. I calmed down a bit. Maybe those old Haftlings seen on the square weren’t so stupid; perhaps it’s just a dress. Even members of our intelligentsia in striped uniforms and with bald heads looked equally impersonal and similar.
I don’t know why they did not shave my head. Maybe because I had already got cut my hair short in Lublin prison, then we all found out that you never knew what or why in that horrible place.