My Name is Eva(53)
49
Eva, 30 November 1945
From the East
And through the smoke and steam yet more came, clambering down from the boxcars. A ragged tide of tired, hungry refugees. Clutching sour blankets, muddied greatcoats, precious bundles and children, they trudged wearily along the railtrack.
‘Brigitte, over here,’ Eva yelled. ‘I’ve got another one.’
Brigitte ran across to where Eva was helping an exhausted mother down from the train, her fractious baby clutched to her empty breasts. A new consignment of several thousand inmates had just arrived at the nearby station, originally constructed for the mighty war machine. All ages, all states of health stumbled towards Eva and the aid workers, past heaps of freshly shovelled snow.
‘If only they’d give the mothers clean nappies for the journey,’ Brigitte said, shaking her head. She took the baby and unwrapped the soiled rags. Eva caught the whiff of ammonia as Brigitte turned her head for air. ‘No wonder he’s screaming, just look at the poor thing.’ His skinny buttocks and thighs were livid scarlet, the skin shiny.
‘Ow, it looks so sore,’ Eva said, as Brigitte gently bathed the baby’s burning flesh and applied a thick protective coating of zinc oxide cream.
‘He’ll soon feel more comfortable. It’s not the worst case I’ve seen,’ Brigitte said. ‘But some will always bear scars from this. And most of the babies are also dehydrated. Many of the mothers are malnourished and aren’t producing enough of their own milk. They probably haven’t been able to feed their babies for the entire journey.’ She wrapped a clean nappy round the child and handed him back to his grateful mother, then turned her attention to the next screaming infant. All along the track, Brigitte’s nurses were spotting those most in need, soothing babies, comforting the sick and welcoming heavily pregnant women.
Eva then ran to help a frail white-haired woman who was trying to clamber down from one of the boxcars, several feet above the track. She was probably no more than forty-five years old, but she looked like a wizened grandmother with her sunken cheeks, shrunken breasts and white head. Yet she had done her best to make herself presentable for this journey, with a knotted grey kerchief over her combed hair and a clean black apron round her waist. She extended her scrawny arm, reaching for Eva’s outstretched hand, and as she did so, the loose sleeve of her blouse slipped back to her elbow. And there on her skin was the telltale mark: the eight purple numbers on the inside of her forearm.
Eva could not help a slight intake of breath at the sight of the tattoo and the woman caught her eye and nodded. ‘Dachau,’ she whispered.
No further explanation was needed. Eva tried to smile as she helped the woman from the train, but inside she told herself, You mustn’t look shocked, you’ve seen those marks before, even though you’ve only been here ten days. They’re all around you, the ones who’ve survived, all with those indelible numbers.
Another four thousand displaced people were arriving at the camp that day and all the aid workers were on hand to help the travellers disembark from trains that had transported them into hope, rather than the hell of their previous journeys. ‘Go to the nurse,’ Eva told a man with open, weeping sores. ‘There’s soup and bread over there,’ she said to a family with hungry, fretful children, directing them to the steaming vat of broth.
Paperwork had to be completed and names noted, but they needed food and comfort too.
‘Careful, look where you’re going,’ Eva cried as a man jostled her in the crowd. Anxious residents from the camp ran up and down the track, shouting names, peering into the boxcars. Each time another train arrived, they searched for the missing. Was that a long-lost cousin or brother they’d glimpsed? Was a former neighbour on this convoy, with news of their relatives? And had anyone seen their lost child?
All the men were lean and hungry, but even when they had been eating well in the camp for a while, the women still didn’t lose the bulging bellies that were the result of their years of surviving on dry black bread and thin potato soup. How many repatriation forms she had already completed in her short time at the camp, Eva could not say. Every day there were questions to ask and disappointment to contend with. People went and yet more came, so still the camp was full.
When all the newcomers had been allocated their quarters, all the babies had been fed and cleaned, and all the paperwork completed, the team allowed themselves a break. ‘It’s never-ending,’ said Eva. ‘No sooner do we ship people out than another load arrives. This place never seems to get any emptier.’
‘We’ve got twenty thousand here pretty much all the time,’ said Ken. ‘But if you’d seen what this country was like immediately after the war ended, you’d think this was a breeze, kid. All the roads were heaving with foreign slave workers trying to find their way back home. Everywhere we went there were distraught parents trying to find their children and lost kids trying to find their mums and dads. And on top of it all, there were goddamn scared-shitless Nazis sneaking back and trying to find a place to hide away and pretend it was nothing to do with them.’
‘So, are you saying it’s all calm and under control here now?’
‘Not exactly, but it’s a damn sight better than it was. We’re bringing some kind of order for these poor bastards with only their OST cards for ID.’