Long Way Home(82)

Sam! It was Sam!

I smiled and whispered his name. He was still as handsome as a film star with hair the color of honey and eyes the same greenish-blue as the ocean. I remembered the first time we met, just as the St. Louis began to steam out of the harbor in Hamburg. I had heard a voice saying, “Right on time,” and I’d turned to see a young man about my age standing behind me, studying his pocket watch. “Germans are always on time,” he’d said. He’d closed the lid and returned the watch to his pant pocket, then smiled and held out his hand. “I’m Sam Shapiro.” And now Sam was bending over me and reaching for my hand again, not to shake it but to feel for my pulse.

“Sam,” I whispered again.

“What’s your name?” he asked me in English. Sam and I used to practice speaking English on board the ship. We had taken English lessons together in Antwerp.

I smiled up at him. Sam knew my name but I whispered it anyway. “Gisela.”

“I’m Jim,” he said. “And I’m going to take good care of you, Gisela.”

*

I was one of the lucky ones. My body responded to the food and medicine I received. Maybe it was because I had been in Buchenwald less than a year, while others had been there for a lifetime, laboring in the quarries. But when my fever broke and I was able to sit up by myself for the first time, I saw a Nazi guard tower and strings of barbed wire outside the window. Tears filled my eyes as I sank down in bed again. I was still in Buchenwald. This hospital and the care I’d received had been only a dream. Soon I would awaken to the nightmare that my life had become.

“Are you all right, Gisela? Is something wrong?” I opened my eyes and saw the soldier who had first rescued me. The soldier I had mistaken for Sam. I thought I remembered him feeding me in my feverish dreams, giving me medicine and kind, tender care. His face had often been the first one I saw when I startled awake from a nightmare. Even so, I was disappointed to realize that he wasn’t Sam after all. I rose up on my elbows again and looked around at the rows of beds crowded together, filled with hundreds of patients like me. Many had IV bottles dangling from stands by their cots.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“In the hospital. I’m an American soldier, and we set up this hospital after we liberated the camp.” He had replied in English but his words were clear and easy to understand.

“So I am still in Buchenwald?” I asked, also in English.

“Yes, but you’re no longer a prisoner. We turned the former SS barracks into a hospital for now. We believe you have typhoid fever but you’re getting better, Gisela. I’m so glad.”

“How long have I been sick?”

“We arrived at this camp almost a month ago. And I have more good news for you. The Nazis have surrendered. Hitler killed himself. The war is over.”

“Is that really true?”

“Yes. It’s really true.” I closed my eyes as they filled with tears. “You’ll be strong enough to leave this place pretty soon, Gisela. You’re a real fighter. I admire your courage.”

He had called me by my real name, not Ella Maes and not by the number tattooed on my arm. “How did you know my name?” I asked.

“You told it to me on the day I arrived. My name is Jim, by the way. Jim Barnett. I’m a medic in the US Army. Are you hungry? We’d like it if you tried to eat every few hours. Not much, just a little bit at a time.” I told him I would try, and he let me feed myself for the first time since I’d been rescued, urging me to go slowly. “Your body needs to get used to food again.”

In the days that followed, Jim slowly brought me back to life as surely as if he had transfused the blood from his own arm into mine. The food and medicine healed my ravaged body, but his gentle touch and soft voice healed my soul after years of bitter abuse. “Do you feel like getting up and maybe taking a few steps?” he asked one morning. “I can help you.”

I agreed, knowing I would need to recover my strength if I hoped to leave Buchenwald and search for Sam and Ruthie. As far as I knew, they were the only loved ones I had left, and they gave me a reason to go on living. Jim slowly helped me to my feet, pausing until the dizziness passed and I found my balance. He wrapped his arm around my waist to steady me as I started walking again. I wondered if he was repulsed to be gripping a living skeleton. We reached the end of the row of beds, and I stopped for a moment to rest and catch my breath before turning back. There was a small window there that looked out at the bright spring day. Buchenwald meant “beech grove,” and the trees on the little hill beyond the barracks had new green leaves. I looked only at the trees—another sign of hope—and not at the barbed wire or the sprawling ugliness of the camp below. Death had been a daily presence in Buchenwald. The sight of it and the stench of it had filled every wretched inch of the camp. Now, like the new green leaves on the trees beyond the guard tower, life was reclaiming me and my fellow prisoners.

“You seem to understand English very well, Gisela,” Jim said as I hobbled back to my bed. “Where are you from?”

“I grew up in Berlin and lived in Belgium before I was brought here. I learned English because my family hoped to immigrate to the United States.”

“Would you be willing to help us communicate with our other patients when you’re feeling stronger?”