Читать книгу David, the forgotten child - Helmut Lauschke - Страница 3

Between tower and trench

The train left the child behind in the thundering snow and raging wind.

The child waits for the mother and her hand, everything else is unknown to the child.

Fear and storms cloud crying eyes in the thundering expanse of ruins and dead.

The child stands abandoned in the darkness, it calls to the mother lost and alone.

It was at the time when Jews and other people were being transported in crammed cattle wagons to the extermination camps in occupied Poland. Elie Wiesel adds the following sentence to the terrible events (“To bury the night, Elisha”): “Happiness is up there. Everything fled up there. How empty it is down here! There is real life there, there is nothing down here. Nothing, Kathleen. Here is the dry desert, the desert that is a mirage to everybody. "

It is the station where the child, overlooked and left behind on the platform, sees his parents drive away on the train. It is one of many children who is scared to death, calls for their mother and does not see their parents again.

It was a lean little boy who was left behind and lost on the platform and was picked up by a woman in Wehrmacht uniform. "Boy, you can't stay here in the cold," said the woman, picking him up and carrying him into a small room that was heated. "Who are you waiting for?" She asked. "To my parents, they took the train without me," replied the boy. The woman in Wehmacht uniform looked serious. "What's your name?" She asked. “My name is David.” The woman in uniform: “And where are you from?” Boy: “We were brought into town on a truck from the village of Brimitz and then on foot to the train station, where we had to wait on the platform."

The woman in uniform with a serious face: “David, you cannot spend the night here and you cannot stay here either. Keep quiet, I'll be back in an hour and pick you up. I have to lock the door and turn off the light while waiting. You don't have to be afraid of the dark. I'll be back for sure, then I'll take you out of here. Do you understand that?" Boy: "Yes, I understand that and I am waiting for you. Another question: are my parents coming back? I ask because every child needs their parents and I have such loving and caring parents." The woman in uniform: "I don't know, I can't answer that question for you either. So wait until I'm back in an hour to get you."

The woman turned off the light, left the room and locked the door. David, the abandoned boy of nine years, felt totally abandoned. He prayed as his mother had taught him and asked God that his parents should return soon because he could not live without them. He falls asleep in the chair. In the dream his parents appear, smiling at him and comforting him with the words that he shouldn't be sad, because they would return soon and in the cold, despite the lack of briquettes, heat the apartment with raw lignite pieces and make it cozy. David replies to the parents in a dream that they should hurry back because he has to get something to eat and his bed to sleep in for the night.

The woman in uniform opens the door, turns on the light and wakes David from his sleep. He is shocked because he has forgotten that he is sitting in a room in the train station, albeit a heated one, and that he fell asleep there. With thin threads of memory he asks himself when the woman in uniform puts her hand on his right shoulder and wakes him up, whether it can be true that he saw his parents here and spoke to them, who smiled at him and comforted him with the words that they want to come back soon and heat up the rooms and make them cozy and warm. The woman in uniform does not notice this communication of silence when she looks into little David's dreamy eyes, but does not follow this look in depth, and tells him that it will be midnight and that she will leave the train station immediately to have.

David rises from the chair, whose head remains below her shoulders with a physical shortness of the woman in uniform. After a short walk to the toilet, the two of them leave the room. The woman turns off the light, closes the door and the lock and takes David's right hand. She notices his hand and body trembling very well. As if the pitch darkness outside gave them the protection they wanted, they left the station and the station square and walked a few hundred meters down a narrow street. Only a few windows of the row houses on either side of the street were dimly lit. Not a word was said to avoid suspicion as much as possible.

From this side street the woman in uniform took a corridor to the back yard, where she stood in front of a small house, where the servants had their accommodation in better times, opened the lock, then quietly the door and locked both after she had finished the small and short ones Entered the hallway without any clattering sound of the key ring. Here, too, she led David into a small back room and only switched on the light after she made sure that the curtain was drawn in front of the small window. There was no light in the front rooms because the woman in uniform did not want to arouse unnecessary suspicion among the tenants in the two-story building.

Here in the little back room she gave little David with the frightened face the first rules of conduct that had to be followed urgently in order to avoid the impending danger of denunciation, because any failure in this regard would be punished with the heaviest punishment, which David, shaken by fear, did not knew. When listing these measures, which is endlessly long for the child, David asks in a slight stammer whether his parents would find their way here. "I don't know, but first of all it's about your safety, which is extremely endangered as far as your survival is concerned," replied the woman with the unbuttoned uniform jacket.

Since David made the face of a thousand questions, the woman pointed out to him with a worried face that now was not the time for the many questions and especially not the time to answer the many questions, because the top priority was absolute silence at this late hour of the evening . The time for the questions and their answers will come, but not now on the first night after leaving the station, because the train and his parents have left him, little David, on the platform. David's body trembled, and tears wet his eyes that the woman of first aid shook hands to comfort him and thought of the preparations for the place to sleep for the little 'night guest'.

David spent the rest of the night in an old armchair, as there was no second bed in the small rear building. The woman stands in front of him between eight and nine in Wehrmacht uniform and says that breakfast is waiting for him in the kitchen, which consists of two slices of brown bread smeared with margarine and beet jam, with a cup of warm Kathreiner brand coffee. The woman says that he should use the toilet beforehand and flush with the full water jug ​​in order to avoid the flushing noise when emptying and filling the water container. To brush his teeth, David could use her toothpaste but not her toothbrush, which he should replace with the index finger, which rubs the toothpaste over the teeth. He could wash his face and upper body over the sink, for which he could use her core soap. The water comes out of the tap cold because, like most people of the day, she could not afford the warm water. A small towel to dry off is hanging next to the sink.

The woman in uniform also says that she has to leave the house around eight-thirty in order to be at work on time. David is supposed to keep quiet while she is away in the house, the window of which is drawn with the curtain and the front door is locked. He should absolutely observe the precautionary measures in order to counter any suspicion of a second person in the small rear building, because failure to do so would inevitably put her and his life at risk, because the road and house controls are strict and ruthless. She would be back from work in the evening and prepare dinner for him. "For lunch I put two slices of bread with margarine and beet jam on a plate on the sideboard next to the kitchen table," says the woman shortly before eight thirty and leaves the house in uniform and locks the front door.

For David it is a huge challenge to adhere to the precautionary measures, while he is in a completely strange house, in which he does not know his way around. The advantage is the smallness of the house with the simplicity of the furnishings, which is noticeable even for a child, which makes it easier for him to familiarize himself with the conditions. He puts the toothpaste on his right index finger and runs that finger over his teeth. Rubbing the finger over the outside of the rows of teeth is easy, but over the inside of the rows of teeth it is difficult to break off the rubbing procedure. Washing his face and upper body with cold water, on the other hand, does not pose any difficulty to him, as the water for washing his face and body at home was only cold.

He dries himself off in the little towel that hangs to the right of the washbasin, runs his fingers through his hair as a comb replacement, and in the small back room next to the old armchair as a bed replacement he puts on the things that are left of the driving and walking procedure the previous day is spotty and dirty. There is even a centimeter-long tear on the pants. David goes into the small kitchen and has breakfast from two slices of bread with margarine and beetroot jam. The Kathreiner brand's warm grain coffee appeals to him the most. He holds the half-empty cup in his hands as he tries to establish telepathic contact with his parents. Inside he calls out the names of his father and his mother, which had to be shielded from the outside so as not to raise suspicions with the chained mortal danger. So David calls out the names of his parents with the greatest desire, but he does not get an answer, as he could easily get in his shouting dream in the darkened and locked room in the train station.

It fills him with fear and the greatest concern that communication with his parents has broken off, until the umpteenth time the call is repeated, a voice can be heard from far away that was his mother's voice and told the son that the train was coming had arrived where he had to drive people with the many overcrowded wagons. “Where are you and where is Father?” David calls out loud to himself, which could not be heard from outside. Mother's voice begins to falter when she says that she and the father were separated after getting out of the wagon. "What do you say?" David yelled excitedly to himself. As she swayed, mother's voice became quieter and quieter, without answering the question of where the train took her and father. It is also the last time that David was able to make voice contact with his mother. In his childlike belief in the good in people, little David cannot even suspect what was going to happen after the extinction of mother's voice and what was kept secret from the child.