A Delayed Life by Dita Kraus

Author:Dita Kraus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

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For the time being I stayed with Aunt Manya, and Grandmother remained at Uncle Leo’s. We would look for a flat and move in together, we hoped.

In the first days and weeks after our return from the concentration camps, survivors were searching for their families and friends. No one knew whether a dear one was dead, had not yet returned, or was perhaps hospitalized somewhere in Germany. If you met some acquaintance, you started asking, have you seen X, or have you met Y, or do you know anything about Z? People usually knew about their campmates, but there were so many different camps where we had been dispersed after Terezín and Auschwitz! On the walls of the Jewish Community Office there were lists with names of survivors and requests for information. Notices were stuck at railway stations and billboards with pleas for contact. Every day the radio broadcast more names, and one day I heard my mother’s name. Searching for her was Mother’s best friend, Edith, after whom I was named. I remembered her from a visit when I was about six. She took me to a toy shop and let me choose not one but three toys. She was sad to learn that Liesl was dead, but I never heard from her again.

Adjusting to normal life wasn’t easy. I had no plans; it didn’t even occur to me to think what I should do with myself. I owned nothing … had no income. Till then I’d never had to make any decisions; before the deportation I was a child and my parents took care of everything. In the camps we were sent here and there; the Germans were the masters of our lives, and we had to obey orders. I never thought that now I had to take responsibility for my life.

I was a guest in Manya’s tiny flat, and I wanted to have a good time. I would eat all day long, but as much as I ate, I still remained hungry. The feeling of hunger went on for years after the war. It was not hunger in my mouth or my stomach, it was hunger in my head. It drove me to eat everything that was in the house; I never felt sated. I had already gained weight after the liberation and was now getting quite plump. In a photo from July 1945, my face looks really bloated. Much of my hair had fallen out after the typhus.

Food was still available only with ration cards, and there was a shortage of everything. Manya made sure to have at least enough bread in the house, because I was able to eat half a loaf at a time. I had nothing to wear. It was summer, and I wanted a swimsuit and a light dress.

Manya took me to several charity places, where I could choose a few items of used clothing and, most important, a pair of secondhand shoes. They were not my size, but I liked them.

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