Surviving in the camp

Clara did not spend long in Theriesenstadt. Just under a month in fact. But I’ve been very concerned about getting the detail about that stay right. We always assume it to have been a more benign place than many other camps and indeed at the time that Clara was there it was more of a transit camp than anything else though it also provided cheap labour for a country at war.

We have little idea of what it was actually like for her in the camp. And in my story-line I’ve included some fictitious characters – a pregnant mother who gives birth in the camp and her little daughter. I’ve borrowed a businessman who carried on running his business from within the camp. This man really existed and he was able to influence his captors. Here, I’ve used his influence to spare the lives of Clara’s friends and her two children.  

But was Theriesenstadt all that benign actually? Probably not at the time that Clara was there. It wasn’t a death camp – a gas chamber was added much later. Neither was it the “holiday camp” fabricated for the Red Cross, nor were there yet football matches or an orchestra. Compared with Clara’s former upper middle class lift it would be pretty miserable there. Am I getting that across?

I’m currently reading Primo Levi’s If This is a Man /The Truce where we have a detailed picture of what Auschwitz was like towards the end of World War II. People had ways of surviving. Levi was enterprising and sold flints he “stole” from his work place and “sold” them for bread. Clara doesn’t survive but by being such a nice person sets everything up for her friends to survive. She is so good to everyone that she brings out the best in them.    

Levi writes about Auschwitz, which we all believe to be possibly the worst of the death camps. I think I’ve made Theriesenstadt as gruesome. Clara’s family believed for years that she was transported to Auschwitz. We have recently found out, in fact, that it was Treblinka.

It’s likely that she and all the other old people in that transport would have been shot on arrival. They would probably not have known what was happening or not until the last moment. This was actually a quicker death than being gassed which at that time took on average twenty minutes. We don’t see that particular scene in my version of Clara’s story. In the epilogue the two children are now quite grown up and help with archiving of information about the Rexingen Jews. At that point they believe that she went to Auschwitz. Only in the notes at the end, and here, do I reveal that where she actually she went.       

Balancing fact and imagination

I continue with Clara’s experiences in Theriesenstadt. I’ve had to find out some more details:

·         What would happen if a child was born

·         How women coped with menstruation and post-partum bleeding

·         Whether roll-call was as strict there as at other camps

·         What they might have eaten

·         What sort of work they would do

Remembering Theriesenstadt

When I wrote The House on Schellberg Street I did quite a lot of research about Theriesenstadt. Some details stand out:

• It was a model concentration camp and was spruced up to fool the Red Cross.
• It was considered by many to be a ghetto rather than a camp.
• It arranged football matches.
• It had an orchestra. (But so did Auschwitz!)
• It housed many creative practitioners and much art work and music came out of it.
• It wasn’t essentially a death camp  

I’ve now had to revisit some of the research and there are a few less savoury details emerging.   

·         It also provided “striped pyjamas”.

·         Inmates slept in crowded conditions just like in other concentration camps.

·         Heads were shaved.

·         It was a transit camp – many, such as Clara, were held there for a short while before being transported again to the death camps.

·         A gas chamber was installed there towards the end of World War II.

And then we have Clara in the middle of it all, not really knowing what to make of it.

Clara for me has become very much a vehicle for asking how and why.

Already as I write these rather demanding scenes I’ve had her and a companion resist escaping when they have a chance as they are transported.  They have no money and they are in a foreign country where they don’t speak the language, at a time when they don’t know exactly how terrible the place is that they’re going to.

Later she asks herself why they don’t try to overcome the guards. There are so many more of them than there are guards. Then she looks into the cold blue eyes of one of the soldiers and realises that at any given moment it is only one guard and one Jew; the guard is the stronger.

I have, I believe, just three more chapters to write to get to the end of the story, though I may also slot two extra earlier ones in.         

22 August 1942

Now I really am getting to the crucial points in this story. This the date on which Clara is transported to Theresienstadt from Stuttgart.  The Jews to be transported were gathered at the Killesberg exhibition grounds. I’ve almost finished writing this scene. It is the last crossover with  The House on Schellberg Street. The writing has convinced me that Clara was still not absolutely certain of her fate.  Even now she remains hopeful.

The Killesberg still has a big outdoor exhibition site. When I was a student in Stuttgart in 1973 I mainly remember it as being a pleasant enough park. For some reason, though, I didn’t like it. There was no logic to this at all. Was I picking up some bad atmosphere form the place? Or had I actually come across the story of its past and forgotten it again and this was my subconscious telling me this?

The Zeichen der Erinnerung web site gives some information about the transports and a quite interesting account by a German eye witness who saw the transportees depart. It leaves us wondering still: did they know or didn’t they know? Clara’s transport is not mentioned here but it is on the memorial at the Nordbahnhof.

Now I have to deal with the journey to Theresienstadt, life there, and then the transport to Treblinka. I’m not doing any scenes at Treblinka. The final scene will be Clara’s granddaughter, Renate, finding the letter that she wrote but couldn’t send from Rexingen.

I shall put notes at the end of the book about what we think happened to her and how her life ended. We do know though that she was taken to Treblinka. Until we found out about eighteen months ago the family had thought she went to Auschwitz.  

It’s a little shocking that I’m so near the end of the book. It’s perhaps going to come out a little shorter than I’d intended. I do have a couple of extra scenes that I might put in but this must be because they’re necessary, not just to make the book longer. I’ll soon be into editing and redrafting.          

Towards persecution

Now it begins in earnest. Clara has to sell her house. The SS arrive to make sure the transaction has gone through. World War II has started. They all worry about rationing and whether the young men will be called up to fight. I’m still in the autumn of 1939 so there’s still a hope that “it will all be over by Christmas”.

We’re moving gradually towards the darker times. Soon Clara will have to go and live in Rexingen. She will live there in poverty but at least she will be free. Then she will have to move on to Theriesenstadt and Treblinka. Will she at last accept that things are bad?  Soon she will bump into Hani at the Nordbahnhof in Stuttgart. I’m minded to make her try to stay optimistic for the young girl’s sake but I think at last in this scene she is beginning to see through the Nazi’s plans. She will still have some hope. And she will continue to see the best in everyone.

Holocaust stories are particularly difficult. If they’re too dark there is little motivation for the reader. If they are too sanitized there is no justice for the victims. A tricky balance.             

A slightly different creative process this time

Normally I know the end of the story before I start. I know the main hurdles it will go through and I have the structure firmly in my head, even if I haven’t written it down. Sure, the characters take off on their own a little but the skeleton of the story remains intact. This time it is a little bit different.