“We are free!” I mused aloud, nodding in time to the music.
“Yes. No more terrible pflegerin!”
“No more Heil, Doktor Mengele!”
“No more experiments!”
“No more shots in the arms!”
“No more hangings.”
“No more . . .”
We were having a contest to list everything we would not miss now that we were free.
“We can do what we want!” Miriam said, satisfaction filling her tiny face.
Her words stopped me short. We can do what we want.
I watched everyone celebrating, but did not see it. I heard the music and singing, but did not listen to it.
We can do what we want. Whatever we want. We are free.
Memories of home filled my eyes. The sounds of the farm echoed in my ears: chopping wood, chickens clucking, cows bellowing. The smells of ripe fruits in the orchards filled my nose. I have no idea how long I sat there thinking.
It was Miriam who interrupted my reverie. “What is it Eva?” She shook my arm. “Eva! What?”
I turned to face her, my eyes finally adjusting to her presence. “Home,” I stated. “I want to go home.”
Miriam searched my face. “OK. We are free. Let’s go home.”
We took stock of our very few belongings, tucking them under us and into our clothing. That night we slept soundly for we had a plan: We were going home as soon as possible.
The following afternoon many Soviet people gathered around us. They asked Miriam and me and all the surviving children, most of them twins, to put on striped prison uniforms over our clothes. Because we were Mengele’s twins, we had never worn those Auschwitz uniforms before. I was already wearing two coats because it was so cold. Underneath our coats and dresses, Miriam and I carried everything we owned: food, bowls, blankets—things we regarded as treasures.
We stood at the very head of the line and held hands as Soviet soldiers marched us out of the barracks between the high, barbed-wire fences. A nurse holding a small child in her arms walked beside us. Huge cameras kept filming, filming. I looked at the cameraman and wondered why he was taking our picture.
“Are we movie stars or something?” I wondered. I was very impressed with it all. The only real movies Miriam and I had seen were the ones starring Shirley Temple that our mama had taken us to in the city.
To my surprise, after we had all walked through the fences, the cameraman sent all of us back inside and directed us to march out again. With nuns, nurses, and Soviet soldiers accompanying us, rows and rows of twins filed back into the barracks, then right back out again. We repeated the action several times until the cameraman was satisfied. Years later I found out that he wanted to capture the scene as part of a propaganda movie showing the world how the Soviet army had rescued Jewish children from the fascists.
At last, for the final time, Miriam and I, hand in hand, walked out of the barracks in matching striped uniforms. Miriam and I had survived Auschwitz. We were eleven years old.
Now we had only one question: How exactly would we get home?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
All around us people were preparing to leave. They just walked away from camp. I did not know what direction to take. I did not know where on earth we were. In those days I did not know there were countries called Poland and the Soviet Union. Having gone to school in a small village in Romania, I had learned nothing about the rest of the world.
For the next two weeks, Miriam and I stayed in Auschwitz with many other former prisoners. At first we did not have enough to eat. I went back to the basement and filled my scarf with flour.
“Nyet! Nyet!” No! No! shouted a Soviet soldier. He fired a shot.
Frightened, I spilled the flour, ran outside, and raced back to Miriam. Later I realized that the soldier was not shooting at me the way the Nazis had. He was trying to scare me. The Soviets had taken charge of the camp and were trying to maintain order.
I do not remember organizing any food After that. The Soviets fed us soup with beans in it that tasted good. As soon as Miriam and I started eating we could not stop. By then we knew that eating too much was bad for us, so Miriam and I monitored each other. We did not want to die from overeating like other twins we had known.
A few weeks later we finally left Auschwitz. We were taken in a horse and wagon to an orphanage in a monastery in Katowice, Poland. Later we found out that the arrangements had been made by the Soviets, who were working with the Red Cross and Jewish Refugee Organizations.
When we arrived at the monastery, we were taken to our new living quarters. I was shocked. Miriam and I were given our own nice room. There were two beds with clean, white sheets. Sheets! I had not seen a white sheet in almost a year. I felt strange and out of place. No one had bothered to give us baths; we were filthy and covered with lice. There was no way I could sleep on that clean, white bed.
For a long time I stared at the sheets. That night I ripped them off the bed and went to sleep on the bare mattress. I did not want to make everything dirty. It seemed wrong.
The nuns had also put beautiful toys in our room, but the toys made me angry. Toys were for children. I was eleven years old, but I no longer knew how to play. What I wanted and needed was warmth and loving care. At Auschwitz, I had struggled to keep myself and Miriam alive. Now I only wanted to go home. The nuns did not know what to do with us. They considered us orphans.
I spoke up for Miriam and me. “We’re twins. Th at’s Miriam, and I am Eva Mozes. Our father is Alexander and our mother is Jaffa. We are from Portz.” We spoke to them in Hungarian because we did not speak Polish; a translator then told them what we had said. Conversations took a long time.
“Where are your parents?” asked the nuns.
“I don’t know.”
“Who will take care of you?”
“I don’t know. We want to go home,” I kept telling them.
The nuns said, “Children cannot be released if they do not have parents.”
“But we do have parents,” I said.
“Where?”
“I have to go home to find out if they came back from the camp,” I said. Now that we were safe, I could still hope to find Mama and Papa and my sisters.
The nuns told us we could not leave unless there was someone to take care of us. So there we had to stay.
I did not like living in a Catholic monastery. At this place, crosses, crucifixes, and paintings of the Virgin and child surrounded us and seemed foreign. I longed for someplace more familiar. I wondered what my papa, a religious Jew, would think if he saw Miriam and me in a monastery. The nuns did not try to convert us or anything like that, but it was just so strange a place to find ourselves.
Older girls who had survived Auschwitz and were staying at the monastery told us that we could go into the town of Katowice and ride the streetcar without paying for tickets. All we had to do was show the numbers tattooed on our arms. They told us we did not have to speak Polish or say anything. Since we spoke mainly Hungarian, that was a small relief.
So we went into town and found what they told us was true: We could ride the streetcars for free. Over and over, Miriam and I rode the streetcar from one end of town to the other. The sheer joy of being free, feeling the wind in our ears, and being able to choose what we did was so liberating to us.
Through the older girls, we learned that some survivors of Auschwitz were being held in a displaced persons camp at Katowice, including our friend from home, Mrs. Csengeri, and her twin daughters. One day I thought of a plan to get us out of the monastery.
“Come on, Miriam,” I said. “We’re going to see Mrs. Csengeri.”