WHERE THE SUN NEVER ROSE
WHERE THE SUN NEVER ROSE
Description
The traumatic experiences she went through as a child in the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen left permanent emotional scars on Rina Revach. Decades later, she will go on a journey of salvation to the place where she learned what true horror means.
Part of Collections
12 Podcasts
THE 1940S
Tags
Credits
Field Reporter
- Iasonas Nestoridhs
Interviewee
- Rina Rebax
Podcast Producer
- Stayros Blaxos
Sound Designer
- Iasonas THeofanou
Sound Editor
- Spyros Lymperopoulos
Video Director
- Apostolhs Karoulas
Voiceover
- Monica McShane
I should speak. I must. Even with the few memories I have. If now, while I’m still alive, people can deny the holocaust, what will happen when my generation is gone, and there is no one left to bear witness?
I was born in May 1939. Because, as I learned later, human character is formed during the foetal stage, and because my mother was pregnant with me just before the Second World War, I supposed I must have absorbed my mother’s anxiety.
I grew up in a house that I barely remember, somewhere in the Analipsi area. It was a house, an old house, with floors. I think my first memory is of a round table, and a little girl dancing barefoot on the table, and all those below clapping their hands. I think this my first image of myself.
I have no memory of them rounding us up in a ghetto to take us away. My first memory was of being on a train. The train is moving. I have been put up on a crate, because I can see outside.
At some point, the train stopped. We were in a structure, I can’t remember if it was a building, if it was a barrack. It was a long building with triple bunk beds everywhere, and, way, way up, there was a skylight. They had separated the men and women, and I stayed with my mother and my grandma. I was on the top bunk, up against the skylight, on a straw mattress. This is where I spent my days.
My mother and grandmother would leave because they were taken for forced labour. They left me lying there. There was another girl, a little older than me, who was supposed to take care of me, but I never got up off the bed. I would watch the bed bugs in military formation, because bed bugs – I imagine no one knows this now – go along the wall two by two; I learned a lot about bed bugs.
Outside my skylight was the male labourers’ camp. This is the most vivid memory I have of the camps. Outside that camp, there was a cart, a huge cart with wooden sides, pulled by horses; very deep, very big. I don’t remember if it was four horses or six. From down below, two workers threw naked bodies onto the cart: the skeletal bodies of workers. All those who died: one, two, three, onto the cart. The cart would fill up. It would fill to overflowing. A German officer wearing black leather boots got onto the cart and began to jump up and down on the bodies, to pack them together, so that more would fit.
I’m not sure what the girl I was then understood of what she saw from the skylight, but I cried. And I remember the expression: ‘The child is scared; we need some sugar’. Where would we find sugar? It was a luxury item. But it has stayed with me. I have never been able to wear black leather boots. I immediately think of that officer.
One day, I had a fever of 40 degrees. Of course, my mother was worried sick. She couldn’t stay with me, because she had to go to work. So, she came up with a plan, which, thinking about it over the years, I don’t think I would have the strength to do. There was a doctor in our group of prisoners, who everyone loved, because he was our guardian angel. She went to Doctor Alalouf and asked him to take out, to pull out this nail, without anaesthetic, without medicine, without anything.
This way she would be sick and could hold me, because there was no medicine. By sharing each other’s warmth, we would both get better. And we held each other, and we both got better. She pulled out her nail. From the thumb, this nail. This has stayed with me, like... my mother also lived to quite an old age. And when I stroked her hand, this nail was harder and wavier than the other nails. And I would stroke her nails and say, ‘Mum, could I have done something like that for my child?’
I also have very clear memories of the watchtowers. These were watchtowers with searchlights, soldiers with guns, and an electrified fence next to them. These fences were very characteristic. I remember them well. It was a place where the sun never rose. There was no daylight. For it not to be sunny, I understand. But there was never a sunrise. The light was grey and there was drizzle, and sleet, and there were the prisoners with their striped uniforms out in the yard, and the Germans walking around with dogs, counting to see if everything was in order. I can’t remember if I have another image of the camp.
One evening, there was shouting. You heard ‘snell!’, ‘raus!’, the only German I still remember. ‘Snell’ means quickly, ‘raus’ means ‘get on with it’. And they loaded us onto a train, which seemed to be struggling somehow. I was a little older then. I remember the train. At some point, ‘chuff, chuff, chuuuuuff’, the train stops. In the pitch dark, in the freezing cold, the train stops. Nothing was said, nothing was heard. Some of the braver ones got down and opened the doors. We were all alone, no Germans, and, of course, everyone was not just scared stiff, they expected a shell to land on their heads. And then we heard the whinnying of horses. Another language. Soldiers on horses again, but another army, the Russian army. The Russians liberated us.
They took us to a nearby German village called Tröbitz. They put us in an apartment building. The German owners lived on the ground floor. I remember the house. It had a big marble basin where they washed clothes. The beds were more or less normal. We were handed over. I don’t know how we were handed over or received by the UNRRA. At the time, the UNNRA was an organisation that saw to the repatriation of refugees, and they arranged for each of us to go back to our homelands. We got into a black vehicle. They had given us clothes.
When I got into the vehicle, I was wearing an adult’s overcoat, a woman’s, which hung down at the sleeves, everywhere. I kept treading on it. But it wrapped around me, it was warm. My head was shaven. I remember, I sank into a corner of the car and only got out when we reached Thessaloniki. I remember the green coat very clearly. The huge green coat that hung off me. And my shaven head. I was ashamed to be alive. I was unbearably ashamed. That feeling stayed with me for a long time.
When it was time to go to school, I was still shaven. When I went into the school yard, with my shaven head, not knowing anyone, the children were kissing each other, and I just didn’t belong. It was a really lonely feeling, a really cold feeling, I’ll never forget it. The school year began, and I realised that we weren’t... They didn’t welcome us with open arms. As soon as something happened in class: ‘Where is my rubber?’, ‘Where is my sharpener?’, whatever, ‘You took it you dirty Jew, dirty bitch!’ That’s what I grew up with.
There was a girl in my class, and she was the most fanatical, the worst of all of them. One day, I got into a fight with her, we were bleeding, wild, all torn up, and we went along Kritis Street to go by her house. We reached her house, both of us covered in blood, and her mother comes to the door, and then, when I’m expecting her to scold the two of us for fighting and hurting each other, she puts her hands on her hips and says, ‘Why did you come back? I don’t understand why you came back! Why didn’t the Germans make soap out of you? Why didn’t they turn you into lamps?’
I didn’t know what she was talking about. Because I knew nothing of soap and lamps. What I do know is that I ran like crazy back home crying. I had had the shock of my life, and I asked what it meant. What did she mean about making us into soap and lamps? What did that mean? Obviously, my parents hadn’t told me anything about it. There was no point telling a child who had been through so much. After hearing it from Polyxeni’s mother, in a way, I forced it from mine: ‘What is all that about? I don’t understand. Who would make us into soap? How do you even make soap?’ And then I learned.
Bergen-Belsen was in north Germany. When I went back to the camp, as an adult, I felt a great emotional upheaval. I don’t know how to describe it. I’ve been on many trips with my husband, really lovely trips. This was the most emotional trip I have ever been on in my life. I think I owed it to those who were lost whom I never knew. I owed it to the younger me, and to my parents, who must have gone through the hell of all hells with such a young and sickly child.
When I got back from that trip, I thanked God. I am grateful that in my own small way, my own personal way, I honoured those that were lost. I almost feel guilty that I can’t remember more, express more pain, and mourn those who were incinerated there just because they belonged to another religion. I mean, isn’t that just the most ridiculous thing in the world?