Livia E. Bitton-Jackson - I Have Lived a Thousand Years

A LSO BY L IVIA B ITTON -J ACKSON:

Sometime during the fourth night,

the train comes to a halt. We are awakened by the awful clatter of sliding doors being thrown open and cold air rushing into the wagon.

Raus! Alles raus!

Rough voices. A figure clad in a striped uniform. Standing in the open doorway, illuminated from behind by an eerie diffused light, the figure looks like a creature from another planet.

Schnell! Raus! Alles raus!

Two or three other such figures leap into the wagon and begin shoving the drowsy men, women, and children out into the cold night. A huge sign catches my eye: AUSCHWITZ.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to express my gratitude to Toni Mendez and Jeanette Smith. Their expert guidance and personal warmth transcended the confines of their function as literary agents and served as a continuous source of inspiration.

My thanks to my editor Stephanie Owens Lurie, and her editorial team, for handling the material for this book with sensitivity and insight and thoughtfulness.

First paperback edition March 1999
Copyright 1997 by Livia E. Bitton-Jackson

Simon Pulse
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Childrens Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
All rights reserved, including the right of
reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Also available in a Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers hardcover edition.
The text for this book was set in Adobe Garamond.
Printed and bound in the United States of America
20 19 18 17 16

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Jackson, Livia Bitton
I have lived a thousand years: growing up in the Holocaust/
by Livia E. Bitton-Jackson
ISBN 0-689-81022-9 (hc.)
1. JewsPersecutionsHungaryJuvenile literature. 2. Holocaust, Jewish
(1939-1945)HungaryPersonal narrativesJuvenile literature.
3. Jackson, Livia BittonJuvenile literature. 4. Auschwitz (Poland: concentration camp).
5. HungaryEthnic relationsJuvenile literature. I. Title.
DS135.H93J33 1997 940.5318dc20 96-19971
ISBN 0-689-82395-9 (Pulse pbk.)
eISBN-13: 9-781-4391-0661-7

Dedicated to the children in Israel who, unsung and unacclaimed, risk their lives every day just by traveling to school on the roads of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, for the sake of a secure peace in Israelthe only guarantee that a Holocaust will never happen again.

CONTENTS

On April 30, 1995, I took an El-Al flight from Tel Aviv to Munich. From the terminal I took the S-Bahn to Tutzing, and from there I was driven to Seeshaupt, a small Bavarian resort. This was not an easy journey to take, and I took it after some weeks of deliberation. I was going back to Germanyfifty years later.

It was in Seeshaupt on this very day fifty years ago that the American army had liberated me, along with my brother and my mother and thousands of other skeletal prisoners. Some leading citizens of Seeshaupt had decided to commemorate the event. They formed a committee and dispatched letters of invitation to possible survivors all over the world. One such letter reached me in my New York home, and here I was, making a detour, on a Tel Aviv-New York flight, to Seeshaupt.

The former mayors son, then a nine-year-old boy, remembered how the victorious Allies had led his father and his family and all other members of the local elite to the Seeshaupt train station, where they witnessed a most horrifying picture of human suffering. The sight of thousands of disfigured corpses and maimed, dying skeletons left an indelible mark on his awareness.

Now he is a doctor in Seeshaupt, and when his patients, members of the post-war generation, refused to believe his account of what he saw, he decided to bring back survivors of that ghastly liberation as living proof that the unbelievable did happen.

The sky was overcast and a light drizzle veiled my view as my host, Dr. Peter Westebbe, one of the local organizers of the commemoration, drove me through the streets of Seeshaupt to the dedication ceremony.

Eighteen survivors had arrived for the ceremony from all over the world. Some were from the United States, some from South America, some from Israel, and one from Greece. The townspeople were thereabout three hundred, mostly young. The present mayor of the town officiated at the dedication of a monument to those who had died and those who had survived to be liberated hereover two thousand five hundred, according to records. Young children from the local school planted trees, danced and sang, and the pastor of the local church blessed the monument. The local audience was visibly moved.

We, the eighteen survivors who had returned to Seeshaupt, men and women in their sixties and seventies, briefly reminisced about that liberation day fifty years ago, and as we looked into each others eyes, we saw that the years had not faded the pain of memories. The pain was intact. And so was the sense of overwhelming burden.

A celebration followed the dedication ceremony. Several hundred guests filled the local beer hall, where tables were set up for a festive meal and musical entertainment by the local band.

Quietly I slipped out of the hall, and slowly made my way to the train station. Late Sunday afternoon stillness enveloped the small town. I walked along the tracks to the colorless, deserted, memorable platform. No trains. No passengers anywhere. Total emptiness. Only an incessant, light drizzle.

But for me the platform was full. It was brimming with a disarray of sights, hundreds upon hundreds, a bleeding carpet of dead and dying. I saw Greco, the fifteen-year-old Greek boy with enormous, feverish eyes, begging for water. I saw Lilli, the sixteen-year-old brunette with her leg blown off, sitting in a pool of blood. I heard Martha, blinded in both eyes, calling to her mother. And Beth, and Irene... ageless faces, skeletal limbs filled the gray, translucent mist.

There are no more trains today. I turned around, startled. The woman with the unmistakably Bavarian accent had a pleasant, nondescript face. There are no more trains today from this station.

Thank you. Im not waiting for a train.

She waited, wondering; then, with a hint of suspicion lingering in her manner, she reluctantly walked on.

But the moment was gone. The half-century-old visions were no longer retrievable onto the screen of my present reality. A cold, opaque haze enveloped the tracks; the platform and the grim two-story station house were empty.

I walked back to the beer hall, where the celebration was winding down. What message do you have for us? one of the committee members asked me. What lessons?

I pondered the question. I was fourteen when the war ended, and believed that the evil of the Holocaust was defeated along with the forces that brought it about. Six years later a new life began for me in the New World. A new life, free of threat. A new world, full of hope.

In America I grew from traumatized teen to grandmotherhood. And as the world grew more and more advanced technologically, it seemed to grow more and more tolerant of terror and human suffering.

My fears have returned. And yet my hope, my dream, of a world free of human cruelty and violence has not vanished.

My hope is that learning about past evils will help us to avoid them in the future. My hope is that learning what horrors can result from prejudice and intolerance, we can cultivate a commitment to fight prejudice and intolerance.