I Have Lived a Thousand Years

Laura has saved a handkerchief, once a piece of her marriage trousseau, by wearing it inside her shoe. After the showers, Laura struggles to wrap the handkerchief around her foot before putting on her shoe. An SS woman screams at her to hurry, calling her “an idiotic bitch” (127). She grabs Laura by the arm and begins twisting it. Bitton-Jackson shoves the SS woman against a wall and tells her to leave her mother alone. The SS woman punches Bitton-Jackson to the ground then kicks her in the face, chest, and abdomen. Lying on the cold, wet ground, Bitton-Jackson tastes blood in her mouth and realizes she is alive. She has committed the gravest form of sabotage—attacking an SS officer—but she is still alive. Her mother entreats her to get up. Bitton-Jackson sees the now-forgotten handkerchief. Laura says she no longer wants it, but Bitton-Jackson does.

They dress and wait outside until dawn. The conditions seem unbearable. Some girls sob or whimper. Others recite passages they remember from Psalms. At dawn, they go to the train station. Bitton-Jackson gasps with pain as she and her mother climb into the cattle cars, but she feels triumphant. She has “attained the first, and greatest, triumph of her life,” and she feels grateful (130). 

The women arrive in Augsburg, a town with “[h]ouses, neat little gardens, cobblestone sidewalks,” and “clean provincial streets” (132). An industrial area houses a factory that produces parts for the Luftwaffe, the German air force. To increase production, the factory requested “500 prison workers from a concentration camp” (133). Male and female Wehrmacht—German military but not SS—officers meet the women at the platform, scrutinizing them “with curious glances” and exchanging “incredulous, puzzled looks” (131). An officer explains they were expecting women and asks who is in charge. They have no escort. Their guards have returned with the train. The officer asks if any of them speak German, and a few girls volunteer. The translators explain they are women from Auschwitz. They line up in rows of five. The Germans wait. Finally, a commandant asks where their luggage is. The women laugh and make wisecracks among themselves in Hungarian (132). The officers do not understand how they can have no luggage.

On the trip to the factory, Laura has trouble keeping up with the group. A female German officer asks her name, and Laura gives her number. The German again asks for her name and calls her Mrs. Friedmann and asks if she can walk faster. Laura says she cannot because of an injury sustained at Auschwitz. Bitton-Jackson is afraid of her mother disclosing this to a German, but the officer says, “Here you will get better. We will take good care of you” (133). At the factory, they are given perfumed bars of soap and clean towels. They have hot and cold water taps they control themselves. They are given warm soup with noodles and a second course of dumplings and sauerkraut. Some of the girls weep. Bitton-Jackson cannot satisfy her appetite, which intensifies with the food, but her “soul soars to heaven” (134). She and Laura revel in the quality of the food. Their sleeping quarters feature individual beds with straw mattresses and clean sheets. Bitton-Jackson thinks the setting feels like a paradise, and wonders what tomorrow will bring.

In the morning, the women line up in the yard to be assigned their work. Factory director Herr Zerkübeloversees the assignments and inspects the women one by one with eyes “blue as ice and just as cold” (135). He measures the distance between their facial features and pulls aside eight “tall, blonde, fair-skinned girls,” including Bitton-Jackson (135). He needs 35 women with “superior intelligence” for his Montage group. He selects women based on the lightest skin, hair, and eyes. The remaining women are grouped likewise. Women with the darkest hair and skin—which include “a noted physicist, a doctor, and a college professor—are assigned “the most primitive tasks” (135). Their living quarters are reassigned by rank, with the Montage group receiving the most spacious room.

Laura’s assignment is to clean floors and windows, which is designed to allow her time to rest and recuperate, though she receives no other medical care. She begins to improve and is soon able to complete her cleaning tasks, though her posture is permanently stooped, and she walks with a limp.

At the factory, Bitton-Jackson works on an assembly line assembling small, complex instruments crafted from tiny parts that are cut, polished, and painted by the other groups. The completed instrument controls “the distance and direction of the bomb ejected by a fighter plane” (137). Four or five German civilians check the accuracy of their work. Mr. Schneider oversees Bitton-Jackson. Though he does not directly monitor the women, Herr Zerkübel observes everything from a glass enclosure and issues scathing reprimands to anyone who displeases him. Mistakes are assumed to be either deliberate negligence or sabotage. When their work is done perfectly, the instrument makes a “whirring and ticking” sound (138). Bitton-Jackson calls it a “proud” and “happy” sound because they have “created something intricate, and complex, and difficult” but also a “tragic sound” because they are “toiling against themselves” (138).

Five days after they arrive at Augsburg, an SS man arrives from Dachau, a nearby concentration camp. His presence shatters their “little haven of hope” (139). Their sheets are removed. The food becomes tasteless mush. The “most painful transformation” is of the previously friendly German staff. Their guards begin shouting orders and carrying whips, though the Oberscharfürer, the camp’s commandant, remains fair. One evening while shoveling snow, the women discover potatoes stashed for the winter. They smuggle back one potato for each inmate. After lights out, they surreptitiously eat, except Laura. She uses her carved out potato to kindle Sabbath lights, using oil smuggled from the factory and blanket threads for a wick. As she recites the prayers, the Oberscharfürer bursts in, demanding an explanation. He shouts at her to extinguish the candles and throw away the potatoes but does not punish her. Hanukkah is ten days away, and the women save potatoes for a celebration. This time, they post a lookout and are not caught.

Deeming their prison uniforms unsuitable for winter, the Oberscharfürer orders them new clothes. The colorful dresses, coats, and sweaters transform the women “from sexless, ageless, shapeless digits into—girls!” (141). They are ecstatic. Bitton-Jackson receives a pink wool dress and warm tweed coat with a fur collar. She is so excited that she cannot fall asleep (141). She strokes the tweed of her coat and brushes her cheeks with the fur. At work, she basks in Mr. Scheidel’s looks of approval, finally feeling “like a human being” (142). Back in her living quarters, she notices stitching at the coat’s hem—“LEAH KOHN—DÉS,” a town in Hungary. Bitton-Jackson realizes her coat likely belonged to a Jewish girl just like herself who may at this moment be shivering in a prison sack “while I delight in her warm coat” (143). She may have been stripped of this coat and sent to the gas chamber. The coatand her “pretty pink dress”become “an agonizing burden” (143). She feels like “an accomplice to SS brutality and plunder” by benefiting from “pillage and perhaps even murder” (143). She asks herself how she dares wear the coat and dress, saying, “Leah Kohn, forgive me” (143).