"Typhus" by Sarah Lumer

Introduction:
Although Carly and I were the first students to ever interview Sarah, we were not the first people to hear her story. Over the past few years Sarah has been takes classes and has begun to write her memoirs. She has written multiple short stories about specific events in her life and Carly and I were lucky enough to be able to look at some of these. The following is one of many autobiographical stories written by Sarah. In it she recounts how she contracted typhus during the War and what its effects were like.


"Typhus"

That winter between 1944 and 1945 seemed particularly bitter. Celie, Rosie and I had become quite thin, and we were happy to work in the kitchen. We nibbled at potatoes and cabbage when no one was looking and sometimes were given a little extra bread by one of our supervisors. We considered ourselves lucky. The most difficult work I had was scraping carrots, because the sugary carrot spray stuck to the back of my hands and froze. I had to clean my hands regularly with lukewarm water, but sometimes I just forgot. I envied the women who were clever and wore gloves with the finger coverings cut away. They didn’t have my problem.

Once after work, I noticed my hands had become puffy. A few days later, the skin cracked and a strange liquid oozed out of the cracks. The liquid was clear, but thick and sticky. The German soldier who guarded us – the same one who had asked me if both my parents were Jewish – ordered me to go to our camp doctor, who was one of us. When I came to his office, the doctor, who was from Budapest and had a graying mustache, examined my hands. He said I had frostbite. He instructed me to simply keep my hands warm and dry. He was sorry, but he had no medication for me, he said. I should come back in three days.

Fortunately, I had traded my bread rations – one loaf of bread – for a dead man’s blanket. Back in the barracks, I rolled that blanket into a kind of muff to keep my hands warm. A man who I often offered an extra helping of soup, gave me a small jar. He said it was a remedy for frostbite. I spread the cream over my hands and I think it helped a little.

Eventually, the skin on the back of my hands shriveled and peeled off. A new, darker skin had formed underneath. I kept applying the cream until it ran out. My hands stayed pink, like they were sunburned, for the longest time.

Soon after, I went back to work in the kitchen, I started to feel sick. I had a fever and got so dizzy, I had to hold on to the walls to get from one place to another. I went to see the Hungarian doctor again. He put a thermometer in my armpit and checked my temperature.

“Forty degrees,” he said.

He felt my neck with his soft fingers, then asked me pull up my blouse. He wanted to examine my belly.

“Look,” he said.

Small red spots covered my mid-section, like when I had measles as a little girl.

“I’m afraid you have Flecktyphus, Suri.” he told me, using my Hungarian nickname.

Typhus. I couln’t believe it. So many people had gotten it. But why should I be surprised, especially after working with the sick women for so many weeks?

“What should I do?” I asked the doctor.

“Nothing,” he answered. Just keep eating and especially drinking, if you can.” And he told me again that he had no medicine. For Jews, there was never any medicine.

When I got back to our barracks, Celie and Rosie convinced me not to stay in bed. They told me I’d be shot if I didn’t go to work. Germans had no use for sick Jews. So I went back to the kitchen, but wasn’t able to work much, or swallow any food. I could barely drink, either. I became weaker and weaker and one day, I fainted in the yard. I was taken to the shack with the sick women, and they put me on a top bunk, on the third level.

I didn’t want to die, I couldn’t die. I kept thinking that Mother had borrowed money for the ticket to send me to Budapest. How could I die? She expected me to survive and I couldn’t disappoint her. She’d kill me.

Friends came to visit. Besides Celie and Rosie, there were the two electricians and the two Romanian carpenter brothers who had built the bunks. They brought me bits of food, like butter, and told me to keep it on my tongue, letting it melt and run down the back of my throat. Once I got an apple. I chewed each bite for what seemed like hours, unable to swallow, but still tasted the juice sweet in my mouth.

I lay on my back, not really feeling hunger, just a terrible thirst. My fever rose and as I watched the ceiling, I saw large black birds flying back and forth, strange birds I’d never seen before. They were similar to the ones that dove out of the sky and caught the baby ducks and geese in our front yard in Sekernice. With screaming chicks in their claws, the vultures flew away, feathers falling to the ground. The shadows on the ceiling frightened me and I closed my eyes until they were gone. I thought they were the angels of death and would carry me away in their claws, too. I felt like I was going crazy.

Eventually, my fever broke and I started to feel better. But I was still weak. Several days later, Celie and Rosie came to say good-bye. They had been transferred to a German officers’ spa about a kilometer from our compound. They said they were being assigned to clean the rooms and baths at the spa. I stayed behind, hoping I could soon join them. I felt like I was left all alone.

After what seemed like weeks, I started to walk around on my own, still dizzy, but much better than before. One day, the watchmaker from the men’s barracks came over with an official slip of paper in his hand. I was to be released. He told me to pack my few things and brought me to the spa where Celie and Rosie were working. We were so happy to see each other again. The two of then had their own room with two beds and they organized another bed for me. I was thin as a thread, but now I was so hungry, and I ate all the food Celie and Rosie brought me from the Wehrmacht kitchen next door. I was never as hungry in all my life, and I never ate as much.