“I make myself not to hide the food in the napkin. The approaching destruction has turned us into predators”

Lidia Maksymowicz was one of one and a half million people who passed through Auschwitz. One of the seven thousand that lived to see the liberation of the camp. With a number tattooed on his wrist. She covered it with plaster for a long time. So that people don’t ask. So she wouldn’t have to translate. But she did not remove the number – to tell today about the hell she experienced, about the lost childhood and the darkest test of humanity. More than 70 years later, the faded number was kissed by Pope Francis. 70072. The symbol of victory over hatred. Below you can read a fragment of the life story of Maksymowicz, which the woman and Paolo Rodari described in the book “The girl who could not hate” (Wydawnictwo Znak). It was translated into Polish by Anna Wójcicka.

Lidia Maksymowicz, Paolo Rodari, “The Girl Who Could Not Hate”, transl. Anna Wójcicka – an excerpt from the book

Adjusting to normal life is very difficult for me. I am constantly on the move. After all these days of nodding in the camp barrack, it seems unreal that I can finally move, run, jump from one meadow to another. For the first few days, I would like to go back to wearing two shoes, both left, the ones in which I left the camp. And the big red sweater with which I tied my arms when I left. I don’t remember where I got these things, but I got attached to them. However, the lady gets her way. He throws it all away. This is a small trauma for me, which I deal with by walking barefoot at first. It takes me a while to put on my normal left and right shoes like all other kids.

I suffer more at the table. After I have overcome my initial indigestion, I can eat anything. But I can only do it with my hands. And only voraciously. When they serve me food on a plate, I devour it one bite after another. I bite very little, swallow the food almost whole. This rush is also the result of camp fear. There was always a fear that other children would steal what I was getting, that the Germans would take it away from me. You had to eat at full capacity, you shouldn’t hesitate – so much so that even today, years later, I tend to eat this way. But it is at the end of each meal that I am brutal to myself. I have to force myself to resist the temptation and not to hide a piece of food in a napkin, not to take it with me. The temptation is great – even today in restaurants I have to tell myself not to do it. This testifies well to how overwhelming the camp experience was, the desire to survive against everything and everything. It is the feeling of impending doom that has made us all predators.

In the first days after Birkenau, many things are difficult for me. Among other things, the stairs. I can’t climb stairs because I don’t understand what they are for. And I’m afraid of them. If I get close to them, I begin to crawl. The lady is not very patient, she often gets nervous. But then he realizes that he has to let go, give up. Imposing yourself does not always lead to the desired effect. She soon realized it – if she allows me to discharge myself, I tire, I become more docile and obey her.

After a few weeks, I give up. “If you don’t want to call me mama, at least call me Auntie,” the lady repeats. It seems to be a good compromise. And so she becomes my aunt, closer to women than she was until now. And a little later she becomes a mother, mother Bronisława. She’s still authoritarian, of course, but I can have some confidence in her. It doesn’t take long before I realize this is my new family, for better or worse, and that she is my foster mother, the woman to grow up with.

The days go by and the unease that dominated my life just after camp starts to subside. I am getting used to my new life, although I still act as if I did not leave the camp at all – I obey my mother Bronisława, I do not fully show my feelings to her; I obey, usually keeping silent, not expressing what I feel. The survival tactics I learned at Birkenau are still with me. One example is what happens one winter morning. It’s a clear day, but the streets are completely covered with snow. Bronisław’s mother decides to take me for a walk. I always miss the free air, I don’t like to play indoors. I throw away the little doll that was given to me irritably. I do not like typical children’s games, the only entertainment for me is running around the meadows, breathing in fresh air, enjoying the freedom that the camp deprived me of. So Bronisław’s mother ties a rope to the sledge and drags me through the streets of the city.

There is a little goat with me, which I usually play with in the yard. I hold her between my legs and we play together. We don’t weigh much so pulling us is not difficult. At some point the goat starts bleating. Bronisław’s mom stops and looks back. The sledge is empty. The goat and I fell off the sledge into the snow. The beast groans and I sit on the ground completely covered in snow, but I don’t cry or complain. If it weren’t for this little goat, Bronisław’s mother would not have noticed anything. I was taught to be silent and not to complain. And so I do. Bronisław’s mother hugs me, asks me why I never cry. I look at her without answering, but let her stroke my hair and hold my head against her breast. It is hard to reach me, deep inside I try to survive rather than live, convinced that sooner or later Anna, my real mother, will come back to me and everything will start anew, like when we were together in Belarusian forests.

Nevertheless, I am also learning to love my mother Bronisława, who, although authoritarian, does everything to make me feel at ease. And with her her husband, who in the meantime returned safely from the German camps. Bronisław’s mother is a meticulous woman, a perfectionist. She always tries to dress me with due care. She sews dresses and skirts for me. She wants me to show myself to all of Oświęcim in a certain way, with her hair nicely combed, she wants people to congratulate her on how lovely and adorable I am. At home, he has a newspaper clipping with a picture of Shirley Temple, a girl with golden curls. He is a role model for her. She wants me to dance like her, but she will never convince me to do so. My curls, however, are similar to hers. When we leave, he introduces me to his friends as his little Shirley Temple. I don’t care about such things, but I can adapt. I smile as much as I can. And I accept compliments from her friends without commenting.

I am very good at playing with other children. Especially in hide and seek, I am unbeatable. The camp was a good lesson in this regard. There, I learned the techniques of disappearing from everyone’s sight, sneaking into the most unimaginable places, becoming invisible, and even spending hours without anyone hearing me. I noticed that also cats, when they get scared, run away to inaccessible places and from there they observe what is going on outside, unnoticed. This is what I do. Ultimately, hide and seek is about the fact that I like to find places where I feel safe and where I can watch what is going on and no one knows where I am.

One day I decide to hide in the bushes, just outside the yard of the house. I enter them carefully, taking care not to leave any traces behind me. The kids I play with start looking for me but can’t find me. After a while, they get bored of it and forget about me. However, I am not leaving. I stay there, locked in my hideout. I’m not going to come out. My thoughts go back to those moments when Dr. Mengele would come to get us from the barracks. I crawled under the wooden boards to the wall. He couldn’t see me. I would close my eyes and talk quietly to my mother. “They won’t take me,” I told her. “I will endure for you.” Same in the bushes – I close my eyes and still talk to her. “You can’t be dead,” I tell her. “One day you will find me and we will be together again.” In the evening, I hear that Bronisław’s mother is calling me. He’s worried. She hasn’t seen me all afternoon. Nobody knows where I am. So I decide to leave. I go to her, she hugs me. I tell her, “You don’t have to worry about me so much. I was just playing hide and seek.”