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Escaping the Third Reich by Doris Colmes Six million beings, officially designated as vermin who—by their absence—undoubtedly altered the course of humanity. Where would we be had any of them survived? I like to fantasize that one of them would have discovered the laws of anti-gravity, and we might all be floating. Click to read Essay Profile of Author Bio of Author from ETG Essay, Late-breaking Developments Author's Comment on the ETG Experience Updated Bio Click to Purchase Send email to the author (The copyright on this essay is held by the author.  For permission to duplicate: copyright@cunepress.com)

Escaping the Third Reich
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and I can’t bear it. In 1938, fleeing from the Nazis, my family and I got across the border thanks to Mother’s American passport and Papa’s Jewish cash. And now, fifty-seven years later, I find myself sobbing. Is this survivor’s guilt?

January 26, 1995. The sky is weeping on Portland, Oregon, and I am plodding through the routine that starts every work day, brushing teeth and combing hair. Suddenly I am thrown back to September 1938.

It is the middle of the night. At a grim little station on the Belgian border, two border guards and an SS lieutenant have just taken Papa off the train. Mother sits quietly, looking at her lap. My sisters and I are in nightgowns with jewelry pinned to the hems for safekeeping. We watch, kneeling on the seats under the windows, shivering in the dark, our breath steaming the glass. We see Papa and other passengers who have been taken off the train standing with the border police. They are looking at his papers. Papa’s hands make gestures while his face alternates between smiles and frowns. Does he want to fight or flee? Neither is an option. His eyes watch the guards’ every movement. The train makes a sudden grunting noise, jerks slightly forward, then stops again. Papa is now out of sight. I hold my breath. Then we see him walking quickly toward the train, his head held forward rigidly, as if heading into a strong wind. He seems to be making every effort not to look back. I hear myself exhale. He appears in our compartment, breathing heavily, just as the train begins to move. The train picks up speed, and I watch the less fortunate travelers recede. "Why," I wonder, "am I worth more to God than they?" Then, with a giant belching lurch the train takes us over the border into Belgium.

Portland, Oregon. I am driving through the early morning streets of my North Portland neighborhood, and the car radio announcer has just introduced a survivor of the Auschwitz liberation. I start to cry again. I wonder if this was one of the people I left on the border platform so many years ago. I am headed to the supermarket. I drive and weep. At the store, I buy more food than usual. My tears drip onto a package of bagels. I take the food for which I imagine a child in Auschwitz might yearn: oranges and milk, sweets and butter.

I grieve for us all. For what we lost. Not just the poets, the healers, the visionaries. But for the others, too. The ones who would have grown up to light candles, hit their children, fail in business, have extramarital affairs, and pass gas in synagogue. Six million beings, officially designated as vermin who—by their absence—undoubtedly altered the course of humanity. Where would we be had any of them survived? I like to fantasize that one of them would have discovered the laws of anti-gravity, and we might all be floating.

The years have mellowed me, taught me the inevitability of genocide. But I still try to figure out the efficiency of this particular phenomenon. Death without passion. How did death become a gross national product with production schedules, assembly line annihilation with awards for exceeding stipulated quotas? This dispassionate efficiency continues to mystify me and contributes to my sorrow. I wish I had access to a real survivor. Someone who didn’t get to Belgium. Somebody like Elie Wiesel who could explain, make sense of it, give me comfort.

But I am on my own: A counselor, expected to advise disturbed adolescents and their families. I smile through the tears, picturing myself attentively listening to a family disaster—a child not coming home by curfew—while I grieve for the ghosts of futures past, martyrs who died for Adolf Hitler’s whim of iron.

I return home, unpack the unneeded groceries, blow my nose and get back in the car, heading for work. I need to stop at the shoe repair shop on the way, but I am afraid. Auschwitz was in Poland. When box cars full of Jews pulled to their destination, Poles stood by the railroad tracks, drew extended fingers across their throats, and laughed. Their children jumped up and down and threw stones. I am sure that Yakov, the shoe repair proprietor is a Pole. He has that accent. Can I face his well-fed middle age? Was he one of those guilty, stone-throwing children?

When he hands me change I look into his eyes and ask, "Where are you from, Yakov?" He hesitates. (Is there something in my gaze that disturbs him?)

"Russia," he says softly.

"Spaziba," I say—thank you—and smile.

"Thank you," he replies. He smiles, too.

Profile
I met Doris Colmes in 1993 through Janus Youth Programs, a small non-profit agency in Portland, Oregon, that serves adolescents and their families. The agency occupies a tiny, unpretentious building in a marginal Northeast neighborhood which houses a plethora of dedicated, underpaid, sometimes inept, sometimes brilliant staff. Here, Doris worked for fifteen years. Her job? Preparing clients to contend with the world. A curious career for one who spent childhood being chauffeured around pre-World War II Berlin. For one who—after the war—married a jazz musician cum business man with family money in Brookline, Massachusetts.

When the 1960s hit, Doris left her elegant closets and drove west with a poet who was also her son’s best friend. She produced light shows for this entertaining bard, became an overage flower child living the psychedelic hippie life in an anonymous Oregon commune run by a nameless shaman, slept in the bare San Francisco bedrooms of junkies, became a combination Tugboat Annie/Siddhartha as one of the first female bridge-tenders in Oregon.

Later, in the Portland business community, she was chased around administrative desks, ever the desired female, her face opening doors and her foot kicking them back shut. Doris completed her Masters in Social Work at Portland State University this spring, at age sixty-seven. School taught her that she wants to write: yet another curious career that she will render like her life—age, position, and gender just another challenge to meet and devour.

—Candace Crossley

Bio
Doris Colmes
Place of residence: Portland, Oregon.
Birthplace: Meiningen, Germany.
Grew up in: Germany, New York City and Brookline, Massachusetts.
Day job: Program Director, Willowlane Shelter, Janus Youth Programs.
Education: M.S.W., Portland State University.
Awards: National Ski Patrol, outstanding service (1963).
Current projects: Keeping sanity while working full time, finishing graduate school, writing.
Favorite book: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Belief: Jewish/New Age.
Cravings: Fame and fortune.

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