I remember my Shamira so vividly. She seems everything but distant to me, even now, after so many years have passed. The raven hair that curled so delicately at her shoulders—those fierce green eyes that resembled that of a cat’s; how could any man forget such beauty? When I stand by the river edge and gaze into the still waters, it is easy to picture her at my side, holding onto my shoulders and grinning as she once did in life. My wrinkles and age spots disappear into the gentle ripples, and once again I am a young polish man, being married in Warsaw, and cracking a glass underneath my foot. The joyous cries still ring in my ears, like a song of a specter that has long passed. I still can taste the sweet wine upon my lips, and hear the violins squealing their Yiddish music. The rhythmic thumping of feet upon dirt floors—my family dancing to a tradition passed down generations; the grass seems to quake around me, as if their spirits still in circle her and I.
We had fallen in love so quickly; a simple look was all that it took, and she had stolen my heart. It was the simple innocence of her that bewitched me. When one would look at her, it would be impossible to think she could feel any emotion such as anger and resentment. I recall the night I finally approached her; she was walking home through the streets toward her home, her blue dress fluttering in the Polish wind. I silently came from behind and took her small hand, bringing it quickly to my mouth to kiss it... Shamira hadn’t recognized me, and with the force of an ox backhanded me across my face.
‘Lieber!’ She had cried, realizing the mistake. She brought her hands to her mouth as a child would. ‘Forgive me!’ An unmistakable look of admiration came over her face, and her mouth opened partially as she drew in a breath of air. Her cheeks blushed, and she glanced away from me. Shamira had said later that she was hesitant to look into my eyes for too long, under fear that she would be helpless to resist me.
It was hard to explain the mark she left to my father, and when I did it was the joke of our small house for many days. It only became serious when I said that I loved her.
In weeks we were married. It was June, the year of 1939.
We had no chance to live the life we so longed for—the life that we fantasized over as we lay in bed the night after we joined. There was no time to have a child—to watch them take their first steps—to give them their ceremony. The false security we lived in was shattered as easily as Germany’s promise had been made, and by September we were in the Warsaw Ghetto; Poland had been defeated by Germany as if it were a feather.
In all honestly I am unsure what level of stupidity allowed us to believe we were ever safe. As the world collapsed around us, as the Nazi’s lust for blood was fueled with bullets in the Ukraine, I am unsure why we remained so fearless in Poland. We may as well have been blind. Perhaps, if we had known the fates that awaited us, if our families had even once fathomed the possibility, we would have escaped to the mountains.
Of course we didn’t. Who, on this earth, is truly capable of knowing the future? If they claim that they do, they are frauds.
On the same conclusion, who, on this earth, can be so absolutely certain that they know the past? If someone says they are certain, they are fools.
We remained in the Warsaw Ghetto for nearly three years. It felt to us both like centuries, and as our families passed away before our eyes, we became numb to the world. I remember the day my last brother died—he succumbed to a sickness many months after it took my parents. He passed away in my arms, mouthing the word “freedom” and attempting to smile. My brother died with this look on his face, and for many hours I stared at him, oblivious to the chill of his flesh. It was Shamira who finally pulled him away from me. She closed his eyes and covered him with a worn blanket, telling me his soul was already at peace.
There was no purpose for having a baby then, though we had plenty of time. Our lives were so consumed with grief that neither of us could contemplate what misery it would bring us. Shamira soon grew too sick to be with child; she seemed to resent the fact. When I spoke one day of our neighbors giving birth to a stillborn, she grew angry; it was the first time she had ever shown such an emotion.
“I had rather die then let this ghetto be the first thing my baby knows.” She spoke. Shamira said it with such tenacity in her voice—with such fueling rage, that I never brought such a subject up again.
After this event, the memories seem to grow dull with me. I can recall bits and pieces—boys lying dead on the street, having died from hunger—snow collecting at our doorways at such a level that we were unable to open them… Perhaps terrible things happened, but they are suppressed; I remember a doctor telling me of such a condition. If that is the case, I cannot find more irony in it, for the things I saw at Warsaw were nothing compared to what my Shamira committed at Treblinka.
I remember the day we were taken... It was in August of 1943. The Nazis came before the sun rose and forced us from our beds with their blaring voices. We were brought outside into the cold morning along with hundreds of others, and like cattle we were crammed into tiny tramcars that brought us to Treblinka. Somehow Shamira and I remained together, even until the very end. While the other women wept and shook at the prospect with death, Shamira only looked at me with an expression of indifference. When the stench of decaying bodies reached us, and once brave men took knives to their throats, she watched the blood flow onto the floor in silence. Her eyes seemed to be shadowed, as if the darkness itself collected upon her lids; perhaps it was the hunger that caused her to look such a way. I had pulled her to my chest, and she buried her face into it, relishing every moment we remained together.
I assume that it was fate… It was fate that made the chambers disabled moments before our group was to be pushed into them; it was fate that led us on a death march through the thick forest under the light of the moon... It was fate that allowed Shamira to cling to me until the last moments. I am unsure what heavenly power gave her the strength to not cry, however, as she watched the others before us gunned down into a pit. When the guard came for her—when he pushed his gun to her chest, she looked longingly up into my eyes and let go. She whispered out my name, as if it was her parting farewell, and I watched as single tear fall down her cheek. I lunged at her, screaming her name, but was restrained by another guard. She ignored my cries and walked willingly toward the pit, crunching the fallen leaves underneath her gentle feet. As the guard aimed his gun, she rose her hands toward the sky, as though she was offering herself to death.
The two shots rang out so distinctly; it was as if the entire world fell silent to honor Shamira’s death. Her body jerked once and fell limply to the ground. There was no further movement from her, at least, there was no movement from my Shamira; my love was clearly dead. The brown leaves she lay upon quickly turned red, and satisfied, the guard went to kick her into the pit.
It was then that her corpse moved. At first it was simply a movement of the head; her dark hair seemed to fall gently to the side. Shamira’s arms then bent, and ever so gracefully she pushed herself back onto her feet. The leaves made not the slightest sound as she stood; they remained perfectly in place, as if she hovered above them. The wounds on her chest offered a last gush of fluid and then ceased to bleed entirely.
The SS guard let go of me and went to his comrade, raising his gun. They watched this miracle before their very eyes, but took her life for granted. They both aimed their weapons and shot several more rounds into her, laughing and speaking to one another in German. Shamira’s body jerked at the force of the bullets, but in any other case was immune to them; it was as if each of the inflicted wounds regenerated before us.
Upon realizing her indifference, the guards ceased their shooting and watched the marvel in curiosity. The men and women behind me began to pray, speaking in both Hebrew and Polish. I was unable, and stood there in silent horror, watching as a terrible look passed over my Shamira’s eyes… It was a look that I never knew her for; the expression wasn’t hers. Her eyes lit afire in rage—she looked at the Nazis no longer helplessly, but with a face of utter resentment. Her crimson lips curled, and she bared her teeth at them, much like a wolf would. Still, I did not understand at my Shamira was lost; I thought of nothing, I comprehended nothing—I only watched.
As one of the guards again rose his gun at her she flung herself upon him, letting out a cry similar to that of an animal. I am helpless to do justice to the scene; it cannot be described. The small girl, no taller then the man’s shoulder, tackled him down to the earth. She buried her deep fingers into his neck, and they sliced through his skin like knives, causing a fountain of blood to spurt forth at her. A terrible scream escaped his lips and he let his gun fall from his hands. He clawed at her in desperation, desperately trying to peel her off. The other guard, having broken from the temporary disbelief that paralyzed him, aimed the gun and shot like a madman. It was useless; Shamira’s hands continued to bury until her wrists were embedded, and in a single movement she tore the head away and threw it to the side. Again, she rose like a ghost, the ground underneath her completely silent.
The men and women behind me rose in a chorus of screams, and seizing the opportunity, fled into the forest. I heard their fleeting footsteps, and yet I remained still, unable to pull my eyes away from the spectacle before me.
With such nonchalance my Shamira looked to the other guard. She rose her bloody hand her mouth and licked her fingers, smiling in deviancy. The guard now knew better then to use his gun; he let it fall to the ground and turned, preparing to flee into the same forest his intended victims had. Shamira gave him no chase to escape. She tackled and choked the life from him, her fingers wrapping so tightly around his throat that it turned blue. He finally lay dead, as limp as she had been before, and I momentary wondered if he too would rise from the grave.
I had no time to ponder such thoughts; Shamira looked toward me. The same rage still burned in her eyes, and she stood from her kill, flinging herself upon me with such speed I was defenseless to resist. She slammed me against a tree and took my neck into her hands, attempting to force me into the same death she had the Nazis. I gripped her shoulders and tried to cry out; when I found my efforts useless, I loving stroked my hand through her hair. A moment of compassion seemed to cross her eyes, and she paused, scanning my clothing. She contemplated for a few moments before letting go of me and backing away. With the same nonchalance she had given the guard she turned her back to me and admired her work.
I collapsed onto the ground and gasped for breath, staring up at her in an utter loss for words. In appearance the demon seemed to be my Shamira—the hair that adorned her corpse’s hair still felt as hers had—though in my heart I knew it wasn’t she. The very manner her body now stood—with such confidence and valor—was foreign to my love; she never had managed such arrogance in life.
“Why do you continue to look at me?” The demon’s words came, cold, though vaguely resembling the tone of my Shamria’s voice. She turned and gazed down upon me with fierce eyes. “Why did you not run like the others? Are you asking for death?”
As she spoke I could see the stain of blood on her teeth; the crimson color covered her entire body, and the ragged dress she had once sown herself from varying scraps was, for the first time, completely colored. I slowly rose to my feet and reached my hand out to her, shaking pathetically. She drew away from me as if I were fire.
“Shamria!” I cried out as my voice involuntary broke out into sobs.
I pulled my arm back and buried my face into my hands. Tears traveled down the sides of my cheeks and collected upon the corners of my lips. I licked them and resentfully enjoyed the salty flavor; it had been so long that I relished in such a taste. When I again gained the courage to look at my Shamira, her eyes quickly darted to avoid me.
“Is that my name?” She asked softly, as if reflecting on its sound. “Shamria?”
I must have allowed a look of dismay pass over my face, for she frowned and moved closer to me, her arms swinging casually at her sides.
“Are you really that foolish? Don’t you know Shamria isn’t here anymore?”
Her words seemed to rise in a crescendo of anger and I backed away from her; the look on her face was that of a demon. As she continued to approach me I turned, and with the innate instinct of my primal ancestors, dashed for the forest. I was given the satisfaction of escape for only a few moments; I felt her hand wrapped around my right arm and froze in mid-step. Those hands, that had once burned with such fire that they brought warmth my lips, were as cold as ice.
I hesitantly turned to look at her. Her face was not of my Shamira’s; it lacked the subtle compassion that I knew her so well for. For a moment, I considered that this experience was an only a dream—that this was all nothing more then a fabrication of a tortured mine—and yet, as I continued to fell the chill of her fingers, I understood my misery was true, and there was no further hope.
“Who are you to me?” I heard her whisper. She allowed the smooth words escape her lips in a true expression of interest.
I was mute for many seconds, and simply gazed into her eyes, cursing both man and God. If angel were to have appeared to me then and asked, “Who is it that you resent the most—the Nazis, or the God that made them?”, I would have been helpless to decide which to slander, for in my eyes they were both equally accountable; the finger that pulls the trigger is no more evil then the arm that aims the gun.
Finally, my lips parted, and my voice came forth in a soft whisper.
“I am Lieber… How can you forget me? Has your love failed, Shamira?”
She shook her head and the darling curls that framed her face lifted in the breeze. Her face was pale now—the scarlet of her lips had faded to a color of a soft rose. The moonlight illuminated the bones of her cheeks, in such a manner that she seemed even more emaciated.
“Forgive me, I do not remember you…” She began, bowing her head. Her language changed suddenly to that of a fluent Hebrew. “I am not your Shamira. You do not know me anymore. Forget your love, and continue with life. Be grateful that God found you so worthy.”
It was as though she believed that was all I needed, for she turned briskly and walked away. Her feet made their way to the path we had taken from Treblinka, and she glanced down the desolate trail in contemplation. A look of contempt passed her face, and in silence she made her way to one of the dead guards, stepping ever so delicately over his outstretched arm. She tenderly lifted his gun from where it lay by his side and studied it with fierce eyes.
It was impossible for me to remain hushed.
“How can I not know you, Shamira? We married—we survived—we remained as one! What are you? What beast has taken her mind and controls her flesh? Dear God, how could such bad will fall upon me, when I am already overwhelmed by it? It is impossible! Shamira, return to me! You demon; what sin you have done by taking her!”
Shamira glared and a mass of deep wrinkles collected on her forehead. Once more she offered me a look of her teeth, grotesquely curling her lips like an animal. It was only in death that I heard the voice of my Shamira screaming, much less in Hebrew; she never had the will to use it upon me in life.
“Do not even think to lecture me on the rights and wrongs of this world! No, I am not your Shamira; if you want to know who I once was, go dig through the corpses in that pit! You saw me die, did you not; or was my death so routine that you did not pay attention to my passing? I am cursed, you ingrate! My spirit turned away at the gates! What peace is there to find on this world? What peace can I possibly come to while I still remember all the pain my very existence caused me? If you lecture morals to anyone, lecture it to God! I am completely innocent in the scheme of things!”
Shamira lifted her head and looked longingly up toward the sky. I understood now that she was truly lost to me. I had never believed in Jewish folklore; before then, they were simply stories that were recited to children before bedtime. As the children grew, such ridiculous tales were shunned, least the young minds were poisoned with such ideas. I too grew into a young man with the belief that the fables were false, believing in only what I saw before my very eyes, or was assured to me in a synagogue.
I remember once, on a cold winter night, my mother told my brothers and I of dybbuks. The very idea of a dybbuk caused us to shiver underneath our blankets. She told us that when people die without completing their purpose, or in such a way that they were filled with hatred upon their demise, they are turned away from the gates of eternal rest and forced back to the earth in the form of a spirit. These forsaken spirits have the choice of wandering the world aimlessly, or taking the form of a mortal’s bodies, that of which is alive or freshly dead. The thought of it kept us awake all night.
The next morning, I asked my father if such a creature was possible; he assured me it was purely myth. It was only I that slept peacefully for many weeks—it was only I that lost faith in the idea of a dybbuk. Ironically, my eyes were the only ones to ever lay eyes on one; perhaps my brothers also would have, if they had not died before their time.
Let me assure anyone of little faith that dybbuks do not only exist, but thrive in this world… Walking down the street, you may pass one, and yet you would not know the difference. I am old, but I am not crazy; these memories have been with me since I was a young man, and have grown only stronger. Shamira’s corpse truly stood before me, possessed by the lost soul of another, who was hellbent on obtaining revenge from those that had tormented and killed her. My Shamira was gone, and the spirit that stole her body was just as helpless as every other victim of God. She was as trapped in the world as I was; there was no escaping sorrow. As the dybbuk stood before me now, struggling to hold back Shamira’s tears, I realized that it was the promised peace after death was the myth, and not my mother’s dybbuk.
“I should have taken your body, I know… I should have waited for you to die, so you could be tougher… ” She paused briefly, as though she were unable to find the words. “Shamira offered herself to me. She reached out to me, and was so beautiful… Was it possible to say no?”
She turned toward me, and with the timidity of a child held out one of the guard’s handguns. It hung loosely from her index finger by the trigger, and she carelessly kept it in such a way.
“Will you help me find my peace, Lieber? My peace does not lie only with revenge; I wasn’t an entirely selfish person in my life, and often my desires helped others. Let me try to end this. Let me try to save them… My sister, I may save my sister, if she still lives. She became a worker, Lieber.”
I looked at her as if she were mad and took a step backward, glancing nervously behind me as if I feared falling into a bottomless pit. She frowned and let the gun fall to the ground, shaking her head and teasing her adorable curls.
“Of course not. Why would you help me find my peace, when I am the one that took yours?”
Once more I witnessed tears come to her eyes, and as she turned, her melancholy movements made it impossible to not pity her. I called out to her in a low voice, trying to disguise my fear.
“No, that is not it. What can I possibly do to aid you? You know that I am helpless.”
Her body failed to regain to assuredness and remained humbly bowed as though her shoulders were brought down by weights. She looked down to her hands and studied the dried blood that coated them, scowling at them with a face of pure discontent.
“You can do nothing truly to help me against the guards; you can only then save me from damning my own conscience. The innocents will need to be protected from me, Lieber. The hate is so overbearing, and there is no control over my wrath. I am unsure why I do not kill you. If you were any other man, I am certain I would. Perhaps a bit of Shamira’s soul still lingers within me.”
I was silent and waited for her to continue. A dark look passed over her face, and it reminded me eerily of the look that once covered Shamira’s during the transport to Treblinka. The darkness seemed to deepen the skin that pulled back to her hollowed eyes and for a brief moment she looked as though she was only a skull.
“I wish I had an angel to guide me, for I do not know what to do anymore then any human. I should stop thinking. What good does thought do? If it had any purpose it would have better served me in life, and I would not be standing before you in a rotting corpse. I have faith I will not hurt them.”
A great gust of wind blew forth through the forest and its ferocity nearly knocked me from my feet. As I struggled to regain my footing I became tangled in a fallen pine branch and in my clumsiness tripped over it. I prepared purposelessly for the impact of pine needles against my face; I should have known that Shamira would not allow me to fall. Her movement was so fast that my eyes were incapable of witnessing it, and as I saw her before me I was unable to restrain a scream. She ignored the cry and roughly pulled me to my feet. Her dark eyes were stoic now, as though they were innately void of any feeling.
When her delicate lips moved and she spoke softly to me, I was helpless to pay attention, for I remembered the nights that I had so passionately kissed those very lips that were now as cold as stone. It was only when he turned away from me that I began to fully comprehended her words.
“I will come back for you, Lieber. Wait for me, and try to ignore everything which you hear.”
And, like the demon my Shamira was, she took off through the forest. Her running could not properly be decided with such a word, for the movements that she made with her two feet were not of a humans, but more like the prancing of a fox. She sprung upward from the ground, perhaps one or two feet, and crashed back down to the earth noiselessly, her knees buckling beneath her. Like this, she traveled into the darkness toward the path that led to Treblinka.
I had not heeded Shamira’s words as well as I should have. The sounds that came from that camp still haunt me today, much more so then the scent of decaying flesh or blood that I encounter when I go to the meat market. A first I heard faint cries, like that of a man announcing an intruder, and then a terrorized scream, so clear that though the camp was miles away it seemed like he was next to me. All at once the sounds of machine gun fire quaked the earth, and the sleeping birds in the trees took off in flight, though they had been undaunted by the fire that killed so many of us; perhaps they knew this gunfire was different. As these sounds of war tormented me I collapsed to the ground and buried my face deep into the leaves, weeping until I fell into an exhausted sleep.
Perhaps it was the inborn abilities of my ancestors that rose me from my rest at the light sound of feet cracking fallen leaves, or perhaps I was so fearful for my life that my senses had increased to that of a man in battle. Nevertheless, at the faint nose of disturbed ground I was jolted awake and looked fearfully into the receding darkness, feeling my flesh begin to quiver.
By the dim light of the rising sun I made out an SS guards uniform. Its green uniform seemed to be radically different then those of the many greens and that adorned the forest’s branches. Petrified, I rose to my feet like a cat. I was prepared to fight to the death, for to me there was nothing to lose if I died, and yet, I found that I was incapable to rise a hand to the wearer. It saw Shamira’s face. She watched my reaction with remorseful eyes and offered out her hand in a gesture of goodwill.
“Forgive me, Lieber; it was the only thing I could find not soiled with blood. I tried not to frighten you.”
I watched her in suspicion and quickly came to hate myself for experiencing the feeling. In hesitance I took the offered hand and she pulled me toward her. It felt to me as if it were snow, and I saw now that the flesh now seemed to be loose upon the bone. The skin around her once vibrant eyes now was wrinkled and colored with dark rings. She seemed to be somewhat ashamed of her appearance and turned away, leading me by the hand toward the path.
“Where are we going?” I had asked her in a soft voice, purposely allowing the words to come forth faintly.
She seemed to take offence to the question.
“We are going to the camp. God help you if you are unable to figure that out, Lieber.”
I was undaunted by her moodiness and continued..
“And they are all dead?”
“All but a few of the SS guards are so. Some of them are locked away in the gas chamber, though I destroyed the mechanism that can kill them. A few of the prisoners fled into the forest from fear of me; most of them are hiding in the dorms still. I believe they think that I am an evil spirit sent by God…”
“And your sister?”
For many moments she was silent, and only my footfalls disturbed the tranquility; hers were again noiseless. She let go of my hand and allowed me to walk beside her freely.
“I did not see her.”
That was all she said to me that day. When we finally passed through the gates of Treblinka, the sun had at last passed over the hills and generously lit the ground we treaded upon. I did the best I could to make my way around the fallen guard’s mutilated bodies and ignore them; Shamira simply walked upon them in utter contempt. I followed her past the gas chambers and to the back of the camp, nearing a great pit that was filled to the brim with corpses. With such dogged devotion I continued until the smell was too much for me to bear, and when this time came I simply turned away and vomited clear fluid. Shamira continued toward it, once again stoic, and paused when she came at the edge. After a moment of complete stillness for respect, she went into the pit, seemingly as careless as when she trampled over the Nazi’s bodies.
It was many minutes before she emerged from it holding the limp body of her young sister. The girl hung lifelessly from my Shamira’s arms, her hair gently swaying in the wind. She passed me and said nothing, and I knew better then to follow her out of the gates and back into the forest... My Shamira did not return again until dusk; I had taken refuge in the dorms, and the prisoners, seeing I was not the demon they hid from, allowed me to remain in one of the beds. Somehow I fell again into a fitful sleep, and for many hours rested without disturbance. When Shamira returned, the man assigned to watch for her came rushing in and shouted in Hebrew that the monster had came back for more blood. I rose from the bed, and still in the midst of sleep, rushed out to meet her, offering not a word of explanation to the others.
Though I only saw Shamira from the back, and from several feet away at this, I somehow knew that she was not well. She her limped along the ground at a pace I could have easily outrun, and as she heard me approach from behind, her voice cried out desperately to me—
“Lieber, do not look at my flesh. Help me walk. Into one of the food cellars over there… I would like to rest…”
Her voice was so strained that it procured instant pity, and without question I came beside her. She took my shoulder and leaned against me, and as she had commanded I did not steal even a glance, though my eyes craved to do so. We walked in such a manner to the nearest cellar, where the Nazis stored their plentiful amounts of food underground and away from the starving mouths of the prisoners. As we reached the entrance my heart sank with despair, for I saw that the metal door was locked. Shamira was undeterred by this and let go of me, wavering on her two feet. I watched in disobedience as she laid her hands upon the two hinges. If I were not so amazed the spectacle she performed, I may have been frightened by the decaying flesh that hung so freely danged from her fingers, or the yellowness of her skin. However, as those rotting fingers touched the hinges there came a hissing noise, and no sooner did the door fall from them. She was too slow to react to it, and I pushed her out of the way, holding her to my chest as I would have done with my love in life.
Whereas a night prior she would have been ashamed of such helplessness, she was utterly indifferent toward it now. Shamira allowed me to walk her down the steps into the darkness and then, like a child, she waited for me to help her lie down upon the floor. As I did a portion of her flesh came off onto my hand and she let out a gasp. I hid my disgust and simply let it fall to the floor.
“Are you dying?” I whispered, in truth not expecting her to reply.
Though it was too dark in the cellar to see her face, as her voice reached my ears I came to know her emotion. Her voice was weak and tired, as if the very words that left her mouth caused my Shamira great effort.
“I am so tired… My soul is barely clinging to this body… I cannot live without the continuing deaths of others… If I do not have it, my soul will be lost from this corpse, and cast out into oblivion… I will be lost… My mother… My sister… The Nazis—the Nazis… Bring me one from the first chamber before I am lost…”
I broke out into a cold sweat and nervously interlaced my hands. My voice shook as I spoke to her.
“I do not understand. Why do you need one of them?”
“I will leave this body… I need their death, their vital life… Someone’s, anyone’s, but I do not want an innocent… Take a gun… Will you need it? They are all wounded… Bring me one near death… You will figure the door out… I put them in the first one… Hurry, before I am gone…”
I felt her fingers claw at my leg, and as I reached to take her hand she placed a handgun gun into mine. I clutched the cold metal in my fingers, and though I had never held one, carried it with confidence. I asked her no more questions and left the cellar silently, making my way toward the first gas chamber. As I went I made no attempt to step over the corpses sprawled about the ground, and walked over their faces as Shamira had. The sun felt hot against my back, and further added to my perspiration; though I acted as if I was fearless and cruel, in reality I had never felt so guilty in my life, for I had never brought a cow to its slaughter, much less a human.
As I opened the gas chamber door and peered inside, my guilt collectively disappeared, for the realization came upon me that if not for blessed fate it would have been the last thing I looked upon. The wounded SS guards looked up me in a sense of muted terror, and from them I selected a terribly injured one whom was missing both an arm and fingers from his remaining hand. It was only with great effort that I pulled him to his feet; the gun provided him no persuasion, for he longed to die. With the useless muzzle pressed against his head I led him back to the cellar and pushed him before his knees before Shamira, who lifted her head partly from the ground.
She stared at the Nazi guard in indifference. As the light from the doorway fell upon her rotting face I saw that there was a bit of cruel satisfaction, even resentment, in her eyes, though I would be a fool to call it a look of hatred. Shamira motioned toward him weakly with her hand.
“You must kill him, Lieber.... Shoot him in the throat, and let me taste of his blood...”
I aimed the gun to his throat and stood there motionlessly, unable to pull the trigger that would end his life. By the look of her face I saw that this irritated Shamira, though she was too feeble to properly voice it.
“For the love of God, this very one pushed my sister into the chamber… Kill him… He is the greatest murderer in this world… I will clean you of the blood on your hands, Lieber…”
Upon hearing her words, I turned my head away and pulled the trigger. The gun sounded, and the guard jolted back against me before falling forward upon Shamira’s lap in a death struggle. When I found it in my heart to lay eyes in the scene, Shamira was looking beseechingly to me with pitiful eyes. I carelessly dropped the gun and knelt down beside her, lifting my love’s corpse up so that she may drink the blood that flowed from the dying man’s neck.
She tasted only a few drops of it before the man died, and as he shuttered and fell into death a wild look passed over her eyes. Her mouth flung open as if receiving an invisible spirit and she drew in a deep breath. I watched in speechless amazement as the rotting flesh turned youthful, and my Shamira became more beautiful then I ever remembered her being. Her curls seemed to ring even tighter, and as she licked the blood away from her lips they remained a bright red. The skin that had been stretched over her starving face became full with health, and her cheeks took on a rosy hue. Even her cat-like eyes—which I had been so taken by before—turned lovelier, and seemed to glow with a fluorescence in the dark. As she noticed me studying her, a brief look of realization crossed her face. She drew nearer to me, so close that our noses were merely a finger’s width away, and in a sudden movement pushed her lips against mine.
I was uncertain on how to react to such a gesture at first, but as my passion grew I realized those lips were of my Shamira, and I returned the desire. We held this kiss for many minutes, until she finally drew sharply away from me, gasping. With such agility she leapt up to her feet and backed away. Her face seemed to be utterly taken by confusion, and she laid her hand upon her heart, still panting for breath.
“She is still here—part of her remains—I haven’t consumed her—can she come back?”
Her voice was interrupted with the faint sound of gunfire. My Shamira composed herself immediately and frustration replaced her confounded look. A chorus of screams arose, and her eyes widened. She hastily motioned for me to stand.
“They have freed themselves… People die, innocents die, I will never have peace… There is another way; let fate be as it will be here. Come to me, Lieber! I cannot leave you to its mercy!”
In fear I came to her side and took hold of one of her arms. She glanced up at me in annoyance, and in a movement I still to this day cannot justify, took my body up into her arms. Anyone seeing the spectacle would have thought her small body holding mine utterly ridiculous, though by simply looking at her frame it was impossible to know her strength. I held tightly onto her shoulders in terror that she would drop me, and yet, as she bounded up the stairs in the same fox-like manner that she had before, and leapt out into open gunfire, she neither dropped me nor let me fall prey to Nazi bullets. My Shamira seemed to dance through the shooting, each one of her delicate feet falling upon the ground and flinging her body so that she narrowly missed the fire, and in such a manner fled the camp.
Once free from Treblinka, she began to leap in such a way that the blue sky and pine needle covered ground became one to me. I fainted and fell into the mercy of my ignorance.
If one were to find a history book of the Holocaust and look up Treblinka, they would find a section that describes a revolt that led to the closing of the camp. It was credit the commando workers taking up guns, and setting fire to the buildings. It was say that the Nazis, though there were some casualties, repressed the rebels, and nearly killed the entire population in doing so.
This history is false. Shamira herself admitted to starting the fires when I asked her after seeing a great cloud of smoke in the distance. She had taken me out of harms way and set me in the forest so that I wouldn’t be hurt, and after she was assured of my safety, returned back to the camp. She found that the prisoners were fighting the guards with small guns, and took advantage of the confusion, setting fire to the buildings on fire with the aid of kerosene. There was a great explosion, that which caused the earth to shiver like a freezing man, as she described it. The wind then betrayed her, and in a cruel manner she brought the fire to the forest, where it headed toward when she had lain my unconscious body.
She could have saved the other Jews, but she chose to protect me.
The Nazis did not destroy Treblinka because they wanted to hide their deeds; they were proud of the fact that they were murders, so much so that they wore their swastikas like plucked feathers. They disassembled Treblinka—they burned the corpses and ground the bones—they planted baby tress over the spot—simply to hide the fact that a thing like Shamira ever existed.
And they succeeded, for if you look in a history book, it is their fabricated story you will find.
Our story did not end there, though it should have. Shamira had not killed all of those that caused her grief in life, and so did not achieve her final peace and fall into death. We had wandered aimlessly from the death camp, and even today, if you ever go to a few of the remote villages in Poland, you will hear a fable of a girl in a Nazi’s uniform and a man with a Jewish star on his shoulder, walking together, side by side.
We continued onward this way, for there was nothing more we could do. The dybbuk that controlled Shamira could not obtain her peace, and at the same time I had no where to go home to, least I be killed. Besides, a part of Shamira was still inside her.
The war lasted for many years, and it seemed that every country we traveled to became an ally of Hitler, and soon after deported their Jews. As soon as this happened Shamira insisted we leave, if not to protect me, then out of utter resentment; she seemed unable to bear what she saw, and longed to be blinded of it. I remember our travels vividly; I doubt there was a better traveled Jew. From Poland we were to Slovenia, and then to Hungary. When the Jews were forced out we fled to Romania, and months after left for Bulgaria. We were allowed a longer stay in Greece, and yet, the day we realized that Germany would take that, too, we took a boat to Turkey, and there we remained, protected.
You may wonder how Shamira survived for so long… The answer is simple, though horrifying. Each night, as the sun set, she would leave and kill someone so that she was able to receive their spirit and blood—as well as their money. Sometimes she left me, sometimes I went with her; I became indifferent to it very quickly. I had seen too much death in my life to care about a soul being lost here and there… However, sometimes, before she left, she would look at me with a fierce desire in her eyes. I never was able to figure out if the look was of Shamira’s passion, or a longing for my life as well. Whatever the reason, she never harmed me, and always left within moments of allowing me to see it.
And like this we existed together for many years.
We never were able to merge back into life socially, not even in Turkey; it was not a matter of being Jewish. When Shamira would go out during the day, she would always be loyally followed by a trail of moths as if she were a sweet nectar. If she were to stop, they would hover around her; some became brave enough to perch upon her skin and spread their dusty wings. It was impossible to travel outside with such a spectacle, though they always subsided at night. At times I wondered why they followed Shamira in such a way, as if they were lost spirits following their mother; I never understood their meaning until many years after she died.
It was in Turkey that she finally found her peace. I believe she at first was afraid of dying, for she dawdled there for many years. We would travel the lands of Turkey, dressed in traditional outfits of the fallen Ottoman empire, and view the various sights of splendor. Though my memory is fuzzy now, I recall the last relic we saw was the great Galata Tower, in Istanbul. It was there that we came across a Gothic Christian church that had been cleverly converted into a synagogue. I remember she studied it with fierce eyes, glanced at her hands, and told me coldly it was time to return to our lodging house.
That night, as I fell asleep, she stared down at me with a sad face. Early the next morning, she woke and pulled me to my feet, whispering in a soft voice that it was finally time. Without questioning my Shamira I followed her back to the synagogue.
The moths neglected her on the streets. Perhaps there were twenty or thirty trailed behind her, though that was barely enough to make a small crowd. As we opened the synagogue door and stepped inside upon the spacious marble floor, our eyes met with a rabbi that stood in the center, behind a high podium of carved wood. Shamira walked forward, motioning for me to stop following, and as she came to the center of the room, a thunderous noise erupted from the paint rafters above us. Thousands of moths came flying down toward her, landing upon her shoulders, and the floor around her, and the benches… All at once they became still, and a cold silence filled the room. The Rabbi was speechless, and watched Shamira only with a face of terror.
Finally, she spoke in Hebrew.
“I need your help to find peace.” Her voice came, barely a whisper. “I am assuming you have spare time for such a request.”
And Shamira then motioned for me to leave.
I did so in blind obedience.
I never heard the rams horn that freed the spirit from her body. I never heard the rabbis chanting, or saw her body fall to the ground, with a look of death only the long dead could manage, as the rabbi had said. All I know is that when I was summoned back into the synagogue, Shamira’s corpse lay there lifelessly surrounded by the carcasses of countless moths.
We carried her body and prepared it for burial. Before the sun set, she was laid to rest behind the synagogue. I shed not a tear over the entombment, for I had already shed far two many tears for them both.
I left not flowers at her grave, but a handful of the moths.
After I left, I never returned to that synagogue. I remained in Turkey for a few more years, and as the war died down, and Hitler’s defeat became imminent, moved Austria. There was no connection to Shamira’s grave; she was not there. As the dybbuk had said, she had found peace in her life, and I was comforted that I will soon join her.
At times, during the sweet Austrian summers, a moth or two will land upon my windfall and stare at me in contemplation. They always seem to study me, and in seconds go mad and flutter about the room in confusion. I never harm them, for the moths remind me of Shamira, and always allow them to escape through the window back into the dark night. If I take the time and go outside, I swear that I can hear a faint singing, that which is like a sorrowful humming. It is as if the moths of Treblinka have composed a hymn of mourning.
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First off: the names. Mine always have meanings.
Shamira is a Hebrew name meaning “protector”
Lieber is a Yiddish name meaning “beloved”
The theme of this story is a question that is provoked in the beginning in a theoretical question that Lieber presents to himself: Who is it that you resent the most—the Nazis, or the God that made them? He concludes that he would be helpless to decide, for they were both, “equally accountable” and “the finger that pulls the trigger is no more evil then the arm that aims the gun”.
The real question is a question of ethics—is a person that stands by and allows, or even aids evil, as guilty as those that carry it out? Are they even more guilty, because they, unlike those that are evil, have no motive for the continuing of the crime, but plenty innate of obligations to stop it? If yes, then do the ethics of man apply to God as well? If no, then is there anyone that we can truly blame other then God, for we are made in his image? Shamira points to this idea with the words, “If you lecture morals to anyone, lecture it to God! I am completely innocent in the scheme of things!”
I won’t go into the Jewish culture or customs. Most of the references, ie “breaking glass underneath my foot, etc” are just apart of Judaism. Read a book on religions; there is no way I am typing it out!
The moths are very symbolic to the story and the Holocaust. I’m not going to explain them here. If you read the story, you should understand what they represent, and why they follow Shamira until she dies. If you are still lost, a hint is to not take the situation too literally; they are not following Shamira because they sense she is dead, or anything. They are allegorical.