"Do you have a profession?" I countered.
"I'm seventeen," she responded again. "I don't have a profession."
I had a job to do, and standing from my seat, and taking this woman by the arm was not part of that job. However, if any Jew were to talk out of turn, we were instructed to handle the situation as we saw fit. Therefore, I deemed it necessary to escort Amelia to her given block. It was quite stupid, but I needed to tell her I was sorry about her mother.
Only a select group of the women were being taken further into the Small Fortress, where we were conducting our intake. Other women would be sent to the housing development on the other side of the ghetto. Amelia was to stay within the confine of our imprisoned area as she was a prime candidate for administrative or medical work. She would be considered one of the lucky women.
Amelia tried to yank her arm from my grip, but I needed to make a show of the fact that I had control over her. "Where are you taking me?" she snapped.
I wanted to tell her to watch her tongue as it would earn her nothing but trouble or much worse, but I didn't have the heart to speak to her in that way.
"To your assigned block," I answered.
I brought Amelia into the main entrance of Block B, feeling the stone walls caving in on us as I escorted her to what would look like a prison cell. The blocks where we kept the prisoners appeared much like the catacombs in Paris, and in some cases, worse. We were to treat the Jews as if they were animals. In fact, horses and cows lived in better circumstances.
Amelia cleared her throat as she continued to comply with our pace. "What's going to happen to us here?" I could tell she was trying to sound brave through the firmness of her question, but her voice shook, admitting to fear.
I took in her question, trying to summon a good response, but I heard voices of comrades in the nearby vicinity, and I couldn't risk the chance of any of them hearing a civilized conversation between Amelia and me. They would punish her to punish me.
"Why would you ask such a stupid question?" I announced, feeling the words catch in my throat.
"Why are we here?" she continued. At that moment, I realized what I was dealing with; Amelia was no ordinary woman. She was brave, strong, and resilient. She struck me as the type to die trying, and maybe that was what she was attempting to do at that moment. I felt as though she was testing her boundaries.
"To offer you shelter, of course. Just as you were told." I don't know what Amelia was told. I know she was torn from her home, forced to watch her mother meet her death, and then shoved onto a train. However, we were told to inform the Jews that we were going to be replacing their homes with new shelter. It was supposed to prevent mass chaos.
"One of you killed my mother—" I didn't hear the rest of what she said because my head began to spin. I don't know if she witnessed me standing there when her mother was shot, or what she may have seen, for that matter.
The first response that came to mind was: "I'm not one of them." I would be shamed and punished if anyone heard me say such a thing. Though, I was not one of them, and that was the truth. "We are all different, just like every one of you."
Her response was instant and did not require much thought. "You're a Nazi, so you are no different from the rest."
I was a Nazi. I represented hatred, antisemitism, and murder. I served the Führer, Adolf Hitler, and his disgust for Jews.
"You don't know what you're talking about," I told her. I shouldn't have responded. I should have let her have the last word because she was right. I was a Nazi, just like the Nazi who shot her mother, and the one who frisked her body as she stepped off the train. We were a united front, left with only our internal thoughts to separate us as beings.
We reached the door to her cell block, and I pressed on the rusted metal to wave her inside. "This is where you will be staying," I told her, taking a look at the conditions from within the room. The bodily capacity was almost at max. The air wasn't circulating, and the smell was volatile—a mixture of urine and vomit. The women, already settled on their wooden bunks, were glowing with a faint look of sickness. They stared at me with drooping eyes and parted lips. They were starving for both food and answers, neither of which I could supply.
"This is where I will be living?" Amelia asked, needing confirmation.
"Yes," is all I could say. My last meal was gurgling in my stomach, and my head was throbbing. I couldn't answer any more questions, and I couldn't bear the thought of forcing another innocent woman into the barren cell.
As soon as Amelia was inside the block, I closed the door behind her, nearly falling against the opposite wall while feeling disgusted with morbid affliction.
I told myself I could not go through with my tasks any longer. I wanted to run away and escape my duties. I needed to find a way out. I would run away that night; that was my plan.
However, before I made my way back out into the courtyard again, I began to realize what I would be leaving for only the selfish act of escaping.
Maybe I could escape, but Amelia and the others, they could not escape without being summoned to death. Running from the prisoners would be just as selfish as the tasks I was completing.
1Miss
Chapter 10
1942
Terezín, Czechoslovakia
My body was heavy as I marched out of the last barrack hallway for the evening. The Jewish people were released from the train. More than half were then sent to their next destination, and the others were given assignments to their appropriate blocks.
