I nod, assuming he notices the slight gesture. He places his hand on top of mine and then squeezes it tightly. I tighten my fingers around his hand, appreciating the gesture, trying to forgive him as much as I’ve tried to forgive myself.
“I’ll help you find him, Emi.”
Citizens are lined up along the road leading to Dachau’s gates. Papa parks a distance away and we make our way up to the end of the line, like a funeral procession. Cries howl in the wind, gasps of shock and terror, moans and groans, and bouts of sickness are what we witness before we even approach the railway cars.
The pungent rotting stench is much worse than anything I smelled while making my way through the camp night after night. I smelled the unimaginable then, but this is something different. A wave of nausea envelops my stomach. I try to swallow against the sick feeling, breathing in through my mouth and out from my nose but when we pass the first car, witness stacks of bodies strewn like piles of laundry, flies swarming like vultures, and pairs of eyes staring directly at me from every direction, I hurl forward and wrap my arms around myself, trying not to let out the sob wailing through my lungs. Felix puts his arm around me, pinching the tips of his fingers into my flesh. His body shivers against mine and our fathers continue forward, leaving us to watch their shoulders jerking up and down as they release their pain too.
“Danner?” I utter. I’m not sure why I call out his name when there’s no living Dachau prisoner in sight, but I can’t stop myself.
“I know,” Felix says, rubbing his hand up and down my arm.
U.S. soldiers stand guard, watching us, inspecting our reactions to something no person should ever have to bear witness to. “Every one of these people will be properly buried,” a soldier shouts. “Your assistance will be needed.”
Felix and I share a look. His complexion is so pale, it’s almost green to match the way I feel inside.
“We can help. We should,” he says, speaking the words I was already thinking.
FORTY-NINE
EMILIE
MAY 1945
Dachau, Germany
We’ve spent days making our way through the railway full of cattle cars, moving bodies that barely weigh a thing, frail bones with thin skin merely offering a hint of who the person once was. We’ve been placing bodies in wagons to transport them to a burial site—one body after another. I inspect every person, wondering if I would recognize Danner’s face if I were to see it again in this way. I know Felix is doing the same. I can see by the extended glances he gives certain bodies before his shoulders slouch forward in defeat.
I’m not sure how many wagons of bodies we have filled, but with the amount of people brought here to help, we’re coming to the end. I doubt there will ever be a time where I’ll forget the look in every set of open eyes I have stared into these past few days, nor should I. No one should forget what they’ve seen here.
The car Felix and I have been working through is empty and we climb down, finding most of the citizens standing in front of the line of railway cars, staring into oblivion. We do the same until our fathers return from their daily search within thecampgrounds, coming back without news of Danner. It’s clear by the dull looks in their eyes as they walk toward us.
“So that’s it. We give up trying to find him?” I ask as they step toward us.
Papa places his hands on my shoulders. “We’ll never stop. There’s just no record of him here.”
The sun is setting and it’s the time of day we leave. “I’m not leaving yet,” I tell them.
“Emilie, there’s nowhere for you to look here. You can’t stay,” Papa says, frustration quaking through his voice, along with how exhausted we all are from the labor of moving bodies.
Papa takes my hand and pulls me away from the empty tombs we’ve cleared out. But I need to be here. What if Danner’s here somewhere?
Papa doesn’t release his grip, ensuring I get into the car with the three of them. “I don’t want to go home,” I tell him.
“I know, but we have to.”
No one is saying much because there isn’t anything to say. We’ve done what we can do and there’s no other option but to essentially give up.
I can’t do that.
I endure the ride home, walking into the house as night settles in. I’m hollow inside, unable to process anything around me. The feeling has only gotten worse in the last year as I’ve sat here in my childhood bedroom, staring out the window that looks onto Danner’s old house. All I feel is guilt, pain, grief, remorse, and emptiness. This can’t be it—all that I’ll feel for the rest of my life.
Later that night, with everyone asleep, I make my way out the front door, careful not to make a sound. I take the gas lamp from the front stoop and walk between the houses, toward the tree line. Years ago, there wasn’t much that could convince me to walk into the woods alone at night, but now, the darkness is the least of my fears.
I place the lamp down on a flat tree stump in the middle of the bee farm and pull open the metal trunk where the supplies have always been kept. So much of this city is in pieces, destroyed, needing to be rebuilt, but Herr Alesky’s supplies, the hives and tools, are all still intact.
I slip into my protective gear and light the smoker. The bees are less frightened at night and find a new hive to burrow in quicker than in the daylight, which has made the process of retrieving the honeycomb filled wooden frames much easier. After placing the frames into the metal bin, I get cranking. The habitual pattern of cycling the machine brings me comfort. Being left helpless and hopeless when it comes to not doing much of anything except sit around and stir with worry, Danner’s words play in my head every night that I’m here: “It’s true. Albert Einstein said that mankind would be extinct within four years if we lost all the bees.” The explosions and air raids scared most of the bees away, but some had gathered in a swarm nearby. I remember Danner telling me about a special wooden box his dad had, which contained drops of lemongrass oil to attract the bees. If he found a tree hive, he’d shake the branch with the box below and capture the swarm. Then he’d bring them to the farming hives at night.
It’s been up to me to make sure the bees have a home here. We’re depending on them.
