I grab my bowl and race back. The guard waits with his arms crossed.
“Next time, I’ll throw it over the fence,” he says, his voice playful. “Let’s see how you get it then.”
I say nothing, and I clutch my things and keep moving.
Through the gates of Birkenau, beyond the tracks, is a platform where people are falling out of cattle cars as if mistreated farm-animals.
Finally, a vast landscape of barracks appear—rows upon rows of dark wooden structures. More prisoners. More guards.
We walk the perimeter, past a few brick barracks then along a line made up of mostly women and children, weaving around a nearby building.
Their eyes lock onto mine and mine to them, wondering what the difference between our lines are.
A child wails.
A gunshot fires.
I jump. I always jump.
A mother collapses over her child, wailing, pleading. A second gunshot.
They’re together now.
“This is your barrack, check in with your block-elder for assignments,” a guard shouts.
A kapo waves us forward.
I follow the others toward the wooden barrack, unable to stop myself from looking over at the dead mother and daughter once more, this time finding another daughter, a young girl, staring at the other two with wide eyes full of shock and terror.
I cup my hand around my mouth as bile rises in my stomach. I step inside, between the walls of what looks like an animal pen with bunk beds.
Another gunshot shatters the air. Silence follows as the door slams behind us.
The odor of human waste mixed with filth and rotting wood are reminiscent of the barrack I came from. But it’s worse here. It’s harder to breathe. Women walk between the tiers of bunks, hunched forward, unsteady on their feet, their jaws hanging low. Is this what I look like, too?
The barrack stretches on endlessly, wooden bunks stacked high. Not one is empty.
I gasp for air as my head becomes heavy, then I reach for a wooden post to keep myself upright.
A faint cry pulls my gaze. A girl—maybe thirteen or fourteen, clutching her blanket as dirt riddled tears streak down her cheeks. Her fingers tremble as she strokes her fingers over the fabric’s folds.
Then, softly, she sings. The words are foreign, but I know the melody. Hebrew, I believe. I don’t understand, but I listen.
With another step toward her, she stops singing, her lips straighten across her mouth, and she stares back at me, unblinking.
“Are you all right?” I ask her.
She shakes her head in slow movements, side to side. I don’t know how to help her. I’m afraid to ask her if her mom is here because she might not be. She might have been sent to the showers. I don’t know who they keep and who they kill.
“Excuse me,” a woman says, brushing by me with a metal bowl and water sloshing around. She kneels in front of the young girl and tips the bowl against her lips.
My heart pounds and my breath stutters as I reach toward the woman.
“Tatiana?” I ask hesitantly, knowing how unlikely it is that I would find her again, and here.
My chest tightens as she turns toward me. Her jaw falls open. It’s her. She’s here, in this barrack.
“Ella?” she cries. She gently hands the little girl the bowl of water as she continues to feed herself, then pulls herself up along a wooden beam before wrapping her arms around my neck. “You’re here.”
