A favorite song of the SS—German folk music about the cheerful times ahead. A musician’s job here, among the endless line snaking around us, is to put on an act, lie as the SS convince these innocent people that they are truly here for the promised shower—the death-trap behind the brown painted door I examine all day.
“Ready,” I reply in a whisper, saving what’s left of the sound in my voice.
The SS don’t appear to care how broken my voice still is or that my vocal cords never healed from whatever virus I was ill with. Rather than waiting to be beaten to death, I will wait until I sing myself to death, and with a forced sense of cheer behind each word.
“One, two—” Etan continues.
In the dead of winter with frigid temperatures and blades of wind slicing through me, I shiver relentlessly through each word. The line of people in front of me come into a sharp focus as I begin to sing, wishing I could change the lyrics to: “Run, there is no shower inside, just vents that will release a deadly gas and kill you.”
But I would only cause them panic and fear, and that would be worse than not knowing. The guilt is like black tar, filling my soul, and I’m ashamed to think that the faces are all beginning to look the same to me while passing through this line. Regardless of which of the four gas chambers I’m assigned to perform outside, I can’t stop wondering if Ella could end up in one of these lines. What if she’s passed me and I’ve glossed over her? I could have let her walk right into one of those shower rooms and…Breathe, I remind myself.Breathe.
She must think I’m already dead, now she can no longer hear my voice where she is, which leaves me wondering what she might be doing to find out what happened to me—how much she would risk for an answer. Ella doesn’t give up. She’s made that clear again and again. But now I’m here, in Birkenau, any chance she might have had of finding me is gone. Almost all Jews are sent here—whether to the shower rooms, or to labor. I didn’t realize it was unusual for me, as a Jew, to be in the main camp of Auschwitz for as long as I was. That area of the camp holds mostly Polish political prisoners, so it’s where Ella will stay.
Mother might have been sent to Birkenau, too. She could be here somewhere. But it’s been ten months of this brutality and starvation since the train spit us out into this hell. The thought of her living through what I’ve been—it turns my stomach inside out.
No one should have to live like this. Dying would be easier. I consider this thought each time before falling asleep.
“I can’t stand upright any longer, Mama,” a little girl hollers from the line during the instrumental verse of this folk song.
“Hush, hush. We’re almost there. See, darling. You can see the door. We’ll be receiving a nice warm shower in just a few minutes from now. Won’t that be nice?”
My chest swells with grief and my throat tightens into a sore knot—a pain that won’t cease. She’s just a little girl.
FORTY-THREE
LUKA
Moments after the first gong strikes, warning us of how little time we have before roll call, Etan slaps his hand over my shoulder as I’m pulling the blanket over my narrow space on the bunk. I don’t know how he moves so fast in the mornings. We’re the same age and he’s been here a while, too. I try my best to keep up with him, so I don’t look like I’m becoming one of the weak. Many men are not moving at all. Some of them will die in their beds today and they’ll be gone when we return. Others will hold up roll call, requiring all others to stand in the row longer, only to be physically assaulted with punishment after. It’s hard to think past the moment we’re living in, I guess.
I step outside and a gust of powdery snow stings my face before I step foot into an unmarked path toward the latrine. The march through the partially frozen snow soaks my socks. My ankles will be wet and cold for hours just so I can relieve myself in the latrines and possibly steal enough time to wash my body before it’s time to claim breakfast.
There’s never a change in the food we receive, except for the occasional slab of margarine or jam they spare for us to scrape a thin layer over our leftover evening bread. I wash it all down with a cup of warm water mixed with floating coffee grinds. I’veforgotten what something savory is like. Even my imagination fails me. No amount of food ever satisfies my hollow stomach. If anything, a deeper hunger follows my final bite.
A second gong informs us it’s time to line up at roll call, which is as brutal here as it was in the other section of the camp—long, drawn out, and cold. The wind traps between the buildings, swirling around us as if we’re caught in an icy vortex. All I can do is shiver and try not to crack a tooth while my teeth chatter.
Once dismissed, I report to my designated location where I will sing until I damage my voice even more while straining through the painful cold for the next ten hours. I find Etan standing by the gas chamber, adding rosin to his bow then fine tuning the small knobs at the base of the strings. I notice a slash along the side of his face that I didn’t see when I was half awake this morning.
“What happened?” I ask, keeping my voice low.
He shakes his head. “It was nothing.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing. It’s bleeding.”
“I was rewinding a string, and it fell,” he says, before nudging his head toward a nearby guard. “He got to it first.”
Etan continues to tune his violin, and I wrap my hands around my neck, trying to keep my vocal cords warm for as long as possible. I no longer attempt to vocally warm up my voice as I don’t know how long it will last throughout the day as it is. I can’t afford to waste the sound.
I could easily mistake the line weaving around for the same line that was here yesterday when I left. It’s as if I’ve seen the same group of people walk in over and over when I know that’s impossible. The only difference between them all aside from their gender and age is the slight differences between their personalities. There are those who appear to have some form ofhope. Others seem to sense the doom as they stare, unblinkingly, at the foreboding door.
Then there are the mothers. One places her hand on her child’s shoulder as she exchanges whispers with another, even sharing a smile or two. The quiet bond between them is a glimmer of light, yet casts a deep, vacant shadow within me. Another mother gingerly straightens her young son’s collar, the gesture so natural and ordinary it makes my chest ache for them. Still, I force myself to pick up the next verse of lyrics awaiting me in one measure.
Despite being amid music and singing, albeit the damage in my lungs, nothing distracts me from the rusty hinges squealing as the door to the building opens.
It must be near noon.
The door only opens two to three times a day, since more than one thousand people enter at once. I’ve noticed a pattern of timing and can now predict when the door will open next, depending on the last time it opened.
Etan told me it takes less than ten minutes to fill the chamber, then another ten to twenty minutes for the Zyklon B gas that’s dropped in between the slats of the roof. All of this takes place at the back side of the building where no one in line can see what their future holds. SS guards will stand watch at a peephole along the wall of the interior chamber and wait for the complete stillness of each body before sending in the Sonderkommandos, the forced Jewish laborers assigned to the task of removing the corpses, extracting gold teeth, shaving all hair, then transporting the bodies to the crematorium. This process takes up to three hours before the next group is sent inside.
