She is Luka.
If he’s still here…still alive… Does he look like us, too? Has his body shriveled into nothing but thin bones like ours?
We continue making very little progress throughout the day, but any guard left behind is breaking down buildings and throwing furniture into burn pits.
“The Soviets. They must be almost here,” Tatiana says. She’s hardly spoken a word all day. All week, really. I’m not sure when she’s said more than a few words. Neither of us talks much at all. It takes too much energy we don’t have.
“Do you think they’ll save us?” I whisper to her. I don’t see any guards in near sight, but they’re always everywhere.
Tatiana shrugs, her shoulder bones protruding against the fabric of her smock.
“We’re getting rid of the evidence—that’s what we’re doing…” I say, coming to realize what is happening around us.
“I know,” she says.
“Tatiana…” My voice cracks as I stare down at my brittle body, skin white as the snow with blue veins swelling across my limbs. “We…are also…evidence.”
Tatiana stares at me, her shovel shaking within her hold. She scans the area around us just as I’ve already done, noticing how few of us there are left. “They still need us. Until they don’t, there’s nothing more we can do.”
We won’t know when they will be through with us. They won’t give us a warning.
“Yes, there is,” I say, my breath escaping me.
Her forlorn eyes stare back at me, and I can see she doesn’t have any fight left in her. I never wondered how much thehuman body could endure, how much damage it could take, the amount of deprivation we can withstand. It seems impossible to still be alive after over three years of fighting to survive in this inhumane prison.
Tatiana doesn’t ask any further questions about what I plan to do to prevent us from being tossed into a fire—our existence leaving no trace behind. The longer I stir over potential plans to keep us safe, the more challenges seep into my head, making me rethink my statement of telling her there is something we can do. I’m not sure there actually is.
But if there’s a chance Luka is still alive, I must persevere. I promised myself I would never give up—not if there’s still a chance. Not if there’s hope…I’m still breathingand the sun is in the sky.
As the sun slips behind the clouds, a stronger cold front falls over us, bringing along a deeper level of freezing pain that breaks through the dull numbness we burden through every day. My bones ache from weakness while my muscles tighten beyond my control, making it impossible to shovel even a particle of dirt.
The lights on the watchtowers don’t power on as usual and the quiet around us is eerie. The others digging along the ash pit have given up and are lying next to their shovels or have gotten up and left. We didn’t hear anyone stop them.
“Come on, we should go back to the barrack,” I tell Tatiana.
She isn’t moving, just staring ahead, her hands still clenched around the handle of the shovel. “Follow me,” she whispers.
“Where?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer. She drops her shovel and stumbles toward the back electrified fence, but then takes a left turn toward a cluster of trees, leading us behind Crematorium number two, one of the three that’s still intact. Crematorium number four, the one Luka had been performing in front of, was burnt down by a group of resistance members within Auschwitzthree months ago. I considered us lucky to be away from the uprising outside the Kanada warehouses, but then we heard some people were able to escape. Although, whoever didn’t escape and took part in the act, was killed—or so we heard through other whispers.
Could Luka have been among them? Did he make it somewhere safe before it was too late?
I try not to think about what might have happened to Luka if he was still performing over there. I don’t know what happened to him after I was caught last March. I want to believe he’s still okay somewhere, still alive, maybe even one of the lucky ones who managed to escape. But once I was moved away from the Kanada warehouses, there was no possibility of hearing him sing. Sometimes, I hear other orchestras play, their sound traveling only on the wind, but that all stopped a week ago, too, when most everyone here was taken away. Any hint of music disappeared with the others, leaving us behind in silence.
The quiet is unbearable.If all the music is gone, Luka must be, too… Is there even a chance for him now?
I glance up at the dark watchtower, having never been within mere footsteps of one. I can only assume there isn’t a guard up there because there isn’t a spotlight or any lighting for that matter. They would have already seen us by now, I suppose, and being directly beneath them is likely safer than being within their view. There’s another watchtower next to the trees, and it’s hard to see if there’s anyone in there. Tatiana takes another left, bringing us to the other side of the gas chamber and crematorium.
The trees become less dense the farther we walk, offering visibility to the two-cylinder sewer plants on the other side of another fence. Tatiana stops to the side of a small wooden warehouse, peers around the darkness as if she could see muchof anything more than what’s in front of us, and rattles the door handle.
It’s hard to believe the door might be unlocked, but nothing is as it was ten days ago. “It’s unlocked because they removed all the cans of Zyklon B,” she says, as if she already knew what I was thinking.
I wasn’t aware this was where they kept the gas, but as a Sonderkommando she had access to more areas than I did when working in Kanada.
She closes us inside the dark building and paces around blindly until I hear her hand bump against something hollow and metal.
A squeal from a hinge echoes around us, sparking my heart into heavier thuds, bringing along a wave of dizziness. The sound of metal scraping against more metal disturbs our attempt of silence, and I have no idea what she might be doing.
