She looks back at me once more, still with a sympathetic expression. “You were brought here from Przczyna, about a day’s walk from Auschwitz.”
The name hits me like a hammer against my head, filling the space around me with a shrill noise I can’t block out. Auschwitz…thick fog floating over barbed-wire fences, snow everywhere, boots crunching around me before the shouting begins and then a smell so potent it forces a wave of nausea through me.
“No, that’s not right,” I utter through a whisper. “I—I wasn’t—what is Auschwitz? You must be mistaken.”
Her chin trembles and I don’t understand why. She doesn’t know me. I don’t know her. Why would she feel anything at all? Maybe I’m missing a face. Is that what this is? She’s letting me down easily. How would I have lost a face? I can’t recall anyone’s face, even my own.
“You were in Auschwitz. You’ve been through—you’re alive, and that’s all that matters.”
“Alive? How? I’m here and I haven’t the foggiest idea where here is. Is this it? Is this how I’ll always be now? Lost in this body that may or may not belong to me?”
“I understand this is hard, but I’m trying to help you. Do you recall your name now?” She’s asking again as if something has changed during our uncomfortable conversation.
I drop my hands to my side, fabric brushing against the inside of my palms. I refocus my stare at the wall ahead, noticing it’s no longer blurry. It’s yellow, a pale yellow. Again, I glance down at my legs, still covered with a sheet, and then realize I’m on a bed, but nothing around me is familiar. Nothing belongs to me.
“No,” I finally say, my eyes burning from a hard stare at this stranger.
“It’s all right. Some days are better than others. You remembered your name and many other details yesterday. It’s still early in the day,” she says, another forced smile returning to her lips.
As she continues coming up with reasons for me not to worry, my attention draws to the ticking of a clock and the swoosh of a broom, and a murmur of static from a radio. Other voices grow louder, some with accents I don’t recognize, some with a slur in their words, some speaking clearly with a sense of logic, and some like this woman, just calm and gentle. I turn to face the rest of the room once more, looking beyond my immediate sides this time, finding more than just beds in a row. People are on the beds—injured people with bandages, some who look like skeletons lying in a cloud of fluff, others stiff and staring at the ceiling as if they’re dead. Other women dressed like the one who has been speaking to me weave in between the beds helping the other people, each of them with a forced smile and careful movements.
I take another look at the injured people to my side and stop at a person a few beds away from me. He’s one of the people who looks like a skeleton and is also staring up through the ceiling. An unexpected pull to him makes me wonder if I’ve met him before.
“Who is that?” I ask, nodding in his direction.
The woman sitting beside me follows my gaze. “That’s Etan,” she says. “He arrived here around the same time as you, but he hasn’t spoken much yet.”
His name is familiar. It is. I want it to be.Etan.I say it to myself again and again, waiting to retrieve more information about him. “I know him. I think I know him.” Maybe I don’t. But if I do, it might mean my memories will return like they did yesterday.
“I’m not sure. You were both found in the same clearing of the woods, unconscious, but breathing. The Soviet soldiers who rescued you said it appeared you both took a significant fall off a cliff, which explains your head injuries and the memory loss as well as the other physical trauma you’ve sustained. But we’re here to help and we’re taking good care of you now.”
FIFTY-THREE
ELLA
February 1945
Unknown Location
The voices of the Soviet soldiers still repeat in my ears as I sit on a hard bench in the back of a transport truck. “We haven’t found any record of Luka Dulski,” an aide said upon answering my plea to help me find someone.
The relentless battle to survive, pushing myself beyond limits, and forcing myself to hold on just another minute, hour, and day has rendered me helpless—unable to find words, stay upright, or fully understand what’s happening. The fight inside of me has left my body.
And if Luka is gone after this relentless fight—what was it worth?
The word liberation waves in the air like a flag in the wind, but the meaning seems open to interpretation. Who won? Did anyone win something? It seems we all lost. Our friends, our family, our humanity, our lives… Is the war even over?
Tatiana’s head falls heavily on my shoulder, her breaths short and quick but steady. The soldiers promised us foodand medical care, but the look in their eyes spoke a different truth. Maybe I’ve lost the ability to trust another person, but something tells me they were offering a sense of hope to keep us alive a bit longer. They gave us bread and soup, the warmth of the liquid was like new blood being pumped through my veins, and though the bread was as stale as what we’ve grown used to, it was bread to help us, not to keep us alive for the sake of being a slave.
The journey from Auschwitz to a displacement camp is foggy. I’m not sure how long we’ve been in this truck, how far we’ve traveled, or where this location might be. The other faces of people around us are unfamiliar, gray, and I keep wondering if some of them are still breathing.Would Luka be unfamiliar?He could be looking for me, too, but would he recognize me?
Tatiana mumbles something against my shoulder but as I peer down at her, I see she’s asleep, dreaming perhaps. Her words don’t make sense. Perhaps that means she’s somewhere better within her mind now.
If I could sleep soundly, maybe I’d dream of Luka—him waiting somewhere for me. But I don’t dream anymore. Maybe I’ll wake up and find out that everything I experienced over the three and a half years was a horrific nightmare. What if I never wake up again?
The truck stops and we’re assisted out and into a collection of connected tents. The air inside is warm but only from the amount of people surrounding us. The smell of smoke is strong, mildew, sweat, and the decomposition of every living thing.
Doctors and nurses run in every direction. There are many, but I can’t imagine there are enough for the number of decaying people standing about. They won’t be able to help everyone, no matter how hard they try. It’s impossible.
