This little girl so obviously senses every emotion surrounding her, explaining the returning of her piercing cry. I hold her tighter but don’t rock her in my arms like I normally would. I don’t hush her either. It’s important that she continues to cry now.
“What is the baby ill with?” the guard asks with haste, shining his flashlight onto her sensitive eyes, lingering on her flushed skin. He stumbles back a step. “Typhus,” he utters, as if the word itself is infectious.
All the guards are afraid of this disease. As they should be.
“There’s a rash—on her belly. The fever…spiked just an hour ago. She’s already had one seizure. We’re sure it’s typhus,” Gavriel explains.
I gasp a stuttered breath as a sob relents. “You must understand,” I cry out. “Feel her head—how hot she is…” I hold her out toward him, my arms shaking.
He won’t touch her. The risk of typhus isn’t worth it to him.Please God, keep us safe right now.
The guard takes another step backward. “Go on,” he snaps, tearing a handkerchief from his pocket to press against his nose. “If you return without a doctor’s note…” He doesn’t finish his statement, but the implication is clear.
His grip tightens on the gate lever. He’s letting us go. But then his jaw clenches, and as if someone has whispered a warning in his ear, he appears to reconsider. The flashlight angles toward our faces, blinding us. “Show me your forearms.”
“Wh—what do you mean?” I ask. “Why must you see our arms?” My acting isn’t believable—nor is my naivete.
He’s looking for tattooed numbers from Auschwitz. The tattooed numbers all the prisoners within the barbed-wire fences have…The tattooed numbers we shouldn’t have if we’re truly just visiting family here on the compound.
“Show me, or you don’t pass.” The ground disappears beneath my feet and my vision blurs.
It’s over.
This is the end for all of us.
ONE
GAVRIEL
Three Months Earlier—May 1943
I lay each brick slowly, pressing it into the wet mortar, knowing it will outlive me. I’m twenty-three, and already I know that these walls, when finished, will stand long after the last scream blurs into ash.
The long rectangular structure, shallow and partly underground, is unmistakable. I recognized it once the foundation was set. Same width. Same slope. The dimensions match the crematorium just south of here—the one where the chimney never stops sputtering and smoke drifts up until it becomes one with the sky.
There, the line of unsuspecting and innocent people never ends. They only move in one direction.
They go in.
They don’t come out.
Burning ash fills our noses and it sticks to us long after we’re done working, reminding us of what’s around us and what’s waiting for us.
The air at this end of the camp is dry with soot and the dust of limestone. Mortar gums up my throat and feels gritty between my teeth. I focus on the metallic scrape of the trowel and dull thud of stone, a familiar companion.
Pa wouldn’t recognize me now. Just skin, muscle, and bone. No fat anywhere. My hair’s been shaved to avoid lice, but I’m left with sunburns. I’ve never had that issue before, not with a thick head of dark hair.
Sometimes,I catch my reflection in puddles. The sight is jarring. I tell myself the water distorts features, but…the face looking back, the hollow cheeks, and eyes too deep. It’s me. I feel it. Even my hands used to be calloused and ready to work. Now, they split open too easily, always raw and bloody.
Pa may not be here to see what’s become of me, but at least I can still hear his words with every brick I lay. “Don’t force it, Gavriel. Let it settle into the mortar. Let it become a solid.” He said if we build slowly with a critical mind, the walls will shelter, comfort, and last for generations of families. Not here. Families are a distant thought here.
Back in the suburbs outside of Krakow when I built walls alongside my brothers and Pa, I would imagine the people who would eventually live inside them: A young couple sharing their first home together, a baker preparing to become well-known for his fresh bread, or a schoolhouse that would keep the youngest generations educated and safe.
Before September 1939 and the invasion when the Reich took everything from us, we’d be up every morning before dawn. Nails in my pockets and sawdust stuck to the scruff of my chin. Every day felt like a new adventure.
Days blurred together until Friday. Shabbat. Ma’s table would be set like nothing else mattered. Wine filled our glasses, bread steamed from the wicker basket, and Hebrew prayers were sung with passion.
“Music to my ears,” Ma would say, gleaming with pride. “Feeding my hungry family of men is my life’s purpose—until one of you gives me grandchildren, of course.”As the oldest son, she’d look right at me, then she’d say it again, so I knew she was serious. I would then bite my tongue until she concluded her thoughts with: “Regardless, I am a blessed Jewish woman.”
