I need to be more careful.
She needs to be more careful.
All we were doing is talking, but it doesn’t matter. I shake my head. “Not now.”
I would think the line would have started moving again, but no such luck. The gong is going to ring at any moment and all I can think about is the thought of losing control of my bladder. The ache weighing on the lower half of my body is a type of pain I never could have imagined before being sent here. I never thought I would be in a situation where someone dictated when I use the toilet, never mind telling me—us—we’re allowed to go twice in a day.
“El malei rachamim…” the man behind chants a soft prayer in Hebrew for the dead, his words rising and falling like lapping waters. “Shehalach l’olamo…” A quiet sob interrupts the prayer, the man gasping for breaths between each release. “…b’shalom al mishkavo…”
The sound of his broken voice chokes me, making me wonder what his story is—who he’s trying so desperately to stay alivefor, like I am for my family. The line finally moves, and I step to the side to let the older gentleman go first. I place my hand on his back as he passes, just a small gesture so he knows he’s not alone.
Somehow, I managed to make it through the latrine before the gong screamed its command—our notice to line up at the labor barracks. The six of us who work in the SS houses reconnect on the walk toward the front gates. In silence, we pass rows of wooden barracks and bodies lying astray. The crunch of our feet over the wet dirt grows louder every day as each of our sets of legs become heavier, despite our weight loss from starving. We pass a line of newcomers, and today, I can’t bear to look at them. The guilt of not warning them of what’s ahead becomes a burden that never subsides.
“So…” Adam says as we near the labor barracks.
“So, what?”
“Do you think the nanny is the long-awaited love of your life?” Adam presses.
“Her name is Halina and quit talking about her.”
“That’s a nice name,” he says, as if checking another box.
“She’s not the love of my life. I met her two weeks ago. There’s no such thing. Trust me, I’d know.”
Adam drops his hand on my shoulder. “You said you didn’t have a girl or wife back home,” he follows. “So how would you know?”
“I don’t have a girl or a wife back home. I don’t even have a home. There was someone once back when I had a home.”
“What happened?” Adam asks, as if he’s already regretting the question.
“We had been planning for a future together until her father joined the Polish Gestapo. She didn’t even give me a reason why she could never see or speak to me again. She disappeared. I found out about her father after the fact and figured out the reston my own. I thought I knew her. I thought I loved her. I was just a fool.”
“We all get fooled, brother. I think most of us learn after the first time. Unless you’re like me…then it takes three or four. But maybe the next woman I meet won’t crush my soul. There’s still hope for us.”
Adam and his optimism…I didn’t think I’d become reliant on it, but it’s growing on me.
“Gavriel, all I know is, she’s a beautiful woman, and some might say a bit feisty with the way she snuck food up to us last week,” he says with a heartwarming sigh. “So, if you aren’t interested in her, I could use a distraction—maybe one that won’t break me.”
Adam’s talking as if he can march right up to the attic and sweep Halina off her feet and carry her away into the sunset. We’re prisoners. We’re not even supposed to be speaking to her. But really, I’d fight him for her.
“Neither of us need a distraction. That’s how we’d end up dead by nightfall, isn’t it?”
The loneliness is dark here. It eats at all of us, gnawing like a parasite until it takes over our every waking thought. This life we’re living isn’t a theatrical production with a predictable ending. It’s real, and there is death. Hope is like a buried treasure that nobody here has the strength to dig up, and anything good just dangles in front of us like a trap.
“We only feel like we’re dying today, brother. But it’s so we can survive another day.”
“We will.” I don’t say what’s running through my mind. It’s not fair of me to keep reminding him that it seems as if death is chasing us.
I still remember the night Adam pulled me up from the ground after a kapo nearly broke my nose for taking fifteen seconds too long at the toilets. It was my third night inAuschwitz and the man left me bleeding in the snow between the latrine and our block. I couldn’t see straight. Everything was a blur, but Adam was there. I heard his voice, telling me I’d won the boxing championship. He draped his coat over mine and helped me to my feet. It took me a minute to understand his joke. I must have looked like I had been in a boxing ring. I doubt I looked like I won, though.
I never asked him why he helped me that night, and he never told me it was so I could survive another day. We just became immediate friends. Brothers in a way.
The only easy part about being in Auschwitz is knowing that I was the only one of my family sent here. I tell myself that the rest of them have been sent somewhere less brutal, making their chances of survival much greater. Maybe it’s just a lie I knowingly tell myself. A year ago, I remember telling my younger brothers, Jozek and Natan, that no one would take us down. I wouldn’t let them. I would outsmart any one of those German soldiers. I believed those words. I made them believe those words too. Now, I hope they forget about that conversation, because I was wrong. If it was just two of us in a room, me and a German soldier…only one of us would have a rifle.
Adam and I step into a growing row of others, rain trickling overhead, the hint of sunlight breaking through the clouds gone.
“A moment of happiness isn’t a crime. You’re still allowed to feel what you want to feel,” Adam utters, keeping his voice down as the kapos pace in front of us like bloodhounds.
