A whistle slings through the air, recapturing my attention. “You there, brick-boy, come,” the watching SS officer shouts up to me. Me. He’s talking to me, just me. I curl my hand around my throat, where my pulse hammers. I grip the ladder’s side and take another glance down at the officer, wondering if he’s laughing because I’m sure he can sense the fear from where he’s standing. He’s still, just staring with his arms folded across his chest.
He told me to come. As if I’m a dog.
I scale down the ladder and make my way over to the officer, trying to hold my posture straight as my stare falls to the ground. My fingers twitch by my sides, coated in mortar dust and sweat. The moment I stop working, the pain and hunger set in. I clench my fists to steady myself.
I step up to the man, nearly a head shorter than me, and wait for him to speak.
“You have experience with masonry, yes?”
“Yes.” My response is muffled by a passing laborer pulling a wagon over dirt-riddled rocks. The clatter is so loud it sounds like a metal rubbish bin rolling down a hill. I can’t help but stare at the pile of cans the man is transporting. Each of them is stamped with a single label: Zyklon-B.
There it is.
The poison they use to kill people.
The ultimate proof.
Even Adam reacts to the sight. From the corner of my eye, I notice him stiffen, staring at the cans.
The officer clears his throat as the wagon stops to the side of the building. “Your attention to detail is—” he says with a hard blink before continuing. “Your skills are needed elsewhere.” They would never pay a Jew a compliment, and I don’t want one from him or any of the other beasts. “Come.”
No one in the vicinity speaks. No one moves. They just watch me go—like they’ve already decided I won’t be coming back.
TWO
HALINA
July 15, 1943
Eva darts out the church doors and makes a beeline for the clearing in the woods. “Eva, come back here,” I shout, already breaking into a run.
Her little feet smack the dirt road, shoes too tattered to soften the clamber. Dirt clouds up behind her like smoke. She bolts forward with the worry-free confidence only a child can have, arms pumping, curls flying in the wind. It’s as if the forest is hers to claim. She doesn’t even hesitate at the split that breaks into several directions, just continues down the one where several low weather-worn branches arch toward the ground. Every weaving motion is methodical, like this attempt to flee was pre-planned. I’m sure it was.
This seven-year-old little girl is going to give me gray hair, but she reminds me of her at the same age. This must be my retribution.
Eva’s heading straight for the bridge, the connecting seam between what’s left of civility on our side of the Vistula, and the Reich-occupied restricted zone on the other.
What was once Polish-owned is now property of the Reich. The people of Poland should have the right to cross whichever road we please here, but that’s a war we won’t win.
At twenty-two years old, I’m more staff than ward now. Julia took me in when I was left on the church as a newborn, an orphan, and I’ve lived here ever since. It’s barely a church anymore, more of an aged sanctuary being utilized as a shelter. That’s just the façade though. Julia and the other housemothers keep the inside warm, clean, and as close to home as anything I’ve known.
No one in their right mind would choose to live beside Reich soldiers, but we weren’t given a choice. Nearly four years ago, they forced all Polish citizens out of the forty-square-mile area of land surrounding Oswiecim and its nearby villages, sealing it off like a fortress and declaring it a “restricted zone.” It’s off limits to anyone not branded by the Reich.
The orphanage sits less than fifteen minutes from the nearest checkpoint of the SS settlement area, and thirty minutes from the front gates of Auschwitz—the former Army barracks turned prison labor camp for war criminals. But no Polish citizen truly knows what happens behind those forbidden barriers—or the road that leads to the smokestack—unless they’ve been taken inside.
In winter when the trees are bare, gunshots echo between frozen embankments. In summer, when the air is thick and sticky, the stench of smoke weaves through the branches.
“Eva!” I shout, this time through a harsh whisper, winded as my lungs threaten to splinter my ribs. I don’t know how this little girl is so much faster than me. “Stop running! Let’s talk about why you’re upset. I can help!” I don’t know how I managed to let her slip past me. I’m better than that. I must have been distracted—something I’m not allowed to be when taking care of children. How could I have let this happen?
She doesn’t bother to look over her shoulder toward me. Just keeps on running, taking all the correct turns between the maze of trees as if she knows exactly where she’s trying to go—where she’s not supposed to go. Most people would get themselves lost trying to get in or out if they didn’t have directions. Not her, though. Nope. She doesn’t understand the danger that looms in the distance.
The humid air catches in my lungs as I continue after her, finally gaining more speed, or she’s becoming tired. I catch her by the wrist just as she sets foot on the road, just footsteps from the bridge, and a two-minute walk from a German checkpoint.
“No!” Eva screams. “Let me go!”
“Eva, you know the rules, and you know exactly where that bridge will take you,” I scold her, breathlessly, painfully, understanding the exact reason why she’s trying to run away.
“Because,” she says with a heavy groan. “The bridge goes to the badplace—the one that makes people disappear.” After a roll of her young, naïve eyes, I tug her backward a few steps onto a patch of grass with sprouting weeds and dandelions.
