Whatever is coming for us here, whatever the Nazis are afraid of and focusing on over murdering the rest of us, will take us all down.
And this is my punishment for having too much when I needed so little.
THIRTY-SEVEN
ROSALIE
AUSCHWITZ I
Present Day: January 16, 1945
A tunnel of papers endlessly swooshes through Weyman’s office. I don’t know where they’re all coming from. They fly down the corridor and take on a flight of their own when the main door opens. Papers stick to walls; some are sucked into vents. Others are stepped on with muddied soles. But we’re supposed to destroy all evidence.
If there’s no evidence, will people truly question whether it happened? Where did all the innocent people go? They were taken from their homes and brought here or one of the other hundreds of camps. People are gone. They left footprints on this earth—ones that can’t disappear.
“Clean them up! Nothing can be left behind!” Weyman shouts at me before slamming his fist on his desk like a hungry ogre.
I’m the only person left to yell at. His family is gone. The other officers on the street must have left in the night. Even Celina is gone. We didn’t get to say goodbye. I didn’t have a chance to warn her of what was coming.
And I don’t want to peel paper off the ground anymore while we wait to be attacked.
“Heil Hitler!” a baritone voice barks from the opening of the office.
I peek over my shoulder, from down on my hands and knees, sweeping up papers. Another officer, who must be a lower rank than Weyman, waits in formal salute stance.
“Heil Hitler,” Weyman replies, seemingly bored of the gesture.
Who wouldn’t be?
“What is it?” Weyman asks.
“Orders have come in for immediate departure.”
My hand freezes on the paper I’m dragging across the floor, my pulse clattering in my head.
Weyman clears his throat then stands from his desk. “Step outside.”
The door closes and I scoot across the office toward the wall, knowing they’re thin enough to hear through.
“I didn’t see the girl,” the other officer says.
“Never mind her—the Oberführer sent these orders?” Weyman asks.
“The directives were clear, Herr Obersturmführer. Marches begin at dawn. All remaining prisoners are to be separated. The sick will stay in the infirmary. The ‘fit’ will go. SS administration from Reich headquarters in Berlin is demanding records of KB and G.”
“So, we’ve been burning ledgers and now we’re writing new ones? Brilliant,” Weyman shouts, his sarcasm oozing with annoyance. “Just—” The door flies open, and I spin around to face away from the wall, so it isn’t obvious I was eavesdropping. Weyman storms back to his desk, unconcerned of my whereabouts, especially with the ghostly expression drawn into his eyes.
“We need more scribes. There are roughly eighteen thousand—” The junior officer peers over at me just as I return my focus to the papers on the ground. “And about forty-nine thousand more across the other two?—”
“I don’t care about the other two. Those aren’t my problem,” Weyman snaps.
“Understood.”
I may bejusta servant scraping papers off the ground, but I’m smart enough to figure out the officer’s missing words. There are still approximately sixty-seven thousand prisoners across the three compounds of Auschwitz, and we’ve been burning ledgers of compiled registries. But now they want lists of names…
“Well, don’t just stand here. Go find more scribes! Assign them to blocks,” Weyman growls at him. “I’ll have the logs retrieved at midnight.”
That’s only seven hours from now. I scrape up the rest of the papers faster than I was moving and pull them to my chest to set them in the burn pile. The junior officer departs with a quick salute. Weyman takes in a sharp breath through his nose and leans back in his chair, the leather complaining.
