If I Should Die Before I Wake (16 page)

At the front of the line was a table with two SS—Defense Corps—officers sitting at it. When I got to them, one of the officers asked me my name.

"Ewa Krisowski," I said.

They didn't even blink. They searched through their stack of papers, pulled one out, and told me to sign it. I looked at the paper and saw my false name, my real name, my true birthdate, and my place of birth written at the top.

Then there were a lot of words I didn't have time to read. Two guards, one on either side, had closed in on me, waiting for me to sign. I bent over the paper and signed it, catching the line "Sentenced to hard labor for life" near the bottom.

"Please, God," I mumbled, "let this war end soon."

The inside of the train was dark and lined with small wire-mesh cells. Bubbe and I were stuffed into one of these small pockets with the twins, Dvora, and two other women. These two women kept staring at me and pushed their way between the others to get closer. They looked as if they wanted to eat me. I took Bubbe's hand in mine and moved toward her. More women were shoved into our cell, and I was stuck pressed up against Bubbe with the two vultures mashed up against my back.

We stood like this for hours, barely able to shift our bodies left or right. I had to go to the bathroom, but there seemed to be no toilets on this train. I felt something wet hit my legs. Had I lost control? I hadn't even felt it, and I still felt as if I had to go, badly.

"Bubbe, I think I just wet myself," I whispered.

"
Moi aussi—
Me, too," said the woman pressed into my back.

I shuddered.

A guard passed down the aisle and was besieged in several languages by women desperate to go to the bathroom.

"You will wait!" he shouted.

It was fine to say we would wait, but no one could, and puddles began to collect in all the cells. I was ashamed when at last I, too, could hold it no longer and felt myself letting go. I tried to push away from Bubbe, backing myself farther into the French woman behind me.

She spit at the back of my head.

"When will you learn, Chana?" Bubbe said.

I hung my head. When would I learn?

The train slowed down and came to a halt. Guards were suddenly everywhere.

"
Alles raus, schneller!
"they shouted.

They herded us out into the aisles and as we passed the guards, they took aim at us, beating us on the shoulders and head with their stubby batons.

"You have no self-control. You are animals!" they shouted at us.

As I approached a guard with a baton, I prepared myself for the strike, pulling my arms in close to my body. I saw the guard draw his weapon up over his head, but before he had the chance to hit me, Bubbe slapped her hands on my back and pushed me forward, out of the way of the rod.

Bubbe received several blows to her head and shoulders for her trouble, blows that should have been mine.

They led us out of the train to a field, soft beneath our feet, under the stars, where they ordered us to squat down and do our business.

Would this night of shame never end?

We then climbed back onto the train, and they locked us back up in our cells.

The train lurched forward and we traveled for another five minutes before it stopped again. This time all the noise and commotion was on the outside. We could hear shouts and clomping boots and doors opening and shutting in other sections of the train. We remained there for hours, our hands and feet numb with our stillness. What were we waiting for? The noise outside had ended long ago, and still we waited.

Finally the train began to grumble and clank and we started to creep forward. A few minutes later we were on our way again.

I had shifted my position so I was now beside Bubbe and the two women were facing us, their cheesy breath suffocating me.

"Auschwitz," the taller woman said to us, her head bobbing on her neck.

We ignored her.

"We are going to Auschwitz," she said in German.

Bubbe nodded. "I know the place, Óswi[ecedil]cim, we call it. It is in Poland. Chana, we are returning to Poland."

"We die in Poland then," said the other woman.

"Why are we going to Óswi[ecedil]cim?" I asked Bubbe. "There is nothing there but swamp."

"To work, to starve, to die," said the shorter woman. "I have heard it is so. No one returns from this Auschwitz. Zola, over there"—she poked her finger through the mesh and pointed at a stiff, sticklike woman across the aisle—"she knows everything. She is a murderer."

I didn't know how to take this last piece of information. Did she know everything
because
she was a murderer? Had Zola really killed someone? Why was I believing these two women, one of whom had spit on my head?

"We are not all political prisoners then?" Bubbe asked.

"No. Many are thieves, murderers, true criminals. We are mishy-mashy, all mixed together."

We rode on, stopping again to go to a field, then filing back into the train, but never were we given food or water. We hadn't eaten since the night before.

Again we stopped, and the guards hurried down the aisle shouting, unlocking the cells, and yanking us out.

"We could not be stopping to go to the bathroom so soon, could we?" I asked Bubbe as we shuffled down the aisle.

"This must be Auschwitz," she replied.

We stumbled out of the train. Above us was a white station sign with black gothic lettering. I could only make out a few of the letters in the early dawn but, yes, this was indeed Auschwitz.

The guards charged forward, herding us into lines, beating us with their sticks, and using barking dogs to keep us moving. All was noise and confusion as we scrambled along with hundreds of others as disoriented as we were.

The air was thick and sticky, the sky unnaturally pink. We could smell something cooking, burning. It must be some horrible animal, some fatty, rotten meat, I decided. I hurried forward with Bubbe, hoping that we'd soon pass through this thick, blanketing stench, but it was everywhere.

"Halt!" the guards shouted down the line as we approached a gate with letters strung across the top of it.

"
Arbeit Macht Frei,
"Bubbe read. "Work Will Set You Free."

All around the gate was a high wall of electrified wire. We waited as people were pulled away from our lines and men were separated from the women and led through this gate. The rest of us were pushed on until at last we arrived at another gate, the entrance to a place they called Birkenau. Here the smell was even stronger, the pink sky almost red, the air closing in on us, feeding on us.

The guards marched us through this gate in rows of five and led us to the front of a long, low building, where two SS women in full uniform were waiting. They pushed us inside a room that smelled of disinfectant, reminding me of the time, now so long ago, when Estera Hurwitz and I were scrubbing the stairs for the Nazis. Whoever could have guessed then how great and cruel the imagination of a human full of hate could be?

"Remove your clothing and queue up for showers!" the SS women shouted.

I glanced over at the two men standing by the entrance. Bubbe stepped forward and spoke to one of the women.

"Please, she is modest, can she not...?"

"How is it that you were not selected?" the officer asked before Bubbe could finish her sentence. "You are too old. You will not live a day."

I studied Bubbe for the first time in a long while. Yes, it was true, she did look old, my youthful bubbe. She had lost so much weight that her skin hung on her bones like an empty burlap sack, and her hair, so black just three years ago, had gone gray like ashes—dull and dead.

"For what was I to be selected?" she asked them.

The two women smirked at one another.

"I am a nurse. Were they wanting someone to do a job? In prison I worked in the kitchen but I am fully qualified—"

"You were a prisoner?"

"Yes, political. We were sent here, sentenced to hard labor."

"Prisoner? Good. It was why you were not selected, but still you will not last. Now you will remove the rest of your clothes."

"But my—"

"Everyone!"

I thanked Bubbe for trying and removed my clothes, cowering behind her as we filed into a brightly lit shower room. The door closed behind us and the showers came on, a cold spray that felt better in my mouth than on my skin. We tried to drink as much as we could.

A door opened at the other end and a voice shouted,"
Heraus! Heraus!
"

Following orders, we hurried, dripping wet, out into another large, bare room where women in striped uniforms grabbed us by the hair and chopped it off. Another woman used a razor and ran it around the crown of our heads. Without time to think, I was shoved forward, where two women grabbed my arms and shaved my armpits. Another woman kicked my legs apart and shaved between them. Again I was pushed forward, where I was doused with a shower of disinfectant that stung like needles on my bare skin. Before I could figure out what was happening, I was outside in the cold October air, wet, naked, and shivering. I looked out in front of me and saw the barbed wire everywhere, and beyond it, nothing, no trees or grass or bushes. Like a warning it spoke to me—"Nothing can grow here, nothing can live here."

WHEN I TURNED AROUND,
I found Bubbe standing behind me. We took a second to examine each other and then broke into hysterical laughter.

"You look like a baby bird, Bubbe."

"And you, Chana, you are Jakub without your hair."

"
Zugánge,
newcomers, here, quickly, quickly!" shouted another guard.

We filed into another building, where more women, prisoners also, handed out clothes. I was given a large dress that looked like a shirt, mismatched stockings, and two clogs—one too small and one too large for my feet. We began moving through the crowd, trading our goods for shoes and clothing that fit. In the end I found myself with clogs that were still too big but matched, and the same large dress; no one else wanted it except Bubbe, and I refused to let her trade it for her warm knickers and sweater. If she were to survive, I knew she would need to stay warm.

At the end of this long room were tables. At the first table they took down our names, our ages, and our professions. When the clerk in front of us saw Bubbe and heard that she was in her fifties she nodded and said, "Yes, you are thirty-eight."

"No, I think you misunderstood," Bubbe began.

"No one over forty should be here. Do you understand?"

Bubbe took the woman's hand. "Yes, thank you. You are very kind."

"I grew up in Lodz," said the clerk. "I moved away when I married. My name is Sora. We are sisters, no? I will look after you and try to get you a good job, but first you will have to survive quarantine. Most do not make it." She squirmed in her seat, glancing sideways at the other clerk. Then she turned to me. "And this is your daughter."

"No, I am her—I mean, yes, yes, I am her daughter."

"Yes, and I think twenty is a good age for you."

"Yes, I am twenty." I nodded.

"And what do you do? Your profession."

"Profession? I—nothing. I'm a student, or I was, once, long ago."

"She plays the violin," Bubbe said.

"Shh, Bubbe, what does that matter here?"

"It's wonderful!" The clerk beamed at me.

"This could help you, they could always use another violinist."

"They? Who?"

The woman looked behind us and then leaned forward in her chair, her brown tufts of hair standing straight up on her head. She lowered her voice to a whisper. "I wonder, in your travels, if perhaps you have met Dovid and Ruchel Ozick, my mama and tata. You see, I have not heard." Her face, lined and waxy, harsh beneath her tufts of hair, suddenly softened. "I need to know if they are all right."

Bubbe leaned forward to speak, but the clerk held up her hand.

"Not now, the
Lagerführer
is coming to see why the line has stopped; you will have to move along."

Bubbe squeezed her hand. "I'm sorry, I can't tell you," she said, and then moved on to the next table.

At this table, two women tattooed numbers on the inside of our left forearms. They were quick and careless with the needle. Each jab into the skin made me jump. Even as I moved away from the table, I could feel the stinging, as though with every poke they had deposited a needle into a pore in my arm.

In our group all the digits in our numbers were the same except the last two or three. Bubbe's last number was 71 and mine 72. Everything here was orderly.

With the help of the SS guards and their dogs, we were organized into groups of five and marched along a hard-packed road to the quarantine block. Along the way we passed a low building with two tall brick chimneys rising up toward the sky, and from these came thick clouds of black smoke. I wanted to stop and watch the smoke. I wanted to stop and think a minute, but there was no time."
Schneller! Schneller!
"they kept barking at us. "Faster!"

We were led through another set of barbed wire and before us stood row upon row of long, low stone huts. These buildings were grouped and divided by still more barbed wire and electrified fencing, and just in case that wasn't enough, they had tall watchtowers at the far corners of the compound where sentries kept an eye, and a rifle, poised on the movements of the inmates.

I took Bubbe's hand as we walked past the row of huts. Dead bodies were lying in piles in front of almost every barrack. They all looked alike—faceless, almost skinless piles of bones. How hard had these people fought for their lives? And now, if they could speak, would they say it was worth the fight? I wanted to know. I had to know. If that was to be my fate, to be tossed onto a pile and become a nameless, faceless nobody, why not die quickly and get it over with? Why should I allow myself to be tortured, why suffer, just to come to this? I looked down at the tattoo on my forearm. Who was I kidding? Already I had become nameless, and in this rag they had given me to wear and with my hair all shaved off, I was well on my way to becoming faceless.