Rena's Promise (12 page)

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Authors: Rena Kornreich Gelissen,Heather Dune Macadam

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical, #test

BOOK: Rena's Promise
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Page 60
when I said good-bye to my family it was not in this place. The tears around me are too plentiful, the pain too raw, as mothers and daughters are driven apart. I shut my eyes but I cannot shut my ears.
"Good-bye, Papa!"
"Good-bye, Mama!"
There is a smudge on my left boot. Spitting into my palm, I stoop to wipe it away. It is white again.
"Line up! Get into rows of five!
Raus! Raus!
" The prisoners poke us with sticks. The SS aim their guns at us. We are civilians unfamiliar with military drill. We line up clumsily. "March! Stay in your rows! If you step out of line you will be shot! March!" One thousand girl-women step in semi-perfect time, in semi-perfect rows of five, through the iron gates of Auschwitz. Above our heads, welded in iron, are the words
ARBEIT MACHT FREI
,
and we believe what the sign says: ''Work Will Make You Free."
"We are young," we remind ourselves. "We will work hard and be set free. We will see what happens." But on the outside we are walking as if we are doomed. It is raining, chilled like March rain. We are lost in thought but it is too cold to do much thinking. Everywhere it is gray. My heart is turning gray.
There are men along barbed-wire fences, in striped jackets, caps, and pants, watching us.
2
Their eyes reflect nothing. I think to myself, This must be an insane asylum, but why would they make the mentally ill work? That's not fair.
I do not comprehend my surroundings. I keep thinking, I am well brought up, well educated, well dressed. I was looking very nice when I went to the barracks in Slovakia wearing my beautiful suit, though it does not look so good now. Still, my white boots look pretty and spotless because I've been careful not to step in any mud. Walking through these gates, I forget my resolve and think
2. Prior to March 26, 1942, the only prisoners in Auschwitz were men, mostly Polish Gentiles serving time for their political or religious beliefs and Russian prisoners of war.

 

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for one moment about who I was at home. I'm a neat person. I should not be here. I am different. I come from a good family. The desire to curl up in a warm blanket of past memories permeates my effort to keep in step. Forget about that
now
, Rena, I reprimand my weakness, that's history. I stare at the acres of barbed wire around us. This is reality.
''Halt!" We freeze, complacent and obedient under the rifles and watchtowers around us. There are rows of brick buildings going down the side of the camp road, the Lagerstrasse, and a high wall with barbed wire. We are forced to line up so as to be going in the door of the first block. Time passes. Is it hours or is it days? I am somewhere toward the end of this line when people start coming out of the other side with no hair on their heads.
Leaning toward the girl next to me, I whisper, "There are more crazy people. We must be in an institution for the insane." She nods in agreement.
"Sophie! It's me!" some crazy bald person shouts to one of the girls nearby.
"Freida? Is that you? What happened to your hair?" Sophie yells back.
"Don't ask questions." Her bald head checks around her to see if anyone is listening. "If you have jewelry, step it into the mud."
I look at the watch I am wearing.
I can hear the children of Tylicz laughing with me as I run through the streets toward the post office, where I have just received my first phone call all the way from Krynica. "Rena has a boyfriend!" they chant. "Rena has a boyfriend!" "Do you like the watch I gave you?" my current beau asked on the crackling wire. "I love it," I flirted, "I will never take it off.'' "Well, you better if you go swimming or bathe," he flirted back
.
I break my foolish promise, ripping the band from my wrist. You cannot have my memories! You cannot have anything of mine! Driving it into the mud with my heel, dirtying my precious white felt boots, I smash it into a thousand pieces.

 

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The door to Block One looms before us. Inside, the unknown is happening. We can hear screams. We can see the girl-women coming out, but we tell ourselves we will not look different when we exit this place. Digging my fingernails into my palms, I pray I will be the one girl to exit with my hair. Then I am inside the block.
In a daze I walk up to the first table, as I have just seen the girl in front of me do. "What are you?" a German woman asks.
"Polish," I answer. She grunts, writing down my information. She does not ask me what race I am, and I do not offer the fact that I am also Jewish. I am puzzled by her clothes. She is not SS, she is definitely Reichdeutsche, but she is wearing a triangle with a number over it. It occurs to me that she may be a prisoner.
3
"Two gold crowns," she announces.
My mind races. Why would they make a note about my teeth? Oh, my God, they're going to take my crowns and then I'll look ugly. I go to the second table pulling my upper lip over my teeth, tilting my head down just slightly so no one notices the money in my mouth.
"Get those earrings off," the next German woman barks at me. I look around wondering who is being spoken to in such a tone of voice. "You there! Take those earrings off or I'll rip them out!"
"Me?" I am stunned. Touching my lobes gingerly, I realize my mistake. The earrings my Grandpa Zayde gave me when I was six years old are glistening from beneath my curls. I have worn them for so long that they are not jewelry but a part of me.
"I forgot about them," I tell her quickly, placing the last remnant of my life on a cold table, to be tossed into a box with everyone else's past.
"Take your clothes off and leave them here." They grab my
3. March 26 [1942] . . . 999 German women prisoners classified as asocial, criminal, and a few as political prisoners . . . receive Nos. 1999 and are lodged in the part of the main camp separated by the wall along Blocks 1 to 10 . . . 999 Jewish women from Proprad [near Hummene] in Slovakia are [also] sent to the women's section of Auschwitz. This is the first registered transport sent to the camp" (Czech, 148).

 

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clothes from me before I have a chance to fold them neatly or place them in a safe corner to be retrieved later.
"
Raus! Raus!
" We hurry forward. We have never stood naked in front of strangers before. Trying to cover ourselves with our hands, we look at the floor, hoping this will protect our modesty. Insensitive to our nudity, they prod us into a tub of disinfectant.
"They are filthy. Don't touch them." Their voices sting as badly as the solution against our bare skin. We stand for several minutes embarrassed to look at each other, staring into a green liquid that feels as if it will eat the flesh off our bodies.
"Get out! Get out!" Orders, more orders. The guards' words jump into our brains, dislodging free thought, exiling it to the nether regions of sanity. There are no towels to dry our shivering frames. Our clothes are not waiting for us, but the line is. Our lives have become one long line moving slowly from one horror to another.
I am held by the head and pushed abruptly into a chair. The cuss of electric shears moves closer to my ears as a tough hand pushes my head forward. "Don't move!" I am spoken to roughly, handled as if my skin were sandpaper. Running from the nape of my neck to my forehead, the clippers cut and scrape against my skin, tearing the hair from my head. Digging my fingernails deeper into my arm, I try to prevent tears from falling down my disinfected cheeks. Only married women shave their heads. Our traditions, our beliefs, are scorned and ridiculed by the acts they commit. They shear our heads, arms; even our pubic hair is discarded just as quickly and cruelly as the rest of the hair on our bodies. We are shorn like sheep and then ordered back into the vat of disinfectant. My flesh burns like fire. I wonder if I will get my jacket and skirt back now that the ordeal is over. They can't possibly do anything morewhat else is there?
A girl screams.
There is a long table where an officer is standing. He has rubber

 

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