Rena's Promise (13 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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gloves on and there are other men holding the girl down. I hear her scream again. I have no idea what he is doing but I know I don't want him doing it to me. There are two lines, the one I am in, going to the table with the man and his gloves, and the line facing in the opposite direction. Blood drips down the thighs of the girl-women coming away from the man and his gloves. It only takes a second for me to weigh the consequences of action against the consequences of inactionI turn quickly around, stepping into the other line. This is my first accomplishment in Auschwitz: no one gives me a gynecological exam.
The German women prisoners, who are obviously superior, toss woolen uniforms at us. There are Russian insignias on the breasts of the uniforms. We fumble, then try them on, quickly discovering that they are too huge for most women to wear. There is a tall woman next to me whose pants are too short. "Here, try mine on," I suggest. We trade. Around us, other women do the same, trying to find something that won't fall off. I balk at pulling the trousers over my body without any underwear on. Sniffing my dark green woolen shirt, I am nauseated by the dampness of the fabric. There are no buttons to close the shirt, but there are holes and reddish-brown streaks and stains. "They haven't even washed these clothes!" I remark. Touching a smear of dirt, I wonder if I can scrub it out later. But this is not mud. It is sticky. It smells sweet. My stomach lurches. I stare at the women around me who are already clothed. Still damp from the disinfectant, they are simply grateful for something to put over their bodies. Like myself, they do not notice at once, preferring to think that the cloth has been eaten away by moths rather than bullets. They do not see that the streaks are not dirt and mud but blood. We are like lambs being led to slaughter, following one another because we know of nothing else to do. Despite the sweet-sour smell of stale blood and scratchiness of the wool against my nipples, I modestly pull my shirt across my chest. What will be next?
In the last room there is a pile of wood slabs with leather straps

 

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across the top. These are supposed to be shoes. Again, we try to help each other find a matching pair, but they were not made in pairs. They're not even made for human beings to wear. Scuffling out of the block onto the camp road, I move into position. We stand in neat rows of five, bald, practically barefoot, and wearing dead men's uniforms. It begins to drizzle.
"Line up!" The drill is repetitive, mundane. We are capable of nothing but obeying orders. "March!" With one hand clutching the stench of my shirt close around me and the other hoisting up the pants which sag below my hips, still possessed by a false sense of modesty, I march.
We stamp our feet awkwardly, trying not to trip or lose our sandals. We pass the first four blocks before turning into Block Five. We are so busy trying not to lose our clothing that we do not notice the room we are led into. The door slams shut and a bolt falls on the other side. We are trapped, standing almost on top of one another in bloody straw. Bedbugs jump, making our bodies black. We hold our clothes up over our faces; they jump on our bare heads, our hands, all over any exposed patch of skin. In the straw, lice crawl hungrily between our toes.
We have gone quietly for too long. Suddenly there is a surge of dissension. Running to the door, we pound and pound. "Let us out! Let us out!" With both hands we beat the walls imprisoning us. "This can't be!" the voices around me scream. ''Please, let us out. We did nothing wrong. There's got to be a mistake. Help us!"
I watch the anguish around me. We have revolted too late. It is no mistake. Joining the mass of betrayed girl-women, I pound against the oak of injustice. It beats thinking. Anything is better than facing the facts on the floor and under our feet.
I am tired of being vigilant. I am tired of watching the sun rise on despair. The girl-women around me mirror my thoughts; my face must look as doomed as theirs. The filth, the smell, the sounds of guard dogs barking in the distanceit is too much. The whole night I crouch on the floor, exhausted yet alert. There has been no

 

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water for over four days, no food, not a drop of anything. I don't fall asleep, but quite a few do. Dropping off into unconsciousness, they collapse on the floor, no longer able to feel the gnawing bites of these terrible bugs.
The door to Block Five opens at four
A.M
. I am still where they left me, wide-eyed and awake. We scramble into line and march out for roll call. We stand silently, being counted, unable to move from our neat and orderly rows of five. I do not turn my head. I do not shift my feet. I want to scratch at the bites and the irritating wool against my bare skin. My thumb twitches against my leg; it is the only movement I allow myself to indulge in.
They divide us evenly into two different groups. We are given a bowl for our tea, but there aren't enough; some people share theirs, but right away there are arguments and some of the bowls disappear. We march into Block Ten. It is late morning when we are finally given a little of something like tea, a piece of bread, and a pat of margarine, which they slap onto the open palm of our hands. I notice that everyone gobbles their food quickly, too quickly for their shrunken stomachs. Some get in line again, expecting more, but there are no seconds. They are beaten for being so presumptuous. I chew my bread, slowly spreading my margarine as if I were at a proper dinner. My tea tastes strange, but I do not care. I sip it slowly, forcing myself to make it last, telling my body that it is full and this is plenty to eat.
The first day we clean the inside of Block Ten. Moving in a daze, I hold my shirt closed and keep my pants up while dusting, sweeping, washing. We carry out our duties. I am simply grateful to be let out of the block, with all its lice and bugs. There is little else to do but watch and learn. The Germans are disorganized. I notice this immediately, but it means nothingorganized or not, I am at their mercy.
More girl-women march into camp and I spend all afternoon watching them come out of the barracks bald and dressed in uniforms like myself. With so many coming in, I cannot imagine

 

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Danka avoiding the transports for long. Standing by the fence watching the line of newcomers, I am torn between praying that I won't see her here and praying that we find each other if this is where she ends up. I wonder if she will recognize me. I wonder if I will recognize her. Each new face is carefully scanned before I dismiss it for not being my sister. Lost in an ever-increasing sea of despair, my heart has one last hope that Danka will hide in Slovakia. My bones tell me she will be here all too soon.
I see my lovely white boots with their red trim on an SS woman across the compound. I want to say something, take them from her and put them on my own feet. Trying to control this impulse to take back what is mine, I start to return to the block. "Line up! Line up!" We move into neat rows of five. The sun sinks in the west as one thousand of us are counted.
A concrete wall divides camp. The men's blocks are on the other side of this wall, but from the second story of the blocks we can see each other through the barbed wire. In the approaching darkness I stand before the upstairs window looking at the same men I had seen the day before. At least they look the same. Each of the blocks in Auschwitz has windows in the front, and from the second floor we can open them and speak to the men on the other side of the wall. They are half-starved, eager to hear news of the outside world and to make friends with us.
I go to the window and spit on my hand. The reflection is dark and obscured, but I stand rubbing the dirt from my face, smearing the tearstains into my skin so they will not know they've made me cry. I rub my scalp as if I had hair to comb. It is a futile but comforting gesture, reminding me of Mama's hand brushing back my hair. I shut out these thoughts quickly; there is only one thing to rememberdon't reminisce. My reflection in the window blinks back her tears. I want to rant and rave but I can only stare at the picture before my eyes. What have they done to us? The silent screams inside my head rip my soul apart. Who is this person star-

 

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ing back at me? The men in camp no longer look insane. They look like me.
"Is anyone over there Polish?" a man asks from the other side of the wall.
"I am," I answer.
"Can I help you?" he asks.
"I could use a rope to hold up my pants, and a nail." This is called organizing. Really it is scrounging, but organizing is more appropriate when you consider our circumstances and how dangerous having anything extra is.
"Run downstairs. I'll throw something over." This is my first care package, and with grateful admiration I retrieve a rope with a nail, wrapped tightly around a stone.
I spend the rest of the evening fraying the rope into four pieces. It does not take me long to figure out that resourcefulness is as precious as food in this place, and nothing passes under my feet unnoticed or unassessed for its potential. By taking a stone, I am able to hammer the nail through the metal rim of my bowl, then I thread one of the pieces of ropemy new beltthrough the hole. To keep my shirt closed I tuck it in my pants and tie the belt tightly around my waist. This is how it is. My life depends on this precious bowl which I can drink from and wash in. I will work with it. I sleep with it. I always keep it by my side. It is red.
There are no showers, but there are three toilets in Block Ten and a place to wash our hands. For toilet paper there are scraps of newspaper, but these disappear quickly. There's always a line, so we don't have a chance very often to use the toilet or wash our hands, but at least it is possible. There are bunk beds which have straw mattresses on them and thin blankets. The first night we have two people per bunk, but there are empty bunks waiting for more girl-women just like us. They must be in Block Five tonight.
My bed is next to a wall with a window that is boarded up, but through the slats in the boards I can look into the yard of Block Eleven. The struggle for sleep is not hard after so many nights of

 

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sleeplessness, but somewhere in the middle of the dreamless night there are gunshots. Awake and alert, I lie on my pallet of straw pulling the blanket closer around me, but it cannot warm the chill in my spine; my cup attached firmly to my waist is no comfort either. I know somewhere someone is dying.
Roll call on the second morning comes just as early, just as rudely. It is four
A.M
. They shout for us to form a line in alphabetical order. Frantically we jostle one another, trying to get where we belong; anyone not in place is beaten into line. We seem to always be marching from one place to another and standing for a long time doing nothing. This time we are funneled into a barrack with benches and long tables. There are two sisters in the front of our line, I believe they are numbered 1001 and 1002. The tattooing is painful. The men prisoners do not delight in sticking the needle, like a shot, in our left forearms over and over. They know how much it hurts. Still, the Germans force them to hurry, so there is no time to be gentle or concerned. It is as if each stab will burst any shred of ego left. My number is 1716. Branded and numbered like cattle, we rub our arms as we had rubbed our naked heads, trying to make the pain go away.
The Nazis are starting to arrange things now. The kapos, who are German prisoners, are put in charge of us when we are outside of our blocks. We learn how to distinguish the kapos by the color triangle they wear: green signifies that she is in for murder; red means she is a political prisoner, and black represents a prostitute or asocial prisoner.
A young Slovakian Jew called Elza is chosen to be our blockowa, our block elder, and is in charge of us when we are inside the block. Her duties include getting us out to roll call and dividing the bread loaves which are assigned to each room. There are also sztubowas, room elders, who divide the loaves between everyone in the room and hand out our portions. Between them, the block elders and room elders steal bread for themselves. It is easy to see that they are doing this and I realize almost immediately that I have to be

 

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