Rena's Promise (41 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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jump into them, pull them up to our chins, shut our eyes, and look just like everyone else who is sleeping.
I force my breathing to be as slow and even as Danka's, but I am sure it is audible. What if she checks the room? What if she turns on the light and demands that the guilty parties step forward? I try to shut my brain off. What if we get caught? But Edita does not check our bunks. The next morning she walks stiffly out of her room without looking at anyone. Nothing is reported to the SS, and no one investigates because she doesn't tell anyone. She has learned her lesson. She stops berating the scribes and starts to act with a little shred of humanity toward her coprisoners.
Danka is on the outside basket and leans back as Stasiu throws us a piece of sausage and some bread. Out of the corner of my eye I see an SS man riding by on his bicycle. I swear that he's seen us, but we do not pause, look guilty, or do anything that will arouse more suspicion. We bury the food deep in the clothes and walk back to the laundry as quickly as possible. The whole way back we think that the SS man's going to come and catch us and then we'll be done for. We are jumpy and irritable, our nerves frayed with fear. First there is the joy of having extra food, then there is the possibility of that food sending us back to Birkenau or worse. We would gladly give up the meal to avoid that end.
We hide the food as soon as we enter the block stairwell and, sure enough, the baskets are checked thoroughly, but no one accuses us of anything. After roll call I sneak back to the hiding place and share the sausage and bread with a few other girls. It doesn't taste as good as it did before; our fear has flavored it differently.
The next morning one of the Poles who delivers our tea whispers to me, "Stasiu Artista just got twenty-five lashes for stealing a sausage for one of you girls." I try not to show alarm. I'm glad he gave me the information because I can prevent the story

 

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from spreading and getting us in trouble. I also know that Stasiu has not given up our names to the SS officer who caught him. We are safe.
Three days later, as we march in from work, Stasiu signals me from the window.
"Change places," I whisper. We stop. Danka moves as the sausage lands in our basket, and Dina takes her place.
"You're going to get into worse trouble than before," I scold him. "You better not do that again!" But he doesn't care. Every few weeks out comes a little bit of sausage, out comes an extra piece of breadmanna from heaven.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
It is spring. We do not allow ourselves to feel spring, but we cannot ignore the fact that it is here again. This is our third spring in captivity; except for the smell of the air, it has all but lost its meaning. All spring really means is that we have survived another winter. Marek and his detail are back working along the fence, and trains race by across the field. I enjoy the noise as they pass; it reminds me of freedom and far-off cities.
Danka and Dina and I hang the clothes up silently as a train passes us in the distance. I turn from my work to watch its journey, and for one moment my mind is transported beyond the walls and work fields of Auschwitz-Birkenau. There a woman bedecked in a white hat and white gloves, her chin leaning on her pristine wrist, is looking out the window, looking at me, looking through me as if I were not there. She is clean and refined. She looks as if she might be going to visit somebody and that the greatest burden on her mind is what to serve for dinner tonight.
I am so controlled always, never do I let the emotions catch up with me, but there is no stopping the tears pouring from the corners of my eyes. Where is she going? I ask myself. Why does she have a life and I have nothing?

 

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''There is a world out there," I gasp, giving way to the deluge inside of me.
There is a song we sing in camp. It never leaves my mind for one moment, always I am singing it inside my head:
There used to be tangos, fox-trots, and fanfares
sung by dancing pairs.
There were tangos of dreams and lovers,
but now we're at war. Nobody writes songs.
It's a waste of our young years.
So sing this new song, our heads held high.
Sing, sister, behind the German iron bars
this tango of tears, suffering, and desperation
what the war means to us today.
Our hearts are crying hot tears.
Are we ever going to see the sun?
Are we going to see the beautiful world again?
From the distance through the iron bars freedom is laughing at us
and about freedom we are constantly dreaming.
But the sun's still not shining.
It is so impossible, but there it is, just a few kilometers away. Even in Stabsgebaüde, even if I can't see it, the smoke is still belching from the crematoriums. We aren't out of it, and the Germans are so efficient, and they're winning the war. We are surviving because we have a hope for living, but admitting to this hope is insane! In my heart I want to believe I will be free again someday because I don't have the strength to stand up and live without that hope. But death is too imminent; the crematoriums are too oppressive. Hope is only there because we cannot survive without it.
"What's wrong?" Marek's voice invades my sorrow.
"That train, . . ." I answer, my voice wavering and unsure, "there were people on it, all dressed up, sitting there as if there is no war . . . as if we're not even here." I disappear behind the

 

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clothesline to wipe my tears on SS underwear so no one will know that they have gotten to me, again.
1
The rock lands a few feet away. It is a simple note, just a few words:
Why don't we try to escape?
And go where, Marek? I wonder. We are Jews, and nobody is for us anymore. Despite the spring my youth is gone. We work, we are temporarily safe, but I feel no passion for life anymore. I sit in the dark fighting the overwhelming urge to cry. One good long boo-hooeven that is not allowed. I clench my hands and jaw until the desire to weep recedes, like the ocean tide. Someday, if we survive, I will cry for a week, maybe more. But not today, not here.
Marek's work detail is no longer by the macaroni factory. I notice his absence the way I do anyone's disappearance in camp: I fear that he is dead.
It is a warm day. Summer is nearing and the clothes dry quickly. We have checked the shirts to see which ones should be folded and put in the basket. I bend down to pull a few tender shoots of grass to nibble on, when a shadow falls over me. Squinting my eyes, I look up at the horse and its rider. Her blonde hair has lovely, graceful curls which tumble across her shoulders. Her boots are like mirrors reflecting the sun. I have seen her before, riding across the fields of camp. She is quite beautiful, and I feel small and insignificant in comparison.
1. Written in April :1944: "[Of] the Jewish girls deported from Slovakia in March and April 1942, [there were originally] over 7,000 . . . Now there are only 400 of these girls left and most of them have been able to secure some sort of clerical post in the women's camp. About 100 girls hold jobs at the staff building [Stafsgabaüde] in Auschwitz where they do all the clerical work connected with the two camps. Thanks to their knowledge of languages they are also used as interpreters. Others are employed in the main kitchen or laundry" (Wyman, 5, 32).

 

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She allows her horse the reins. He shakes his head eagerly, lowering it toward the shoots of grass I was just gathering. Surveying the area for a moment, she allows him to graze. Then she pulls the reins up and clucks to her steed. They gallop off across the fields, her hair bouncing against her back. Pangs of memory shoot through me: I used to have long hair . . . I used to have curls . . . I used to sit on our plowhorse . . .
Danka and Dina return to the trockenplatz. "Wardress Grese was here," I tell them. We have seen her many times riding across the fields, and ever since she came to camp she has been whispered about because she is so beautiful.
"What did she want?" Danka asks nervously.
"I don't know. She certainly isn't going to speak to me."
"Was she on her horse?"
"Yah." We hang up the new load of laundry.
Marek returns to the work detail by the macaroni factory, and tosses me a note which is very long. I retrieve it, slipping it into my jacket. It must have been hard for him to organize a piece of paper so large.
I am an officer in the Polish army. I was trained to be a doctor in Belgium and then returned to Warsaw where I received the post of an officer. I have some contacts in the underground who are willing to build a double floor in the train that takes clothes out of Auschwitz and into Germany We can hide in this space which will be small but we can escape. You would have to leave your sister behind, we cannot risk more than one other person as one scream or cry could mean death for all of us. I would like to escape with you and make a life with you. I believe we can do this
.
I crumble the note, tearing it into little pieces, and go to the toilet to wash it away. Marek. So sweet, so eager, so naive. I swallow back the lump in my throat. I swallow the words of my friend.
I can't do this
, I write back to him.
I cannot leave my sister in this place alone. Besides, I am not brave enough. Thank you for

 

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