Rena's Promise (46 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 243
prayer. Their voices are cut short as the chairs are pulled out from underneath them. There is no God to save them.
I have to watch, it's the least I can do; it is how I honor them. We stand and wait until the last body has stopped its death dance in the air. They take the bodies down, loading them into a cart and wheeling them to the crematorium.
8
"One of them is still alive," it is whispered through the rows. "One of them is still breathing." In a civilized world if the condemned survives hanging they are pardoned, but not in Auschwitz-Birkenau. We pray that she will die before she is put in the ovens.
Mullenders makes us march back to our camp singing more German songs. "Louder!" she orders. "Chins up!" We sing in our dry and cracking voices, our spirits trying not to break.
In the morning we wake slowly, depressed by the loss of our comrades. The kettle of tea arrives. We are in mourning for the girls who have died and not eager for news of the war today. One of the kitchen men whispers, "She died on the way to the crematorium." We breathe a sigh of relief. She did not suffer.
I get my tea. A note is slipped into my hand smoothly without a second's falter. It is from Marek:
They're going to march us out of camp. The Russians are very close. You must decide if you want to feign illness and stay in camp or march. I will help you either way and meet you in America. When you get out, go to America and find Charles Boyer. Tell him I sent you, he is a friend of mine from Belgium. He's such a famous actor even little children in New York know his name
. . .
8. In November and December of 1944, demolition squads were created who were responsible for dismantling some of the crematoriums. "After the beginning of the demolition of the extermination facilities probably no more selections are conducted among the prisoners. The prisoners die a 'natural death' from starvation, heavy labor, and the inconceivable living, hygiene, and sanitary conditions." In the camp registry 322 women, who died by violent means, were listed as dying because of "special treatment." (Source: Czech; quote, 756.)

 

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I fight back the tears. Children may know who Charles Boyer is, but I don't. America seems like such a far-off place.
We get more and more information that the Russians are coming and we are going to be freed. So we start talking about what we're going to doshould we stay or try to escape?
"They're going to leave all the sick in Birkenau and the rest will have to march to Germany," one of the girls in our block tells us.
"Well, then, we should pretend to be sick."
"I heard that they're planning to set fire on all four sides of the camp, lock the gates, and leave the electric wires on, so everyone will burn inside," one of the scribes tells us.
"So if we pretend to be sick we could burn to death?"
"That's what I heard."
"What should we do?" Danka asks me.
"I don't know. What are you going to do, Aranka? Act sick or march out?"
"I'm going to take a chance and march out. Maybe I can escape on the march."
"Maybe they're going to shoot you."
"It seems like our chances would better of escaping on the march then locked inside a burning camp, though."
"All I know is that I don't want to die here. Let me die anywhere but Auschwitz." The voice is passionate. We all look at Janka. Her seventeen-year-old eyes have seen much in all of her years in the ghetto and camp. She has said what we all feel deep down inside. We will die if we must, but not here, not in the flames.
We continue to work at the laundry every day, but Mullenders is jumpy and ill-tempered. Her regular morning speeches terrify us, but now we glare at her with hatred. We would not have dared to do so a few weeks before, but the songs she forced us to sing are still sticking to our tongues no matter how hard we scrub to rid our mouths of their taste. We know now that she will not have control over us forever and we hate her with a vengeance.

 

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Our work days are not as long and we discuss things more openly than ever before, worrying about what to do. It's not that we speak in front of Mullenders, that would be foolish, but when she moves away from us we whisper. Guesswork and rumors, guesswork and rumorsthat is all we know. Nobody knows for sure whether staying or going is safer.
9
The morning tea arrives. I hold out my bowl, feeling a note slipped into my hand by the server.
"
, thank you for my tea." I say to him in Polish.
"You're welcome." He has kind eyes. What is it about these men in the kitchen that they will risk their lives to bring notes to us? Sometimes I am in such awe of their bravery. They do not know me, they are not blood relations, but they would die before they gave up my number.
I disappear quickly to read the note from Marek. It says,
How many girls do you want supplies for?
I show Danka the note. How many should we try and help?"
"We have to help Dina."
"Yah, for sure. But who else?"
"Janka . . . Mania and Lentzi." I nod. We cannot help everyone, but we can help a few, and these are our friends who have helped us.
Clothes and food for six
, I write to Marek.
Thank you
. The men with the kettle are preparing to leave. I slip the note to the one with kind eyes and move away.
The day passes slowly. The weather is worsening. Clouds are everywhere, and it looks as if we'll be in for a snowstorm tomorrow. We hang up the boxer shorts and SS long johns on the lines inside. It suddenly seems so ridiculous, the days we spent watching the laundry in sleet and snow and rain. At least it's warm in the leather factory and the clothes dry quickly. The soup comes at
9. "The last roll call [in Auschwitz-Birkenau] had included 31,894 prisoners16,577 of them women" (Rittner and Roth, 14). "No. 202499 [is] the last number assigned to a [male] prisoner in Auschwitz" (Czech, 785).

 

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noon. I receive another note:
Watch for the tea tomorrow. Don't forgetAmerica
. I walk to the toilet casualty and flush. We fold the underwear that has dried into our baskets and leave what has not dried hanging for the next dayif there is a next day.
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Morning comes. There is no work today. I get my tea and my instructions:
There is a kettle in the basement. Get everything out of it and leave
. I nod to Mania, who is the biggest and strongest of us. Danka knows to follow in a few minutes with Dina; then Janka and Lentzi will sneak downstairs. We must hide the food and clothes quickly, without anyone noticing. There is a loaf of bread for each of us, four bags of sugar, six pairs of pants, shoes, socks, and sweaters. I divide them up. Mania helps me. We conceal the clothes under our mattresses, hiding them for later.
"You're more robustbeing a secretary and working insidecan you carry two bags of sugar?" I ask Mania.
"Sure." She takes the bags under her arms. There is one little package wrapped in a rag that says
Rena
on it. I open it excitedly and find a chrome watch. Marek knows how particular I am. I smile to myself, fastening the band onto my wrist, remembering the last watch I wore. Pulling the sleeve down over my wrist, I return upstairs.
The SS have a lot on their minds, trying to destroy records, gathering things around camp. There are bonfires of paper that remind me of that dreaded night six years ago when the Nazis ignited our holy books outside the temple and shaved Papa's beard and earlocks. The flames are no longer newborn, they are aged and smile wickedly at those of us who have seen evil mature, unhindered. Like Mengele's mask of beauty, no one will believe what this evil has cultivated behind its walls. They destroy the evidence so that there will be no proof, no records, nothing but our memories, if we survive, and they will try to obliterate those, too. I look

 

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