If I Should Die Before I Wake (20 page)

"He is Doctor Mengele, the worst of the SS doctors," she said.

I laughed. "He is a Nazi, is there any other kind but the worst?"

"Some doctors actually try to help, but not him. All he is interested in are his experiments."

"What kind of experiments?"

Rivke picked something out of her coffee and took a sip from her bowl. She didn't look at me when she spoke. "He likes twins. He does things with twins, and pregnant women."

I stopped eating. "What kinds of things?"

"Just things, Chana. Do you have to know everything?"

"You know," I said.

"I wish that I did not." She sloshed her drink around in her bowl. "They say he is interested in their brains. He experiments, cuts them open without anesthesia."

"Enough. That is enough," I said. I took what remained of my bread and coffee and organized it into a cloth for my head. I tied the cloth in the back at the base of my head and followed the line to the lavatory huts.

 

Digging trenches was impossible work. The freezing nights had turned the ground to stone. Our
Kapo
would strut back and forth with whip in hand and an assistant at her side, making sure we were in constant motion. If we weren't fast enough, if our progress wasn't as fast as our neighbors', she would lash out at us with the whip and order the assistants to club us with their sticks.

On that first day out, I made little progress. It was as if I were trying to dig a hole in an iron skillet with a rubber spatula. I tried standing on the shovel and using my weight to break the ground, but I had no weight, none of us did. We were too weak and too light for this kind of work. I looked about me. Were any of the others doing any better? No one seemed to be, so I decided we were safe. I was wrong. The
Kapo
came up behind Matel and watched her work for a few minutes.

"You are getting nowhere," she shouted.

None of us were, but this particular
Kapo
seemed to enjoy picking on her fellow countrywomen, and since she was a Pole, Matel was the perfect target.

Matel rammed the shovel against the ground and threw her body into the handle. She scraped up a puff of dust.

"It will not give." Matel grunted as she tried again to force the earth.

"You lazy Jew!" our Jewish
Kapo
said. "You are worthless. You belong in the chimneys!" She slashed her whip across Matel's back. I rushed over to Matel and grabbed the shovel from her hands. The whip stung at my calves.

"You have your own digging to do, get back over there." The
Kapo
cracked her whip again, first at me and then at Matel.

I tried to jump aside but my coordination was poor. I twisted my ankle and got a lashing on my shoulders. "Wait," I said as I grabbed at my arms and fell to my knees. "Please, when they come to inspect and we have gotten nowhere with the trenches, they will say it is you who is not doing your job."

The
Kapo
stepped in closer. Was she about to kick me? I spoke quickly. "If we can work together we can make the trenches. Let us show you. They will say you are a good
Kapo
if our trenches are the biggest."

She looked down the line at the other groups working, the
Kapos
and assistants behind them.

"Right," she said. She grabbed our left arms, noted our numbers, and motioned for a nearby
Unterkapo
to take them down. "We will have the biggest trenches and if it is not so, you and your young friend here will see the chimneys from the inside tonight." Pleased with her decree, she marched away, her boots smacking the earth as she went.

What had I done? Not only had I made it worse for Matel and myself, but I had also fixed it so our whole party had to work faster and harder if we were to have the largest holes dug in time for inspection that afternoon.

No one said anything to me as we grouped ourselves together and pushed our bodies against the shovels. Rivke and Dvora couldn't even look at me. Bit by bit, layer by layer, we began to Scrape up enough of the crust to get our shovels into the moister, softer underground, and the work became a little easier. Still the
Kapo
kept on top of us, leaving the group only long enough to check on another work party's progress. Then she would return to give us her report. It seemed that all the
Kapos
were in on the contest, each interested in having the largest trenches. Word quickly got around to the rest of the prisoners that the young woman down on the other end was the cause of all the extra beatings and the demand for faster, harder work. When our
Kapo
wasn't looking, one of the Russian prisoners from our party came up to me and asked, "Why should we do this for you? What do we care if you burn? I will not kill myself for you."

I knew this was the attitude of everyone there except for Rivke, Dvora, and Matel. When the
Kapos
weren't looking, the work all but stopped. Only the four of us kept working, and I wondered if these weren't perhaps our graves we were digging.

It wasn't until after our soup break in the afternoon that two SS officers, both men, arrived for the inspection. Matel and I had worked so hard in the morning, jumping from trench to trench, lending a hand, trying to keep our section moving, that by afternoon all we could manage were a few scraping motions. We saw our
Kapo
go over to the two men. We watched her explaining something to them. We saw them turn their heads toward us and nod. We watched them as they strode along the line, peering over the edges of the trenches.
As they drew nearer, Matel and I worked harder. I could hardly lift the shovel anymore, so I got down on my hands and knees and scratched at the hole. "Please be bigger," I said to myself. "Please be bigger."

One of the officers came up behind me. I kept digging, kept scratching with my fingers. I could feel his feet against my backside. I held my breath.

"So you are the one with the big ideas," he said to me. "Your trench is good." I glanced across at Matel, who was chewing on her lip, her shovel held in midair. "Your
Kapo
can be proud." He paused. I looked over at our
Kapo,
who stood smiling, almost giggling, behind Matel and next to the other officer. I let out my breath. "But it is not the biggest." The officer laughed. Then with his foot he pushed forward against my back, and I tumbled, head first, into the pit. I heard myself cry out, and another voice, quite near whispered,"
Lord, how long shall I cry and Thou wilt not hear, even cry unto Thee of violence and Thou wilt not save.
"

The march back to the camp that afternoon seemed endless. I could not face what I had done. I could not face Matel. I thought of Bubbe and of how hard she had tried to keep me alive, with her food, her warmth, her words. I recalled how often she had told me how important it was for us to survive and to remember, so that when the war was over we could tell people of these atrocities. She counted on them caring, on this being a lesson mankind would only need to learn once, and that their having learned it would redeem the lives of all of us who died here. However, I thought as our enemies did, that few would believe and in time those who did would forget. Besides, I didn't want to be a sacrifice for mankind, and I resented God for creating me if that was my purpose, if that was my reason for existing.

As we approached the gates, I heard the orchestra playing one of their rousing marches. As soon as we were within hearing range of the music, we were supposed to pick up our feet and march through the gates, our gazes forward, arms at our sides.

I didn't care if they beat me a thousand times, I wasn't going to march, I wasn't going to be a part of this game they were playing with the incoming trains. The newcomers would arrive and hear the music, see us marching, and think they were arriving at a real work camp. They, too, would march along, convinced they had finally come to a better place, only to be led to the showers, where they would be locked in, gassed, and then stuffed in the ovens.

As I passed directly in front of the orchestra, I glared at the girl with the cymbals. She looked away. Good, I thought. I had shamed her. I smiled to myself and faced forward. Then I saw in front of me, moving as I moved, my
shvester.
Looking up at her, watching her eyes searching my face, it was I who felt shamed. I was ashamed of my bitterness, my selfishness, and my anger with God. Instead of reaching out, opening myself to others in my suffering the way Bubbe always did, I rejected them, despised their presence, and ended up alone and bitter. Was this the way I wanted the last moments of my life to be?

I switched places in line with Dvora and found myself next to Matel. I took her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back. "I won't ever let go," I told her. "We'll go up together."

The line dispersed as we reached our block and I pulled Matel forward with the crowd, hoping to get beyond reach of the
Kapo,
but I was not fast enough. She yanked me back by my shirt collar and slammed us both up against the wall of our barracks. Our new
Blockälteote
came forward and the two of them faced away from us and talked. Then the
Kapo
left and the
Blockältejte
stood before us, her legs spread, her hands behind her back. I pulled Matel closer to me and the
Blockäl-teste
laughed.

"You think you would be selected for making the whole
Kommando
work harder? Eh? You think you would be killed for your trenches?"

We just stood there. She laughed again, and then she walked away.

The next day Matel and I were put on a new
Kommando,
and between us we never again spoke of our death sentence or the day we spent digging trenches.

THE DAYS AND NIGHTS
grew colder as 1943 ended and the new year began. There were blizzards and ice storms and days when the temperature never got above freezing. There was no heat anywhere except in the SS barracks and headquarters. The rest of us had to stay warm by keeping in constant motion and stuffing organized bits of old newspapers that had been hoarded for use as toilet paper into our shirts. At night when we slept, we stayed warm by packing ourselves together into tight rows of up to seven across. Our shoes and thin clothing protected our modesty but not our bodies. Frostbite and death from exposure were hourly events and, as in thé ghetto, I grew adept at stepping over the dead, or almost dead, bodies that lay in the way of my destinations. The energy it would take to go around them, to feel any pity for them, was energy I couldn't spare.

I managed to organize coats for Matel and me by trading some cigarettes I found in a waste-bucket stashed behind the lavatory hut. I decided that they had been discarded by prisoners just before they were taken to be gassed, but I didn't think much about that anymore. Cigarettes were valuable currency here. They were used to bribe the guards and officers and to purchase extra food or clothes or spoons.

All of these riches came from a place called
Kanada,
named for that land of plenty that existed far away on the other side of the ocean. This
Kanaka
was a storehouse for all the personal belongings the guards tore out of the incoming prisoners' hands, as older prisoners in striped uniforms pulled these victims out of the trains and shoved them into lines.

I had heard stories about the piles of eyeglasses and suitcases, shoes and blankets, that stood as high as the ceiling in a sorting shed. There were thousands, millions, of photographs, cigarettes, pieces of jewelry, coins, cups, plates, and spoons. The girls who got to work at these sorting sheds were always the best dressed and healthiest looking of all the inmates. They could grab and eat whatever they found hidden in the clothing they sorted, but anything they wanted to bring back to camp they had to smuggle. It cost them their lives if they were caught; but here, just about any slight infraction of the rules cost us our lives. For them, for all of us who risked our lives each day in some small way, it was worth it. Not to take risks was virtual suicide. Any victory we could score against the enemy, no matter how small, was an affirmation of our existence. It was proof that we still had some control over our lives. Taking risks was a necessary part of our survival.

Once or twice a week, I risked my life by using the time before evening
Zählappell,
when all was chaos and commotion, to slip past the guards and go to the
Revier
to see Bubbe. I always found her scurrying toward the back of the barracks in answer to someone's call for water, or bread, or Mama. The hut was just like all the others in the camp, only cleaner, and the bunks were separate pieces of furniture rather than being attached to the walls. Still, the odors that hit me as I entered each time were overwhelming. More than the red cloud that hung over the camp, more than the black smoke in the chimneys, more than the fumes from the lavatory pits, this place smelled—reeked—of death. Selections were made from here more often than any other place, and I feared getting caught in one every time I came. I could not live without my visits with Bubbe, however, so I took the risk whenever I saw the chance.

One afternoon I padded through the snow to her compound, my mind full of distressing news. Bubbe could see at once that I was upset. She found me a chair to sit in and asked one of the orderlies, a prisoner in a striped blue-and-gray uniform, to take over for her.

"Now, Chana, something is wrong with Rivke?" she began.

"Yes, yes, it is true. We had been separated for so long, I didn't know what had become of her but now, now I see her every day. Bubbe, she has been on this
Aussenarbeit
too long. It is killing her. She has to carry these big rocks to the other side of the camp and deliver them to me. I have to watch her struggle across. I see her fall, I see her return each time more cut up, more ... Bubbe, it is terrible. I cannot watch what they are doing to her. They won't let us trade places. I have to chip the rocks with the hammer; she has to carry them to me. They won't let us trade. She has no fingernails."