The Family Behind the Walls

13. Dalia

THIRTEEN

DALIA

JULY 30TH, 1943 – O?WI?CIM, POLAND

There’s nothing but confusion and relentless hunger coursing through me as I lie on a thin, straw-padded cover between the tiers of wooden bunks. The straw is sharper than needles poking me in every possible location. The straw is just a layer between my body and wood that doesn’t give way to body weight. Everything inside of me aches and I can’t find a position to rest without breathing into someone’s face, or receiving the hot breath from someone’s mouth. If I can find just a bit of comfort, sleep should come easy after being awake for so long. Although, I fear what awaits when my eyes reopen.

I think about Leo, my darling husband, and wonder where he is right now. I wish I knew how we got separated. It’s been over twenty years since we were last apart. The thought of sleeping in a room without him beside me snatches at my heart.

Leo and I had our future mapped out from a young age after being inseparable since sixteen, but our plans came to an abrupt halt when Germany occupied our home city, Warsaw, classifying us as Polish-Germans. Two days after Leo turned eighteen, the German Army conscripted him to fight in the Great War. With one letter, demanding his service, civil duty and loyalty, our lives were put on hold.

Unlike me, Leo wasn’t afraid or worried. Not as I was. He eagerly did what was expected of him as a young man. With fear in his eyes, he told me not to worry as we said goodbye before they sent him to the Western Front. Three years into the war, worry became impossible to avoid. All we heard was news of young men dying horrific deaths in trench warfare.

No letters, just waiting. That summer, a nearby offensive battle resulted in tens of thousands of casualties. There weren’t enough nurses or doctors. The pleas for help rang loudly in my ears, knowing I could either sit and wait, or help. I knew little about nursing, but I was willing to learn on the fly, and I learned quickly. I remained with nursing units through the end of the war until there was mention of the 8th Bavarian Reserve Division being sent home after a deadly battle against the British. A field hospital would be the direct destination for whoever was returning home.

I didn’t know if Leo was alive or injured.

Like now.

Except I can’t go to a field hospital to find out.

My heart was as cold as ice that day in 1918 as I searched for Leo’s name on the admission list. He was alive and my blood recirculated through my body as I ran to find him. I remember walking into a partition of the field hospital, spotting the love of my life with a bandage wrapped around his forearm. He was standing at the foot of someone’s cot, giving them a lecture about keeping faith through tough times. He was holding up his compass, pointing to it, saying, “As long as you know the right direction, you can find your way. And you did.”

That was him. My Leo. I questioned if I was imagining the sight of him, rugged and handsome as he’d always been, but now older and war-torn, mature, aged.

He spotted me just before I reached his side. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes, the instant tears, the shock—he ran to me, scooped me into his arms and kissed me with everything he had in his body.

My heart pounded against his, internal applause at the ending I’d been dreaming of since he left.

Leo’s comrades were hooting and hollering at the sight of our reunion, but everything around us disappeared. At that moment, I knew nothing could ever tear us apart again. I wouldn’t let it.

I can still feel his lips on mine. The passion. The longing. The safety of home.

Leo, I need you. We aren’t supposed to be apart. The memory of him swooping me into his arms plays, and him wooing me with the words, “You see…” He holds his compass up to me—the one I gave him before he deployed. “I told you this was no ordinary compass. You remember what I told you, don’t you?” he asked with a beaming smile.

“You said, ‘ So long as I’m alive, darling, I’ll carry this with me so always find my way back to you, ’” I repeated the words I’ve never forgotten.

“And here I am, my love. I’ll always be with you.”

“ And here I am, my love. I’ll always be with… ”

Gong [vibrating rumble]. Gong [vibrating rumble]. Gong [vibrating rumble].

A raucous thunder of rubber against metal rumbles through my head, forcing my eyes open, after refusing to close for hours last night.

Even a dream as wonderful of my love couldn’t last forever.

I blink again and again, unsure why it’s still dark without an inkling of light from the nearby window.

Everyone scurries from the wooden bunks, rushing out of the barrack. “What’s happening?” I ask, hoping someone will answer me.

“If you don’t hurry, you won’t be able to use the latrine or washroom before roll call.”

I don’t know who gave me the information, but it’s enough to push me out of my cubbyhole as the blood in my body takes a long minute to rush through my limbs. I straighten my striped pajamas over my shoulders and slip my feet into the clogs. I reach for my head to smooth out my hair, but find smooth, sweat-covered skin. I forgot.

I follow the others outdoors to where they’re lining up outside two wide, brick structures. I assume these buildings must be the latrine and washroom. I don’t remember the last time I relieved myself. After days with nothing to drink, my body is nothing more than an empty cavity.

The light of dawn teases in the distance, a hazy orange, pink glow promising of a pleasant day—forging a lie. There isn’t much of a chill in the air, nothing brisk to send energy through my veins. All I have is fear, keeping me alert.

The latrine smells of sewage, bile, and urine, a stench to make a horse stable smell like roses. Holes in cement, side by side, with barely enough room for our arms to remain square to our bodies. Everyone needs to use the sewage holes at once.

Next are the washrooms, rows of water troughs, filthy black rusty basins with water. I want to drink the water but not in front of a spout filling the trough. I make my way toward the next one in sight, waiting as another woman gulps down mouthfuls of water. My heart races, knowing we could be shoved out of here without notice and I’ll still have had no water. I don’t even know if the children have a drop of water. The image of them starving to death or dying from dehydration, falling to the ground like the others I’ve seen here, is wearing me down.

At other spouts, I watch others shoving each other for a turn. If there were only drops left and the children were here, I would make sure they got the water. I would die for them. But they aren’t here, and therefore, I must liveif only for the mere hope of staying alive for them.

I’ve taught them never to fight with others, never to take from another person. But they might have no choice, like me. That’s what we’re forced to do here, fight for the bare necessity to survive. I move in closer to the woman, but she doesn’t budge. Without another thought, I grab the metal pipe connected to the faucet and shove her to the side, hanging my mouth open to fill it with as much water as I can before she shoves me back.

To my surprise, she walks away, allowing me several mouthfuls before I feel someone walking up to my heels. As I did to the woman before, I should expect to get shoved away when patience runs dry. One more mouthful of bitter water is all I take. The warm trickle down my throat is the most incredible feeling.

No one looks at one another. Everyone focuses on cleaning themselves to the best of their ability with what we’re given in the short time we have.

Without instruction, I follow those who seem to know, returning to the barrack for a cup. Some bring a bowl with them too, so I take my bowl, spoon, and cup, then follow the others back outside into a line-up of rows.

A male prisoner drags metal barrels toward our lines, removes the lids and prepares to serve whatever is inside. I don’t care what it is, I will eat it.

“Why do you have your spoon and bowl?” the woman beside me whispers.

“I—I’m uncertain what we need,” I say.

“You should have your leftover bread from dinner last night. You’ll only get coffee after roll call.”

The bread. The small scrap of bread that fell to the ground last night was that woman’s breakfast. “Oh.”

I hold the bowl and spoon behind my back, drowning in a pit of sorrow, knowing I will skip another meal.

The sun is bearing its unforgiving rays of heat overhead, promising another sweltering day. A prisoner walks among the rows with a clipboard passing dozens of frail, tired, and terrified women.

“Who is she? Who are the women wearing prisoner uniforms, seemingly in charge, but with no defining markings like some of the others?” I whisper to the same woman who was kind enough to tell me I didn’t need a bowl.

“She’s a kapo who reports to an SS officer. All of the people with white armbands that say ‘KAPO’ are half prisoner, half laboring servants to the SS, but also more privileged than the rest. They receive more of everything, especially when they turn someone in for one wrong step. Then there’s the block elder with the armband that has BLOCK and our block number. They also answer to the SS but they’re responsible for every person in the barrack they’re assigned. They can often be the deciding factor of daily selection—deciding whether you live or die. Use caution.”

I wonder how one ends up in that situation, privileged among the rest. Although privilege seems to have a much different meaning here. I wonder what other privileges she receives on that side of these rows.

The kapo calls out numbers, our identities, waiting for each prisoner to confirm their presence. The list must be a dozen pages deep by the time she reaches my number. I call out, “Present,” and hold my breath until she moves on to the next number.

“You will report or return to the meadows for your work today and every day you remain in quarantine,” the kapo says.

It’s the most information I’ve received from someone in charge, or should I say, since I’ve been here.

“Move, move, move.” Someone shoves me forward toward the man with the metal barrel. He takes my cup from my hand and fills it with a black liquid. “Move.”

I peer inside, wondering what I’m looking at. It’s thicker than coffee, darker, and smells sweet and putrid. It doesn’t matter. I lift the cup to my mouth and empty the contents, forcing the sludge down my throat. The lumps. I don’t know what’s in the coffee. I struggle to push it through my throat but it eventually slithers down, sloshing around in the emptiness of my stomach.

We’re herded back into the barrack to replace our cup, and for some of us, bowls and spoons, still never touched by food, then rushed back outside back into lines where a kapo leads us to our next destination—the meadow, I assume.

The walk is much longer than it appeared, and the blocks are larger up close, proving a greater distance between one barrack and another from end to end. The walk takes just under twenty minutes. A pile of shovels marks the entrance to the meadow but offer no clue or purpose for why we’ll need them. Again, I follow the others who seem to know where to begin. All I can wonder is if I’m digging my own grave. I’ve heard rumors of Polish Jews being taken into the middle of fields, held at gunpoint and told to dig. They didn’t know they were digging their graves until they were lying dead in the holes. I told myself it was just a story—a lie, to make myself feel better.

Kapos, women with white armbands and a glint of authority in their eyes, sprawl out along the barbed wire fencing encasing the meadow. It’s clear they plan to stand and monitor us throughout the day. Each kapo looks angry with a sense of brutality in their eyes, and they aren’t forced to dig holes. Their only task is to watch us. I shouldn’t judge. I don’t know what they’ve already been through or survived. All I know is my organs feel like they’re feasting on each other.

I wait for a rare moment when they’re all facing a different direction to ask a woman nearby the pressing question on my mind. “Why are we digging?” I ask, keeping my voice low, hoping she can hear me.

She glances at me with tired and forlorn eyes. “No one knows. We were just told to dig. It doesn’t matter. We’re all going to die soon, anyway. They take what they can get from us before gassing us to death, then cremating us.”

Her words slink down my spine, my nerves responding with a twitch. “Ho-how do you…how do you know?”

The woman glances up at me, dark circles underline her eyes, her lips chapped and raw, and her neck covered in insect bites, making me scratch the back of mine. She shrugs before answering. “Others have said so.” She nudges her chin to the left toward the barren open land. I find nothing more than grass that eventually meets the sky, though. “When you see it, you’ll know—a smokestack of ashes from cremated bodies.”

Without the sight of a smokestack in the distance, I should tell myself she’s telling stories or repeating false rumors.

Hours pass and my tired muscles ache while continuing to dig in rhythmic motions, a second hand of a clock spinning without pause. All the while I stare off into the horizon, waiting to see a stack of smoke rise into the sky. It could be true. We’ve been told so little; it makes sense to think the SS would hide the truth of what they plan to do with us. If we knew how it might end, no one would continue working.

I’m strong. I’ll fight , I remind myself. If I can imagine a future where I’m back home—we’re all back home and together—it must mean it will happen. When I close my eyes, I try to sew these images together—just a daydream—but each time I try, darkness descends. A darkness conceals the unimaginable.

The metal spade of my shovel pings against rubble and dirt, the sound a relentless ringing in my ears. All that changes is the air’s temperature as clouds burn away from the sun. I turn around, letting the sun beat off my back rather than my face, trying to ignore the sweat dripping down my spine.

Eventually, a hum of commotion whizzes around me in a ripple of unease and when I look up, I spot the rumored stack of smoke, faint, but distinct, stark against the clear blue sky.