The Girl with the List

Chapter 1

ONE

ROSALIE

MONOWITZ (AUSCHWITZ III)

Fit to live or die—the question on my paper never changes. Not like the faces staring at me. Sullen eyes, mingling hues of brown, blue, and green, saturated by desperation and grief—all fixated on one question. They need to know if it’s their time.

A squall of snow spins over the stale ground between the brick barracks and blocks, stinging my eyes.

The orderly lines stretch longer here at Monowitz—Auschwitz III—where select laborers serve in the I.G.

Farben Buna Works factory complex, unlike the prior two weeks I spent at the Judenrampe in Auschwitz II, where people spill out of cattle cars at all hours of the day.

But my task remains: identify people “fit” to work.

At my earlier post, when I wasn’t evaluating the innocent, displaced people the Nazis crammed onto trains, I spent every second searching pairs of eyes for Stefan’s. Those beautiful eyes I know better than my own—ones I wanted to stare into forever.

I know he didn’t arrive by train. I watched a pair of guards drag him through the black iron gates three weeks ago.

All because of me. All I want to do is protect him, but every attempt to do so has gone wrong in the worst ways.

I want to reach back through time, to the moment our lives veered into this darkness, but every step since then has been a blur of impossible decisions.

Now, at this new location within the prison walls, I might never find him again.

I don’t know where he went within Auschwitz, or if he’s still alive. For most prisoners, the odds of being sent to their deaths are far greater than being spared for labor. That fear is a shard of glass, plunging straight through my heart, deeper each day.

Every man I see makes my chest ache. Terror threatens to choke me while hope weakens me at the thought of spotting him again—finding out he’s still alive. For now.

As a young girl, I once asked Mama if people knew when they were about to die. She stroked my cheek and tried to hide her quiet laughter. “Only God knows what second, minute, and hour we draw our first and last breaths,” she said.

“Stand up straight,” Officer Weyman grunts in my ear, his breath a mix of coffee and tobacco. The bitter air bites my shoulders. Yet I dare not complain amid these rows of men, shivering in silent torment.

SS Officer Weyman, square-jawed and narrow-eyed, is a textbook Nazi officer. He oversees the flow of forced slave labor to and from the synthetic oil and rubber plant within the factory complex. His polished boots and fitted black coat do little to mask the savagery beneath.

I shadow him, his every step. I’m not his equal, but a meek twenty-year-old midwife.

He considers my skills “intriguing” by his low standards, and he gave me no choice but to serve him.

My fingers drum gently against the clipboard as I follow in his footsteps to keep my boots dry from the wet slush.

A man coughs.

Weyman stops short, pivoting toward the row of prisoners. “Which one?” he utters.

Every man is ghostly pale, the cold staining pink blots on their skin, except one. His cheeks blaze red, lips parted, gasping for a breath. He hunches forward, clutching his chest as if holding his ribcage together.

I could help him.

Weyman’s stare burns against the side of my face.

He rests a hand on my shoulder, pressing his fingers into my flesh before sweeping his hand down my back. His gesture seeps through my wool coat. “Point to him, Rosalie,” he whispers, his hiss a command that chills my veins.

I raise a shaking hand, the pencil in my grip, and extend it out toward the man who coughed.

I’m a monster. That’s what he’s made me. His puppet.

Weyman steps forward, points his gloved finger like a dagger as he marks the man for his fate.

“Mark him,” Weyman tells me. My focus narrows on the identification number sewn to his striped uniform.

I jot down the string of numbers and circle the word: “unfit.” “Anyone who looks emaciated, injured, or cannot stand still…” His words pelt through the icy wind like ammo from a machine gun. “Mark them as ‘unfit.’”

At first, I thought “unfit” meant medical care, like how I once tended to new mothers and their babies. My work as a midwife is why Weyman and his soldiers came to my village in Sanok—forcing me to serve him by keeping his wife alive through childbirth.

He’d heard of me through Ernst Schmidt, the Reich-appointed trustee who seized the factory owned by the family I aided—a small man desperate to impress the SS. Word of “the Polish girl who saves babies”—a non-Jewish Polish girl, at that—traveled further than I ever wanted.

After Weyman’s baby, Tilly, took her first breath, he twisted my ability to find the sick and frail at Auschwitz before the prisoners could disrupt production goals.

That’s when I learned what the long line outside the brick building truly meant—the one belching dark smoke. In Auschwitz, “unfit” means death.

A symphony of uneven breaths, shallow and hard, wavering and weak is all I hear as I approach the rows of men.

I’m not dressed like them, but not like the officers either.

My black servant dress is too tight, thin, and a poor fit, leaving me cold with splotchy knuckles.

Even my twisted knot of hair hangs heavy with frost. I hope they realize I’m not part of the Reich, not here by choice.

Even so, they will take their final breaths convinced I chose their deaths.

Down the line, man after man, sunken cheeks, sharp collarbones, gray skin—but they’re all quiet and still, making this a good day with so many men meeting the criteria to continue laboring.

I weave around to the next row, stepping in front of the first man, feeling small, despite their stooped form.

My body stiffens when I spot a man from the corner of my eye.

He’s swaying, rolling back and forth over the balls of his feet.

The movement is subtle, but a clear sign of degradation.

I swallow against the burden of marking someone as “unfit.”

The man in front of me is still, eyes wide, quick breaths, and appears distraught.

But he’s “fit” to continue. I move down the line to the next man—he’s shorter than most of the others, close to my eye level.

He’s young, but old enough to work. His eyes bulge with fear, and I wish I could tell him everything will be all right.

The rattle of a congested lung strikes from the direction I’m moving—the same unsteady man I noticed before.

His chest shudders with every inhale. Officer Weyman would mark him “unfit” without hesitation.

I just wonder if Weyman has noticed him—if he’s watching as closely as he usually does.

My pencil becomes heavy in my hand. Years of listening to inhales, exhales, and counting ticking pulses has become a skill that will only betray me here.

The next man whispers prayers in Hebrew, unfamiliar words fading into fog. He sniffles, and his brows rise before his eyes meet mine with a plea. He’s “fit” enough.

A muffled cough and wheeze escape the poor man I’ll be inspecting next, though.

Another shift to the side. My eyes lock onto the papers secured to the clipboard.

I’d rather not face the man I’m about to condemn, but looking away is spineless.

I may not be able to save these men, but I can do them the dignity of looking them in the eye.

Perhaps mine will be the last kind gaze they feel, even if they won’t see it that way.

I touch my necklace, hidden under my dress, tracing the shape to calm my quick breaths as I peer up at the man. A twitch flutters beneath his left eye—beautiful pale green, framed by dark lashes. His cheeks are flushed and splotchy.

My heart stalls as blood rushes to my ears. Roaring. Deafening.

No. My eyes drop, denial becoming my only source of protection.

Purple and green veins line his hand, and there’s a tremor—not a shiver from cold or fear. An isolated effect on one side of his body. One I’d know anywhere. Have felt so many times.

I force myself to look back up at him. My chest squeezes.

His cleft chin, faint scar along his jawline, and freckles stand out against his shaved head. His hair is gone.

I’ve memorized these features and traced the markings in my dreams. My mind could never mistake him.

He coughs again, suppressing a wheeze. He’s sick, unsteady, and succumbing to weakness.

I can’t move forward.

My lungs stutter through the breath.

He’s “unfit” by all Nazi standards.

Stefan.