Chapter 11 Rosalie
ELEVEN
ROSALIE
MONOWITZ (AUSCHWITZ III)
Weyman’s instructions for this selection sear through my mind with every face I see:
“Hose down those you consider ‘fit’ with disinfectant. As for the ‘unfit,’ drop the hose by your side and a kapo will remove the man. No need to waste disinfectant on them.”
The hum of shivers and muffled groans fuses to the wind, threading through bare branches and hollow reeds.
The cold in Auschwitz never ceases, and nothing stops the numbness from seeping into my hands as I aim the stiff rubber hose at Stefan and spray him.
I try to disappear from this moment. I fail.
Hurting him doesn’t harden me. It fractures something inside of me.
He grits his teeth and clenches his eyes—strangulation grips my neck as I watch this torture.
His body quivers, and my stomach lurches.
Is it a seizure? Did the cold cause this?
Is it the sight of me? Is he just…just…freezing?
How long has it been since he’s been able to take his medicine?
There’s no way any part of it remains in his bloodstream.
How much more of this can his body take?
I want to ask him if he’s all right, but he’s not. Even if he’s just cold.
Naked.
Vulnerable.
I can’t look as though I know him. It could destroy any chance of being able to help him.
Disinfectant is helping him.
If I could at least say I’m sorry…
I keep my grip until my hand gives out, and the sludge-covered nozzle of the hose clacks against the square cobblestones. Ice-cold liquid sputters into the cracks of the ground as I watch the disinfectant mixed with dirt streak down Stefan’s emaciated body.
A guard grabs him by the arm and tosses him into the barracks as if he’s a heap of trash.
Bile burns within my tight throat, saliva choking me. I slap my arm against my cloth-covered mouth and run behind the barrack, finding the metal rubbish bin. I retch until there’s nothing left but.
“Is there a problem?” Weyman shouts through his crumpled handkerchief, which he holds to his face. I don’t respond. Then he storms toward me, his boots thumping against the frozen soil.
He approaches me where I’m hunched over the rubbish bin, gripping the rim to keep me upright.
“Stand up straight,” he snaps under his breath, grabbing my arm and jerking me toward him.
“That line of men is waiting for you, Fr?ulein Kaufman. Naked and freezing, do you think any of them care for your pity?”
They’re freezing to death. Because of me.
I would trade places with Stefan, never mind pity. I would take the pain. Endure his disease. Give him the little freedom I have left if it meant I wasn’t the one hurting him. If it meant sparing him this torment.
“No, Herr Weyman,” I croak.
I straighten my back, feeling light-headed and empty. Weyman searches my face, his soulless stare flickering with curiosity.
I might retch again.
“You aren’t afraid of me,” he says. “Of all the men out there, most can’t look me in the eye.”
No one wants to look a murderer in the eye.
Rather than respond, I fight to hold my mirroring stare steady, knowing it will mean more than words. He wants me to be afraid, and I can’t give him that.
He lowers the handkerchief from his face, allowing me to see his mouth curving into something that resembles a smile. “You’ve been quite captivating since the day I met you.”
Weyman lifts his free hand toward my face, as if reaching for a loose strand of hair.
His gloved fingers hover for a moment before dropping by his side, and he narrows his eyes.
My throat tightens, imagining hands clasping my neck.
“It would be best to do only what you’re told.
We don’t want anyone to notice you’ve…captured my attention. ”
His words are a warning I can’t ignore—a warning. People might not know when they’re about to die, but they know when something unimaginable is about to happen.
He steps back and lifts his chin. “Clean yourself up,” he commands, his tone savage again. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”
He turns and walks away, hands clasped behind his back, quiet and composed, but pauses for a half-second before disappearing around the barrack corner.
My stomach toils, and tears burn the backs of my eyes as Weyman’s words repeat in my head.
I blot my face with my handkerchief and replace it over my nose and mouth, then return to the line of naked men.
My hands shake as I continue to hold the hose that grows heavier by the minute.
I watch the pain in each man’s eyes—each pair of unique eyes, filled with endless variants of emotions, so many, there aren’t enough words to describe them.
And it’s not fair to sum their feelings up into cold, fear, starvation, and exhaustion.
This nameless look—it’s deep and inhumane—it’s cold fists plunging into throats, stealing a few remaining breaths.
Almost…godless.
What do we pray for when we don’t know who to pray to? Is anyone listening to the silent cries?
The SS tosses another man into the barrack like a feral cat, splattering to the ground, all four limbs stretched to the sides.
With the metal door to the barrack opened, a glimpse of Stefan’s world flashes before my eyes.
Life within the musky brick walls: rows of wooden bunks, stacked three high from wall-to-wall with men crammed into tight spaces, fitting as many bodies as possible.
The next man steps up to the x to be sprayed.
Most of them take it in silence, but panic rises within this man’s eyes—pure adrenaline laced with terror.
A loss of power. His guttural scream pierces my ears.
The sound—it brings me back to Mama’s side, the look on her face, enduring death’s claws yanking her body away.
That’s the look. The one I’ll never forget.
The indescribable one with a type of emotion I can’t name.
It’s the look right before someone knows they’re going to die.
“Shut up!” a guard shouts, startling me back to this frigid moment. My eyes refocus just as a guard tosses the screaming man out of his path.
As the next cold figure steps forward, another approaches—an officer in a white medical coat draped over his SS uniform.
A disconcerting smile unfurls as he clenches a clipboard in his white-gloved hand.
His demeanor demands purpose for his presence.
I can’t fool myself into thinking a white coat might offer a hoax of compassion.
Even with a medical coat, he’s no different from any other member of the Reich.
“How are you doing, my friend?” he exclaims, his glee bubbling through each word as he greets Officer Weyman. “Another outbreak, I hear.” Laughter follows. I don’t find anything about typhus humorous.
“Yes, it appears to be so,” Officer Weyman says.
The doctor drops his free hand into his pocket and scopes out the never-ending line of men sprawled out before me.
“Who’s the lovely young lady?” he asks, nodding at me as if I’m nothing more than a statue.
Weyman gives me a side eye then glances back to the doctor. “Fr?ulein Kaufman. Midwife. Skilled in detecting sickness before it spreads. I’ve tested her accuracy. She rarely misses.”
“Is that right?” the doctor replies, tapping his finger against his chin. His stare makes me squirm.
“Yes, she’s plucking the diseased out of line before disinfecting them. There’s been about a dozen or so beyond what we spotted earlier in the day at the factory.”
“Brilliant,” the doctor says.
It takes everything inside of me not to peer over at Weyman and the doctor. I don’t know if they intend for me to overhear their conversation. I spray the next man, quickly, making sure there isn’t much time passing when I can’t hear the continuing conversation.
The next man to step up to the x-mark holds his fingertips against his temple, his face distorted with an edge of pain. He also has a small pink strawberry patch of skin along his right hip.
I drop my hose-clenching-hand down by my side and wait for a kapo to take the man away.
“One minute,” Officer Weyman says to the doctor before whistling at a comrade. The whistle is the only necessary signal before the ill man is taken from the line, without being disinfected.
The doctor’s brows rise as he inspects the man in passing. He nods. “Good eye. Good catch.”
“Yes, agreed,” Weyman says, clearing his throat.
“Well,” the doctor says, sweeping an invisible speck of lint from his coat, “in two weeks, once quarantine is complete, whoever is no longer ‘fit’ for labor—send them my way, yes? I can certainly make use of them.”
Two weeks.
Another quiet selection.
Between forced labor and what? Medical care?
I know better than to think that. He wants to “make use of them.”
“Of course,” Weyman replies with a firm nod. “Two weeks it is.”
“Wonderful. Marvelous.” He steps away from Officer Weyman and lifts a gloved hand in a mock wave at the line of men. “Take care of yourselves, gentlemen. Stay warm and hydrated. “Fr?ulein…” The doctor pauses, addressing me with a quick nod. “It’s been a pleasure.”
Weyman takes a step to the side, concealing the doctor’s view of me.
It isn’t protection.
The doctor strolls in a small circle before moving along, clipboard tucked beneath his arm, lips still curled into a snake-like grin.
The next young man steps up in front of me, naked as the day he was born.
He’s much younger than many of the others.
Embarrassed because I’m a woman. He covers himself for an attempt at modesty.
He still has youthful eyes. He’s someone’s child. A mother’s world.
He mouths the words, “please no, please no.” I don’t know what he’s pleading for—if he’s sick and doesn’t want me to notice or doesn’t want to be sprayed.
“I won’t let anything happen to your baby.” The words hauntingly echo in the back of my mind—words I spoke to Miriam when nothing was going right during her labor. I know better than to make promises I can’t keep, but it didn’t stop me.
And what about this boy’s mother? She would be begging for someone, anyone to help save her baby. But the whites of his eyes are yellow, and his skin—also tinted yellow. He frees a hand to scratch at his neck, a sign of a rash—typhus—something he doesn’t have. No. No. No.
The doctor turns his focus to us and tilts his head to the side, tsk-ing his tongue. “Oh, so young.”
He’s someone’s baby. There is no doubt he’s “unfit”—that his life will be seen as unworthy here per any German guard or officer.
But he isn’t sick with typhus. It’s jaundice—not contagious, but severe.
“Listen to me,” I whisper, “find water. However you can—warm water is even better.” Just before the doctor begins his stroll toward us, I spray him down with the disinfectant, marking him as “fit.” “Go on, quickly.”