The Lost Husband

Chapter 1

ONE

Auschwitz, O?wi?cim, Poland

I wake with my mouth open, throat drier than old newspaper.

The stained cellar ceiling hangs low over me. The air tastes like mold and something sour. A soft groan murmurs nearby, or it could be me. I grip the cold metal frame of my cot as chills writhe through my veins, slow and venomous.

I’m not dead.

But I should be after purging my insides from dysentery over the last two weeks.

My stomach pinches tight, muscles contracting hard enough to fold me in half. Pain crashes in like a wave, recedes, and swells again.

An unexpected weight falls against my chest. A frail arm, clad in faded blue-and-white stripes, the bone thinner than a broomstick.

The air is thick and suffocating in the damp cellar, lit only by a few hanging bulbs that struggle to offer a dim yellow blur.

The SS have entombed us down here, the sick prisoners beneath Auschwitz.

We’re too far below the surface for even a hint of sunlight to reach us—deeper than a coffin’s reach.

Even the screams above seem distant now.

“If they continue burning the place down, they’ll burn us down with it,” an older man shouts from the far wall.

He sounds as if he’s swallowed a rusty nail.

“That’s why the Nazis didn’t care about leaving us behind.

Soon, there won’t be any evidence or people to find if the Allies come looking in this abandoned encampment. ”

The war is ending. It must be. How could it not be after four-and-a-half years?

The rumors circulating down here in the infirmary all say the Allies are closing in from the east, and the German SS are fleeing before they arrive, but not without destroying whatever is possible on the way out.

Auschwitz is being demolished by the same people who built it.

Since the SS moved all the sick prisoners down here from the sick bay two days ago, before they fled, there’s been a near-constant rumble from above, the ceiling shaking so hard, plaster crashing to the ground—or on top of us. It sounded like a battle was taking place just above our heads.

Until today.

The rumbling stopped, and it’s the first time there’s been stillness since we were sent down here.

“I don’t know if anyone’s left to continue the demolition. That’s why it’s so quiet,” a younger man, a few cots down from me, garbles with a wet cough. “The SS left with the groups they were marching to another location. Not one of them in sight when I sneaked outside yesterday.”

“The SS aren’t all gone,” the older man replies. He points toward the cement stairwell, his finger trembling. “This morning, I saw a few by the main gates with their dogs. They’re making sure the rest of us don’t get out.”

I have seen some of the ill prisoners come and go from this cellar these last couple of days, sneaking out for fresh air before returning.

If the older man is correct, the SS still posted at the main gates would prevent anyone from leaving the camp.

I don’t know why anyone would choose to come back down here though. There’s nowhere else to go, I’m sure.

Regardless, we’re waiting down here to die, either by sickness, starvation, or when the remaining SS decide to destroy this building with us inside.

I twist my head to the side, staring at the middle-aged woman on the cot next to me. The one whose arm has fallen across me. For hours, she has been crying out for her beloved to save her—rescue her—while reaching for something I can’t see. Her hand lifts, fingers clawing at the air, then falls.

She’s quiet now. Her eyes are closed.

I take her slim wrist into my hand and slide her arm from my chest onto hers. It’s ice-cold and heavy, resting on her chest—a chest no longer rising and falling with breath.

“I think you’ve been rescued,” I whisper to her. “May your memory be a blessing.”

When no one is speaking or speculating about what’s happening above, the silence grows louder than the coughs, moans, and snores. The walls seem to narrow around me, threatening to swallow me whole.

I don’t want to wait down here to die. Not if there’s even the slightest chance I might get out of here alive. With a pause in the rumbling, now’s the time to try.

I shift my legs off the cot, waiting for the room to still.

Hunger and illness have hollowed me out to a point where I can’t see straight anymore.

I need to push through it. The dirt floor wobbles, the rows of cots sway, but I convince myself that I can stay upright.

I lower my bare feet into the dirt and rubble, testing my weight before releasing my hold along the cot’s metal frame.

Everything I’ve grown accustomed to in Auschwitz over the last fifteen months dictates I should expect a shout, a beating, or a baton strike for being out of order, but there are no kapos or guards down here to stop me now, as the others have proven.

But whether the SS have all gone or not, leaving this cellar without restriction feels dangerous.

So does dying without a fight.

I move along the narrow cement path, stepping around bodies who couldn’t find a cot, or didn’t have the strength to look. The air thins around me as I push myself toward the stairs—closer to the exit. Each step, a fiery burn within my legs.

The stairwell heads steeply upward, and the damp stone wall is grimy against my palms, leaving my fingertips to do all the work. I cling to the grooves, fighting to pull myself up.

Light streaks across the gray walls with barred windows and a wooden door.

I nudge the door open a crack, peeking out to confirm if a guard waits for me or not.

The front gates aren’t visible from here, and the SS haven’t demolished all the buildings.

If the SS are only stationed at the gates, that must be why people are returning to the cellar beneath the infirmary.

They can come and go without being noticed.

I hold my breath as I push the door open wider for a better look.

I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing. Stepping outside, Birkenau’s landscape is motionless and silent.

Shallow barracks form endless rows, their brown wood blackened by ash, windows sealed with soot.

Where harsh order and rows of blue-striped uniforms once stood, dark gray snow blankets the ground.

I pause, pulling in a breath that stings my lungs, eyes searching the nearest watchtowers and the section barriers.

Not a guard nor an officer in sight, just as the younger man had said.

My insides twist again, as if my body is turning against itself.

I need food, even if I can’t keep it down.

I have to eat before I can think about what to do next.

Wind hurls a flock of snow into my face—the elements taking no mercy on me.

I just need to make it down the row to the Kanada inventory warehouses.

That’s where the SS store food and supplies.

Everything torn away from incoming prisoners has been stashed and organized within those walls, from suitcases and shoes to sometimes perishables.

I keep to the side barrier of the path where the snow is thinnest, listening to the camp’s sounds of despair. Fences moan and wood creaks. Somewhere to my right, a structure collapses with a tired sigh.

The ground rumbles again, just like I felt in the cellar until this morning, and I stumble.

The fences surrounding me rattle violently.

A deep, earth-shattering groan tears through the air, vibrating in my chest and between my teeth.

I can’t move—not to run or hide. I’m frozen as an explosion splits the sky—light flares along with a wave of scalding heat, and the brick walls of the crematorium ahead fly in every direction.

“They’re still burning the place down.” The reminder of the man’s words steals my breath.

Smoke swells into thick black clouds. As the crematorium crumbles, the air pressure tightens around me, the air raging against me with a force I’ve never experienced. Something hard smashes into my shoulder, spinning me around before the ground vanishes beneath my feet.

My head crashes down hard, my breath ripping from my lungs. Hot ash and debris flutter down, stinging my eyes, filling my mouth, coating my tongue with grit. My ears ring, a high-pitched, piercing whine.

Leather-gloved hands seize me from under my arms.

My heart lurches into my throat, arms thrashing to get free. A German uniform. I should have known better.

The officer pulls me backward, my feet dragging on the ground, heels catching on crags of ice and broken brick as the world moves in reverse, away from the collapsing ruin and core site of the explosion. I’m dragged behind the shell of a barrack as another blast thunders through the sky.

His body folds over mine. Is he going to beat me for leaving the cellar? I brace myself for the worst, screwing my eyes shut.

But instead of the pain I thought was coming, I only feel a light pressure against the pulse in my neck, a hot breath against my forehead. Confused, I crack open one eye, and my heart stops.

I keep my eyes fixed on the arc of freckles along the bridge of his nose, the tension lines between his brows.

It can’t be.

Forcing my gaze up, his eyes meet mine—a sunburst of gold, green, and brown pigments, like a hazy memory breaking through the fragile walls of my mind. He has the same eyes I’ve stared into more than I’ve looked into my own in the mirror. The eyes of my husband…

My chest caves in, questioning my sanity… “Noah…” The name slips off my tongue.

It can’t be him. Of course it can’t. Not here, not in a German uniform. Noah is dead.

But the man pauses, just for a blink, and whispers, “Run.”

Run…the word repeats in my head.

“Blockführer!” a German soldier shouts from behind, his voice ripping through the smoke, his boots stomping over snow, ice, and rubble. “Was machst du?”

Hands seize the man who saved me, and he doesn’t fight back.

“Ich komme zuruck zu meinem Block.” He’s speaking German now, the words rattling in his throat.

The guard turns once, catching my gaze as he’s yanked away and into the smoke—and as I cling to the image of my beloved Noah, even if I know it’s wrong, even if I know he’d never be one of them, the high-pitched ringing in my ears roars louder and everything fades to black.