Chapter 11
ELEVEN
CURRENT DAY
Kopciowice, Poland
My eyes burn against the thick smog, blurring the vicinity. Ahead, voices crash into one another, loud and erratic, funneling between a group of scattered trees.
“Shh, if we listen in for a minute, we might be able to get an idea if they plan to stay or go. We can wait them out and search for what they might leave behind,” Elias says. “We stay behind them. Always behind. That’s the only way to survive.”
I don’t even remember deciding to move closer after questioning what we’re walking into, and I don’t turn to see if the others are behind me, but I find a wide trench bordered by elevated mounds of snow packed dirt.
As the smoke thins, I trudge up the mounds, crouching forward to get a peek into the trench.
A cough bucks through my chest, but I pinch my lips and swallow against the grit as the sight of uniformed men comes into view.
All of them are talking or shouting in a mix of German, Russian, Polish, and Yiddish.
The smoky scene twists into something out of expressionism—elongated, misshapen faces, mouths split open in accusation, the sky and surrounding trees a battered smear of it all. They did put out a fire, like Elias had thought—the smoke is blooming from a pit behind rows of prisoners.
Avi tugs me backward, but I fight against her, trying to figure out what I’m looking at—or who, for that matter.
They’re like us, but not us. There are no blue-and-white striped uniforms. No emaciated bodies. Just men in Nazi uniforms, hands and ankles bound, sitting in rows as Soviet soldiers pace back and forth in front of them.
Their hands are clean and cared for rather than used for daily labor—not like the ones that pulled me from the rubble after the explosion.
“They’re going to see you,” Avi hisses in my ear. “Get down.”
For so long, the German soldiers have had unlimited power over us, imprisoning the Jewish population, killing as many as possible. And now, overnight, it seems, they’ve become the prisoners under Soviet power. So, the hunter becomes the prey…
I can’t break my stare from what’s in front of me, the sight of these ruthless monsters, now paying for their sins.
Except one.
One who isn’t talking to anyone else.
One whose stare is fixed on the ground. His right shoulder dipped lower than his left; dark hair. His bound hands clench, the pad of his thumbs pressing into his knuckles.
Is it…?
Nausea strikes again, triggering a cold sweat down my spine.
Most of the faces in front of me aren’t helpless—but full of anger. The Soviets shout at them in Russian just like those officers shouted at us in German.
I hadn’t realized I’m holding a sap branch until it snaps in my hand. The crack has several pairs of German eyes turning to find me spying. Blood drains from my face.
“Jude!” a German prisoner shouts.
Avi pulls me down from the mound edging the trench, and I fall back and on top of her. She groans and coughs from the blow and Elias pulls me up, separating us and yanking us up to our feet.
“We need to run. Go!” he demands.
We hurry to the right, toward a cluster of trees, but not fast enough when someone makes it known they’re coming after us. And not just someone. Multiple people.
Elias swoops in behind and shoves us between a cluster of trees with gnarly branches that weave the individual birches into one. “Don’t speak,” he hushes.
The four of us scramble quietly between a set of boulders, then lower ourselves behind them. I don’t know if anyone saw where we went or if we might have disappeared from their line of sight fast enough.
I only know that we’re hiding because of my decision. I’m the one they’d noticed. The ditch smells like moldy moss and mildew. Wet snow bleeds through my wool socks, now sagging at my ankles as I curl into a ball. If only I could disappear entirely.
For a moment, I thought the soldiers might have given up on us, but the voices continue.
Russian, and—there’s German mixed in. I dig my fingers deeper into the snow, reaching the mud as my nails bend.
My throat tightens as if I’m being strangled by air itself.
Not one of us can make a sound. Not even a whisper of a breath.
Avi slips, her body crunching lower into the ground as snow gives out beneath. Her eyes widen, as do Gerda’s and Elias’s. She stares at me, our eyes locking. Still strangers, yet I can read every thought on her face. Every ounce of fear.
More crackling, crunching, grinding snow, ice, and frozen dirt. “Celina,” Avi whispers, the words a warning. She grabs my wrist and squeezes, her nails biting into my flesh. A distraction. “Stop.” She swallows hard. “You’re shaking.”
I’m the one making the noise. Again.
Boots crunch closer. Someone stifles a laugh.
A rifle clacks against a hip. “Just a hungry Jew,” one says in a mix of Yiddish and Russian.
“You won’t find anything here. Gey avek!
” Their message to go away is loud and clear.
“No time for this, comrade. We must head back to the tracks and continue en route.”
Elias lifts his finger to his mouth, like we don’t already know. Avi squeezes my wrist tighter. Gerda closes her eyes and mouths a prayer. Back to the tracks.
The voices pass, then drift into the wind. I stretch my neck to peek over the ledge of the ditch, searching for trails of shadows, finding the tail end of two.
We wait in stillness, minutes longer, until Elias climbs out of the ditch first and makes his way to a clearing deeper into the woods. Gerda and Avi follow, but my body struggles to unfold and straighten. My knees are frozen. It doesn’t matter. I have to move.
I claw my way out, stumbling to my feet, then landing against a tree.
The bark scrapes my calf. Avi reaches her arm out for me to take.
We follow Elias blindly like he has a compass, but he doesn’t.
Maybe he’s following the direction of the wind, but to where, is anyone’s guess.
We don’t stop until the faint shouts from the barbed-wire imprisonment are quiet.
Elias leans his back against a tree, heaving breaths through puffed red cheeks. “All we had to do was wait a few minutes until they leave. They were talking about rounding up the prisoners. I heard it myself.”
I wasn’t trying to get caught, or sending a warning signal that we wanted to steal their food.
“You don’t steal food and supplies by showing your face first!” Avi adds.
“I wasn’t trying to—” I begin, my whisper sticky in my throat. Even with effort, sound doesn’t form. “I was trying to see if I could spot food, or supplies, something we could use…”
“We can’t move until they’re gone,” Elias interrupts me. “That’s the point.” I stop myself, remembering the reaction in the infirmary when I asked if anyone had seen who carried me back inside.
“No, you weren’t just investigating, and you weren’t in some sort of shock,” Avi says, tightening her coat around her chest, her wet hair sticking to her cheeks. “You were looking at their faces—the faces of all those murderers. What were you looking for? An apology?”
Gerda’s head tilts to the side and her brows furrow. Elias gives me a shrewd, untrusting glance. It makes me wonder if he looks at everyone that way—if that’s what his time at Auschwitz caused.
I’m not sure how many hours we’ve been on this trek together, but I know very little about any one of them.
They know just as little about me. Survival is greedy, lonely, and trust doesn’t come easily.
Regardless, Avi has been kinder to me than I might be to me in her situation—able-bodied, eager to find a way out.
I bend forward, pressing my hands into my thighs for support, trying to catch a full breath. “My husband. Noah. I thought I saw him,” I finally answer, the words burning my throat.
No one says a word but I’m sure I know what they’re all thinking… Why would I be looking for my husband among a group of German soldiers?
“He was a prisoner too?” Avi asks, surprise settling into her dark eyes. I told her I was looking for someone before we left Auschwitz. Then I said he might be with the group of prisoners we followed. Then I told her he wasn’t there. I can only imagine what she’s thinking now.
I shake my head and search for words but speak the wrong ones.
“I—I’m not —He’s dead. Or I thought he was dead.
I thought I watched him get killed. But then the day before we were liberated, someone saved me from the crematorium explosion, and the man—he looked uncannily like my husband.
I could almost swear it was him.” I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to find the right words.
“But that man was in a German uniform. The next day, I was sure I saw him being taken away by the Soviets.” My voice falters into fragments of air.
“I know it sounds mad, but I can’t shake the thought from my head.
” I press my hand to my throat as if to will my voice to keep working.
“I—just need to see whether it’s him or not. ”
No one responds right away.
Not even a breath passes.
The three of them stare at me with some form of confusion and sympathy. I’m sure they’re all in silent agreement that the only thing that makes sense is that I clearly lost my mind a long time ago.
“That’s why you looked at the dead German guard, and why you just froze back at the Soviet prison.” Avi wipes the back of her hand against her forehead. “That’s why you hesitated when we left Auschwitz. You’re looking for your husband.”
I nod. “Yes.”
Her stare narrows in on me, as if she can see through the layers of my flesh in search of information I’m not giving her. Out loud, none of it makes sense. Only to me.
“Why would your husband be wearing a German uniform, Celina?” She stares at me, unblinking, appalled. “Is he a Nazi?” Her words are like flames against my face.
“No! He’s Jewish!” I cry. “I don’t know. But he would never—he would have a reason and a purpose for being in those clothes. I’m sure of it.”
Avi scoots backward, not to stand up or leave but to create space.
Her eyes widen and she shakes her head. “I—I can’t imagine what could make someone put that on…” Avi hisses. “I don’t know what to say, but—maybe you should have said something sooner.”
Sooner, as in, given them all time and notice to know not to travel alongside me. To suspect me—either of madness, or of being married to the enemy. As if I haven’t gone through the same torture they have.
“Saying it out loud doesn’t change anything.”
Gerda drags her tired feet toward me and rests her arm around my back. “I lost my husband,” Gerda says. “And my three daughters.”
We’re all in pain. We’re all suffering. It’s hard to think beyond my own frame of mind. Gerda moves toward a bare log and drops down, wrapping her arms around her torso as she squeezes back the pain beneath her clenched eyes.
“I lost my parents and three younger brothers,” Elias says, his voice deflating.
“My brothers were taken from me after we were separated from our parents. I told them everything would be all right and to be brave.” He pauses a moment.
“The last thing I told those three was a lie. And I’d never lie to them. ”
He can’t be more than sixteen or seventeen, and living with that guilt. It’s a lifelong punishment.
Avi heaves an exhale, already turning away. In avoidance. “None of us can afford to be chasing shadows right now,” she says. “Especially if one of them might be wearing a German uniform. We need to keep moving, for ourselves now. To safety, not into more danger.”
“I understand.” I sigh. But I won’t give up on the idea that the man I keep seeing looked too much like Noah to not prove for sure it isn’t. I have nothing left to lose…
“Do you?” she asks, her voice softer this time. Not soft enough to hide her frustration. “Next time, that could get us killed.”
Guilt swells in my chest, heat coiling around my neck and through my face. I silently agree as tears burn the back of my eyes. I can’t force anyone to understand, and if I can’t stay with them because of that, so be it.
“We really need to find shelter,” Elias says. “Hospitable shelter.”
Elias notices Gerda struggling to stand from the log and helps her up, leaving Avi and I to walk behind.
Hardly a minute passes before she gives me a side-long glance and exhales heavily. “Next time,” she huffs, “will you at least tell me before you risk everything?”
“All right,” I utter.
“We’ll wait here,” Elias says. “Give them time to move out of the trench. Then we’ll continue to stay behind them.”
There was a day when I prayed for no more warnings. No other reasons to live in fear. I didn’t want to know what would happen next.
Now, I’d give anything for a sign.