Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
CURRENT DAY
Ruda ?l?ska, Poland
I count down the minutes leading to dawn, the gray light leaking in, the cold growing heavier rather than letting up. My body aches all over, every muscle feeling tied in knots after shivering for so long.
Avi is still pressed against me, but without noticeable movement.
I shift just enough to press my hand between us, against her back.
A breath moves through her, but shallow and unsteady.
I move my cheek back to her hair, reaching my hand to her forehead.
Relief floods through me as I feel the usual burn beneath her skin.
A fever is better than the alternative, but she’s even warmer than the last time I checked her head.
“Christoph,” I whisper again.
He fell asleep with his hand draped over my side while searching for Avi’s breaths. He doesn’t respond to me calling him this time, but his eyes are open, his jaw rigid as he stares out from the snow berm.
Elias’s hand finds Avi’s ankle beneath the foil, then he presses up on his elbow, his eyes searching mine in the murky halo of light. He shakes his head and swallows hard. I’m not giving up on her. I’m not calling her death before it comes.
We need to get her out of this tunnel of ice. She needs aid. “We should never have taken her out of the shelter. I should have insisted she and Elias stay there.”
I’ll be the one responsible for her death. I’ll be as bad as those soldiers.
“None of you could stay, Celina,” Christoph says quietly. “I told you the woman in the administration office said they were running out of supplies. They barely had food left. The longer Avi remained there, the worse off she would have been.”
Just as I thought our lives were something we could regain control of, I’m proven wrong. We’re no longer hostages of Auschwitz, but we’re still fighting to survive within the purgatory of this war.
I try to prop Avi up, scooping my arm behind her.
My head knocks against the underside of the railcar, reminding me of the swollen bump that might never fully disappear.
“Avi, can you wake up for me?” I ask her, trying to keep my voice calmer than I feel inside.
She doesn’t move, and her body is dead weight against my arm.
I squeeze my hand around her arm, pinching her skin. “Avi.”
She makes a sound. Not a word, or even a groan. Just a thin breath that catches in her throat and doesn’t come back out.
Christoph backs out of the berm first, then Elias and I slowly maneuver Avi out far enough that Christoph can lift her up. With the chill of wind against my back, I know despite our efforts, none of us stayed dry last night and my skin stings and stretches beneath patches of numbness.
We’re all looking ahead rather than into our next step, searching for a way out of the forest that feels more like an endless hallway with no exit—one where those rat-hunters from last night could be lingering. There’s a chance we’ll never find a way out of here, not all of us, alive.
* * *
Gliwice, Poland
Through the barren trees, a stack of smoke swells toward the sky. It doesn’t mean safety, but it’s a sliver of hope that we can find something to help Avi. “How close are we to Gliwice?” I ask Christoph. He looked at the map a few minutes ago. He must have an estimate.
“Not far at all now. We cut some time by moving through the woods, but that smoke could belong to anything.”
“Regardless, there must be something over there,” I say, pointing between the trees.
“Soldiers, of some form, I assume,” Elias says.
“We’re still moving along near the rail line, so it will be the Soviets with the German prisoners in detainment.”
“How do you know?” Elias asks.
“That man at the train depot, the one I was talking to… He told me they would be heading this way in a week-and-a-half, when the rail line should be up and working again.”
“Wait a minute. We’re back to following your husband, who’s dressed in an SS uniform, rather than searching for a shelter with a medical station? Something that could save Avi’s life? Is that what you’re saying?” Elias lashes out.
“Both are one and the same,” Christoph says, defensively.
“She’s going to die if—”
“Smoke means a chance we’ll get help. It’s better than no smoke,” Christoph continues.
I don’t know what to say. It isn’t as if we’ve passed medical tents and I’ve suggested waiting for the next one.
No one truly knows where we’ll find help.
And I don’t truly know if Igor was speaking a word of truth, or if Noah has become someone I won’t even recognize.
Everything is a risk. But everything is also a chance.
I pick up my pace, forging ahead of Christoph who has slowed from carrying Avi, and Elias who is rightfully questioning every decision.
When the trees clear, the sight of stone houses ignites my pulse with strangled hope.
I scan the area, taking in the sight of a village that has become a casualty of this war.
Some of the houses are still standing, but less than half have roofs still intact.
The rest of the homes have mere walls hovering around tall piles of charred debris.
Doors lie in the road, shattered glass beneath windows.
Metal drums with small fires mean there are people here amid the destruction.
I step forward only to be stopped abruptly when Elias grabs the back of my coat. “You cannot just storm through the center of this village. We don’t know who’s occupying the few standing houses.”
I know what the uniforms mean, and I know what it costs to be seen by either side, but hiding won’t save Avi. “I need to find a nurse or doctor. Even a pharmacy that’s in pieces. Someone must at least have aspirin.”
“Celina—” Christoph says. “Let’s just take it easy. If the wrong people spot us, they won’t even give us a chance to explain why we’re here.”
Help isn’t going to greet us while we’re hiding behind piles of stone.
I yank myself out of Elias’s grip to keep a better look at what other buildings are down the road.
Crates, barrels, and overturned wagons with piles of coal spilling out into the snow.
The path ahead is a clustered obstacle, but as soon as I can see around the wide bend, a church and schoolhouse come into visibility as well as a low stretched wooden building with uneven stacks of timber. The larch mill, maybe.
I head back toward the three of them. “There are a church and a schoolhouse. They might be sheltering refugees,” I call out, choking against the smoke clinging to the fog.
“Are there people around? Christoph asks.
“None that I could see.”
Christoph and Elias share a look, reminding me of the way he and Noah once shared silent conversation. Except this time, it’s about me and the choices I’m making. We all want to help Avi. That’s my focus.
Hesitantly, they follow behind me. It doesn’t take long to realize the church is further away than it looked, and standing to one side of the road we’re on are Soviet soldiers.
I won’t try to hide this time. Hiding implies spying.
With my elbows folded into my sides, I hold my hands up—a surrender in exchange for a fair response. “What are you doing?” Christoph shouts in a whisper.
“Follow me,” I whisper back.
They do, but with ragged breaths that are louder than my pounding heart.
None of the soldiers reach for their weapons, and only one steps forward.
“Stop there.” He presses the palms of his hands toward us. “Put her down.”
Another soldier steps away from the others. He doesn’t have a rifle slung over his shoulder, but instead, a worn leather satchel. A yellowing band with a faded red cross is bunched within the creases of his jacket sleeve.
I turn to the side as he passes me, watching Christoph’s arms shake as he lowers Avi to the ground. The soldier with the arm band drops to his knees at Avi’s side, touches his hand to her forehead then turns to the group of soldiers and shouts something in Russian.
Two more soldiers separate from the group and rush past me, lifting Avi and rushing her toward the direction of the church.
I turn to follow Avi, but I’m reminded quickly that I wasn’t meant to move any further as the first soldier snags me by the elbow with a firm hold. “Stay.”
My stomach knots into a wave of nausea, realizing I’ve gotten Avi help, but also given up the right to decide anything else for her. “We’re worried for our friend,” Elias speaks up, his voice quivering.
The soldier still holding on to my arm looks over his shoulder at his comrades and nods to one of them. “You will wait behind the infirmary.”
We’re escorted in the direction the others took Avi, but to the side of the building. A soldier opens a tall metal gate and waves us forward. The moment we’re all contained, the gate secures behind us, leaving us penned between metal fencing, topped with barbed wire.
Christoph paces. Elias stands in the center of the snow-covered field, hands on his hips, staring up at the dark windows along the schoolhouse building. I’m at the fence, watching three lines of German prisoners spill into the adjacent yard.
Soviet guards tear them apart, dragging men into groups that form smaller uneven lines. They grab prisoners’ collars, inspect insignia then decide whether to shove them left, right, front or back—by rank, perhaps—but I can’t quite follow the pattern.
“Down!” a Soviet guard shouts. “Knees!”
The command echoes between the two buildings and is then repeated by someone’s attempt to speak German in the back row. One by one, the German prisoners drop down.
“Coats off!” German prisoners fumble with the buttons and stiff sleeves. Anyone moving too slow is struck with a rifle butt.
Soviets circle the rows, shoving heads down into the snow, forcing them to wait for their next order.
I can’t seem to look away as something inside of me steadies rather than unravels.
The insignia branded to their clothes say enough.
It was a choice to take part and show devotion.
I wouldn’t be able to live with the memory of this scene if I allow myself to wonder how many of them were forced into it, like everyone else within this war.
These prisoners marched through our streets, took our loved ones, homes, and names.
They decided who should live, who could serve them, and who could be erased.
Whatever happens to them now will never give back what was taken from me.
I will never return to the person I was before they decided my future.
Therefore, I have to allow myself to believe this is justice to the deserving.
Soviet guards meet in a small circle, one with papers in hand, hissing orders while another one eyes one of the prisoners. His stare quickly shifts to another prisoner. The Russian holding papers slaps his hand against them, his eyes bulging. He points behind him and shakes his head.
The Soviet guards listening take direction and drag three German prisoners from their groups, out of the pen to the far side of the building. Out of sight.
A moment later, shots fire beyond the wall—the blasts splitting through the air like lightning. I gasp silently, but no one looks toward the sound. Not the soldiers, nor the prisoners.
The uniforms mean they already know what’s coming.
And then one man in the front row, his head hanging toward the ground, shifts his knees in the snow, his shoulders folding inward as he rebalances himself. The movement pulls his sleeve back.
Just enough.
A smear of dark ink blurs along the inside of his forearm—something hand-done.
Tattoos like that don’t belong beneath Nazi coats. Not the kind meant to mark someone as less than human.
I can’t see his face. Many have dark hair.
I don’t know when I tangled my fingers through the metal grates of the fence, but I need the man with the tattoo to move his head. I need to see his face.
I need to know if it’s Noah.
The Soviet guard with the papers in hand stills as his cold stare fixes on the row where the tattooed prisoner kneels. He’s not scanning, nor passing it over. He stops. His hand lifts, the papers shifting between his fingers as if he’s about to point.
My body stiffens and I hold my breath, watching…waiting. I know that look. It’s reason for action—a pause before deciding an outcome. Whether that’s Noah or someone else, I’m certain I’m running out of time.
Igor said they would be here waiting for transport once the rail lines opened. If Noah is here—if he survived whatever they’ve already done to him, he won’t stay here long. They’ll move him. Put him on a train and send him somewhere I won’t be able to reach him.