Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
CURRENT DAY
Gliwice, Poland
“Celina…” Christoph’s stern voice hisses in my ear. He takes my elbow, tugging me away from the fence I’ve been staring through. Watching the German prisoners succumb to their own style of punishment. “They’re Nazis. Don’t let them see you.”
“Not all of them are Nazis.” I’m speaking, but the voice doesn’t sound like mine. The words don’t even feel like they’ve come out of my mouth.
“How could you know something like that?” he presses, searching the faces in the rows just as I was.
“One of them has a tattooed number on his forearm. One like I received following registration at Auschwitz.” I push my coat sleeve up, bunching the uniform with it, showing Christoph my forearm.
He takes my wrist into his hand, the warmth returning some of my senses that have become ice-cold. “Who did this?”
“The Nazis are responsible for this,” I say, nodding my head toward the column of prisoners. I’m contradicting myself, making no sense to him or me. “The SS mark everyone—inking numbers in place of names to identify every person who lives beyond the selection lines.”
He runs his thumb over the puckered skin. “It’s permanent.”
“No more so than the nightmares I’ll carry with me.”
“I’m scared to ask what else they did—”
“Don’t,” I stop him.
“Sorry.” He lowers his head and releases my arm. “Which of them has a tattoo like yours?”
“The group parallel to us, first row, fourth person in from the left. No member of the SS—no one wearing a German uniform either—would have one of these tattoos.”
Again, Christoph twists to face the fence, searching through the grates for the branded German man. “It would be easy for a Nazi to tattoo himself, and make it look like he’s a former innocent prisoner rather than part of the SS. I wouldn’t put it past them to be that desperate.”
“You think they’d tattoo themselves with numbers like the one on my arm?”
“Yes, but—” Christoph interlocks his fingers along the fence, pulling his face closer to the grates. “That man. Fourth person from the left, first row—he—”
“What?” I ask, my throat tightening.
Christoph looks at me, his brows angling in toward his nose. Before saying another word, he looks back at the group of prisoners and his jaw tightens. “No—it can’t be him—” he says.
“Wh—who?” The whisper rattles in my chest.
“Noah…”
I push back against the gate as if an extra step closer will help me see any more clearly. The man with numbers inked on his arm shifts his eyes in our direction. The moment is brief and interrupted when he falls, face-first into the slush.
It’s him!
It’s Noah.
I gasp and yank my hand back, smothering it over my mouth.
“They’ve beaten him. His face—he’s bruised, and…” Christoph splutters.
“But it’s him,” I say. “Surely, you believe me now.”
“Yes, I think… it is him,” Christoph utters in disbelief.
“Did something happen?” Elias’s voice grows from behind me, re-grounding me in the enclosed school yard, outside the building where the Soviet medics took Avi.
Christoph doesn’t turn away from the fence to respond to Elias.
“I—I don’t know.” It’s all I can get out of my mouth to Elias before returning my stare to the groups of prisoners.
“Noah isn’t getting back up,” Christoph says.
I search to the left, wondering if the fence opens freely or if we’re secured within.
There’s only one way to know. I step to the side, releasing my grip on the fence.
Before I take another step in the snow, Christoph grabs my arm, yanking me backward.
“No. You can’t… What are you going to—” He pulls me so I turn to face him. “Celina, look at me.”
“I have to—”
A rifle butt jabs into the fence, rattling the metal around us. “Move away,” a soldier demands.
My heart thuds and steals my breath as I jump away from the fence, still within Christoph’s locked grip. Then I see soldiers separating the man—the man who might be Noah—away from the rows of others. He’s being singled out by a soldier pointing a rifle at his head.
They can’t take him. They can’t.
Christoph squeezes my arm.
“We need to check on Avi,” Elias says.
If I move, he’ll disappear.
“Celina,” Elias says, demanding my attention.
If I stay, something could happen to Avi. She could die.
I can’t lose him again…
“They’re staring at you,” Christoph whispers. “The Soviets.” He pulls me away from the fence, my heels heavy as I fight to move my feet backward. “If you don’t step away from the fence, they’ll shoot you.”
“I can’t lose him again. I can’t.”
“You won’t be any help to him if you’re dead.” Christoph’s words speak of finality as he pulls me harder, forcing me to turn my back on Noah.
I look over my shoulder, but we’re no longer within sight of the row we spotted Noah.
Instead, I watch two Soviets dragging a German prisoner toward the back of a low building, sitting flush with the schoolhouse.
They’re blocking the view of the man’s face.
All I can see are his black boots. They’re untied, gaping at his ankles.
Noah used to hate that feeling. Said it let in too much cold if they weren’t tight enough.
Whether they’re dragging Noah away, or he’s lying face down on the ground, he’s in dire need of help.
A metal fence thrusts open on the opposite side of the field from where we are and another two Soviet soldiers charge toward us, their expressions like stone.
“Is our friend all right?” Elias asks, panic-stricken.
“Is she out there with the German prisoners? Is that why you were watching them?” One of the soldiers sneers, his tone dark and guttural, irate. “We’re moving you.” One steps around us to usher us forward while the other turns toward the gate we came through.
My chest tightens. The pop of a rifle bursts within me, the sight of Noah’s body—black pants, dark hair, lying on the street in a pool of blood. Now, snow—his body being dragged away—again.
“Wait,” I say, my voice bouncing off the side of the schoolhouse. “You can’t—”
Christoph tugs my arm, pulling me into his side. “Celina.”
I shake away his voice. He doesn’t know what I’ve seen. “One of them isn’t who you think.” The words blurt out, unmistakable for anyone listening. “One of them isn’t German—he’s not who you think he is.”
The prisoners’ yard behind us grows quiet. Too quiet. As if they’re all focusing on my outcry.
The soldier leading us away stops and pivots back to face us. His stare is cold and ruthless, needling me with scrutiny.
“Ona sumasshedshaya,” he slurs to the other soldier, knowing we wouldn’t understand their Russian. The other soldier only shrugs in response, unaffected by whatever he said.
“You didn’t see anything,” the soldier in front says. This time he’s speaking to us in Yiddish so we understand.
“I did.” The words pour out of me, my desperation clear in any language. I yank my sleeve and shove it up to my elbow, my arm shaking from both cold and nerves. “They mark people. They mark us. No German soldier would have a number on their arm unless he was like me.”
Elias is stepping from side to side, pulling at his short hair, breathing quickly.
“Stop,” Christoph hisses in my ear, squeezing at my arm again. “You’re going to get us killed.”
I barely hear or understand what he’s telling me to do as I’m already drowning in my own fear.
“There was a tattoo,” I press again. “A number. I saw it clearly on the man’s arm. Not an ink stain. German soldiers don’t do that to their own.”
The soldiers don’t acknowledge my erratic explanation but rather share an annoyed look with one another.
“Enough,” the one in front snaps before stepping in toward me, leaving no room for my shoes to budge forward. He lowers his head and speaks directly against my face. “You will be quiet now.” His breath smells like cabbage and coffee grounds.
The soldier from behind shoves Elias and Christoph forward, knocking into me just enough to force my feet out of step.
Again, they mutter something to each other in Russian, a grunt shadowing the words. They force us along, out of the school yard and up to the front of the schoolhouse, next to the other building where they’re keeping the prisoners.
“If one of them is a Jewish traitor,” the louder of the two soldiers says, “he won’t last long among those German soldiers anyway.”
His thick accent puts emphasis on all the words that hollow me out.
Christoph grabs the back of my coat and pulls me back a step, maneuvering himself to stand in front of me. “I apologize for the trouble.” His voice is too calm—too unmotivated to match my pleas. “She’s not well. Lost family in the camps. She isn’t thinking properly right now.”
The soldier lazily moves his glare from Christoph to the schoolhouse. “Your friend in there, she’s weak.” He points toward the front door and exhales heavily with aggravation. “Any more disturbances from you, and we move her someplace else.”
“Please, no. She needs help. She needs—” Elias argues.
“Quiet,” he barks. He steps around us and opens the front door, motioning for us to follow. He takes us down the corridor and opens a door. “Go.”
A large, damp closet with a dangling light bulb. No windows. Just the sound of a key switching a lock in the door from the outside.
The urge to bang on the door rivets through me. I can’t just wait in here. Avi was right. They don’t really care about liberating us. And now I’ve left her alone in their care—the people she feared more than the German soldiers themselves.
“You can’t speak to them that way,” Christoph lectures me. “They don’t care about what you’re telling them. They’re following orders and we aren’t a part of them.”
I need to get out of here. I need to get to Noah. I don’t care what the Soviets are concerned with or not. Noah needs me.
“God knows how long they’ll leave us in here,” Elias follows, clearly angry with me too, despite him being the first to ask about Avi.