Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
Auschwitz, O?wi?cim, Poland
The woman in charge of my barrack, the kapo, a hollow-eyed beast with a narrow face and drooping jowls, has been shouting at all the women of block twenty-five since dawn as we stand in front of our rows of tiered bunks.
Her voice grits like sand scratching metal as she intentionally steals the few precious minutes we need for the toilets before the guards line us up like cattle for roll call.
“You. Wagon duty, now,” she says, stepping in so close, her rotten breath sours my stomach.
“What does that—”
“Now!” she screams, slashing a cracked leather belt against my bare leg. The throb and sting burn across my skin, radiating up to my thigh like flames. I clamp my teeth into my tongue until the metallic taste of blood fills my mouth. I’d rather that than give her the satisfaction of my pain.
“Laundry—wagon duty,” she barks at Tilda, one of my bunkmates, a skeletal woman with short gray hair and droopy eyes. She’s closer to Mama’s age, or at least the age Mama was when I saw her last. She didn’t say the word laundry to me.
The woman beside me with cheekbones carved like porous stone flashes a glance in my direction, a quiet warning of sorts.
“Laundry. Wagon duty, now!” That makes three of us chosen.
We hurry toward the exit of the barracks like starving rats, our wooden clogs clacking against the cement floor.
“Must be near Kanada,” one of them whispers. “That’s where they empty luggage.”
I follow closely behind the woman who appears to know the direction we should be heading.
Though we don’t get far before a guard stops us between barricaded fences topped with rusted barbed wire that glints dully in the early morning light.
“Where are you reporting?” His bloodshot eyes study us as if he’s searching for a visible unreported crime among us.
“Laundry.” My response is brittle, my voice hardly forming a sound.
“Laundry for what?” His hand rests on his holster, fingers tapping it with impatience.
“Our kapo told us we had wagon duty for laundry.” My throat tightens around every word.
“Block number?” His annoyance is no longer hidden in his tapping finger. He shifts his weight between his feet, his boots grinding against the damp gravel.
“Twenty-five,” Tilda utters, her voice drier than mine.
The guard stares down the dirt path we’ve just taken and narrows his eye toward our dark wooden block, hardly visible through the morning fog.
“Report to the laundry building at the Kanada warehouse.” He points ahead of us with a gloved finger.
The guard moves through us as if we’re nothing more than tall threads of grass, his shoulder deliberately colliding with mine.
The guards need someone to always be irate with, or they aren’t doing their jobs. When one person seems to get away with something, despite doing nothing wrong in the first place, it’s almost guaranteed the next person on their list will become not just a target, but a victim.
And if that victim is our block kapo, we will be the ones to pay the ultimate consequence if she is the given opportunity again.
“None of us will get bread for a week now, or longer,” the third woman, whose name I don’t know, says.
“I was thinking the same,” I say.
We continue down the path toward Kanada, the wooden soles of our shoes slipping along small rocks until we find a sign for laundry on a small building beside Kanada.
We step into nothing but steam-filled air, and temperatures far hotter than July in Poland.
The humidity is oppressive, and weighs heavily on my shoulders.
My linen smock is damp with sweat within seconds of being inside, the fabric sticking to my gaunt frame.
A middle-aged woman in a matching uniform approaches us, deep lines stretching across her forehead, and away from her eyes like wingtips.
“Are you my new labor line to transport laundry?” she asks, her voice hoarse, but firm.
She doesn’t have the typical bite in her words of the other kapos and block elders.
“Yes, I say,” unsure if that is, in fact, what we are.
“Elsa.” She introduces herself, shocking me as kapos and block elders do not usually offer their names to anyone beneath them.
“Follow me.” She limps ahead with an unsteady gait as she leads us past mounds of dirty clothes.
“You will be emptying wagons of discarded clothing. First, you will retrieve a pre-filled wagon from the drop-off location, then you must bring the wagon into the laundry building, dump the load, and return the wagon. In between wagon pick-ups and deliveries, you will sort through the load of clothing and organize them into marked piles. Once complete, return for the next wagon. Work quickly.” She takes a glance around us, as if looking for someone.
“And don’t stop moving.” The last of her statement is under her breath.
We step back outside, facing the building with smoke pluming from the chimney, where ash-like snow forms.
The crematorium. We all know about it.
Elsa leaves us at the drop-off, several wagons already lined up and full of discarded clothing.
I tug on the handles of the wagon and realize how much strength it requires to budge—strength I’m not sure I have. Sweat beads on my forehead the moment I push down on the handles while pulling at the same time, feeling the wooden wheels dislodge from the rubble.
My chest aches and I’m out of breath by the time I return to the laundry building, and I haven’t even unloaded the wagon yet.
These people thought they would return to their clothes. That much is obvious.
I reach in, finding clothing bundles tied with belts, shoes with laces tied into pairs, dresses folded neatly, and children’s clothing. A lot of children’s clothing.
I create piles for men, women, and children, hats, and glasses too. Why wash these if there’s no one to wear them?
When I return for the next filled wagon, a blast of heat hits me in the face.
I lift my arm over my eyes, staring ahead toward a metal door along the brick building with the tall chimney.
It’s open. A glow of flames wavers from within, and ash swooshes outside with a guard who needs a cigarette break.
That’s where every dead body goes. Do they even kill all the people with gas first? Or do some go directly into the crematorium?
I blink and visualize a guard shoving an innocent person into the flames. A cold sweat and a wave of dizziness come over me, and I stumble to the side just as I’m reaching for the next wagon.
“Grab the handles and lean your weight on them,” Elsa says, coming up from behind me. “Don’t let them see you trip.”
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“I’ll walk with you. Let’s go.”
I put my dizziness and fears behind me and stare at the laundry building, focusing only on that so I make it back inside without falling over.
I can’t look at the fire again. I won’t be able to convince myself that they aren’t pushing living people into those ovens.