Chapter Twenty-Six 30 April 2015
Chapter Twenty-Six
Tears slipped down Aletta’s cheek, and she lifted a shaky hand to wipe them away. She held her chin high as they stood outside the barracks, a shiver running through her body that had nothing to do with the cold.
I used to live here.
She remembered the cold nights, huddled beside her mother and Chloe, taking turns to be in the middle for the tiny bit of warmth it created.
Not that any of them had enough body fat to offer much comfort to the others.
They’d been little more than bones by the end, the only constant that they’d always had each other.
But it hadn’t just been about the three of them.
The children who’d gathered around them every Sunday had bound them to many of the women in the camp, and as heartbreaking as it had been to see so many children come and go, it had also given all three of them a reason to live.
The presence of Else alone had made Aletta determined to survive.
Aletta looked over her shoulder when she heard her daughter’s voice. For a moment she thought it was her calling to her own mother against the wind after roll call. But, of course, Emma was long gone.
She’d listened to everyone talk about the beauty of the grounds beyond the camp as they’d moved through the first part, and it was true.
On one side it had been a barren place of torture and misery, and on the other, an idyllic paradise for those who lived and worked there.
The more she’d heard about the guards who’d treated them with such derision, the more she’d learnt about what the conditions had been like for them.
It had almost seemed like a cruel joke at the time.
‘Mum, you don’t have to do the full tour. If it’s too much—’
Aletta was silent as she turned, as she looked at the group gathered, and then past them, to the endless stream of people walking through the gates of the camp that had once held her captive.
It was heartening when she thought about it, to see how many people still cared about what had happened in the past, that they’d chosen to see the camp for themselves, to pay their respects.
‘Mum?’
Their group was silent as Aletta blinked, swallowing that now-familiar lump in her throat as she refocused on her daughter, as she tried to subdue the memories.
This was once my home. This was the place that kept me captive.
This was where I met Chloe.
‘My teenage son,’ one of the men in their group said, his eyes shining with tears, ‘he asked me how I knew that the Holocaust was real. He said that he and his friends don’t believe that so many people could have been killed.
’ The man shook his head. ‘My son, he’s a good boy, but I don’t think they can believe that such cruelty ever existed. ’
‘They get all their news from YouTube, that’s why,’ a woman near Aletta said. ‘If they don’t see it on there, they don’t think it’s real.’
As the people around her murmured, Aletta found a strength growing within her that she hadn’t felt in years, as she began to nod.
She found it in the group gathered around her, in the hundreds and thousands of people who’d cared enough to visit the camp and commemorate history.
It made her believe in humanity again; it made her believe that her story was worth telling, that she’d been right in coming.
‘Then you must bring him here,’ she said, as everyone fell silent to listen to her speak. ‘You tell him to place his hand on the walls of the crematorium. You tell him to feel the truth in those walls. And you tell him to listen. To people like me, before we’re all gone.’