Hanna #2
She laughed hollowly. “Usually there are two options. One is you work to death. The other is you skip the working part and go straight to the other place. See, over there?” She pointed into the distance, where a livid glow flickered as flames leaped into the night sky.
In its light, flakes of ash fell like snow, floating back to the ground below.
Her words made me shiver, because all at once I understood for certain what they were burning there and the source of the terrible smell that hung in the air throughout the camp.
Marta eyed me appraisingly. “For you, though, there would have been another option. The pretty ones who still have their hair, they put them to work in the Puff.”
“The Puff? What’s that?” I asked.
She grimaced. “It’s where the guards go when they want a woman. I’ve seen the ones they put there. Believe me, many of them wish they had been sent to one of the other lines. There are some fates that are even worse than death, you know.”
I was silent as I absorbed her words. It seemed several twists of Fate had brought Liv and me to this place.
If we hadn’t been NN prisoners, we might have stayed in Grini or in Ravensbrück with the others.
And if we hadn’t been twins, we’d have been put to work in the camp here at Auschwitz-Birkenau, as Kirsten had.
I just prayed she hadn’t been sent to work in the brothel.
I hoped she was surviving, as we were, whatever her lot had been.
It seemed as if we were all unwitting players in some grotesque game of chance that the Nazis had devised.
Another of the women came over and poured water into the cup she carried. “How’s she doing?” asked Marta, glancing at the bunk where her twin sister lay. “Do we need to get her to the hospital block now?”
“No.” There was an abruptness to the woman’s answer, which shocked me a little. Surely she’d want her sister to have proper medical treatment if it was available.
Marta sighed and reached into her pocket again. “Here,” she said, handing the woman a couple of aspirins. “Give her these.”
The woman shuffled back to the bed and held the tablets to her sister’s lips, quietly urging her to drink from the cup to wash them down.
“She needs more than aspirin. Why wouldn’t her sister want her to go to the hospital and get some proper treatment?” I asked.
Marta pressed her lips into a thin line before she replied.
“It’s not that kind of a hospital. People who go there, they almost never return.
And if you’re a twin…well, you’re only of use if there are two of you.
That girl doesn’t just want her sister to stay alive.
She needs her to. Do you understand my meaning? ”
I was struggling to make sense of any of this. It seemed surreal, incomprehensible. “So, if her sister dies…?”
“She dies too.” Marta’s answer was brutally abrupt. “The doctor is conducting research, you see. And being able to compare a healthy body to one that is infected—although identical in all other ways—that is of use to him.”
I remembered what Liv had said about the Polish girls she’d seen in the hospital at Ravensbrück. They do experiments on them. They were in dreadful pain. And finally, it sank in.
I thought of Sylvia, of how she’d been determined to find ways to work the system and help others. “Are there any jobs we can do?” I asked Marta. “Like helping in the hospital? We’re both trained in first aid and have some experience from volunteering at home.”
She looked at me appraisingly. “While you’re both strong enough, I suppose you might be of help.
But probably not in the hospital and the laboratories.
The only prisoners who work there are qualified doctors and nurses.
You could lend a hand in the children’s block next door, though.
The boys have Zvi, who they call the Twins’ Father, but I’m supposed to keep an eye on the girls, as well as you lot in here, and it’s more than anyone could reasonably be expected to do, so you might be useful.
I’ll check with the guards and let you know tomorrow. ”
She turned away, pocketing the tube of ointment, then collecting the jug and tin mugs near the stove, going about her duties as the others slowly wandered back to their bunks for the night.
The lights went off with a loud click as I climbed in beside Liv, who had turned her face to the wall and fallen asleep, exhausted after everything that had brought us to this terrible place.
But I lay awake, staring into the darkness for a long time, thinking about everything I’d learned from Marta.
Thinking especially about the children in the block next door.
Perhaps we could find ways to help them a little.
Whatever our fate was to be in this grotesque game of chance, at least Liv and I still had each other.
I remembered the faces of Sylvia and Kirsten and Johanna—our Norwegian sisters—and it helped a little to think of their courage, dignity, and determination, and of how they’d always tried to help others.
Whatever happened, Liv and I would meet it in that same spirit.
I vowed to do everything I could to protect my sister, to keep both of us alive.
And maybe one day we would all be reunited in our homeland once again, beneath the midnight sun and the northern lights, freed from the nightmare into which we’d been banished.
Through the window, the glow in the sky a couple of miles away was still just visible. It was another kind of midnight sun. Flames burning through the night, and ashes falling like snow to the ground below.