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TWENTY-SEVEN

ELLA

May 1943

I know it’s May.

It’s been a year and a half since I arrived here in Auschwitz.

A year that has dragged on as if ten.

It’s the repetitive cycle of doing the same thing every single day that causes the days to blur into one.

I wouldn’t know it was May unless I was forced to write the date down over a thousand times a day.

The memory of a May when we set up part of the grocery store out on the front stoop flashes through my mind.

Tata would be waving at everyone on the street, inviting them over with his friendly smile.

“This is how you find happiness, Ella,” he would say.

“When you offer a smile, you give someone else a reason to smile.” He was right.

Only in front of our store did it sound like the bees were singing rather than buzzing, and daffodils would blossom for months.

Birds would weave between customers’ feet as if we were all one of a kind, and everyone knew our names.

Life felt magical then, almost unreal compared to this.

It might as well still be winter here with how cold the air is and the relentless dense fog that hovers over us like another imprisoning wall or gate.

Would Tata tell me to smile now?

Would he tell me it would work, fix everything around me?

I’m not sure.

Day after day, I question whether I’m alive or in some form of hell, but there’s no answer.

Rain falls in fat plonks as I amble away from the roll-call square to the administration building.

The mud is thick and sticky, sucking the clogs off my feet just to splash back at me after I place my foot back down.

I once loved the rain.

I thought it was magical and romantic—a perfect setting for a first kiss with a symphonic background made of drips, drops, and plonks that would silence the world’s chatter.

If I could have that moment back, that one kiss, the only first kiss I might ever experience—I would love the rain again.

That was a dream, it had to have been.

How can one person go from living a life like that to one like this?

I push my sleeve up to show the guard at the gate my number and wait for him to let me through.

The world around me becomes a blur as I walk down the corridors into the room where I will catalog names until the muscles in my hand seize.

The stack of papers on my desk grows taller each day, despite making it through the full pile daily.

More and more innocent people are being brought into these confines.

By the over-population of Polish resistance members now imprisoned within these walls, it’s hard to imagine there’s anyone left to rescue us.

And worse, I’m terrified to think what might have become of Tata and Miko—if they’ve been caught.

“Ella…” the whisper of my name tells me the coast is clear of officers, guards, and kapos in the near vicinity.

I peer behind me, finding Tatiana with her hand cupped around her cheek, calling for me.

I’ve come to learn she’ll only call for me here if there’s a reason worth taking the risk.

She waves me over and I scan the room to make sure there are no watchful eyes before scurrying to her side with my back arched to conceal myself behind the front row of typists.

“What is it?”

“I’ve made a friend,” she says, her eyes growing wide as if I should understand what she means by her statement.

We all have “friends”, but there are varying forms of friends here: those we can trust and rely on, share emotions and secrets with, some who offer help in exchange for help, and then, of course, there are the foes who act as friends but will rat out us out to receive an extra crumb of bread.

Without knowing who each of these people truly are deep down inside, it’s easy to walk into a deadly trap.

“Go on,” I tell her.

“Iza, she works in a room down the corridor, processing incoming and outgoing post. She’s looking for a name—her sister to be exact—and she’s desperate to know what barrack she’s been assigned. I told her I would look and ask you and the other girls the same. If we manage to find this name, she’s offered to help clear a letter for each of us.”

My mouth falls open, shock swelling through me as I consider the thought of sending a letter out of this place.

Then I remember how feeble our luck has been upon trying to locate names in our logs.

We tried to find Tatiana’s mother’s and sister’s names before, but we couldn’t.

She’s convinced herself they were sent somewhere better than here and that’s why she can’t find them.

I think that thought helps her sleep at night.

“What about the restrictions and SS reviews?” We had once been told we could send an occasional note out of Auschwitz, but that “generous” offer came without any ounce of privacy.

Every letter would be reviewed before being sent to the addressee and anything found to be stated negatively against Auschwitz would be a violation and result in severe punishment, torture, or death.

That’s why I haven’t sent anything home.

My notes would be full of lies, forcefully positive and upbeat, as well as offering false hope to Mama and Tata.

They might find relief in knowing I’m alive, but no one in Auschwitz is promised a tomorrow.

The guilt I live with, knowing they must assume I’m dead or held prisoner somewhere showers my mind with images of them grieving for me daily, especially after Miko warned me not to go help Luka that night.

He’s likely aware of what happened to me and there isn’t a doubt in my mind that Tata and Miko will travel to the ends of the earth to find me.

That thought alone leaves me with more dread than anything else.

“She’s a Funktionsh?ftlinge, a functionary prisoner who screens letters under SS supervision, but her supervisor wanders about more frequently than most,” Tatiana says.

“It’s something, a bit of hope for us.”

I stare through my friend, knowing tears should be filling my eyes, but I’m not sure I remember how to cry through the staleness of my mind.

“Thank you—what—what is her sister’s name? What should I be searching for?”

“Zofia Jonowicz. She’s seventeen from Krakow.”

Tatiana scribbles down the name on a small note card, folds it up and presses it into my hand, folding my fingers over the note.

I offer a small smile, the only form of a smile I’m capable of here.

I rush back to my desk and pull out a piece of note paper to hide beneath the catalog of names—a blank sheet I can use if I find the name we’re searching for.

I could search previous pages, one or two at a time between entering a column’s worth of new names.

I take the top paper from the pile and set it down next to the open catalog.

I dip my pen into a bottle of ink and script out the prisoner number, surname and first name, date of birth, place of birth, nationality/ethnicity, religion, date of arrival to Auschwitz, reason for imprisonment, occupation, and assigned block.

I flip the paper over and set it to my left, then take the next paper from the pile to scan before jotting down the information.

I blink, holding my eyes closed for a moment to clear my focus as I recenter my stare on the name:

Family name: Bukowski

Forename: Lukasz

Born on: 4.

5.1918 in: Krakow

Status: Unmarried

Religion: Jew Country of Origin: Poland

My blood turns cold, despite the words “it’s not him” rushing through my head.

Luka. 1918. Polish Jew.

I wouldn’t want him to be here.

I know what they do to most of the Jewish people here.

But my Luka is Luka Dulski, not Lukasz Bukowski.

Same age, but Luka was born in February on the 2 nd of the month in Warsaw, not Krakow.

My heart splits down the center, the fibers of tissue tearing like a thin fabric, filling me with a pain that will never subside.

In a humane world, I could write to him, but in this world, it could endanger him under the policing laws of the ghetto.

I see people who look like him every day, making me feel like I’ve gone mad.

Every man here is bald, left only with their eyes, nose, and mouth as their only discernible features, making many of them look nearly identical to one another.

That’s the point. We’ve all been stripped of our identities, left with a number, striped uniforms, and hollow eyes.

We’re objects used to work and make the daily lives of the SS easier.

I force my hand to scribe the information across the page, spelling out the man’s name as my heart continues to bleed onto the desk beneath me.

The nights are the hardest, even worse than working twelve to fourteen hours a day.

I’ve found that when there is less time to think, the better off I am.

At night, after we’ve eaten the second half of our daily allotment of bread, our stomachs still angry for something more, we are sent to our straw-filled mattresses to sleep elbow to elbow with others in the same block.

There’s no reason I shouldn’t fall asleep within seconds of lying down.

My body is always in an extreme state of exhaustion, yet my mind refuses to concede as it searches for sustenance to fill the gaps of the thoughts that I actively avoid from the moment I wake up, until right this very moment when I’m staring at the back of a shaven head, counting the beauty marks along her scalp.

I suspect none of us had ever questioned how many beauty marks or freckles we had on our scalp before arriving here.

To be so unfamiliar with our bodies makes me realize we, as humans, think we know far more than we do.

With a deep breath, I let my eyes drift closed in search of sleep, but instead find Luka’s presence in the darkness of my mind—his beautiful hazel eyes filled with hope and determination.

That was the Luka from over a year ago.

I’m not sure if he’s even still breathing.

I tell myself he is, knowing the likelihood is slim.

Too many people were dying in the encampment within Warsaw.

I was bringing him and his family extra food.

Without that, they would likely be just as worse off as the rest of the people living there.

To know I could have kept him alive, but didn’t listen to Arte in that one passing second, will haunt me for the rest of my life.

The lights flash back on as if a strike of lightning breaks through the barrack.

“Roll call, now!” Francine, the block-elder shouts at us.

We’ve already been through roll call, just after we ate our crumbs of supper.

“It’s been brought to my attention that several of you didn’t return from the latrines before lights went out.”

Who would tell her such a thing?

No one converses with Francine unless necessary.

I, for one, can’t understand the reason for the pure cruelty behind her actions.

She treats every woman in this barrack as if we’re the German soldiers who dragged her away and imprisoned her here, when we are the same as she, if not worse off.

The Jewish women here were taken from their homes or plucked from the streets.

Many, separated from their families.

We all pull ourselves from our beds, our bodies landing heavily to the ground against the day’s imposed weakness.

No one speaks. We all slip our clogs onto our feet and shuffle toward the door into the cool, dense fog, walking through mud toward the roll-call square within the orange glowing lights.

I stare up at the closest light, watching flying insects swarm the glow in masses, fighting for something better than the darkness can offer.

We’re living a similar life down here.

Francine disappears, leaving us in rows, cold to the bone and tired.

One woman falls into the next and that woman begins to fall in the same direction.

The women behind her grab hold of their smocks, fighting to help them remain upright.

Whoever was behind them would decide their fate tonight.

Some of the other women no longer converse or attempt to help another.

They move when they’re told and carry on like walking corpses, unaffected, or maybe unknowing of whether they’re even alive or dead.

My eyelids become heavy the longer we stand in silence, listening only to the buzzing of the bugs and heavy breaths of the women on either side of me.

And then, warm melodic notes weave through the air with a rich silky tone that breaks into a smooth vibrato between a bow and a violin’s strings.

Am I dreaming? The music softens, blending into the silent buzz around us, welcoming a tune carried by a male voice.

Through battles of a time long ago

Triumph and victory will carry on

Through smoke and whispers of foe

It is all we must see, the light, so very strong

Very strong…

It is for us to achieve, bravery for free

For one and all, this, is our solemn vow

Set forth and though shall not see

What is left behind, then and right now

The weight of my eyelids lifts, the wind burns as I forget to blink.

That sound, the hum, muffled but clear, traveling through the few trees and gates between the barrack behind us and the Commandant’s villa on the other side.

My heart goes still, then gallops up into my throat.

I clutch my chest.

Is it another delusion?

I’ve seen him in so many faces, felt the warmth of his endearing stare from people I’ve never met.

Through battles of time long ago

Triumph and victory will carry on

Carry on…

So strong…

My breath hitches, the weight of exhaustion lifting like a fog.

That voice—unmistakably his.

It awakens a part of me that has been asleep for so long.

Where is the sound coming from?

It’s close by, but faint.

My chest tightens as the song continues, each note pulling me in closer.

We are one and the same

Alive with courage and heart

Time will come when they chant your name

The heroic tales of war’s subdue art…

The way he carries the last note, lifting it to travel like a silk scarf twirling through the air.

I’ve only known one person to sing like that.

Only one.

But it can’t be.

It can’t. He wouldn’t be here.

Please, don’t let him be here.

The thought twists in my stomach with a mix of hope and terror.

I can’t allow myself to believe it’s Luka.