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FORTY-TWO

LUKA

I’m not stationed by the chambers because they’ve decided I shouldn’t die…

yet. I’m here to entertain those who are waiting their turn to step inside.

I’ve spent time at two of the four gas chambers until this point.

The longest line appears to wait here—in front of chamber number four.

We were moved here earlier in the week.

“Jetzt kommen die lustigen Tage,” Etan says, giving me a quick glance.

He’s the talented violinist I’ve been grouped with here, a young fellow, around my age, a skeletal body like myself, eyes protruding from his face.

He’s been separated from his entire family, too.

He said they were all sent to the left when he was pushed to the right, and like me, he didn’t realize that was the last time he would see them.

We all have a story, but it’s odd to have such similar ones.

“On three.”

A favorite song of the SS—German folk music about the cheerful times ahead.

A musician’s job here, among the endless line snaking around us, is to put on an act, lie as the SS convince these innocent people that they are truly here for the promised shower—the death-trap behind the brown painted door I examine all day.

“Ready,” I reply in a whisper, saving what’s left of the sound in my voice.

The SS don’t appear to care how broken my voice still is or that my vocal cords never healed from whatever virus I was ill with.

Rather than waiting to be beaten to death, I will wait until I sing myself to death, and with a forced sense of cheer behind each word.

“One, two—” Etan continues.

In the dead of winter with frigid temperatures and blades of wind slicing through me, I shiver relentlessly through each word.

The line of people in front of me come into a sharp focus as I begin to sing, wishing I could change the lyrics to: “Run, there is no shower inside, just vents that will release a deadly gas and kill you.”

But I would only cause them panic and fear, and that would be worse than not knowing.

The guilt is like black tar, filling my soul, and I’m ashamed to think that the faces are all beginning to look the same to me while passing through this line.

Regardless of which of the four gas chambers I’m assigned to perform outside, I can’t stop wondering if Ella could end up in one of these lines.

What if she’s passed me and I’ve glossed over her?

I could have let her walk right into one of those shower rooms and…

Breathe , I remind myself.

Breathe .

She must think I’m already dead, now she can no longer hear my voice where she is, which leaves me wondering what she might be doing to find out what happened to me—how much she would risk for an answer.

Ella doesn’t give up.

She’s made that clear again and again.

But now I’m here, in Birkenau, any chance she might have had of finding me is gone.

Almost all Jews are sent here—whether to the shower rooms, or to labor.

I didn’t realize it was unusual for me, as a Jew, to be in the main camp of Auschwitz for as long as I was.

That area of the camp holds mostly Polish political prisoners, so it’s where Ella will stay.

Mother might have been sent to Birkenau, too.

She could be here somewhere.

But it’s been ten months of this brutality and starvation since the train spit us out into this hell.

The thought of her living through what I’ve been—it turns my stomach inside out.

No one should have to live like this.

Dying would be easier.

I consider this thought each time before falling asleep.

“I can’t stand upright any longer, Mama,” a little girl hollers from the line during the instrumental verse of this folk song.

“Hush, hush. We’re almost there. See, darling. You can see the door. We’ll be receiving a nice warm shower in just a few minutes from now. Won’t that be nice?”

My chest swells with grief and my throat tightens into a sore knot—a pain that won’t cease.

She’s just a little girl.