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FORTY-NINE

ELLA

My heart thumps inside my chest. Luka has the honey he needs.

He’s alive. I’m alive.

That’s all that matters.

Except, the guard behind us is now shouting at me.

I haven’t turned around, afraid to catch his eye.

What if he saw me drop the jar, or Luka pick it up?

It all happened so fast.

Tatiana switched scarves with me since hers has a distinct pattern and mine is plain black.

She also let me borrow her Sonderkommando armband, denoting certain prisoners’ access to the gas chambers to remove gold teeth, hair, and prosthetic limbs from the bodies before they’re taken to the crematorium.

The thought of this job would normally be enough for me to stay away from switching roles, but my desperation to see Luka and make sure he received the honey is all I care about.

I don’t know if the honey will help, but it’s something more than what he has.

He was so pale and thin, his body hunched forward as if he’s carrying something heavy on his back.

I may look just as bad…

But even if it doesn’t help him physically, it could be the boost to his spirits that he needs, and that means everything.

The fabric of my smock scrapes against my back as I’m jerked backward.

“You,” a guard seethes in my ear.

“Is this yours?”

His spit splatters along my face, but I tell myself it’s mist from the sky, so I don’t budge or blink.

He holds a piece of fabric up in front of my face.

“Is it?”

It is mine.

I must have dropped it when walking away from Luka.

My muscles tense and my grip tightens around the wagon’s wooden pull-handle.

“What is it?” I ask, nausea rising in my stomach.

“What does it look like?” He holds it closer to my face, nearly pressing it to my nose.

“It’s not mine,” I say, forcing each word out without a change of inflection.

He drops his hand, slapping it against his side.

“I see,” he says, clawing his hand around my arm to inspect the Sonderkommando armband that doesn’t belong to me.

“Go.” He points to the back door of the gas chamber.

“Do your work first.”

He steps away and his words ring through my head over and over, the threat of punishment to follow the cruel labor I’m about to endure—the labor Tatiana endures daily.

He didn’t look for my number.

He didn’t write it down.

Will he remember me by my pale face that looks like every other female I work alongside?

I catch up to the other two wagons, stepping inside the gas chamber for the first time.

I wasn’t sure what to expect or what it might look like inside.

I’ve been wondering if the other prisoners still think they’re getting a shower once in here, or if they know something else is about to happen once the doors close on them.

Or is it not until they fall from the fumes poisoning them that they realize they’ve been sent into a trap?

The two other women with me line their wagons up just outside the door and pull their scarves down over their noses.

I do the same.

I turn away from the overwhelming stench that smacks me in the face.

Even with a scarf covering most of my face, it’s worse than the filth I live in.

Much worse. A sharp, bittersweet, nutty smell mixed with body fluids, sweat, and rot.

You might easily believe they were leaving the deceased bodies in here for weeks with the level of smell, but that isn’t the case.

I taste the odor, and it seeps down my throat and shrouds my stomach, forcing my throat to constrict.

I can’t allow myself to become sick in here .

Someone who does this day in and day out would be numb to their surroundings.

I must get this done with.

I force my eyes back open, finding the rectangular chamber sprawled out before me and much larger than it appears from the outside.

The walls are white-washed brick, covered with fingernail scratches—the markings outlined with dry blood.

There are no windows, only iron caged lights along the ceiling which offer little visibility.

I’m wasting time as I fight against looking down to the ground where the massacre lies.

I take in a lungful of potent air and hold it until I become dizzy.

The concrete floor is covered with dead bodies, most people having fallen into piles beneath the ceiling vents.

They must have thought the water would be coming in that way.

There are children’s limbs poking out beneath their naked mothers’ bodies.

My breaths are erratic and short.

I’m lightheaded and my stomach pinches painfully.

“What are you waiting for?” one of the other girls whispers to me, knowing we’re being watched, though we can’t see from where.

I bow my head, taking in another trembling breath.

“You get the children. We’ll lift the adults.”

“I thought we were supposed to retrieve hair, teeth, and—” the hushed words stick to my tongue as I struggle to comprehend what we’re doing.

“We bring the bodies to the workroom next to the crematorium first.” The girl’s words come out quickly and while she’s moving around, reaching for arms to pull—a reminder not to be caught standing still in here.

There are only three of us and an adult body needs more than one person to lift.

I follow the other two around, waiting on them to lift the mothers off their children so I can retrieve the small bodies.

I will never forget this image for as long as I live, however short that time might be now.

One by one, I drop each into a wagon as if they’re a sack of potatoes rather than lifeless little angels.

Tears swell in my eyes and sweat beads on my forehead, seeping into my eyes with a burn.

After an hour, it seems we’ve hardly made any progress and yet we’ve taken the wagons to and from the crematorium several times already.

Eventually, we carry the last few people to the wagons and leave the chamber empty and prepared for the next victims to meet their demise.

I will never be able to close my eyes again and see anything else.

How can the German military and police live with themselves knowing what they are doing to all these innocent people?

They walk around with smiles on their faces.

I don’t understand.

Our last pass to the workroom outside the crematorium brings us to organized piles of sorted bodies other Sonderkommandos must have taken care of while we were retrieving.

An SS officer steps inside, holding a rag over his nose, and reaches his hand out with a pair of clippers.

Neither of the other two girls take it from his hand, so I do.

I assume I’m responsible for removing the hair.

I spare myself from watching the other two with their tasks of removing gold teeth and prosthetic limbs.

I cut the hair of each person as close to their scalp as I can, taking handfuls and dropping them into a large set of sacks to my side.

I don’t ever want to know what they do with this hair.

I hope my imagination is too weak to ever come up with a possible thought of where it goes next.

A thick film of grease or residue shrouds the hair, making it difficult to cut through.

But the other two are moving along much faster, which means I need to keep up.

My mind is in a haze as we make it through the bodies.

It’s been hours and my arms are weak, my head is heavy and my back aches from being hunched over for so long.

We’re escorted out of the crematorium building with our wagons full of hair, teeth, and limbs, then led back to the warehouse buildings by a guard.

We don’t leave the same way we entered.

There’s a backside passageway into Kanada, away from the line of prisoners waiting to enter the gas chamber.

I assume the SS know better than to let the line of people spot us walking by carrying body parts.

It would give away their intentions and cause mass chaos.

We stop outside the building where teeth, hair, and limbs are collected within Kanada and lift the sacks two at a time to bring inside.

I follow the other two, but before I can step into the building, someone grabs hold of my arm.

“Your number?” a man demands from behind me.

The man takes the sacks of hair out of my hands and hands them to another prisoner passing by.

“It’s—” I hesitate.

“What it is?” he shouts, flinging me around to face him where I find a second guard holding onto Tatiana’s arm.

Her eyes are wide, full of fear, and it’s all my fault.

I did this. I asked her to help me, again.

I’m still wearing her armband.

They must know.

The guard with his grip on me pushes my sleeve up to check my number, since I never answered his question.

The other guard holds a clipboard out for him to check.

“Foolish women. You don’t know when you’re lucky, do you?” he snaps.

“Now you’re about to realize how lucky you were.”

Tatiana is shaking, while I’m frozen in place.

Say something. I have to say something.

“This isn’t her fault. It’s mine. I forced her to switch places with me.”

“Why? No one would choose to carry dead bodies over working in one of these buildings. You must have had a reason. What was the reason?”

A reason.

Anything I say won’t be the right answer.

“My back was aching,” Tatiana says.

“I thought a day’s break would make it so I could continue working as normal tomorrow. I didn’t want to hinder the work that needs to be done.”

The guard standing next to her glares at her as if he’s expunging a confession to her lie.

“Is this true?” the guard next to me asks.

“You risked both of your lives to help her—a Jew, of all people?”

“Her back hurt. I forced her to switch jobs with me so her back could get better.” The lie continues to grow but fits with my previous lie.

The two guards release us and step to the side to speak indiscreetly, leaving Tatiana and me to stare at each other with hollowed eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I mouth the words to her.

She shakes her head, telling me no.

Movement behind her grabs my attention and I glance at the barbed-wire fence between us.

Luka is facing the gate, but from the other side where Gas Chamber number four is located.

I’ve never had to enter these buildings in Kanada as my work has been done on the other side within a different set of buildings.

Our eyes lock for an instant, and I want to tell him to turn back around and continue singing or doing whatever he’s supposed to be doing.

Watching whatever might happen here isn’t going to do him any good.

“Twenty-five whip strokes for each of you,” the one closest to me says, grabbing a wooden barrel from near the door of the warehouse, then flipping it upside down.

The other guard steps aside and pokes his head into the warehouse.

“All prisoners report outside at once,” he shouts.

A wave of dizziness washes over me as I inhale ice cold air that somehow burns my lungs.

All the women within the warehouse congregate outside as directed.

“This is what happens if you make the foolish decision to switch jobs with another person. Let this be a lesson to you all.”

The guard who checked my number grabs the backside of my smock and tosses me into the barrel, and lifts the smock to expose my entire backside.

I’m forced to stare through the barbed-wire fence between Kanada and the gas chamber—from where Luka keeps turning around to see what’s happening.

The first whip whistles through the air before striking me like a set of knives searing into my back with a burning pain that radiates across my body.

I gasp for air, but choke as the next lash strikes.

Again.

Through the darkness that falls over me, I see Mama’s face, her eyes full of worry as she reaches out her arms to lift me up as if I’m just a child who’s fallen off my bicycle.

And then there’s Tata, his calloused hands cupping my cheeks as he presses a kiss to my forehead, his way of telling me everything will eventually be all right.

I’m sorry, I want to tell them.

I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to you…

I’m scared. I’m so scared.

I need you.

Another slash.

And the dark haze becomes a heavy burden I can longer hold up.

The pain is too much.

With one last deep breath, I let go…