“Pleased it’s more organized, but I can no longer allow the sick to linger.” She leaned in and lowered her voice. “Prisoners unable to work are done away with, so stay away from there. The woman doctor is not to be trusted. It’s best you all keep your distance.”
“Germans,” Zuzanna said. “I’m ashamed for the part of us that’s German, Matka.”
“Don’t say that. You should meet the good pharmacist from town, Paula Schultz. When she comes to deliver SS medicines, she slips me supplies—hair dye so the older women can look younger and escape selections. Heart stimulants so the weak can stand at Appell. She told me the Americans are—”
A Stubova walked by our bunk, brushing her teeth, and spat into a tin cup.
“Lights out!” she shouted.
I held Matka tight, unable to let go, weeping like a child, until she had to pull away and sneak out, afraid she’d be caught. I felt such shame acting like this, but watching her through the window as she rushed off down Beauty Road and turned to throw us a kiss from the darkness was worse than the hunger or any beating.
Such terrible agony.
—
LATER THAT WEEK ROZA came to the bunk room before morning Appell and read a list of ten prisoners to report to the Revier. Luiza, Zuzanna, and I were on the list.
After the others were marched off to work, Roza led us down Beauty Road toward the Revier. “Come along, girls,” she said in a kind way.
Where was the old Roza who’d slap us for dallying? One of my bad feelings was coming on, rising in my chest. The sunrise that morning turned the sky pink and blue as we approached the gray Revier block.
I turned to Zuzanna. “What is happening?”
“I don’t know,” she said, squinting in the morning sun.
“We have Matka,” I said.
“Of course,” Zuzanna said in a distant way.
The Revier was oddly quiet that day. Matka was not at her post at the fat wooden desk in the front room. My gaze fixed on the yellow stool on which she usually sat to check patients in each day, now empty.
“Where is your mother?” Luiza whispered as we passed it.
Zuzanna looked about. “Here somewhere.”
Roza handed us over to two sturdy SS nurses in brown uniforms, their caps, like clear, white cakes, bobby-pinned to their upswept hair. They led us down a hallway to a ward, a whitewashed room crammed with three sets of bunk beds and six singles. One window, the size of a doormat, sat up high on the wall, almost touching the low ceiling. Suddenly the walls closed in. Why was there no air in the room?
A girl I knew from Girl Guides named Alfreda Prus sat on one of the beds dressed in a hospital gown, hands folded in her lap.
I wiped the smear of wetness off my upper lip. What was happening to us?
One of the nurses told us to remove our clothes, fold them neatly, and put on hospital gowns with the backs open. I puffed my chest up with air to the point of bursting, then released it slowly. I would be calm for Luiza’s sake.
Once the nurses left, Zuzanna paced about the room. She pulled a clipboard from a hook at the end of one bed and studied the blank chart attached.
“What do you think is going on here?” Luiza asked.
“Not sure,” Zuzanna said.
“Just stay next to me,” I said.
“I’ve been here for two days already with only a crazy Gypsy woman for company,” Alfreda said. “They took her away this morning. What do you think they’re up to? There are more girls in the next room. I heard one crying.”
Zuzanna walked to the door between the two rooms and wrapped her fingers around the metal doorknob.
“Locked,” she said.
Soon the nurses ushered more Polish girls into the room, including a tall, quiet one named Regina who wore round reading glasses and taught a clandestine English class in our block. Janina Grabowski came in too. We put on our gowns, and Janina and Regina laughed since the open backs left our rear ends exposed to the breezes.
“Maybe they’re sending us to a subcamp and have to give us special exams?” Alfreda said.
“Maybe they’re sending us to the brothel,” Regina said.
We all knew about the brothel being set up at another camp. Binz had made more than one recruitment announcement at Appell. She promised that in exchange for a few months of service volunteers would receive the finest clothes and shoes and guaranteed release from camp.
“Stop, Regina,” I said.
Luiza took my hand, and our palms met, both moist. “I’d rather die,” she said.
“I brought my English phrasebook,” Regina said, placing it under one of the pillows. She’d made it from eighty sheets of toilet tissue, inscribed with the tiniest writing.
“A lot of good a book will do us,” Janina said. “We are their laboratory rabbits. Need a picture drawn for you?”
“I hope we don’t get needles,” Alfreda said.
Luiza pressed herself closer to me. “I can’t take needles.”
To calm ourselves, Luiza and I sat on one bed and watched a house wren build a nest outside the window, flitting off, then coming back with more building materials. Then we quizzed each other from the English book. Hello. My name is Kasia. Where might I find a taxicab?
Soon a nurse came into the room with a thermometer, a metal bowl, and a razor.
“Why would they shave us?” Luiza whispered.
“Not sure,” I said. Were they operating on us? There must have been some mistake. How could Matka let this happen?
Pretty Nurse Gerda bustled in with two other nurses, one holding a tray of needles and vials. Gerda walked straight to Luiza.
“No, please,” Luiza said, wrapping her arms about my neck. I held her fast around the waist.
“Please don’t hurt her,” I said. “Take me instead.”
Zuzanna came to sit next to Luiza on the bed. “Have some mercy. Luiza is only fifteen and afraid of needles.”
Gerda’s helpers pried Luiza’s arms from my neck.
“It won’t be so bad,” Gerda said to Luiza with a smile. “Soon you will see flowers and hear bells.”
They wrestled Luiza onto a wheeled cot and stretched her arm out. I covered my eyes as she cried out at the stab of the needle. At once Luiza grew sleepy and Gerda and the other nurses wheeled her out.
Zuzanna came to my cot at the far end of the room.
“I’m afraid they’re…”
“Operating on us?” I felt a stab of fear just saying the words.
“They’ll take me next,” she said. “Want to take the difficult ones first.” The sound of the wobbly wheels of another gurney echoed in the hallway.
“We must get word to Matka,” I said.
Gerda steered the gurney into the room and beckoned to Zuzanna. “Auf die Bahre,” she said with a smile. Onto the gurney.
“What is happening here?” Zuzanna sat up straighter. “We have a right to know.”
Gerda came to Zuzanna and pulled her by the arm.
“Come now. It’s better you don’t fuss. You must be brave.”
I held Zuzanna’s other arm as Gerda pulled her toward the gurney.
“You cannot do this to us,” I said.
Zuzanna punched Gerda in the arm, causing her to call for a pair of stocky green-triangled kapos. They rushed in, pushed Zuzanna onto the gurney, and tied her down with strips of white cotton.
“It’s best you don’t struggle,” Gerda said. “Soon this will be over, and you will be released to go home to Poland.”
Could that possibly be true?
I stepped up to one kapo. “Where are you taking her?” Janina and Regina watched it all, hugging each other on one of the bottom bunks.
The kapo pushed me back as Gerda managed to get a needle into Zuzanna’s arm.
“We are prisoners, not guinea pigs,” I said.
Zuzanna grew quiet, and Gerda pushed the gurney out of the room.
“I love you, Kasia,” she said as they wheeled her out.
Within minutes, Gerda came for me. I fought as her kapos pushed me to the gurney, but once pinned, I shook all over as if covered in ice. She held my arm out straight, and I felt the sting of the injection in the crook of my arm.
“You girls, you’re worse than the men,” she said with a little laugh.
Men? What men? Where were they?