Two Russian girls stood at their makeshift store between Blocks 29 and 31, where one could buy a sweater or stockings or a comb, for the price of a bread ration. Their lookout stood close by, alert for signs of Binz.
Rumor was, Gemma La Guardia Gluck, sister of New York City’s Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was our fellow prisoner. A group of female British paratroopers captured by the SS in France too. Charles de Gaulle’s niece Geneviève. And everyone knew Himmler’s own sister had been a Ravensbrück prisoner, arrested for race defilement—relations with a Polish man. The girls in the front office said even she was not spared the twenty-five lashes that came with her sentence.
Binz turned up the music that was playing throughout the camp even higher and pelted us with war songs and marches. I looked to the sky as three planes flew overhead—German. I could tell by the sound of the engines and the lack of an air-raid siren.
The previous summer we’d heard about the Normandy invasion thanks to Herr Fenstermacher, but no one needed to tell us Germany was rapidly losing the war. The signs were everywhere. Daily air raids. Shorter Appells. Fewer work details.
The Nazis were giving up.
They did not give up killing us, though. The windowless black transport buses came to the blocks with new urgency. Fat Dr. Winkelmann in his long leather coat and his partner old Nurse Marschall prowled the camp, looking for sick prisoners to mark down for the buses.
Sick women hid everywhere to escape: under the blocks, above the ceilings, behind the coal bins. Zuzanna invented a method of scraping the arms of women arriving from evacuated Auschwitz to cause their tattooed skin to appear infected to hide their blue numbers. Everyone in the camp continued to hide the Rabbits when roll call came. Some even traded numbers with us at great peril to themselves.
Rumors flew. A prisoner-nurse told Zuzanna that out at the former youth camp, the Jugendlager, not ten minutes away from camp by truck, they were sending in older women restricted from work. The food was more filling, and there was no roll call. Could it be true?
Early that evening I was given permission to go to the administration building and collect a package addressed to me. I left the block, happy I could finally walk without my crutch, but before long, Karol, a Jules from the Netherlands, caught me by the arm and pulled me into the shadows.
My heart contracted. I was wary of most every Jules, for this was a new sort of character that emerged in the last year of the camp. Usually a German prisoner with a green or black triangle, a Jules would gather a man’s sport coat, trousers, and even men’s underpants from the booty piles, cut her hair in a masculine way, and swagger about the camp with a cigarette and a nasty attitude. Some would use a blade to carve an X, called a “cow’s cross,” into the forehead of a girl they liked, marking her as theirs. The Jules were not all bad. I knew several nice ones, and it was often an advantage for a girl to go steady with a Jules, for it meant protection and food, but the objects of their affections were powerless to refuse since a Jules always had connections in high places. They could starve a girl if she did not cooperate.
“They are doing another selection next door,” Karol said. “Let’s take a walk.”
We walked away from the truck, taking the long way to the administration building, but I glanced back and saw Winkelmann and Nurse Marschall loading women onto one of the windowless black vans. A death transport. Neither of us had to say it: Anyone caught close to that hurricane could have been swept up for no good reason.
As terrifying as some Jules were, Karol may have saved my life that day. Once the danger was over, I thanked her and continued on my way.
I soon passed a long white canvas tent set up for a group of newly arrived prisoners in an open area just off Beauty Road. The camp had become so horribly crowded, and the transports kept coming from all countries. Suhren set up these tents right in the middle of camp. This one was so jam-packed with women and children that they were barely able to sit down under there. Many stood, trying to soothe their babies.
“Kasia,” someone called. I turned, surprised to hear my name.
I didn’t recognize her at first in the shadows under the tent, for her face was drawn and gaunt and her short blond hair gray with dust.
Nadia.
She sat on an old suitcase, and a woman lay next to her with her head in Nadia’s lap. Nadia stroked the woman’s brow and murmured something to her. I watched for a second to make sure it was her and then walked closer to the tent, just out of sight of the Aufseherin.
“Nadia?” I said. Was this a hallucination?
She looked up as if her head was too heavy for her neck.
“Kasia,” she said, her breath a puff of white steam. How beautiful my name sounded when she said it. She put one hand out to stop me from coming closer.
“We just saw a girl dragged away for talking to us. Plus half of us have typhus. Be careful.”
I took a step toward her. What a happy day this was! How quickly could I get her to our block?
“How long have you been here?” I asked quietly, so the guards would not hear.
“We just arrived last night from Auschwitz. They said we are going to the youth camp. There is shelter there.”
“When?”
“I don’t know,” she said, looking down at the woman in her lap. “We’re all so thirsty, and she needs a place to die in peace.”
“Nadia, come quickly. I can hide you.”
“I can’t leave her.”
“Someone else can tend to her.” I stepped closer.
“You don’t recognize her, do you? It’s my mother, Kasia. I would never leave her.”
Mrs. Watroba. How had they been caught?
“Come,” I said. I knew I could hide them both.
“I know what you are thinking, my friend, but I am staying here with my Matka.”
“What can I get for you?”
Binz’s guards began waving prisoners into the truck.
“Nothing. Don’t worry. We’ll all be back in Lublin before you know it. Back with Pietrik. He will be happy to see you.” She said this with a real smile. The old Nadia.
“It’s you he loves,” I said.
“Do you know how many times he asked me if you liked him? Hey—I left the book for you before I went. In the spot. You’ll love chapter five.”
“I think the spot may be long gone, but we’ll both check it together when we get back.”
“Yes.”
Nadia gasped, one fist to her chest, her gaze fixed on my bad leg. One of the mismatched woolen men’s socks I’d traded some of our toothpaste for had slid down to reveal it—by then healed, but withered and shrunken, missing whole tendons and bones, the skin shiny and taut. “My God, Kasia, what happened to your leg?” Water came to her eyes.
To be crying for me while in her situation? This was a good friend.
“I’ll tell you later, but now I can get you a drink—I have a bit of rainwater saved.”
Nadia smiled again. “Always resourceful, Kasia. Matka would love that.”
“I’ll be right back,” I said and set off back to my block.
My leg slowed my progress, and by the time I returned with the water, the guards were loading the last of the prisoners into the open truck. They closed the back gate and banged twice on it, and the truck started off down Beauty Road.
Nadia. It had been like medicine to see her! Would she be safe at the youth camp? I’d never heard of anyone going there from Ravensbrück before. I said a prayer that what I’d heard about the new camp there was true. Was God even listening to prayers from us?
The truck continued down Beauty Road, and tears came to my eyes as I caught a glimpse of Nadia cradling her mother.
“I’ll see you soon, Nadia,” I called, running as best I could after the truck.
She craned her neck above the crowd, smiled, and raised her hand.
I watched the truck rumble off, the red taillights a blur. I wiped the tears away. Were they really going to a safe place? It was hard to believe anything the Germans told us, but no matter what, the Danish girls in the front office said the Russians would be arriving soon to liberate the whole camp. At least Nadia and her mother would have shelter. Nadia was the strongest person I knew.