Rena's Promise (24 page)

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Authors: Rena Kornreich Gelissen,Heather Dune Macadam

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical, #test

BOOK: Rena's Promise
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but that is a small price to pay for keeping one's toes. No one who is still wearing sandals will survive the winter. Except to dry them, the shoes never leave our feet; to leave them unattended for even a second would be to go barefoot. Shoes are a precious commodity. Danka and I are lucky to have friends as dear as Erna and Fela, who have brought them to us without even asking for a piece of bread.
I am concerned about Danka's depression. She doesn't seem to care about getting her own bowl of soup. This is something beyond her fear of the kapos serving the food. She seems so downtrodden, as if she's giving up on any hope of survival and this depression is eating away at her soul. She is absent; her eyes are glazed over most of our waking hours. I don't think that she's too far away, but I know I must try to do something before she goes beyond my grasp. Struggling with what to do about my sister's failing faith, I finally decide that there is no other course but to confront her.
It is late. The rest of the block is sleeping fitfully. "Danka," I whisper into the dark, "are you asleep yet?"
"No."
"What's bothering you? Something's wrong, I know it. Why' re you so sad?"
"I don't know."
"Please talk to me. How can I help you if I don't know what's going on in your head? I feel you shrinking away from me. You have to tell me what's wrong."
"What sense is there to this?"
"To Auschwitz-Birkenau?" I'm puzzled.
"To everything." She pauses. "What if there's a selection and I'm selected to die?"
"What makes you say that?"
"You look better than me. You aren't losing so much weight and you're still strong. What if I can't make it?" Slowly it dawns on me.

 

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"Remember those two sisters?" I take her hand. "And how the one begged to go with the other one?" She nods in the shadows. "I will do the same, if it comes to that.''
"They don't allow it all the time, though. That was the first selection. They were soft. Now if someone begs to go with their mama, or sister, or daughter, they laugh and push them away."
"I will do whatever it takes, even if I must strike the SS."
"Then they will kill you immediatelythat's no good."
There is something else lurking behind her eyes. It isn't dying alone she's afraid of, I'm not sure which fear is possessing her. "What is it you're really afraid of?"
"Being thrown in the truck," she confesses. "They treat us like rotten meat . . . I don't want to be discarded like that, thrown onto the flatbeds . . . I'm afraid of what Erna said. Maybe there won't be enough gas, and I'll go into the crematorium still alive . . . What if they're trying to conserve the gas?"
I cannot answer that question. I cannot give her any promises or assurances that there will be enough gas to kill us when we arrive at the ultimate destination of all prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau. I cannot promise her that because I cannot lie to my sister, but I can promise one thing.
Everyone is sleeping around us, but with everyone talking out of their heads all the time anyway, no one pays us any attentionit's too commonplace to hear voices and screams in the night.
"Sit up, Danka. Come on, sit up." I hold out my hand. "You see my hand here." I put her hand on mine and look into her eyes. "Our parents are standing here in front of us and my hand is the Holy Book and on this book and before our parents I make this oath to you: that from this day on, if you are selected I will join you no matter what. I swear that you will not go onto the trucks alone."
It is pitch-black in the blocks, but I can almost see the light flicker back on in my sister's eyes as I make this promise. Exhausted, I release her hand and we fall back against the cold wood,

 

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pulling our blanket close around our bodies. Sleep comes swiftly, carrying us away to a land where there are no shadows.
At lunch the next day, Danka stands in line and receives her first full helping of soup in months.
I shiver under the thin blanket protecting us from the elements. There is something like ice touching my body. Recoiling, I struggle to return to the solace of sleep. I hate the rats that wander in between our bodies, chewing on whatever does not fight back. I jerk my feet; it is an automatic response to the varmints that cross our feet at night. Again I feel the pressure and push back against it. My jaw clenches shut as I fight to squeeze in a few more moments of unconsciousness. The ice brands me. Involuntarily my hand reaches out to shove away the weight lying against me, then recoils, recognizing the touch of human flesh. She is solid, devoid of all warmth, absent of life.
The room elders begin the morning ritual, banging on the sides of the shelves with their sticks, yelling and beating anyone within their reach.
"Go outside and get your tea." I move Danka toward the door. "I'll fold the blanket this morning."
"Why?" she asks innocently.
"Just go, Danka. Let me do this for you. We should start taking turns tidying our beds. This morning it's my turn. Go on, I'll catch up with you." I wait until she is outside.
"Somebody help me carry this body out?" No one wants to assist me. I understand their fear, but I don't want to be beaten for not removing the body. Tapping a neighboring bony shoulder, I ask, "Can you please grab her feet?" She nods reluctantly, helping me shift the corpse off the shelving. "I'm going to stop at the door. I don't want my sister to see.''
Danka has her back toward me, so we take the body out, placing her at the end of the lines for roll call, where she will be tallied along with the rest of us. I am dying to wash my hands, but there

 

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is no time for that now; I must grab my tea and get into line next to Danka before roll call begins. Wiping my hands against my trousers repeatedly, I try to scrape the feeling of cold flesh from my body's memory. All day we work, and periodically I scrub my hands with dirt and then against my woolen pants, trying to get rid of the aura of death still lingering on them. The afternoon soup does not warm them; cupping them and blowing my hot breath into them does not thaw the morning's chill. Wringing my hands together until they ache, I cannot dislodge the obsession in my mind. I hesitate to take the evening bread before washing my hands but am too hungry to avoid the food. In the latrine I finally get a moment to rinse my hands and face, but there isn't enough water in the world to wash her frozen body from my mind. How I long for a hot bath, how I long for a cup of cocoa to sweep away the frigid fears devouring my mind.
"You should always sleep on the outside, next to the stall divider," I tell Danka as we crawl into our place on the shelf-beds. I never want her to be touched by death.
She blinks in wonderment at my statement. "Are you okay?" she asks.
"Of course." I pull the blanket up over our shoulders, snuggling as close to my sister as I possibly can, trying to avoid the touch of the girl already asleep next to me.
You cannot count on anything here. You cannot even count on the ground beneath your feet.
Danka has gotten scabies. Many have contracted this disease from living in such close quarters, and it's quite dangerous if it's on an area of the body that's visible. Fortunately, they're not on her face or hands and her legs are so covered by mud that no one notices anything beyond the dirt. But at the drop of a hat the SS can deem us unworthy to live, and the selections seem to be occurring on a more regular basis. I search my memory for a rem-

 

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edy, allowing just enough of the past to return to my present so that Danka can get well. I remember.
We had gotten scabies at school and been sent home along with the other children who had contracted it
.
"
Rena! Danka! Come into the kitchen and let me rub this sulphur onto your poor bodies." Mama opened up the door of the stove, rubbing the lotion into our skin. "There you go. Now I'm going to wrap you up and let you sleep by the stove tonight so the salve can soak into the sores and make them disappear." We wore our one-piece pajamas, the type with the trapdoor in the back. Then Mama wrapped us up in old blankets and slid the bench out of the szlufbank so it would make a small sleeping space for us. Fluffing the down in our pillows, tucking us in, she hugged and kissed us good-night. "Sweet sleep." The next morning she heated water and used the big washtub to bathe us in, scrubbing us hard with sulphur soap
.
"
Mama! You're treating us like laundry," we giggled. "That's because I don't want a spot on you!" She snuggled us, wrapping our little bodies up in towels and rubbing us dry. "Now you look like two healthy young ladies again!" She unwrapped the towels, revealing our creamy skin as fresh as a newborn's, ''It's still itchy," Danka complained, hugging Mama's leg. "It's okay. I'll wash you one more time and then you'll be all ready to go back to school.
"
I hold out my bread to the block elder. "I need some sulphur."
"What for?"
"Scabies."
"Humph, better get rid of them soon." She disappears into her room. She takes her time. As always, I must wait until she sees fit to come out again, and crouch against the wall, dozing. Surprisingly, she does not take hours to return with the lotion.
"Here. You know how to use it?"
"Yah." I take the salve. "Thank you."

 

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We stand next to the potbellied stove in the middle of the block. "Do you remember when Mama wrapped us in warm blankets and had us sleep by the stove, when we were little?" I ask, rubbing the sulphur into her skin.
"We had scabies then, too," she answers quietly.
Our stomachs growl as we split Danka's portion of bread between us, speaking quietly or not at all. I wait with her, knowing she'll leave the fire too soon if she's tired, and I want to make sure the heat makes the ointment penetrate her skin. I feel like Mama as I go through the motions of mothering my sister, only this time there are no blankets to wrap her in, or flannel pajamas. The smell of the sulphur is strong but it is not so noticeable above the body odors we constantly live in. I determine that it will be safe for her to leave the salve on throughout the work day before we wash it off.
"How are you going to wash it off?" Danka asks.
"I'm going to have to use our bowls to rinse you, Danka."
"I can't eat from mine if you do that." She looks almost terrified by the thought.
Why not? I want to ask. What's the big deal? But I keep my mouth shut. I don't want to risk her refusing to eat again. "We'll use my bowl," I suggest. "And I'll share yours until Sunday, when I can clean mine out real good."
"Okay." The next evening I get some water and rinse my sister's body of the salve.
"They're gone, Danka."
"They are?" She checks her skin, relieved. Mama's angelic face floats on the periphery of my vision; I am grateful that there's no sign of infection from the sores.
Four
A.M
.
"
Raus! Raus!
"
We crawl off the planks. Our shoes are already on our feet because they are never taken off. We step into the neat rows of five,

 

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