Many hours later, they stop again. Water and bread are thrown in. This time, the stop brings additional scrutiny and the young mother is forced to hand over her dead infant to the soldiers. She has to be restrained from trying to leave the compartment to be with her dead child. The slamming of the door brings her silence as she is helped into a corner to grieve her loss.
Cilka sees how closely Josie watches it all, with her hand against her mouth. “Josie, is it?” Cilka asks the girl who has been leaning against her since they first got on the train. She asks her in Polish, the language she has heard her using.
“Yes.” Josie slowly maneuvers her way around so they are knee to knee.
“I’m Cilka.”
Their conversation opener seems to embolden other women. Cilka hears others ask their neighbors their names, and soon the compartment is filled with whispered chatter. Languages are identified, and a shuffling takes place to put nationalities together. Stories are shared. One woman was accused of aiding the Nazis by allowing them to buy bread from her bakery in Poland. Another was arrested for translating German propaganda. Yet another was captured by the Nazis and, being caught with them, accused of spying for them. Amazingly, there are bursts of laughter along with tears as each woman shares how she ended up in this predicament. Some of the women confirm the train will be going to a labor camp, but they don’t know where.
Josie tells Cilka that she is from Kraków, and that she’s sixteen years old. Cilka opens her mouth to share her own age and place of birth, but before she can, a woman nearby declares in a loud voice, “I know why she’s here.”
“Leave her alone,” comes from the strong older woman who’d suggested sharing the bread.
“But I saw her, dressed in a fur coat in the middle of winter while we were dying from the cold.”
Cilka remains silent. There’s a creeping heat in her neck. She lifts her head and stares at her accuser. A stare the woman cannot match. She vaguely recognizes her. Wasn’t she, too, one of the old-timers in Birkenau? Did she not have a warm and comfortable job in the administration building?
“And you, you who wants to accuse her,” says the older woman, “why are you here in this luxurious carriage with us going on a summer holiday?”
“Nothing, I did nothing,” comes the weak reply.
“We all did nothing,” Josie says strongly, defending her new friend.
Cilka clenches her jaw as she turns away from the woman.
She can feel Josie’s gentle, reassuring eyes on her face.
Cilka throws her a faint smile, before turning her head to the wall, closing her eyes, trying to block the sudden memory flooding in of Schwarzhuber—the officer in charge of Birkenau—standing over her in that small room, loosening his belt, the sounds of women weeping beyond the wall.
* * *
The next time the train stops, Cilka gets her ration of bread. Instinctively she eats half and tucks the rest into the top of her dress. She looks around, fearful someone might be watching and try to take it from her. She turns her face back to the wall, closing her eyes.
Somehow, she sleeps.
As she floats back awake, she is startled by Josie’s presence right in front of her. Josie reaches out and touches Cilka’s close-cropped hair. Cilka tries to resist the automatic urge to push her away.
“I love your hair,” the sad, tired voice says.
Relaxing, Cilka reaches up and touches the younger girl’s bluntly chopped hair.
“I like yours too.”
Cilka had been freshly shaved and deloused at the prison. For her a familiar process, as she saw it happen so often to prisoners in that other place, but she supposes it is new for Josie.
Desperate to change the subject, she asks, “Are you here with anyone?”
“I’m with my grandma.”
Cilka follows Josie’s eyes to the bold older woman who had spoken up earlier, still with an arm around the young girl, Ana. She is watching the two of them closely. They exchange a nod.
“You might want to get closer to her,” Cilka says.
Where they are going, the older woman may not last long.
“I should. She might be frightened.”
“You’re right. I am too,” Cilka says.
“Really? You don’t look frightened.”
“Oh, I am. If you want to talk again, I will be here.”
Josie steps carefully over and around the other women between Cilka and her grandmother. Cilka looks on through the slats of light coming through the carriage walls. A small smile breaks free as she sees and feels the women shuffle and shift to accommodate her new friend.
* * *
“It’s been nine days, I think. I’ve been counting. How much longer?” Josie murmurs to no one in particular.
There is more room in the compartment now. Cilka has kept count of how many have died—sick, starving or wounded from their prior interrogations, their bodies removed when the train stopped for bread and water. Eleven adults, four infants. Occasionally some fruit is thrown in with the dry husks of bread, which Cilka has seen mothers soften in their own mouths for the children.
Josie now lies curled up beside Cilka, her head resting on Cilka’s lap. Her sleep is fitful. Cilka knows of the images that must be racing through her mind. A few days ago, her grandmother died. She had seemed so strong and bold, but then she’d started coughing, worse and worse, and shaking, and then refusing her own ration of food. And then the coughing stopped.
Cilka watched Josie standing mutely at the compartment door as her grandmother’s body was roughly handed down to the waiting guards. Cilka experienced a physical pain so intense she doubled over, all her breath leaving her. But no sound, and no tears, would come.
Auschwitz, 1942
Hundreds of girls are marched from Auschwitz to Birkenau on a hot summer day. Four kilometers. A slow, painful march for many who have ill-fitting boots, or worse, no footwear. As they enter through the large imposing brick archway they see the construction of blocks. Men working there pause to stare in horror at the new arrivals. Cilka and her sister Magda have been at Auschwitz for around three months, working among other Slovakian girls.
They are turned from the main road through the camp and into a fenced-off area, with several buildings complete, and others under way. They are stopped and held, standing in lines, as the sun beats down upon them for what seems like hours.
From behind, they hear a commotion. Cilka looks back to the entrance of the women’s camp to see a senior officer, with an entourage of men following, walking up the row of girls. Most of the girls keep their heads down. Not Cilka. She wants to see who warrants such protection from a group of unarmed, defenseless girls.
“Obersturmführer Schwarzhuber,” a guard says, greeting the senior officer. “You’ll be overseeing the selection today?”
“I will.”
The senior officer, Schwarzhuber, continues walking down the line of girls and women. He pauses briefly as he passes Cilka and Magda. When he gets to the front of the row, he turns and walks back. This time he can see the turned-down faces. Occasionally he uses his swagger stick pushed under the chin to raise the face of a girl.
He is coming closer. He stops beside Cilka, Magda behind her. He raises his stick. Cilka beats him to it and lifts her chin high, looking directly at him. If she can get his attention, he will ignore her sister. He reaches down and lifts her left arm, appearing to look at the numbers fading on her skin. Cilka hears Magda’s sharp inhalation of breath behind her. Schwarzhuber drops her arm, walks back down to the front of the line, and Cilka notices him speak to the SS officer beside him.