“What’s wrong?” Laszlo asked, apparently noticing her shuddering.
“Nothing.” She would not admit to him or anyone else that she was still crying over her sister. “Do you think Ruth will leave?” Ruth’s father owned a visa to Palestine, and she had often boasted that it was only a matter of time until her family would be released.
“Probably.” Laszlo didn’t seem too interested in speculating, instead, his eyes were riveted to the tumultuous scenes unfolding. The adults begged, pleaded, shoved, pushed, yelled, and cried in an attempt to be added to the transport. Finally, the guards were called and beat everyone with their truncheons until a big enough corridor opened for the Obersturmbannführer to continue his way toward the Lagerkommandant’s office.
“We should go see if he puts us on his list,” Laszlo said, taking her arm and trying to pull her forward.
Mindel shook him off. “No. I don’t want to leave without my sister.”
“You’re stupid!”
His words hurt and Mindel frowned up at him. “And you are mean!”
Laszlo sighed and shook his head. “Look, staying here on the off-chance of finding your sister, instead of trying your luck getting to Switzerland, is plain stupid.”
Maybe he was right, but that didn’t change her mind. She would not go anywhere without Rachel.
He looked at her for a long time and then said, “I’m going to do it! I’ll find a way to sneak onto the transport when it leaves.”
The breath caught in Mindel’s lungs and raw fear attacked her. “You can’t! What if they catch you?”
“They won’t. And once I’m out of this goddamn camp, nobody will care. Please, come with me!”
“That’s crazy. We can’t do that. The guards will see us.”
“Not if we’re careful.”
Mindel shook her head. “This isn’t like sneaking into the kitchen. Don’t you think they will count everyone millions of times like they do during roll call? They will surely find us and then…” Her voice faltered. She didn’t even want to imagine what might happen then. Not the dogs, please.
“If you don’t come with me, I’m doing it alone,” Laszlo said and turned his back on her to watch the crowd.
Mindel’s legs had turned to ice. She had a very bad feeling about what might happen to her best friend.
12
Summer had passed and with it the oppressive heat; the beginning of autumn had turned the leaves golden, red and orange on the trees. Not that Rachel could enjoy the beautiful colors, because it was dark in the morning when she walked to work, and dark in the evening when she returned to the camp. Except for the glimpses through the frosted factory windows, she never saw the sunlight.
The cooler daytime temperatures were a welcome respite from the sweltering heat inside the factory building, but they came accompanied by chilly nights, exchanging one discomfort for another one. On the assembly line she stretched out her limbs, stiff from lying huddled on her bunk, shivering in the wee hours of the morning before the sun woke up and rose in the sky again.
During the past weeks, she’d fallen into a numb mental state, where every thought felt like a viscid puree attempting to cross her brain. Her thinking had become slow and incoherent, before it had stopped altogether and she merely subsisted like the mindless creature the Nazis saw in the likes of her.
On the other hand, her body had gotten used to the tedious work, doing the required movements all on its own like an automaton. Every day from morning to night she stuffed explosives into casings, never looking left or right, never talking, never dreaming, and never thinking.
All the other women who’d been at the factory longer than a week seemed to be the same. Walking dead, not actual persons anymore, but simply shells that walked, worked, and slept. Even the never-ending roll calls didn’t faze her anymore, since she sincerely did not care, whether she was selected to disappear, be beaten to death or allowed to live another day.
Some days, before wake-up call in the morning, she simply lay on her bunk, waiting for the merciful salvation of death, but it never came. Somehow her body got up, put on her shoes and walked out the hut to form a line for the thin breakfast soup, without her mind being involved.
It was simply a matter of habit. Day in and day out she subsisted side by side with her faithful companions hunger, exhaustion, and pain. Only because of them did she know that she was alive, because supposedly all of this stopped once a person died.
In Tannenberg the women weren’t shorn at regular intervals like in the main camp and one day she ran her hands through her one-inch-long hair. It was a strange feeling, because she’d grown so used to being bald.
She gazed in abstraction at her hand, until she noticed the loose hair between her fingers. Back at home, she’d had long, soft, dark brown hair, but now, the short strands were wiry and stiff, like straw – and orange.
She gasped in shock and cried out, “Good heavens!”
“What’s happened?” the woman working next to her asked.
“My hair is orange!”
The woman snorted. “Have you had a look around?”
For the first time in ages Rachel actually recognized the women around her, and much to her chagrin, every single one of them, save for the new arrivals, had a shock of orange stubble on her head.
She cocked her head to scrutinize her neighbor – the visage drawn and pale, the cheekbones protruding through the parchment-like pallid skin. Dark circles had taken up residence beneath her hollowed-out eyes. But it was the bright, glaring orange hair that stuck out, making her look like some horrific clown.
For lack of a mirror, Rachel assumed she looked the same. She swallowed hard, as fragments of realization permeated the viscosity of her brain. For weeks now,
