“Begging for food,” he said, swinging his truncheon at Rachel, who quickly moved back into the shadows.
She stayed hidden nearby, until complete darkness had settled over the camp. Then she removed the ring from her toe and pressed it deep into her pocket and waited until she could approach the guard again.
27
Typhus was wreaking havoc in the orphans’ barracks. Several of the children had died the previous night and more were seriously ill. In an effort to break the chain of contagion, Mother Brinkmann changed the sleeping arrangements, cordoning off part of the barracks and telling the uninfected children that they were no longer allowed to talk with the others.
Mindel had a slight cough and a running nose like most everyone in the camp, but apart from that – and the itching, biting lice – she didn’t feel any worse than normal. “What is contagious?” she asked.
“It’s when someone is sick with something and everyone else catches the disease if they get close to them,” Sandy explained, and after a glance at Mindel’s confused face, added, “For example a cold. When one person gets a cold, suddenly everyone has it. That’s contagious.”
“Only typhus is much graver than a cold and most people won’t recover,” Mother Brinkmann added before heading back to check on the sick children.
Mindel thought about the explanations for a minute, trying to process the information, before she asked, “Is hunger a contagious disease, too?”
“Why would you think that?” Sandy said.
“Because everyone living here is hungry.”
Some children laughed. “Hunger and typhus aren’t the same thing.”
“Why not? Fear and hate are contagious, aren’t they?”
The laughing stopped and Michael asked, “Where do you get those strange ideas from?”
Mindel paused for a moment, frowning. “It’s just if one child is afraid, soon after we all are.”
“Fear and hate are contagious, Mindel. I wish it wasn’t that way, but it is.” Mother Brinkmann had returned. “Hate is a disease worse than typhus and the very reason why so many of our people are killed. First the Nazis feared us, then they blamed us for whatever problems there were in Germany and once they started hating us, it was the beginning of what we’re experiencing now.”
Mindel nodded, although she didn’t completely grasp the meaning of Mother Brinkmann’s explanations. But she wouldn’t think for long about that issue, since she yearned for clarification of so many other things she didn’t understand.
The infirmary, above all. Over the last few weeks she’d watched person after person removed from their barracks and hauled off to the infirmary. She watched them go there, but never saw anyone return.
She waited until Mother Brinkmann busied herself patching up torn clothes, sidled up to her and asked, “Are you keeping the sick kids here so that they won’t disappear?”
“Disappear? What do you mean?”
“Well, sick people go to the infirmary, but no one ever comes back from there. Is that why you are keeping our children here?”
“Oh, Mindel,” Mother Brinkmann said and patted Mindel’s head without giving an answer. Another annoying adult habit. They always resorted to this when they didn’t want to answer a question. Either because they tried to hide the fact that they had no idea, or because they thought Mindel was too young to know the truth.
Mother Brinkmann turned around and said, “Time to go to bed. Everyone get into your bunks and I’ll tell you another story of Fluff.”
Even the children who hadn’t caught typhus were too starved and tired to protest and climbed into their bunks. Lately, Mindel felt like all she did was sleep or lie around dreaming. Even after the harsh winter had passed and the weather had become warmer, the children rarely ventured outside and never played tag or hide-and-seek like they used to last summer.
She huddled in her bunk that she shared with five other girls, eager to hear another story about Fluff. It was a comforting, predictable part of their existence and Mindel hugged Paula close as she listened. Why couldn’t all day be as nice and peaceful as those minutes when Fluff helped them escape into a better world?
28
Rachel paid the guard with the ring and he let her pass to the Star camp without a problem, but since it was already way past midnight and all the people she saw were either asleep or dead, she decided to find a sheltered spot and wait until morning before she began her search for Mindel.
In the morning she woke to an unusual bustle in the camp. Even back in the days when the SS had still kept a tight regimen, there had never been such a nervous tension in the air. Something was definitely brewing, but she wouldn’t let herself speculate or be frightened. Whatever it was, she could do nothing to prepare, let alone to prevent it. That much she’d learned in the past year and a half.
Therefore, she focused on finding Mindel. Much to her surprise, this part of the camp was still somehow organized and at dawn the kitchen workers came carrying soup pots to the barracks. She decided to keep Mindel waiting for a little longer and instead queued up at one of the pots with her mug in hand.
When it was her turn, the soup handler looked at her warily for a moment, but then shrugged and poured one ladle of soup into her mug. Rachel hurriedly moved away, lest someone ask questions and take the murky, stinking liquid from her. She grabbed some of the wheat from her pockets and threw it into the soup, hoping that both the soup and the wheat would improve by mixing them together, although food was food and she would have eaten almost anything by now.
She might not go as far as some other women she’d seen cutting off pieces of flesh from the fresh corpses lying around,
