“Yes, you. Get on your feet. Come with me.”
I stand up. I am dead. I know it. Rachel knows it, too. I can see it in her eyes. She has no more tears to cry.
“Remember me,” I whisper as I follow the man on horseback into the trees.
Thankfully, he does not ask me to walk far, just to a spot a few meters from the side of the road, where a large tree had fallen. He dismounts and tethers his horse. He sits down on the fallen tree and orders me to sit next to him. I hesitate. No SS man has ever asked such a thing. He pats the tree with the palm of his hand. I sit, but several inches farther away than he had commanded. I am afraid, but I am also humiliated by my smell. He slides closer. He stinks of alcohol. I’m done for. It’s only a question of time.
I look straight ahead. He removes his gloves, then touches my face. In two years at Birkenau, no SS man had ever touched me. Why is this man, a Sturmbannfuhrer, touching me now? I have endured many torments, but this is by far the worst. I look straight ahead. My flesh is ablaze.
“Such a shame,” he says. “Were you very beautiful once?”
I can think of nothing to say. Two years at Birkenau has taught me that in situations like these, there is never a right answer. If I answer yes, he’ll accuse me of Jewish arrogance and kill me. If I answer no, he’ll kill me for lying.
“I’ll share a secret with you. I’ve always been attracted to Jewesses. If you ask me, we should have killed the men and utilized the women for our own enjoyment. Did you have a child?”
I think of all the children I saw going to the gas at Birkenau. He demands a response by squeezing my face between his thumb and fingers. I close my eyes and try not to cry out. He repeats the question. I shake my head, and he releases his grip.
“If you’re able to survive the next few hours, you might someday have a child. Will you tell this child about what happened to you during the war? Or will you be too ashamed?”
A child? How could a girl in my position ever contemplate giving birth to a child? I have spent the last two years simply trying to survive. A child is beyond my comprehension.
“Answer me, Jew!”
His voice is suddenly harsh. I feel the situation is about to spin out of control. He takes hold of my face again and turns it toward him. I try to look away, but he shakes me, compelling me to look into his eyes. I have no strength to resist. His face is instantly chiseled into my memory. So is the sound of his voice and his Austrian- accented German. I hear it still.
“What will you tell your child about the war?”
What does he want to hear? What does he want me to say?
He squeezes my face. “Speak, Jew! What will you tell your child about the war?”
“The truth, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer. I’ll tell my child the truth.”
Where these words come from, I do not know. I only know that if I am to die, I will die with a modicum of dignity. I think again of Regina, flying at Mengele armed with a spoon.
He relaxes his grip. The first crisis seems to have passed. He exhales heavily, as if exhausted by his long day of work, then removes a flask from the pocket of his greatcoat and takes a long pull. Thankfully, he does not offer me any. He returns the flask to his pocket and lights a cigarette. He does not offer me a cigarette. I have tobacco and liquor, he is telling me. You have nothing.
“The truth? What is the truth, Jew, as you see it?”
“Birkenau is the truth, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer.”
“No, my dear, Birkenau is not the truth. Birkenau is a rumor. Birkenau is an invention by enemies of the Reich and Christianity. It is Stalinist, atheist propaganda.”
“What about the gas chambers? The crematoria?”
“These things did not exist at Birkenau.”
“I saw them, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer. We all saw them.”
“No one is going to believe such a thing. No one is going to believe it’s possible to kill so many. Thousands? Surely, the death of thousands is possible. After all, this was war. Hundreds of thousands? Perhaps. But millions?” He draws on his cigarette. “To tell you the truth, I saw it with my own eyes, and even I cannot believe it.”
A shot crackles through the forest, then another. Two more girls gone. The Sturmbannfuhrer takes another long pull at his flask of liquor. Why is he drinking? Is he trying to keep warm? Or is he steeling himself before he kills me?
“I’m going to tell you what you’re going to say about the war. You’re going to say that you were transferred to the east. That you had work. That you had plenty of food and proper medical care. That we treated you well and humanely.”
“If that is the truth, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer, then why am I a skeleton?”
He has no answer, except to draw his pistol and place it against my temple.
“Recite to me what happened to you during the war, Jew. You were transferred to the east. You had plenty of food and proper medical care. The gas chambers and the crematoria are Bolshevik-Jewish inventions. Say those words, Jew.”
I know there is no escaping this situation with my life. Even if I say the words, I am dead. I will not say them. I will not give him the satisfaction. I close my eyes and wait for his bullet to carve a tunnel through my brain and release me from my torment.
He lowers the gun and calls out. Another SS man comes running. The Sturmbannfuhrer orders him to stand guard over me. He leaves and walks back through the trees to the road. When he returns, he is accompanied by two women. One is Rachel. The other is Lene. He orders the SS man to leave, then places the gun to Lene’s forehead. Lene looks directly into my eyes. Her life is in my hands.
“Say the words, Jew! You were transferred to the east. You had plenty of food and proper medical care. The gas chambers and the crematoria are Bolshevik-Jewish lies.”
I cannot allow Lene to be killed by my silence. I open my mouth to speak, but before I can recite the words, Rachel shouts, “Don’t say it, Irene. He’s going to kill us anyway. Don’t give him the pleasure.”
The Sturmbannfuhrer removes the gun from Lene’s head and places it against Rachel’s. “You say it, Jewish bitch.”
Rachel looks him directly in the eye and remains silent.
The Sturmbannfuhrer pulls his trigger, and Rachel falls dead into the snow. He places the gun against Lene’s head, and once again commands me to speak. Lene slowly shakes her head. We say goodbye with our eyes. Another shot, and Lene falls next to Rachel.
It is my turn to die.
The Sturmbannfuhrer points the gun at me. From the road comes the sound of shouting.Raus! Raus! The SS are prodding the girls to their feet. I know my walk is over. I know I am not leaving this place with my life. This is where I will fall, at the side of a Polish road, and here I will be buried, with nomazevoth to mark my grave.
“What will you tell your child about the war, Jew?”
“The truth, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer. I’ll tell my child the truth.”
“No one will believe you.” He holsters his pistol. “Your column is leaving. You should join them. You know what happens to those who fall behind.”
He mounts his horse and jerks on the reins. I collapse in the snow next to the bodies of my two friends. I pray for them and beg their forgiveness. The end of the column passes by. I stagger out of the trees and fall into place. We walk that entire night, in neat rows of five. I shed tears of ice.
Five days after walking out of Birkenau, we come to a train station in the Silesian village of Wodzislaw. We are herded onto open coal cars and travel through the night, exposed to the vicious January weather. The Germans had no need to waste any more of their precious ammunition on us. The cold kills half of the girls on my car alone.
We arrive at a new camp, Ravensbruck, but there is not enough food for the new prisoners. After a few days, some of us move on, this time by flatbed truck. I end my odyssey in a camp in Neustadt Glewe. On May 2, 1945, we wake to discover that our SS tormentors have fled the camp. Later that day, we are liberated by American and Russian soldiers.
It has been twelve years. Not a day passes that I don’t see the faces of Rachel and Lene-and the face of the man who murdered them. Their deaths weigh heavily upon me. Had I recited the Sturmbannfuhrer’s words,
