If I Should Die Before I Wake

by Han Nolan

  "That's for the work parties. They are returning," Rivke explained.

  "Real music? Here? How bad can it be if we are to be entertained by real music? It is wonderful!" I ran to the side of the hut and peered out. The band was playing a Sousa march, and marching through the mud to the music were thousands of women in rows of five. All of them were filthy. Their clothes were torn and their bare feet bloody and swollen. Their arms and legs, faces and heads were covered with sores and gaping wounds. Most of them tried to step lively as they passed under the eyes of the SS guards, but some didn't seem to care, didn't even seem to know where they were. Their heads were bobbing on their necks with every step they took, their shoulders drooping, their eyes vacant. Others were virtually being carried in, supported on either side by a helpful shoulder. They were all dying. For many, keeping in step with the music looked as if it would be the last thing they would do on this earth. The thought made me sick. Why did the orchestra keep playing? Why didn't they slow it down so the workers could keep up? They were prisoners, too—couldn't they see they were killing these people with their music? Never, in all of my wild imaginings, could I have come up with something as horrible as this. Now even music had become something ugly, something evil. I felt as if the Nazis had somehow discovered everything I ever cared about and then had set about destroying it all one by one. There was nothing left. Nothing!

  "See those women? See them dragging in?"

  I jumped. I didn't know Rivke had come up behind me. She was pointing to the women with the floppy heads and vacant stares.

  I nodded.

  "That is what happens to people who think too much. They become what the people here call Mtwelmänner."

  " Miuelmänner? That means Muslims. I don't understand."

  "It is the name given to those who have given up all hope. They have lost it here." Rivke pointed to her head. "There is nothing up there anymore and the body, it follows the mind. They will be dead today, tomorrow at the latest. Remember that, Chana. You think too much. It is dangerous. The body can endure a lot if the mind will allow it. You must want to live more than anything else because here that is all there is—life, or death. But mostly death."

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Hilary

  "I THOUGHT I SAW A GHOST for a minute. Baby, I thought I saw you going into the bathroom down on the fifth floor. This girl, she had long blond hair like yours before you cut it and a jacket like the one Brad gave you for your birthday with 'Aryan Warriors' written on the arm. You know? Hilary?

  "You're looking funny. You look—you don't look good. No, your heart monitor, I don't think it should be doing that. You're—you're dying—someone—I've got to get someone....

  "What's that? Hey, what's—"

  "Ah, Mrs. Burke, glad I spotted you in there. It's the fire alarm. You'll have to take the exit at the end of the hall. Just follow the others, please. Your daughter will be fine."

  "What? Are you crazy? My baby, she's dying. Nurse, listen to me! Please come in here, she's dying! Get a doctor! Any doctor."

  "Please try and stay calm. We'll take care of your daughter. If there's anything wrong, one of the nurses will see it on the monitor, but I have to ask you to get out of the building."

  "Didn't you hear me? Come here. Look at this monitor! She's dying! I know she is."

  "My God! Yes, okay, I'll get someone right away, but you must get out of the building."

  "Hurry—my baby. Dear God, my baby.

  "Hilary, I'm here. I'm staying right here. I won't leave, I promise. Don't you worry. Come on, fight!

  "Where are they? Please, dear God, where are they? You're slipping away and the doctors are all out on the lawn directing traffic.

  "God! Help me!"

  Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohainu Adonai Ehad.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Chana

  WE HAD BEEN in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp for only three weeks, and yet the changes I had seen in the people around me, in myself, were changes that would normally require the passage of several years. A woman could march out of camp with her head held high, her back strong and straight, and a glint in her eye, and return from work that afternoon a destroyed, broken mass of flesh, too far gone to make it much past the gate. Every day here was a lifetime, and with the passage of each day, I wondered if it was worth the struggle. I had no answer, and much to Bubbe's frustration, I was fast becoming one of the ragged people, the Musemänner I had seen dragging into camp toward the end of our first day.

  I knew if it weren't for Bubbe I wouldn't have lasted this long, but I didn't feel gratitude. Sometimes I didn't think I felt anything, except rage—rage at everything and everyone, including Bubbe. She seemed to live on nothing but her beliefs, and I seemed to be dying by mine, yet I couldn't change. I didn't know how.

  Every morning the kitchen workers handed out to each of us a chunk of black bread smeared with rancid margarine, which was to last us the day. I always ate mine at once and counted on Bubbe to give me some of hers later when I needed it, as I had done with Anya in the ghetto. I also counted on her to give me some of her soup in the afternoon and to sleep next to me and keep me warm at night. But others, too, had learned to count on her. She told them stories in the courtyard, stories she used to tell me. She wrapped their sore, freezing feet in bits of rags she had organized, and gave them her food. She held them in her arms and cried with them. She had become everyone's grandmother, and even women older than she were calling her Bubbe.

  One day as groups huddled together behind the barracks, Bubbe saw me go off on my own, as I had done the past two days, and came after me.

  "Chana, this has gone on long enough!"

  I turned away. "Go to your friends, Bubbe. They need you."

  "So, you think you will punish me. It is you whom you are hurting. You are going to allow yourself to waste away, to punish me?"

  "You give them your food, you wash their faces and their sores with your tea."

  "You want me to help only you?" she asked as she eased herself onto the ground.

  "Yes, I mean no, it's just—don't you care that I'm—I'm dying? Bubbe, it's too much. What's the point of it all?"

  Bubbe took my hand in hers. "Chana, what I give these people, what I try to give you, isn't enough, can never be enough. So many of them die. No matter what I do, they still die. I cannot give them, or you, the will to live, and without that, there is not even a hope of surviving here."

  "There is not even a hope, anyway," I said.

  "If you feel that way, Chana, then you will die, and I will die with you."

  I looked into her face. I held out my arms. "Bubbe, help me."

  She grabbed my arms and pulled me into her lap as though I were a little girl. She rocked me in her arms and whispered, "Chana, please, do not think so much. Just do as they say."

  Do not think. Always, Do not think. But how could I stop? The Germans had taken everything, and now I was expected to give them my mind as well.

  The next morning I felt too sick to get up for Zählappell, roll call. It was four in the morning; our Blockälteste had already blown her whistle and shouted into our hut for us to get up. Our hut was lined with bunks made out of slats of wood, three tiers high and separated by brick walls. We slept on a thin smattering of straw that reeked of the blood, pus, and urine it had absorbed as our rotting bodies slept, five to a bunk. Again I was not to think about it, I was just supposed to climb in and go to sleep. I was supposed to ignore the fat bugs that fell between the slats above me and onto my neck every time someone in the bunk above tried to turn over.

  "Don't think, sleep," I would tell myself over and over as I waited for that blessed sleep. "Don't think, eat," as I swallowed my soup. "Don't think, march; don't think, pee; don't think, stand, starve, freeze, bleed, rot!"

  Bubbe pulled herself out of the bunk with the others and then waited for me to follow.

  "No, Bubbe," I said. "This is it. I am going to be one of the dead bodies they dr
ag outside and drop at the end of the rows for Zählappell."

  Bubbe felt my head. "You are warm. What else?"

  "My stomach. I'm afraid if I move it will explode. All night I had to keep climbing out of bed and using the bucket."

  Bubbe looked down at the end of the hut where the overflowing bucket stood. They fed us so little and yet we all seemed to be in constant need of a bathroom.

  "Hurry then. You must get to the pits before Zählappell— who knows how long it will last today."

  We had roll call twice a day, and since we had been there it had lasted anywhere from two to eight hours, but Rivke had said it could last as long as twenty-four if the numbers didn't add up correctly.

  I did as Bubbe said and shuffled along to the lavatory hut. Hundreds of women sat on the holes on either side of me. These holes were cut out of thick slabs of concrete supported above dug-out pits by another long concrete pedestal. There were three of these conveniences in this building, and each ran almost the full length of the hut and had approximately eighty to a hundred holes. Still, we usually had to sit two to a hole, using this time before Zählappell to get information, organize some items, or just chat. This morning, no one wanted to sit with me. They could tell I was sick and most believed that to even look my way was to catch whatever I had. Once on my hole, I couldn't get off and Bubbe and Dvora had to pull me off and drag me back to our hut in time for Zählappell. No one missed roll call, not even the dead.

  As usual we were whipped into rows of five, facing forward, standing straight and still. Bubbe and Dvora hustled me to the back row and stood me up between them. My feet did not want to support me. I knew I was going to be sick again and I could only hope that being in the back row would keep me hidden enough so I wouldn't get caught. Every time the Blockältcste had passed us, Bubbe and Dvora would lean me against the wall behind us, and I would sag to my knees and wait until it was time to hoist myself up again.

  "It's Taube!" Dvora whispered. She and Bubbe pulled me to my feet. I tried to look up, to look alive, to forget that my insides were running down my legs, as the Rapportführer, roll-call leader, strutted in front of us.

  Taube was the man upon whom I had placed all my fears and hatred. I had seen this man extinguish a life in less than a minute simply by butting the person to the ground with his rifle and stomping on her neck.

  While those around me tried to keep their teeth from chattering, I stood there trying not to sweat. The more I fretted about this, the more I sweated. The more I fretted about this, the more I sweated, so by the time Taube had reached our group, the top half of my shirtdress was soaked. Bubbe and Dvora closed in on me, squeezing me between them.

  "What is that smell?" Taube demanded.

  Was he speaking about me? Could he smell me from all the way up front? No, it couldn't be. How could he distinguish my diarrhea from all the other wretched odors in this camp? I locked my knees and held up my head. I was sweating more now and needed to spit, needed to ... I dropped to my knees and threw up. I was gagging, choking. Nothing came out but clear, slimy liquid, but the noise and my movements brought Taube to the back row.

  " Raus! Raus!" he commanded.

  Was he going to make me stand up only to butt me with his rifle and stomp on my throat?

  I forced myself to stand. I had to show him I was strong, that this problem was only temporary.

  "You are disgusting!" he said as I looked up at his face. "You think it is all right to make a mess like this? You like standing in your own mess? For this you will have Sport, all of you." He waved his hand above him, including the whole block in his gesture. "For as long as this Appell lasts you will stay down on your knees, all of you. Now! And you"—he pointed a gloved finger at me—"you will kneel right where you are standing."

  I fell to my knees with the others.

  Taube called to our Blockälteste's assistant, Gerte, a short, dark Jew with brown teeth. "You see to it that she keeps her arms out as high as her shoulders. If they drop, use your whip." He spun around on his heel and marched away, leaving me to face Gerte. I knew it would do me no good to try to plead with this woman. To her, I was Jewish scum and she was Jewish royalty. Rumor had it that she had tossed her own mother and sisters onto the truck that took them to their death. Now she kicked Bubbe and Dvora aside with her warm-booted foot and circled around me, daring me with her sausage breath heavy on my head, to just try to move.

  I could see Bubbe out of the corner of my eyes murmuring her prayers for me. I wanted to shout at her and tell her to stop. She was wasting her time. God wasn't going to save me, or her, or anyone. I remembered how, just yesterday evening, Bubbe had been whipped for stepping on the Blockälteste's foot when Bubbe was leaving the hut. I remember how she just stood there and took it, her expression serene, as though she were walking through a field of poppies. And when the whipping was over, Bubbe looked at the woman with such pity, as if she had been the one who was whipped.

  Never, never could I look at Gerte that way. Never could I "find God," as Bubbe claimed to do when confronted with something unbearable.

  I decided my bubbe wasn't real. She was like my shvester, someone only of the imagination. She continued to murmur beside me, but Gerte left her alone. For some reason Gerte was afraid of my gentle bubbe. Perhaps she, too, sensed that Bubbe was not real, or maybe she was saving her beatings just for me. My arms were numb from the shoulders out and my knees were sinking deeper into the mud and slime. I was shaking from head to foot, but something in me refused to allow my arms to slip below my shoulders.

  I saw someone in front of me fall forward on her face. If she didn't move, she'd suffocate in the mud. Bubbe kept praying and the woman in front of me did not move. I was determined to make it, to remain on my knees, my arms raised as long as it took, if only to shut Bubbe up and to lift that woman out of the mud. If she died, it would be my fault.

  At last the whistles blew and Zäblappell was over. Dvora and Bubbe got up off their knees and rushed forward to congratulate me. I ignored them and crawled forward on my hands and knees to where the woman had fallen in the mud. She hadn't moved since. I grabbed her shirt and rolled her over onto her back. Her face was plastered in mud, her mouth full of it, her eyes open and muddy. I dug the mud out of her mouth and shook her.

  Gerte kicked me in the side. "She's dead, you idiot. You killed her, and that one over there." She pointed to another woman farther away. "You are like me now. How does it feel?"

  Before I could speak, Bubbe had rushed forward with Dvora and grabbed me under the arms. Together they pulled me backward, toward the hut.

  "Not so fast," came the Blockälteste's voice from behind. Her name was Holga and she looked, to my mind, like what every German bully should look like. She was a large, almost fat woman with tiny, deep-set blue eyes and hair down to her shoulders, mocking our baldness. She wore no makeup except lipstick. Always she wore lipstick. We believed she even slept with it, freshly applied each night before going to bed.

  "You." Holga pointed at me. "You are on Scheisskommando. Get along now."

  I looked up at Bubbe. I felt too weak to move. I had hoped I could somehow hide myself away in one of the bunks before they locked the hut, and sleep there all day.

  "Be strong, Chana," Bubbe whispered. "You made it through Sport. You are not a Muselman yet."

  "Enough of this! Go!" Holga kicked at me.

  At the entrance to the lavatory hut the Kapo, work party leader, handed me an empty bucket and a small shovel. She gave me no instructions, but I really didn't need any. The work was easy enough. I was to scoop out the mess beneath each hole, dump it in the bucket, and haul it away to yet another pit. There were three others working in my row. They had already begun down near the entrance, so I took the center and dug the shovel into the first hole. As I scooped out the mess and dumped it, I thought about the fecal workers in the ghetto. I remembered how we used to pretend they weren't even there when they came along our street to clean up our messes. We knew
the people with that job never lasted long because of typhus and other diseases that were easy to pick up, and I wondered if it was the same here. Was this the worst job? Did I already have typhus? Was that why I felt so sick? I didn't care. Just keep moving, I told myself. Move until you can no longer move. Move until you die. Then they won't have the pleasure of kicking the life out of you.

  One of the workers on the opposite side came up to the hole in front of me and began digging.

  "I'm Matel," she whispered, keeping her face down so the guard at the entrance wouldn't see her talking.

  I said nothing. I kept digging. What did I care if she was Matel? I didn't want to make any more friends. I didn't want to care about anyone else. I said nothing to her, but every once in a while I couldn't help glancing up at her and trying to get a better look. She was slightly taller than I was, but for some reason I had the feeling she was young, very young.

  During our lunch break, when they gave us the same meager helping of old sock soup, Matel came up to where I was sitting and sat down.

  "I am sick," I said, not even bothering to look up. "You might catch it, go away."