by Jane Yolen
“That means ‘thank you,’” Rivka said.
Hannah stared after Leye. “I think . . . ,” she said slowly, “I think I prefer the water to the thanks.”
That night, she washed out her dress with the cup of water, hanging it like a curtain from her sleeping shelf. Now she understood why the children had all stripped off their clothes, dropping them like bright rags on the sandy ground. She’d worried that the clothing would be gaudy signals to the commandant, but clearly he already knew—as did the guards—where the children hid. It was all some kind of awful game. But she’d been too scared to stop and too shy to undress out in the open like that, especially while the memory of her naked hours waiting for the shower still brought a blush to her face. Especially as the guards, some in their late teens, had all been laughing nearby.
As she fell asleep, she was sure the smell of the midden had gotten into her pores; that there was not enough water in the camp—in all of Poland—to wash her clean.
The days quickly became routine: roll call, breakfast, work, lunch, work, supper, work. The meals were all watery potato soup and occasionally bread, hard and crusty. Then they had a precious hour before they were locked in their barracks for the night.
The work was the mindless sort. Some of it was meant to keep the camp itself running: cleaning the barracks, the guards’ houses, the hospital, the kitchen. Cutting and hauling wood for the stoves. Building more barracks, more privies. But most of the workers were used in the sorting sheds, stacking the clothing and suitcases and possessions stolen from the prisoners, dividing them into piles to be sent back to Germany.
Still, Hannah was glad of the routine. As long as she knew what to expect, she wasn’t frightened. What was more frightening was the unknown: the occasional corpse hanging on the gate without an explanation, the swift kick by the blokova for no reason.
She and Shifre were set to work with Rivka in the kitchen hauling water in large buckets from the pump, spooning out the meager meals, washing the giant cauldrons in which the soup cooked, scrubbing the walls and floors. It was hard work, harder than Hannah could ever remember doing. Her hands and knees held no memory of such work. It was endless. And repetitive. But it was not without its rewards. Occasionally they were able to scrape out an extra bit of food for themselves and the little ones while cleaning the pots, burned pieces of potatoes that had stuck to the bottom. Even burned pieces tasted wonderful, better even than beef. She thought she remembered beef.
“She gave the blokova a gold ring she organized to get you in here,” Leye explained, wiping her hands on a rag and nodding her head in Rivka’s direction. Leye was the head of the kitchen crew; her arms were always splotchy and stained. But it was a good job, for she could keep her baby with her. “Otherwise that one . . .” and she spit on the ground to show her disapproval of the three-fingered woman, “. . . she would have had you hauling wood with the men. And you would never have lasted because you are a city girl. It is in your hands. Not a country girl like Shifre. We outlast you every time.”
When Hannah tried to thank Rivka, the girl only smiled and shrugged away the thanks. “My mother, may she rest in peace, always said a nemer iz nisht keyn geber, a taker is not a giver. And a giver is not a taker either. Keep your thanks. And hand it on.” She said it gently, as if embarrassed.
Hannah understood her embarrassment and didn’t mention it again, but she did try to pass it on. She began saving the softer insides of the bread, slipping it to Reuven when she could. Yitzchak’s little boy was so thin and sad-looking, still wondering where his sister had gone, that she could not resist him. She even tried giving him her whole bread, meal after meal, until Gitl found out.
“You cannot help the child by starving yourself,” Gitl said. “Besides, with those big blue eyes, he will have many to help him. And that smile . . .”
Hannah bit her lip. Those big blue eyes and the luminous, infrequent smiles reminded her of someone she couldn’t name.
“But you—you are still a growing girl, Chaya. You must take care of you.” She folded Hannah’s hands around the bread and pushed her away from Reuven. “Go, finish your kitchen duties. I will take Reuven with me.”
Hannah turned away reluctantly, as if she had somehow failed Rivka. As she did so, she saw that Gitl had given the child her own bread—and half her soup besides.
It was on the third day in the camp that Commandant Breuer came again, this time—word was whispered around the camp—for a Choosing.
His black car drove right up the middle of the camp, between the rows of barracks, the flag on the aerial snapping merrily. The driver got out, opened the rear door, and stood at attention.
“What is a Choosing?” Hannah asked Rivka out of the side of her mouth as they waited beside the cauldrons they were cleaning. She didn’t know why, but she could feel sweat running down her dress, even though it was a cool day, as if her body knew something it wasn’t telling her mind.
There was no movement from the midden pile, where the bright shorts and blouses of the children marked their passage. The commandant strode past without giving the dump a glance.
Rivka hissed Hannah quiet and ran a finger across her own throat, the same signal that the peasants had made in the fields when the cattle cars passed them by. Hannah knew that signal. She just didn’t know what it meant . . . exactly. She shivered.
The commandant was a small, handsome man, so clean-shaven his face seemed burnished. His cheekbones had a sharp edge and there was a cleft in his chin. He stopped for a moment in front of Hannah, Rivka, and Shifre. Hannah felt sweat run down her sides.
The commandant smiled, pinched Rivka’s cheek, then went on. Behind him was a man with a clipboard and a piece of paper. They walked without stopping again, straight to the far end of the compound. The door banged behind them ominously.
Rivka let out a ragged breath, and turned to Hannah. “Anyone who cannot get out of bed today will be chosen,” she said. Her voice was soft but matter-of-fact.
“Chosen for what?” Hannah asked, though she’d already guessed.
“Chosen for processing.”
“You mean chosen for death,” Hannah said. Then suddenly she added, “Hansel, let out your finger, that I may see if you are fat or lean.”
“Do not use that word aloud,” Rivka cautioned.
“Which word?” asked Hannah. “Finger? Fat? Lean?”
Rivka sighed. “Death,” she said.
“But why?” asked Shifre, her pale face taking color from the question. “Why will some be chosen?”
“Because they cannot work,” said Rivka. “And work . . .” Her voice became very quiet and, for the first time, Hannah heard a bitterness in it. “Because work macht frei.”
“And because he enjoys it!” added Leye, coming over to see why they were not working.
“But do not let them hear you use the word death. Do not let them hear you use the word corpse. Not even if one lies at your feet,” Rivka warned. “A person is not killed here, but chosen. They are not cremated in the ovens, they are processed. There are no corpses, only pieces of drek, only shmattes, rags.”
“But why?” asked Hannah.
“Why?” Leye said. “Because what is not recorded cannot be blamed. Because that is what they want. So that is how it must be. Quickly, back to work.”
No sooner had they begun scrubbing again than the door to the hospital opened and Commandant Breuer emerged, still smiling, but broader this time. As he and his aide passed by, Hannah could see the paper on the clipboard was now covered with numbers and names.
The commandant reminded her of someone. A picture perhaps. A moving picture. She’d seen a smiling face like that somewhere.
“Dr. . . . Dr. Mengele,” she said suddenly. “The Angel of Auschwitz.” As suddenly as she knew it, the reference was gone.
“No,” Rivka said, puzzled, “his name is Breuer. Why did you say that?”
“I told you she says strange things,” Shifre put in.
/> Hannah looked down at her hands. They were trembling. “I don’t know why I said it. Am I becoming a musselman? Am I going mad?”
No one answered.
Gitl had been working in the sorting shed, where mountains of clothes and shoes, mounds of books and toys and household goods from the suitcases and bags were divided up. It was also the place where men and women could talk together, so there was a quick, quiet trading of information from the women’s camp to the men’s and back again.
That night, Gitl shared the news with the others of the zugangi barracks. “All the clothes and shoes in good condition go straight to Germany. And we get what is left. But look what I took for you, Chayaleh.” She held up a blue scarf.
“Organized. You organized it, Tante Gitl,” Shifre cried out, her hands up with delight.
The women all laughed, the first time such a sound had rippled through the barracks since they had arrived. “Yes, she organized it.”
Gitl looked up, pursed her lips for a moment, then smiled. “All right. I organized it.”
“How did you do it, Gitl?” someone called.
“You can bet she did not ask!” came an answer.
Gitl nodded, stretching the scarf between her hands. “Az m’fraygt a shyle iz trayf.”
Hannah translated mentally, “If you ask permission, the answer is no.” She remembered suddenly another phrase, from somewhere else, almost like it: “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.” She had a brief memory of it printed on something. Like a shirt.
“So,” said Esther’s mother, a self-satisfied look on her face, “we may be zugangi, but we already know how to organize.”
Esther looked longingly at the blue scarf, and hummed quietly to herself.
Gitl handed the scarf to Hannah. “To replace the blue ribbons,” she said softly.
“The blue ribbons?” For a moment, Hannah couldn’t remember them. Then she did.
“And because today is your birthday,” Gitl added.
“Her birthday!” cried Shifre. “You did not tell me.”
Hannah shook her head. “My birthday is . . . is in the winter. In . . . in February.” The word sat strangely on her mouth.
“What nonsense is this?” asked Gitl, her hands on her hips. “And what kind of word is February? They taught you to count the days by the Christian calendar in Lublin?” She turned to look at the women who were circled around them. “You think I do not know my own niece’s birthday? And did I send a present every year?”
“Of course you know,” a gray-haired woman called out.
“I remember the day she was born,” said another. “You told me in the synagogue, all happy with the idea. You were only thirteen, you said, and already an aunt.”
“So,” Gitl said, turning to face Hannah.
Her certainty overrode Hannah’s own. Besides, she asked herself, who knew what day it was, what year, in this place?
“Thank you, Gitl,” she whispered. “It’s the best present I’ve ever had, I think. The only one I remember, anyway.”
“Oh, my dear child,” Gitl said, pulling her close, “thank God that your father and mother are not alive to see you now.”
Caught in Gitl’s embrace, Hannah suddenly remembered the little house in the shtetl and the big, embracing arms of Shmuel. “What of Shmuel?” she said. “And Yitzchak? Are they . . . well?”
Gitl sat on a low shelf bed and pulled Hannah down next to her. The circle of women closed in, eager for news.
Gitl nodded. “Now listen. Shmuel is working with the crew that cuts wood, but it is all right. It is what he knows how to do and he is strong. With him are Yitzchak the butcher and Gedaliah and Natan Borodnik and their cousin Nemuel. Tzadik the cobbler is doing what he has always done, making shoes and belts. They have a cobbler’s shop there. He is making a fine pair of riding boots for the commandant. Size five.”
“That is a woman’s size!” Esther’s mother said with a laugh.
“Yes, and they have made up a little rhyme about it. Listen, I will tell it to you:
Breuer wears a lady’s shoe,
What a cock-a-doodle-do.
The women began to giggle; Hannah didn’t understand the humor.
Gitl held up her hand and the laughter stopped. “And from Viosk, Naftali the goldsmith is making rings on order for all the SS men. He is a very sick man but they like his work so much, they are leaving him alone.”
“And where does he get the gold?” asked a woman in a stained green dress.
“From the valises, idiot,” someone else answered.
“From our fingers,” Fayge said suddenly, the first time she had spoken in days. She held up her hands so that everyone could see that they were bare. “From our ears.”
“From our dead,” Gitl whispered. Hannah wondered whether anyone else heard her.
“What about the others?” Esther’s mother asked.
“I do not remember anything more,” Gitl said softly.
“What about the rabbi?” asked a woman with a harelip. “What about Rabbi Boruch?”
Gitl did not answer.
Fayge knelt down in front of her, putting her hands on Gitl’s skirt. “We are sisters, Gitl,” she said. “I am your brother’s wife. You must tell me about my father.”
Gitl closed her eyes and pursed her lips. For a long moment she did not speak, but her mouth opened and shut as if there were words trying to come out. At last she said, “Chosen. Yesterday. Boruch dayan emes.”
Fayge opened her mouth to scream. The woman in the green dress clapped her hand over Fayge’s mouth, stifling the scream, pulling her onto the sandy floor. Three other women wrapped their arms around her as well, rocking back and forth with her silent sobs.
“Chosen,” Gitl said explosively, her eyes still closed. “Along with Zadek the tailor, the badchan, the butcher from Viosk, and two dozen others. And the rendar.”
“Why?” asked Hannah.
“The rabbi was in the hospital. His heart was broken. Zadek, too. He had been beaten almost to death. The badchan because he chose to go. They say he said, ‘This is not a place for a fool, where there are idiots in charge.’ And the others whose names I do not remember for crimes I do not know. And the rendar . . .”
“With all his money he could not buy his way out?” asked Esther’s mother.
“In this place he is just a Jew, like the rest of us,” said Gitl. “Like the least of us.”
“He’s a shmatte now,” said Hannah, remembering Rivka’s word.
Gitl opened her eyes and slapped Hannah’s face without warning. “That may be camp talk out there, but in here, we say the prayer for the dead properly, like good Jews.”
“Gitl the Bear,” someone murmured.
Hannah looked up, hand on her smarting cheek. She could not find the speaker, so spoke to them all. “Gitl is right,” she said, her cheek burning. “Gitl is right.”
Gitl began reciting the Kaddish, rocking back and forth on the sleeping shelf with the sonorous words, and the prayer was like the tolling of a death bell. The rest joined her at once. Hannah found she was saying the words along with them, even though her mind didn’t seem to have any memory of the prayer: Yis-ga-dal v’yis-ka-dash sh’may ra-bo . . .
16
THE FIRST CHOOSING HAD BEEN THE HARDEST, HANNAH thought later. After that, it merely became part of the routine. And if you didn’t stand too near the Greeks or work too slowly or say the wrong word or speak too loudly or annoy a guard or threaten the blokova or stumble badly or fall ill, the chances were that this time you wouldn’t be Chosen. This time.
Part of her revolted against the insanity of the rules. Part of her was grateful. In a world of chaos, any guidelines helped. And she knew that each day she remained alive, she remained alive. One plus one plus one. The Devil’s arithmetic, Gitl called it.
And so one day eroded into the next. Her memories became camp memories only: the day a guard gave her a piece of sausage and asked for nothing in return. The
morning a new shipment of zugangi arrived. The morning a new shipment didn’t arrive. The afternoon Gitl organized a rope and the children all played jumping games after dinner. And that same night when red-headed Masha from Krakow hanged herself with the jump rope, having learned that her husband and seventeen-year-old son had gone up the smokestack.
It was on a sunny afternoon, as Hannah cleaned out cauldrons with Shifre, that Hannah asked dreamily, “What is your favorite food? If you could have anything in the world.”
They were in the tipped-over pots on their hands and knees, scraping off bits of burned potato that still clung stubbornly to the vast pot bottom.
Shifre backed out of the cauldron, wiping one dirty hand across her cheek. She thought a moment before answering. It was not a new question. They had been asking each other variations of the same thing for weeks.
“An orange, I think,” she said slowly. That was a change. Usually she said an egg.
“An orange,” Hannah echoed, pleased with the novelty. “I’d forgotten oranges.”
“Or an egg.”
“Boiled?”
“Or fried.” They were back to their regular conversation.
“Or scrambled?”
“Or an omelet.”
“How about . . . pizza!” Hannah said suddenly.
“What is pizza?” Shifre asked.
“It’s . . . it’s . . . I don’t know,” Hannah said miserably, fingers in her mouth, blurring the words. “I can’t remember. I can only remember potato soup.”
“You can remember eggs,” Shifre said.
“No, I can’t. Not pizza, not eggs either. Only potato soup and hard brown bread. That’s all I can remember.” She popped a piece of the burned potato scraping into her mouth.
“Well, do not cry over this pizza. Tell me about it.”
“I can’t,” Hannah said. “And I’m not crying over the thing, whatever it is. I’m crying because I can’t remember what it is. I can’t remember anything.”
“You can remember the shtetl,” Shifre said. “And Lublin.”