The Last Checkmate

by Gabriella Saab

  ARBEIT MACHT FREI.

  I pull Father Kolbe’s rosary from my pocket and pass my fingers over the pale blue beads. It’s worn from decades of use, but it’s one of my most treasured possessions. I close my hand around the silver crucifix, recalling the night Father Kolbe—now Saint Maksymilian Kolbe—pressed it gently into my palm. Those first weeks in Auschwitz were the darkest days of my life, but this rosary is from a man who gave a tortured girl the courage to live, fight, and survive.

  After tucking the rosary away, I draw a breath until the chilly air fills my lungs, warding off the reminders encroaching upon my mind. The memories will come. And when they do, I’ll face them.

  Visitors from all over the world file past, murmuring in their native tongues, taking photographs, asking questions, and listening to tour guides. Instead of continuing through the gate, I begin the journey three kilometers west, one I’ve made so many times before. A guide attempts to convince me to wait for the shuttle that travels between camps, but I shake my head. If I could walk this distance as a starved and battered child, I can walk it as a healthy, middle-aged woman.

  I reach the women’s sector in Birkenau and don’t stop until I’ve returned to my block. Unlike some of the other barracks, mine hasn’t been destroyed. A few tourists file out as I enter. I cross the uneven floor until I reach the top bunk where Hania and I spent so many nights, shivering and huddled together against the relentless cold. A rose and a stone rest on the wooden planks, both in remembrance of the dead.

  Taking a deep breath, I kneel before the loose brick and pull it free. The hand holding it is pale, yet flushed pink, slightly wrinkled and peppered with a few age spots, lined with remnants of old scars. This hand has clutched this brick so many times before; in those days, my hand was gray and cracked, covered in calluses, scrapes, and bruises, unrecognizable beneath layers of filth. How things have changed.

  Now that I’ve revealed the depression in the dirt, I look inside. There it is, exactly as I left it. The jewelry pouch I organized for my chess pieces.

  With shaking hands, I pour the pebbles and twigs into my palm. Each one is here. A wistful smile plays around my lips while I set up the game on my old bunk; then I return the pouch to its hiding place and re-cover it with the brick.

  I go back to the main camp, still on foot, but I stop before passing through the gate. Already I feel my heartbeat picking up its pace. I’m not certain I can make my feet continue. As I hesitate before the sign, two women appear on either side of me, and I don’t have to turn my head to recognize them. My heart will always recognize those who hold it together.

  “You didn’t have to come.”

  “And you don’t have to do this alone. We decided to give you the opportunity to change your mind.”

  A gentle warmth spreads over me, and I turn to Irena while she pushes a loose strand of hair away from her forehead. Her locks are dyed brown, a bit darker than what was once her natural color. According to Irena, the gray that has overtaken all of us makes her look old as hell. On my other side, Hania adjusts her raincoat. Her eyes, with wrinkles around the corners, glimmer even as they pierce the bleakness of this place. She won’t go even if I order her away.

  More footsteps greet my ears. When their owner reaches my side, I kiss his lips, but if I nestle into his embrace then I won’t have the strength to emerge from it. I pull back at once.

  “Maciek,” I start to say, but it’s all I manage before I meet his familiar blue eyes and the words catch in my throat. This gaze, the one that has always known me; this gaze, my refuge for so many difficult years, bringing moments of light into the darkness. This gaze and those moments, both found again when I set foot on American soil.

  “Did you really believe we’d stay in Warsaw while you came here alone?” Mateusz asks with a small smile. The humor fades when he brushes a gentle hand over my scarred shoulder and drops his voice. “We’ve shared so little, Maria. All of us. Isn’t it time for that to change?”

  He glances over his shoulder, and I follow his gaze to find our family waiting a few meters away. When we turn to them, Jakub and Adam, in the midst of conversing in Yiddish, fall silent. Izaak and my son, Maks, take in our surroundings with furrowed brows, while my daughter, Marta, stops pacing and faces us. Helena stands between Marta and Franz, and she takes a step closer.

  “We’ll look around on our own if you’d prefer, Aunt Maria, but we . . .” Although the words trail away, the look in her eyes is no different from the others.

  They don’t know why Aunt Hania struggled for so long to break her smoking habit or why Aunt Irena never removes the gold crucifix around her neck. Why Uncle Izaak occasionally sits alone, uttering faint whispers about how it could have been any of us. Why Uncle Franz insists that food should never be wasted, because they were skeletons, every one of them. Why Uncle Mateusz carries a faded scrap of paper in his wallet. Why Aunt Maria experiences debilitating headaches and sometimes wakes in the middle of the night, gasping Jawohl, Herr Lagerführer . . .

  Our children know so little when they long to know so much.

  Leaving me with a kiss on my cheek, Mateusz rejoins our group. When I look at the gate again, the twinge slips into my head, threatening to overtake me. The burdens are simultaneously too horrific to speak of and yet necessary to divulge. History is the grand master, and only by studying his game can the pupil learn and improve.

  I allow the twinge to pass before glancing between Irena and Hania. “You’ll stay with me?”

  Hania intertwines her arm with mine. “Have we ever left you, shikse?”

  Years ago, I confronted my past alone. Today I will face my past alongside those who helped me through it. Together, Irena, Hania, and I walk through the gate, and our family follows.

  We go slowly, relaying our experiences along the way. When we turn right toward the roll-call square, images of countless chess games and Fritzsch’s dead body flit through my mind, but they don’t torment me further. My feet know where to go as I traverse the rocky, uneven road and file past the familiar redbrick buildings.

  Inside Block 11, we descend the stairs to Cell 18. My family has heard many stories of Father Kolbe, but none from the time I spent visiting him in this cell. Conjuring the words is difficult at first; then they come, passing over my lips like rosary beads passing between my fingers. When I’m finished, everyone waits for me outside while I stay at the cell, holding Father Kolbe’s rosary, hearing his prayers and hymns that brought light and comfort into this place of darkness and despair. I reach into my handbag and pull out my childhood rosary, the one Irena recovered from my family’s apartment. I slip it through the bars. Father Kolbe gave me his, so it’s only fair that I return the favor.

  Once outside, we stand before Blocks 10 and 11, facing the courtyard’s open iron gate, where I stood on my first day here. The day I spoke to the prisoner filling the truck with bodies.

  The wall is there. It’s a new wall, because the original was taken down, and this one is covered with flowers, stones, prayer cards, and memorials. The gray structure stands out so prominently against the red bricks. As we enter the courtyard, their names echo with every step.

  Mama. Tata. Zofia. Karol. Father Kolbe.

  We pause a few meters away from the wall, and I close my eyes. How I miss them.

  “Oh, excuse me.” The apology comes from an American girl who had obscured my view in her efforts to photograph the wall. She steps back, seeming unaware that my eyes were closed anyway.

  “It’s all right,” I reply in English, and her eyes widen. My English is decent, but despite the many years I’ve spent in America I can’t shake the heavy Polish accent that accompanies my words. Hania takes great pleasure in pretending that my English is as poor as my Yiddish.

  The girl looks to my forearm, where I’ve unwittingly pushed up my sleeve to brush my fingers over my cigarette-burn scars. When she notices my tattoo, her eyes widen even more. I study her while she studies me. She’s so young.


  “How old are you?”

  Startled, she looks down, perhaps embarrassed to have been caught staring, but the gentleness in my tone must assure her I’m not angry. She tucks a loose strand of blond hair behind her ear and answers in a shy voice. “Fourteen.”

  I run my thumb over my prisoner number, 16671. “So was I.”

  The girl hovers near my family and watches as I approach the wall. Once there, I reach into my handbag and push aside the folded striped uniform. I usually keep it in a box at home, but I wanted it with me today. Beneath the familiar garment, I find what I’m looking for—a copy of the family portrait Irena saved so many years ago. On the back, I’ve written our names, birthdays, and the date of my family’s execution. I have their rosaries with me, too.

  Some say the life I led for almost four years wasn’t a life at all, but I don’t believe that. It wasn’t a life I’d wish upon anyone, but it was still a life. My life. And my life was worth fighting for.

  Even after all this time, it hasn’t felt over. Not really. But now, standing in this place, this place that was the most vicious opponent I’ve ever faced, the game I played here is drawing to an end. It’s time to make my final play.

  I kneel and place my family portrait in front of the wall, and I weight it down with the remaining four rosaries and a pebble from my chess set. A pawn. I offer a prayer for my family, Father Kolbe, the Jews, and all who suffered and lost their lives during that terrible, terrible war. Irena and Hania join me on either side. As I take their hands and stand up, I wait for the headache, the trembles, the memories, but, for now, they don’t come.

  Checkmate.

  Author’s Note

  THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS extremely important information and significant spoilers. I implore you to read it, but not until you have read the book. You have been warned!

  First, allow me to clarify that the Auschwitz portrayed in this novel is not an entirely factual representation of the camp. To study Auschwitz, I relied heavily on Danuta Czech’s Auschwitz Chronicle and Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum’s Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, but I took various creative liberties for story purposes, some detailed below. My hope is that this book will encourage you to dive deeper into history. Auschwitz is where real people—more than a million of them—lived, suffered, and died, the overwhelming majority being European Jews. My own two feet have walked its grounds, and I have no words to describe the experience—the sorrow, cruelty, and injustice, yet the bravery and resilience of the victims. Sadly, some claim the Holocaust never happened, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary and eyewitnesses who still live. Bear in mind, the Second World War ended less than eighty years before the time of this book’s publication. That is not very long ago. Please look to survivors, their testimonies, and listen and learn from them. Please turn to experts who have dedicated their lives to educating the world on these horrors—the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and many others. Please do not forget.

  This book began with Saint Maksymilian Kolbe, one of my favorite saints. Father Kolbe was a Conventual Franciscan friar and Polish Catholic priest who sheltered Jews in his monastery and published anti-Nazi materials. He was arrested and sent to Auschwitz in 1941; beginning in 1939, Auschwitz was a labor camp for male political prisoners before the Final Solution—the Nazi’s plan for the genocide of the Jews—was implemented in 1942, transforming it into an extermination camp for Jews. According to eyewitness testimony, Father Kolbe was a positive, supportive influence on his fellow inmates and ultimately offered his life for one of ten men chosen by the camp deputy, Karl Fritzsch, to starve to death in reprisal for another inmate’s escape. I learned so much about him through Patricia Treece’s biography, A Man for Others. This novel came to me as the idea of a young female prisoner visiting Father Kolbe in Block 11, Cell 18, where he spent two weeks without food or water before being murdered by lethal injection. This girl had an intense need to be with him, so much so that she was willing to risk this visit, to try to comfort him as, I sensed, he had comforted her. Because women were not imprisoned in Auschwitz until March 1942, when the first transport of Jewish women arrived, I asked myself if I could come up with a way to make this impossible scenario possible.

  As I got to know my fictional Polish resistance member, Maria, I studied Church of Spies by Mark Riebling. The Vatican’s position on Nazism remains heavily disputed, but this fascinating account is rich with primary sources detailing work Pope Pius XII did in secret to combat the Nazis and overthrow Hitler—though his intended plot ultimately failed. To learn more about occupied Warsaw and the Polish resistance, I relied on Irena’s Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto by Tilar J. Mazzeo, the story of a Polish woman named Irena Sendler who smuggled Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto and is credited with saving more than two thousand five hundred lives. Through Sendler’s work, she crossed paths with Mother Matylda Getter and the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary. Although many of the details included about the sisters and resistance are factual, my portrayal has been condensed and fictionalized for story purposes.

  Maria told me very quickly that she was a chess player, and I soon realized that chess would play a central role in her story. By diving into chess history, I discovered women such as Vera Menchik, who won the first Women’s World Chess Championship in 1927, defended this title six times, and, in 1944, was killed alongside her sister and mother in a V-1 bombing attack on London. She was thirty-eight years old and remains the record holder as Women’s World Chess Champion, with a seventeen-year title. In researching Auschwitz, I learned about Maria Mandel’s prized creation: the Women’s Orchestra, comprising Jewish women who were spared death but forced to entertain their captors through music and play for roll calls, selections, transports, and executions. I combined these concepts for my reasoning behind why Maria, a girl sent to Auschwitz while it was a prison camp for men, would be spared: the camp deputy, Karl Fritzsch, described by historians as a man who resented authority and often broke rules, was not always under the watchful eye of Kommandant Rudolf Höss, who was a firm believer in order and obeying superiors, as indicated in his autobiography, Commandant of Auschwitz. In my story, Fritzsch rebels by registering Maria, a female, so he can force her to play chess to entertain the SS guards.

  When the reader first meets Maria in April 1945, Auschwitz has already been evacuated—before being liberated by the Red Army—but the war is not over, as it did not end until May. She returns to Auschwitz for a final chess game against Fritzsch, seeking to confirm what she discovered during her imprisonment—that Fritzsch murdered her family. After the Soviets liberated Auschwitz in January 1945, the Red Cross cared for prisoners and took them to hospitals and displaced-persons’ camps. Auschwitz did not officially become a museum until 1947, thanks to the efforts of, among others, Kazimierz Smoleń, a survivor. Following liberation, many former prisoners returned to the camp seeking family or friends. In other cases, “diggers,” as they were called, came seeking valuables, so a protective guard—made up of, among others, former inmates interested in preserving the camp as a historical site—was eventually set up to watch over the camp and its artifacts. When that guard was established, I’m not certain, but I was compelled by the piece that mentioned prisoners seeking family and friends—or, in Maria’s case, news of the circumstances surrounding their deaths, because she already knows their fate.

  As for whether or not there was a time when the camp was completely abandoned, the simple answer is I’m not sure, so this is a fictionalization on my part. From a dramatic perspective, I wanted this pivotal scene to take place in Auschwitz for obvious reasons. This is where Maria and Fritzsch met, where she lost her family, and where she went through a horrific, life-altering experience that left her with crippling PTSD, which is severely triggered by returning, far more than she bargains for. Also, with Karl Fritzsch described by eyewitness
es and historians as a man fond of psychological torture, I was certain he would like nothing more than to bring Maria back to Auschwitz to further remind her of what she’d suffered at his hand. Finally, considering that there was a gap between Auschwitz’s liberation in January 1945 and the end of the war in May, it left me wondering if, during that time, maybe a few prisoners like Maria had recovered enough to return seeking family or friends, but maybe the protective guard had not been set up yet, and maybe former inmates had not thought about preserving the camp and its artifacts, thus giving Maria and Fritzsch the ability to return to this space without interference.

  Another more obvious liberty, as noted, was imprisoning a girl in a men’s camp. Non-Jews were not subjected to a selection process as Jews were; however, in these smaller, earlier transports prior to the Final Solution, most men were spared. A few exceptions—including men unable to perform hard labor and a rare handful of women or children sent with the men or arrested in surrounding towns—were shot at the death wall in the courtyard between Blocks 10 and 11. By contrast, later, massive transports of Jewish men, women, and children were heavily scrutinized and the unfit sent to gas chambers. I made Maria’s transport larger and busier than it likely would have been historically, making it easier for Maria to stray from her family.

  When women first arrived at Auschwitz in spring 1942, they were given their own numbering system and kept in separate blocks in the main camp before moving to the women’s sector in Birkenau when the camp was expanded. I learned much about what those first women experienced from Rena’s Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz by survivor Rena Kornreich Gelissen with Heather Dune Macadam. Maria arrives in 1941, during a time when women and girls would have been executed.

  I felt that it was only right for a Jewish woman to be the lone female prisoner in the camp before Maria’s registration, a small, symbolic way to recognize and commemorate that the first female inmates were Jewish. This led me to Hania. Regarding Hania’s registration, I created an SS guard whose prominent, fictional German family name gives him significant power, so he secures permission to register her (after she offers to prostitute herself to him in exchange for her life). Many women used their bodies for survival, often with prisoners in positions of authority rather than with SS guards. I wanted Hania involved with a guard to heighten the stakes, because this would have defied race defilement laws, and to demonstrate how much she was willing to risk to survive for her sons. She and Maria are housed with men and given prisoner numbers in the same groupings as the men’s. The first female transport received the uniforms of executed Soviet POWs, not the blue-and-gray-striped garbs commonly recognized as camp uniforms. I put my characters in stripes for symbolic purposes. Since the series of numbers for women had not been created yet, Hania’s number comes from a transport of twenty-seven prisoners registered on April 18, 1941, sent by the Gestapo from various cities. Warsaw is not mentioned, but I took creative liberty. Maria’s number is consecutive with Father Kolbe’s. I reasoned that Fritzsch wouldn’t go to the trouble of granting separate quarters or establishing different number sequences for two women who, frankly, should have been dead, and whom he doesn’t expect to survive long.