Edek only smiled sadly. “I have no hard feelings for Szymlak. He made a promise he thought he could keep, but when it came to reality… Many people think they’re braver than they are until they’re faced with a decision that will show them what they are or aren’t capable of. He had a family; he’d explained it all to me. If it was just him, it would have been an entirely different matter. But you know how the Nazis retaliate.”
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” Jakub asked.
Edek regarded him for a moment. “Is it possible for me to see Mala one last time? Just for a few minutes.”
Jakub considered the request. “I’m not promising anything, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“How are they…” Edek’s voice betrayed him, trailed off. “How is she holding up?”
For a few moments, Jakub seemed to search for the right words. It was Block 11, the personal kingdom of the Political Department butchers, built with the sole purpose to torture information out of its prisoners, to bleed the words out of them, to break them into betraying their accomplices. It was a prison within a prison, an extermination facility within an extermination facility—how could Mala possibly be treated by the Gestapo sadists in one of its dingy cells? “She’s a very brave and a very strong young woman,” he announced at last in a still and grave voice. “She told them she would die before they’d get a word out of her.”
Edek’s lips quivered. He tried so desperately to hold it together, but at the last moment his face twisted into a painful grimace and he broke down in tears. “All because of me.” He sobbed. “Because of me and my stupidity. I should have never risked her life in such a reckless manner. I had no right.”
Jakub lowered his palm on Edek’s shoulder and squeezed it lightly. “You didn’t force her into anything. That was a choice she made herself.”
“I wish she had never met me.”
A sad smile appeared on Jakub’s face. “Last night, I smuggled coffee and cake into her cell. You know what she told me? That meeting you was the best thing that has happened to her and that she regretted nothing. Not a damned thing, you hear me?”
Edek nodded, weeping harder.
Hauptscharführer Moll, acting as a temporary aide to Political Department interrogator Boger, leaned over Mala, boring his gaze into her. The wire holding her wrists together behind the chair was cutting painfully into her skin but, oddly enough, she found the pain almost empowering. The more they hit her, the more resilient she was growing, baring her bloodied teeth at them in a snarl and almost challenging them to hit her harder.
“Make no mistake, I have made the toughest Sonderkommando men under my charge cry like little babies,” Moll hissed his threat. “And I specifically asked to be assigned as one of your interrogators. Burning stiffs gets boring after a while. They don’t react much, as one should expect. But you, Mally, I shall make sing. Even your protector Hössler won’t save your sorry behind this time.”
Mala’s broken lips twisted into a vicious grin. What started like a ghostly quiet chuckling soon transformed into full-blown laughter. Witches must have laughed in their inquisitors’ faces centuries ago, Mala realized, as the sound was wrenched from her. In spite of himself, Moll pulled slightly back.
“I somehow doubt that boastful claim. You can’t even make a tiny slip of a girl like me talk!” Mala’s hysterical laughter echoed around the walls. “A girl, who is tied to a chair, no less. Tell me this: does it make you feel more like a man when you hit a woman? Do you feel strong and powerful when you strike someone who can’t strike back? Do you feel proud of yourself? Do you go home to your wife and boast to her how big of a man you are after you spent your day slapping about a girl tied to a chair? Or do you hit her too, just to teach her who’s in charge of the house?”
Moll straightened completely and took a step back, pale and visibly unnerved.
“Tell me, why aren’t you on the front? Why aren’t you fighting someone who can fight back?” Mala narrowed her eyes. “I’ll tell you exactly why. Because you’re a coward. Men like you never challenge anyone who is even remotely strong enough to fight back. You’re a school bully, who only picks on small defenseless children. You’re a wife-beater, who can only feel like a man if his entire family is in fear of him. You’re a member of the troop that doesn’t even fight real wars, but burns corpses behind the gas chambers and beats helpless inmates tied to chairs and who can’t hit you back. You’re a coward. You’re a pathetic, quivering nothing and I despise you and all of your comrades who hide behind political slogans and fight political wars simply because they don’t have the balls to pick up a real weapon and step onto a real battlefield. I’ll slap you still, Herr Hauptscharführer. You mark my words, I’ll slap you in front of the entire camp and that’s how they shall remember me.”
Breathing heavily, teeth still bared, she slumped back into the chair, exhausted with effort but pleased with the effect it had produced.
Much to Mala’s satisfaction, she saw that Moll’s entire body was shaking, either in indignation or something quite different. Fear. She could almost smell it on him, just like she smelled the copper scent of her own blood that had filled the interrogation cell many hours ago.
“Take that insolent bitch back to her cell!” he roared at his subordinates. “No water and no food! I want her to starve until the day she hangs.” He stared at Mala with his only good eye that rolled wildly with rage. The glass one was dead, as Moll’s soul must have been. “I will personally put that noose on your neck, Jew-bitch.”
“I promised that I would slap you in front of the entire camp.” Mala smiled viciously at him. “It would simply break my heart if you missed our date and delegated the responsibility to someone else.”
Curled in the corner of his cell, Edek tried to forget himself in a fitful sleep when the door to his cell opened. It was Jakub.
“Pick up your tail, lad, and put yourself into a presentable state. Your lady friend is waiting.”
The SS had been hitting his bare soles with a metal rod for several hours that day in the hope of untying his tongue, just to fail miserably, but at once Edek leapt up, forgetting all about the pain. “Jakub, if you’re joking…”
“I don’t jest with such holy things.” The Kapo dunked a rag he’d brought into a bucket filled with water that stood in the cell and began to clean Edek’s wounds with utmost gentleness. “Those SS bastards are having a little party upstairs. Our friends from the underground managed to bribe one of them with a whole case of brandy, which he, naturally, decided to share with his comrades. Kostek, I think he said his name was, the fellow who brought it here. He’s from the Sonderkommando, he said.”
“Yes.” Edek smiled warmly.
“Well, you can thank him for his efforts and all others for donating to the good cause. It was them who arranged your date.”
Not quite believing his luck, his head swimming with nerves and excitement, Edek followed Jakub along the dimly lit corridor that smelled of mold and damp earth.
When the Kapo unlocked Mala’s cell, just as musty and dark, his heart exploded with joy. She threw herself on his neck and covered his face with kisses. Her cheeks were bruised and swollen; her lips were torn; blood was caked in the corners of her mouth and yet she was beaming at him with those broken lips as though the mere sight of him had wiped away her pain once and for all.
“Mala—”
“Shh, not a word about it.” She was smiling radiantly at him and brushing his hair with infinite tenderness. “I’m so happy to see you.”
“Mala, I don’t know if you will ever forgive me—”
“I said, not a word about it. I have nothing to forgive you for.”
He shook his head. “Because of me, you will now…”
Die.
What a terrible thought; what a terrible word—he couldn’t force himself to utter it out loud.
Still, Mala understood and smiled gently at him. In the pallid, yellowish light, her eyes shone like two pre
cious gemstones—hard, golden, full of life despite the death sentence hanging over their heads. “You gave me something to die for. You gave me hope. We gave everyone hope. Didn’t you hear? Kapo Jakub says the entire camp is talking about us. The entire camp will continue our battle, long after we’re gone.”
“Mala, no…” A sob of pure torment tore from his chest. All of a sudden, the very thought of a world in which Mala’s brave heart was no longer beating was too much to bear. Silent, impotent tears spilled down his unshaven cheeks as he cradled her in his arms, burying his face in her hair, inhaling the scent of her skin, trying to clutch at something precious that would soon perish, robbing humankind of its light. Without uttering a word, he wept—desperate, helpless, slowly dying on the inside with every breath he took. “I should have never asked you to run; I had no right to risk your life in such a reckless manner—”
She tossed her head impatiently at that. “Quit it this instant. You didn’t force me into anything. My entire life I have decided everything for myself. This was my decision also. Mine and mine alone. And besides, what are you asking my forgiveness for? For the nights we spent under the sky full of stars? For the roads we traveled together? For the dreams we shared at least for a few weeks? For making me believe that a future with you was possible? Would you really rather leave me here alone and rob me of sharing all of those precious moments with you?” She shook her head with mock-reproach, her fingers warm and loving around the back of his neck, caressing him gently, tangling themselves in his hair matted with blood. “What we had, I would not trade for anything. Even my safety, my life—it’s simply not worth it without you in it; you understand?”
He nodded, pressing his forehead against hers. He could barely see through the film of tears.
“I regret nothing,” Mala repeated with a smile that tore at Edek’s heart. “I lived a good life and I’ll die a good death. I’m happy, Edek. Look into my eyes. I am. And it’s all thanks to you.”
He covered her mouth with his and for a few short instants, the entire world stood still. The earth itself had come to a halt to make way for their kiss.
Thirty-Six
Birkenau. Two weeks later
The verdict was out. He was to be hanged tomorrow. Edek had already seen the solitary gallows—crude but deathly effective—erected next to the inmates’ kitchen block, close to where the large water tank stood. He had no illusions concerning his fate. The SS weren’t known for granting pardons at the last moment.
Alone in a small room next to the kitchen block, for Birkenau didn’t have a punishment block, Edek sat and contemplated his very short yet very eventful life. The bitterness and anger at the unfairness of it all had passed. His breathing was no longer shallow and frantic, like that of a cornered animal. With his head against the stone wall, Edek sat and stared at the only barred window, at the stars that would still be there long after he was gone, at the soft velvet night, at the slice of moon that bathed his last residence in cool silver light.
Just a month ago, he and Mala had lain in the field near the barn, her head on his shoulder, her hair smelling sweetly of hay. He’d promised her the entire world that night and, for a few hours, he had kept his promise; Mala had told him that much during their last meeting at the punishment bunker.
Mala.
With a nail he’d discovered on the floor of his cell in Block 11, he’d inscribed her name and number and his own right next to it. Mala Zimetbaum 19880 + Galiński Edward 531 + 6.VII.44. Edek wished he had something sharp to scratch her name into the wall of this little room as well, but the floor had been swept clean and so, he whispered it instead—Mala, Mala, Mala—fervently, almost religiously, his very last prayer to the only goddess he’d ever worshipped.
Alone in the cellar of the camp administration building, Mala was studying a piece of razor blade in her hand. Jakub was kind enough to give it to them during their last meeting. That way, they could cut off locks of their hair and pass that sad memento to Wiesław in a note that bore their names and numbers, so that Wiesław would pass it to Edek’s or Mala’s father—whoever was alive. Overcome with emotion, Jakub didn’t notice that the blade she had returned to him had been broken in two, its second half hidden carefully in the seam of Mala’s skirt.
She sat by the wall, a soon-to-be-martyr surrounded by a pool of silver moonlight, and contemplated her much-too-short life and inevitable death. Its dark shape slumbered in the darkest corner, but Mala had no fear of its ghostly breath. Hers was a good, honorable death; a noble warrior’s death—the death of a freedom fighter who lived and loved fearlessly and would die the same way.
Looking back at the years of her youth—eternal youth, for she would never mature, never grow older and wiser—Mala smiled serenely at the pictures of the past, her eyes without tears in them, clear and bright. Yes, she only had hours left to live, but she was infinitely soothed by the thought that she had no regrets whatsoever and no desire to change a single thing about the choices she’d made, the paths she had traveled, the beliefs she’d stood up for… the people she’d loved.
Edek.
A gentle smile appeared on her face when she thought back to the day when she first met him.
He’d brought her nails.
She gave him her heart in return.
That was her only regret—being robbed of the time they could have shared, the battles they could have fought, the celebration of honesty, human decency, and universal love that would undoubtedly triumph over hatred, nationalism, and bigotry. But even that regret failed to dim the light in Mala’s gaze. She’d lived; she’d loved; she’d fought side by side with her loved ones. In her eyes, it was more than enough.
The day dawned mercilessly beautiful, with a mother-of-pearl sky tinted blue and a warm breeze, soft and tender like a woman’s last caress. Inside Edek’s holding cell, camp Kapo Jupp finished binding Edek’s wrists with a wire.
“Not too tight, is it?” he inquired, looking oddly funereal that day.
“No,” Edek lied. “It’s just fine.”
Jupp brought him outside, to the sunlit square where the entire men’s camp appeared to have been assembled. Desperate eyes full of grief followed his every step. Old comrades stood in the very first rows. Like an honorary guard, the Sonderkommando men formed the vanguard, shoulder to shoulder, chins up, eyes right, with Kostek as their leader saluting Edek, the resistance martyr, with his gaze. In the next row, Jurek from the admissions block stood pale and trembling, crushing his inmate’s striped cap in his nervous fingers. Recognizing Jerzy-the-giant, Edek nodded to him, thanking him silently for his help and friendship and wishing him better luck in escaping death. Not a single muscle moved on the Pole’s face; only tears rolled down his cheeks, endless streams of profound grief. Among the Russians, Wiesław stood, ashen-faced and sobbing without shame, without restraint.
Edek ascended the gallows, tall and proud, and himself climbed the stool that was positioned under the noose. He felt rough rope touching his cheek and looked straight ahead.
“Attention!” an SS man bellowed.
The second one began reading out the sentence, but Edek wasn’t planning on listening to that circus. Making use of both guards’ turned backs, he pulled his head through the noose and kicked the stool from under himself.
One by one, the inmates removed their hats, pressing them against their chests. The SS scrambled to pull Edek out, shouted at the prisoners to put their blasted caps on, there was no such order, they’d make them all stand Stehappell for that, they should just wait and see…
Yet no one budged. The SS raged in their powerless ire, threatened with retributions and beatings, but no one listened. Edek showed them something that day. He showed them that the resistance was very much an option and that dying as a free man was better than living as an animal.
Their eyes were riveted to the gallows.
The powers had shifted.
The end was near.
The end of the Nazis.
&nb
sp; A gentle wind caressed Mala’s hair. Fearless and proud, she faced the crowd of women—the entire women’s camp, it seemed—some of them weeping openly. Her dark hair shifting in the breeze, Zippy stood in the front row with her kerchief pressed against her mouth to silence her sobs. At the sight of her quivering shoulders, Mala smiled at her tenderly, apologetically. Forgive me for leaving you just like Alma had left you… Neither of us had a choice. But you’re strong; you’ll survive; you’ll leave this place and tell the stories of the ones who didn’t.
In front of Mala, Mandl was reading out her sentence, her voice oddly soft and shaking slightly, as though tinged with guilt for being an accomplice in her former favorite secretary’s execution.
A dark smile on her face, Mala was secretly cutting the ties on her wrists behind her back and then, as soon as she was free at last, her wrists themselves. She felt no pain, only a rush of strange, triumphant exhilaration at the thought of sticking it to the Nazis when they least expected it—perhaps her last act as a free person, but the act of someone who resisted them to the very end.
A few moments later, blood ran freely onto the gallows. In the crowd, someone gasped. The warden that stood on the ground just by the gallows noticed it first and shrieked, calling Moll’s attention.
He turned to Mala, stunned. Her grin transforming into a vicious snarl, she slapped him hard across the face, leaving a bloodied print on his immaculately shaven cheek.
“You shall never wash it off!” Her voice roared, carried far above the parade ground, sending chills down everyone’s spine. “I’m going today, but you’ll be standing in my place soon enough. Just like I promised that I would slap you, I now promise you this.” Another resounding slap, this time with her left hand.
The Girl Who Escaped from Auschwitz: A totally gripping and absolutely heartbreaking World War 2 page-turner, based on a true story Page 30