Forever Fleeting

by Bret Kissinger

  Wilhelm went over the numbers. If Rudolph’s wife was roughly the same age as Rudolph, she must have spent most of her adult life pregnant.

  The camp was subject to non-stop noise, whether it was the nearly hundred conversations, the humming of generators, tanks rolling by or planes flying overhead. It was doubtful Wilhelm would be able to sleep.

  “How could you afford twelve children?” Jonas asked.

  It was a personal question but Jonas, although younger, was not worried if Rudolph took offense. It was hard to be intimidated by a man so thin.

  “It was tough. You three must have been too young to really know what it was like. People were burning useless money. Living in alleyways. France, Great Britain, the Americans—they all blamed the war on us. We didn’t shoot that Duke. One man did. They took our country and split it among the winners like hyenas tearing bits of flesh from a wounded prey. We’re taking it back now,” Rudolph said. He hit the butt of his Gewehr 41 rifle into the dirt to signify where they now sat. “This isn’t France anymore. It’s Germany. This is German soil now.”

  French or German, it was still only soil. Soil thousands had already died for.

  “I personally do not feel like dying for dirt,” Höring stated.

  Wilhelm and Jonas smiled. Rudolph took slight offense. He was a member of the SS and a devout believer in all that they were doing.

  “Glory is not free. It requires blood,” Rudolph said.

  “And dirt apparently,” Höring joked.

  Wilhelm tried to meet Höring’s gaze and give him a warning look. Rudolph outranked them both, and Höring was playing on the line of disrespect. Even though Rudolph was little more than skin and bones, it was the insignia on his uniform that was to be feared. Rudolph’s mouth opened.

  “Incoming!” a voice yelled.

  Wilhelm and the others arched their heads to the sky. Bombs showered the earth like meteors. The planes overhead were not German. They were French. The ground exploded with hellfire and sent bodies catapulting through the air. As Wilhelm and the others sprinted for cover, one exploded within twenty feet of them. The blast knocked them over. A high-pitch whistle shrieked in Wilhelm’s head. Sounds were warped and distorted. The blasted-up earth fell back down like hail, and a large portion landed on Wilhelm’s chest. He grabbed the clump of earth by the grass on it. He lifted it, but to his horror, it was not grass he held nor a clump of dirt—it was hair and a human head. Rudolph’s dead eyes stared into Wilhelm’s. He had been blasted in half. His torso was feet away and his legs, even further. His entrails were wrapped around Höring like a squid.

  The sky lit up with what looked like fireworks as the Luftwaffe fired at the French air fleet. It was almost beautiful the way the gunfire lit up the sky, but the reality was much more terrifying. Planes that were shot down plummeted and crashed into the ground. Wilhelm’s hearing slowly returned, and the lip-syncing of an officer formed audible words. But Wilhelm could only stare at Rudolph. Moments earlier, he had been speaking about his family. Seconds later, he was dead—nothing but a pile of blasted-apart bits of flesh and bone. When the shock wore off, he threw Rudolph’s head aside. He was disgusted at how carelessly and with such disregard he had treated Rudolph’s body. Höring grabbed Wilhelm’s arm and forced him to cover behind one of the trucks.

  “The bombers have run their course! We are safe now!” an Oberscharführer shouted, but his words were drowned out by the buzzing and firing from the sky.

  Wilhelm’s eyes scanned the battlefield. It was not just Rudolph who had been killed. At least twenty-five had fallen, and as medics rushed past with the injured, it was obvious the final fatality total would be much higher. But Wilhelm could only think of the twelve children who were now fatherless and Rudolph’s widowed wife.

  “When your number’s up, your number is up,” Höring said.

  Arbeit Macht Freit

  The relief the screeching train brought quickly turned into worry. Exactly where had the train brought them? The unknown was terrifying. The door roared like a lion as it slid open. Blinding sunlight barged in through the door and struck the back corner of the train, and even with dozens of people ahead of her, it still caused Hannah to close her eyes.

  “Out! Quickly!” a voice yelled, repeating the command like a mantra.

  The train emptied, and Hannah and Eleanor were able to move toward the exit. People were pulled and dragged off the train. It was impossible not to notice the twenty who had died. Hannah and Eleanor were both cautious of where they stepped. The fresh air from outside was welcomed. The inside of the train had been nothing short of purely putrid. As Hannah stepped off, it was obvious her train car had not been an anomaly. It had been the status quo. Hundreds of people stepped off the cars.

  “Form lines! Your places will be determined shortly. Men, one line! Women, another! Form lines!” an SS officer commanded in German.

  Nearly eighty percent had no idea what was being said. The passengers searched for their family members or for someone who spoke their language and could explain what the Germans were shouting. The Nazi guards, with German Shepherds, formed a line to bottleneck the passengers in one direction. Soldiers pushed the elderly and young children into lines. Infants were ripped from their mother’s arms. Mothers were put into separate lines from fathers. Nazi workers marched through the lines, taking away the possessions of those who still had any.

  Hannah clutched her book bag tightly and tried to hide it between her and Eleanor, but a woman guard snatched it from her and threw it toward a cascading pile by the train. Her camera, no doubt, had broken. The suitcases, knapsacks, and bags were tossed from the train cars. The numbered tags had indeed been a ploy. German Shepherds barked, daring people to run. The two lines were massive, and Hannah tried to determine what they meant. It appeared random in their selection but, like those taken during the searches, they were certainly not random. The Nazis did nothing randomly. There was a method and a formula with an answer yet to be seen.

  “What is happening?” Hannah asked.

  “I don’t know,” Eleanor answered.

  Shouting from a dozen languages broke out. Family members tried to rejoin each other in different lines but were pushed back. Children either cried or were too young to know what was going on and played with one another. The two lines branched apart. One went left, and the other went right. Several officers were taking down what appeared to be registration numbers. The line again forked.

  “Women to the right. Men to the left,” another guard shouted.

  Huge crates were overflowing with eyeglasses and another with rings, earrings, and jewelry. Women unwilling to part from their wedding rings had them yanked off. Hannah concealed her ring, but a hand seized her charm necklace and snapped the chain. When Hannah reached to reclaim it, her ring flashed, and the woman guard grabbed her wrist and wrenched the ring from her finger. Eleanor took one last look at her own ring. The two rings were tossed into the crate of thousands. The ring that had been in Hannah’s family for generations was gone. Even if the guards told her she could reclaim it, it would take days to sort through the crate.

  “Just a ring, Hannah. It can be replaced,” Eleanor said.

  Hannah was terrified and confused, but she knew Eleanor was the type of person she should surround herself with. She had a flame of encouragement, strength, and resolve, and Hannah clung to it like a moth to a flame.

  An SS woman handed out rectangular pieces of paper with registration numbers on it. She wrote the next number and gave it to Hannah. The number “19653” was written in black ink. Hannah followed those ahead of her, everything happening too quickly to fully understand. A man with stone-cold hands grabbed her left arm and twisted it so hard that Hannah grimaced. He stabbed a single-needle device into her flesh and carved into her arm. Each poke was like a wasp sting as he tattooed in black ink the number “19653.” Her blood turned black and the area around the skin, red. He finished the tattoo with a small black triangle underneath the
number—it was to permanently mark Hannah as a Jew. She would never be able to hide it again. Her forearm throbbed and continued to redden and bleed.

  The guards kept yelling for them to hurry and move. Hannah and Eleanor were pushed into another room. The women undressed and laid their clothes on tables. Both men and women, in striped pajamas, pulled the clothing over the women’s heads to speed up the process. They were called Kapos (prison workers).

  Hannah had found it extremely uncomfortable to go to the bathroom in a bucket in front of people, and this was even worse. But she realized every woman in the room was equally terrified and worried as she was. After stripping nude, the women sat on benches, and the Nazis or Kapos cut their hair to almost a shaved length. Women cried as their hair was cut and fell at their feet. A Kapos pushed Hannah on her shoulders, forcing her onto a wooden bench. The Kapos grabbed a handful of her hair and nearly yanked it out. The scissors were dull, and they sawed her hair more than they cut. It was superficial, but she loved her hair. It was a part of who she was and how others viewed her. Tears trickled down her face as her blonde hair fell. She lost a part of what made her a woman. She trembled from both fear and cold. She was yanked off the bench and pushed forward toward a large shower room. Hannah ran her fingers across her head to feel it. The length of hair that fell short of her shoulders and she had habitually run her fingers through was now gone. The showers were clouded in steam, and the water struck her body like shards of glass but switched to scalding and back to freezing without warning or middle ground. Eleanor was at the shower beside Hannah, and though she tried to exude strength, there was no way she too did not crumble inside.

  All the women looked the same. No hairstyles to differentiate them or allow them to express themselves. More Kapos handed out striped pajamas, wooden clogs, and a headscarf. The Kapos did not care what size was needed, and women tried to trade with one another. Hannah’s pajamas were a size too large and her clogs, a size too small.

  Eleanor and Hannah found each other and embraced in a hug. They had known each other for mere hours, but the immense worry, fear, and radical change in their life had to be shared with someone. They followed those ahead of them outside. They were still wet, their clothes sticking to their bodies, and the hot sun had set. To Hannah and the other thousands, it seemed as though the sun had set forever and abandoned them to the darkness of the camp. The masses were escorted toward a series of long buildings that looked like barns.

  “Welcome to Auschwitz,” the guard said, opening the door and stepping aside.

  As they were brought inside, it did little to change Hannah’s opinion it was a barn. Rows of beds, three-rows high, stretched the length of the barn. The mattresses were stiff and torn and the pillows, flat. Hannah kept a look out for her mother amongst all the women, but her mother’s long, dark hair had surely been cut. It was impossible to decipher who a woman was without seeing her face. Like the train car, there were far too many people for the allotted beds, and the building smelt much like the train had.

  Hannah and Eleanor climbed onto the third bunk. People laid down head to feet. Also, like the train, going to the bathroom at night required going into a bucket. Sobs from almost everyone filled the barracks, and even though there were a hundred people inside them, Hannah had never been more alone in her entire life. She closed her eyes and pleaded with God that she was only stuck in a nightmare—a nightmare she would wake up from and find Wilhelm beside her and her parents at home. But every cough, every sneeze, and every whimper was amplified, and every person who rose from the bunks to use the bucket caused enough noise to break a light sleep. A woman grabbed the full bucket and moved outside to empty it. A loud bang caused the invisible hair on Hannah’s body to rise. The door to the barracks opened, and a tall handsome man with black eyes, like eyes of a great white shark, walked in holding up a dead woman with one arm.

  “I would like to remind you that no one is allowed outside the barracks after hours. Caught and you will be killed. No exceptions,” he announced. His hand was covered in a black leather glove and wrapped around the back of the woman’s neck. He released her, and her body dropped to the wooden floor.

  The barracks was closed, and the room went black once again. The name Standartenführer Usinger was whispered about. It appeared it was an unwritten rule about the barracks—the last one to fill the bucket must empty it, but at the risk of being shot. The barracks had no windows or lights but, instead, had a row of skylights at the top of the roof. Hannah stared at the few stars she could see. “I am anywhere,” she whispered to herself. She fixated her thoughts and her gaze on the few stars. Her gaze became so strong that she could no longer see the feet on either side of her face. Her breathing calmed down, and she powered her imagination to take her back to her apartment in Berlin. Her eyes closed, and she fell asleep not out of comfort, but sheer exhaustion.

  After what seemed like only seconds, a whistle blew, and she woke. Those who had been in the camp rose from the bed quickly. Hannah and Eleanor followed them, making sure not to be the last to leave. They followed the masses to another stable-type facility, only this one was the latrine. Circular holes—two across, spaced diagonally—ran the width of the building, and each was occupied. There was no toilet paper or sink or even water basin to wash hands. The longer-tenured prisoners did not give a second thought to using the open toilets, and even those who had arrived the previous night had been desensitized to it. The room was thick with a pungent foul smell with little ventilation to help clear it out. Hannah squatted over the hole and suppressed the urge to gag and cry. But the oddest thing was people mimicking showering motions.

  “What are they doing?” Hannah asked.

  The question was to no one in particular.

  “Try to clean … best … can,” a woman answered.

  It seemed ridiculous, even mad, but the human psyche was an odd thing. If literally dusting oneself off helped keep morale from dropping further, Hannah was in no position to criticize—only to learn.

  “First day?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” Hannah answered.

  “Stay close … me. Speak … German. Have chance … to live,” the woman said.

  Hannah and Eleanor followed in her wake. The woman had a strong odor to her, and she was nothing but bones. Her eyes protruded out in an alien way, and she was one of the oldest in the camp at what Hannah assumed was in her fifties. The woman was fortunate her scarf and shaved head concealed her gray hair.

  “I have been … for one year,” the woman said.

  Her German was rough, and her sentences were more like puzzle pieces than a full image but, still, Hannah and Eleanor were able to decipher what she was saying. Eleanor told the woman her and Hannah’s names and then asked for hers. It was Kitty, and she led Hannah and Eleanor, amongst the hundreds, for morning breakfast.

  “No lose bowl. Lose. No eat,” Kitty said, waving her finger in warning.

  The bowl was nothing but a silver cup with a handle. The workers ladled out of wooden barrels either imitation coffee or herbal tea into the bowls. Breakfast was a word that encapsulated many different foods from pastries, eggs, hash browns, pancakes, and waffles, but it did mean food. But no food was present.

  “I thought you said breakfast,” Eleanor said, peering into her bowl and at her coffee. The water was barely colored.

  “This breakfast,” Kitty said.

  Hannah had never cared for coffee. But what was in her cup was far from it. It tasted as if just two drops of coffee were dropped from a pipet into her bowl and the rest, filled with water.

  “You come to like,” Kitty said.

  Hannah’s gag reflex pressed to its limits when she swallowed her first gulp. It certainly did not rival a French café drink, but it was wet. Her dry throat regained much-needed moisture.

  A second gong rang out, and a frenzy swept over the prisoners. They scrambled into lines.

  “Appell,” Kitty said.

  Appell meant roll call Hann
ah discovered, and she and Eleanor hurried behind Kitty as the lines formed into rows of ten. Hannah, Eleanor, Kitty, and the hundreds of others waited for an SS officer to march forward. But nobody came. It was impossible to know exactly how much time had passed, but Hannah had no doubt that it was over thirty minutes.

  “What is happening?” Hannah asked.

  Kitty silenced her with a long hush. Hannah peaked from the corners of her eyes. Everyone was as still as a statue. An hour passed without any sign of a Kapos or a guard. Hannah’s neck and back stiffened, and her feet were two slabs of meat that had been beaten with a meat tenderizer. Her wooden clogs, at least a size too small, caused her toes to curl downward, and her toenails to break off. A second hour passed, and Hannah’s shoulders had meat hooks stabbed into them, and her lower back was as stiff as a two-by-four. Was this what they had to do all day—stand in silence and in a statuelike stature?

  With what felt like a forever later, the Kapos of the barracks finally emerged. He held a clipboard in his hand and read off numbers from it. Again, they appeared to be random and, again, Hannah did not fall prey to it. The numbers weren’t random. They were the registration numbers that had been tattooed onto the prisoners’ flesh.

  “There is one missing,” the Kapos said.

  “Yes, Sir. She was killed last night,” a woman near the front said.

  “Why has she not been presented before me?” the Kapos asked.

  Was a dead person truly expected to stand for appell? But two women hurried to the barracks and dragged the dead woman toward the lines. The two women hoisted her up, and the Kapos again disappeared. The dead woman was frail and the two who held her equally so, and they struggled to support the dead weight. Another half hour passed before Standartenführer Usinger stepped forward. The two women collapsed under the weight of the dead woman.