They had also found a gap in the bottom of the fence, which they increased by digging away the dirt. They stashed food there and Trugnowski, on the other side of the fence, was able to grab the food and eat it throughout his shift. Sometimes, he would leave a rock for Hannah and Eleanor and each time they smiled.
Hannah and Eleanor worked in tandem, searching for men’s jackets, and after ten were found, they switched to women’s or vice versa. They kept their numbers within five of each other, knowing any greater discrepancy could lead one of them to the chambers. They ate four times during their shift, and when it was winter, they wore coats as they searched but always made sure to take them off by the time Waltz came by.
At first, Hannah lost track of the days, but now, she lost track of what month it was. Was it snow that fell or ashes? On another indistinguishable day, the motor of the lorry had run steadily, but it finally shut off.
“How come you never had children?” Hannah asked.
It had rained most of the day, and a permanent gloom had been hanging in the gray sky for days.
“We tried but were unable,” Eleanor said.
The wound was still fresh and always would be. She would always want to be a mother.
“I’m sorry,” Hannah apologized.
“Far less cruel than the fates that await those over the fence,” Eleanor said.
The motor of the lorry rumbled again. More unfortunate souls were dying. When the motor shut off some fifteen minutes later, Eleanor resumed the conversation.
“And you and Wilhelm? Will you have children?” Eleanor asked.
“I hope so,” Hannah answered.
Though she had not given much thought on it since arriving at Auschwitz, she had wanted children prior, and if she was able to leave someday, she would still want them. The conversation went quiet as they resumed searching and sorting men’s and women’s jackets and coats. They had finally reached some of the stockpiles buried beneath and behind hundreds of others. Between a blue suitcase and wedged between a dress and boots was another coat. It was nearly inside out, and the black fur-collared dress coat was caked in boot marks and cobwebs. Hannah brushed aside the boots gently, knowing the integrity of the pile could be compromised at any moment and bury her in an avalanche of suitcases, clothes, and shoes.
As the coat pulled free, the initials E and J with an overlapping G in gold thread became visible. Hannah’s airways closed. She held the jacket close to her. The gold thread only verified a truth she had already known but did not want to accept. It was her mother’s favorite coat. One she, no doubt, would have worn for relocation. The unknown had allowed her to think her parents had made it to England or New York City. The unknown had the ability to be either cruel or kind.
“Hannah?” Eleanor asked. She paused and stepped closer to her.
“It’s my mother’s coat,” Hannah mumbled.
The words stabbed her like a knife through her still heart. Thoughts had always been almost harmless in comparison to words.
“I’m so sorry, Hannah,” Eleanor said, rubbing Hannah’s back.
“I hope they were sent right to the chambers. That they didn’t have to wilt away to bone. I hope they didn’t have to go through this,” Hannah said. She slid down the pile and to the floor. Her mother’s jacket was pressed against her face, soaking in her tears.
Eleanor knelt beside Hannah and squeezed her hand and wiped Hannah’s tears. “You need to keep being strong, Hannah. There will be a time for grief—a time where you can let it wash over you and ponder why this happened. But that’s for a later time. You need to concentrate on surviving,” Eleanor said.
“We’re never leaving here, Eleanor. The only way out is through the chimney. Remember? We’ve seen too much,” Hannah said.
The outer layer of the coat had taken on the smell of mildew, dust, and the stench of Auschwitz—burned corpses. But the inside of the sleeves had retained the smell of her mother’s perfume and of her home. She took whiffs of it like a drug, but the high it brought diminished with each sniff. Everything they gathered was sent back to Germany for use by its citizens. Hannah kept her mother’s coat buried. She pushed on the piles to cause them to cascade. She would not let her mother’s hand-designed and handmade coat be worn by the wife of some Nazi elitist.
“Don’t lose hope, Hannah. It’s the only thing we have,” Eleanor said.
But hope had been lost. Her parents were dead. Wilhelm very well could be too. She wanted a life beyond Auschwitz, but she had always envisioned her parents being in that life. But it did not matter. Sturmbannführer Waltz would not let them leave. She would die here like so many others. She could not fathom an estimate toward the number of people she bore witness to going into the gas chambers. Those who had given up fighting for life, but wanted to die on their terms, stormed the electric fences to either be electrocuted or shot by the guards. Hannah was silent the rest of the shift, even with Eleanor’s attempts to talk in both German and English.
During the line for food, Hannah skipped the soup. Her appetite somehow was gone. The watery soup would have done little to stifle it anyway. Trugnowski and Eleanor were in line together, and Eleanor no doubt told him what had happened. When Trugnowski sat beside her, she tossed her piece of bread to him.
“You are not eating?” he asked.
Hannah only shook her head.
The November winds were mercilessly cold and ripped through her tissue paper-like pajamas. She shivered, causing goosebumps to erupt on her flesh. Eleanor and Trugnowski spoke, but Hannah was too fixated on the guards in the watchtower to hear. It was an unequivocally better way to die than the gas chamber, starving to death, freezing to death, working to death or from a slow-forming disease. She was in tears as she trudged forward. She hyperventilated as she drew closer to either being shot or hit with thousands of volts of electricity. She had moved past every other prisoner. A few more steps and either a bullet or electrocution would come. A measly two more steps and her pain and suffering would end. But two hands wrapped around her and squeezed her like a vise.
“You are not a quitter,” Trugnowski said, forcing Hannah away from the fence.
“Just let me go. Please,” Hannah pleaded.
Trugnowski spun her around. The rain still fell, going on for nearly twenty-four hours straight, and the ground was a muddy slop. “You have lost your family. I have lost my family too. Your parents did not have the opportunity to fight, nor my wife and children. But we do. Each day we live, each day we do not give into those fucks and die, annoys them. They want us to lie down like a turtle on its back. But I am no fucking turtle. Neither are you,” Trugnowski said.
Hannah’s tears mixed with the falling rain, but Trugnowski knew they were there. He pressed her head against his chest and hugged her. Even when the first warning rang out, Trugnowski did not let her go. He was prepared to stay with her for as long as she needed. Hannah broke away and took Eleanor’s offered hand and joined her back in the barracks.
All that night, Hannah awoke to sobs as the realization she was not in a nightmare dawned on her. Her mother in her favorite jacket kept coming to her and then her father beside her. Children were biased and considered their own parents to be the greatest in the world, but to Hannah, it was true. They were more than parents. They were her best friends, her role models, her closest confidants. They were the kindest people who kept to themselves but always greeted people with a warm welcome. Hannah could not stand to be awake. It hurt too much. During the deep abyss of sleep, her mind was idle and all her thoughts, washed clean. Each time she awoke, Eleanor was there to try and comfort her. Sometimes, it was a whisper telling Hannah to hold onto fond memories and keep them alive and other times, it was simply lying in silence with her.
Hannah’s mood and morale did not improve over the next week or even the next month. She could not understand why Trugnowski continued to resist death. It was so welcoming. Why live in such conditions? Was it truly worth living another month? Hannah did n
ot want to be there another winter. It truly was an absolute frozen hell. She used to find the cold air filling her lungs rejuvenating—a reminder she was alive. But now, it only reminded her that death crept and lurked behind every corner, pointing its finger at her. Forget the Nazis and their gas chambers—they were only death’s instruments and did its bidding. Starvation, freezing, and sickness were the hounds of the beast.
But Auschwitz took away her sense of individualism. She was now a number. Hannah Elsa Goldschmidt was dead. 19653 was left in her place—a walking skeleton with protruding eyes, wearing baggy pajamas that made her look like a ghost. But as she reflected, she realized she truly was a ghost. She was caught between worlds—not belonging to this life anymore but, for some reason, unchosen to join the next. She had no possessions and nothing to separate her from any of the other haunted souls who wandered the courtyard.
Hannah had always held faith that this life was not it. There had to be more. But now that she knew for certain her parents were dead, she wanted to believe in heaven exponentially more. Yet, she truly feared she would never see them again. She started to join the groups that still actively prayed while the guards were not watching. She wanted to hear it. She wanted to hear from someone else that there was a kingdom in heaven and her parents were waiting for her.
The rain continued to fall, thunder struck, and when the skies cleared and the sun shined, it only made the view of the damned on their march to the chambers that much clearer.
“I can’t watch this anymore,” Eleanor said.
Every day, she was forced to watch children wait for their deaths—children who had yet to experience life. She had taught so many children and she, better than most, appreciated the wonder of a child.
“Don’t look,” Hannah said.
It was an immediate reaction of her, but she understood for some people, there was a magnetism that would not allow them to look away.
“I can’t dig through piles of children’s shoes and coats anymore,” Eleanor said.
She had finally broken. She had been Hannah’s rock since the train. If she broke now, there was nothing stopping Hannah from crashing over the waterfall. Of the near two thousand conversations the two had had, Eleanor’s beliefs had only been brought up once—on the train ride where she had told Hannah she had been anointed an honorary Jew.
“What do you believe in?” Hannah asked.
It was certainly a private question, but Eleanor was her surrogate sister.
“Nothing,” Eleanor answered.
The words were a truth she had accepted since she was a young teen. She wanted to believe, but the skeptic in her stopped her.
“There is a heaven, Eleanor. A place where we reunite with all we have lost. Whether it is above the stars or in your heart or your mind, it does not matter,” Hannah said.
It must have had made it so much worse to be branded a Jew but not be granted the strong faith in God. Hannah had asked her often about her husband, Liam. Eleanor knew he would have signed up for the war the moment she stopped answering the telephone.
“I am glad he doesn’t know where I am. There is nothing it could do but bring him pain,” Eleanor said.
“Do you regret it? Saving those children?” Hannah asked.
“Not for a second. Those children are somewhere smiling, laughing, learning, living.”
Eleanor had certainly lived longer than a child’s age, but at thirty-four, she had hardly lived a full life.
The conversation ended abruptly because Sturmbannführer Waltz approached. Hannah, Eleanor, and the eight other women, a number needed to keep pace with the new inventory, stood dismissively. Hannah hated it. She was a beaten dog scared of her master.
“You are not maintaining the quota,” Waltz said.
Yet, Hannah and Eleanor had. The only problem was the quota was almost always one more than the day before. If they found two hundred coats, he would require two hundred and one the following day. It was just another way the Nazis tried to make the Jews feel useless. But Hannah and Eleanor were wise to the Nazi game. There were days when they found a hundred coats, but the day before had been significantly less. To counter such a flux in numbers, they hid the coats, and the next day, they started with double-digit coats without any time expiring. It allowed more time to search for food. They dug five additional holes and filled them with food. During lucky searches, they found apples and oranges in the packs, purses, and bags of the fresh arrivals. But no matter what the food was, it saved Trugnowski’s life.
“You add thousands of objects a week. Yet, we are still only ten. We need more, one to sort through for dresses and skirts, another for men’s pants and trousers, and…” Eleanor began explaining, but Waltz cut her off.
“How many workers do you require?” Waltz asked.
“Twelve,” Eleanor answered.
“Try again.”
“Children.”
“We have no use for children at this camp.”
“They require less food than adults, and they have much more energy. We could double our numbers. They can easily reach the back piles and sort through them,” Eleanor reasoned.
“We have no use for children at this camp,” Waltz repeated.
Eleanor had tried the argument several times, and most of it was valid. But Waltz and the Nazis had no use for crying children or decrepit elderly. Each day, a period of which dozens upon dozens of children were killed, Eleanor too died bit by bit.
“You will get three adults. I expect the numbers to be reached or you’ll be wafting through the chimney,” Waltz said and then marched toward the door.
“Sturmbannführer,” Hannah shouted. She had to nearly jog to keep up with his gazelle-like march. He paused. “Can you tell me how the war is going?” Hannah asked. She had not gotten a spec of information in months.
“Germany prevails much to your displeasure,” Waltz answered.
“My husband fights for Germany,” Hannah said.
“Jews are not allowed to serve in the military. We have no need for rats,” Waltz said.
“He is not a Jew.”
“You lie.”
“What use of a lie would I have?”
“It is illegal for a non-Jew to marry one.”
“We were married before the laws were passed.”
She refused to give specifics in fear of Wilhelm getting killed. The Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935, and it was obvious Waltz studied her to see if her age made sense. But what was there to study? Her hair was shaved, her skin sickly and pale and covered in dirt and draped in pajamas over a frail skeleton. It was hard deciphering one woman from the next.
Waltz nodded and continued on. Though Waltz was cold and had no problem watching innocent people step into the chambers, he was not the cruelest officer in the camp. He generally let Hannah and Eleanor work without interruption as long as they met their quota. But as the number of people working in Kanada grew so did the number of guards, for Waltz must have thought there was more of a likelihood to steal. But Trugnowski’s life depended on it, and both Hannah and Eleanor were willing to accept the punishment if caught.
After finishing the work day and getting their supper, they walked away from the food line to eat.
“Stand watch,” Hannah said.
Trugnowski towered over her and blocked her from view. She stood beside his bowl and lifted her pant leg out of her clog. Rice fell into the bowl. She and Eleanor had torn a small hole in the lining of their pocket and stuffed it with rice. The rice traveled down their leg and collected in the pants’ leg tucked into the clog. He would have to wait until the next day when his hot coffee would be poured into his bowl to soften it up.
“Where will you go when you are free?” Trugnowski asked.
Hannah and Eleanor split one piece of bread and gave Trugnowski the other. They had made sure to eat near the end of their shift. They were by no means full or even satisfied, but Trugnowski needed it more.
“England,” Eleanor said.
“Your husband ... is he a good man?” Trugnowski asked.
“A sweet man with a charming smile that sends chills down my arms,” Eleanor gushed.
It was awful to think Wilhelm and Liam fought on opposite sides and could have fought against one another.
“I will get the fuck out of Europe. Australia. Swim with crocodiles,” Trugnowski said.
The gong struck, and another day at Auschwitz ended. But those moments eating dinner were the best part of Hannah’s day. Hannah had always been a firm believer in surrounding herself with strong and positive people, and she was grateful she had found Eleanor and Trugnowski. Eleanor had such a calm, soothing presence, and nothing baffled her or dampened her spirits. Trugnowski had an intimidating presence, but it was his resiliency she envied greatly.
Three days later, Hannah and Eleanor had quite the array of food for Trugnowski, including rice, bits of broken carrots, peas, and cut potatoes.
“Put your bowl on the ground,” Hannah said.
“Save it,” he said.
“You need to eat,” Hannah said.
Trugnowski looked from Hannah to Eleanor.
“I will have no need for it,” he said.
“What is happening?” Eleanor asked.
“There were a hundred young men unloaded today. Stronger than me. Younger than me,” Trugnowski explained.
“Impossible. You are made of stone,” Hannah said.
“I heard one of the guards. They do not know I speak German. I will not make it,” Trugnowski said.
“Then we make a run for it. Together. We sneak out tonight and take our chances,” Hannah said.
Trugnowski lifted his pant leg and removed his wooden clogs. His feet were swollen and a disturbing blend of purple, blue, and black.
“I cannot run,” he said.
“You have to try,” Hannah insisted.
“Even if I make it, they will punish those who remain,” he said.
Those who had successfully left the camp did so knowing ten people were starved to death because of it.
Forever Fleeting Page 23