Forever Fleeting

by Bret Kissinger

  “People will die anyway. Go,” Hannah said.

  “They will kill you and Eleanor. I cannot do that. I will not do that,” Trugnowski maintained.

  “We will go with you. We will help you walk until we find a train or a bus or something,” Hannah said.

  “You will only get killed. Hannah, thank you, but I have only come to say goodbye,” Trugnowski said.

  “You said you wouldn’t stop fighting!” Hannah yelled.

  “I will march with my head high, not bent,” he said.

  “Please. Don’t. I can’t lose you too,” Hannah begged.

  He lifted her chin and forced her to meet his eyes. “I would have died a long time ago if not for you.”

  “I would have died the first day in the field. You helped me. Why?” Hannah asked.

  She had never asked. It was a dog-eat-dog world inside the camp where the moment someone perished, they were searched for food and their pajamas, taken. And at that time, Hannah had absolutely zero to offer him.

  “You have quiet strength. Like my wife,” Trugnowski said.

  “We will think of something,” Eleanor reassured.

  “I have accepted this. You are a fine woman, Eleanor. Take care of each other,” Trugnowski said. The gong was about to strike, and the masses would break for bathroom and barracks. “Keep fighting. When you can’t fight anymore, fight again,” Trugnowski said. He kissed Eleanor’s forehead and squeezed her hand. She, like Hannah, had tears flowing from her eyes. Their dirty faces were washed clean where the tears fell.

  “Goodbye, Hannah,” Trugnowski said.

  Hannah planned on taking his words “keep fighting” literally and was not going to stop in her attempt for him to embrace his own mantra. The gong rang out, and the masses scurried. She clung to the tips of his fingers, and he gave them a squeeze before breaking the grip. Taller than most, he was visible the entire way. He limped as he followed the other men, but the Rottenführer stopped him. Two guards had their guns raised. The man’s lips moved, but the words he formed were indecipherable. Trugnowski nodded and followed the officer, the two guards aiming their guns at his back. Before they arrived at it, their destination was known to Hannah and Eleanor.

  In between buildings ten and eleven was a connecting wall. In front of the connecting wall was another removable wall, constructed from logs and covered with black-painted cork. It was where prisoners were shot, and the black cork was there to protect the wall behind it. The gas chambers were a well-tuned death machine but were not cost-effective to kill one person or even a dozen. In those cases, they were either hanged or shot.

  Hannah dashed after Trugnowski. With each step, her feet were greeted by a baseball-bat-like hit from the ground. Eleanor hurried to keep up, calling Hannah’s name, but to Hannah, it was distant and faded. Hannah’s other senses had been numbed to increase her vision. Her vision was crisp and clear and locked on Trugnowski. Hannah flirted with time. She may not make it back before the gong struck the final time. But she didn’t care.

  “Turn around,” the Rottenführer commanded.

  Trugnowski was at the wall. The hundreds of bullet holes in the cork were testament to what he would soon face. Hannah’s body froze, rooted to the spot, in a further attempt for her vision to sharpen even more. She could no longer even feel the ground beneath her feet. Eleanor was beside her, squeezing her hand.

  “Turn around,” the Rottenführer repeated, his voice more forceful.

  But Trugnowski would not turn to face the wall. He would stare into the eyes of the Rottenführer. Trugnowski took a deep breath and stood tall—his head held high as he looked up at the night sky.

  “Fine,” the Rottenführer said.

  He fired off a shot that struck Trugnowski in the stomach. He was forced back into the wall. He used his hands to cover his wound. A second shot hit his chest, and a third proved to be fatal. He slid down the black wall, leaving a streak of crimson. His head slouched to the right, his eyes still open. Hannah’s face was too filthy for her tears to travel down parts of her face. Her vision, which had been eagle-like in its sharpness, was now cloudy.

  “We have to get back, Hannah,” Eleanor said, sniffing back her runny nose caused from crying.

  Now that Hannah’s vision was compromised, her other senses came back to her. The permanent smell of roasting corpses, the howling wind, and a return of strength to her legs were among them, but none more than a sense of time. It had frozen when Trugnowski stood against the wall and, now, moved twice as fast to make up for it. They sprinted as the invisible clock struck down. They were mice amidst hawks they could not see. The gong rang as they stepped into the barracks. They searched for a vacant spot and had to lie sideways to fit.

  “His pain is over,” Eleanor consoled.

  “And ours only grows.”

  “He wants us to fight. We would dishonor him if we did not.”

  The only two constant things in their life at Auschwitz had been each other and Trugnowski. Every other friend or acquaintance was gone, whether it was by gas chamber, starvation or disease. Breakfast the next morning was heartbreaking. Hannah kept waiting for Trugnowski’s tall frame to march toward them. During their shift in Kanada, even the dug holes beneath the fence were cause for grief. Hannah and Eleanor were silent during their shift, and even Eleanor and her undefeated spirit and resolute flame flickered.

  “I want double of yesterday’s numbers. By this time tomorrow, this place will be triple in size,” Sturmbannführer Waltz instructed.

  Apart from the obvious that thousands of possessions would flood into Auschwitz and the thousands of possessions were brought by hundreds of new arrivals, there was a subliminal truth lurking in Waltz’s words—the long-tenured prisoners no longer had a place at Auschwitz.

  “Sturmbannführer Waltz, may I speak with you?” Eleanor asked.

  “Make it quick,” Waltz said.

  Eleanor struggled to keep up with Waltz’s march. Their conversation was either too far away or spoken too quietly for Hannah to hear. She continued to toss women’s coats into one pile and men’s into another. The other women working did not speak German nor English, and even if they had, it was unlikely Hannah would have spoken to them. She could not stand to get to know one more person only to see them die.

  “What did you have to talk to him about?” Hannah asked.

  Eleanor’s conversation with Waltz lasted all of five minutes, a seemingly short conversation, but the longest between a Jew and a Nazi Hannah had witnessed.

  “I wanted to know how many were arriving and offered ideas on how they could save time on our end,” Eleanor said.

  Hannah got the strange feeling Eleanor was not being entirely honest, but it most certainly was not a malicious lie. Hannah suspected Waltz had confirmed that tomorrow they would enter the gas chamber and not Kanada. Eleanor’s worried or nervous look only amplified Hannah’s own worry and nerves. Eleanor was silent as she worked, and Hannah was too troubled to mention it. They snacked on food more that day than any other.

  “Eat more,” Eleanor said.

  Two guards watched over them while Waltz left for one of his meetings. But both were generally lazy and not very observant. It was easy to sneak a mouthful of food three or four times a shift, but Eleanor kept handing Hannah more food.

  “What is going on?” Hannah asked.

  She was caught in a conundrum. The truth was painful and scary, but so was the unknown.

  “Do not react to what I am saying,” Eleanor said in English. Hannah could only nod. “They are going to be sending hundreds of us to the chambers to make room for the new arrivals. But they are sending some to another camp. Waltz has agreed to it,” Eleanor said.

  “So we can die someplace else?” Hannah asked.

  “We have to get off the train before it stops.”

  “How? The doors are locked. The only window, barred. Some of the cars do not even have that.”

  “Find one problem, find a solution. Small victor
ies, Hannah.”

  Appell that night was a miniature eternity when the Rottenführer finally approached them. His meeting had been with the higher-ranking officers as well as the commander of the camp, Rudolf Höss.

  “The Reich will be sending some of you, along with a few of the officers, to Belzec. There is more work needed there. You will assist the officers as needed on their journey. When your number is called, step forward,” the Rottenführer announced.

  The air was thick with hope. Everyone prayed silently for their number to be called. No one knew how many numbers would be called, but after each number was read, the hope faded. They were literally lottery-type odds of having your number called. Each time a number was read, someone was ecstatic, and each time, there was a person a digit or two away who was devastated.

  “…19653…” the Rottenführer read.

  The number was tattooed on Hannah’s flesh and mind, but she stared at her forearm nonetheless. Hannah wanted to turn her head to look at Eleanor but had learned to stifle that desire. But Eleanor, no doubt, wore a smile.

  The Rottenführer lowered his clipboard. He had no more numbers to read off. “Follow Sturmbannführer Waltz to the train,” the Rottenführer commanded.

  Hannah not only had her number memorized but Eleanor’s too. It had not been read. Hannah turned her head, ignoring the dangerous ramifications of breaking appell policy.

  Eleanor’s eyes were glazed with tears.

  “Eleanor?” Hannah asked.

  “Go, Hannah,” Eleanor said.

  Those who had had their numbers read hurried after Waltz. The train would not wait for them.

  “Why?” Hannah asked. It was the only word that she could form.

  “I could only get you. Go, Hannah. I’ll be fine,” Eleanor said.

  Hannah risked missing the train, and the jealous spiteful eyes of those around her were anything but subtle.

  “Live, Hannah,” Eleanor said in English.

  Hannah’s body was going to tear itself apart. Her heart wanted to stay. Auschwitz had been a visceral hell—the likes of which Hannah could never have expected. She had had her reservations of what the destination of the train was—so many had believed the great lie of a Jewish resettlement. But Hannah had only survived because of her deep-rooted friendship with Trugnowski and Eleanor. Hannah knew what staying meant. It meant, the next day, Eleanor would be sent to the gas chambers, and for that reason, her body tried to pull her away. Her soul was caught somewhere between the struggle. It tried to mediate and consider both options. Could she live with such a selfish action as abandoning a true friend? A part of her wished the choice would be removed from her hands—that Waltz either dragged her to the train or shot her where she stood. She considered what the new camp would be like. The devil she knew was better than the one she didn’t. And there would be no Eleanor there—just a dark unknown she would have to face alone. But her thoughts went to Wilhelm. Perhaps, there was a future for the two of them. Fifty years from now, she would look back at this moment as the opportunity where she reclaimed her life. With that, her heart let go of the rope and walked over and joined her body and mind.

  “I’ll never forget you,” Hannah said.

  Eleanor smiled. Somehow, she had stayed positive, stayed kind, stayed human in a place designed to strip all remnants of humanity. She had saved Hannah’s life. She hadn’t stopped a bullet from striking her or rescued her from a burning building, but she had saved the small fragment of life Hannah clung to—the ember that barely flickered in the torrential downpour. She had breathed life into it.

  Hannah stared into Eleanor’s kind blue eyes before she finally turned and hurried after Sturmbannführer Waltz. She tried to keep her eyes forward, but with each step she took, the desire to see Eleanor one final time grew. She turned. Like with Trugnowski, her other senses dulled to allow her vision to sharpen so she could see Eleanor’s face one last time. The sign reading “Arbeit Macht Freit” loomed over her head. She joined the other fifteen toward the train tracks. In English, the sign read “Work Shall Set You Free”—another lie of the Reich.

  The train waited for them like a black stallion of iron and metal. It was much sleeker and meaner than the cattle cars Hannah had ridden into Auschwitz on. But it did have one cattle car. The Nazis were certain not to let such foul creatures as Jews ride along with them. Hannah stepped aboard the cattle car. The door slammed shut and then locked. As the train shrieked and powered ahead, Hannah pressed her nose against the cattle car and looked through a small crack for her last image of the place she had spent the last number of unknown months—a place that, in a weird morbid way, had been her home. Auschwitz was the devil’s vacation home—a home away from hell. She cried for what felt like hours until she could not cry anymore.

  She thought of her mother’s coat she had left behind. It was all that remained of her existence and, soon, even that would be gone. When she closed her eyes, the train’s shrieking morphed into the cries of those who had died inside the gas chambers, demanding justice and remembrance.

  She had no idea how long they had traveled. Hannah stood beside the barred window, glancing outside. The bars of it were on the inside and were burnt orange with rust. The cold air that blew into her lungs powered her once more. It was life blowing in between the horizontal bars. With each breath she took, she became drunk on the notion of escaping. She would not die like a sheep sent to its slaughter. Trugnowski had willed her to fight, and Eleanor had allowed her to do that by getting her a spot on the train. It would be a dishonor to allow herself to be taken prisoner at another camp.

  “Find one problem, solve one problem,” Eleanor had said.

  Hannah pulled on the bars, bits of rust came floating down as she did. She removed her headscarf and wrapped it around the bar and tugged on it. The other women aboard knew what she was trying to do, and they had the same feelings of hopeful emancipation as Hannah. One pointed to the wet floor and motioned wringing out the scarf. Hannah nodded and dipped the headscarf into the urine-and-feces-filled bucket and wrapped it around the bars and pulled. More rust came floating like snow as the bar moved but a quarter of an inch. She removed the scarf and, together, she and the other women pushed up on the bar to try and move it back into place. They repeated the process over five hundred times before they exhausted their final strength. But finally, the bottom bar snapped off at the connecting points to the window.

  The train traveled too fast to jump, but Hannah waited for any signs of deceleration. But the others were not as patient, and instead, dove headfirst out of the train, not caring where the train was or how fast it was traveling. They had chosen death their way. But Hannah was no longer looking to decide her death. She looked to embrace her moment to reclaim her life. Only three had yet to jump, Hannah included, but at the first sign of the train slowing down, the two women squeezed through one after another in quick succession.

  Hannah was alone, and timing would be imperative. If she jumped too soon, she could be killed or injured, and if she jumped too late, she could be captured. But if any guard had been looking out of the window, they may have been able to see the women leaping from the train.

  The train shrieked and decelerated. Hannah’s insides lurched forward, and she nearly lost her balance as the train rounded a bend. Outside the window, there was nothing but blackness and silhouettes of trees. She took a deep breath and flung herself through the window.

  The Battle of Stalingrad

  Any hopes of the war ending within the first year vanquished when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa—the planned invasion of the Soviet Union. While many of the soldiers cheered upon hearing the news of the betrayal of the non-aggression pact, Wilhelm knew his path would take him east and keep him from returning home to Hannah. Jonas tried defending the action by saying it was all part of Lebensraum or “living space”—the belief that the land occupied in the western parts of the Soviet Union was needed for the advancement and growth of the German race.

&
nbsp; Wilhelm wanted the war to be over. Germany had had a score to settle with France and Britain, but Russia had been knocked out of the fight early during the Great War and had signed a non-aggression pact at the outset of this war. Why seek a war with them?

  Wilhelm traveled from the coastline of Northwest France through Southern Germany and across Austria, Hungary, and into the Ukraine. The Germans raced toward the Dnieper River that divided the Ukrainian country in two. The fighting had been much like it had been in France, and Germany covered large amounts of land quickly. The fields were on fire and crops burned to ash. The buildings were destroyed too, leaving nothing but rubble where they once stood.

  “Who did this?” Jonas asked.

  Wilhelm, Jonas, and Höring were a part of the tip of the spear—no other Axis forces had rolled through.

  “They did. So we cannot use any of it,” Höring said.

  Hundreds of acres of crops burned to ash—crops thousands depended on for survival. The Soviets had embraced a military tactic called Scorched Earth. But even though the fields were burned and the wooden buildings had crumbled to giant bonfires, there were still people left behind who were now homeless—women and children who had nothing to do but stand and watch in fear as the German army, with its beast tanks, roared and marched past.

  It was late June 1941, and Wilhelm had hoped to spend his summer at Lena’s cottage in Northern Germany, not on a battlefield in the Western Ukraine. Although there were casualties, the battle on the eastern front had yet to show the strength of numbers the Soviets possessed. Day after day, the German army rolled further into the Soviet Union. Perhaps, the war would not be as extended as initially feared.

  “A greater German Reich, boys,” Jonas said. He had preached in annoying detail how much the German people had benefited from the war. Germany was now in control of all Western Europe, save for Spain and Portugal. “Franco is a supporter of ours,” Jonas said when asked why there was no planned invasion of Spain.

  General Francisco Franco Bahamonde was the military dictator of Spain. If he did choose to enter the war, it would be to join the Axis powers. Almost all of Northern Africa was under German rule. The Desert Fox, a moniker given to German General Erwin Rommel, had led victory after victory. But each country conquered meant they were now subject to the Nazi’s racial laws. It was unlikely Wilhelm and Hannah would be able to live in any of them, except the Lebensraum.