Cilka's Journey (ARC) Read online

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  Born in New Zealand, Heather Morris is an international number one bestselling author, who is passionate about

  stories of survival, resilience and hope. In 2003, while

  working in a large public hospital in Melbourne, Heather

  was introduced to an elderly gentleman who ‘might just

  have a story worth telling’. The day she met Lale Sokolov

  changed both their lives. Their friendship grew and Lale

  embarked on a journey of self-scrutiny, entrusting the

  innermost details of his life during the Holocaust to her.

  H E A T H E R M O R R I S

  Heather originally wrote Lale’s story as a screenplay –

  which ranked high in international competitions – before

  reshaping it into her debut novel, The Tattooist of

  Auschwitz. Her second novel, Cilka’s Journey, follows on from this international bestselling work .

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  H E A T H E R M O R R I S

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  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by

  zaffre

  80–81 Wimpole St, London W1G 9RE

  Copyright © Heather Morris, 2019

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic,

  mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the

  prior written permission of the publisher.

  The right of Heather Morris to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events

  and incidents are either the products of the

  author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is

  available from the British Library.

  Hardback ISBN: 978–1–78576–904–7

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978–1–78576–913–9

  Also available as an ebook

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Typeset in Simoncini Garamond by

  Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

  Zaffre is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK

  www.bonnierbooks.co.uk

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  To my grandchildren

  Henry, Nathan, Jack, Rachel and Ashton

  Never forget the courage, the love, the hope

  given to us by those who survived

  and those that did not.

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  This is a work of fiction, based on what I learnt from the first-hand testimony of Lale Sokolov, the tattooist of

  Auschwitz, about Cecilia ‘Cilka’ Klein, whom he knew

  in Auschwitz-Birkenau, from the testimony of others who

  knew her, and from my own research. Although it weaves

  together facts and reportage with the experiences of

  women survivors of the Holocaust, and the experiences

  of women sent to the Soviet Gulag system at the end of

  the Second World War, it is a novel and does not repre-

  sent the entire facts of Cilka’s life. Furthermore, it contains a mix of characters: some inspired by real-life figures, in

  some instances representing more than one individual,

  others completely imagined. There are many factual

  accounts that document these terrible epochs in our

  history and I would encourage the interested reader to

  seek them out.

  For more information about Cecilia Klein and her

  family, and about the Gulags, please turn to the end of

  this novel. I hope that further details about Cilka and

  those who once knew her will continue to come to light

  once the book is published.

  Heather Morris, October 2019

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  CHAPTER 1

  Auschwitz Concentration Camp,

  27 January 1945

  Cilka stares at the soldier standing in front of her, part

  of the army that has entered the camp. He is saying

  something in Russian, then German. The soldier towers

  over the eighteen-year-old girl. ‘ Du bist frei.’ You are free.

  She does not know if she has really heard his words. The

  only Russians she has seen before this, in the camp, were

  emaciated, starving – prisoners of war.

  Could it really be possible that freedom exists? Could

  this nightmare be over?

  When she does not respond, he bends down and places

  his hands on her shoulders. She flinches.

  He quickly withdraws his hands. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean

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  to scare you.’ He continues in halting German. Shaking his head, he seems to conclude she doesn’t understand

  him. He makes a sweeping gesture and slowly says the

  words again. ‘You are free. You are safe. We are the Soviet

  Army and we are here to help you.’

  ‘I understand,’ Cilka whispers, pulling tight the coat

  that hides her tiny frame.

  ‘Do you understand Russian?’

  Cilka nods yes. She grew up knowing an East Slavic

  dialect, Rusyn.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asks gently.

  Cilka looks up into the soldier’s eyes and says in a clear

  voice, ‘My name is Cecilia Klein, but my friends call me

  Cilka.’

  ‘That’s a beautiful name,’ he says. It is strange to be

  looking at a man who is not one of her captors and is so

  healthy. His clear eyes, his full cheeks, his fair hair

  protruding from beneath his cap. ‘Where are you from,

  Cilka Klein?’

  Memories of her old life have faded, become blurred.

  At some point it became too painful to remember that

  her former life with her family, in Bardejov, existed.

  ‘I’m from Czechoslovakia,’ she says, in a broken voice.

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  Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp,

  February 1945

  Cilka has been sitting in the block, as close as she can

  get to the one stove that provides heat. She knows

  she has already drawn attention. The other able-bodied

  women, her friends included, were forcibly marched out

  of the camp by the SS weeks ago. The remaining prisoners

  are skeletal, diseased, or they are children. And then there

  is Cilka. They were all meant to be shot, but in their haste

  to get away themselves, the Nazis abandoned them all to

  fate.

  The soldiers have been joined by other officials – counter-

  intelligence
agents, Cilka has heard, though she’s not sure

  what that means – to manage a situation the average soldier

  has no training for. The Soviet agency is tasked with

  keeping law and order, particularly as it relates to any

  threat to the Soviet State. Their role, she’s been told by

  the soldiers, is to question every prisoner to determine

  their status as it relates to their imprisonment, in particular if they collaborated or worked with the Nazis. The

  retreating German Army are considered enemies of the

  State of the Soviet Union and anyone who could be

  connected to them is, by default, an enemy of the Soviet

  Union.

  A soldier enters the block. ‘Come with me,’ he says,

  pointing to Cilka. At the same time, a hand clutches her

  right arm, dragging her to her feet. Several weeks have

  passed and seeing others being taken away to be

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  questioned has become part of the routine of the block.

  To Cilka it is just ‘her turn’. She is eighteen years old and she just has to hope they can see that she had no choice

  but to do what she did in order to survive. No choice,

  other than death. She can only hope that she will soon be

  able to return to her home in Czechoslovakia, find a way

  forward.

  As she’s taken into the building the Soviet Army are

  using as their headquarters, Cilka attempts a smile at the

  four men who sit across the room from her. They are here

  to punish her evil captors, not her. This is a good time;

  there will be no more loss. Her smile is not returned. She

  notices their uniforms are slightly different to those of the soldiers outside. Blue epaulettes sit on top of their shoulders, their hats, placed on the table in front of them, have

  the same shade of blue ribbon with a red stripe.

  One of them does eventually smile at her and speaks in

  a gentle voice.

  ‘Would you tell us your name?’

  ‘Cecilia Klein.’

  ‘Where are you from, Cecilia? Your country and town.’

  ‘I’m from Bardejov in Czechoslovakia.’

  ‘What is the date of your birth?’

  ‘The seventeenth of March, 1926.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘I came here on the twenty-third of April in 1942, just

  after I turned sixteen.’

  The agent pauses, studies her.

  ‘That was a long time ago.’

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  ‘An eternity in here.’

  ‘What have you been doing here since April 1942?’

  ‘Staying alive.’

  ‘Yes, but how did you do that?’ He tilts his head at her.

  ‘You look like you haven’t starved.’

  Cilka doesn’t answer, but her hand goes to her hair,

  which she hacked off herself weeks ago, after her friends

  were marched from the camp.

  ‘Did you work?’

  ‘I worked at staying alive.’

  The four men exchange looks. One of them picks up a

  piece of paper and pretends to read it before speaking.

  ‘We have a report on you, Cecilia Klein. It says that

  you in fact stayed alive by prostituting yourself to the

  enemy.’

  Cilka says nothing, swallows hard, looks from one man

  to the next, trying to fathom what they are saying, what

  they expect her to say in return.

  Another speaks. ‘It’s a simple question. Did you fuck

  the Nazis?’

  ‘They were my enemy. I was a prisoner here.’

  ‘But did you fuck the Nazis? We’re told you did.’

  ‘Like many others here, I was forced to do whatever I

  was told by those who imprisoned me.’

  The first agent stands. ‘Cecilia Klein, we will be sending

  you to Kraków and then determining your fate from there.’

  He refuses, now, to look at her.

  ‘No,’ Cilka says, standing. This can’t be happening. ‘You

  can’t do this to me! I am a prisoner here.’

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  One of the men who hasn’t spoken before quietly asks,

  ‘Do you speak German?’

  ‘Yes, some. I’ve been in here three years.’

  ‘And you speak many other languages, we have heard,

  and yet you are Czechoslovakian.’

  Cilka doesn’t protest, frowning, not understanding the

  significance. She had been taught languages at school,

  picked others up by being in here.

  The men all exchange looks.

  ‘Speaking other languages would have us believe you

  are a spy, here to report back to whoever will buy your

  information. This will be investigated in Kraków.’

  ‘You can expect a long sentence of hard labour,’ the

  original officer says.

  It takes Cilka a moment to react, and then she is grabbed

  by the arm by the soldier who brought her into the room,

  dragged away, screaming her innocence.

  ‘I was forced, I was raped! No! Please.’

  But the soldiers do not react; they do not seem to hear.

  They are moving on to the next person.

  Montelupich Prison, Kraków, July 1945

  Cilka crouches in the corner of a damp, stinking cell.

  She struggles to register time passing. Days, weeks,

  months.

  She does not make conversation with the women around

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  her. Anyone overheard speaking by the guards is taken out and brought back with bruises and torn clothing. Stay

  quiet, stay small, she tells herself, until you know what is

  happening, and what the right things are to say or do. She

  has torn off a section of her dress to tie around her nose

  and mouth in an attempt to minimise the stench of human

  waste, damp and decay.

  One day, they take her out of the cell. Faint from

  hunger and exhausted by the effort of vigilance, the

  figures of the guards and the wall and floors all seem

  immaterial, as in a dream. She stands in line behind

  other prisoners in a corridor, slowly moving towards a

  door. She can lean, momentarily, against a warm, dry

  wall. They keep the corridors heated, for the guards,

  but not the cells themselves. And though the weather

  outside must be mild by now, the prison seems to trap

  cold from the night and hold on to it through the whole

  next day.

  When it is Cilka’s turn, she enters a room where an

  officer sits behind a desk, his face bathed in greenish light from a single lamp. The officers by the door indicate she

  should go over to the desk.

  The officer looks down at his piece of paper.

  ‘Cecilia Klein?’

  She glances around. She is alone in the room with three

  burly men. ‘Yes?’

  He looks down again and reads from the paper. ‘You

  are convicted of working with the enemy, as a prostitute

  and additionally as a spy. You are sentenced to fifteen

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  years’ hard labour.’ He signs the piece of paper. ‘You sign this to say you have understood.’

 
Cilka has understood all of the officer’s words. He has

  been speaking in German, rather than Russian. Is it a trick,

  then? she thinks. She feels the eyes of the men at the door.

  She knows she has to do something. It seems she has no

  choice but to do the only thing in front of her.

  He flips the piece of paper and points to a dotted line.

  The letters above it are in Cyrillic – Russian script. Again, as she has experienced over and over in her young life,

  she finds herself with two choices: one, the narrow path

  opening up in front of her; the other, death.

  The officer hands her the pen, and then looks towards

  the door, bored, waiting for the next person in line – just

  doing his job.

  With a shaking hand, Cilka signs the piece of paper.

  It is only when she’s taken from the prison and pushed

  onto a truck that she realises winter has gone, spring never

  existed, and it is summer. While the warmth of the sun is

  a balm to her chilled body, her still-alive body, the glare

  of it hurts her eyes. Before she has a chance to adjust, the

  truck slams to a stop. There, in front of her, is another

  train carriage, on a cattle train painted red.

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  CHAPTER 2

  A Train Bound for Vorkuta Gulag, Siberia,

  160 km North of the Arctic Circle, July 1945

  The floor of the closed railway wagon is covered in

  straw and each prisoner tries to claim a small space

  on which to sit. Older women wail, babies whimper. The

  sound of women suffering – Cilka hoped she’d never have

  to hear it again. The train sits at the station for hours,

  the heat of the day turning the inside of the compartment

  into an oven. The bucket of water left to share is soon

  gone. The infants’ cries turn wretched and dry; the old

  women are reduced to rocking themselves into a trance.

  Cilka has placed herself against a wall and draws comfort

  from the small wisps of air that make their way through

  the tiny cracks. A woman leans on her from the side and

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  a back is shoved up hard against her raised knees. She leaves it there. No point fighting for space that doesn’t

  exist.

  Cilka senses that night has fallen as the train makes its

  first jolting movement, its engine struggling to pull the

  unknown number of carriages away from Kraków, away,

  it seems, from any hope of ever returning home.