Cilka's Journey Read online

  Josie tells Cilka that she is from Kraków, and that she’s sixteen years old. Cilka opens her mouth to share her own age and place of birth, but before she can, a woman nearby declares in a loud voice, “I know why she’s here.”

  “Leave her alone,” comes from the strong older woman who’d suggested sharing the bread.

  “But I saw her, dressed in a fur coat in the middle of winter while we were dying from the cold.”

  Cilka remains silent. There’s a creeping heat in her neck. She lifts her head and stares at her accuser. A stare the woman cannot match. She vaguely recognizes her. Wasn’t she, too, one of the old-timers in Birkenau? Did she not have a warm and comfortable job in the administration building?

  “And you, you who wants to accuse her,” says the older woman, “why are you here in this luxurious carriage with us going on a summer holiday?”

  “Nothing, I did nothing,” comes the weak reply.

  “We all did nothing,” Josie says strongly, defending her new friend.

  Cilka clenches her jaw as she turns away from the woman.

  She can feel Josie’s gentle, reassuring eyes on her face.

  Cilka throws her a faint smile, before turning her head to the wall, closing her eyes, trying to block the sudden memory flooding in of Schwarzhuber—the officer in charge of Birkenau—standing over her in that small room, loosening his belt, the sounds of women weeping beyond the wall.

  * * *

  The next time the train stops, Cilka gets her ration of bread. Instinctively she eats half and tucks the rest into the top of her dress. She looks around, fearful someone might be watching and try to take it from her. She turns her face back to the wall, closing her eyes.

  Somehow, she sleeps.

  As she floats back awake, she is startled by Josie’s presence right in front of her. Josie reaches out and touches Cilka’s close-cropped hair. Cilka tries to resist the automatic urge to push her away.

  “I love your hair,” the sad, tired voice says.

  Relaxing, Cilka reaches up and touches the younger girl’s bluntly chopped hair.

  “I like yours too.”

  Cilka had been freshly shaved and deloused at the prison. For her a familiar process, as she saw it happen so often to prisoners in that other place, but she supposes it is new for Josie.

  Desperate to change the subject, she asks, “Are you here with anyone?”

  “I’m with my grandma.”

  Cilka follows Josie’s eyes to the bold older woman who had spoken up earlier, still with an arm around the young girl, Ana. She is watching the two of them closely. They exchange a nod.

  “You might want to get closer to her,” Cilka says.

  Where they are going, the older woman may not last long.

  “I should. She might be frightened.”

  “You’re right. I am too,” Cilka says.

  “Really? You don’t look frightened.”

  “Oh, I am. If you want to talk again, I will be here.”

  Josie steps carefully over and around the other women between Cilka and her grandmother. Cilka looks on through the slats of light coming through the carriage walls. A small smile breaks free as she sees and feels the women shuffle and shift to accommodate her new friend.

  * * *

  “It’s been nine days, I think. I’ve been counting. How much longer?” Josie murmurs to no one in particular.

  There is more room in the compartment now. Cilka has kept count of how many have died—sick, starving or wounded from their prior interrogations, their bodies removed when the train stopped for bread and water. Eleven adults, four infants. Occasionally some fruit is thrown in with the dry husks of bread, which Cilka has seen mothers soften in their own mouths for the children.

  Josie now lies curled up beside Cilka, her head resting on Cilka’s lap. Her sleep is fitful. Cilka knows of the images that must be racing through her mind. A few days ago, her grandmother died. She had seemed so strong and bold, but then she’d started coughing, worse and worse, and shaking, and then refusing her own ration of food. And then the coughing stopped.

  Cilka watched Josie standing mutely at the compartment door as her grandmother’s body was roughly handed down to the waiting guards. Cilka experienced a physical pain so intense she doubled over, all her breath leaving her. But no sound, and no tears, would come.

  Auschwitz, 1942

  Hundreds of girls are marched from Auschwitz to Birkenau on a hot summer day. Four kilometers. A slow, painful march for many who have ill-fitting boots, or worse, no footwear. As they enter through the large imposing brick archway they see the construction of blocks. Men working there pause to stare in horror at the new arrivals. Cilka and her sister Magda have been at Auschwitz for around three months, working among other Slovakian girls.

  They are turned from the main road through the camp and into a fenced-off area, with several buildings complete, and others under way. They are stopped and held, standing in lines, as the sun beats down upon them for what seems like hours.

  From behind, they hear a commotion. Cilka looks back to the entrance of the women’s camp to see a senior officer, with an entourage of men following, walking up the row of girls. Most of the girls keep their heads down. Not Cilka. She wants to see who warrants such protection from a group of unarmed, defenseless girls.

  “Obersturmführer Schwarzhuber,” a guard says, greeting the senior officer. “You’ll be overseeing the selection today?”

  “I will.”

  The senior officer, Schwarzhuber, continues walking down the line of girls and women. He pauses briefly as he passes Cilka and Magda. When he gets to the front of the row, he turns and walks back. This time he can see the turned-down faces. Occasionally he uses his swagger stick pushed under the chin to raise the face of a girl.

  He is coming closer. He stops beside Cilka, Magda behind her. He raises his stick. Cilka beats him to it and lifts her chin high, looking directly at him. If she can get his attention, he will ignore her sister. He reaches down and lifts her left arm, appearing to look at the numbers fading on her skin. Cilka hears Magda’s sharp inhalation of breath behind her. Schwarzhuber drops her arm, walks back down to the front of the line, and Cilka notices him speak to the SS officer beside him.

  * * *

  They have been sorted, again. Left, right; hearts banging, bodies clenched in fear. Cilka and Magda have been chosen to live another day. They are now in line to be painfully marked again—to have their tattoos re-inked so they will never fade. They stand close but not touching, though they desperately want to comfort each other. They whisper as they wait—consoling, wondering.

  Cilka counts the number of girls in front of her. Five. It will soon be her turn, and then Magda’s. Again, she will hand her left arm over to someone to have the blurred blue numbers punctured into her skin. First she was marked on entering Auschwitz three months ago, now again after being re-selected for the new camp, Auschwitz II: Birkenau. She begins to shiver. It is summer, the sun blazes down on her. She fears the pain she will soon experience. The first time, she cried out in shock. This time, she tells herself she will remain silent. Though she is still only sixteen, she can no longer behave like a child.

  Peering out from the row of girls, she watches the Tätowierer. He looks into the eyes of the girl whose arm he holds. She sees him place a finger to his lips and mouth, shhh. He smiles at her. He looks down to the ground as the girl walks away, then looks up to watch her moving on. He takes the arm of the next girl in line and doesn’t see that the previous girl turns back to look at him.

  Four. Three. Two. One. It is now her turn. She glances quickly and reassuringly back at Magda, then moves forward. She stands in front of the Tätowierer, her left arm by her side. He reaches down and gently lifts her arm up. She surprises herself by pulling it free, an almost unconscious reaction, causing him to look at her, to look into her eyes, which she knows are filled with anger, disgust, at having to be defiled, again.

  “I’m sor
ry. I’m so sorry,” he whispers gently to her. “Please, give me your arm.”

  Moments pass. He makes no attempt to touch her. She raises her arm and offers it to him.

  “Thank you,” he mouths. “It’ll be over quickly.”

  With blood dripping from her arm, though not as much as last time, Cilka whispers, “Be gentle with my sister,” before moving on as slowly as she can so Magda will be able to catch up. She looks curiously around for the girl who’d been in front of her. She glances back at the Tätowierer. He has not watched her walk away. She sees the girl who’d been five in front of her standing outside Block 29 and joins her and the others waiting to be admitted into their “home.” She studies the girl. Even with her head shaven, the baggy dress hiding whatever curves she may have, or once had, she is beautiful. Her large dark eyes show no signs of the despair Cilka has seen in so many. She wants to get to know this girl who made the Tätowierer stare. Soon, Magda joins her, wincing from the pain of the tattoo. They’re temporarily out of sight of any guards and Cilka clutches her sister’s hand.

  That evening, as the girls in Block 29 each find a space in a bunk to share with several others and cautiously inquire of one another, “Where are you from?” Cilka learns the girl’s name is Gita. She comes from a village in Slovakia, not too far from Cilka and Magda’s town of Bardejov. Gita introduces Cilka and Magda to her friends Dana and Ivanka.

  The next day, following roll call, the girls are sent to their work area. Cilka is pulled aside, not sent like the others to work in the Kanada, where they sort out the belongings, jewelry and heirlooms brought to Auschwitz by the prisoners, and prepare much of it for return to Germany. Instead, by special request, she is to report to the administration building, where she will work.

  CHAPTER 3

  Vorkuta Gulag, Siberia

  The temperature is dropping. It hasn’t been sudden, more a gradual change noticed at night when Cilka and the others have found themselves snuggling into each other. They are all in summer clothing. Cilka doesn’t know what month it is, though she guesses August or September, and she does not know where they are going, though the language at each stop is Russian.

  One day bleeds into the next. Illness creeps through the carriage. Pitiful coughing drains the women of what little energy they have. Conversations become fewer and shorter. At the last few stops, men had taken pity on the cargo, had stripped and thrown in their kal’sony, as they called it, off their own bodies. Cilka and Josie had pulled the loose, still-warm undergarments up over their goosebumped legs, waving a weak thank-you.

  It has been three days since they last stopped when the train screeches to a halt, the heavy doors flung back. A vast, unpopulated landscape of dirt and yellow-green grass lies before them.

  This time it isn’t one or two guards greeting them. Dozens of men in uniform, rifles at the ready, line the length of the train.

  “Na vykhod!” they yell. Get out!

  As the women struggle to their feet, many collapsing on legs no longer capable of bearing weight, the shouting continues.

  Cilka and Josie join the others outside for the first time in weeks. They link arms with two older women who are struggling to stand. They don’t need to be told what to do; with a line forming in front of them they know which way to face. They can see some crude buildings in the distance, on the broad, flat plain. Another camp, thinks Cilka, surrounded by nothingness. But the sky here is different—an impossibly vast gray-blue. They trudge along with the flow of the others toward the faraway buildings. Cilka tries to count the number of carriages, some disgorging men, some women and children; people of all different ages, in varying states of ill health and distress. Some who’d been on the train since the beginning, some who’d been added along the way.

  Time stands still for Cilka as she remembers lining up to go into the other place. That line led to an existence that bore no end date. This time she knows her end date, should she survive to see it. Fifteen years. Will having an end date make the labor more endurable? Is an end date even to be believed?

  Before long, Cilka is standing in front of a large woman dressed in a thick khaki uniform. Her own clothing is still too light for this weather. They must be far north. She can barely feel her hands and feet.

  “Imya, familya?” the woman barks at Cilka, scanning a list on a clipboard. Name.

  “Cecilia Klein.”

  Her name ticked off, Cilka follows the line into a large concrete bunker. Immediately she looks to the ceiling for the telltale signs of showers. Will it be water or gas? Her relief at not seeing anything threatening is palpable and she holds on to Josie to steady herself.

  “Are you all right?” Josie asks.

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine. I thought we might be going to have a shower.”

  “I’d love a shower—it’s what we need.”

  Cilka forces a small smile. There does not seem any point in explaining what she had feared. Looking at the bafflement on the faces around her, it dawns on her that few of them will have gone through something like this before. Only survivors from that other place, or those from other camps, carry the burden of knowing what may be in store for them all.

  As the room fills, several male guards enter.

  “Clothes off. Now.”

  Women look around for guidance. The words are whispered through the gathering in different languages, and they catch on as several slowly start removing their clothes.

  Cilka whispers to Josie, “You have to take your clothes off.”

  “No, Cilka, I can’t, not in front of men.”

  It seems Josie had only had her head shaved in prison, not the full ordeal. Cilka knows that all the hair on their bodies will be shaved.

  “Listen to me. You have to do as you’re told.”

  Cilka starts undoing the buttons on the front of Josie’s dress. Josie pushes her hand away, confused, looking around at the other women in various stages of undress. The naked women hold their hands in front of their pubis and across their breasts. Slowly Josie begins to undress.

  “Hurry up,” Cilka says. “Just drop your clothes where they are.”

  Cilka looks up at the men standing in front of the doors, yelling out instructions. The smirks and nudges between them sicken her. She looks down at the pile of her clothes at her feet. She knows she will not see them again.

  The men in front of the doors part as four other guards enter, each dragging with them a large hose. The blast of freezing water sends the women crashing into each other, screaming, shouting, as they are knocked down, bundled together by the force of the water. The smell of chlorine becomes overpowering and the screaming changes to gagging and coughing.

  Cilka is smashed up against a cracked tiled wall, grazing her arm as she slides to the ground. She watches as sadistically the guards target older, frail women who attempt defiance by trying to stand firm. They go down fighting. Cilka curls up in the fetal position and stays there until the hoses are turned off and the laughing guards leave.

  * * *

  As the women pick themselves up and shuffle toward the door, several grab at a dripping article of clothing to cover themselves. They exit the building and are handed a thin gray towel to wrap around themselves. Barefoot on the gritty cold ground, they walk to a nearby concrete building identical to the one they have just left.

  Cilka sees Josie in front of her and hurries to catch up.

  “Will they give us new clothes now?” Josie asks.

  Cilka looks at Josie’s drawn, desperate face. There is much worse to come, she thinks. Maybe, momentarily, she can cheer her.

  “I hope so—gray is not my color.” Cilka is pleased when Josie stifles a snigger.

  They are roughly pushed into four lines and screams of protest inside are heard by those waiting to enter. Several terrified women break from their line, scared by the screams ahead. They become game for the warders to fire at. The shots miss but send the women scurrying back into line. A source of entertainment.

 
She feels Josie trembling beside her.

  Cilka and Josie enter the building and see what is happening to the women in front of them. Four men stand behind four chairs. Several strong, large women, also dressed in khaki uniforms, stand nearby.

  She watches as the woman in front of her approaches the chair and is forced to sit down. The woman’s hair is roughly gathered together and swiftly cut close to her head with a large pair of scissors. Without missing a beat, the man exchanges the scissors for a shaving blade and scrapes it across the woman’s scalp. Blood trickles down her face and back. One of the nearby women is yanked to her feet, turned around and placed with one of her feet on the chair. Josie and Cilka watch in horror as the man, with no sign of emotion or care, shaves her pubic area. As he lifts his head, indicating he is done, the female guard pushes the woman away and motions for Josie to come forward.

  Cilka quickly moves over into the next line so she is next to be shaved. She can at least be beside Josie as this humiliation is played out; she has been through it all before. Together they walk to the chairs. Without instruction, they sit. Cilka keeps her eyes on Josie as much as she can, wordlessly offering comfort, her heart aching as she sees tears falling helplessly down Josie’s cheeks. She can tell this is the first time Josie has been subjected to anything this brutal.

  Their heads shaved, Josie is slow to stand and the back of a female guard’s hand slaps her across the face as she is pulled to her feet. Cilka places her own foot on the chair and stares at the man in front of her. Her glare is met with a thin toothless grin and she knows she has made a mistake.