If I Should Die Before I Wake

by Han Nolan

Matel put down her bowl and scooted closer to me. She fingered the edge of my dress, and then saw me watching and pulled her hand away.

  I looked into her eyes. She was very young.

  "Sorry," she said. "You look like my mother. You are not as tall, or as old, but your face, it is—is gone like hers."

  "Gone?"

  " Muselman. You know the expression?"

  I looked away. I could see the guard moving toward us. Our lunch break was almost over.

  "If I had been able to stay with Mama she never would have died, but they told her I was dead. They put her to work carrying heavy rocks and one day I saw her, looking even worse than you, dragging herself toward the camp after work. I called out to her, but she did not hear. She looked right at me, but she did not see. Do you understand? I was not real to her. She had dreamed of finding me so many times that when she really saw me, she could not believe I was not just another one of her dreams. That must be what happened. Do you not agree?"

  I didn't answer. "Do you want my soup?" I asked her. "The break will be over in a minute. I cannot drink this today. You have it."

  Matel paused only a second before grabbing my bowl and pouring the soup into her dish. She drank it down, wiped her mouth with her sleeve, and smiled.

  The whistle blew. It was time to get back to work.

  When I returned to the hut that afternoon, Bubbe was not there. I searched for Dvora and found her in the crowd making their way to the lavatory.

  "Dvora, please, what has happened? Where is Bubbe?" I asked when I caught up with her.

  "A woman named Sora came and got her. You remember, the clerk? The one from Lodz, who said she would help us?"

  "Yes, yes, but where is she? Where have they taken her?"

  "It is good, Chana, she has inside work. She is a nurse at the Revier, camp hospital. It is where she needs to be."

  "But I need to talk to her. I need to see her. I need to tell her that I am feeling a little better. It must not be typhus."

  "She will try to see you. She said for me to tell you that." Dvora paused just outside the lavatory. "You do look better. Your face—your eyes look better, I think."

  "I met a girl. A real girl, only twelve years old. She wants ... It is silly, but she wants me to be her family, her mother. She wants me."

  I left Dvora at the lavatory entrance and walked back toward my hut, wishing that I could have something to eat. I did not look forward to standing through another Zäblappell today without food in my stomach, and for a moment I wished I hadn't given my soup away, but then, on second thought, remembering Matel, I was glad I had.

  In front of me, I saw one of the non-Jewish prisoners walking with a package under her arm. Non-Jews were able to receive care packages from home. There was something odd about this package, though. It almost looked as if something were leaking out one of the ends. I ran forward and crept up behind the woman. Sure enough, white granules were pouring out of the bottom corner of the package. I stuck my bowl out in front of me and trotted along behind her, collecting the little granules in my bowl. When the woman with the package turned around I quickly headed in the opposite direction, my bowl gripped between my hands.

  When I had a chance, I stopped, licked my finger, and dipped it into my bowl. I then poked my finger into my mouth and tasted the sweetest, most delicious taste in all the world—sugar!

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Chana

  BY THE END OF THE SIXTH WEEK, very few of the group of women from our train were left. Those of us who were were taken to the sauna, or shower hut, and given cold showers, our first since we had arrived. We had learned to be wary of showers since we discovered that the Germans used the pretense of showers for gassing thousands of the prisoners who arrived by train each day. We were never sure what they had in store for us at any moment. They counted on our confusion and fear to keep us off balance, which was easy to do in our deteriorating condition. We never knew when the end was at hand.

  This time, though, we really had showers and then got mopped with disinfectant and handed clean, although worn, clothes. I grabbed some knickers and a heavy shirt and threw them on before anyone could yank them out of my hands. In the past few weeks I had begun to see myself in a different light. I was an animal. I gave myself the eyes and mind of an animal, watching, waiting, listening. At last I understood what Rivke and Bubbe meant when they said, "Don't think." With animals, survival is by instinct, and by instinct I, too, would survive. I no longer tried to reason. I no longer held out any expectations. If at any moment I was alive, that was all that mattered. It was enough to eat, sleep, stay warm, and visit the lavatory hut twice a day. For that, I lived.

  I was no longer on Scheisskommando but was put to work digging trenches, along with Dvora, Matel, and Rivke, whom I had not seen since she had left quarantine four weeks earlier. The twins were not in our block. They had been given a "special assignment."

  It happened one afternoon, a week before the end of quarantine. Whistles blew throughout the camp and we heard the dreaded shouts of" Lagersperre! Lagersperre! "Everyone was confined to her block until "selection" was over. When the Blockäl-teste entered our hut with a clipboard in her hands, we knew that our group was to face selection. From the single window at the front of our hut I could see four men marching down the Lagerstrasse, main road. One of them was an armed guard who stepped inside and ordered us to remove our clothes and line up outside." Schneller! "he shouted before ducking back out and entering the next hut. Always it was" Schneller!"

  Naked, I stepped outside into the icy damp behind Dvora, clutching my arms over my breasts. I saw Rapportführer Taube standing beside the guard and prayed he wouldn't recognize me.

  "Stellen Sir an!—Line up!" he ordered.

  My kneecaps began to jiggle up and down with a mind of their own as we shuffled into our rows of five.

  Standing a few feet away from Taube were two other men: Lagerfübrer Hössler, in charge of camp discipline, and a man I had never seen before. This stranger was in full uniform, right down to his white gloves, and he stood before us like a fairy-tale prince, majestic and handsome. He stepped forward and ordered the first row to parade before him, left arms out so their numbers could be checked off as they passed.

  They were a sorry sight, trying hard not to shuffle or stumble or slouch as they passed before this man. Their hair and bodies were caked in dirt and blood, infested with lice, and coated with a frozen layer of sweat. I glanced down at my own body. I was no better.

  Row after row paraded before this man, and as each woman stood directly in front of him, he would run his eyes over her body and point either to the left or the right. I saw Jutka, an older woman like Bubbe, shuffle forward. She had been miserable without her husband, who was in the men's camp, and tried to get on any work party that was going out, in the hopes of seeing him pass by. The work had taken its toll on her. Her back was bent forward in spasms that only rest could mend, but she was not allowed to rest. As she stood before the man, she pulled herself up, her whole body trembling. He hardly glanced her way. He pointed to the left.

  Most of the women were being sent to the left, so I was determined to go to that side as well. When Lisette stepped before him, our Blockälteste stepped forward with her clipboard and whispered something in the stranger's ear. His face lit up and he took Lisette by the hand and pulled her to his side. Liselle was next and again he pulled her away from the group and stood her on his other side. They looked like bookends, and the stranger looked delighted.

  When our row was called forward, I took a deep breath, stood up as tall as I could, and stepped forward with every ounce of confidence I could muster. This handsome man would see I was worth keeping around. As I approached him, however, I saw both Dvora and Mat el get sent to the right. I didn't know what to do. They looked as fit as anyone. They looked better than the twins, far better than Jutka. I looked at both lines again, the one on the left, then the one on the right. Everyone on the right, all twenty of the
m, appeared far healthier than most of the women on the left. But it was impossible! There were at least three hundred women standing to the left. Three hundred women who had spent the past six weeks struggling to stay alive, fighting starvation, going forward, picking themselves up again and again no matter how many times they had been beaten. They couldn't all be "going up the chimney," as our Blockältedte liked to say when she was sure no official could hear. Perhaps this was not a selection for death but for some different kind of work. I no longer knew which side to choose—as if I would be given a choice.

  It was my turn to stand in front of the stranger. I looked down at my feet as I felt his gaze upon me and then, holding my hands in tight fists, I looked up, all the way up, into his eyes. There was nothing there. I couldn't even say what color they were. They were like smoky diamonds, facetless and cold. I was reminded of the stories Zayde used to tell me when I was six years old and already learning that I was quite good at the violin. He would hold me in his lap and rock me in the hush of his bedroom, where he liked to sit, and he would whisper in my ear, warning me about the evil eye and how its dark forces sought to possess any beautiful or especially talented child. I used to imagine that singular eyeball staring down at me while I slept, staring at me the way this stranger did now. I could not give in to the evil eye. I held my head even higher and put my hands on my hips. I would stare him down.

  The stranger opened his mouth to say something, stopped, chuckled, and pointed to the right.

  When the selection was over, more than four hundred women had been chosen for gassing. I didn't watch them leave, I didn't look over toward the tall chimneys that coughed up smoke day and night. If I looked, if I accepted this as real, I knew it would happen to me, the evil eye would look my way.

  Later that evening, as we drank our coffee substitute and gnawed on the remains of our bread, Rivke told me about the stranger.

  "He is Doctor Mengele, the worst of the SS doctors," she said.

  I laughed. "He is a Nazi, is there any other kind but the worst?"

  "Some doctors actually try to help, but not him. All he is interested in are his experiments."

  "What kind of experiments?"

  Rivke picked something out of her coffee and took a sip from her bowl. She didn't look at me when she spoke. "He likes twins. He does things with twins, and pregnant women."

  I stopped eating. "What kinds of things?"

  "Just things, Chana. Do you have to know everything?"

  "You know," I said.

  "I wish that I did not." She sloshed her drink around in her bowl. "They say he is interested in their brains. He experiments, cuts them open without anesthesia."

  "Enough. That is enough," I said. I took what remained of my bread and coffee and organized it into a cloth for my head. I tied the cloth in the back at the base of my head and followed the line to the lavatory huts.

  Digging trenches was impossible work. The freezing nights had turned the ground to stone. Our Kapo would strut back and forth with whip in hand and an assistant at her side, making sure we were in constant motion. If we weren't fast enough, if our progress wasn't as fast as our neighbors', she would lash out at us with the whip and order the assistants to club us with their sticks.

  On that first day out, I made little progress. It was as if I were trying to dig a hole in an iron skillet with a rubber spatula. I tried standing on the shovel and using my weight to break the ground, but I had no weight, none of us did. We were too weak and too light for this kind of work. I looked about me. Were any of the others doing any better? No one seemed to be, so I decided we were safe. I was wrong. The Kapo came up behind Matel and watched her work for a few minutes.

  "You are getting nowhere," she shouted.

  None of us were, but this particular Kapo seemed to enjoy picking on her fellow countrywomen, and since she was a Pole, Matel was the perfect target.

  Matel rammed the shovel against the ground and threw her body into the handle. She scraped up a puff of dust.

  "It will not give." Matel grunted as she tried again to force the earth.

  "You lazy Jew!" our Jewish Kapo said. "You are worthless. You belong in the chimneys!" She slashed her whip across Matel's back. I rushed over to Matel and grabbed the shovel from her hands. The whip stung at my calves.

  "You have your own digging to do, get back over there." The Kapo cracked her whip again, first at me and then at Matel.

  I tried to jump aside but my coordination was poor. I twisted my ankle and got a lashing on my shoulders. "Wait," I said as I grabbed at my arms and fell to my knees. "Please, when they come to inspect and we have gotten nowhere with the trenches, they will say it is you who is not doing your job."

  The Kapo stepped in closer. Was she about to kick me? I spoke quickly. "If we can work together we can make the trenches. Let us show you. They will say you are a good Kapo if our trenches are the biggest."

  She looked down the line at the other groups working, the Kapos and assistants behind them.

  "Right," she said. She grabbed our left arms, noted our numbers, and motioned for a nearby Unterkapo to take them down. "We will have the biggest trenches and if it is not so, you and your young friend here will see the chimneys from the inside tonight." Pleased with her decree, she marched away, her boots smacking the earth as she went.

  What had I done? Not only had I made it worse for Matel and myself, but I had also fixed it so our whole party had to work faster and harder if we were to have the largest holes dug in time for inspection that afternoon.

  No one said anything to me as we grouped ourselves together and pushed our bodies against the shovels. Rivke and Dvora couldn't even look at me. Bit by bit, layer by layer, we began to Scrape up enough of the crust to get our shovels into the moister, softer underground, and the work became a little easier. Still the Kapo kept on top of us, leaving the group only long enough to check on another work party's progress. Then she would return to give us her report. It seemed that all the Kapos were in on the contest, each interested in having the largest trenches. Word quickly got around to the rest of the prisoners that the young woman down on the other end was the cause of all the extra beatings and the demand for faster, harder work. When our Kapo wasn't looking, one of the Russian prisoners from our party came up to me and asked, "Why should we do this for you? What do we care if you burn? I will not kill myself for you."

  I knew this was the attitude of everyone there except for Rivke, Dvora, and Matel. When the Kapos weren't looking, the work all but stopped. Only the four of us kept working, and I wondered if these weren't perhaps our graves we were digging.

  It wasn't until after our soup break in the afternoon that two SS officers, both men, arrived for the inspection. Matel and I had worked so hard in the morning, jumping from trench to trench, lending a hand, trying to keep our section moving, that by afternoon all we could manage were a few scraping motions. We saw our Kapo go over to the two men. We watched her explaining something to them. We saw them turn their heads toward us and nod. We watched them as they strode along the line, peering over the edges of the trenches. As they drew nearer, Matel and I worked harder. I could hardly lift the shovel anymore, so I got down on my hands and knees and scratched at the hole. "Please be bigger," I said to myself. "Please be bigger."

  One of the officers came up behind me. I kept digging, kept scratching with my fingers. I could feel his feet against my backside. I held my breath.

  "So you are the one with the big ideas," he said to me. "Your trench is good." I glanced across at Matel, who was chewing on her lip, her shovel held in midair. "Your Kapo can be proud." He paused. I looked over at our Kapo, who stood smiling, almost giggling, behind Matel and next to the other officer. I let out my breath. "But it is not the biggest." The officer laughed. Then with his foot he pushed forward against my back, and I tumbled, head first, into the pit. I heard myself cry out, and another voice, quite near whispered," Lord, how long shall I cry and Thou wilt not hear, even cry unto Th
ee of violence and Thou wilt not save."

  The march back to the camp that afternoon seemed endless. I could not face what I had done. I could not face Matel. I thought of Bubbe and of how hard she had tried to keep me alive, with her food, her warmth, her words. I recalled how often she had told me how important it was for us to survive and to remember, so that when the war was over we could tell people of these atrocities. She counted on them caring, on this being a lesson mankind would only need to learn once, and that their having learned it would redeem the lives of all of us who died here. However, I thought as our enemies did, that few would believe and in time those who did would forget. Besides, I didn't want to be a sacrifice for mankind, and I resented God for creating me if that was my purpose, if that was my reason for existing.

  As we approached the gates, I heard the orchestra playing one of their rousing marches. As soon as we were within hearing range of the music, we were supposed to pick up our feet and march through the gates, our gazes forward, arms at our sides.

  I didn't care if they beat me a thousand times, I wasn't going to march, I wasn't going to be a part of this game they were playing with the incoming trains. The newcomers would arrive and hear the music, see us marching, and think they were arriving at a real work camp. They, too, would march along, convinced they had finally come to a better place, only to be led to the showers, where they would be locked in, gassed, and then stuffed in the ovens.

  As I passed directly in front of the orchestra, I glared at the girl with the cymbals. She looked away. Good, I thought. I had shamed her. I smiled to myself and faced forward. Then I saw in front of me, moving as I moved, my shvester. Looking up at her, watching her eyes searching my face, it was I who felt shamed. I was ashamed of my bitterness, my selfishness, and my anger with God. Instead of reaching out, opening myself to others in my suffering the way Bubbe always did, I rejected them, despised their presence, and ended up alone and bitter. Was this the way I wanted the last moments of my life to be?