The Child of Auschwitz: Absolutely heartbreaking World War 2 historical fiction

by Lily Graham

  It was her tiny stub of a pencil, with the bite marks at the end. She blinked, then touched her coat. How had he got it without her even feeling it? He waggled a gnarled finger at her and said, ‘Try better. Try harder. Only steal if you are absolutely sure it’s worth it.’

  She’d raised a brow, looking at her pencil which he pocketed with a grin to her deep annoyance. It was her last one, and was, as such, rather valuable. ‘And was it – taking that from me?’

  ‘To teach my favourite niece this lesson, I’d say it was.’ Then he sauntered off, turning back to add, ‘Very,’ with a chuckle, and he left whistling a tune as he went. She’d shaken her head as she watched him go, a reluctant smile on her lips. Without looking back, he doffed his grey hat to her, and was gone with the night.

  It took her three more attempts but eventually she got the pencil back from him. And his watch.

  She looked up now as Hinterschloss walked past, her hand making a quick splaying action so that the crinkled package sped up her sleeve, fast. He stopped and looked at her, and she shook out the coat, and placed it on top of the others. He moved on, oblivious to the slim parcel sliding up her sleeve, which would be squirrelled away, and placed in the stockings by her knees in a minute.

  Sofie, who had also been transferred to the Kanada work unit was put in another part of the building, sorting through bedding, a welcome relief from her old posting in laundry – brutal work, especially on her back and fingers, the skin of which had begun to itch and split from the harsh soap, making it all the more painful in the cold. But it was harder for her to sneak anything away, like the others, as a young guard named Fritz Meier, with a round, slightly effeminate face with big blue eyes, plump lips and sandy blond hair always seemed to find some reason to be where she was.

  ‘Chocolate, Kritzelei,’ sighed Sofie as she put a small piece on her tongue later that evening.

  Eva nodded, eyes alight, as she shared it with the others in her bunk; it was the first time in weeks that she felt even slightly normal. It had grown white with age, but it still tasted heavenly.

  ‘I didn’t think I’d ever taste chocolate again,’ said Helga, sucking it, a look of pure bliss on her old face. ‘We’re lucky to have been assigned here,’ said Eva, chewing her own sliver of chocolate slowly, her eyes closed in pleasure.

  Helga looked at them, her eyes softer than they usually were, and full of warning. ‘If we were wise, we’d try to get an assignment away from the warehouses as quick as we can – I’ve heard that not many come back after they’ve been sent here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Sofie, turning to look at her in surprise.

  ‘Well, when you finish for the day, it’s quicker to walk you to the crematoria and dispose of you there than take you back here to the barracks.’

  At her frown, the old woman explained. ‘They’re there behind the warehouse – the gas chambers and crematoria – they’ve been working them day and night, that’s what Sara said,’ she whispered, her eye darting to their new Kapo, at the end of their barracks who was busy cooking her evening meal, one she wouldn’t be sharing.

  The stolen chocolate stuck in Eva’s throat.

  What Eva found more often than not in the linings and pockets of the coats and jackets she sorted weren’t jewels or money, but the photographs of loved ones. When people were unsure of what to take, or if they would ever see their friends or family again, what they prized more than gold or jewels were the faces of the people that they loved.

  It was these that Eva would treat with the most respect, piling them up in a corner, and stacking them together. Her eyes were drawn to the children, to the mothers, the sons and daughters, to the lovers. Snapped in time, all these memories, all these lives, snatched away.

  ‘They will make you burn these, or at least turn them over,’ said another woman who had been assigned the same task, seeing Eva put another photograph on a pile. ‘I doubt even they want to be reminded of what they’ve done – to see that these were people once,’ she said, nodding at the pile of coats. Then she picked up the stack of photographs Eva had been sorting and took them away herself.

  Eva’s fist clenched. ‘Before they turned us into rats, into animals, fighting for crumbs, you mean?’ She had to stop herself from protesting as the woman took the photographs to the guard, where Eva was sure they would be destroyed.

  She stared at the back of the woman’s head, feeling oddly betrayed. Eva returned to her work, and saw that one of the photographs had fallen on the floor, and she stooped to pick it up. It was instinctive. It was a picture of a family, a man with bushy eyebrows and a mole over his lips. He had his arms around a shy girl who could barely meet the camera’s gaze, and a boy who was in front laughing. She touched it, and her lips moved in the ghost of a smile. They could have just posed for this picture now. Without really knowing why, Eva slipped it up her sleeve.

  She wouldn’t forget that they were human. That they were people once, who had lived lives full of joy and heartbreak. They had had jobs, and mortgages and homes filled with families and food and love. She wouldn’t forget, either, that she had been a person once, too, with a life, a future, a family, and a home, like them.

  Chapter Five

  Working in the Kanada was one of the easiest roles in the camp. The hours were long, yes, but the work itself was easy and the rewards, if you had nimble fingers, like Eva, were great. Sofie was pretty good at sluicing the odd item here and there, despite the fact that they were regularly searched; shoes were good hiding spots that weren’t really checked. She’d got lucky with a bracelet the week before, and had managed to trade it with the women who worked in the kitchens for salami and cheese, and it had been wonderful to have a full belly for the first time in months. She’d given some of the cheese to their Kapo. As a result, Sofie and Eva were able to use the washrooms for the first time in ages, which was wonderful, not that they were perfectly clean but less dirty was better than the alternative.

  But it was getting harder for her to steal anything much, as her work was closely supervised by the guard, Meier. His big blue eyes were often cast towards her, and his innocent-looking face had the kind of boyish, worrisome flush to his cheeks whenever she looked in his direction, that let her know he would cause trouble.

  Sofie could feel his eyes on her now. She looked up and saw him smile at her. She looked down, with a frown, gritting her teeth. An older woman that had been assigned the same task as her snorted, then whispered loudly, so he could hear.

  ‘Looks like someone’s in love.’

  Sofie looked up to see that Meier’s ears had turned red in embarrassment, and he looked away.

  The old woman started to laugh as his blush deepened.

  Sofie felt her heart thud in fear. The woman was an idiot. He might be young and barely out of puberty but it would be a mistake to antagonise someone like him. ‘Shut up,’ she snapped at the old woman. ‘No one asked you.’

  The other guard, Hinterschloss, came in and told them to keep it down.

  Sofie flexed her jaw and carried on working, when she glanced up sometime later she saw Meier look at her, a soft expression on his face. She looked away again, wondering if she’d just encouraged him more, cursing herself in the process.

  As they walked, she told Eva about her fears. ‘Kritzelei, he follows me everywhere. This is the only time he doesn’t, when we go to the latrine.’

  Eva frowned. ‘I don’t think you have anything to worry about, I think he’s basically harmless.’

  ‘For now,’ agreed Sofie.

  ‘At least it’s not Hinterschloss,’ said Eva. The foul-tempered guard seemed to reserve his antics for their side of the building. Like calling them names, and telling them if they didn’t find him anything good he would make them skip their midday meal. Just the day before he’d kicked one of the women to the ground for walking too slowly on the way out of the warehouse – though he’d been known to do the same if they rushed, sneering, ‘In such a hurry to die, eh?
’ He’d hit them on the backs of the legs with the butt of his rifle. ‘I’m not sure he’s capable of any emotion besides spite,’ said Eva.

  Sofie nodded. It could be worse.

  When she got back to her work though, and found a note with the words, ‘I missed you,’ scribbled on a tiny slip of paper near where she’d been sorting through blankets, and saw Meier shooting her surreptitious looks from his post by the wall, she knew that actually, worse might be on its way.

  ‘You’re pretty, you know that?’ he said later, coming to stand near her, on the pretext of helping her fold a blanket. He peered at her slim body in approval.

  Sofie closed her eyes but tried to keep her expression light. Ordinarily she would tell someone like him to get lost, with some choice words so that he never attempted it again. She was direct, and people often mistook it as rudeness. But she had learnt, like Eva, that there were some games you had to play in order to survive.

  ‘Not with this,’ she said, running a hand over the scar along her forehead and scalp, where her dark blonde hair was starting to grow back.

  ‘How did you get it?’ he asked, his eyes concerned.

  Sofie felt her anger rise at the question. The windows of her father’s watchmaking shop exploding in a sea of glass, her son’s loud wails, her blood pooling on the floor, all flashed before her eyes. She wanted to snap, ‘How do you think?’ To hiss in his face, that it was from boys like him. Instead she took a breath and lied. ‘I fell down some stairs.’

  ‘Oh. Well, you’re still pretty.’

  Sofie didn’t say anything.

  ‘We watched a film in the cinema last night – starring Bette Davis, and I couldn’t help thinking that you look just like her, prettier even, because you don’t wear any make-up.’

  Sofie looked up at him, noting his clear blue eyes. ‘The cinema?’

  ‘Oh yes, there’s lots to do in this town.’

  He didn’t seem to notice the look of incredulity she shot him.

  That night as they lay in their bunk and the snow fell in thick drifts outside, they shivered, huddling together, Sofie asked, ‘Did you know that there’s a cinema here?’

  ‘A cinema?’ said Eva turning to look at her in surprise, eyes wide in disbelief.

  ‘For the guards.’

  ‘I suppose they need something to do with their evenings,’ scoffed Vanda, sarcastically.

  ‘Still, while we’re here suffering, dying, they’re watching films.’

  It was a disturbing thought.

  As the others fell asleep, Sofie stared at the wood from the bunk bed above, thinking of those guards at the cinema, calling this place a ‘town’ while for them it was a prison. The sensible thing to do, she knew, was to use Meier and his infatuation with her to get what she needed out of him. Eva wasn’t the only person who had come to Auschwitz looking for someone. Only, unlike her friend, it wasn’t a happy reunion she was after.

  Chapter Six

  There were always new transports arriving. Every day thousands more women arrived in Auschwitz, their fate decided as they lined up in groups: left or right.

  Word spread like wildfire of where they were from – camps like Westerbork, Terezín, Ravensbruck – and Eva and Sofie would rush to meet the new arrivals, with the others, particularly if they were from anywhere they had been themselves.

  After the evening Appell, you sometimes found cousins reunited, friends, or even mothers and daughters, though it was usually more distant connections one came across: strangers with whom you’d shared passing greetings, light conversations about the weather back home, your family’s good health. People you never thought you’d see reduced to the bare bones of who they used to be.

  There was Mrs Edelstein the greengrocer from Eva’s street, who used to always add something extra in a bag when she was out shopping with her mother. ‘Take, take,’ she used to say, offering her a handful of sugared almonds, or a ripe nectarine. Always with a ready smile for her. Seeing the poor woman here, with her shocked face and shaved hair, had been heartbreaking. She had been in Terezín up until now, though Eva hadn’t seen her there.

  ‘Have you any news about my parents?’ Eva asked.

  She shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t see them, I’m sorry, we left so suddenly, they took my sons from me,’ her lips started to tremble, ‘I don’t know if they’ll live,’ and then she began to cry.

  Eva rushed forward and the two hugged for a long time. Strangers no more.

  She wasn’t the only one who encountered people she used to know. Every evening before curfew, Sofie made the rounds, asking the women if they knew where she could find her cousin. ‘Her name is Lotte,’ she told them. ‘I need to find her. They said she was brought here. She would have been taken to the Austrian barracks, I think.’

  Sofie passed around some extra bread she’d traded for. ‘She has blonde hair, big green eyes.’

  But no one had heard anything. ‘Sometimes people go by another name here,’ one of the others suggested. ‘A nickname, or something else, is there anything else you can think of?’ she said, pocketing the bread.

  Sofie sniffed. ‘Yes.’ It wasn’t a nickname though. It was what she would call her if she ever found her again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Brutus. Or perhaps Judas,’ she said with a snort, aware of the irony.

  Chapter Seven

  Sofie’s palm closed over the ring. She’d found it in the lining of the bedding she was looking through in the warehouse. Her gaze had darted left and right nervously, and she’d seen no one looking. She slipped it up her sleeve.

  There was a shuffling sound behind her, and she froze, a prickle of fear ripping through her. ‘Open your hand,’ said a soft voice, close to her ear. Sofie lifted her gaze, just over her shoulder. Meier. His blue gaze was oddly still, serious. She swallowed. ‘Open it,’ he said, more firmly.

  Sofie obeyed. She bit her lip. ‘I-I was going to bring this to you.’

  He looked at her for a long moment, his gaze gave nothing away. For a moment, Sofie was wrenched back in the past, to a moment just like this, when she’d thought that her life might be over. Except then she’d had Eva come to her rescue.

  ‘Let her go.’ Eva raced at the gendarme, a tangle of limbs and flying dark hair, as she tried to pull Sofie out of the gendarme’s grip.

  ‘Don’t, Kritzelei,’ Sofie implored as the guard pushed her back roughly, so that she landed roughly on her backside in the muddy courtyard. He was tall, with short, dark hair and hooded eyes, which peered at Eva in some surprise. ‘This does not concern you, girl – I suggest for your sake that you move on.’

  Then he twisted Sofie’s arm, and attempted to drag her off to the camp office, while she resisted. Eva could see that her friend’s arm had turned white, and bloodless, like her face which was pale, and terrified. The scar on her forehead stood out in sharp pink relief.

  ‘What has she done?’ demanded Eva, dusting herself off and getting back up, ready to implore, to beg. The gendarmes in Terezín were generally reasonable, and could be persuaded, or bribed, so she’d found. ‘Maybe I can help?’

  The gendarme looked at her, his eyes dark, as he prised open Sofie’s fingers, while she tried desperately to keep her fist closed. ‘She has been found sending illegal letters, the punishment – as all of you know – is death.’

  Correspondence with the outside was strictly controlled – in the beginning no one in the ghetto was allowed to send any. In January of 1942, a few prisoners were caught, and the gendarmes had made an example of them, with an horrific public execution that had rocked the camp, and truly driven home to them just where they were. A prison.

  Inmates could send out short postcards, written in German, that were censored. At one time these were limited to a strict word count but that had since been abolished. Still, it was almost impossible to say anything of importance in the postcards or find out anything of importance either. Keeping the illusion that Terezín was a ‘model’ camp with happy inma
tes, and no suffering was vital to the Nazis as it had come under a lot of scrutiny. In fact, there would even be an inspection to this effect by the Red Cross many months from now.

  ‘Illegal letters?’ said Eva. ‘I’m sure that’s not true. The only ones she sends are the postcards. You must have some kind of proof – even here, there needs to be proof for such an accusation?’

  Sofie’s eyes widened, wondering at what game her friend was playing. The gendarme looked at Eva as if she was an idiot. ‘Of course, there is proof!’ Then he took Eva’s hand roughly and prised open her fingers, in triumph. Only to blink. In Sofie’s splayed fingers was no letter, just a small crumpled up bill of no real significance. It was the currency used here, ‘ghettogeld’ they called it.

  He stared at in shock. Then shook Sofie roughly. ‘It was there, I saw it!’

  ‘I -I -I was just going to buy some bread,’ stammered Sofie.

  ‘You’re lying!’ he hissed.

  Eva frowned. ‘Maybe you saw this and thought it was a letter – perhaps it looks like it from far.’

  Sofie nodded, emphatically.

  The gendarme looked livid. ‘I know what I saw! She’s hidden it. But I will find it.’ And he began searching Sofie’s body, patting her down, making her turn out her pockets, take off her shoes. He even squeezed open her mouth to see if she’d tried to swallow it, but found nothing.

  Suddenly he straightened – something must have occurred to him – whirling around to look at her suspiciously. ‘You touched her earlier – I saw it, when you rushed at her. You took it, didn’t you?’

  Eva’s eyes widened. ‘You were holding on to her arm the whole time – and you found it there in her hand. I’m no magician.’