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

by Lily Graham

As the days passed in a sea of grief, there were shouts for them to come outside. Once again those who were able to walk were told to come. ‘Schnell. Quickly.’

  Hundreds of prisoners scrambled outside into the freezing cold to begin what would be known later as the death marches.

  The sick and the elderly stayed behind. Once again, Eva watched as no guards came inside to drag them out; she held Naděje to her chest, closed her eyes, and blew out her cheeks. Next to her Helga said, ‘You aren’t going to go?’

  Eva shook her head. The last time she’d left they’d almost died.

  Helga nodded. The old woman’s eyes were wide with fear. She was thin, frail, tired too. She nodded.

  No one came inside to check. Perhaps the guards figured they would die soon enough in their beds without food. It was likely. They’d finished the last of the bread.

  They watched the others leave. It turned out to be a momentous decision.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  They awoke to quiet. No dogs barked. No jackboots marched outside. The background hum of thousands of human beings clinging onto their lives was gone.

  It was just quiet. An odd stillness that she hadn’t heard in months, if not years. The barracks was nearly empty, the only ones left behind were skeletal shapes, close to death.

  Helga came back from the outside, shuffling into the bunk, her eyes wide. ‘They’re gone,’ she breathed.

  ‘Gone?’ whispered Eva, getting out of the bunk, Naděje close to her breast, needing to check for herself. Eva wrapped a thin jacket over them, and made her way outside to stare.

  There was no one there.

  No floodlights lit up the camp. No booted feet marched. The guard towers were empty. They’d been abandoned to their fate.

  Knowing that the Germans had gone felt like the first ray of sun in the longest winter. She looked down at her tiny baby, still miraculously alive despite her size, her weak lungs still unable to make more than a thin gurgling sound, and kissed her smooth cheek. A tear, this time of surprise and joy mixed with regret, rolled down her cheek.

  She missed her friend, more now than ever. ‘Oh Sofie, just a few more days, and we would have been free, together.’

  She looked up, past the fence, and for the first time, saw beyond it, and vowed, ‘I will find him, your Tomas, like I promised you. I will raise him – I will raise our children together.’

  Those who had been left behind were close to death. Even though their tormentors had finally left, survival would be harder than ever. Soviet planes had bombed the nearby factory and there was no electricity or water. Those who could walk – like Eva – would need to call on their very last reserves to keep going, to keep fighting. It seemed incredibly cruel as so many of the people who had clung on to life now began to die.

  Eva was surprised to find that Maria was one of the left behind. She had grown pale and weak in a short space of time, and the change was shocking. Eva suspected she was suffering from Typhus. The Kapo stayed in her room, and they left her to it.

  She looked at Helga and said, ‘It’s not over yet. We’re going to have to be strong. Find food. Clothes. Water.’

  Helga nodded. ‘And carry out the dead.’

  Which was the worst part, having to move the bodies of the people who died in the night, and there were many.

  Together they broke into the Kanada and found piles of clean clothing, decent shoes, socks and blankets. For the first time in years she had proper boots that kept her feet warm. The feeling was delicious.

  They brought back blankets and clothes and shared these with all they could.

  At first to slake their thirst they melted snow, but soon hacked up ice from a nearby frozen pond by the gates. It was hard work and it took its toll.

  Maria lay sick, near death still in her private room. She’d protested when the others had begun to take her things, using up the last of her supplies, but she’d been too weak to prevent them.

  Looking at her lying weak and pale on the bed, feverish, Eva couldn’t help but feel that maybe she’d been paid back for her betrayal.

  When she came inside the room to fetch a bucket, her thin cry made her turn. ‘Eva, please. I need medicine. It’s typhus, I think. Please, Eva. Please remember that I helped you.’

  Eva turned to look at her, a frown between her eyes. ‘You helped me?’

  ‘Yes – that’s how you have your child, because I turned my back so you could see your husband. You can hate me if you want but if it weren’t for me—’ She stopped and started to cough, wheezing as she fell back against the thin mattress.

  ‘Yes, you did do that. But only because you were well paid.’ The Kapo had been given parcels of food that Sofie and Eva had managed to scrounge, and even then when she’d taken the food she’d made no promises that she would protect her, just keep her mouth shut. She hadn’t even kept that promise in the end, had she? And it had led to her best friend’s death.

  ‘Please, Eva, I’ll die if someone doesn’t help me.’

  Eva clenched her jaw. ‘Yes,’ and she turned on her heel to leave, saying over her shoulder, ‘That’s the case for all of us.’

  With two of the other stronger women, they broke into a storeroom in the kitchen and were amazed to find row upon row of black bread, as well as cheese and jam. Putting them in heavy sack bags, they dragged their goods back to the barracks, and those who could feasted on more food than they had in years.

  Eva’s stomach was so small that she was full just after two slices, but she crammed in a thick wedge of cheese for good measure, thinking wryly that the dairy might ensure that her milk continued to flow as Naděje suckled on her small breast, her tiny hand near Eva’s heart. ‘That’s it, baby,’ she said. ‘We’ll get strong together.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Helga as Eva sat on the edge of the bunk, her legs dangling on the ground. She made her decision, then handed Naděje to the old woman and got to her feet.

  ‘I’ll be back soon.’

  Her hands reached into the pocket of the thick, cosy coat she’d found at the Kanada with its fur collar, and she straightened her spine as she walked to the end towards the Kapo’s room.

  ‘Here,’ she said, handing her two wedges of bread and a bottle of antibiotics they’d found in their scrummage of the warehouse.

  Maria tried to sit up, and Eva reluctantly came forward to help her. ‘Thank you,’ said Maria, opening the pill bottle and swallowing one. It seemed to take a long time as she was very weak.

  ‘I’m sorry about your friend,’ she said at last. ‘I liked her. I never meant for that to happen.’

  Eva nodded, dashing away a tear. She got up to leave and Maria said, ‘She would be glad that you helped me.’

  Eva turned back to look at her and scoffed, a trace of humour about her lips. ‘No, she wouldn’t. She would have said, ‘Kritzelei, you’re a fool, she almost got you killed.’’

  Maria blinked. ‘Why then?’

  ‘Because I’ll never be able to forgive you for causing her death, but at least I won’t have yours on my conscience now.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Eva woke to the sound of armoured cars and tanks and then shouting and gun shots.

  ‘Wake up,’ she hissed to Helga. ‘We need to hide.’

  Six days after they had left, the Germans returned.

  Helga looked at her, her eyes wide, her lank hair seemed to crackle with fear. ‘They’ve come back to finish us off!’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Eva. ‘I won’t let that happen.’

  They crept outside, but fell back when they saw, in the distance, guards marching. In the snow there were fresh bodies, and they saw Maria stagger slowly past them, outside.

  ‘Come back, don’t be a fool!’ called Eva. But the former Kapo walked on bare feet through the thick drifts. Her clothing hung off her like a sack – she’d lost a lot of weight in recent weeks, a combination of her illness and the loss of her favoured position with the guards. She staggered, possibly deli
rious, trying to call the guards who were some distance ahead. Her thin cracked lips, crying out, ‘Help me.’

  One of them turned. A shot rang out and Maria sank backwards into a pool of blood turning pink in the fresh snow.

  Eva and Helga stifled a gasp. The guards carried on walking, not bothering to look back, shooting any stray prisoners they encountered with impunity. Eva and Helga huddled just beyond the doorway, out of sight.

  In the distance, there was the sound of an explosion.

  ‘They’re blowing up the other crematoria,’ guessed Helga.

  They watched in shock as the Germans got back into their armoured cars and left.

  ‘Do you think they will come back?’ she asked.

  Eva looked at her, clutching her baby to her chest. Her eye fell on Maria’s body, growing cold in the snow. ‘I don’t know.’

  They’d had a lucky escape but they were stuck here. The Germans may have left Auschwitz but they were still fighting the Soviets nearby. The war wasn’t over yet and until that happened, they dare not risk leaving.

  Two days later, as Helga and two of the other women were walking to get more ice from the pond, heavy buckets in their arms, they saw what looked like a bear at the gates.

  Eva blinked as more and more of them began to appear. Finally, she realised that they were men, in large overcoats.

  ‘It’s the Russians!’ shouted one of the women, whooping in joy. ‘They’ve come to set us free!’

  Eva watched as they made their way into the camp, greeting the women who fell upon them crying and hugging them in their joy. They were civil, and courteous, which after years of brutality felt like kindness.

  One of the men – who had a long thin scar running down his face, just below his left eye, and startling blue eyes – looked at her and said in broken German, ‘When we came through here I thought you were all ghosts.’

  Soon there were warm fires burning and the men invited them to warm themselves by the flames. They shared their food readily too. Not realising that this kindness would be the undoing of some of these poor women, their bodies so starved and malnourished their systems didn’t know how to cope with an overload of fat; many ended up dying from diarrhoea as they couldn’t process the new diet.

  Eva watched in horror as more and more women in their barracks got sick, complaining of stomach cramps, their wasted bodies giving up on them when they were now so close to freedom. ‘Don’t eat their food,’ she told Helga. ‘No matter how much we want to – I think it’s making us sick. Just stick to the bread and cheese.’

  ‘Kritzelei,’ complained Helga. ‘You can’t think they’re poisoning us – we’re eating the same food as them.’

  For Eva, having her still be called Sofie’s nickname, was both a comfort, and a torment. ‘Not poison, just too rich maybe.’

  Helga nodded. They’d watched too many die. She would be careful.

  The man with the scar kept coming back inside the barracks, wanting to chat with the women. He was curious about the survivors. It was hard for them all to explain what had happened. To talk about what the Germans had done. He seemed most interested in the baby. ‘Was it – one of theirs?’ he asked, not unkindly.

  Eva shook her head. ‘No, it was my husband’s. We found each other, here.’

  He looked at her, his blue eyes solemn. ‘Well, that is the first good thing I have heard about this place. I’m glad.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I am Stanislav,’ he said introducing himself. She looked at him carefully and then stuck out her hand. ‘Eva.’

  Stanislav and their liberators were soldiers from the 60th army of the 1st Ukrainian Front. He’d grown up in Odessa, a beautiful city on the Black Sea, so he said. He was married, with two young sons, but back home he used to be a professor of literature. ‘It’s not much use here. But I tell the men poetry sometimes.’

  ‘Does it help?’

  He inclined his head. ‘Sometimes.’

  She looked up at him and said, ‘Tennyson, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. An English poem I learnt at school – my father wanted me to learn the language,’ she explained, feeling a twinge of pain as she thought of him, and her family, of her old life, when such things had seemed to matter. ‘That’s as much as I know of the Ukraine.’

  He frowned. ‘I don’t know that one,’ he said with a frown. She recited the poem about the needless killing of six hundred men who were ordered to fight, even though they were facing certain death by a foolish commander in the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War in 1854, ‘… Someone had blundered. Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do and die, into the valley of Death, rode the six hundred…’

  Eva couldn’t help thinking that the Germans had followed a madman in the same way.

  Until this war was over, they were like those 600, waiting and hoping that their new guardians would lead them towards victory, towards freedom at long last.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Helga and Eva managed to find a room away from the barracks, and they spent their first night in years in real beds.

  As they regained some strength they began to look forward, to think of how they might rebuild their lives. Eva had one thought only and that was to get back to Prague. To find out what happened to her family. After that she would keep her promise to Sofie, she would find Tomas, somehow.

  For Helga, freedom came at a hard price. There was no one left in her family. ‘They’re all dead,’ she said, tears in her eyes. ‘My parents died when I was a little girl. I was an only child. My husband was my life, and my two sons, and I watched as they got shot – the day I arrived here. It’s why I almost gave up. There’s no one.’

  Eva reached out and clutched her hand. ‘You’ve got me.’

  Helga looked at her. ‘I can’t go live with you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because – your family—?’

  ‘Helga, we’ve been sleeping next to each other for two years. You are my family now.’

  The old woman dashed a tear from her eyes, and touched Naděje’s little hand and nodded.

  Some of the other women wanted to go to Auschwitz I to see if the men were alive – many of the Soviet soldiers were going there as well, and it was thought it would be safer than Birkenau in case the Germans came back. It was a long, interminable walk through the snow, and Eva had to help Helga get through it. She was stronger now, but they were all painfully thin, and weak, even with more food in their bellies, it would take many of them years before they would fully recover, if they ever truly did. Their bodies might, but their lives would forever be changed. They were not the same people they’d arrived here as. At twenty-six, Eva felt like an old woman.

  When they arrived at Auschwitz I, the remaining men were overjoyed to see them. They welcomed them warmly. In the crowd, Eva found Herman and they embraced for a long time. ‘Oh, I’m so glad to see you’re alive,’ he cried.

  ‘Not just me,’ she said, and showed him the baby that he’d had a small part in bringing into the world. His mouth fell open.

  ‘Is that Michal’s?’

  She nodded and the old man stared down at the baby, as the men around them spoke to the other women, asking after their wives. Some were crying, many were sharing warm smiles.

  Eva and Helga slept in an old Kapo’s room in the men’s barracks.

  Herman came to visit often, bringing whatever food he could. ‘You have always been so generous, thank you,’ she said as she ate the salami he offered.

  ‘It’s from the Russians,’ he said.

  They watched the Soviets warily. The truth was their lives were in these men’s hands. They felt like they could trust them, but after everything they’d been through they couldn’t be sure who or what to trust ever again.

  On their third evening in the new camp, Eva passed Stanislav who was sitting by a fire. He held his hands out towards the flames. ‘Eva,’ he called, and she stopped. ‘Would you like a coffee?’


  Eva cradled Naděje to her chest. Her baby was still far too small, but she had grown slightly, and seemed stronger. She had yet to cry properly though, beyond short gurgling wheezes, her tiny lungs were just too weak.

  ‘That would be nice, thank you.’

  She watched as he put a tin kettle onto the coals, then spooned freshly ground coffee into the pot. She sighed in pleasure as the rich aroma permeated the smoky air.

  ‘It’s been several years since I tasted the real thing,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘I can imagine, you’ve been away from the outside world for a long time.’ The firelight fell on the scars on his face, and his blue gaze turned towards her. ‘I was thinking of that when you walked past actually. You will need a birth certificate for your child. I can take you to the town tomorrow.’

  Eva blinked. A birth certificate. ‘From here?’

  ‘You will need it.’

  Eva stared down at Naděje. ‘Born in Auschwitz, that’s some legacy.’

  Stanislav was true to his word and in the morning, she travelled with him and Helga to the town. ‘We must be careful – the Germans have left the camp but they are still around in the town. Stay close to me,’ he said, patting his rifle.

  They made their way into the small courthouse, the sight of the Ukrainian soldier causing more than a little unease as a group of clerks dropped their files as soon as they entered.

  ‘What is going on? We don’t have anything for you!’ cried one of the men.

  ‘We don’t want any trouble,’ said Helga. The man sneered, and Stanislav frowned. ‘We need a birth certificate.’

  ‘We can’t do that – not without—’

  Stanislav stepped forward. ‘This child was born in that camp – which you allowed to continue for years – acknowledging that is the least you can do.’

  He stared from the tall, bearded man to the skeletal frames of Helga and Eva, and the tiny baby in her arms, and nodded. ‘We don’t want any trouble – come with me.’