Beyond the Shadow of Night(65)

Outside, he could hear a distant hiss, and looked across to see steam pulsing out above another train. He stopped for a moment to listen, and heard the clatter of shoes on concrete—hundreds of them—and the faint hubbub of voices. A shout and a crack of a stick on his shoulder made him move on.

They were led to a nearby building, where a few more guards were casually leaning against the walls, talking and smoking cigarettes, and they were told to wait inside.

It was another large cabin, with lots of sacks piled up along one side. Asher opened one of them, and then another. It took a moment to register, and he quickly checked a third sack. They were full of hair—yes, hair. How strange. And it looked like human hair. But if it was from people, there must have been thousands of them.

The guard fetched scissors from a closet and handed them out.

Even stranger.

The clatter of shoes and the blur of voices got closer, and the guard called Asher and his fellow Totenjuden to attention.

“Your job is to cut off the hair of all the women and girls who pass through here.”

Asher had to think that through. Had he really said that? More importantly, had the rest of his family been here? He glanced back at the sacks again. Were Rina’s locks—freshly cut the day before—somewhere in that mass of hair?

The guard continued: “Take care to cut the hair off as close to the scalp as possible. No waste.”

“What do you think they do with the hair we remove?” Asher whispered to the man next to him.

The man shrugged. “I can’t say I care. I’m just hoping my hands still work after all that digging.”

Asher clenched his aching hands and was about to agree, but before he got a word out the room started filling up. Women and girls entered, the men and boys waiting outside. Clearly, these people represented the next batch of Jews, like livestock being delivered to a farm.

Perhaps now Asher would find out what had happened to the rest of his family.

Another guard started talking to the new arrivals. “All of you, be quiet and listen. You are going to have a shower to rid you of any lice, but first, while the boys and men wait outside, the women and girls must have their hair removed just in case the lice have laid eggs. It’s nothing more than that.”

Before Asher had time to consider what was going on, a girl had been placed in front of him. She started crying. Asher placed an arm around her and squeezed her shoulder gently. He told her it would be all right, that he would be gentle and not hurt her, and that getting rid of the lice would be for the best. His own hastily arranged words echoed in his head as he then whispered into her ear, asking her to keep still.

He started cutting.





Chapter 21

Treblinka, Poland, 1943

Cutting hair didn’t seem such hard work compared with chopping wood, but after a few hours Asher’s back ached so much it brought tears to his eyes, and his fingers had an arthritic quality to them, the joints stiff and swollen.

But together the men had worked their way through the entire crowd, and by the end the scene before them looked like a nightmare. This was a room full of hundreds of women and girls with hair so closely cropped they were as good as bald. Asher had never seen a bald woman before, and judging by the looks of fear and disgust on their faces, the women were also unaccustomed to the feeling.

The Totenjuden were then ordered back to their barracks. More orders were given as Asher walked toward the exit, this time to the girls and women.

“Clothes off!” was the command. “Now!”

Some of the older women questioned this.

“Do as you’re told,” the guard replied, giving her an assured look. “Your clothes will be disinfected and returned to you after your delousing shower.”

One woman was brave enough to continue arguing. A guard stepped up to her.

But by then Asher was outside the building, and his mind was adjusting to a new scene of distaste. Indeed, every Totenjude stopped for a second, startled to be confronted by the boys and men, all naked, all shivering and huddled together, their clothes in a pile against the wall.

Asher glanced back to see the shaven-headed women and girls undressing too, many cowering from yet more embarrassment.

As Asher was marched away, his thoughts turned again to the rest of his family. Was this what had happened to them? And to Rina only the day before? All of them would have been uncomfortable, to say the least, undressing in front of strangers. An image of his mama, cold and naked, nothing more than rough stubble covering her head, flashed into his mind. He stopped walking at the thought, only starting again when the men behind shoved him in the back and forced him onward.

In the cabin, Asher collapsed onto his bed. Physical relaxation was easy; the thought that he was in the bowels of some hell on earth prevented his mind relaxing. Nevertheless, he closed his eyes and tried to make the pulsing sensation in his fingers go away. It didn’t take long for the exhaustion to conquer his unpleasant thoughts, and he slept.

He was woken by a distant throbbing sound—deep and regular, like nothing he had ever heard before. Well, actually, no. It was like the engine of a truck or a tractor, only louder and deeper in tone. But Asher had been woken from a dream—a dream of being on the tractor in Dyovsta once again, driving up and down the fields with his papa and his best friend, Mykhail. Perhaps that was why the noise reminded him of an engine.

As he was rousing himself, a group of guards entered, yelling orders. Asher’s back ached, and he took a little longer than the others to get up. They were marched back to the same building as the day before, and told to gather up all the clothing and shoes and take them to another one.