Cilka's Journey(2)

“Cecilia Klein.”

“Where are you from, Cecilia? Your country and town.”

“I’m from Bardejov in Czechoslovakia.”

“What is the date of your birth?”

“The seventeenth of March, 1926.”

“How long have you been here?”

“I came here on the twenty-third of April in 1942, just after I turned sixteen.”

The agent pauses, studies her.

“That was a long time ago.”

“An eternity in here.”

“What have you been doing here since April 1942?”

“Staying alive.”

“Yes, but how did you do that?” He tilts his head at her. “You look like you haven’t starved.”

Cilka doesn’t answer, but her hand goes to her hair, which she hacked off herself weeks ago, after her friends were marched from the camp.

“Did you work?”

“I worked at staying alive.”

The four men exchange looks. One of them picks up a piece of paper and pretends to read it before speaking.

“We have a report on you, Cecilia Klein. It says that you in fact stayed alive by prostituting yourself to the enemy.”

Cilka says nothing, swallows hard, looks from one man to the next, trying to fathom what they are saying, what they expect her to say in return.

Another speaks. “It’s a simple question. Did you fuck the Nazis?”

“They were my enemy. I was a prisoner here.”

“But did you fuck the Nazis? We’re told you did.”

“Like many others here, I was forced to do whatever I was told by those who imprisoned me.”

The first agent stands. “Cecilia Klein, we will be sending you to Kraków and then determining your fate from there.” He refuses, now, to look at her.

“No,” Cilka says, standing. This can’t be happening. “You can’t do this to me! I am a prisoner here.”

One of the men who hasn’t spoken before quietly asks, “Do you speak German?”

“Yes, some. I’ve been in here three years.”

“And you speak many other languages, we have heard, and yet you are Czechoslovakian.”

Cilka doesn’t protest, frowning, not understanding the significance. She had been taught languages at school, picked others up by being in here.

The men all exchange looks.

“Speaking other languages would have us believe you are a spy, here to report back to whoever will buy your information. This will be investigated in Kraków.”

“You can expect a long sentence of hard labor,” the original officer says.

It takes Cilka a moment to react, and then she is grabbed by the arm by the soldier who brought her into the room, dragged away, screaming her innocence.

“I was forced, I was raped! No! Please.”

But the soldiers do not react; they do not seem to hear. They are moving on to the next person.


Montelupich Prison, Kraków, July 1945

Cilka crouches in the corner of a damp, stinking cell. She struggles to register time passing. Days, weeks, months.

She does not make conversation with the women around her. Anyone overheard speaking by the guards is taken out and brought back with bruises and torn clothing. Stay quiet, stay small, she tells herself, until you know what is happening, and what the right things are to say or do. She has torn off a section of her dress to tie around her nose and mouth in an attempt to minimize the stench of human waste, damp and decay.

One day, they take her out of the cell. Faint from hunger and exhausted by the effort of vigilance, the figures of the guards and the wall and floors all seem immaterial, as in a dream. She stands in line behind other prisoners in a corridor, slowly moving toward a door. She can lean, momentarily, against a warm, dry wall. They keep the corridors heated, for the guards, but not the cells themselves. And though the weather outside must be mild by now, the prison seems to trap cold from the night and hold on to it through the whole next day.

When it is Cilka’s turn, she enters a room where an officer sits behind a desk, his face bathed in greenish light from a single lamp. The officers by the door indicate she should go over to the desk.

The officer looks down at his piece of paper.

“Cecilia Klein?”

She glances around. She is alone in the room with three burly men. “Yes?”

He looks down again and reads from the paper. “You are convicted of working with the enemy, as a prostitute and additionally as a spy. You are sentenced to fifteen years’ hard labor.” He signs the piece of paper. “You sign this to say you have understood.”

Cilka has understood all of the officer’s words. He has been speaking in German, rather than Russian. Is it a trick, then? she thinks. She feels the eyes of the men at the door. She knows she has to do something. It seems she has no choice but to do the only thing in front of her.

He flips the piece of paper and points to a dotted line. The letters above it are in Cyrillic—Russian script. Again, as she has experienced over and over in her young life, she finds herself with two choices: one, the narrow path opening up in front of her; the other, death.

The officer hands her the pen, and then looks toward the door, bored, waiting for the next person in line—just doing his job.

With a shaking hand, Cilka signs the piece of paper.