The Rabbit Girls(44)

On Eugenia’s release, she found the broken space in Block 15 and made a small bunk from the wood found in the upper loft space where other ‘rabbit girls’ were hiding. The women pretended not to see the rabbit girls, they are like the forgotten war-wounded; left alone to tenderly lick their wounds.

Yet the guards are always looking to smoke them out.

The broken bunks, our space, is their sanctuary, and the camp women have kept the rabbit girls a secret. It’s one of the only times, Eugenia says with pride, that the women have stood united against the guards.

Fear, Eugenia thinks. It is fear that keeps their secret. Because the women know that so random was the selection for the experiments, it could so easily be them.

Eugenia kept her leg clean by using water from the sink, which has now dried up. She escaped knowledge and detection. Soon other rabbits joined her, although many died. Eugenia went back in to rescue Wanda and Bunny, and Stella joined their group the following day.

The guards want ‘the rabbit girls’. They want to destroy the evidence.

Tomorrow I will hand them in. Three lives for the price of my release.

Wanda.

Eugenia.

Bunny.

And what will happen to Stella without Bunny?

I am awake, not fearing tomorrow, but I am doing what I have fought against all my life. One life is worth more than another. My life matters more. Because of this I can barter my life for theirs. A position of advantage. I am no better than the guards who kill with batons and guns. I am no longer Frieda. I am superior.

I will stand on those who have shown me kindness. I will stomp on them to leave. I think of my empty stomach, my own pain and I know the Nazis have won a war, whether in victory or not, they have won the war over humanity. Turning everyone against each other.

Eight weeks is all it takes.

Can you forgive me?

Can I forgive myself?

A disgust so deep pulls Miriam away from the letter, she feels tainted by it. By its roughness and an honesty that scares her. She looks at the remaining letters and considers burning every single page, every word removed in flame and smoke. Imagines the match scratching a flame into the air, taking each letter in the corner, flames igniting the paper into life. To eradicate the past, the present so almost at its end. Then the thought of her teetering on the side of the bath comes into focus, the cool bath under bare toes, and what she had considered doing to escape Axel. If anyone had given her an opportunity, or the means to leave . . . would she not have taken it, also?

Instead of setting them alight, she thinks of her father’s words, ‘I killed Frieda.’ And she knows no matter how difficult, she will see this through. She must, so he can rest in peace.





18





HENRYK


To look back is to relive.

To relive is to die a thousand deaths again. I barely survived it once. I would get lost in the labyrinth of black eyes and a loss of humanity that so startled me. We were nothing but animals, and within the barbed-wire walls, surrounded by the weakest mankind has made, we were slaves. Not to them, but to ourselves. Slaves for survival. Slaves to the next mouthful of food. We would kill for bread, all of us. He who fights hardest and longest wins.

I was covered in lice, watching them crawl along my skin. Did Frieda fight back, pick them off, shake them away, scratch? Or did she resign herself to their torture like I did?

I did what I had to do to survive, I tell myself that, but I know that I would rather have died than become who I became.

That is why I didn’t go back. That is why I am paralysed. I cannot think that Frieda would have done the same, I cannot know if she was so compromised.

Even though I smiled, I laughed and I enjoyed my life, I was also hollow. She holds something that cannot be returned, only shared.

For a time, I willed the memoirs, maps and reports to tell me she was shot in the back of the head, perhaps. Even though the crevice that opened for me at the thought was black and red and cindered as if on fire, it was peaceful.

And it meant that Emilie never lied to me.

It meant it was over. But I fear the opposite was true.

Emilie did not know the horrors that existed within me; she did not want to hear, she chose not to look and I cherished her the more for that.

Auschwitz was like a cancer: it ate and changed everything into one thick, black mass. An abyss.

Emilie found me in the hospital and I returned to her side. We had been married nine years, she took me back after the camp was liberated when she did not have to.

As a husband, I did not recognise myself. As a man, I was lost. Nine months was all it took.

After six months in hospital, I returned to the small room Emilie called home. As one of the very few married couples who had both survived the Nazi regime we were considered fortunate and many women in the large building we inhabited visited us. I remember nothing but an endless sea of women at the door and my wife at my side. For months I was, apparently, inert. I did not move unless told, eat or speak unless I had to.

Emilie told me many times that she thought about leaving me in that room. So deeply absorbed in my own trauma I had no ability to do anything when everything needed to be done. Emilie stayed because she had made a promise to, she always said. ‘I promised to stand by you, Henryk, even though I would leave you ten times over if I could.’ My wife never minced her words, but even in their harsh reality I was lost.

So, am I a weak man?