Three Sisters (The Tattooist of Auschwitz #3)(3)

‘Yitzchak, I’m glad you’re here, come and sit with us.’

Chaya quickly turns to the young doctor, fear in her eyes. Dr Kisely smiles and guides her to a kitchen chair, pulling another away from the small table for Yitzchak to sit.

‘Is she very unwell?’ Yitzchak asks.

‘She’s going to be fine. It’s a fever, nothing a healthy young girl can’t recover from in her own time.’

‘So what’s this about?’ Chaya waves a hand between the doctor and herself.

Dr Kisely finds another chair and sits down. ‘I don’t want you to be scared by what I’m about to tell you.’

Chaya merely nods, now desperate for him to tell her what he needs to say. The years since the war broke out have changed her: her once smooth brow is lined, and she is so thin her dresses hang off her like wet laundry.

‘What is it, man?’ Yitzchak demands. The responsibility he bears for his daughter and grandchildren has aged him beyond his years, and he has no time for intrigue.

‘I want to admit Magda into hospital—’

‘What? You just said she was going to get better!’ Chaya explodes. She stands up, grabbing the table for support.

Dr Kisely holds up a hand to shush her. ‘It’s not because she’s ill. There’s another reason I want to admit Magda and if you will listen, I’ll explain.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Yitzchak says. ‘Just spit it out.’

‘Mrs Meller, Yitzchak, I am hearing rumours, terrible rumours – talk of young Jews, girls and boys, being taken from Slovakia to work for the Germans. If Magda is in hospital she will be safe, and I promise I won’t let anything happen to her.’

Chaya collapses back onto her chair, her hands covering her face. This is much worse than a fever.

Yitzchak absentmindedly pats her back, but he is focused now, intent on hearing everything the doctor has to say. ‘What else?’ he asks, meeting the doctor’s eyes, urging him to be blunt.

‘As I said, rumours and gossip, none of it good for the Jews. If they come for your children it is the beginning of the end. And working for the Nazis? We have no idea what that means.’

‘What can we do?’ Yitzchak asks. ‘We have already lost everything – our right to work, to feed our families .?.?. What more can they take from us?’

‘If what I’m hearing has any basis in fact, they want your children.’

Chaya sits up straighter. Her face is red, but she isn’t crying. ‘And Livi? Who will protect Livi?’

‘I believe they’re after sixteen-year-olds and older. Livi is fourteen, isn’t she?’

‘She’s fifteen.’

‘Still a baby.’ Dr Kisely smiles. ‘I think Livi will be fine.’

‘And how long will Magda stay in hospital?’ asks Chaya. She turns to her father. ‘She won’t want to go, she won’t want to leave Livi. Don’t you remember, Father, when Cibi left, she made Magda promise she would look after their little sister.’

Yitzchak pats Chaya’s hands. ‘If we are to save her, she must leave, whether she wants to or not.’

‘I think a few days, maybe a week, is all we need. If the rumours are true, it will happen soon, and afterwards, I will bring her home. And Cibi? Where is she?’

‘You know her, she’s off with the Hachshara.’ Chaya doesn’t know what she thinks of the Hachshara, a training programme to teach young people, just like Cibi, the skills necessary to make a new life in Palestine, far away from Slovakia and the war raging in Europe.

‘Still learning how to till the soil?’ the doctor jokes, but neither Chaya or Yitzchak are smiling.

‘If she’s to emigrate, then that’s what she will find when she gets there – lots of fertile land, waiting to be planted,’ says Yitzchak.

But Chaya remains silent, lost in her thoughts. One child in hospital, another young enough to escape the clutches of the Nazis. And the third, Cibi, her eldest, now part of a Zionist youth movement inspired by a mission to create a Jewish homeland, whenever that might be.

The truth has already dawned on all of them that they need a promised land right now, and the sooner the better. But, Chaya surmises, at least all three of her children are safe, for now.





CHAPTER 2

Forested area outside Vranov nad Topl’ou

March 1942

C

ibi ducks as a piece of bread sails past her head. She scowls at the young man who threw it, but her twinkling eyes tell a different story.

Cibi had not hesitated when the call came, responding eagerly to the desire to forge a new life in a new land. In a clearing in the middle of the woods, away from prying eyes, sleeping huts have been constructed, along with a common room and a kitchen. There, twenty teenagers at a time learn to be self-sufficient, living and working together in a small community, preparing for a new life in the promised land.

The person responsible for this chance is the uncle of one of the boys also undergoing the training. Although he had converted from Judaism to Christianity, Josef’s sympathies still lay with the plight of the Jews in Slovakia, despite his change of faith. A wealthy man, he had acquired a piece of land in the forest on the outskirts of the town, a safe space for the boys and girls to gather to train. Josef has only one rule: every Friday morning everyone was to return home, before the Shabbat, and not return until Sunday.