Three Sisters (The Tattooist of Auschwitz #3)(32)

‘Are you serious?’ Cibi asks the kapo in charge. ‘How can I wear this?’ She is holding up a dress made from a sheer, thin fabric, with a low cleavage and three-quarter length sleeves.

‘This is what’s been sent over. Your choice. These dresses or nothing.’

Cibi turns to Livi, who is laughing at her. She holds up the dress. ‘Anyone coming to the ball with me? Where is my prince?’ she jokes, stepping into it. Cibi bows to the other girls. Their relief at holding on to their lives for just one more day has released something, the impulse to be a silly teenager, a desire to laugh.

Livi’s dress is made from a similar material in green, but the sleeves are short, so she has also been given a cardigan.

‘May I have a cardigan too?’ Cibi asks the kapo. ‘I don’t think this dress is going to keep me very warm.’

The woman tugs on Cibi’s sleeves. ‘You already have sleeves. And anyway, you wouldn’t want to cover up such an elegant gown.’

*

After a sleepless night on the damp floors of the sauna, the girls are led back to the women’s camp, where a delegation of senior SS officers is waiting for them.

‘I am Commandant Rudolf Hoess. Tell me right now, if there is anyone here who doesn’t want to work or doesn’t know how to work, step forward and you will be put to death immediately. I can say this freely now – you all know what happens here if you don’t work or you get sick.’ Hoess pauses for effect, a tight smile on his thin lips. ‘You heard me right. There are no more secrets between us. It is your choice.’

This delegation, like the last, departs in a shiny black car. A new female SS officer steps forward.

‘I am SS Officer Grese. I am now in charge of you and this entire camp. You have made it through selection. There will be many more prisoners joining us in the coming weeks. I have ordered that girls with four-digit numbers be passed over during selections. If you work hard and stay healthy you will continue to live.’

With a start, Cibi takes in her meaning. As the camp has grown so have the numbers, and now many girls carry five digits on their arms. The girls who arrived at the same time as she and Livi have only four-digit numbers on their arms. They are almost all Slovakian and number in the hundreds; they have been there the longest of any prisoners. Cibi wonders why they should be spared, rationalising that maybe it’s because they have been in Auschwitz almost as long as the officers, kapos and guards, and therefore they are well-trained and familiar with the rules of the camp.

Livi and Cibi are exempt from the selections: a chink of hope. Now they just have to survive the rest.

The girls are ordered to squeeze into just three blocks; the remaining twenty-one will be allocated to the new arrivals. They don’t need to be told that the last block in the camp, Block 25, or the ‘Death Barracks’, has a special purpose: those who are too ill to work are housed there, and every morning its inhabitants are sent to the gas chamber.

Walking to their new block Cibi and Livi see Cilka, the young Slovakian girl who has her own room in Block 25, where she oversees the women who are bound for death.

‘You know why she’s in there, don’t you, Livi?’ says Cibi.

Livi shakes her head. She can’t imagine how or why Cilka is there, living amongst women who are bound for imminent death.

‘They say the commandant visits her for sex,’ whispers Cibi.

‘For sex?’ says Livi. ‘She has sex with him?’ The young girl is aghast: she would rather die than sleep with a Nazi. ‘How can she do it, Cibi? Why?’

‘Like us she has chosen to survive, so don’t ever judge her, Livi. Do you think she wants to be in Block 25? Or that she flirted with the commandant? We all choose to stay alive any way we can.’ Cibi is passionate about this idea and she needs Livi to understand. ‘If she refused him, she’d be dead,’ she adds.

‘But I couldn’t do it, Cibi. I just couldn’t.’ Livi hangs her head.

‘Then be thankful you’re not in her position. It must take a certain type of courage to wake up every morning and just carry on.’

In their new block, the sisters are delighted to find clean, warm blankets.

*

The next morning, as if the night before had never happened, they go back to work at Auschwitz in the Kanada sorting rooms. Their very first task is to select suitable clothing, relieved at last to discard the curious cocktail dresses for the rough woollen garments of a prisoner.

But, once again, the sisters are thwarted by the footwear. There are no boots available and frostbite continues to ravage the girls’ feet. As winter rages around them, it is Cibi’s turn to suffer. On some of the colder days, she needs the help of her friends to make it to and from Auschwitz.

Finally, when she can barely put one foot in front of the other, there is nothing to do but ask her boss, SS officer Armbruster, for help. She gathers her courage and makes her plea, and the officer receives her words with a nod of his grey head.

Cibi has already sensed that he is not like the other officers, preferring the quiet of the office to the peacock strutting of so many of his peers. If he doesn’t like what she’s saying, he is more likely to tell her to stop whining and get on with her work than order her death.

But, Armbruster tells her to sit down and take off her shoes. As she gently pulls off her socks, the flesh on the soles of her feet come away, sticking to the socks. There is also a powerful decaying smell which fills the room and makes Cibi recoil. This is what death smells like, she thinks. It’s just waiting for the rest of me to catch up.