Three Sisters (The Tattooist of Auschwitz #3)(66)



The ‘train’ is a line of open-air coal wagons.

‘At least we can stop walking for a bit,’ encourages Magda.

‘Schnell, schnell!’ the officers command, and the women climb into the filthy compartments. Black coal dust sticks to their damp clothes; it finds its way into their noses, eyes and mouths. The women cough and splutter as they stand, once again, packed tight, unable to move an inch.

As the train pulls away it starts to snow.

The wagons rumble along the tracks. No one has said a word for hours. It’s still very cold, but the fact that they are so close together provides a little insulation.

‘Can you hear the fighting?’ says Cibi. And then the wagons jerk as the ground beyond explodes, scattering shrapnel over their heads. It can’t be avoided, there’s no room to duck. The women swerve, stumble, slip on the wet floor.

One woman and then another and another pass out. They’re dead already, thinks Cibi, and soon enough, their features become rigid, their eyes glaze and mouths gape. Cibi turns away from these fresh corpses and catches a conversation between a few of the women. Should they throw the bodies over the side? They’d have more room if they did. But no one moves.

In the early hours of the next morning, the coal wagons arrive at another camp. Cibi hears the name ‘Ravensbrück’ uttered by the SS guards.

As the sisters pass through the gates, Cibi notices a very young girl sitting on the icy ground, weeping. Cibi nudges her sisters and moves to kneel beside the girl, whose teeth are chattering. She is blue. She can’t be more than ten or eleven years old.

‘Have you got separated from someone? Your mumma?’

The girl shakes her head and Cibi reaches for her hand. ‘Would you like to come with us?’ The girl’s watery eyes meet Cibi’s. She nods.

Cibi helps her to her feet.

‘These are my sisters, Magda and Livi. Can you tell us your name?’

‘Eva,’ comes a whisper.

‘Eva, you can stay with us until we find someone you know,’ Cibi says.

‘I don’t know anyone anymore,’ Eva tells them in her quiet voice. ‘They’re all dead. It’s just me.’

Livi puts her arm around Eva, hugging her as they walk.

There is no one to tell them where to go or what to do. Hundreds of women mill about the camp, seeking shelter – it’s the most they can hope for right then. Their SS guards have abandoned them.

Eva and the sisters are finally accepted into a block. The bunks are all full, they will have to make do with the floor, but Cibi is simply grateful they are no longer outside. There is warm water flowing from the taps in the bathrooms and Cibi soaks her scarf to wipe away the coal dust from their faces.

‘Strength and hope,’ Magda mutters, as Cibi wipes.

‘I don’t need strength and hope,’ says Livi. ‘I need food.’

The sisters have not eaten a morsel for two days, and it becomes clear there is not enough food in this camp to feed its inmates and the new arrivals.

‘They are looking for volunteers to go to another camp,’ Eva tells them. ‘We might get some food there.’

The four girls, rested and washed, head for the administration block and, an hour later, they are on their way to Retzow, a sub-camp of Ravensbrück, in the back of a truck.

‘Stay strong, sisters,’ mumbles Cibi. But her thoughts are scattered. Why is she asking them to stay strong when she feels so weak, so utterly drained of energy and hope? They will die in this truck, or at the next camp, or on another death march. Her father’s face flashes in front of her eyes. Now I’m hallucinating, she thinks.

‘You are stronger together.’ She hears his words as clearly as if he were sitting there beside her. Cibi’s eyes shoot open. She was dreaming, but that doesn’t matter. He was right, is right. She can’t give in to her fear. Her sisters will sense it and they will give up too.

Once through the gates of Retzow, the women are lined up for registration. When it’s Cibi’s turn, she tells the officer she is from New York, in America. She winks at Livi and Magda.

‘It was just a joke,’ she tells them afterwards.

‘How is that funny?’ asks Magda.

The truth is that Cibi doesn’t know why she did it, but maybe it’s because there is no war going on in America right now, and that’s exactly where she would like to be – as far away from Europe as she can imagine.

The sisters have just learned they are in Germany.

*

The sisters and Eva enter their new block with a rosy flush in their cheeks. They have just eaten and now they have beds to sleep in. Magda claims a top bunk and is helping Eva up when their new kapo steps into the room. All chatter stops immediately.

‘I need girls to work at the airfield,’ she says, staring around the room. The short, rotund woman with spiky black hair speaks slowly in German, so that everyone will understand her. ‘It is a bombsite. Our enemies want to destroy us, but they will not win. If you help to clear the runway of debris and fill the craters, you will receive extra food.’

Cibi exchanges a look with Magda – extra food because it’s so dangerous, their eyes say. But they don’t need to think twice. They decide to take Eva with them. While she’s too small for this work, she is still better off in their company.

The next day finds the sisters at the airfield, along with dozens of other volunteers, loading shrapnel and unexploded bombs into wheelbarrows and taking them away. The day after they fill the cleared craters with gravel.

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