“What profit is there
In my blood
In my descent to the grave.
Will dust thank you
Will it recite your truth?”
Psalm 30:9
I wake up to a crash of thunder and for a minute I am back at home in bed with Leah, and we are under the warm comforter. Then when my hands grasp for the covers to pull them up over my shoulders and onto my cheek, it all comes back to me in a sinking moment. I am in a barrack with a thousand other women. I don’t have a warm comforter. I do not even have a blanket. My bed is a wooden plank with 14 other women. I have scratches all over my body from the wood surface and breakfast today will be muddy coffee again, instead of oatmeal. I close my eyes and wish for it to go away.
The door slams open and Eidy marches in with a flashlight in her hand. She shines it on all of us.
“Get up! Get up!” she shouts. “Everyone out! Zeilappell!”
I take Bailu’s hand on the way to get our coffee. She looks worse and worse each day. She is only 17 years old, and she looks as lost as a child.
“Bailu, do you also work dragging the mortars back and forth? You must run away with me. You will not survive doing that.”
“No,” she says. “I work in the factory. We make weapons.”
“So, you need to run away Bailu. Come with me. Every day there is a different Barrack that doesn’t have to work. They stay in their bunks. Do what I do. Go to work each morning but slip out right away and run back to the bunk.”
“I can’t, I have a set station. They will know if I am not there. They will beat me like they beat my friend when she was a few minutes late.” Bailu shakes at the memory of her friend.
“Stop talking! Get out!” Eidy yells from the middle of the room.
I look out the door. The rain is coming down hard and heavy and the sky is a deep black hue, covered with gray rolling clouds. I wear only the thin dress they gave me. It has a rip all the way up my right thigh. I have no underwear on.
We walk to the door and step outside and immediately I am hit by the impact of the rain. The ground gurgles and flows like a muddy river. I don’t have any shoes. The SS men are outside, and they have strong black coats on with their collars up. Their boots reach their thighs, and they hold umbrellas in their leather-gloved hands. My dress is like a soaked-through paper cloth. We line up without a word, just like we did yesterday and the day before. The wind whips through us and I struggle to stay standing. The SS men walk around us and count.
“One, two, three, four,” the SS says as he walks by me. Someone falls to the ground. He steps on her, so she is pushed further into the mud. I try not to shake from the cold. The rain slams down on our bald heads and floods my eyes but I look straight ahead, and I do not wipe my face. Snot drips down my nose as the rain turns to hail and angry shards of ice hit my numb cheeks, each with a pinch of their own. The SS seem to smile from under their umbrellas as they count each girl slowly and deliberately. They are dry and we are wet rags, but I do not care.
After they count all of us an SS stands in front of us and says, “The numbers are not adding up correctly, we must count again.” He is almost laughing as he says this.
I lift my eyes up slightly to the sky. It is dark gray, but I am almost certain the sun is up already because of the hours that pass while we stand here. The sun is here, and we cannot even see it. I look down and watch the gushing lake frantically rush past my bare feet, down the hill it goes with an urgency that could easily knock me over. Even the water wants to get out of here. I am numb from my head to the tips of my toes. I stand straight as a board and the Nazis circle us again.
Hours later it is finally over. Everyone is accounted for. The rain gives up and the sun peeks out from behind the weary, gray clouds. The sky is the face of a woman who has finally stopped crying, drained but calm. I don’t think or feel as I march with everyone else to the fields to work, but when we get there, I remember where we are. I pull Leah’s shoulder.
“Please come with me, we are going to hide.”
“Don’t you know what they will do to us if they catch us?”
“I know what will happen if I stay here and work.”
“I cannot do it, Rosie.”
“But we will never survive like this. We need to go home, and we cannot go home if we work this hard. We will drop dead!”
She shrugs and picks up a block of mortar.
“I am too scared,” she says.
I turn away from her and run toward the barracks. I dart behind buildings. There was a rumor yesterday that Barrack 14 would not have to work today. I run past the buildings until I find 14 and I slip inside.
“Who are you?” someone says as I walk inside.
I look up and see a small girl calling to me from her plank.
“I am Rosie Greenstein.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I am running away from work.”
The girl climbs off her plank to stand next to me.
“Where are you from?”
“Crasna.”
“Oh, I am from Zenta,” the girl says. “Crasna, I have a friend who has a cousin in Crasna. What is your mother’s name?”
“Chaya Necha Greenstein.”
“I know! Maiden name is Heilbrun?”
“Yes! How did you know?”
“A girl was just talking about her relatives in Crasna. She is in this barrack. I will take you to her.”
I cannot believe it.
We walk down the Barrack together. She takes me to a tall girl sitting on the floor.
“This is Rivka Heilbrun,” the strange girl says. Then she leaves us.
“Who are you?” the girl named Rivka asks.
“I am Rosie, Rosie Greenstein, I think you are my cousin. My grandfather was a Heilbrun.”
“Rosie? I heard about you. My father is Avraham Chaim. Who was your grandfather?”
“Yehida, do you know him?”
“Oh, of course! He was my father’s brother. Come sit next to me.”
I sit down on the floor next to her.
“I have a chossen1 waiting for me at home. He is our cousin, too.”
“Wow! That is exciting. What is his name?”
“Yitzchak. Would you like me to tell you about him?”
“I would love that!” She is suddenly quiet, so I prompt her. “What does he look like?”
“He is very handsome.” She smiles. She is beautiful. “He has blond hair and blue eyes. We met a couple of months ago. I did not see him before they took us here, I wonder where he is.”
“Probably here.”
“I hope not.”
“I hope not, too. But tell me more about him.”
And she does so until it is time to go back to my barrack for supper.
“It was so good to meet you,” she says to me, giving me a hug. Her body is sharp with bones and nothing else.
“You too, Cousin Rivka. I will see you again.”
But I do not. Not ever after that.