Livi’s hand heals as the sisters grow weaker. Like everyone, they now take each day as it comes, feeling a glimmer of satisfaction when they close their eyes at night: they have survived another day of demolition detail. More than once they have seen what happens if an SS guard is feeling particularly vindictive; a chipped brick, a toppled pile – and a bullet fired. They have had to help carry dead girls back to Auschwitz, at the end of a long hard, harrowing day.
But the knife continues to puncture their misery with moments of joy. Cibi uses it to cut their bread into small portions: some to be consumed immediately, the rest to be saved, giving the ability to ration their food. It’s not much, but it gives the sisters a secret and with it a tiny amount of control over their chaotic lives. Livi keeps it with her at all times: concealed in her breeches by day, under her mattress at night.
Boys from Slovakia started arriving a few weeks after Cibi and Livi, but they didn’t stay in Auschwitz. The sisters knew where they were, however. The bricks the girls continue to drop off at the field are being used to construct new housing blocks, and across the road from this site vast wooden rooms have been erected. It is within these structures that the Slovakian men are now housed; it is obvious to all that a new camp is being built.
Cibi can communicate with the Russian prisoners of war because she is familiar with Rusyn, the Ukrainian dialect spoken in eastern Slovakia. But the whispered conversations she shares with the men reveal nothing new about their situation. Livi, still the shy, innocent teenager, never joins in these exchanges. Cibi is glad: this place hasn’t taken everything away from her little sister.
And then one day, the men have some answers for Cibi. These new brick buildings are to be women’s housing. A women-only camp.
Birkenau.
CHAPTER 10
Auschwitz-Birkenau
Summer 1942
B
y June, the sisters are navigating their days in silence. The grinding exhaustion of manual labour and scarcity of food has worn them down. Cibi notes the arrival of summer with a weary acceptance that they might remain in this place, this terrible place, for years – or until they die, as so many others have. Every night she wonders how they have survived another day. Even the idea of her family begins to feel like a half-remembered dream she had a long time ago. Cibi tries to imagine what Magda is doing, whether she is safe, whether the Hlinka guards are still looking for her. She keeps a watchful eye on Livi, who is getting thinner by the day, often mute, often moving from place to place in a dazed trance. But Livi also works hard; she is brave, well-liked by the other prisoners, and Cibi is proud of her.
There is no let-up in their treatment: despite the raging heat, the daily abuse of their bodies and minds continues, but as August approaches, the promise of cooler days beckons. Cibi and Livi have endured illness, injury, starvation and ‘selection’。
Once harmless, this word has come to symbolise their greatest fear. Paraded before the SS, the girls must appear fit and healthy, show no sign of weakness, no tremor in their hands or faces. Those who fail this examination are ‘selected’ – and never seen again.
The heat has been so oppressive illness is everywhere, and what little food they have often spoils. But, today, a little breeze scatters dry leaves on the ground around them as they line up outside their block, gazing dumbly down the street at all the other blocks and the thousands of other women and girls. The silence is palpable as they await roll call. But, Cibi notes, catching sight of trucks positioned at the end of the road, something is different today.
A female German SS officer patrols the street, pausing to talk to the guards of each block. ‘Some of you are moving to another location today.’ The officer stands beside Ingrid, shouting instructions into their faces. ‘Get into your work details and follow your kapo. Those of you who can’t walk may use the trucks.’
Cibi quickly moves towards Ingrid once the officer has moved on to the next block. By now she and the kapo share an odd kind of friendship. It has grown slowly, but surely. There is something about Livi which has thawed a corner of this woman’s heart. Cibi never probes – it is enough to receive her small mercies.
‘What does she mean, “another location”？’ Cibi is suddenly breathless: fear has crashed through her fatigue and dull-headedness. Life is bad, but they understand the rules here, at Auschwitz. Will they have to start all over again, with different guards, different routines, new tortures?
‘You are to going to live in Birkenau. Just do as you are told, and don’t get in the truck, whatever happens. You must walk – understand? Rita will be your new kapo.’ Ingrid glances around, noting the position of the SS guards. She lowers her voice. ‘I have asked her to look out for you and .?.?. and Livi.’ Ingrid turns her back on Cibi and walks away. Cibi knows she will get no more out of her kapo, the risk is too great for them both.