Livi looks away as the kapo bears down on them. She hears the repeated thuds of his baton cracking bone and skull. When she looks back the prisoners are obviously dead, a bloodied heap of rags and blood. But the kapo appears to have lost his mind – he continues to strike out with the baton, breaking fragile bones and pounding his hatred into Jewish flesh.
‘That’s enough!’ orders one officer, holding out his hand for the baton. The kapo doesn’t hear him, lost in his work.
‘I said, that’s enough!’ the officer screams. The kapo gives the pile one last kick and then wipes the bloody stick on his trousers before handing it back.
And then he sees Livi.
‘Want some too, do you, girlie?’ he sneers, revealing two rows of broken, yellow teeth. He is a squat man with wild eyes, his unkempt black hair hanging in damp ribbons around his sweating, filthy face. ‘Give me back the stick,’ he yells to the SS officer. ‘I’d like to have a go at her.’
Livi feels herself float away. She is staring at this animal, but she is also hovering over this scene, looking down at him, at the bodies of the dead men, at the officers, one of whom is now planting himself in front of the kapo.
‘Leave her alone. She works for us, not you.’
‘I could kill her with my bare hands,’ spits the man. ‘And enjoy it.’
‘Girl, get out of here,’ the other SS officer says, over his shoulder. ‘Go back to your block.’
‘I’ll remember you, girlie. Isaac never forgets a face.’
Livi snaps back into her body and runs.
*
Every day they witness the trains entering Birkenau and disgorging the thousands of men, women and children abducted from their homes. They watch as the SS, with a flick of their wrists, consign the inmates to the right – the camp, or to the left – the gas chamber. Livi, in her new role as a camp messenger, can’t avoid the distress of these families as they await their fates and, once again, she begins to withdraw.
Tomorrow will be 16 November, my birthday. I will turn seventeen, she tells herself. Will I see eighteen? She wonders what Mumma would make for her birthday tea, if Mumma were there – no, if she was back home with Mumma. Cibi would remind her that she is still the youngest, Magda would search the backyard for a flower from the oleander bush.
Livi decides to say nothing to Cibi, or anyone else. Tomorrow will be a day like every other day there. All she has to do is wake up and keep moving.
*
The next morning the sisters woke up to heavy snow showers, which haven’t abated. Now, in her position at the gates of Birkenau, waiting for the messages she will deliver around the camp, Livi watches another train pull in; men and women clamber down from the carriages into three feet of snow, where they huddle together, frozen and terrified on the platform.
Livi can’t seem to avert her gaze. Occasionally she catches the eye of one or other prisoner, but she quickly glances away.
It is still snowing when the selection detail arrives. In a heavy coat, one officer considers the crowd, before flicking his hand to the left, to the gas chambers. Today, it is not their age or their health or gender which has sealed their fate, but the weather.
That night, when the sisters climb into their bunk, they discover that their blanket has been stolen. Cibi and Livi cuddle together for warmth. They are wearing every single item of clothing they own, including their shoes. The freezing wind howls around the block, forcing its way through the cracks in the mortar, the gap beneath the door. Snot from their noses forms icicles.
Instead of sleeping, Livi whimpers, quietly, to herself. ‘Cibi, are you awake?’ she says, finally.
‘Yes. What is it? Can’t you sleep?’
‘I don’t think I can keep doing this. And now, without our blanket, we’ll freeze to death. Cibi, if we’re to die tonight, I don’t want it to be in here.’ Livi starts to cry.
Cibi reaches out with gloved hands and holds Livi’s face. She blows warm air onto her sister’s icy cheeks. She swallows once, twice. She feels something like a punch in her stomach. Livi is right. They will die in this block and, in the morning, their frozen corpses will be loaded onto a truck with hundreds of others and taken away to be set on fire.
‘Let’s go,’ is all she says, and Livi nods.
The girls quietly climb out of the bunk and tiptoe across the concrete floor. Cibi pushes open the door and the girls take a step. They are almost blasted back into the room by a flurry of snow and wind, but they keep going. They hug the walls as they round the block, behind which lies the forest. Together, hand in hand, they head towards the electrified fence.