*
Cibi is back at the fence the next day, watching the new arrivals endure the selection. She feels empty inside, depleted. As the officers attempt to corral the prisoners into lines, Cibi has the sudden urge to hammer on the fence and scream at them to run, that they are headed for the gas chamber to die. Turn on your captors! she wants to yell. Do something!
But she is not brave enough, and she has to stay alive herself, for her sisters.
But the prisoners are not being killed today; instead, they are being marched towards the Hungarian camp. Why?
But Cibi has seen enough. She doesn’t understand what’s going on, why a selection hasn’t taken place and it’s a waste of her time trying to figure it out. Turning away, she hears a man’s voice from the crowd calling her name. For a moment she feels disorientated, as though her grandfather has somehow survived and is now amongst this new group of arrivals.
She peers into the sea of figures until she alights on a group of very familiar faces. No, it can’t be, but it is.
Uncle Ivan and Aunt Helena and their children.
Cibi’s heart is racing, her emotions churning. She is overjoyed to see them, heartbroken they are here. Will she have to watch them too, being driven towards the gas chamber one day?
Her aunt and uncle have moved on but, for now, they are safe.
Cibi returns to the platform the next day and the next, observing that all the new arrivals are now being housed in the Hungarian camp, that no one is being exterminated. Are the gas chambers broken? she wonders. But what crushes Cibi and her sisters is the idea that their mother was murdered the day before these killing machines fell silent.
Every night now, Cibi lies awake, mulling over this cruel idea. Nothing Magda or Livi say brings her any comfort.
On Sunday, the three sisters make their way to the Hungarian camp, where they wait for Uncle Ivan to appear. When he does, the girls call and wave until he sees them. Cibi is glad he is on his own – this will be hard enough even without the presence of the children and her aunt.
‘My girls,’ he says in tears. ‘I hoped never to see you in here.’
‘We hoped the same, Uncle,’ says Magda. She finds she can’t look at her him, can’t begin to tell him the news he is waiting to hear. She glances at Cibi. You do it, her eyes tell her, and Cibi understands.
‘Mumma and Grandfather, Uncle .?.?.’ Cibi begins. Livi is already crying, her face buried in Magda’s shoulder. Ivan seems to visibly deflate before their eyes. He leans against the fencing, his fingers gripping hold of the wire.
‘Tell me,’ he says, his voice thick.
But Cibi doesn’t know how to say the words. Should she tell him of Grandfather’s smile? Of Mumma’s parting entreaty, of the look on her mother’s beautiful face, stoic and prepared to meet her terrible fate? In the end, she needs only two words. ‘They’re gone.’
Their fingers push through the holes, entwine, and the family weeps.
CHAPTER 22
Auschwitz-Birkenau
Winter 1944
I
t is winter when the rumours start circulating. The girls from the administration block are privy to the talk amongst the officers, and they share everything they hear. They are adamant the Germans are losing the war, the Russians are on their doorstep. And why shouldn’t they believe these rumours, when the sound of shelling, night after night, keeps the girls awake? Aerial battles are fought overhead. The SS is now destroying the records of all the Jews, all the other prisoners, gypsies and Russian POWs they have killed.
This is why the murders have stopped.
In a frenzy of activity, the prisoners, men and women, find themselves allocated to new work details. Both Livi and Cibi are informed that they are being moved back to Auschwitz to work and to live, but Magda is to remain in Birkenau. Rita, despite their pleas, cannot help them – no one can. Once again the sisters will be separated.
‘It won’t be for long,’ Cibi reassures Magda. ‘We’ll find a way to get back to you.’
But Magda is despondent. She doesn’t understand this place and without Cibi and Livi to guide her she worries she will put a foot wrong and end up dead. On the morning her sisters depart for Auschwitz she refuses to wave them goodbye and instead remains in the block. She is angry with them; she can’t help feeling abandoned, and soon she falls into the all-too familiar despair for her mother – if they had only been allowed to stay together, she could have entered the gas chamber by her side. Maybe this would have been better, she doesn’t know anymore.
On the day of their departure from Birkenau, Cibi and Livi dress in every item of clothing they own, and after rollcall hundreds of girls begin the march back to Auschwitz, back to the place where this nightmare began.