While the sun shines and the road ahead looms long and white, Cibi begins to wonder which of the sisters will collapse first. She hopes it’s her. She is struggling to breathe now; it takes effort to fill her lungs and even to expel the air.
‘Halt!’ The SS guards are suddenly animated, screaming at the girls to stop walking. The sisters freeze in place. They each have the same thought: they will die now, out here in the anonymous Polish landscape. Their bodies will be buried by the falling snow only to be discovered, perfectly preserved, in the spring.
But their guns are holstered. Instead, the officers direct the hundreds of women off the road towards a large barn into which they slowly file. Dozens at a time collapse onto the straw covering the ground.
‘My feet are dead,’ groans Livi, reaching for her shoes.
‘Don’t take them off,’ Cibi warns her. ‘Your feet will swell and then you’ll never get them on again.’ Cibi gathers handfuls of straw and packs them around her sister’s feet. ‘This will warm them up.’ She does the same for Magda and then for herself.
The sisters hunker down, keeping on their coats, laying the blankets they’ve been wearing across them. Despite their hunger and the bitter cold, they fall fast asleep.
*
The officers tell them it’s time to go and the sisters jump to their feet. Magda urges those around them to stand up, not to give up now. Some women never wake up, and their shoes and coats and cardigans are carefully and gratefully removed by those who need them. Those who refuse, begging the officers for a little longer in the shelter of the barn, are executed on the spot.
They are on the road again. The sun is shining, but its warmth is an illusion; within minutes, the girls are chilled to the bone. The snow is packed hard and the women slide over the ground.
‘A town!’ gasps Livi. Ahead, the outline of dark buildings against the blue sky. They make slow progress, but the fact they have a destination drives the women forward.
‘Oh, dear,’ says Cibi, as they enter the town. She points towards the train station at the top of the main street. ‘This isn’t good.’
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.