Eva and the sisters are finally accepted into a block. The bunks are all full, they will have to make do with the floor, but Cibi is simply grateful they are no longer outside. There is warm water flowing from the taps in the bathrooms and Cibi soaks her scarf to wipe away the coal dust from their faces.
‘Strength and hope,’ Magda mutters, as Cibi wipes.
‘I don’t need strength and hope,’ says Livi. ‘I need food.’
The sisters have not eaten a morsel for two days, and it becomes clear there is not enough food in this camp to feed its inmates and the new arrivals.
‘They are looking for volunteers to go to another camp,’ Eva tells them. ‘We might get some food there.’
The four girls, rested and washed, head for the administration block and, an hour later, they are on their way to Retzow, a sub-camp of Ravensbrück, in the back of a truck.
‘Stay strong, sisters,’ mumbles Cibi. But her thoughts are scattered. Why is she asking them to stay strong when she feels so weak, so utterly drained of energy and hope? They will die in this truck, or at the next camp, or on another death march. Her father’s face flashes in front of her eyes. Now I’m hallucinating, she thinks.
‘You are stronger together.’ She hears his words as clearly as if he were sitting there beside her. Cibi’s eyes shoot open. She was dreaming, but that doesn’t matter. He was right, is right. She can’t give in to her fear. Her sisters will sense it and they will give up too.
Once through the gates of Retzow, the women are lined up for registration. When it’s Cibi’s turn, she tells the officer she is from New York, in America. She winks at Livi and Magda.
‘It was just a joke,’ she tells them afterwards.
‘How is that funny?’ asks Magda.
The truth is that Cibi doesn’t know why she did it, but maybe it’s because there is no war going on in America right now, and that’s exactly where she would like to be – as far away from Europe as she can imagine.
The sisters have just learned they are in Germany.
*
The sisters and Eva enter their new block with a rosy flush in their cheeks. They have just eaten and now they have beds to sleep in. Magda claims a top bunk and is helping Eva up when their new kapo steps into the room. All chatter stops immediately.
‘I need girls to work at the airfield,’ she says, staring around the room. The short, rotund woman with spiky black hair speaks slowly in German, so that everyone will understand her. ‘It is a bombsite. Our enemies want to destroy us, but they will not win. If you help to clear the runway of debris and fill the craters, you will receive extra food.’
Cibi exchanges a look with Magda – extra food because it’s so dangerous, their eyes say. But they don’t need to think twice. They decide to take Eva with them. While she’s too small for this work, she is still better off in their company.
The next day finds the sisters at the airfield, along with dozens of other volunteers, loading shrapnel and unexploded bombs into wheelbarrows and taking them away. The day after they fill the cleared craters with gravel.
Slowly and methodically, the women clear small areas, and enjoy the bread, milk, potatoes and even pudding they are offered on their breaks. The sisters eat slowly, devouring every morsel, only returning to work when they have the energy and enthusiasm.
One afternoon, Cibi is startled by the sound of an approaching aircraft. Air raid sirens scream across the airfield and the sisters watch the SS guards flee to the bunkers.
‘Run!’ a voice yells.
‘To the kitchens!’ shouts another voice. And then Cibi, Livi, Magda and Eva, and all the other workers, are pounding the tarmac to the corrugated iron shack that functions as a kitchen.
Outside, bombs are exploding as they crash into the airfield.
‘Better to be killed by the Allies than the German pigs,’ the cook announces to the room. ‘And if we must die here, at least our stomachs will be full. Come on. Eat!’ she commands.
The sisters stuff food into their mouths and their pockets.
When the all-clear sounds, the women return to the airstrip to find their careful work undone by fresh blasts.
The work the next day is back-breaking, but somehow they fall into the rhythm of their labour.
‘This is easy work for us,’ jokes Cibi to Magda. ‘We had to clear an entire demolition site when we first got to Auschwitz.’
‘The bricks had to be placed “just so”，’ says Livi, delicately placing a piece of shrapnel into the wheelbarrow. ‘If it chipped or cracked, you would be cracked.’