Annexed (22 page)

It is called Auschwitz.

It is called death camp.

But they are not finished. Not yet. They raise my sleeve and a sharp pain pierces my wrist. What is it? I look down. There is a number: B-9286.

I am no longer Peter van Pels.

I am Stegi Stersi, B-9286.

Look, if I turn my wrist I can still see it.

Our clothes have gone, our hair has gone—our names have gone.

We are numbers now.

Numbers on the side of a cattle car, blue numbers tattooed upon a wrist.

It is done.

We have crossed the gates into a human hell.

We are in Auschwitz.

The memories crowd now—as thick and heavy as the dead. Why did I let go of Muttis hand so easily? I didn't know what was happening. There was no time to think.

"
Petel!" She said my name, and then she was gone. They were all gone, our women. Into the chimneys of this hell. I let go of her. I let go of everything in the end.

Even myself.

But not yet.

Let me tell you.

Let me tell you.

If anybody is there?

If anybody is listening?

In those first minutes the seconds felt like hours. We sat shaved and uniformed and numbered. Häftlinge now, unable to wake to the shock of that final parting we didn't even know had happened, yet sensed within us—a severing from our women, from ourselves—the first of many to come as we are kicked, or beaten or hanged or shot, or taken into the showers that turn water into gas. There are so many ways to part with life.

Those of us who learned quickly, despite the shock, we might survive. But even we, who spoke German, we didn't really understand. How could we? How can we?

Do you?

Even now when it is nearly over, it makes no sense to me.

Can it really make sense to the Germans?

Why is it me who feels such shame?

Shame that I fought for my life, and watched others die.

Shame that I did nothing to save them.

It haunts me as I lie here, waiting to die. The structure of the camps, the bones that held them up, are within me—written in invisible ink—engraved on me like the blue tattoo on my wrist.

And will never let me go.

"
How can I tell of this, Anne?
"

"
You must put one word in front of the other and walk with them, as we have walked through this, Peter, with no thought of tomorrow.
"

"
But there is no one to hear.
"

"
Then write it on air, they cannot burn ideas.
"

"
I will. I will walk with my memories toward you.
"

I am scared.

I am alone.

I am the last Jew.

The guard is screaming at us.

"Stand in fives! Fives! I said fives! Are you men or morons?"

Mr. Frank gathers us, begins to explain, in Dutch, in English, in French, in any language that might help us understand what it is that we have to do. The guard sneers at him: "A professor, are you? Your type never lasts long!"

Mr. Frank doesn't answer; he obeys, and fast. He understands, look busy. Bow your head. Our first
Appel
—roll call—our first lesson in how to be Häftlinge.

"Stand in fives, two yards apart!"

Mr. Frank translates, we listen, watch, and copy; already anxious not to be the one who is hit, the one who falls and might be shot.

We used to laugh at him, me and Anne, at his poor Dutch accent. Dutch is no good to us here. It is German that will save us, if we can be saved.

"Is it really German?" I whisper. Because although I understand the words, it is nothing like the German
we
speak.

"Of a kind," he replies, quietly. He is calm. I can see him now standing before us, bigger than the uniform they put us in.

In that moment he is like the one word you can understand in a foreign language. The word you cling to as though it could explain the whole sentence.

Help me,
I think.
Help me.

Because even standing in the searchlights looking like Häftling, I still had the smell of freedom on my skin. The belief that there was such a thing as understanding this.
A
child's belief that somewhere, elsewhere, the world might go on making sense.

Mr. Frank changes the brutal sound of the bitten-off German into slow, clear sentences for us, and we obey him. We stand in fives. Two yards apart. We learn our lesson. For a moment he looks startled as we shuffle into shape. As though it is him who is making this happen.

We don't know yet that we will do this every day and every evening.

We will stand an arm's length apart from our neighbor, in a straight line of five, and make it easy for them to count us.

I will stand in snow and rain. In fog and mist. In sun and dust. In hail.

I will be one of a five, that is one of a ten, that is one of a hundred, a thousand, a million. How many of us have been counted and how many times?

I don't know.

I will shuffle on my blistered and breaking feet in and out of the gate, in lines. In rows.

Sometimes I will stand for hours, my head bowed against the cold and driving snow, because there is a gap in the line, or because today the guard feels like it. I do not wonder why, I stand and wait and endure.

For hours.

Sometimes people fall beside me. They might be sent to the sick bay, or they might be shot where they lie. I learn to stay standing.

Once, we stood in rows and watched a man hang. It was cold. We dropped our heads and wished that it was over so that we could stop standing.

"Do it quickly!" the young Pole next to me whispered. He wanted to be out of the shivering cold, to get through the day to come. He was already longing for the short break and the watery soup. His words came from the ache in his legs and the cold through his shirt.

Dammit, hurry up and let me get out of this cold, get on with surviving, finishing this step, this day, this night, this roll call.

They shouted at us to put our heads up and watch him die.

"
Haben Sie verstanden?
" they shouted. "Have you understood?" And we all knew what we had to reply.

"
Jawohl!
" But they never asked us what we had understood.

Our shame. That's what.

And their hatred.

"Comrades, I am free," the condemned man shouted as he put the noose over his own head—and jumped before they could push him.

There was only one road to freedom in Auschwitz.

To choose the manner of your death.

I wish I'd died that way too. Alive. Fighting. Standing in front of our unbowed heads, our eyes staring up at him through the gray cold. That man will be remembered. He will be counted. He will not be one of us. One of the millions like gray striped rats, dying in piles. Well, I say that now. But then I just wanted the standing to be over. I could only think of the cold and the need to move. Of the moment when the dreadful music that played as we shuffled in and out of the gates would finally stop.

And the roll call would be over.

For a while I worked in the postal department, in the warm, where I sorted their post. Where I could get extra rations of bread.

Why did I get that job? Who knows? Maybe because I looked German. Maybe because I walked past at the right time.

There is no why in this world, haven't I explained that?

Don't you get it yet? Must you be beaten too? Must you be made to eat soup from a bowl standing up?

"
You smell like animals!" That's what they said.

Yes, we are like animals. We eat fast and standing up. We lick our bowls, searching for every last morsel. If there
is food we will snatch it, fight for it. We are the beasts of your burden, your hate. We think like animals, of simple things.

Food.

Warmth.

Sleep.

But we are not animals.

Animals do not fear death, or anonymity, or a story untold.

So I am not an animal, do you hear me?

Even if you replace my name with a number, give me no spoon to eat with, or clothes, or shoes to walk in—so that I am forced to live and eat like one. I am not an animal.

Although even now I am waiting.

Waiting for the command to come at me through this sleeping, waking, dreaming nightmare. Through the cold, ball-breaking dark of a winter dawn, and the harsh early light of summer. The word that breaks me in half and forces this body to wake to a day my mind cannot make sense of.

Wystawach.

Wake up.

And I know that when I hear it, despite everything, I will try to rise, to get up, to stand, and wait to be counted. The command is wired into me.

Wystawach.

Wake up.

And I cannot escape it.

"
How can I tell of this?
"

"
Because you must," whispers Anne.

But is it possible for you, outside, to understand, even if the words exist?

Do we even have the same language? Here is a plate, I say. There is a bowl. These are easy words, but there are others more difficult. This is where your world stops and mine begins.

Can you cross the space between us?

To hear the meaning of a word.

"
Say it," whispers Anne.

"
But why?
"

"
Because it is words that make man free—not work.
"

Seleckcja.

Seleckcja.

That is what they call it—the thing that happens. We have never heard the word, although we have already, all unknowingly, survived that first selection on the station platform. We are the high numbers in the camp, the new ones—the stupid and clumsy and dangerous.

Dangerous because we don't know the rules, we draw attention to ourselves with our awkward shuffle. We trip over-our clogs and bring others down with us.

We are hated.

Seleckcja.

It is October. The word whispers its way around the huts of Auschwitz, hangs like a hawk above us, waiting to descend. There are too many of us. The low numbers know it, they sense what's coming, the old hands. And they whisper the word
—seleckcja.

Seleckcja.

They look at us with hate. We've made this happen, us high numbers, turning up and causing crowding. There are too many of us and now the guards will have to do something about it. They forget that it's not us killing them—not us who think they are not people but numbers.

Seleckcja.

I look at Papi, he shakes his head.

"Well. At least we're inside!" he says. We were living in tents, but the wind has blown them away. We sleep sideways now, four to a bunk.

No, we didn't sleep. That was not sleep. There should be another word for it, that thing we did with our eyes closed, our minds playing over and over, trying to make sense of the impossible. Fending off the grunt and the knee in the back, the grinding of
someone else's imagined food in our ears, the descent into a dream, without warning. A perfect carrot, whole from the ground, it is nearly in my mouth, my spit is wet with the anticipation of it, my teeth can feel the crunch of something solid at last beneath them ... I wake ... the dream spreads ... my mouth is empty, my spit sour ... it takes a few seconds to dawn ... to the word that pulls us from this place that is not sleep.

W
YSTAWACH.

Wake up!

The Blockaltester shouts and another day begins.

There is a new fear in the air—not the daily fear of living or dying, of the cold, or the pain of walking on blistered feet and the whipping
...

Death is coming. It is always coming, but now it is closer.

It does not matter if you are young or old, healthy or ill, if you are Dutch or Greek or even German. All that matters is that you are a Jew—and even one of you is too many.

"There are too many of us," says Mr. Frank. "They are choosing who will die."

We know it's true. It doesn't shock us—it makes as much sense as anything else that's happening.

"We're all dying," says Papi. "It's just a matter of timing!" And then he laughs. I stare at him, but Mr. Frank laughs out loud. The others stare, his laughter sounds shocking and huge, like remembering something forgotten.

"Quiet!" shouts the Blockaltester.

And we obey.

We know it's going to happen. We are going to be selected. But we don't know how. Dr. Pfeffer has disappeared. Mr. Frank asks questions, but there are no answers. Men shrug or shake their heads. "Up in smoke," suggests one low number. Mr. Frank puts his head in his hands. "Somehow I only really got to know him in here," he whispers. That night another man lies where Dr. Pfeffer was.

"Watch," says Mr. Frank. "Whatever happens, keep your eyes on the low numbers; copy them. Look like you know what you're doing."

Rumors are rife. It will only be the young who are chosen. It will only be the old. It won't be our section, but another camp. For once it will not be us Jews, this time it will be the criminals.

We knew somewhere inside ourselves that it was not true. We were doing our own choosing, pretending that it will be you. Not me. What else could we do when... ?

There is no escape. Nowhere to run to, except for the wire, but that is only for the brave—those who understand that there is only one choice: and the choice is not
who
will die, but
how
to die. And so they choose to die in the only way left to them—on the wire.

Do you understand?

Can you?

That it was not an act of despair.

But an act of life.

For the rest of us, we say the words we don't believe to each other. That it will not be us this time, but someone else, somewhere else. We allow the words to flatten the fear surrounding us, to soften the threat hanging in the air above us like ashes.