Fragments of Isabella by Isabella Leitner

Author:Isabella Leitner [Leitner Isabella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2016-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

IN THE “HOSPITAL” AT BIRNBAUMEL

The daily trip to the forest took its toll. Both my spirit and my body hung on by less than a thread. Ill with typhus, I was finally put in the Revere, the concentration camp’s version of a hospital, which resembled no hospital anyone has ever seen. You slept on the cold earth, you defecated right there, because you were no longer human enough to go out—and, of course, you were beaten for it.

The only advantage of being in the Revere was that you did not have to go out to the forest. You were lying mostly with people who could no longer walk, who were hopelessly ill with gangrene. The odor could drive you mad, but you no longer cared because there were only a few more days of life left in you, and death would be welcome.

My sisters came every night to pump spirit into my near-death body. “Please, please make yourself live. We held on this long—it really would be sacrilegious to give up now. You must hold out. The Nazis’ end must be near.” And “Here is a tiny piece of bread,” said Chicha. “You mustn’t think that I took it away from myself. I really, really am not hungry.”

And they came every night to pump life into me. I am sure that I did not want to live. But every night, they were there, terror-stricken that the bone they called a sister was no longer alive.

But the bone had a heart that refused to stop beating. And the bone would greet the three sunken-eyed visitors.

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