Rena's Promise by Rena Kornreich Gelissen

Author:Rena Kornreich Gelissen [Gelissen, Rena Kornreich; Macadam, Heather Dune]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8070-9509-6
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2015-01-12T16:00:00+00:00

IT IS SUNDAY. I walk around camp looking for any tidbits or anything that might be useful lying in the mud.

“Rena!” Someone calls my name. Looking around, I see no one and start to move away, thinking perhaps the wind is playing tricks on me.

“Rena.” This time it is a hoarse whisper. I stare and stare at a skeleton leaning out of the iron bars. Barely recognizing the face, I search through my memory for the name that fits the chiseled features before me. It is Erna and Fela’s older sister.

“Pepka? Is that you?” I try not to look dismayed.

“What are you doing in Block Twenty-Five?” I shudder. Block Twenty-Five is the place we avoid no matter what the cost. No one who goes inside those doors comes out alive. The women inside this block are ill and put there to be starved to death or carted to the gas and then the crematorium.

She cannot speak easily but manages to whisper, “Water.”

I run to get her something to drink, trying to shake her image away from my eyes. Her face has fallen inward, collapsing into her soul. She is a shade of the Pepka I once knew. I wish Erna were still in camp; she should know about her sister, but there is nothing anyone can do.

I place my bowl, brimming full of water, into her skeletal hands. She drinks greedily, barely able to contain her gulp at life, before handing it back to me. Her hands tremble. Retreating into the darkness, her eyes plead for me to save her. Her voice is silent.

I am helpless against the walls, the bars. I have no food to share with her, no medicine to heal her ills, no way to get enough water that she will never thirst again, no way to get her out of the Block of Death. She is doomed and I am helpless. Pepka’s eyes become those of my own sister, Zosia. What if Zosia were in Block Twenty-Five? Would someone take her water for me? Would someone tell me she were there? What about the children? If Zosia was in this hell would they already be dead? I wish for someone to share this burden with but must blot these thoughts out quickly before they find a home in my mind and drive me mad. Maybe the children are in an orphanage. Maybe Zosia sent us the packages from Switzerland and she is safe. Zosia and Mama and Papa will be in Tylicz, and when it’s all over we will be reunited again. My mind slows its whirling descent into despair. Fragile hope replaces doom—this is all that matters.

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