Three Sisters by Heather Morris

Author:Heather Morris [Heather Morris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zaffre Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

Auschwitz-Birkenau

Winter 1944

I

t is winter when the rumours start circulating. The girls from the administration block are privy to the talk amongst the officers, and they share everything they hear. They are adamant the Germans are losing the war, the Russians are on their doorstep. And why shouldn’t they believe these rumours, when the sound of shelling, night after night, keeps the girls awake? Aerial battles are fought overhead. The SS is now destroying the records of all the Jews, all the other prisoners, gypsies and Russian POWs they have killed.

This is why the murders have stopped.

In a frenzy of activity, the prisoners, men and women, find themselves allocated to new work details. Both Livi and Cibi are informed that they are being moved back to Auschwitz to work and to live, but Magda is to remain in Birkenau. Rita, despite their pleas, cannot help them – no one can. Once again the sisters will be separated.

‘It won’t be for long,’ Cibi reassures Magda. ‘We’ll find a way to get back to you.’

But Magda is despondent. She doesn’t understand this place and without Cibi and Livi to guide her she worries she will put a foot wrong and end up dead. On the morning her sisters depart for Auschwitz she refuses to wave them goodbye and instead remains in the block. She is angry with them; she can’t help feeling abandoned, and soon she falls into the all-too familiar despair for her mother – if they had only been allowed to stay together, she could have entered the gas chamber by her side. Maybe this would have been better, she doesn’t know anymore.

On the day of their departure from Birkenau, Cibi and Livi dress in every item of clothing they own, and after rollcall hundreds of girls begin the march back to Auschwitz, back to the place where this nightmare began.

Now, just like the other girls in the block, Magda doesn’t have a job to go to. The days unravel, and she spends more and more time curled up in the bunk she once shared with her sisters. There is no comfort in having all this space.

*

Only a few officers are out in the snow, ordering the girls through the gates, telling them to move faster, calling them lazy, work-shy, filthy Jews. But it’s not the soldiers that Livi is afraid of: she has seen Isaac. He is wrapped up warm against the cold, sharing a joke with the officers when he sees Livi. He raises a hand in greeting, Livi stares at her boots. She is afraid she is going to wet herself.

‘I see you, girlie,’ is all he says, as she joins the long line of girls walking away from Birkenau.

She doesn’t speak a single word the entire length of the journey, but then neither does Cibi. Each girl is wrapped up in her thoughts, but they are broadly similar thoughts. Will they die before they reach Auschwitz? Despite their layers, it is freezing. Why can’t Magda join

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