Sing, Memory by Makana Eyre

Sing, Memory by Makana Eyre

Author:Makana Eyre
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2023-04-20T00:00:00+00:00


Now Henryk was dead, and Aleks mourned him as he had so many other talents who perished at the hands of the Germans. Death, always present, seemed to lurk ever closer. The SS guards appeared jittery. Chatter intensified around the camp about Red Army positions or the proximity of American soldiers. New prisoners, who had been arriving from camps to the east and west, spoke of Allied tanks treading nearer and nearer Berlin.

Toward the end of March, while most of the prisoners stood at the roll call square, the SS herded about a thousand of the first women into the camp. They looked starved and sick, haggard and hollow-eyed. As they walked into the camp, Aleks began to compose a welcoming poem. From some distant part of the camp, Aleks could hear a rhythmic drumming. He adapted the poem’s meter to this beat.

A big day, a happy day,

Today, there are a thousand women on the square!

The prisoners brush their yellow teeth,

The prisoners wash their coarse rags—

Because it is a big day, a happy day,

There are a thousand women on the square!

In the days that followed, Aleks searched for his sister, Łucja. Perhaps she had been transferred to Sachsenhausen from Ravensbrück? Maybe a woman had known her and could give Aleks news?

In the women’s barracks, Aleks often performed “Song about Wanda” as a way to pique interest in his search. Though he asked every woman he could, he came up empty-handed. No one had heard of a Łucja Kulisiewicz from Cieszyn.

In the men’s barracks, Aleks heard constant talk about the female prisoners. Some of the men had mixed feelings, fearing that the SS would assign women to the easiest camp jobs, like peeling potatoes or mending socks. One man exclaimed, “What do we need the damned women for!” Aleks might have thought that being in such close proximity to women after so many years would excite the men. But few prisoners he knew seemed interested in sex. They would sooner spend their extra hours seeking out food. A foreman who held sway where the women lived even offered the men the chance to watch them bathe in exchange for a few slices of bread. But no one Aleks knew took up the offer. Aleks reflected on how strange the world had become. Just a few years earlier, he and so many of the men around him yearned for a lady. Now, with nothing in their bellies, they craved bread or meat or steamed grain. A bowl of unsalted potatoes was far more appealing than the caress of a woman.

When another transport of women arrived at Sachsenhausen, Aleks composed the song “She Was My Little Miss,” which opened with sentimental overtones about the beauty of a woman but quickly turned dark by the last line of the song: Young lips will soon be kissed—by death.

As the number of women arriving at Sachsenhausen increased, Aleks found himself assigned to a new work detail: delousing female inmates. The delousing facility was divided into three parts—the inspection room, where he worked, the bathing house, and the clean side.



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