Hell

The train would be stopping soon. Hannah could feel the car losing speed as the bodies standing tight and hot and crowded around her sloshed with forward momentum towards a halt. Helpless anticipation surged through the passengers when they realized that the train was slowing down. Murmurs of curiosity and dread filled the car with hot air. Hannah strained towards the tiny hole of a window. The barbed wire strung across it glinted menacingly in the twilight. She could feel no evening breeze, only the sick, re-circulated air she had been breathing for hours.

Hannah had been one of the first loaded roughly into the train car that afternoon. She was pressed tight against a side wall below the window as more and more passengers were piled inside. When the car was full, the officers at the station pushed twenty more people in. These people, families and strangers, clutched each others’ clothes. Children cried. Old men cried. Some people sat on the bodies of those that died during the journey. There was waste, slippery, on the floorboards of the car; the buckets the officers gave them filled up and tipped over hours ago.

As the train approached a station and combustible nervous energy circulated through the veins of the passengers, Hannah felt a hand grip her forearm. “Kannst du etwas durch die Fenster sehen?” Can you see anything out the window? Her sister’s voice was pleading. In the darkness, Hannah could see Leah’s brow pulled into a deep, tight furrow. Her once flushed and chubby face was white with exhaustion, soft charcoal bags cradling her wild green eyes.

Hannah could only see the tops of trees. She strained to look out the window again, and the surrounding elbows and shoulders dug into her sides. Through the tiny hole, the last of the day’s sunlight was being soaked up by dingy evening clouds.

It had been a beautiful afternoon despite the cold when they were waiting in a crowd on a platform earlier. Hannah remembered noticing how nice it felt to stand in the sun. It was rare that she noticed the weather anymore. They arrived at Theresienstadt with their mother some four months before, back when the leaves would have been turning a rich and perfect yellow at her Oma’s house in Freiburg. They were among the last people left in their neighborhood when they were sent to the ghetto. It wasn’t until they got to Theresienstadt and moved into a crowded, leaking attic that they understood the heavy truth. Through the sudden absence of friends and neighbors, they learned about the transfer system. Names were put on a list and people were sent away, transferred, to a new location. Their mother had gotten her notification three weeks ago, and before she left she pulled Hannah aside. Hannah was only seventeen, but she’d grown and hardened since the beginning of the war, and her mother knew that. “Biss bald, schatzi.” I’ll see you soon, sweetheart, she said with piercing intention. Her eyes bore down on Hannah with motherly determination as she held her face in her hands. She told her to watch her sister. Always have her close. Leah wasn’t as strong. Hannah’s mother slid her wedding ring off of her finger and put it in Hannah’s hand. “Sei mutig, Hannah.” Be brave.

The train wheels were squealing painfully to a halt. Hannah slid her thumb over the wedding ring on her index finger. Her mother’s fingers were so much bigger than her own. She noticed the ring slipping and took it off to put it on her thumb. Perhaps it would fit better. With a bone-shaking thud the train finally stopped. The passengers in the car were thrown forward, and Hannah lost her grip on the ring. She heard it fall to the ground and land in the filth on the floorboards. There was no room to bend and pick it up, so she tried to secure in underneath her foot. It slipped, and the heel of the man beside her knocked it through the boards and onto the tracks below. She heard a faint tink as metal landed on metal somewhere under the train.

The sound of a sliding deadbolt vibrated through the walls of the car. Waves of claustrophobic impatience swelled in the crowded mass. The smell of fear and clammy sweat was overwhelming Hannah. She didn’t care where they were; she needed to get out of the train. Her proximity to the tiny window had kept her fairly calm during the journey, but now she felt trapped. People were crying and praying, pushing towards the door in anticipation and slamming Hannah into the wall until she couldn’t breath. Arms and backs and bodies pressed into her lungs, and her chest burned for oxygen. She grabbed Leah’s hand so tightly she could feel the tendons and bones moving beneath the force of her fingers.

With a hellish noise of scraping rust, the door to the car rolled open. The crowd heaved forward and was frozen by the cold outside air and the blinding foreignness of light. Flashlight beams probed the crowd, momentarily illuminating the uncountable faces of the people in the car. “Raus! Jetzt!” barked the voices behind the lights. The passengers emptied out onto the cold concrete platform, stepping over bodies and holding children tightly to their chests. Hannah and Leah moved together with the crowd and lowered themselves out of the car. The officers screaming their grating orders looked statuesque among the rumpled mass that had just exited the train. “Schnell!” Flashlight beams swept across the tops of dirty, sweaty heads as seven other cars emptied onto the platform as well.

People stood in confusion, waiting for the next orders, trying to make sense of the world outside the train car. Hannah noticed that the man in front of her was trying to get the attention of an officer. He called out and waved his arms, pushing against the people around him. “Entschuldigung,” he said with the unsettlingly frank weariness of a lost tourist. “Entschuldigung—Wo sind wir? Welche Stadt?” Excuse me—Where are we? What city? Those around the man fell to silence as the closest officer turned to see who asked the question. His uniform was the color of steel and just as stiff. His heavy, sharply angled jaw was clenched so that the muscles beneath his ears flared. He had hair so blond it was practically white and eyebrows just as faint. Slowly, his cool blue eyes panned across the sick and sagging faces in front of him. His gaze fastened on the curious man, and he closed the distance between them with a few unhurried steps. He shone his flashlight directly in the man’s face and after a few blinding moments, he spoke. “Wir sind in Dachau, schmutzige Jude.” We’re in Dachau, filthy Jew.

There was a hoarseness in the officers’ voices, but they screamed through it, moving the people down the platform. The blue-eyed one, Hanna noticed, never once raised his voice. His comrades spat out vicious words, but he never spoke. He helped herd when he needed to, but mostly he watched.

After a while, they arrived at a heavy iron gate, in the middle of which, fashioned out of metal, were the words Arbeit Macht Frei. “Frei von was?” Hannah wondered as she was struck with her own ignorance. Free from what? Cold sweat began to collect on Hannah’s palms, on the inside of her elbows, on the back of her neck. They had entered an expansive courtyard. In the crowd ahead, the officers had begun to separate the men from the women. People shrieked. They wept as they were pulled, sometimes with force, from the ones whose clothes they’d held tightly to on the train. All the while, Leah clung to her sister, her fingernails digging into Hannah’s knuckles. They stood for a while in the biting evening cold, and when two distinct groups had been formed, officers began moving the women out of the courtyard and to the left. For the first time, Hannah noted her surroundings. They were being led between two seemingly endless rows of long, rectangular, industrial buildings. She could only see what the perfectly spaced light posts on either side allowed her to see. Each light post was placed exactly opposite of its partner, and the pairs were spaced at intervals that created rhythmic light and darkness as the women moved down the rows.

Hannah realized, when the rows of buildings ended, that the entire place was surrounded by a skeletal metal fence. The officers brought them to a building in the very back corner and explained that they would be taken inside in groups of twenty. The rest would wait their turn in silence.

Hannah looked at her sister. Leah’s eyes were frantically searching for something, but her face was blank. Her lips moved a bit as her teeth chattered in the cold, and her ashy hair fell loose in pieces from behind her ears. Hannah felt a wave of sadness for her sister that brought the beginnings of hot tears to her eyes. They had left for Theresienstadt on Leah’s fifteenth birthday, no time for celebration. The memory of a sister who sang little made up songs to their cat seemed fictitious because of its distance. She had not heard Leah’s voice in months and desperately wanted to beg her to sing right there in the middle of the line.

“Leah,” she whispered. Leah’s panicked green eyes settled on her sister. “Alles ist gut. Wir sind noch zusammen,” Hannah reassured her. Everything is alright. We’re still together. Leah took a shaky deep breath and felt Hannah’s fingers for their mother’s ring. With fresh remorse, Hannah explained that she had dropped it on the train, remembering the ring for the first time since they arrived.

“Seid schweigen!” Be silent! The officer’s command rang out against the concrete building, the steam of his breath illuminated by the industrial lights. Eventually Hannah and Leah were put in a group of twenty and ushered into the building. The women were brought into a windowless room with tile floors. A few lights hung overhead and a long metal grate covered a drain that ran down the center of the room. The officer from the train platform entered and closed the door behind him. He and two other men arranged the women in an evenly spaced line against the wall, and, for the first time, Hannah and Leah’s hands were separated.

The officer with the white-blond hair stood still in the middle of the room with his comrades. His steel blue eyes clicked from woman to woman. “Zieht euch aus,” he said to them. Take off your clothes. His voice was steady, tired even, but his eyes cut across the women with precise intention.

“Alles! Schnell!” growled the officer to his left. They were to take everything off and place it in a heap beside them. With tired obedience, Hannah stripped. Her fingertips were cold against her body, and her skin erupted in goose bumps, raising the hair on her arms and legs. Hannah was tall like her mother. Her long legs were pillars on which her curving hips and torso rested. She unpinned her hair and it fell, dark and wiry to her shoulders. She glanced at Leah who watched her closely. They were both down to their undergarments now, and the officers were screaming for expediency. Hannah locked eyes with her sister for a moment, bracing her, and then stripped off her last filthy items of clothing. With a shivering breath, Leah did the same.

The twenty of them stood there naked, breathing foggy air. The lights overhead threw odd shadows across their bare bodies, and the cold air burned their skin. They were sent to shower along the opposite wall and then paraded, dripping still, to a room where they were given a striped smock and a pair of clogs. Leah found Hannah’s icy hand and the two moved side by side as new officers took them back out into the night and down the rows of long rectangular buildings they’d passed before. They stopped at one about halfway down the row and were pushed through the heavy wooden door.

Bunks filled with women, bunks piled three high, filled the room. Hannah reeled from the smell of filth that tangled tightly around her. The officers ushered in the last of the women and closed the door behind them as they left. Hannah felt Leah tighten her grip on her hand as their eyes adjusted to the darkness. She turned to her sister and saw tears on her face, pooling by her nose, hanging off her chin. Leah’s chest heaved as she cried silently, and Hannah’s own throat began to burn. “Komm, Leah. Lass uns ein platz finden.” Come on, Leah. Let’s find a place.

They found a bunk in the middle tier with barely enough room for them both. These women were piled in, crumpled on top of each other. They breathed shallow, sickly breaths as they slept if the slept at all. Hannah held tightly to Leah’s hand, stroking her fingers, trying to calm her. Finally, Leah slept, but Hannah could not. The smell made her dizzy, and she couldn’t stop shaking. Hours peeled away as she stared at the wood grain of the bunk above her head.

At some unnamable hour, the door to the barracks swung open with a bang. Hannah raised herself up on her elbows to see who was coming, and Leah jolted awake. Four officers walked slowly along the bunks, shining their flashlights. The women recoiled like frightened animals from the blinding beam. A few times the officers slowed, muttering to each other. Hannah did not know most of them, but she recognized the one from the train platform and the showers. His hair looked platinum in the dim light, and his eyes shone sharply as he advanced down the bunks. He swung his flashlight beam and stopped. Stunned, Hannah squinted as the light covered her face. Unhurried, he and the other three moved towards her. “Hübsch…” Pretty, growled one of them. “Sie würde es möchten.” The other men seemed to agree. They were all very professional. The officer stared at Hannah the entire time his comrades spoke until, finally, he moved the flashlight beam from her face. It settled on Leah, who was shuddering, holding back tears. As if curious, the officer took a step closer. His friends did as well. Hannah could smell the sourness of alcohol on their skin. “Was für eine süssen Mädchen,” he said. “Sie ist genug alt, ja?”

With that, the other three reached into the bunk and grabbed Leah under the arms. She screamed for help, frantically looking to her sister. The officer carrying her covered her mouth. Hannah grabbed one of Leah’s ankles. “Wo nehmt euch ihr?” she screamed. Where are you taking her? “Leah!” Hannah screamed as she watched her sister struggle against the guard, her legs flailing. “Leah! Nein!” Before she could try to get out of the bunk, the blue-eyed officer brought the butt of his flashlight down forcefully on the base of Hannah’s scull.

When she woke up, weak morning light was trickling through the window and Leah was beside her again, staring blankly at the bottom of the bunk above her as Hannah had earlier in the night. Her arm, obviously broken, was wrapped in a bandage. She could not use it.

That night, they laid in the bunk again, side by side, and Hannah turned and looked for a long time at her sister. Both of their heads had been shaven that morning, and Leah looked frighteningly naked. The entire day, she had not said a single word.

A week later, Leah still had not spoken. Hannah awoke one morning to find her sister frozen in a vacant stare. No breath moved in her chest, and she was cold as stone. Dried tear tracks ran through the dirt on her face.

***

The weather is almost nice enough for Hannah to go out without an overcoat. Her pumps click on the cobblestone sidewalk and an April breeze winds around her knees, playing with the hem of her dress. She crosses the street, squinting in the sunlight. Hannah feels the warmth tingling on her skin and takes a slow deep breath. It’s nice to be in the sun.

In front of her, the München Frauenkirche stretches up towards the watery blue morning sky. One of the towers is wrapped in scaffolding and the hole at the back of the roof still gapes. Only the skeleton of the building next to it remains, but buildings all around had already come back very nicely. The streets are surprisingly crowded today. The sun and the breeze have drawn people out into the city. They are too happy to complain that the first nice weather doesn’t come until the end of April.

Hannah halts for a moment. What’s the date today? Could it be? Yes, today is the twenty-ninth. April twenty-ninth. Her flatmate Marlene’s birthday is the twenty-eighth, and that was yesterday. How many years has it been? Images of scruffy American soldiers flash before her as she walks. She remembers the horror on their faces, how they took their helmets off, ran their dirty fingers through their hair. It had been sunny like this that day ten years ago when the Americans came. They loaded all the officers into the back of a truck; they spat on them and drove them by the weak and weeping crowd. As the truck passed, he looked right at her, steel blue eyes fixed even as he moved farther into the distance. When she couldn’t see him any longer, she turned to the woman next to her who was smiling a rapturous, skeletal smile and wept.

She has not thought about that day since the Americans left München years ago. The city was still in ruins then, but now it is beautiful again. There is meat on the bones of most buildings’ skeletons and the piles of rubble have disappeared. Hannah gazes up at the clock faces on the Frauenkirche’s towers. The golden hands blinding, glinting in the sunlight.

Something knocks her sharply in the ankle. Pain shoots up her leg for a moment and she looks down and sees a can of tomatoes at her feet. Someone has dropped their groceries a little further up the sidewalk. Hannah grabs the can and walks over to the older man who is collecting the rest of his food off of the ground. She crouches down next to him. “Kann ich Ihnen helfen?” she asks the gentleman. Can I help you, sir? She reaches out to hand him the tomatoes, but he says nothing. He stares down at the can. Hannah looks, wondering if maybe it had broken open or something and notices her number peeking out from underneath her sleeve. - - 8 9 0 4.

After a silent moment, the man raises his head. His cold, steel blue eyes lock with hers, and they both turn to stone. Numbness washes down into Hannah’s limbs. Her breathing slows. Her heart bangs against her collarbone. His jaw clenches, and through a thin and slightly wrinkled layer of fat, Hannah can see the man’s muscles flaring beneath his ears. His brow tenses and furrows a bit as he searches her with his eyes. “Nein, danke,” No thank you, he says, “ich bin schon fertig.” He’s already finished. Hannah’s eyes are raw, burning. Her vision clouds, but she refuses to blink.

“Also gut.” She struggles, willing her heavy tongue to shape the words. Her throat stings. “Sie sind sicher?” You’re sure? She can barely manage more than a whisper. Tears are swimming in her eyes, but she cannot break her gaze. They are both stuck there, crouching on the sidewalk, eyes level.

“Ja, danke.” Yes, thank you. Slowly, they stand. Hannah’s legs quiver; she can barely see. Expressionless, the man tips his hat and walks away, sun shining down on his back as he goes.

The world comes into focus when she finally blinks, two big tears racing down her face. The muscles in her throat relax, and air rushes into her lungs. For moments, Hannah stands motionless in the middle of the sidewalk, the can of tomatoes in her hand.