• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 12463 0

But as she later explained to Höss in an episode I have earlier narrated, an odd cluster of little events—the attack on her in the barracks by a lesbian, a fight, intercession by a friendly block leader—had led her to a translator-stenographer’s job and lodging in another barracks, where she was sheltered for the time being from the camp’s mortal attrition. And of course at the end of six months another stroke of good fortune brought her the protective comforts and advantages of Haus Höss itself. Yet first came a critical meeting. It was only a few days before she was to take up residence under the Commandant’s roof that Wanda—who had been immured in one of the unspeakable kennels at Birkenau this entire time and whom Sophie had not seen since that April day of their arrival—made her way to Sophie’s side and through a tumultuous outpouring filled her with hope about Jan and the possibility of his salvation, but also terrified her with demands upon her courage which she felt certain she could not meet.

“You will have to be working for us every moment you’re in that insect’s nest,” Wanda had whispered to her in a corner of the barracks. “You can’t imagine what kind of an opportunity this is. It’s what the underground has been waiting for, praying for, to have somebody like you in a situation like this! You’ll have to use your eyes and ears every minute. Listen, darling, it’s so important for you to get word out about what’s going on. Shifts of personnel, changes of policy, transfers of the top SS pigs—anything is priceless information. It’s the lifeblood of the camp. War news! Anything to counter their filthy propaganda. Don’t you see, our morale is the only thing we have left in this hellhole. A radio, for instance—that would be priceless! Your chances of getting one would be practically nil, but if you could smuggle out a radio just so we could listen to London, it would be nearly the same as saving thousands and thousands of lives.”

Wanda was sick. The dreadful bruise inflicted on her face in Warsaw had never really gone away. Conditions in the women’s compound at Birkenau were hideous and a chronic bronchial ailment to which she had always been prone had flared up, bringing to her cheeks a hectic and alarming flush so bright that it almost matched her brick-red hair, or the grotesque frizzles that were left of it. With mingled horror, grief and guilt Sophie had a swift intuition that the present moment would be the last time she would ever lay eyes on this brave, resolute, luminous flame of a girl. “I can only stay a few more minutes,” Wanda said. She suddenly switched from Polish to a rapid, breezy colloquial German, murmuring to Sophie that the nasty-faced assistant block leader lingering nearby, a Warsaw whore, looked like a stool pigeon and a traitorous rat, which she was. Quickly then she outlined to Sophie her scheme about Lebensborn, trying to make her see that the plan—however quixotic it might appear—was perhaps the only way of assuring Jan’s deliverance from the camp.

It would require a lot of conniving, she said, would require a lot of things which she knew Sophie would instinctively shrink from. She paused, coughed in painful racking spasms, then resumed. “I knew I had to see you when I heard about you through the grapevine. We hear everything. I’ve so wanted to see you anyway all these months, but this new job of yours made it absolutely necessary. I’ve risked everything to get here to see you—if I’m caught I’m done for! But nothing risked, nothing gained in this snakepit. Yes, I’ll tell you again and believe me: Jan is well, he’s as well as can be expected. Yes, not once—three times I saw him through the fence. I won’t fool you, he’s skinny, skinny as I am. It’s lousy in the Children’s Camp—everything’s lousy at Birkenau—but I’ll tell you another thing. They’re not starving the children as badly as some of the rest. Why, I don’t know, it can’t be their conscience. Once I managed to take him some apples. He’s doing well. He can make it. Go ahead and cry, darling, I know it’s awful but you mustn’t give up