What followed I perceived as if through a thick fog, blending the events into each other in surreal chaos. The moment I grasped what absurdity I was living through my mind was confronted with yet another. The sequence of action was lost to me instantly and so I could only tell what happened after standing still and before we entered the barrack. What happened in the time between those two events was, however, clouded.
At some point, I answered a man sitting in front of a list questions about my name, age, and occupation—Hanna Cohen, 18 soon to be 19, unemployed in the service of the state.
For any wishes and dreams I might have had were forbidden; not even the crude flattery peculiar to the regime of seeing something I had written and published burned was granted to me.
I would have been lying if I had claimed to have spoken those words. Instead, I answered the last question quite nicely with "None".
At some point, we were ordered to undress and I heard a flurry of silent protest, whispered fear, and incredulous, panicked giggles around me.
At some point, I must have obeyed, and I told Leah the same thing I had said before.
"Just look ahead. Don't look at them. They're not there. And if you do see them, remember they're not people like us, they're machines in uniform." The comparison seemed to please and relieve them a bit, at least it helped a little to endure the humiliation and shame of having to stand defenseless and naked in front of strange men.
At some point there was a hand in my hair, holding it in place while the other cut it with scissors. It wasn't the dark curls that I wanted to cry over at that moment—for they would grow back, after all—but the mere fact that someone could take them from me. That someone could, with a few careless movements, rob me of my dignity and what makes me human. Just a moment ago I had been a young woman. Now I was a prisoner. Even less a part of society than before. And it was for everyone to see.
Even Leah shed no tears over her golden-brown, long braids that she had loved so much. They merely glistened in her eyes, but she didn't lower her guard, instead suffering through it chin up and expression grim. I was unsure whether this filled me with pride or terror.
At some point, we were allowed to wash ourselves in icy water that left us freezing.
At some point, we were given striped clothes that didn't fit anyone, and Stars of David and numbers to attach to them. Thus, the last hint of Hanna Cohen who had entered the camp was erased. What remained was 2245.
At some point, a ferocious woman who was not SS, but probably had some power, dragged us to a photographer, who too was clearly a prisoner. With him were two others with armbands. Kapo. What did that mean? Fingerprints. Flashing lights. A baton, that lifted my head into position and struck when they noticed my star was not attached properly. Then, the Kapo beat me again because I wanted to correct it.
At some point, this woman herded us to a barrack, randomly meting out blows, because as she said now that our faces were photographed, we wouldn't have to look adequate.
At one point, I lay shivering and huddled in a wooden frame, damp rotten straw for a mattress, my jacket for a pillow, and without a blanket. I kept my eyes open, staring at some point without seeing, and the only thing that filled the emptiness inside me and reminded me that I was still alive was pain--in my rips because of the Kapo's truncheon, and where it hadn't hit me, because of the exhausting journey to this place that still lingered in my every bone and muscle. That old life in Berlin I had left behind suddenly seemed so far away.
Feather-light footsteps, nevertheless audible through the boots on the gravel, announced the approach of a person, causing a short murmur to go through the barracks, which, however, immediately fell silent again as if on command.
I almost expected to see this vicious woman again, Wilken or the Rottenführer, but against all expectations, it was a young woman, only a few years older than myself. She wore better clothes than we did, but even on them, there was a traitorous symbol attached that branded her as a prisoner. At the level of her heart, I recognized a red triangle, as had the other woman before; an armband distinguished her as Stubenälteste.
She did not look quite as gaunt as the other prisoners, but still malnourished, and although she was pretty, there was something slightly strange about her appearance, for everything about her seemed drained of color. Her skin was white, her eyes a pale blue, and even her hair an ashy blond. She seemed as if she had just stepped out of black and white into reality.
"Ah, the new ones," she noted, glancing at the group gathered around Leah and me, which included Miriam Mendelssohn, two women my mother's age, and an older lady. She spoke German, probably because she had to, however, her strong accent revealed that it was not her mother tongue.
"In ten minutes, it's curfew. Later, no lights and no leaving barracks if you don't want to get shot."
The other women exchanged confused and worried glances. They did not understand a word. Maybe they had been brought here directly from Łódź.
So, the woman repeated in Polish—which I thought to hear a telltale hint of Yiddish in—and added, "Here you better learn to understand quickly. Orders are given in German. When you are called, you tell your number in German. Those who don't understand won't survive long in Koniec."
And how long do those who understand survive?, hung the question in the room, which some did not know how to answer, while others did not want to.
Without giving any particular weight to her own statement, the Stubenälteste routinely continued with her instructions on what we had to do and when, how we had to behave toward the SS, and what offenses would immediately grant us the death penalty.
"And you'd better not stand out. Not in front of the guards and even less in front of the Blokowa," she ended, for the first time in a tone that suggested that this was not just a matter of following a rule, but sincere advice.
What happened to those who did stand out, I could answer for myself, but I didn't want to think about it.
"Blokowa?" The question escaped me before I had thought about whether I was allowed to ask it or even allowed to talk to this woman.
For a moment her bright eyes rested on me, scrutinizing me closely. I wondered what she saw, not really wanting to know how horribly I had been beaten. But her gaze immediately dispelled any thought of that, because something about it was so disconcertingly emotionless, so inhuman, that I almost shuddered under it.
"Blockälteste. Block elder," she explained in a distinctive accent as if that would make anything more understandable. "She brought you here. In general, you have to watch out for the Greens, but she's no match for them."
This time I didn't even have to utter the question. It was obvious from our faces that we didn't know what she meant.
Tapping two fingers on her own triangle, the woman added, "Green means professional criminals."
"And red?" My gaze lingered on the small piece of fabric.
"Political prisoner." Without her indifferent tone changing any further at that, she switched back to German, "Curfew in five minutes." And with these words left the barracks.
"What did she say?" asked Miriam uncertainly, but I was not given a chance to answer.
"I wouldn't ask them so many questions if I were you, dear child," a woman remarked in Polish from the other end of the room.
I couldn't quite make her out from behind the beams of the wooden racks, but what I saw revealed that this place had already left its mark on her. Her skin was sunken in at the cheeks and stretched over her bones in a way that made it impossible to guess her age. It was also almost the only thing that still distinguished her from a skeleton. Around her head she had tied a dirty cloth, already full of holes, revealing only a few strands of scraggy hair. Like ours, they were cropped short.
"You're lucky Horowitz is a decent one. Others would have answered you with a nightstick. Still, she's one of them."
"One of them?" I became more and more aware that by passing through the gate I had entered another world that had nothing to do with the one outside of it. With its own language, its own hierarchy, its own laws. And all of them came down to the question of life or death. I felt like one of Kafka's protagonists, thrown into an alien reality in the blink of an eye, or as in this novel by Zamyatin, in which people were named like numbers as well. They were mere stories, however, the path from the pages of a book to reality was shorter than I had imagined.
"Those who work for the SS. They get these armbands, better clothes, and more food. And in return, they do what they're told and that's never a good thing for us," the woman replied in a raspy voice that sounded worn, "Funktionshäftlinge they call it. Traitor describes it better. If they choose someone for that position, it's either because of special skills—or because of their brutality."
"And this woman ...?"
"Horowitz. Czesława Horowitz."
I had a hard time imagining the latter option for she did not seem cruel, after all. Her name even made me suspect that she was Jewish as well. But then, why was she wearing the sign of a political prisoner?
"I don't know. When we came here, she also had a star like us," the woman continued, touching her chest where the symbol sat—worn around the edges—like a blemish. "One day it was gone. Instead, she had proper shoes, a warmer coat, and the position of Stubenälteste. Maybe she's already forgotten where she came from, but they won't forget. No matter how hard she tries to hide her accent and Jewishness."
The woman shrugged.
"She's more tolerable than the others. But it's always the same. Either they become cruel over time to earn their extra rations, or they lose the favor of the SS and ..."
"And?"
"Then may God have mercy on them."
I strove to learn as much as I could about the rules in Konitz. I didn't even want to think about understanding them, just knowing them was enough for me.
Eventually, I began to see the way we were being branded here, so meaningless at first appearance.
Strange. So now I could tell at a glance who someone was. Take, for example, the young woman in the bed across from me: She was number 1392, Jewish and a political prisoner, and Czech. All this was told to me by her clothes alone, and at the same time I didn't even know her name, her beliefs, and what she thought of when she heard the word "homeland." No, I knew everything she was accused of and what the SS thought she was, but absolutely nothing about her.
The light was turned off and the room fell into darkness.
Despite the exhaustion, the desire to write arose in me, to free myself from the chaos inside me, to give my thoughts a form, and thus capture them on paper. But I had neither a pen nor anything to use it on. It was strange how these two simple things could make everything that would otherwise have seemed difficult and shadowy simple and understandable, pressing them visibly and constantly into the confines of words—and how I had taken it for granted that I could do that almost any time. Now I was defenseless against the thoughts that kept me awake.
"Hanna?", I heard Leah's soft voice next to me at some point. "I can't sleep. Can you ... can you tell me a story? I don't want to have to be here for a moment."
"I don't know any," I confessed, equally whispering so as not to wake the others, "only a poem."
"Just as well," came her reply from the darkness, in which I could only glimpse the silhouette of her head just in front of me. However, now, without the familiar braids, it seemed strange.
"Give me your small hand.
So, now you are not alone.
Child, you shall not be lonely
With the shadow on the wall.
When the evening falls upon the world,
The sun is slowly cooling down.
The cloud is sleeping behind the house,
The flowers are dozing in the field.
Slowly little stars start to shine,
Wind aimed at our window.
And the evening angel plays
With the pale moon balloon.
Quietly, quietly the tree is rustling...
Eyes sinking. Now you rest well.
May a good sleep bless you,
May a lovely dream bless you!"
It was one of those poems that had been in my last two books and now, along with my suitcase and everything in it that had been dear to me, was waiting to be read again somewhere here in Konitz.
"May a lovely dream bless you," I repeated, so softly that I almost couldn't hear it myself besides Leah's soft, regular breathing. Even if behind this house was only dirt and gravel, the only lullaby was the crunch of boots in the distance, and instead of stars and moon the only light was an artificial one whose pale glow crept between many a crack in the wood.
To a child in the dark. The title alone seemed to fit us because we were also only two children here alone in the dark.