Cilka's Journey (The Tattooist of Auschwitz, #2)

by Heather Morris

you will be thrown in the hole.’ She sniffs. ‘The hole is a solitary confinement cell in the lagpunkt. It is a dank, mouldy place where your body is forced into a crooked shape whether you stand, sit or lie down. There is no stove, and through a barred open window the snow will come in on you from outside. You’ll be lucky to get a bucket for your waste, as there’s a ready-made stinking hole in the floor. You will receive barely a third of your normal ration – and a black, hard piece of bread at that.

Another number. Cilka subconsciously rubs her left arm; hidden under her clothing is her identity from that other place. How many times can one person be reduced, erased?

Each time she stabs the needle through the fabric she feels the pain of a needle stabbing into her left arm. Another number. Another place. She grimaces. To have lost everything. To have had to endure what she has endured, and be punished for it. Suddenly the needle feels as heavy as a brick. How can she go on? How can she work for a new enemy? Live to see the women around her tire, starve, diminish, die. But she – she will live. She does not know why she has always been sure of that,

Cilka feels as inanimate as the snow. Her eyes blur over the bony, bowed bodies, but her feelings have been taken away. It started when Schwarzhuber placed her in that tiny room at the front of Block 25 and began his regular visits. She found she could become just a series of limbs, just bone, muscle and skin. She didn’t choose it. It just happened. She thinks it might be a bit like when she was a child and badly scraped her knee – though she saw the blood it took a long time to register the hurt.

I could tell he really loves his mumma and sister. That’s good, isn’t it?’ ‘That’s very good, Gita. You want to love someone who is good to the other women in his life,’

she touches the baby; it is hot to the touch in a room badly in need of heating. She picks up one of its arms and lets it go. The baby makes no attempt to stop its arm flopping onto the floor. Cilka calls out to the staff. ‘Excuse me, this baby is sick, there’s something wrong with it.’ One of the attendants wanders over. ‘Yeah, been like that for a couple of days.’ ‘Has a doctor seen it?’ ‘Doctors don’t come here, love. These little ones either make it or they don’t. This will be one that probably won’t.’ Cilka looks again at the tiny form, its large head and sunken cheeks, its ribs showing under the skin.

‘I saw it for myself. The staff there, I don’t know what you call them, they’re not nurses – they show very little interest in the babies. They told me only the strong survive, but they might just be sick. They could live if they got care and treatment.’ ‘All right, all right, Cilka, settle down. Why don’t we talk about this another day?’

Despite Petre’s belief that these children are important to the system as future workers, Cilka thinks the system might also see them, for now, as a drain on resources. She wonders whether they are all at risk of punishment because of it, but she knows she will fight to keep these infants alive.

‘We have to stick together, we’re all we have.’

Cilka herself does not know how she has always found a way, does not know where that comes from, within herself. She has never wanted to die, despite the horror.

‘We move the ones who are not going to make it onto the floor; it’s easier to clean the floor than a mattress. You’ll get the hang of it.’ Something turns in Cilka’s gut. Bodies on the floor, on the ground, with no hope of living another day. So, she is back here again. Her curse.

Cilka asks Lyuba, ‘How is his arm burnt worse than his hand? It doesn’t make sense.’ ‘Jakub’s clothes caught fire and the burns he received through his clothing are more severe because they kept burning for longer – until the clothes could be removed.’ ‘I see. Well, Jakub, can I give you some advice? Go to work naked in future.’ Cilka realises her comment is in extremely bad taste and starts to apologise. But she feels Jakub squeeze her hand and looks down at him; he is trying to smile, to laugh, he has appreciated her joke.

‘I need to get into his stomach and remove whatever it is he has swallowed that he shouldn’t have. Unfortunately, some people will go to extreme lengths to not work outside, including swallowing objects that could kill them.’ ‘You’re joking,’ Cilka says. ‘No, I’m not. Coming into hospital and having their stomach cut open is seen as a better option than working, at least for a while.’

Women march past her to who knows where, their death the only certainty.

They stop in front of the first woman. With the tip of his whip Taube lifts her breast. When he releases the whip, it sags down onto her chest. To the guard walking in front of him he indicates for the woman to be pushed back a step, out of line. Cilka watches as the next two women, after their breasts also sag, join the first on a back row. The fourth woman stays in line, her breasts having bounced back into place. He is choosing whether they will live or die, depending on whether or not their breasts are firm.

They all agree she is the most beautiful baby they have ever laid eyes on. Natia has been like a sun breaking through dark clouds. No one mentions the uncertain future that both Natia and Josie have, or the cruel surroundings Natia was born into. That’s a conversation no one wants to start.

‘So, you’re telling me you spent two and a half years being raped by the men in charge of the camp in which you were a prisoner, and for that you are now here?’

As Cilka closes her eyes for the second time that evening she decides she will try and remember a happy time in her life. It is not for a shortage of them, quite the opposite, her life up until the day she was loaded onto a cattle train had been blissfully happy, and perhaps for this reason, remembering has been too painful for her. But she will try again.

‘Let me help you leave this place and it could happen sooner. This is only a temporary post for my husband. We may be back in Moscow soon. This may be your only chance to let me help you.’ Cilka sits back down, turning her chair slightly to face Maria, looks her in the face. ‘Could I use your offer of help for someone else?’ ‘Why would you do that?’ a clearly perplexed Maria asks. ‘Because there is a mother here, in this camp, who is very dear to me. Her little girl, Natia, will be two in a few weeks. As soon as she turns two, she will be taken away and Josie will never see her again. If there is anything you can do to stop that happening, I wouldn’t know how to thank you. I would be so, so grateful.’

‘Jozefína, I offered to help Cilka Klein after she saved the life of my daughter, not once, but twice—’ ‘Well it wasn’t really me—’ ‘I’m telling the story, Cilka!’ Maria says. ‘She saved my daughter’s life twice. I asked her what I could do to help her, in gratitude for her care. She didn’t ask for anything for herself; she told me about you and asked if I could help you and your daughter.’ ‘I don’t understand, you offered to help her and instead you’re helping me?’ ‘Yes, there is a car waiting outside. It will take you and Natia to the train station and from there to Moscow. A friend of mine, Stepanida Fabiyanovna, will meet you in Moscow and take you home with her.

‘We were taken together but sent to different prisons. I never saw him again. I don’t know if he is alive, but my heart tells me he is dead.’ ‘What did he do?’ Anastasia asks, having not heard the story yet. ‘He fell in love with me.’ ‘That’s it? No, there has to be more.’ ‘He’s from Prague; he is Czech. I call him my husband but that is the problem. We dared to attempt to marry. I’m from Moscow and we are not permitted to marry a foreign citizen.’

Any suspicion of self-harm is verified when doctors question the injured patients. They beg to be kept in the hospital, or at the very least, released from outside work. Some of these self-inflicted injuries are terrible mutilations – among the worst Cilka has seen.

last moments in the mine. She gurgles his name, in distress. ‘It’s all right, Cilka,’ Raisa says. ‘Pavel …’ ‘I’m sorry, Cilka. He didn’t make it.’ And it is my fault, she thinks. I made him go in. She closes her eyes.

Five days later, guards move on the prisoners. Cilka is advised not to leave the hospital. Prisoners have erected barricades and concerns grow that the guards and camp authorities may be planning retaliation. Cilka is terrified for her friends, hoping they are safe. And she fears for Alexandr, too. The next day, the stalemate is broken. ‘Prepare for casualties,’ Yelena warns the staff. Gunfire reverberates around the camp. Within minutes, Cilka and her colleagues are overrun with prisoners bringing in wounded men, and some women.

Everyone affected by war, captivity, or oppression reacts differently – and away from it, people might try to guess how they would act, or react, in the circumstances. But they do not really know.

‘Johann?’ ‘Yes, little one.’ ‘I’ve never asked you for anything in all the time we’ve been together, have I?’ ‘Mmm, no, I don’t think you have, why?’ ‘Could I ask you for just one thing?’ ‘I suppose so. Yes, if I can give it to you. What is it you want?’ ‘It’s not for me.’ ‘Then who?’ ‘For my friend, Gita. She likes this man, just as I like you, and it would be good if he could have his old job back, he was very good at it.’

A week into her new situation, during a break, Yelena sits down with her. She tells her about a patient she treated a couple of days ago with a burn on her arm. When she asked the patient what happened, she was told it was self-inflicted. The patient identified herself as Elena and asked Yelena to pass on a message to Cilka. Boris had come looking for Cilka, planning to take her away. When Elena told him Cilka had taken a turn for the worse and was back in hospital and not expected to live, Boris had flown into a terrifying rage and smashed up her empty bed. Elena wanted Cilka to know that the wood had kept them warm that night. Her message was a warning, however: Cilka must stay away from Hut 29. Other men have come looking for her, bad men … Cilka is horrified that Elena had to do that to herself to get a message to her.

Cilka hears of, and sees, some beatings that are so severe the loser doesn’t survive. Like caged animals with nothing to live for, the prisoners turn on each other. Cilka’s gently flowering optimism starts to shrink back down inside her. This is always, she thinks, the way people will treat each other.

She still doesn’t believe she is free. Maybe the world is just a wider prison, where she has no family and no friends and no home.

Cilka’s last sight of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp would have been of the wrought-iron sign erected over the gates: ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ – Work Brings Freedom. The first thing she would have seen on her arrival in the Soviet Gulag camp at Vorkuta was another sign: ‘Work in the USSR is a matter of Honour and Glory.’ Another declared that ‘With an Iron Fist, We Will Lead Humanity to Happiness.’ A taste for sadistic irony was just one of the many traits that Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR shared.

But where the Germans used Zyklon-B poison gas, Stalin preferred to let cold, hunger and overwork do their lethal work.