December 1943Auschwitz-Birkenau
Ida Kowalska cracked open her right eye, and quickly surveying the vicinity, she deduced they had a few minutes before the kapo and guards summoned them to morning roll call. Opening her other eye, she crawled out of the lower bunk that she shared with three other women and made laps down the aisles of the barrack, in search of anyone or anything that might be useful to her existence. The morning moonglow cast a whitish sheen through the cracked, dirt-smudged window and that helped, but she had trained herself to be able to “see” with her fingers. Groping about, the second her fingertips came in contact with something, she could “see” what it was, even if her eyes couldn’t. A piece of cloth, a sock, a button, a crust of stale bread—any and all of those things could make a difference between life and death in Birkenau.
Her spirits soared when she found a motionless heap in the middle of the floor at the rear of the building. Instantly, she knew it was another prisoner. A dead
prisoner. Before her incarceration, she never would have rejoiced over another person’s demise. However, Birkenau changed everything. Her life was divided into two parts—before Birkenau and after.
Ida crouched down beside the motionless body and rolling it over, she remained nonplussed at the horrified expression on the woman’s face. Death and life held hands in the camp and to make it through another day, she no longer allowed it to affect her.
She jerked the woman’s cap off her head and put it down on her own, pulling the knitted material down to her ears. Then she pulled off the clogs and sat on them, until she could find a good place to hide the shoes. She was in the middle of tugging the deceased’s sweater off when two other prisoners swooped in and began to claim what they could of the woman’s belongings. They had become like birds of prey—vultures, scavengers—their humanity faded days after their arrival in Auschwitz.
Ida glanced at the other two prisoners. She didn’t know them by name, but one wore a black triangle on the left breast of her prison garb, and the other woman wore two yellow triangles superimposed forming a star. A black triangle signified an asocial person, but the barrack’s kapo had harassed this woman in the past for liking women. And a yellow triangle signified a Jew, which was worn by the majority of prisoners. Names no longer mattered—numbers were all that counted to the Germans. I am my death number. Ida pressed her palm to her own triangle, a green one which indicated she was a criminal. It had been ages since she heard her own name, so she sometimes forgot what it was.
The one with the yellow triangles gasped loudly. and dropping whatever was in her hands, scrambled back a few feet. “Oy!” The woman exclaimed.
“What is it?” The one with a black triangle asked, her head snapping up.
The Jewish woman’s mouth moved, but her words weren’t audible.
Ida snatched it up and knew from touch that it was a small, compact book. A book in Birkenau. She opened it, the pliable cover easy in her hands, and the thin pages whispered as she thumbed through them. She was suddenly brought back to her life before the camp. When she was a girl, she listened to her parents read from this book. And later, when she was in the convent, she studied from this book to become a nun.
“It’s a Bible.” Ida declared.
She knocked the clogs out of the way and sat back
