Free I Have Lived a Thousand Years by Livia Bitton-Jackson

differences melt away. Facial expressions disappear. In their place, a blank, senseless stare emerges on the thousand faces of one naked, unappealing body. In a matter of minutes even the physical aspect of our numbers seem reduced—there is less of a substance to our dimensions. We become a monolithic mass. Inconsequential.
    The shaving of hair has another curious effect. A burden is lifted. The burden of individuality. The burden of associations. Of identity. The burden of the recent past. Girls who had continually wept since the separation from parents, sisters, and brothers, now keep giggling at their friends’ strange appearances—shorn heads, nude bodies, faceless faces. Some shriek with laughter. Others begin calling out names of friends to see if they can recognize them now. When response comes from completely transformed bodies, recognition is loud, hysterical. Embraces are wild, noisy. Disbelief is shrieked, screamed, gesticulated. Some girlsbury their faces in their palms and roll on the ground, howling.
    “Was ist los?” What’s the matter? A few cracks of the SS whip, and order is restored.
    I look for Mommy. I find her easily. The hair cropping has not changed her for me. I have been used to seeing her in her kerchiefs, every bit of hair carefully tucked away. Avoiding a glance at her body, I marvel at the beauty of her face. With all accessories gone, her perfect features are even more striking. Her high forehead, large blue eyes, classic nose, shapely lips, and elegant cheekbones are more evident than ever.
    She does not recognize me as I stand before her. Then, a sudden smile of recognition: “Elli! It’s you! You look just like Bubi. Strange, I’ve never seen the resemblance before. What a boyish face! They cut off your beautiful braids ...”
    “It’s nothing. Hair can grow.”
    “With God’s help.”
    We are herded en masse into the next hall. I shriek with sudden shock as a cold torrent of water gushes unexpectedly from openings in the ceiling. The mass of wet, nude bodies crushes about me in a mad, splattering wave. In a few minutes it is over and I am carried along in the midst of the wet mass to another hall. Gray, sacklike dresses are shoved at us and we are ordered with shouts of “Los, blöde Schweine” to pull them over wet, shivering bodies. The epithet “blöde Lumpen, ” idiotic whores, is now downgraded to “blöde Schweine,” idiotic swine. More despicable. And it is upgraded only occasionally to “blöde Hunde, ” idiotic dogs. Easier to handle. Everyone has to pick a pair of shoes from an enormous shoe pile. “Los! Los!” Take a pair. Size makes no difference.
    As we emerge from the other end of the building and lineup quickly in rows of five, shivering wet in shapeless gray sacks, with heads clean shaven, the idea strikes me. The strange creatures we saw as we entered the camp, the shaven, gray-cloaked bunch who ran to the barbed-wire fence to stare at us, we are them! We look exactly like them. Same bodies, same dresses, same blank stares. They, too, must have arrived from home recently. They too were ripe women and young girls, bewildered and bruised. They too longed for dignity and compassion. And they too were transformed into figures of contempt instead.
    The Zählappell lasts almost three hours. This word, meaning roll call, becomes the dread and the lifestyle of Auschwitz. Twice daily we are lined up by fives in order to be counted. At 3 A.M. we would line up with lightning speed, and then stand stiffly and silently for three or four hours until the official SS staff shows up to count our heads. The SS officer taps the heads of the first line and counts in multiples of five. The actual count is accomplished in a few minutes. The stiff, silent wait on the evening Zählappell lasts from five to nine. The lineup has to be mastered in seconds in order to stand for hours, waiting.
    It is inconceivable to me that the mad rush inside would culminate in an interminable