Free Rena's Promise by Heather Dune Macadam, Rena Kornreich Gelissen Page A

long to figure out that resourcefulness is as precious as food in this place, and nothing passes under my feet unnoticed or unassessed for its potential. By taking a stone, I am able to hammer the nail through the metal rim of my bowl, then I thread one of the pieces of ropemy new beltthrough the hole. To keep my shirt closed I tuck it in my pants and tie the belt tightly around my waist. This is how it is. My life depends on this precious bowl which I can drink from and wash in. I will work with it. I sleep with it. I always keep it by my side. It is red.
There are no showers, but there are three toilets in Block Ten and a place to wash our hands. For toilet paper there are scraps of newspaper, but these disappear quickly. There's always a line, so we don't have a chance very often to use the toilet or wash our hands, but at least it is possible. There are bunk beds which have straw mattresses on them and thin blankets. The first night we have two people per bunk, but there are empty bunks waiting for more girl-women just like us. They must be in Block Five tonight.
My bed is next to a wall with a window that is boarded up, but through the slats in the boards I can look into the yard of Block Eleven. The struggle for sleep is not hard after so many nights of

     

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sleeplessness, but somewhere in the middle of the dreamless night there are gunshots. Awake and alert, I lie on my pallet of straw pulling the blanket closer around me, but it cannot warm the chill in my spine; my cup attached firmly to my waist is no comfort either. I know somewhere someone is dying.
Roll call on the second morning comes just as early, just as rudely. It is four A.M . They shout for us to form a line in alphabetical order. Frantically we jostle one another, trying to get where we belong; anyone not in place is beaten into line. We seem to always be marching from one place to another and standing for a long time doing nothing. This time we are funneled into a barrack with benches and long tables. There are two sisters in the front of our line, I believe they are numbered 1001 and 1002. The tattooing is painful. The men prisoners do not delight in sticking the needle, like a shot, in our left forearms over and over. They know how much it hurts. Still, the Germans force them to hurry, so there is no time to be gentle or concerned. It is as if each stab will burst any shred of ego left. My number is 1716. Branded and numbered like cattle, we rub our arms as we had rubbed our naked heads, trying to make the pain go away.
The Nazis are starting to arrange things now. The kapos, who are German prisoners, are put in charge of us when we are outside of our blocks. We learn how to distinguish the kapos by the color triangle they wear: green signifies that she is in for murder; red means she is a political prisoner, and black represents a prostitute or asocial prisoner.
A young Slovakian Jew called Elza is chosen to be our blockowa, our block elder, and is in charge of us when we are inside the block. Her duties include getting us out to roll call and dividing the bread loaves which are assigned to each room. There are also sztubowas, room elders, who divide the loaves between everyone in the room and hand out our portions. Between them, the block elders and room elders steal bread for themselves. It is easy to see that they are doing this and I realize almost immediately that I have to be

     

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frugal with what I get. Sometimes there might be half the portion allotted for me and sometimes there might be the whole portion; it all depends on luck and whether the room elder and block elder are honest people.

From the window I hear a man outside and across the wall asking, "Where are you from?"
"Tylicz, near Krynica." I answer.
"Go downstairs," he instructs, leaning his head sideways to see which way the watchtower guard is facing before tossing a piece of bread over the barbed wire for me to eat. I run out the door and grab this