Free Kanada by Eva Wiseman

Hungarian, pointing to the chimneys in the distance. “Your families are going up in smoke! There goes your mama and your papa! Be careful or they'll get you too!”
    We stared after him as he was swallowed by the crowd.
    “He must be crazy!” Agi said. “What
is
he talking about?”
    I had no answers.
    We continued on for another fifty meters before stopping in front of the building where some men and women in striped clothing waited with large shears in their hands. The SS ordered us to undress, put our shoes at the side of the building, and add our clothes to a small mountain of garments piled next to the shoes. A few girls began to weep and tried to cover their nakedness with their hands. I felt nothing. It was as if everything was happening to somebody else, not to me. I just stood there, as if I were watching the plot of a bizarre movie unfolding before my eyes. I looked on calmly as the dark hair of a girl in the film dropped to the ground. The wailing of the women around me was muted in my ears, as if the sound were coming through a long tunnel. I didn't recognize the weeping stranger with a shorn blond head clinging to my arm.
    Oh, Jutka, what is happening to us?” she cried. It was Agi.
    Then we were led into the bathhouse. The ceiling of the large hall was dotted with shower heads. Icy water began pouring out of them, but I barely felt the stinging cold beating down on me.
    We left the shower room, naked, our bodies still dripping with water. The SS ordered us to run past a pile of dirty, ragged striped uniforms. A prisoner standing beside the pile threw a striped skirt, a tattered shirt, and a pair of men's shoes at me. I was lucky. The clothing fit, and the shoes were only slightly large. Agi's uniform was several sizestoo small for her, and her shoes were wooden. She was able to trade her uniform for a larger one, but nobody would exchange her clogs for shoes.
    Night was falling by the time we were marched at gunpoint to the wooden barracks behind the barbed-wire fence. Agi and I clung to each other, determined to stay together. The long line of exhausted women was eerily quiet, until a whisper traveled through the crowd like wildfire through dry prairie grass. “Don't touch the fence! It's electrified!” Only then did I notice the white posters of skulls hanging on the fence.
    The guards used their truncheons and whips to push and shove groups of women inside each building. Finally, it was our turn.
    “They must think that we're animals! This is no better than a stable!” she said.
    The cavernous room was dimly lit by skylights. Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw wooden rafters and an earth floor. On either side of the room were long lines of three-tiered bunk beds made of rough wood. Each bed frame was covered by a piece of plywood on which rested a filthy straw-filled burlap bag.
    A young blond woman with the face of an angel ordered us to choose beds. She was wearing a striped uniform with a green triangle on her shirt. “Los! Los!” she cried harshly, waving her rubber stick. Within minutes, a thousand women were packed into the bunks. There were eightprisoners per bed, which was only meant for two. Elbows jabbed elbows, knees knocked knees, eliciting angry protests at the forced intimacy.
    Agi and I held on to each other silently. There was nothing to say. We could hear the buzz of soft voices as the women tried to make themselves comfortable.
    “Haltet die Klappe! Shut up!” cried the blond woman with the green triangle. She spoke in Hungarian. “I am your Kapo. Listen to me carefully. You're in Auschwitz-Birkenau. This is not a sanatorium! You are in a Vernichtungslager! You are Häftlings, prisoners. You will do exactly as you are told or you'll pay the consequences for your actions! Anybody who disobeys will go straight to the ovens! Understood?” Silence. “Now, all of you outside! Line up in rows of five!”
    I did not think. I did not question. Neither did Agi or any of the