Free I Will Plant You a Lilac Tree by Laura Hillman

unkind. She hurried us on, saying, “It’s for your own good to be on time.” Her Yiddish was understandable to me; her Polish was not.
    Back in the barrack a young girl approached me. “I haven’t seen you here before. When did you arrive?”
    I explained that I had come during the night.
    â€œThere is room on my bunk,” the girl said. “Up here, on the third level.”
    And so it was that I instantly became friends with the girl named Fella, who not only was beautiful to look at but cheerful in spite of our surroundings.
    â€œHow do you manage to act as if this is a normal place?” I wanted to know.
    â€œI pretend it is normal,” Fella answered, flashing her almond-shaped eyes.
    Having a friend made all the difference. Now I had someone to talk to, to share my fears and hopes with. Fella was practical as well. She offered a lot of good advice. When I ate my portion of bread too fast, Fella showed me how to make it last longer by taking very small bites.
    â€œSometimes they withhold the noon soup as a form of punishment. It’s hard to deal with that when you are so hungry, but you will get used to it,” she assured me.
    It was incredible what had happened to me within a span of twenty-four hours. First I had been violated and had been close to losing my life. Now I had found a wonderful friend who would help me cope with the hardships of this camp.
    But my first day in Budzyn had just began, and it would stretch into a very long and painful experience. The backbreaking work of lifting rocks onto trucks for road building, coupled with the fact that I had been up all night with only a slice of bread for breakfast, made me sluggish. I became exhausted in a matter of hours and fell behind in my work.
    Fella kept a watchful eye on me. “The overseer, the Kapo , has been looking your way for some time now. You must work faster, Hannelore, or he will punish you. He is mean.”
    My back felt as if it was breaking and I grew light-headed, yet I continued to work as if my life depended on it—which indeed it did.
    At noon we were given time to sit on theground and eat the soup that was brought to us in large cauldrons. Even the odd smell of the watery soup didn’t dampen my appetite, and I held out my cup in eager anticipation of my portion.
    All too soon the whistle blew, calling us back to work. The blisters on my hands had opened, making it even more painful to hold the shovel. Fella’s promise that the afternoon hours would be better because a different Kapo , more humane than the first one, would be guarding us was small comfort.
    The afternoon dragged on. It seemed as if it would never end. The sun had already gone down, and we were still at work. Fatigued, I asked Fella to tell me how much longer we would have to work before they returned us to camp.
    â€œIt’s almost dark now,” she said. “They always return us to camp before it gets dark.”
    Her assurances that the first days in this camp were the hardest, that I would soon getused to the routine, did little to ease my weariness. The march back to camp was uneventful, but our day was not over yet. As we’d done in the morning, we again had to stand at the assembly place and be counted. Untersturmführer Feix, our camp commandant, was in no hurry. Seeing us looking tired and hungry seemed to amuse him. This evening he played his favorite game with the male prisoners. The command “Caps off, caps on” came again and again.
    Finally it ended. We were allowed to go to our barrack, where the food distribution line awaited us. I was at the point of fainting from hunger and fatigue. Fella was still in good spirits.
    â€œIt’s beet jam again,” she explained. “Specialty of the house.”
    It was food; that’s all I cared about. If only there were a little more of it. The small portion hardly satisfied my hunger.
    Fella went to see Regina, the