We quickly learned that survival at Ravensbrück revolved around one’s tin bowl, cup, and spoon and the ability to safeguard them. If one looked away for a moment, they might disappear, never to return. As a result we kept our kits tucked in the chests of our uniforms or, if one was lucky enough to acquire a piece of twine or string, made that into a belt and wore them strung on it at the waist.
Luiza and Matka chose a top bunk, what the prisoners called the coconut palms, since it was high up. It was very close to the ceiling, so they could barely sit up, and in the winter icicles hung from above it, but it was more private up there. Zuzanna and I slept just opposite.
I had to push down my jealousy at Luiza sleeping with my mother. I got Zuzanna, who shifted all night in her sleep, mumbling doctor talk. When she woke me up, I would spend the night fretting in the darkness, paralyzed with guilty thoughts. How could I have been so reckless to have gotten us all sent to this terrible place? To make things worse, the block was never quiet, always filled with the sounds of shrill voices of women tortured by nightmares or the itch of lice, night-shift workers returning home, sleepless women exchanging recipes, and calls for a basin for the sick who could not get to the washroom in time.
I did find moments to be alone with Matka, though. That night I crawled into the bunk with her before dinner.
“I am so sorry I got you here, Matka. If you hadn’t brought that sandwich, if I hadn’t—”
“Don’t think that way,” she said. “In here, you have to concentrate all you have on being smarter than the Germans. I’m glad I’m here with you girls. This will all be fine.” She kissed my forehead.
“But your ring—I hate them for taking it.”
“It’s just a thing, Kasia. Don’t waste your energy on the hate. That will kill you sure as anything. Focus on keeping your strength. You’re resourceful. Find a way to outsmart them.”
Blockova Roza strode in. She had a kind face but did not smile as she made announcements.
“Work call is at eight A.M. Those without work assignments, report to the labor office next to the block where you were processed. That is where you will pick up your badge and number.”
“She speaks only in German?” I whispered to Matka. “What about the girls who don’t understand?”
“Say a prayer of thanks for Herr Speck’s German class. It may save your life.”
She was right. I was lucky I spoke German, since all announcements were made in that language, no exceptions. The non-German speakers had a terrible disadvantage, since ignorance was no excuse for disregarding rules.
—
THE NEXT MORNING THE SIREN startled us awake. I’d just dozed off, dreaming about swimming with Pietrik in Lublin, when the lights in our block came on at 3:30 A.M. The worst part was that siren, a screech so loud and piercing it was as if it were from the bowels of hell. With this siren, Roza and her Stubova assistants came through the rows of beds. One Stubova banged on a tin pan, and one poked at sleepers with the leg of a stool, and Roza splashed ladles of water from a bucket onto sleeping women’s faces.
“Get up! Hurry! Everyone up!” they called.
This was a special kind of torture.
Matka, Zuzanna, Luiza, and I made our way to the dining hall, the long room next to our sleeping quarters, and squeezed onto a bench at the end. Breakfast was the same as it had been in quarantine, lukewarm yellowish soup that was more like turnip water and a small piece of bread that tasted like sawdust. The soup hit my stomach and almost came back up.
Roza read a list of new assignments.
Matka was assigned to the bookbindery, one of the highly sought-after inside positions. It was much harder to work a prisoner to death when she was sitting at a desk.
Luiza became an assistant to the Bible girls who processed Angora rabbit fur. The Angora rabbits lived at the far end of the camp in specially heated cages and were fed tender lettuce from the commandant’s greenhouse. Their fur was periodically shaved and sent to the tailor’s workshop, a massive complex of eight interconnected warehouses where prisoners assembled German army uniforms.