635798

I left Vater that night to wallow up in his own shame alone. Jürgen walked me to his mansion. I needed to tell Aalyshah the news. It would most likely break her heart, but she needed to know. She also needed to know about Shifre. Shifre was to Aalyshah as apparently Levi Cohen was to Vater. A Jew, a German-Christian, but still best friends.

I climbed up the stairs to Aalyshah’s room. She sat on her bed, reading a book I’ve never seen before. As I slipped it out of her hands, she glared at me.

“Where’s Six’s uniform?” I asked.

Aalyshah pointed under her bed. The dirty gray and blue uniform stuck out at a corner. I picked it up, unfolding it as well. Dear Lord. A person would never realized how much a prisoner’s uniform goes through until they actually sat down and examined one. 635798’s uniform wasn’t even clothing anymore. Just simply a piece of cloth. The holes made from the Yitzchak incident weakened and tore away to form a giant hole in the back. The blue was fading, making it seem like it was melting into the gray stripes. The sleeves were tattered, looking as if they were for a witch. The collar tore in my hands, smearing dirt onto my fingertips. How did 635798 live with this thing?

I folded the cloth over my arm. “I’m going to need this.”

“Why?” Aalyshah asked.

“For Six.”

Aalyshah rolled her eyes. “She’s dead, Wolfgang. You know that.”

I shook my head. “No. She’s alive.”

Aalyshah’s eyebrows raised.

“She’s with Arzt Mengele,” I said. “Vater sent her there as punishment.”

Within a matter of seconds Aalyshah’s face contorted with a myriad of expressions. Depression, anger, happiness, confusion. None stayed for a long period of time.

I sat at the foot of her bed. “Vater knew a man that Six resembles. It hurts Vater too much to look at her. That’s why he tortured her so much. So he sent her to Mengele for punishment. She can’t eat. She can’t wear her uniform. She can’t avoid the experiments Mengele performs on her. She has stitches up her side because of an experiment. I saw Mengele cut across her other side. Just today I saw this. And today she spoke.”

Aalyshah inched closer to me. “What did she say? Is she alright?”

I shook my head. “She is the skinniest thing you would ever see in your life. And she’s terrified of Vater.”

“I would be too.” Aalyshah looked away from me. “Why would he do something like this? How can he not feel any guilt?”

I scoffed. “Oh, he’s guilty, alright.”

Aalyshah’s head whipped over to face me. Her eyebrows were scrunched together, showing her confusion. “How do you know?”

“His best friend is Levi Cohen,” I said. “He said if he could save his family, he would.”

“I’m guessing this man is a Jew?”

I nodded. “But what Vater didn’t know was that Six is Levi’s daughter.”

Aalyshah nearly fell off her bed. Her eyes were wide and mouth was open. “You’re kidding? Six is the daughter of Vater’s best friend and he didn’t know?”

I shook my head. “The two lost contact. Vater never met Six.”

Aalyshah covered her face with her hands. “Oh, my God. What is he going to do now?”

I shrugged. “I left him in the dining room. I think he was in shock when I left. He couldn’t move or talk.”

My sister leaned against her bed rest. She sighed heavily and closed her eyes.

“There’s one more thing,” I said.

Aalyshah opened her eyes, alerted.

“Remember Shifre?” I asked.

“Of course I do. She was my best friend. I haven’t seen her since her family moved,” Aalyshah said.

And from there I proceeded to tell her what happened. Shifre Schwab came here to Auschwitz. I didn’t know when, but she must have been here for a while. Her sunken gray eyes recognized me during a roll call. It took me a while to realize it was her. Her strawberry blonde hair was gone and the stubs didn’t shine like they used to. Her pale skin was almost transparent. Bones and veins stuck out awkwardly. That day Shifre was chosen to go to the gas chambers because she refused to do what the Nazi asked. Maybe it was a simple task. Maybe it was a hard one. I didn’t know. But it seemed as if Shifre gave up. This I could tell because she wasn’t smiling. She used to always be smiling and laughing. A person knew something was wrong when she wasn’t. Shifre followed the chosen women to the chambers. She was the only one who didn’t seem terrified of the dark, cold building. She waited for the other women to go in before she did. Her eyes bore into mine as I closed the door.

“I don’t want to hear anymore!” Aalyshah exclaimed. She covered her ears. “I know what happens next.” A tear streamed down her face.

“I’m sorry, Aalyshah. But you needed to know,” I said quietly.

Aalyshah shook her head violently, trying to hold back her tears. A few chokes were heard and they echoed throughout the room.

“Why, Wolfgang?” Aalyshah cried. “Why did she let them take her away?”

I pulled my sister and hugged her close to my chest. My body trembled along with hers.

“She knew what they were going to do to her! She always knew!” Aalyshah muffled against my chest. “Shifre always told me about the things they did to Jews when she moved away. There was a new story in every letter. No wonder why she stopped sending them. She was here! She was fucking here! She could’ve stopped them from killing her. Why didn’t she, Wolfgang? Why did she just give up? She was never a quitter.”

I wiped a tear away from her cheek. “Auschwitz does strange things to a person.”

“But she must’ve known she was going to die. She had to know she was walking into a gas chamber!” Aalyshah pounded my chest.

“What’s a gas chamber?”

Aalyshah jumped against me, causing me to jerk. We looked at the bedroom door. There, standing in the doorframe, was Abbey. Her eyes were big as they examined us cautiously, her hair framing her round face.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” I said.

Abbey jumped onto the bed. “But I wanna know.” She looked at Aalyshah and her expression went from curiosity to horrorstruck. “Why are you crying?”

Aalyshah shook her head rapidly and repeated what I just said.

“You guys are jerks,” Abbey said. “Whenever I ask about anything related to the war people think I’m not old enough to understand. I will!”

Aalyshah’s response was to hug me tighter.

“Please? I wanna know!” Abbey exclaimed.

“No! Mama will kill us if we told you,” Aalyshah said.

“No she won’t!” Abbey jumped on the bed, wiggling it. “Tell me!”

“Why do you want to know so badly?” I asked calmly. Someone needed to be calm with her. Aalyshah was about to explode out of my arms.

“Because. Now tell me,” Abbey snapped. “Tell me tell me tell me tell-”

“GAS CHAMBERS KILL PEOPLE, ABBEY!” Aalyshah pushed herself away from me and I had to stop her from slapping our sister. “Nazis pick people to die, tell them they’re taking a shower, and put them in a dark room where they receive a deadly gassing instead of a shower. There. Now you know. Happy? Are you happy, Abbey? Do you feel like a big kid now?!”

Abbey’s face gradually became a look of horror. Her mouth dropped simultaneously with her widening eyes. She pulled her knees up to her chest and looked away from us.

“Stop lying,” she whispered.

“Oh, my God, Abbey. This is a war. What did you expect to happen?” Aalyshah asked, annoyed.

“You’re forgetting it’s an inhumane war,” I said. I turned to Abbey. “You know why this whole war started, right?”

She shook her head.

I sighed. “Dear Lord. They don’t teach you enough in your Hitler Youth class.”

From there, I told Abbey what led to Hitler’s hatred. After Germany surrendered in World War I and signed the treaty, Adolf Hitler thought of it as unfair. He blamed the Jews for Germany’s downfall even though many German Jews fought for Germany (Levi Cohen being an example). Hitler went to work. Many people gained jobs thanks to him. That was probably only one of the good things he has done. He began to yell out his speeches to the crowd. Jews were animals. They took over Germany’s jobs. They caused the surrender of the war. They caused Germany’s downfall. All Jews must die. Many people believed everything Hitler fed them. The Nuremberg Laws were created along with the anti-Semitist groups. Kristallnact happened in November of 1938, sending many Jews to Dachau. More camps were being made. Meantime, Italy and Japan were joining the Axis Power and spreading Fascism throughout their countries. Mussolini and Hirohito helped Hitler gain his power. Hitler’s Nazi Party formed. They forced Jews to live in ghettos and later picked them up by train to take them to places such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Dachau. Jews began to die thousands at a time every day.

By now Abbey had wrapped herself in a blanket. She refused to look at either me or Aalyshah. “That’s a lie. People can’t simply die by the thousands. That’s too much.”

Aalyshah looked at me. “You’re explaining this one.”

I took in a breath while letting my hands run down my face. It was only a matter of time before Abbey found out the truth. “Only if Abbey wants to hear it.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Abbey nod feverishly.

I started with selections first. There were so many types of these. Most all reasons were insane to the human mind. They were just to the typical Nazi’s. Selections that happened outside of the camps were similar. Victims lined up against a wall and waited. Sometimes Nazis shot every second person, sometimes every third. One day only the person in the middle would die. Only people on the ends would die another day. This depended on the Nazis’ mood. The reasons for selection in the camps varied. Most of the time, the “doctors” chose who seemed sick. Not was sick. Seemed. Some days they asked the prisoners questions. If they heard an answer they didn’t like, then goodbye. On some days they shot people in a specific pattern. An example of this was the selection Vater brought Mutter and my sisters to.

Mass killings was another form of death inside and outside of these camps. There were so many types of these that I didn’t even know where to begin. Sometimes Nazis invaded a synagogue and ordered for all the Jews to leave. The shootings would begin, painting the streets red with blood. Both inside and outside camps, Nazis lined Jews up against walls. They had them face the brick so they wouldn’t see the shooters. All Nazis would raise their guns and begin. Blood splattered everywhere as each Jew was shot in the head. Sometimes pieces of skull or brain would escape, too. It only took seconds for each victim to die. Another way to complete mass killings was have Jews work together to dig a hole in the ground. The hole was said to be deeper than six feet and wider than ten. When the order was followed, every Jew lined up by the edge. Nazis shot their heads, leaving each of them to fall into the hole they created. Sometimes the Nazis would even throw babies in the air and use them as targets. No remorse was felt for these poor unfortunate souls. None at all.

Starvation was an easy, but long, process to kill prisoners. Once in the camps, rations of food became unbelievably small. The two “meals” they received a day couldn’t add up to one. Each prisoner was given a bowl. They had to guard it with their life since another one wouldn’t be given, no matter how long they stayed. The prisoners waited in line for very long minutes to receive a portion that didn’t even fill the bowl a quarter of the way up. And let’s not forget the type of food they were given. Stale bread and watered-down soup. That was it. In order to stay alive, the bodies of the prisoners took in the fat within them as food, causing all prisoners to shrink in weight. That was why everyone looked so fragile by their third week.

Another factor of death was sickness. Many prisoners caught pneumonia when on the train coming here. Getting sick was easy. Almost too easy. Look at Chaya for example. She got sick from being out in the sun for too long. The uniforms the prisoners wore were too thin for winter as well as the blankets they received. Such an easy way to catch pneumonia. Bugs were at every corner of each camp, spreading the diseases they carried. Each camp had a popular disease. There was one called Tuberculosis, which was found almost everywhere. This was what many prisoners had. Many prisoners died from this every single day. It was so easy to spread since the barracks were in close quarters.

I proceeded to talk about Arzt Mengele, keeping 635798 out of it. Block 10, located in the men’s ward, was where he worked mostly. It was populated with women, sick or well. Arzt Mengele had an interest in people with strange heredity traits. He liked when someone had two different colored eyes or some part of their body was larger than normal. But his main obsession was with twins. He was interested in how their bodies worked. Did they work similarly or differently? Deadly experiments were performed on twins, and even some normal people.

Everyone who crossed Mengele’s path in his blocks had to have blood drawn. They weren’t used to determine what experiments would happen. If a person couldn’t undergo an experiment due to body issues, Mengele performed away.

Measurements were taken for each person. Everything was measured. Legs, arms, necks, even genitals. From what Vater had told me throughout time, things that measured the same were part of their genes and the environment was what caused the differences.

After measurements, blood transfusions began. To my knowledge, Mengele didn’t check if a person was or wasn’t qualified for a certain type of blood. Whatever the blood type was, it went from one twin to another.

Mengele supported the Aryan Race just as much as Hitler did. He had special chemicals in his care and he would drop them in the eyes of the twins, trying to turn them blue. I would imagine that it caused pain so severe to the human mind. Who wanted an unknown substance dropped into their eyes? Infections appeared, many causing blindness.

And yes, shots and diseases came along with this man too. The twins didn’t know what was in these shots. Actually, nobody did except Mengele. When passing by the Block containing twins, one could hear them scream in agony. Mengele proved that he didn’t exactly care if his patients were in pain (he proved this when I first discovered 635798 with him). Therefore, no anesthesia was used. Worst of all, these shots were injected in the spine. Many believed this was Mengele’s way of passing diseases to one twin. Sometimes both twins received the disease, but most of the time it was only one. The one with the disease would die. The other twin was purposely killed so the two of them could be examined further and the effects of the disease could be compared.

Many twins or other “variables” died from numerous surgeries. I was familiar with these thanks to the help of 635798. Mengele had stated that he liked to compare organs. Organ comparing was when Mengele opened a person up and compared their organs to either a twin’s or a look-alike’s. This was what happened to 635798. There was also organ removal. This surgery was performed to see how one twin functioned without a certain organ while the other twin still had it. Castration was also performed. This was done to males since it was the act of removing a male’s testicles. Another was performing amputations. All of these surgeries, as proved with 635798, were done without anesthesia.

Many twins were killed just for the purpose of autopsy studies. This was done by having a needle stabbed into their heart, injecting chemicals I wouldn’t know of.

The last thing I informed Abbey about were the gas chambers. They were located at every camp. Hitler needed a faster way to exterminate his enemies so this was what he thought of. One gas chamber was able to hold more than one hundred prisoners. One hundred prisoners would be gathered (mostly at random) and sent away by either truck or foot. This depended on the camp. At the gas chambers, they were told to strip to nudity. Nazis told the crying prisoners they were only taking a shower. Some were deceived, but I was positive a good amount weren’t. Rumors tend to spread. The naked prisoners walked in, standing almost too close to their neighbor. From above, a deadly gas was dropped. This gas was called Zyklon-B. Many prisoners started screaming once realizing what was happening. Some died in seconds. For others, it took longer. The maximum amount of time it took to kill all one hundred prisoners was fifteen minutes. After the coast was clear, the live prisoners proceeded to take the bodies, which were like skeletons, to the crematoriums to be burned.

At the end of my lesson, Abbey was nearly flat against the wall, knees hugged tightly and eyes shining with tears. Her small body trembled, and she seemed to almost be in disbelief. She most likely was. This war happened in nine year olds’ nightmares, not real life.

“Don’t lie to me, Wolfgang,” Abbey said, voice shaking.

Aalyshah crawled over to our sister. “He’s not.”

Abbey shook her head violently.

“Believe what you want, Abbey,” I said. “But I would never lie to you about stuff like this.”

Abbey threw herself against Aalyshah. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew she was crying. Her voice squeaked across the room. My youngest sister was shocked. Her nightmares were appearing in real life.

“Does that mean Six is dead?” Abbey’s voice quivered.

I shook my head. “No. But she’s with Arzt Mengele.”

Abbey’s head shot up in surprise. “Does that mean she’s going to die? She can’t die, Wolfgang!”

I shuffled next to Abbey and embraced her tightly. “No. No, she won’t die. I won’t let that happen. Vater won’t let it happen either.”

“But he hates her!”

I shook my head. “Not anymore.” I stopped Abbey from asking why. I didn’t need to experience earlier today once again.

“But… I don’t understand, Wolfgang.” Abbey let herself lean against me.

“I wouldn’t expect you to. You’re only nine,” I said.

“No. I mean I don’t understand why soldiers do this to others.” Abbey looked up at me. “Don’t they care about any of the people they’re killing?”

I sighed, trying to ignore the chill riding up my spine. “No. No, they don’t care.”