Good luck homing pigeon

Chapter thirteen: A course of flight never did run smooth.

Hello to those few who are reading this! Firstly I'd like to say happy summer to those in New Zealand, Australia and any others who are going through the summer this January. Secondly, I just like to mention that updates on this story are going to get more frequent as I've actually finished writing the bulk of it! At last. Now without further ado, we have chapter fifteen!

After the first three, gruelling months spent in the camp called Birkenau, there came and passed another three. During this time, I'd done so much more here that I could barely comprehend it. Yes, I still worked in the work-huts; popping the lenses out of glasses and organising them into piles. And yes, I still stood outside for hours during the mornings and evenings, during roll-call. But ever since I'd been introduced to The Flock, my life never was the same. It was far more exciting.

As the homing pigeon, it was my main job to deliver messages from the women's camp, to that rendezvous-point beside that main gates where Angelo-known to the rest as Robin, would take the message from me and sneak his way back into the men's camp in Auschwitz once the guard was on his break. We would only get ten minutes together, but I swear, those ten minutes were what made each week worth carrying on for. We'd talk-about each others families, and what was going on in our sides of the camp. But most of the time we'd embrace; cuddling close in the corner, neither of us wanting to let the other go. When he nuzzled my neck, when I rested my head against his chest, and when he kissed my face...it felt like we were back home again. For a short bit of time, nearly microscopic, but it was a fair glimpse. A sort of window to the care-free life we had in Paris.

As for Angelo himself, well...when I said I was confused about what I thought of him, I was right. But now, ever-so-gradually, things were beginning to fall into perspective. I think...I think I might've been falling for him. Not how a girl would come to care, intensively deep for her best friend. But real falling. Falling, fast and deep into the beautiful, strange world of teen hood romance. I couldn't say it was some innocent, schoolgirl crush-it was more than that. But the most frustrating part was that I couldn't tell if he was feeling the same thing for me. Angelo would freely talk about Andre and Nick and the good-old days-but romance? I never could picture him as a romantic kind of boy.

And my family, well...it wasn't easy to talk about that. Not that I'd known the truth behind it, all along. After the fourth month, a transport was announced, requiring workers for the nursing station in Bergen Belson-a work camp, all the way in Germany. The guards were the ones who chose the prisoners they saw fit; most of them healthy, rosy-cheeked and able to hop, up and down on the spot. Much like the selections we had every month. If you were stealthy and strong, you were sent back outside. If you could barely walk-or stand, you were sent on a march. It was never confirmed what happened to those who were marched out of the barrack; but we all knew the answer anyway. Sometimes, when we were sent to the work huts, we'd see some on other marches-all heading in the direction of the left-hand 'shower' block we'd narrowly avoided on arrival. We'd bow our heads, discretely in respect, and hoped to god their deaths wouldn't be too painful. But we'd heard many things about gas chambers. It took a group of twenty, thirty, forty or so roughly half an hour to die. That time was spent, coughing up their own, melting organs or watching fellow friends, loved ones, dying the same death right beside you. It was a sick thing indeed, to kill somebody that way. Whereas, they  saw it as quick and efficient.

I've known, and heard of people in Birkenau who were, and remained completely ignorant of what really happened here. They believed if Hitler really wanted us to die, he would've killed us all by now, instead of keeping us for labour. They thought that the infirmary really was something of a hospital; where the renown Dr Mengele took good care of their children-the ones he kept alive at least. They believed that those marches towards the left-hand 'showers' and the chimney that smoked everyday were to move those too frail for labour into the mass kitchens of Birkenau for factory work. How stupid could they be?! Did they not notice the smell of rot and decay, in the air around them? Did they simply walk through the piles of bodies, like ashes to air? I honestly, didn't know how they could live the way they did. And by the time this war was over only then, I thought, could their illusions be broken.