The Lost Hope (Short Story)

           It was November 5, 1944. The cold had set in and snow fell in white sheets as we hauled heavy slabs of stone. Wind was whipping around me as my hair, which started to grow back from my shaved head, blew in every direction. My limp and weightless fingers felt like they were about to fall off as they touched the stone. I could no longer feel how cold the stone was or anything at all. I wanted to drift away in an endless sleep where one couldn't feel pain, or regret. I wanted to drift away into a world free of labor, violence and death. Free of people who commanded you with a bell and their guns. But I couldn't. The pain and hunger in my stomach would not let me sleep. I could not rest peacefully, not when the only thing I could think of was my evening rations of soup and bread. These thoughts were stopping me from joining my father on the other side. That, and the thought of my sister.

          Alma and Mother were separated from me and Father when we arrived here at Auschwitz. I still remember that day. We got out of the cattle car and the SS officers shouted for women to one side and men to the other. Mother hugged me, almost as if she knew that it would be the last time we see each other. As if she knew she was too old to pass the selection that we were unaware of.

          Mother and Father then turned to twins Sharon and Joseph Lewin. They were my closest friends since childhood. Their mother died when they were young and their father was the only person they had left. But he didn't make it during the trip.

           Sharon and Joseph sat there on the ground outside the cattle car with their father's body laying at their feet. Their eyes were dry from crying for hours. They continued to sit there, Joseph rocking his body back and forth as he clutched his father's head and Sharon laying her head down on his chest as she held him tightly as if to never let him go. But the fact remains that he was gone. The SS officers eventually grabbed his body from the mourning twins' arms and hauled him into a cart full of corpses. Father helped Joseph onto his feet and took him to the men's side with us as Mother did the same with Sharon. That was the last time I saw the three of them.

          "Frenkel. David Frenkel," whispered Joseph next to me. That snapped me out of my thoughts and I continued to work before anyone noticed.

          Joseph stood next to me, also hauling stone slabs back and forth. Though he and his sister had the Aryan look, their father converted to Jewish and they were punished to concentration camps.

          The bell tolled signalling the end of work time. We gratefully hauled the last slabs to the piles and made our way to the Appelplatz. From there, you could see a neighboring camp with electric barbed wire fences. The women's camp.

           How I wanted to run over there and call my sister's name as loud as I could. How much I wanted to see her, to know if she was okay. But I couldn't. Doing that would mean both my death and my sister's. As much as I wanted to, I couldn't risk it. But I just needed to know if she passed that first selection when we arrived. She was a survivor. As long as she passed the first selection, she would live.

           I tried asking some of the women that were around the fence but they usually ignored me or quickly walked away while looking over their shoulders.

           These were my thoughts as Joseph and I slurped down our thin soup and swallowed our bread whole. Then I started wandering around the camp before it was time to sleep. There were a couple small spots around the camp that you could hide in when you wanted some peace. I used to hide in these places often when we first came to camp so that I could mourn for my father in silence.

          I quietly trudged away to a quiet spot behind one of the blocks. Joseph didn't follow me. He learned to recognize when I needed space or wanted to be left alone. I kept to the walls of the blocks and buildings as I walked. That's when I nearly tripped over and face first into the mud. There at my feet was a sack. Looking over my shoulder, I bent down and peered inside.