The angel of auschwitz, p.10
The Angel of Auschwitz, page 10
Inside the infirmary, silence held for a moment before the women lifted their eyes.
Her assistant approached her. “He is gone?” she whispered.
Gisella nodded. Her breath finally escaped her lungs. Her knees weakened. She reached for the edge of a bunk and sat, hand gripping the wooden frame. The world swayed for a moment. The tension that had held her rigid loosened all at once, leaving her hollow.
Across the room, a woman raised her head. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
A second voice murmured something too soft to hear.
Gisella remained seated, breathing slowly, feeling the quiet press of relief around her.
She had outwitted Mengele. He would never know. Closing her eyes for a moment, Gisella let the silence settle her.
That danger had passed. Barely. But not one life had been lost today. And that was enough.
14
Snow had fallen in the night. A thin, pale layer covered the camp like a fragile skin, sinking into the mud in uneven patches. The morning air stung the inside of Gisella’s nose as she stepped out behind Block Ten. The world felt muffled, quieter than usual, as though the snow had absorbed the usual groans, shouts, and clatter of metal.
A woman stood at the corner of the infirmary, holding her belly with both hands. Her face had thinned in recent weeks, but her stomach had grown heavy. Her child was close. Too close. She could barely walk without pressing a hand to her side. Morning roll call would begin soon. The guards would see her. That would be the end.
Hannah appeared beside Gisella, her breath shallow, eyes scanning the courtyard. She gave a single nod.
They had practised this.
Gisella placed both hands gently on the woman’s shoulders and guided her toward the narrow crawl space behind the stacked crates used for waste storage. Snow had gathered there. The woman knelt slowly, one hand gripping a crate to steady herself. Hurry, the moment whispered. But there was no spoken word.
From beyond the fence, a lookout gave the smallest tap against the metal. Too faint for a guard. Loud enough for Gisella.
She crouched and helped the woman slide herself into the gap. The woman’s breath hitched with effort. Straw rustled. The crates scraped slightly against the ground. The sound felt immense.
Gisella froze.
Boots struck the path beyond the infirmary. Steady steps. Not close yet. Not safe, either.
The woman pulled her legs in. Hannah pushed a fallen blanket closer, covering the entrance by letting it fall naturally so it looked like a scrap misplaced.
The lookout tapped again, urgent now.
Gisella pressed two fingers to the woman’s hand where it reached through the straw. The contact lasted a heartbeat. Then she pulled back, rose, and brushed the snow from her knees.
The courtyard filled with movement. Women emerged from their barracks as guards shouted numbers. The cold bit into Gisella’s palms as she wiped them on her skirt.
Roll call had begun.
The line shuffled forward. Women were counted, then counted again. Gisella held herself still among them, shoulders relaxed, gaze lowered. Hannah stood two rows away, her face void of expression.
The missing woman almost passed unnoticed.
Almost.
A guard near the back of the line frowned. He lifted his head and looked across the yard, eyes narrowed. He stepped out of formation and scanned the ground, then kicked at something with his boot.
A scrap of cloth.
Gisella recognised it at once. It belonged to the blanket they had used to disguise the hiding place. It had likely torn when she pulled it forward.
The guard picked it up and sniffed it. He turned toward the line. “Who hid someone?” he said, voice low.
No one answered.
He stepped closer to the line, the cloth hanging from his hand. “Who?” he repeated, his voice cold.
The women stared ahead in silence.
The guard’s gaze landed on Gisella. Only for a second. But it was enough. He walked toward her. “Doctor,” he said. The title twisted his mouth, as though it amused him.
She held his gaze without challenge.
“You’ve hidden them?” he said.
“No,” she replied.
He looked at the cloth again, then at her face. “Come with me.”
Snow crunched under his boots as he grabbed her arm, fingers tight around her sleeve. She did not resist. Resisting would bring chaos, and chaos would endanger the hidden woman. She allowed herself to be pulled forward, out of line, across the yard.
The women watched with neutral faces, their fear contained behind unmoving eyes.
The guard dragged Gisella toward the courtyard. Another guard stepped into view. He looked at her without interest, only routine.
“Here,” the first guard said, releasing her arm.
Gisella stumbled but did not fall.
The second guard stepped forward and struck her across the face with the back of his hand. The blow came without warning. It snapped her head to the side. A small burst of white light flickered at the edge of her vision. Gisella steadied her feet, breath tight.
The guards did not shout. They did not curse. Their silence made the blows sharper.
A fist hit her in the ribs and the impact stole the air from her lungs. She folded slightly, instinctively protecting her stomach. Another blow landed on her back. Her knees weakened. Gravel pressed into her palms as she caught herself on the ground. Her breath came in short bursts. She tasted iron, the metallic tang settling at the edge of her tongue.
A kick landed against her thigh. Pain radiated upward, dull at first, then sharp as she tried to push herself upright. Her arms shook with the effort.
“Stand,” one guard said.
She tried but her body refused.
Another kick, this time against her side. Her breath scattered. The cold ground pressed against her cheek as she fell fully. Sound blurred for a moment. The crunch of snow. The faint hiss of wind moving between the barracks. Someone’s quiet gasp swallowed quickly.
The guards grew bored. Their cruelty was only ever meant to last long enough to punish. Long enough to warn.
The first guard grabbed her collar and hauled her upright. Her legs buckled again. She could barely feel her fingers. Cold and pain meshed into one sensation.
“Enough,” he said.
They let her fall.
Snow cushioned the blow slightly, but the ground beneath was hard. She lay still, her vision dimming. Her ribs felt as if a rope had been drawn tight around them and her back ached. Her thigh throbbed in slow waves.
The guards walked away from her without a backward glance and roll call resumed as if nothing had happened.
When the courtyard slowly emptied, Gisella lay alone on the ground. Minutes passed. The cold pressed deeper.
At last, when the guards turned toward the gate, two figures slipped from the shadow of the barracks. Hannah and Bina. Their steps were quick and cautious. They lifted Gisella’s arms over their shoulders and pulled her to her feet with effort.
She tried to stand. Her legs trembled violently. The world tilted.
“Not here,” Hannah whispered.
They half carried her toward the infirmary. Each step was painful.
Inside, they moved her past the beds and into a small holding cell behind the medicine shelves. The room was dim, the air colder than the rest of the ward. A cracked window let in a thin thread of winter sunlight. Hannah and Bina lowered her gently to the floor.
Gisella closed her eyes and took a moment to steady her breath. Pain pulsed through her body and her shoulder throbbed where one blow had landed hard. She was sure her thigh was deeply bruised.
Hannah retrieved a cloth and dipped it into the bowl of water she had got from the main ward and pressed the cloth gently to Gisella’s mouth. She cleaned it with soft, careful movements. A faint trace of blood stained the fabric.
Someone whispered outside and another nurse slipped in with a rag soaked in weak disinfectant. She dabbed at the bruises with trembling fingers and the three women worked quickly in near silence.
Gisella opened her eyes for a moment. Faces hovered above her: hollow, exhausted, resolute. Their bodies bent with hunger. Their eyes alive with fear but there was something else beneath it: a purpose.
Hannah touched Gisella’s wrist for a pulse. The touch was firm, clinical, steady. “She will live.”
Bina nodded and continued pressing the cloth against her ribs.
Time blurred. Pain came in waves. Sometimes sharp, sometimes heavy. Gisella drifted in and out of awareness. Always the same sensations: cloth, cold, breath. The muted sounds of the infirmary beyond the cell.
Hours later, the door creaked softly. The pregnant woman stepped inside. Her belly was round beneath the blanket she clutched. Her face was still fearful as she approached Gisella slowly, as though approaching a sacred object she did not know how to touch.
She knelt and reached toward Gisella’s hand. Her fingers brushed Gisella’s skin, making light and fragile contact. A thank-you without voice. She placed a small scrap of bread on the floor beside her. Tiny. Barely a mouthful. But precious. More precious than anything she could have offered with words.
Then she withdrew. Quietly without lingering. The door clicked shut behind her.
The room settled back into stillness.
Gisella lay on the floor of the dim cell, her breaths shallow, ribs burning each time her chest rose. Her body trembled from pain and cold. The scrap of bread sat beside her hand but she did not eat it. She did not move.
Her mind felt strangely clear.
She thought of the pregnant woman walking in the camp yard. Alive and undiscovered.
Gisella’s pain was the price. Her suffering had bought time as her body had intervened where words could not. Each painful breath was a reminder that she still existed within the silence of Block Ten. Gisella let her eyes close again.
This moment marked a threshold as profound as any she had crossed. Gisella’s body had become part of the resistance. Her bruises carried purpose. Her silence protected lives.
The woman she had hidden was alive. That knowledge rested against her ribs like a second heartbeat. And it was enough to keep her from breaking.
15
The cold entered the block long before the light did. It crept through the cracks between the boards, slipped beneath blankets, settled on the floor in a thin sheet of frozen damp. Women lay curled against one another, breath rising in faint clouds, their bodies small and brittle beneath the striped cloth. Dawn brought no warmth. Only a dim grey that seeped into the room and revealed the hollows in every face.
Gisella rose from her narrow bunk slowly. Her ribs ached where the bruises still lived beneath the skin and her shoulder protested when she tried to straighten. But she did not pause. After stepping onto the cold ground, she moved to the first bed and knelt to check the fever of the woman lying there. The woman’s breath was weak but her eyes fluttered when Gisella touched her forehead.
The cold stung Gisella’s fingers. Her hands trembled slightly, but she willed them steady. She wrapped a scarf around the woman’s neck and adjusted the blanket. The cloth was too thin to offer real warmth, but the gesture carried weight all the same.
Hunger sharpened everything. Gisella felt it in her bones as she crossed the room: a slow grind, a hollowing. Her movements had grown slower in recent days because her body no longer had strength to waste. The heaviness of the basin she grabbed surprised her and she nearly dropped it. Her vision blurred at the edges for a moment, darkness creeping inward.
She caught the table with one hand.
Hannah hurried to her. “You must sit,” she whispered.
Gisella shook her head. “I’m fine.” She lifted the basin again and this time was able to carry it to the corner without stumbling. But her breathing was laboured and there was a faint ringing in her ears. She set the basin down and steadied herself against the wall.
Not now, her mind whispered. Not today.
A woman on the far cot let out a wet, deep cough that came from the chest. The sound reminded Gisella of why she must move, why she must keep going. She pushed herself away from the wall and slowly made her way to the infirmary.
Winter had stripped the camp of sound. The usual noises felt muted beneath frost. Boots still walked the yards, but their rhythm was dulled. Voices still called numbers, but breath froze on the air, turning spoken words into brittle fragments.
Inside Block Ten, even the feverish women shivered.
Gisella reached the girl with pneumonia near mid-morning. The girl lay curled tightly, hands against her chest, lips pale. Gisella sat beside her and lifted her hand to the girl’s forehead. Heat burned beneath the skin. With a trembling hand, Gisella raised a glass of water to the patient’s lips. The girl drank a mouthful, then coughed, the liquid spilling down her chin. Gisella wiped it gently with the corner of a cloth.
“You must breathe slowly,” she whispered.
The girl nodded faintly.
Movement at the door drew Gisella’s attention.
Abigail entered, carrying a small basket of crusts. Her eyes met Gisella’s briefly. She set the basket down with deliberate slowness, creating a screen from the guard outside. Behind the crusts, hidden beneath a folded rag, lay a narrow vial. Abigail gave the smallest tilt of her chin. Then she left.
Quinine.
The amount was so small it barely filled the bottom of the glass, but even a few drops could ease fever. Gisella hid the vial in her sleeve and checked the yard through the crack in the boards. The guards had turned away so she slipped a single drop into the girl’s water, mixing it quickly.
The girl grimaced at the taste but swallowed it. Gisella stayed with her until the coughing eased.
Getting up to see to the other patients, Gisella became light-headed and had to place a hand on the end of a bunk to steady her balance.
Bina saw her sway. “You must rest,” she murmured.
“There is no rest here,” Gisella said.
Bina looked away, understanding the truth of it.
Gisella moved through the ward with slow precision, each step placed carefully to avoid falling over with exhaustion.
With numb fingers she cleaned a wound on a woman’s leg. The smell of infection rose faintly. Her vision blurred again. The next breath did not come easily. Her knees bent without her permission. She caught herself on the edge of the bed, but the world tilted sharply. Hannah rushed to her, one arm wrapping around her shoulders.
“Sit,” she insisted.
This time Gisella let herself be guided to a stool that she lowered herself gently onto. Her breath steadied with effort and the room slowly returned to focus.
A moment. Only a moment. Then she rose again.
“Enough,” Hannah hissed.
But Gisella shook her head. “They need me.”
Night brought a deeper cold.
The walls creaked. Women huddled in their blankets, too tired even to speak. Snow fell through the cracks in the roof, drifting to the floor in tiny flakes that melted slowly against the wood.
Gisella stepped outside with a bucket. The yard lay under the dim moon, sharp with shadow and wire. The fence line glimmered faintly with frost. She moved toward it, her steps soft on the snow.
A shape approached from the other side.
Aron.
He moved with care, his shoulders tense, his breath visible in faint clouds. His face was thinner than before, his movements slower. But when he reached the fence, his eyes lifted and found hers with quiet clarity.
He crouched, pretending to check a break in the wire. She knelt on her side, setting the bucket down. From beneath his coat, he produced a folded scrap of cloth. Inside it lay a small piece of bread and a sliver of hardened sugar. And tucked into the corner, nearly hidden, a tiny shard of metal. A needle tip. Clean. He slid it under the lowest wire.
She covered the movement by reaching for a piece of fallen straw.
Their hands nearly touched before retreating again.
“Tonight,” he whispered, barely audible. “There is a shift change. The pharmacy will be left unguarded for a brief moment.”
She nodded once.
His eyes lingered on her, filled with something she could not name. Not hope. Not tenderness. Something quieter. Recognition. Kinship. The relief of seeing a familiar mind in a place where every day erased another piece of your self.
Then he stepped back into the shadows and Gisella returned to the infirmary.
Hours passed.
When the yard had fallen silent except for a distant patrol, Abigail slipped into the room with a small lantern shielded by her coat. “It is time,” she whispered.
Gisella rose carefully, ribs aching.
Hannah followed them to the back corridor where the storerooms connected to the SS medical wing. A loose board near the ground had been pried away weeks earlier. Just enough space for a hand to pass through.
Gisella lay flat on the ground. Cold seeped into her stomach and chest. Abigail knelt beside her, holding the lantern low. Through the gap, Gisella saw the corridor lit faintly by a single lamp. Shadows moved beyond, but none close.
She reached through. Her arm brushed against stone as her fingers probed for the small crate Aron had described, the one stored against the far wall. Eventually, she felt the edge of a box.
Her hand shook from cold and hunger as she slipped her fingers into the crate, moving slowly so as not to make noise. Her fingertips found a glass vial. Then another. She drew them closer, holding her breath. One vial fell, striking the floor with a soft clink.
Gisella froze.
Steps echoed somewhere deeper in the building. Hannah pressed a hand to Gisella’s back, urging stillness. The steps receded. Gisella exhaled silently and retrieved the fallen vial, inching it toward the gap. She slid both vials through the opening. Abigail caught them in her coat. Quinine. Morphine. Barely enough for a handful of doses.
But enough to save lives.
