The angel of auschwitz, p.20
The Angel of Auschwitz, page 20
They left the reception centre together.
At the station, they found a bench near the far wall of the waiting room. It was warm from the heat of the stoves and voices echoed softly. Announcements drifted through the air and the scent of coal lingered.
Gabriella sat beside her, hands folded in her lap. Gisella reached for one of them. Their fingers intertwined easily, naturally, as if the years between them had never happened.
They sat in silence as the world moved on around them. People boarded trains. Children called to one another. A porter carried luggage down the corridor. Somewhere outside, a train whistle blew.
Gisella studied her daughter’s face. The changes were unmistakable: shadows beneath her eyes, a quietness that did not belong to her age. But there, beneath all of it, was the child she had known. The curve of her cheek. The shape of her hands. The way she tilted her head slightly when listening.
Gabriella leaned against her gently, resting her head on Gisella’s shoulder. Gisella closed her eyes for a moment and breathed in the faint scent of soap in her daughter’s hair. Her chest tightened with something that felt like gratitude, edged with sorrow for every mother who would never receive such a letter and she tightened her grip on her daughter’s hand.
They said nothing. They did not need to.
Gisella exhaled slowly, her breath steady. For the first time since the war began, she felt the faintest shape of a future.
Her daughter’s hand in hers.
The noise of the station surrounding them.
The world beginning again.
And they remained there on the bench, fingers intertwined, two lives returning to themselves in the quiet hum of a place where trains came and went and people searched for one another in the slow rebuilding of everything that had been broken.
29
The ship slid slowly into New York Harbour beneath a sky the colour of pale tin. The wind off the water was sharp, carrying the briny smell of winter and the faint diesel tang from nearby docks. Gisella stood on the deck wrapped in a borrowed coat, Gabriella beside her, both watching as the skyline rose like an iron forest out of the mist. Buildings layered behind one another in a way that made distance hard to measure. Everything looked unfamiliar, abrupt, too tall. The noise reached them even from here: horns, engines, a rumble she could feel in the rail beneath her hand.
Her daughter pressed closer, slipping a hand into hers. Gisella did not look down, but she tightened her fingers. The ship groaned as it approached the pier. Lines were thrown and people crowded forward with suitcases and bundles, breath clouding in the cold air.
Alive, she thought. They were both alive. It was still something her mind could not hold for long without trembling.
They disembarked slowly, funnelled through a metal walkway that clanged beneath their feet. Inside the immigration hall the lights were bright and unflattering, the ceilings high enough that voices drifted upward before losing shape. Rows of benches held families hunched over documents. Babies cried. Officials called names in monotone voices. Typewriters clicked steadily at one end of the room.
Gisella and Gabriella moved through the line until they reached a desk. The man behind it looked tired, his collar slightly wilted, his eyes ringed with dark circles. He studied their papers for a long time, his brow furrowing.
“You were in the camps?” he asked softly.
She nodded.
He looked at her more closely, then gestured to another official. She and her daughter were led down a corridor into a smaller room where the air felt colder. The walls were painted a dull cream, the floor worn smooth by countless footsteps. A table stood in the centre with two chairs and a woman with clipped speech and clear glasses sat behind it.
“Sit, please.”
They complied. Gabriella squeezed Gisella’s hand once before folding her own hands in her lap.
The woman lifted a sheet from a folder. She read silently for several minutes before meeting Gisella’s eyes. “You were a physician in Auschwitz?”
Gisella nodded again. Her throat felt tight.
“Under whose supervision?”
She answered quietly, the name passing between them with no change in tone. The woman made a small note. She asked about duties, wards, procedures. Her voice remained even, her face revealing nothing. When she asked whether Gisella had participated in any actions harmful to prisoners, Gisella met her gaze without blinking.
“I saved who I could. I harmed no one.”
The woman observed her carefully. The silence stretched for several seconds.
Then the door opened and two women stepped in, both thin, both with faces carved by years she did not know. She recognised neither.
“We were in Block Ten,” the first woman said quietly. “She saved many. She hid names. She lied for us. We survived because of her.”
The second woman nodded and placed her hand on the table. “More than once,” she said. “She risked her life every day. You should know that.”
The official thanked them both and dismissed them. When the door closed, she looked again at Gisella, her expression slightly softened.
“Your papers will be cleared. You will be authorised to practise medicine. You may begin the process immediately.”
Gisella lowered her head, letting her breath settle. “Thank you,” she said, though her voice barely rose above a whisper.
Gabriella touched her arm lightly, her eyes bright but controlled as they left the room together. Outside, the hallway felt warmer and the noise of Ellis Island returned.
Hours later, they stepped into the cold air of New York. The city loomed ahead of them, alive with movement. Taxis honked. People hurried past with briefcases and newspaper-wrapped parcels. Steam rose from grates along the sidewalk. Street lights glowed faintly in the dusk.
Gabriella looked up at the towering buildings, awe mixing with something like fear. Gisella understood. She felt it too, the sense of being pressed into a world that had kept moving while theirs had stopped.
They found a room in a modest boarding house on the Lower East Side. The landlady spoke quickly, her accent thick. She pointed out the bathroom, the narrow beds, the small shared kitchen. Gisella nodded, absorbing the information without urgency. The room smelled of soap and dust. A window looked out onto a brick wall across a narrow alley.
Gabriella sat on the bed, running her hands over the quilt as though testing its warmth. Gisella stood a moment before placing her suitcase beside the dresser and sitting next to her.
“Are you warm enough?” she asked softly.
Her daughter nodded.
They lay side by side that night, fully clothed, coats still on top of the blankets. The city noise drifted upward in a harmony of horns, footsteps, muffled music from a radio in another room. Gisella closed her eyes and felt her daughter’s breath against her shoulder.
In the morning, Gisella went to Mount Sinai Hospital.
The corridors smelled of disinfectant and fresh linen. Nurses walked with brisk steps, their white shoes tapping softly on polished floors. The delivery ward was bright, the windows large. Babies cried from nearby rooms, the sounds sharp and startling.
A senior physician greeted her and read her documents. He asked about her training in Romania and about her surgical skills. He did not ask too many questions about Auschwitz. His eyes flickered once at the mention, but he merely nodded and handed her a set of scrubs.
“We need doctors. Begin tomorrow.”
Gisella returned the nod.
She began working the next day.
Births came in waves. Some quiet. Some loud. Some long, stretching through the night with the mother gripping the metal rails of the bed, breath deep and slow. Some sudden, the child arriving before the nurse could fetch warm blankets.
Gisella worked with steady hands. She attended to mothers, murmuring calm instructions. She caught newborns with practised movements, cradled their small slippery bodies, listening for the first cry. She wrapped them swiftly and passed them to waiting arms. Each time she delivered a child, she felt something shift inside her, a warmth threaded with an ache that never dulled.
Sometimes she paused a moment too long, holding the baby before handing it over. Nurses noticed, but they said nothing.
After each shift, she walked back to their room. Her daughter waited with homework or a borrowed library book. They shared simple meals. Bread. Soup. Tea. The city hummed beyond the window.
One evening, after a long delivery that left her sleeves damp and her fingers trembling slightly with exhaustion, Gisella returned to the room and removed her coat. Her daughter slept already, curled beneath the blankets.
Gisella moved to the small table. She took from her drawer the candle she had bought two weeks earlier. A plain white one, short, unscented. She placed it on a saucer. She lit it with a match.
The flame grew steady, small against the dark.
She watched it for a long time but said no prayers.
The ritual became constant.
After every birth, she lit the candle. A flame for life. A flame for the dead. A flame for the child she held in her arms that morning, and for the ones she could not save in the camp.
Gabriella sometimes woke and found her sitting there, the candle glowing between them. She never asked why. She simply sat close, resting her head against Gisella’s arm.
Spring arrived slowly. The city thawed. Street vendors returned. Trees along the avenues budded. People shed heavy coats. In the hospital, the windows were opened, letting in the breeze and faint city scents.
Gisella’s days filled with more births, more mothers gripping her hands during labour, more infants lifted into air and guided gently to their first breath. Sometimes she stepped into the supply closet to steady herself, pressing her palms to her knees as she remembered the weight of other births, other losses.
But each time she returned to the delivery room, she moved with purpose. Each child placed into the arms of a waiting mother strengthened a part of her she thought had died.
Yet the ache remained.
One afternoon, after delivering twins to a woman whose husband cried quietly in the corner, Gisella found herself lingering at the window, watching the city below. Cars moved in orderly lines. Children walked home from school, swinging lunch boxes. Life flowed with a rhythm she was still learning to trust. She pressed her hand lightly to the glass. The warmth of the sun on her skin felt strange, almost unreal.
That night, she lit the candle again.
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. The flame wavered slightly in the draught, then steadied.
Gabriella sat beside her, folding laundry quietly on the bed. The room felt peaceful in a way Gisella had not experienced in years.
She opened her eyes.
The candle glowed, its small flame reflecting in the window. A point of light in the darkening room. A promise. A memory. A reminder.
She exhaled and the flame held.
30
Jerusalem, 1978
Gisella stood at the lectern, her fingers resting on the edge of the polished wood. Her hands were smaller now, thinner than they had been in her years of work, but they held steady. She had spoken for nearly an hour, her voice gentle and measured, never raised, yet every word had travelled across the hall with the clarity of truth spoken from a deep well of experience. She had chosen her words carefully, shaping them with a quiet precision that felt as natural to her now as breath.
She did not look at the papers arranged before her. They were more a comfort than a necessity, a structure she no longer needed. Her story lived in her body, in her breath, in the long memory that stretched behind her. The students had listened without shifting, without looking away, almost without blinking. Now they waited for her to finish. She could feel their collective stillness settling over her like a soft blanket.
She lifted her eyes and let them travel slowly across the hall. She saw faces shining in the fading light, some pale with shock, others flushed with emotion they did not know how to name. A few had their hands pressed together as if bracing against something fragile inside themselves. Others held their breath. The quiet was so complete that even the faint hum of the overhead lights seemed louder than usual.
Gabriella sat in the front row, her hands folded neatly in her lap, her posture straight, her expression composed yet tender. There was a shimmer in her eyes, not quite tears but something close. She had heard fragments of this story across the years, but never in this full and unbroken way. She watched her mother with a stillness that came from both pride and grief, as though witnessing a moment she had long known must one day arrive.
As Gisella drew in a slow breath, she felt the familiar pull at her ribs, the soft ache that came with age, but also something lighter, something close to release. She let her hands settle against the lectern and leaned forward just enough for the sound of her voice to carry naturally across the room.
“I have nothing more to add,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Thank you for listening.”
When she stepped back from the lectern, the room did not stir. The students remained motionless, the quiet folding inward around her words like a final act of recognition. She gathered her papers, her fingers brushing the edges of the pages as though acknowledging the years they represented, then she stepped down from the low platform. Some of the students lowered their heads as she passed. Others met her gaze for a brief moment, their eyes wide with something beyond sympathy, beyond shock, beyond admiration. It was the gaze of witnesses newly awakened.
Near the back of the room, a young woman waited. She had been silent during the entire talk, her gaze fixed on Gisella with a kind of focused intensity that did not waver even when others blinked or shifted in their seats. As Gisella approached, the young woman stepped forward, her hands clasped together.
“Grandma,” she whispered.
Gisella paused. The word settled in the space between them, soft and trembling, like a fragile bridge. She lifted her eyes and met her granddaughter’s gaze. She saw traces of her daughter in the young woman’s face, the line of her cheek, the set of her mouth, the quiet strength that lived behind her eyes.
The young woman swallowed, searching for something to say. Her fingers twisted together once before she stilled them. “Thank you,” she murmured. “For telling it.”
Gisella reached out and touched her arm. It was a gentle touch, almost weightless, yet it carried the warmth of an entire lifetime. She gave a small nod, then let her hand fall. The young woman stepped back, blinking as though steadying herself.
Gabriella approached then, moving to her side with a calm expression that held deep tenderness. She slipped an arm beneath her mother’s, offering support without making it look like assistance. Together they walked into the corridor, the heavy door closing behind them with a soft thud.
The hallway was cooler, the air carrying the faint scent of polished stone and old books. Evening shadows clung to the corners. Gabriella guided her gently toward the exit, moving at a slow pace that matched her mother’s steps. Students lingered near the walls, unsure whether to speak or allow her quiet passage. A few murmured soft words of thanks. Gisella inclined her head in reply but did not stop.
Outside, the sky stretched wide above Jerusalem, its colour deepening into violet as the last light faded along the horizon. The air was warm, scented with dust and the faint sweetness of the citrus trees that lined the path. Lamps flickered to life along the walkway, casting small pools of light that rippled gently in the evening breeze.
They reached the car parked beneath a low street lamp that hummed quietly. Gabriella opened the door and helped her inside, tucking her coat carefully around her. When her daughter settled in the driver’s seat, she did not start the engine right away. She rested her hands on the wheel, breathing in slowly as though grounding herself.
“Are you comfortable?” she asked softly.
Gisella nodded. Her breath felt tight. It was the familiar constriction that came whenever she allowed herself to look directly at the long shadow of her past. Speaking of it never lessened the weight. It only placed the weight in a different part of her chest.
The car rolled forward, its headlights cutting a narrow path through the dim roads of the campus. Students walked in small groups, their laughter subdued, their conversations quiet. Her daughter drove carefully, slowing near turns, always mindful of her mother’s comfort.
They rode mostly in silence. It was not an empty silence but a full one, a silence that carried memory and meaning. Gabriella reached across once and placed her hand on her mother’s arm. The touch was warm, a steady presence in the dim interior of the car. Gisella let her own hand rest on top of it for a moment before releasing it again.
The city lights grew brighter as they descended toward the neighbourhood where Gisella lived. The streets wound gently through a hillside, lined with stone buildings that glowed softly under the lamps. When they reached her building, Gabriella parked near the entrance and helped her out of the car.
They climbed the stairs slowly. Inside the apartment, the air felt cool and still. Gabriella removed her mother’s coat and folded it across the chair beside the door. Then she moved into the small kitchen and warmed a cup of water with lemon, placing it on the table near the armchair.
“Do you need anything else?” her daughter asked quietly.
Gisella shook her head. She lifted her eyes and met her daughter’s gaze. Gratitude passed between them, unspoken yet unmistakable.
Her daughter kissed her forehead, then slipped out the door, leaving her alone in the dim room.
A soft silence filled the space and she reached for the matchbox beside her chair.
The match felt light between her fingers. Gisella turned it once, the small piece of wood tapping softly against her palm, then she struck it. A brief flare rose, bright and warm, filling the room with a sudden pulse of gold. She touched the flame to the wick of the candle on the small table. The wick caught slowly, then held. A steady glow formed, soft and low.
