When
she stood, the others rose, and the four of them tiptoed to Lotte’s cot. Leonie poured the clear liquid onto the gag, releasing a cloying, confectionary-sweet aroma. Tedi held her breath and pulled back the blanket.
They found Lotte lying facedown, which complicated things. Shayndel pointed orders for Tedi to grab Lotte’s shoulders and for Zorah to take her by the hip. She held up three fingers and when she dropped the third, they rolled her onto her back in one deft move while Leonie pressed the cloth over her nose and mouth. Lotte flailed for a moment but the chloroform took effect quickly, and Tedi and Leonie set to work lashing her wrists to the metal rail of the cot. Zorah and Shayndel tied her ankles down.
They glanced at each other across the body on the bed, nodding congratulations. But Lotte began to stir and within a few moments was thrashing from side to side so violently, she twisted her left leg free. Zorah and Shayndel struggled to hold her down and retie the knots, but the rope they had been given kept breaking.
Shayndel was furious. Did they really think kitchen twine would be strong enough to restrain anyone?
Leonie retrieved the compress from the floor and held it over Lotte’s face, dousing the cloth until chloroform soaked through and began running down the sides of her neck. Tedi turned away to avoid the dizzying effect of the chemical, amazed that Leonie could be so close to the fumes and remain conscious.
After a few moments, the stuff took effect and Leonie set the bottle down, pushed up Lotte’s sleeve, and twisted her limp arm to show them the double-thunderbolt tattoo of the SS.
Tedi whispered, “Impossible.”
“Tell me, what is impossible anymore?” Zorah muttered as she pulled the pillow out from under Lotte’s head and placed it over the wet compress covering her face. Zorah fixed her eyes on Shayndel, who met her gaze and nodded. Leonie and Tedi stepped closer, tight-lipped, and watched as Zorah pressed the pillow down and held it with all of her strength. Lotte’s body reacted instantly and with astonishing force, rising an inch off the cot. The others added their hands and weight to the job as spasms rattled the bed.
Leonie imagined Lucas’s face under her hands. Tedi throttled the men who had raped her. Zorah killed the neighbor who betrayed Jacob’s mother. Shayndel felt the muscles in her arms shaking with exertion, avenging Wolfe, Malka, Noah, her mother and father, Shmuley, and far too many others.
Finally, Leonie, panting with effort and emotion, slid her hand under the pillow in search of a pulse. “We can stop,” she whispered.
They stood up, avoiding one another’s eyes as they arranged the body on its side and tied it in place. Tedi fussed with the blanket, trying to make it look as if Lotte were merely sleeping. “That’s enough,” said Shayndel. “No one is going to worry about why we’re leaving her here.”
The barrack door opened a few minutes later and the order was whispered: “Now.”
Shayndel, Tedi, Leonie, and Zorah went from bed to bed, waking each girl as gently as they could, leaning down to whisper, “Wake up, shhhh. Don’t be afraid. We are leaving, shhh. Tonight we escape from this place. Get dressed, hurry. Don’t worry, but be quick. We are going with you, too. Bring nothing. Hurry.”
The urgency and excitement in their voices turned everyone out of bed and the girls were on their feet before their eyes adjusted to the dimness. They bumped into the edges of beds as they dressed, while Shayndel walked up and down the center of the barrack, putting her finger to her lips and giving a thumbs-up. Zorah helped one woman hunt for her shoes. Leonie buttoned dresses.
Esther was the first one ready, waiting beside her cot, where the blanket had been neatly tucked in. She carried nothing in her hands, as she had been ordered. But she wore the heavy fur coat she had brought from Poland, a pair of silver candlesticks poking out of its bulging pockets. She had her hand on top of Jacob’s head and kept his face turned toward the door.
No one looked at Lotte.
As soon as they were dressed, the women began jamming their belongings into sacks and suitcases.
“No, no,” Tedi whispered to one girl stuffing a pillowcase with clothes. “We cannot bring anything with us.”
Leonie tried to reason with another busy filling a bulky valise. “We are going to be running in the dark. Carrying this will be dangerous.”
When Shayndel saw that no one was paying any attention to the order, she tried pulling things out of people’s hands until one woman clasped a photograph album to her chest and said, “If I cannot take my family with me, I will stay here.”
“I’m sorry,” Shayndel said, and went to retrieve her ruck-sack, with her pictures inside.
The flutter of packing and preparation came to a halt as a loud, piercing scream rose from somewhere in the near distance.
No one moved. A minute passed and then another, but there was no alarm, no sound of boots on the ground, no orders shouted in English. Someone in the barrack started weeping softly but she was shushed from every corner.
Shayndel could barely breathe. She kept her eye on the wristwatch for four long minutes, until the door opened.
A silhouette of a man with a gun over his shoulder appeared. “Hurry up, children,” said a familiar voice. “Come, my little ones,” Goldberg said in Yiddish.
Shayndel was the first one outside, with Zorah, Esther, and Jacob right behind her. Leonie stopped at the foot of Lotte’s cot, but Tedi put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s over,” she said, and gently guided her out the door.
The women found themselves surrounded by Palmachniks dressed in dark clothes and black caps. They carried guns, waved for them to follow, and started at a fast trot toward the back of the camp; their barrack was closest to the front, which meant they had the farthest to run.
The commandos shepherded them through the camp, avoiding the glare of the lights by zigzagging from one shadow to the next, around barracks and latrines. Crossing the parade ground, Zorah spotted four Palmach fighters dragging the two burly Poles she had talked to in the clinic—now gagged and bound at the wrists—in the opposite direction from everyone else. As she turned to watch them shoved through the back door of Delousing and out of her story forever, someone grabbed her arm and pulled her forward toward the back side of the dining hall. Esther and Jacob and the rest of the girls in their barrack pressed themselves flat against the wooden wall and listened to the sounds of footsteps moving into the distance, and then … nothing.
Zorah began to worry. They were certainly the last group to be released; perhaps they had been forgotten. Or maybe they were being used as decoys, to be discovered and sacrificed as a diversion so that the others could get away. It took Jacob three tugs on her sleeve before he got her attention and pointed to the wall where he had found “Esther” among the names and dates scratched into the wooden clapboard. Zorah touched his hair and thought, He will be all right. No matter what happens tonight, he must be all right.