I discovered this years later when I tried to find documents. There was nothing, only whispered accounts from survivors who had preferred to forget. I spent three months there, three months that should have killed me. The cold was the first torture, a damp cold that seeped into your bones and never left. We slept in rotten wooden barracks without heating, piled on top of each other like firewood. My belly grew larger, my body wasted away. We ate a thin soup of potatoes and turnips once a day, sometimes twice if there were leftovers. The guards treated us like animals in a freak show. They didn’t beat us frequently, but they humiliated us systematically. They made us stand for hours in the freezing courtyard, made us sing German anthems we didn’t know, and laughed when we tripped.
One of the guards, a blonde woman with light eyes named Hilde, seemed to take particular pleasure in pointing at my stomach and asking aloud where the father was. I never answered. Silence was the only dignity I had left. At first, I prayed, I prayed that my child would be born alive, that I would survive long enough to see him breathe, that something or someone would come and get us out of there. But the weeks passed, and God seemed too busy with bigger wars.
One January night, I was lying on the floor of the barracks, feeling my baby move inside me, when I heard heavy footsteps outside. The door opened, and two figures blocked the dim moonlight. One of them pointed at me and said my number, not my name: “Number 34.” I stood up slowly, my body heavy, my heart pounding. The other women looked at me with pity and relief that they weren’t me.
I was led out of the barracks. I crossed the courtyard, covered in dirty snow, and passed through the inner gates of the camp until we reached a wooded area at the edge of the perimeter, a place I had never seen before. I didn’t ask any questions; questions were dangerous. I simply walked. When we stopped, I noticed other people there, dark figures among the trees, smoking, waiting. One of the guards pushed me forward, another grabbed my wrists and began tying them with thick, rough rope. I tried to pull instinctively, but he tightened his grip and snarled something in German that I didn’t understand. They led me to two nearby trees, tied my left wrist to one, my right to the other, and pulled the ropes until my arms were fully stretched out, my body suspended between the trees like a grotesque, pregnant Christ.
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