days after it rains; it penetrates everything. How does one measure temperature when there is but one temperature? It is a dull chill, like the numbness in my mindalways there, taken for granted, eventually ignored.
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I used to love the warm, sparkling days of summer, but this year it seems to have disappeared. Can it be fall already? How long have we been here? What month is it? There must be trees somewhere in the world that are changing color, preparing to welcome winter with their fiery reds, oranges and golds, but I do not see any changes here. It is always gray. I myself am gray.
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We have a calendar in Birkenau. It is hunger.
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The emptiness in our stomachs never ceases, just as the chill never leaves. It is our only clock, our only way to discern what time of day it is. Morning is hunger. Afternoon is hunger. Evening is hunger. Slowly we starve until we cannot make out anything beyond the gnawing of our intestines grinding against each other.
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A block elder asks me if I want to be a room elder. ''No, thank you," I tell her, but in my head I think, I can't take bread from others who are as hungry as me, I can't hit people suffering just like I am. I repeat my private chant, Be invisible. That is one of the rules I live by. Those who are too visible eventually get struck down, so I stay in the background and try simply to get by.
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There is only one thing that exists beyond the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau. It lies in wait for me like a beacon of light shining through the fog. I hold it before me constantly, every second of every day. It is the only thing that keeps me goingMama and Papa. They beckon to Danka and me from the fringes of my mind. Their hands wave against a backdrop of snow and winter sky.
We're here!
they cry.
We're waiting for you to come home
.
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We're coming, Mama
, I remind them.
Don't leave us here alone
. And they don't. I hear Mama's voice comforting my trou-
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