and the flow is not nearly as heavy as it was in Auschwitz, or even a few months ago; for this I am grateful. Danka hasn't had her period since the beginning. She, as well as most of the girls and women in camp, lost hers almost immediately. Breasts and the cycle disappear as quickly as our fellow prisoners. It is something in the tea; I think they call it bromide. I don't know why the bromide doesn't work on me, but the starvation does. My period is slowly slacking off as the weight drops from my body.
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Taking a cloth that Erna also organized for me out of my sleeve, I thank her in my heart again as I leave the latrine with a semi-clean kerchief securely in place.
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Every three weeks, on Sunday, the only day we have even a moment's rest, we are lined up and marched outside to another part of Birkenau to be shaved.
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"Strip!
Schnell! Schnell!
" The SS shout at us as if we were deaf. Undressing, we place our clothes in a pile. Sometimes we stand for hours without a stitch on, outside in the elements or inside in the drafts. Our own Jewish men, prisoners obeying orders, wait for us, clippers in hand. The line to the shaving is long, but I think compared to all the other horrors this is not so horrible.
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This is not the worst thing that happens to us in Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is not nightmare-making, but it is consistent, like everything the Germans do. Every three weeks like clockwork.
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Our own boys, our own men are forced to see our nakedness, forced to shave our heads, our arms, our legs, our pubis. Sometimes they are friends, sometimes they are relatives; mothers get shaved by their own sons, sisters and brothers suffer this embarrassment. Danka and I are lucky. We meet no one we know.
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Why can't they let us shave each other? We are young women, virgins; it is not in our religion to bare ourselves even in front of our husbands. This is not life-threatening, but it is degrading. One more degrading thing they make us do.
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