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Another time, the girls and I found huge containers of sauerkraut. We ate the food, and since we had no water to drink and there was no snow on the ground to melt, we drank the sauerkraut juice. In the kitchen, we grabbed bread. For us it was a feast.

By this time we were skillful at scrounging for something to eat. I had organized a scarf, and it became our most valuable tool. In a basement we came upon a huge pile of flour. I straightened out my square scarf and filled it with flour. Back in the barracks we mixed the flour with some liquid and baked a cake on top of the stove. It was like the unleavened bread the Jews had eaten when, in the Bible, they had had to leave Egypt in a hurry, with no time to allow the bread to rise. It was concentration camp Passover matzoh.

We still had very little food. I remember looking at my sister and thinking, “She’s like a skeleton. Do I look like that, too?” Whenever we found something, we gobbled it up till it was gone. There was no such thing as leftovers. At that time, we did not know that stuffing ourselves in our starved condition was dangerous. Some of the girls became bloated, and one of my best organizing friends died from overeating.

One morning another set of twins and I set off for the Vistula River, which was not far from camp. Armed with a couple of bottles and containers, we planned to crack the ice, lower the bottles, and fill them with fresh water.

As I stood on the bank of the river, I saw a girl my age on the other side. She had braided hair and wore a nice clean dress and a coat. On her back she carried a school bag, so I knew she was going to school.

I froze. I could not believe there was still a world out there where people were clean and girls wore braids with ribbons and nice dresses and went to school! Once, I had been that girl in nice clothes with ribbons in my hair on my way to school. Until that moment, I had thought everyone was in a concentration camp like us. But I realized then that was not true.

The girl stared at me. I looked down at myself wearing ragged clothes swarming with lice and a coat and shoes many sizes too big for me. I was hungry and scavenging for food and water. I do not know what she thought, but as I looked up again at her I could feel the fire of anger rising in me. I felt betrayed. Miriam and I had done nothing wrong! We were just little girls like her. Why were we in this situation while she was over there looking so pretty and clean and living a perfectly normal life? It was so wrong, so inconceivable to me. But there she was. And there I was.

After what seemed like a long time, she hitched up her book bag and walked away.

I stared after her, watching her leave, then watching the empty space where she had stood. I did not understand it. I could not understand it.

Then I felt a grumble in my stomach, reminding me of my hunger and thirst. I found a thick stick and jabbed it angrily against the surface of the icy river, cracking it until the hole was big enough. I lowered my bottle into the frozen river, turned it slightly sideways, and watched the bubbles of air escaping as it filled with clear river water. The image of the girl stayed in my mind—as did all my questions about the outside world.

When we had collected as much water as our bottles would hold, the twins and I returned to the camp. Once there, we made a small fire and boiled the water to kill any germs. Although we made the trip to the river a couple more times, I never saw the girl again.

We could not leave the camp because battles raged all around us. It was dangerous to wander outside. Guns fired indiscriminately and hit anyone in the way. We were in the middle of a battlefield. In the noise and confusion outside, we learned to dodge the rat-a-tat-tat of machine-gun fire. If we heard a certain whining sound, we had to run for cover because a bombshell was coming in our direction. Bursts of gunfire flashed and crackled from the bunkers where the SS had gone to hide after dropping us off at the barracks.

During those days, rumors spread that the whole camp was going to be blown up—the barracks, gas chambers, and crematorium—to cover up evidence of Nazi crimes. The SS forced sixty thousand prisoners to leave on a death march. Miriam and I and many of the twins stayed huddled in our lucky barracks. Thousands of other prisoners, too old and sick to march, also remained.

Later I learned from an eyewitness account that on the night of January 18, 1945, Dr. Mengele had paid one last call to the lab where we twins had been measured, injected, cut into, and bloodlet so many times. He took two boxes of papers containing records of the approximately three thousand twins he had experimented on at Auschwitz, stashed them in a waiting car, and drove off to join a group of fleeing Nazi soldiers.

For about nine days we heard continuous shooting and bombing. The boom-boom-boom of artillery fire rattled the windows in our barracks. There was talk in the barracks among the adults that we were soon going to be set free. Liberation. Miriam and I did not know what that meant. We hid inside and waited.

On the morning of January 27th, the noise stopped. For the first time in weeks, it was completely silent. We hoped this was liberation, but we had no idea what liberation would be like. Everyone in the barracks crowded at the windows.

It was snowing heavily. Until this day I only remember the camp being gray—the buildings, streets, clothes, people—everything dirty and gray. In my mind, a constant smoky pall hung over the camp.

On this day, sometime late in the afternoon, maybe about 3:00 or 4:00 P.M., a woman ran to the front of the barracks and started yelling, “We are free! We are free! We are free!”

Free? What did she mean?

Everyone ran to the doorway. I stood on the top step, huge flakes of snow falling on me. I could not see anything beyond a few feet in front of me. The snow had fallen all day, and the dirty gray of Auschwitz was now covered in a white blanket of snow.

“Don’t you see something coming?” asked an older girl.

I kept peering through the swirling snow. “No . . .” I squinted.

Then I saw them.

About twenty feet away, we saw Soviet soldiers emerging through the snow, approaching us in snow-covered capes and suits. They did not speak as they crunched through the snow.

As they came closer, they looked to us like they were smiling. Were those smirks or smiles? I peered closely. Yes, they were smiles. Real smiles. Joy and hope welled up inside of us. We were safe. We were free!

Crying and laughing, we ran up to the soldiers, crowding them.

A shout rose from the crowd: “We are free! We are free!” There was laughter and wails of relief all mixed together in a jumble of celebratory sounds.

Laughing themselves, some of them with tears in their smiling eyes, the Soviet soldiers hugged us back. They handed us cookies and chocolate—delicious!

It was our first taste of freedom. And I realized that my silent pledge the first night in the latrine to survive and walk out of the camp alive with Miriam by my side had become a reality.

CHAPTER TEN

I threw my arms around the neck of a Soviet soldier, and he picked me up. I clung to him, with Miriam attached to my side. Everybody was hugging and kissing and shouting, “We are free!”

That night the soldiers continued the celebration in the barracks. They danced with the women and shared vodka with the men right out of the bottles. Everyone laughed and sang. There was music: people pounded homemade drums using spoons on food tins, and someone played an accordion. Some of the children joined in dancing, jumping up and down on the floor, on the bunks, on the adults. I had never seen so much merriment, especially in our death camp.

Miriam and I sat happily on our bunk, watching and enjoying the scene of rare contentment and cheer. What a crazy sight. It was the pure human joy of being alive.