The Choice

my bread at the evening meal so we can share it in the morning.
e officer with the needle and ink is right in front of me now. He
grabs my wrist and starts to prick, but then shoves me aside. “I’m not
going to waste the ink on you,” he says. He pushes me into a different
line.
“is line is death,” the girl nearest me says. “is is the end.” She
is completely gray, as though she’s covered in dust. Someone ahead of
us in the line is praying. In a place where the threat of death is
constant, this moment still pierces me. I think suddenly about the
difference between deadly and deadening. Auschwitz is both. e
chimneys smoke and smoke. Any moment could be the last one. So
why care? Why invest? And yet, if this moment, this very one, is my
last on Earth, do I have to waste it in resignation and defeat? Must I
spend it as if I’m already dead?
“We never know what the lines mean,” I tell the girl nearest me.
What if the unknown could make us curious instead of gut us with
fear? And then I see Magda. She’s been selected for a different line. If
I’m sent to die, if I’m sent to work, if they evacuate me to a different
camp as they’ve begun to do to others ... nothing matters except that I
stay with my sister, that she stay with me. We are of the few, the lucky
inmates who have not yet been completely cut off from our families. It
is no exaggeration to say that I live for my sister. It is no exaggeration
to say that my sister lives for me. ere is chaos in the yard. I don’t
know what the lines mean. e only thing I know is that I must pass
to whatever lies ahead with Magda. Even if what lies ahead is death. I
eye the gap of crusted-over snow that separates us. Guards ring us. I
don’t have a plan. Time is slow and time is fast. Magda and I share a
glance. I see her blue eyes. And then I am in motion. I am doing
cartwheels, hands to earth, feet to sky, around, around. A guard stares
at me. He’s right side up. He’s upside down. I expect a bullet any
second. And I don’t want to die, but I can’t keep myself from turning