Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land

You know what?" Wierka came running from the next room after breakfast. "I will tell you something wonderful. You will see. You will faint from excitement."

At that time we were sipping the hot dishwater, which burned our empty stomachs, and we paid no attention to her words. Wierka was a young, happy Ukrainian girl, a known prankster; she liked to tease us, to frighten and confuse us with unusual news.

"You don't want to hear?" she asked further. "I swear to God that I am not teasing. From now on they will have to give us the food packages sent for us by the Red Cross."

I stopped sipping for a minute. "I suppose someone gave you some secret information about it," I said.

"Really, I found out about it from a good source. Believe me. After all, you will find out for yourself."

She ran out of our room in order to carry the news to the others.

Klara said, "She knows what she's talking about."

The end of April 1945 was approaching. It was warm and sunny. We saw that the war would soon be ending. We believed that we would wait for the end of the war in Rostock. We hoped that the hunger and the lice would not finish us off. Our attending SS men did not pay the least attention to us any more. Even the blokowe did not care about us. We wandered around the camp dreaming and fantasizing about that day we were all talking about when the Red Cross packages would arrive. I did not know whether Wierka spread the news widely or whether the other women found out about the packages from another source. The next minute we would not believe the news, and we would dismiss Wierka's stupid talk with a disdainful wave of the hand.

We were really surprised when, after lunch, the blokowe told us to line up by twos and to march to the warehouse for packages. We marched accompanied by the functionaries. Wierka ran from one prisoner to another, saying, "Didn't I tell you? And you laughed at me." What kind of packages? And where did they come from? It

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