I Have Lived a Thousand Years

After four days of traveling, the family arrives at Auschwitz. “Rough voices” shout at them in German, “’Raus! Alles ’raus!” (64). SS men leap into the cattle cars to push everyone out. Bitton-Jackson sees a sign, “AUSCHWITZ” (64). She sees “tall watchtowers, high wire fences, an endless row of cattle cars, SS men, dogs, and a mass of people pouring out of wagons” (64). The Jewish passengers have left their coats on the train and are not permitted to retrieve them. They are told they will get them back later. The SS divide them into men and women. Sent with the men, Bubi turns to say goodbye and trips. An SS man kicks him in the back.

SS guards order the column of people to march forward. They move to the sound of snarling dogs, screaming soldiers, and crying children until ordered to stop. An SS officer—who she later learns is the notorious Dr. Mengele—regroups the women, sending some to the right and others to the left. He looks at Bitton-Jackson with “friendly eyes” (65). He exclaims at her blond hair, taking one of her braids in his hand. He asks if she is Jewish, and she replies that she is. He asks her age, and she says 13. He tells her to go to the right with her mother, and that from now on, she is 16. He sends Serena to the left. Serena grabs Laura and begs not to be left behind. Laura pleads with the SS officer that her sister needs her. He pushes her to the right, saying her daughter needs her more. Bitton-Jackson feels certain she will never see her aunt again. Serena goes to the left. Bitton-Jackson never sees her again.

A “huge metal sign” hanging above a “gothic gate” announces, “WORK SETS YOU FREE” (67). Bitton-Jackson wonders whether it means they will be given food and lodging in exchange for work. They march through a large gate into an enclosure surrounded by tall fences topped with barbed wire. Beyond the fence, she sees people of unidentifiable gender with shorn heads and blank stares and assumes they are insane asylum inmates. The road ends before a “gray, flat building” with shouts, screaming, and orders to be quiet (67). A soldier asks for German-speakers to translate. Bitton-Jackson steps forward with a few other girls. The guard tells them to stand on chairs and translate to the crowd that they will be shot if they do not quiet down. Bitton-Jackson complies, but fails to quell the crowd’s concerns. SS guards crack their whips into the crowd, and silence descends.

The women are ordered to strip off their clothes. They do not want to undress in front of the male guards but are told anyone still dressed in five minutes will be shot. Bitton-Jackson does not want to remove her bra. She does so after she hears a shot ring out. They march into another hall where young women in gray dresses shave their hair. The shaving renders the women indistinguishable from each other. It lifts the “burden of individuality” and “identity” (70). Girls who had wept now giggle at each other’s strange appearance—their “shorn heads, nude bodies, faceless faces” (70)—until the guards crack their whips again.In the next hall, they are doused with cold water then herded into another hall where they are given shapeless gray dresses and told to select a pair of shoes. They are called “idiotic whores,” “idiotic swine,” and “idiotic dogs” (71). As they emerge from the other end of the building, Bitton-Jackson realizes she has become like the people she saw when she arrived. Roll call, “Zählappell,” lasts three hours and becomes “the dread lifestyle of Auschwitz” (72). They are lined up twice daily in groups of five to stand for three or four hours. Bitton-Jackson has been “initiated” into the “exclusive club”— “Inmates of Auschwitz” (72).

Having been “transformed into a mass of bodies,” women and girls ages 16-45 march to the Auschwitz barracks, “an army of robots animated by the hysterics of survival” (73). Bitton-Jackson feels “an abyss” separating her from her pre-Auschwitz life. They don’t realize it, but the group has survived Dr. Mengele’s selection. When he stroked Bitton-Jackson’s blond hair and encouraged her to lie about her age, he saved her from his own design. As they march to the barracks, the women see smoke rising from the gray buildings but do not yet know what it signifies. Through the heat and dust, they march instinctively, thinking only of survival. Bitton-Jackson has had nothing to drink in three days.

The camp, which is under construction, is “a huge barren enclosure fenced in by barbed wire” (74). After Zählappell, women who have been in the camp for weeks surround the new arrivals, hoping to find relatives and friends among them. They ask Bitton-Jackson where she is from and what news she has heard. She thinks only of water. She finds her first cousins Hindi, 19, and Suri Schreiber, 16, whose mother, grandmother, aunt, and two younger sisters were sent to the left. Bitton-Jackson recalls spending the happiest vacation of her life with them four years earlier. Hindi and Suri take Bitton-Jackson and her mother to the camp’s only source of water, a murky puddle. Bitton-Jackson is so thirsty she does not care that the water is smelly and filthy.She finds her mother’s younger sister, Celia, who is shocked to see Bitton-Jackson “on this side,” where there are no children (78). Celia and Laura embrace. Celia gives Laura a clump of black ration bread, but Laura throws up the small bite she takes. Suri says they must learn to eat it to survive. Bitton-Jackson wonders “what cruel fate” eventually “robs her” of “the secret of survival against all odds” (80). She never finds out.

A riot takes place on Bitton-Jackson’s first night at Auschwitz. The barracks have no beds. Each group of five women receives two army blankets, one to serve as mattress, the other as cover. A shriek wakes Bitton-Jackson and spreads panic in the barrack. Women trample each other in the dark. One says she smells gas and shouts, “They are exterminating us!” (81). Many run for the door, but it is locked. They hear shooting outside, and the screaming stops. Guards burst into the barrack shouting for the women to lie down and be quiet, or they will be shot. It is silent until a girl screams for her mother. Another shot is fired followed by orders to keep quiet. The girl continues screaming for her mother. Someone tries to soothe her, but she jumps up and screams to be allowed to go to her mother. Two German guards enter the room with their guns drawn. They grab the screaming girl and take her outside. Bitton-Jackson hears a shot ring out.

At dawn, they rise for Zählappell. It is cold and dark, the sky “studded with stars” (82). A group of five stands wrapped in their army blanket. The Blockälteste, head of barrack, orders them to put the blanket back and strikes each in the head with her stick. She informs Bitton-Jackson’s barrack they are lucky they were not all shot. She calls what happened “sabotage” and says if it happens again the entire block “will be sent to the gas” (83). The women are given no further explanation why it was considered sabotage, what “the gas” is, and whether the rumors about it are true. Nothing more is said of the girl who disappeared in the night, “a dark, nameless silhouette” who departed “like a shadow,” leaving only the memory of her shriek (83).