At that moment Anne loves Margot entirely. Loves her like she has never loved her before. Perhaps that makes it so much harder when the news comes. First as a rumor, then as a fact. There’s to be special transport. Not on Tuesday but this Sunday. And so, on the night of the second of September, their barracks elder makes the announcement to the entire population of the S-Block. “On the orders of the SS-Obersturmführer und Lagerkommandant, all inmates of Punishment Barracks, men and women without exception, will assemble for transport tomorrow.” Including Anne. Including Margot. Including Mummy and Pim and all the other former inhabitants of the Achterhuis.
Morning comes to the Boulevard des Misères. The OD Flying Column in their fluttering capes and brown coveralls are brusque but not exactly brutal, since it’s known that the Herr Kommandant prefers to keep things orderly. No panic. No violence, no untidiness. The Herr Kommandant is oh, so very humane, you see. Oh, so very handsome is the Herr Kommandant. Oh, so very polite. He ranges up and down the length of track in his immaculate SS uniform, trimly tailored, perfectly coiffed, confirming that all is in order. All is well. Assisting the elderly. Handing an infant up to a mother. Waving to the children. Anne sees their little faces, the children from the camp school, lined up by their teachers, loaded into the rail cars by the Ordedienst, cooperative and unafraid, like good little boys and girls.
When it’s their turn, two OD men lift Anne up like she is nothing, and she has the briefest sensation of weightlessness before she stumbles forward into the car. Margot is right behind her, and then Mummy, and then Pim, and then they are shoved deeper into the mass of people before the doors of the freight car are rolled shut and Anne hears the heavy, irrevocable clang of the lock.
Inside, she and Margot are huddled together, gripping each other’s hand. Only the narrowest cracks of light interrupt the darkness that encloses them all. A day earlier they were eating thin but edible broth with a short ration of hard-crusted brown bread. They were walking in the open air, absorbing the sunlight. The precious sunlight. But now they are all packed into this murky darkness. With so many sardined inside a freight car, the communal act of breathing takes on the low-pitched rhythm of a bellows. Mummy and Pim are trying to protect them with their bodies from the crush of people, though Mummy is whimpering, and not even Pim can comfort her. There’s a heavy rumbling noise. Metal clanks. The carriage lumbers forward, and Anne feels its sudden lurch in the pit of her belly. It grabs her like a hook, and a claw of utter, helpless terror snags her. The locomotive lets go with a high, mournful howl as it leaves the camp perimeters.
The journey will be hideous. No space, no air, no food, no place to use the toilet. The wailing. The stench of shit and vomit. The sobs and moans. A trainload of Jews rolling into the unknown horror. But in a gruesome way, Anne will treasure the memory. It will be the last time they are all together as a family. Pim, Mummy, Margot, and Anne. The last of the Franks.
Three days hence cars and cargo arrive at their destination, a converted cavalry garrison in the marshlands of southern Poland near a village that the Germans call Auschwitz.
9 A PRAYER
Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on Your earth, my eyes raised toward Your Heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude. At night, too, when I lie in bed and rest in You, O God, tears of gratitude run down my face, and that is my prayer. Amen.
—Etty Hillesum, a prayer written in Auschwitz-Birkenau before her death in March 1943
1944
KL Auschwitz II
BIRKENAU
Frauenlager B1a
Barracks Block 29
GERMAN-ANNEXED POLAND
“Mummy.” Her sister is frantic. “Mummy, we’re going to die here, I know it!”
“Shut up, Margot,” Anne bites out, shivering against their mother’s body. “You can’t say that!”
“I can say it, because it’s true!” Margot shouts back, her anger raw and shredding, her face like a crumpled wad of paper.
“Quiet, girls, quiet,” their mother demands. The three of them are crammed in with seven others onto the bottom pallet of the hardwood koje that serves as their “bed,” so the matted layer of straw they lie upon reeks like a latrine, since shit and piss can only travel south. They are all starved to madness, and freezing, but in this nightmare Mummy might have found her true self. Anne is astonished by the transformation. She feels shamed by all the enmity that once divided them and is so grateful for even a thin shield of protection. Separated from Pim, her mother has become a different person, one whose every word and action seems to reflect the strength of her single purpose: keeping her daughters alive. And even though her body is a shrunken glove of yellow skin stretched over bones, she’s making them a promise. “We’re going to make it through this. We are.”
“But, Mummy,” Margot breathes, always the logical one, “how can you say that? How can you make such a promise? We’re a step below the lice here,” she says.
“Mummy, make her shut up!” Anne demands, firing her angriest look at her sister. “You heard what Mummy said! She said she is going to protect us!”
“Protect us from the cold, Anne? Protect us from dysentery? You think anyone can protect us from that? Stop being an idiot!”
“And you stop being a bitch!”
“Anne,” Mummy snaps at her.
“Well, she is a bitch, Mummy. She’s a stupid bitch!”
But suddenly her mother’s arm is wrapped around her with a tender power, enveloping her, as Anne hears her mother’s voice burrowing into her ear. “It’s all right, my child. My baby. It’s all right.” Rocking her so slowly. Whispering, “My baby, my little girl. I know you’re so angry. So very angry. And so very afraid. But we are here, and we are together, and we are alive. Both my girls are here with me and alive.” Shifting, she scoops her children into the circle of her arms. “Both of you are here with me and alive,” she says. “And for that I thank God. And I pray to him that he will protect you from the cold when I cannot. And that he will protect you from sickness when I cannot. And that he will guide us through this trial. I am so proud,” her mother whispers. “So proud of you girls. My beautiful Margot and my beautiful Anne. You are so strong. So very strong. And I know that God is watching over you. I know it. And that he will bless you and keep you whole.”
Anne can feel the tears chilling her eyes as she clutches her mother’s hand. “Amen, Mummy,” she weeps. “Amen.”
“Amen,” her sister weeps.
“Amen,” their mother whispers.
A prayer offered in the swamps of Poland.