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her
cellblock was named Filatov.
    Sometimes, while she stood at attention
beside her bunk, Filatov would walk by, stop, take off his glove,
and run his hand over her body, slipping it inside the neckline of
her nightdress or along the sides of her flanks, touching her with
his hard fingers in all her private places—if a prisoner could be
said to have any private places. If she, Esther Rosensaft, Jewess
and harlot, hadn’t lost all right to think of this body as
belonging to herself.
    In her dreams sometimes she would become
confused and Filatov would become Hagemann, or the two would blend
together. She would be standing at attention and all at once it
would be Hagemann there beside her and the finger that was running
over the curve of her breast would become the muzzle of a pistol.
It was because of this, more than anything he had done to her
himself, that she hated Filatov.
    But, of course, that was ridiculous because
Filatov was merely a man taking advantage of his position, and
Hagemann had been something altogether different. Filatov might
have a wife who was a shrew, or perhaps no wife at all. All he
wanted was a little sex—and not to sacrifice his position of
authority. So he threatened, in a way that was almost like
pleading, and watched her, and. sometimes, took off his glove. The
day would come when he would feel that he was powerful enough—or
she sufficiently overawed—to claim more, but for the moment he was
content merely to slip his hand inside her dress.
    It was best not to look at him, not to smile,
but to stand quietly like a shadow, not to resist or yield, and
finally he would lose interest and pass by. She had not been raped
yet—it happened sometimes here, so she had been told, but so far
not to her. She had been here four months, and she had not been
raped. If she ever was, she would not resist—it was pointless to
resist. She would not weep or even cry out. She would keep the rage
inside, where it would not show. She would hate Filatov in the
privacy of her heart, and for the rest pretend she was made of
marble. It was easier that way, as she had learned from the
Germans.
    But four months were four months, and still
Filatov had not summoned up the slight courage it would require to
do as he liked. So perhaps the Russians were better than the
Germans.
    But it was better to let them do as they
wished—no matter what it was—better than to starve and die.
    . . . . .
    At Chelmno she had dug potatoes—that was the
work that permitted her to live while others died. Every morning,
through the summer mud, in the icy, lightless winter, they would
march out to the fields—five kilometers in each direction—and work
for fourteen hours. Some girls had to carry stones until they
dropped to the ground and the blood bubbled at their lips as they
tried to catch their breath. Those died quickly. The others were
worn down, month after month.
    And one day, on the march back to the
barracks, she had dropped her hoe and, when she reached over to
pick it up, had fallen down herself. She couldn’t get up. She tried
and tried, but she couldn’t. She had been at the camp long enough
to know what that meant. A couple of her friends managed to drag
her back in time for the evening roll call, but the next morning
she was part of a line of women threading their way to the gas
chambers. In the morning they called your number, and you were
condemned.
    It had been that way with her parents—one,
after the other, they had disappeared into the shuffling columns of
the doomed. She would hear about it a week, two weeks later. So now
it was her turn.
    She was so weak she hardly cared. She could
remember some of how she had felt that morning, too dumb with
hunger and exhaustion to have much room for fear. Just once every
so often the idea would flicker through her mind. I will be dead
soon. They will lock us up in a shed until our turn comes, and then
they will herd us inside one of the death chambers. A day from now,
or an