We didn’t know what would happen to them . We could only imagine. And Imagination in a place like this is worse than reality. I spent the rest of the night rubbing my leg, trying to erase the phantom sensation of the ruler on my skin, trying to cleanse the stain of his attention. But deep down, I felt this was only the prelude. Heines was bored.
The routine of the morning inspections was no longer enough for him . He was looking for something deeper, more intimate. He was looking to see what lay beneath the skin. The next day, at roll call, the five women were not there. Their places in the ranks were empty like missing teeth in a jaw. No one dared ask any questions.
Silence was our only armor. But around noon, as we carried stones under the watchful eyes of the guards, I saw the infirmary door open. A stretcher was carried out. It was covered with a white sheet, but the wind lifted a corner of the fabric. I saw. I am not Sure of what I saw. It was a leg. But it no longer resembled a human leg.
It was bandaged, deformed as if someone had tried to reshape it. I looked away, bile rising in my throat . I understood then that the 16 cm wasn’t just a rule of modesty or discipline. It was a measure of access. It was the zone Heinz had reserved for himself the right to control, alter, destroy. Our legs had become his canvas, and he was beginning to paint his masterpiece of horror.
I swore to myself that day that I wouldn’t let him take me, that I would hide my injury, that I would walk straight even if the bone in my leg broke. I started stealing scraps of paper from the trash cans in the administrative office where I sometimes cleaned the floor. I chewed them into a paste that I applied to my wound to conceal it, then covered it with dust so that it would melted with my filthy skin.
It was ludicrous, pathetic, but it was my act of resistance. Every morning, I presented my sixteen centimeters of bare flesh for inspection, breathless, praying that its eagle eye wouldn’t detect the deception. I gambled with my life , every day, every hour, but I didn’t know that the real danger didn’t come from my injured leg.
The real danger came from a rumor that was starting to circulate in the camp. A rumor about a new directive from Berlin. A directive that would give Heines absolute power over our very fertility. And this rumor had a terrifying code name that we barely whispered in the dark. The Purity Protocol. People often say that hope keeps you alive.
That’s false. In a camp, hope is a useless calorie that the body burns in vain. What keeps you alive is hatred. It’s a cold, hard ember, lodged somewhere between the stomach and the heart that It keeps you upright when your muscles have long since surrendered. By the spring of 1944, I lived only for that hatred.
It was directed entirely at that immaculate white door , which marked the entrance to the infirmary. Unlike the rest of the camp, made of rotten wood and blackened ends, the infirmary shone. It was obscenely clean, the windows were washed. Sometimes, through the panes, you could glimpse figures in white moving with a reassuring, almost divine slowness.
But we all knew that this building was not a place of healing. It was the belly of the beast. And the rumor of the purity protocol was no longer just a rumor. It had become a list. Every morning after roll call, an officer read out numbers. Those who were called up didn’t go to forced labor. They walked toward the white door. Some returned a few days later.
Empty-eyed, walking with a A strange stiffness, as if their hips had been fused together. Others never returned. My turn came on a Thursday in April. The sky was an insolent blue, dotted with small, cottony clouds that reminded me of afternoons on the stage platforms. When my number, 784, was called, the world fell silent.
I didn’t hear the birds. I didn’t hear the wind. I only heard the blood roaring in my ears, a gurgling sound that drowned everything out. My comrades instinctively moved aside, creating a void around me, as if I were already contagious, already marked by death. I didn’t cry; I moved forward. I crossed the courtyard, feeling the thousands of eyes fixed on my back.
It was the longest walk of my life. Each step took me further from the world of the living and closer to the world of shadows. As I reached the white door, A smell hit me. Not the smell of death. No. The smell of ether and carbolic acid, a clean, surgical smell that stung the nostrils and made the eyes water.
