They Went Left

In a dream, Zofia remembers whispering to her brother through the fence separating men and women at a concentration camp. She whispers that they will find each other after the conclusion of the war.

In the dream, Abek admits that something happened but that they don’t have to talk about it yet.

Lower Silesia, August 1945

Zofia lines up at a Red Cross desk to give the details of herself and her younger brother, Abek, whom she is looking for. She hasn’t seen Abek in five years since the family was taken to Auschwitz Birkenau. Abek Lederman, Zofia explains, would be 12 now. She receives a document saying that she was a prisoner at Gross-Rosen, which will help her to get food rations.

Zofia is disorientated and easily overwhelmed; she has just been released from the hospital after years in concentration camps, most recently the Gross-Rosen camp. She remembers her family being sorted on a soccer field in the Polish town she is from, Sosnowiec. She and her family—Mama, Papa, Baba Rose, Aunt Maja, Abek—were taken to Birkenau. Those selected to live were sent to a line on the right. Zofia thinks she remembers herself and Abek being sent right for hard labor, whereas the rest of her family were all sent left to die in the gas chambers.