The Storyteller

On arrival at Auschwitz, soldiers sort prisoners into two lines. Ania’s father is sorted to the left, but Ania is taken to the right. A soldier confiscates her boots with the Christian papers and money. Officers shave Minka’s head and brand her with a number: A14660. Desperate, she attempts to flee the camp, but is caught and thrown into a barracks by an officer, where a familiar voice chides her for her escape attempt. It’s Darija. Darija and Minka are crammed into a hut with five other women in various states of starvation and illness. Minka dubs the SS officer who oversees their block Herr Dybbuk, after the Jewish Dybbuk, an evil spirit which takes up residence in a living human body. Herr Dybbuk is “too weak to force out the evil that [has] taken up residence in him” (284). He has a brother, another SS officer with a shaky right hand. This brother is cruel, delighting in mistreating prisoners.

Minka is assigned to work at the crematorium, sorting through the belongings of the dead. One day, she finds her father’s suitcase in the pile and realizes that she is an orphan, her entire family now gone.