So are you, I wanted to respond. I’d had enough of being the only girl among the men. Once I reconnected with my parents and siblings, my next mission was to find more women. Her uniform was marked with a P and two superimposed triangles, one red like mine and another yellow, forming a Star of David. Her number was 15177. I guessed that meant she was a Polish Jew, and she looked maybe ten years older than me. It was hard to tell.

“Do you know where I can find my family? We arrived today, but I got separated from their group, so I think they were registered ahead of me. Have you seen them? Tata is tall and walks with a limp, Mama is a bit taller than me, then my little sister and brother . . .” My voice died, unable to formulate words around the lump in my throat, put there by the woman’s guarded expression.

The Jewish woman cast a furtive glance over her shoulder and dropped her gaze. “You’ll see your family soon.” She left without waiting for a reply.

If there was one skill I’d gained from studying opponents during chess games, it was how to read people. The clues that someone was lying were subtle—a change in pitch, a nostril flare, inability to maintain eye contact. Those indicators weren’t always reliable, but I could usually tell when they were. In this case, the signs were as obvious as the kapo’s club that cracked across my shoulders and forced me into motion.

The woman had lied. I wasn’t going to see my family. Where had they been sent? A different camp? A prison? Would they be coming back? I rolled the tiny chess piece around in my palm, wishing I’d never dropped it so I could’ve stayed with the correct group.

As I walked and attempted to ignore the damp, itchy uniform chafing my bare skin, I noticed an open iron gate leading to a courtyard between Blocks 10 and 11. Even though I’d learned my lesson about falling behind, the sight left me too weak to move.

A truck waited near the gate, and prisoners piled dead bodies onto it. At the far end of the courtyard, a gray wall stood in front of a brick wall, and that seemed to be where the prisoners were fetching the corpses from. Naked bodies were tossed onto the pile like sticks being gathered for firewood. I didn’t know which horrified me more: the irreverence for the dead or the indifference with which the prisoners completed their task.

A graying SS officer supervised from a few meters away, but, when I stepped toward the truck, he didn’t stop me. The sharp, metallic smell of blood reached my nostrils, and I clutched my stomach to suppress a sudden wave of nausea.

“What happened to them?” I asked no one in particular.