She let the words sink in and crossed her arms, but I wouldn’t relent. I didn’t want help, I didn’t want friends, I didn’t want anything other than to leave this place. Her kindness would have been better utilized on someone else.

After a moment, she sighed. “If you won’t accept my help, fine, but if you change your mind, find me. My name is Hania. Hania Ofenchajm. What’s yours?”

I gestured to the prisoner number on my chest. “See for yourself.”

Hania was silent, then she cast a cautious glance around and stepped closer to me. “Prisoners who want to survive will stop at nothing to eliminate the weakest links and better their own odds. You and I are women, so how do you think they see us? We’re a waste of space, a waste of clothes, a waste of rations. The moment you forget that is the moment you die.”

She waited for me to respond, but I didn’t. Although I admired her tenacity, I suspected she’d be disappointed to learn I didn’t share it.

Before either of us could say more, the SS men ordered my kommando to march. Hania muttered something in Yiddish and hurried away.

I pushed her words aside as my kommando passed through the main gate, where the camp orchestra played a lively German march to accompany us on the arduous day ahead. The cheerful music made going to work harder. It was worse when we staggered back, encumbered by those who hadn’t survived the day, marching in time to avoid our own bodies being added to the death count.

Some prisoners envied those who left the camp for work, but I thought leaving was worse than staying. In leaving, I glimpsed the outside world. After a mere few weeks, I’d already forgotten there were people who led an existence far different from my own. People who led normal lives. I was no longer part of the world beyond the barbed-wire fences, and I never would be again.

As we traveled along the main road, the sound of wheels displacing dirt and gravel reached my ears, and I located a boy who often rode his bicycle along my route. A shoddy bag stuffed with newspapers was slung across his back, and as usual he watched us as he pedaled by. His curiosity tended to focus on me, the girl among men, the prominent one despite the uniformity that reduced us to a singular, bland entity of shaved heads and striped uniforms. I tried not to look at him, but I couldn’t help noticing when the fool dropped his bicycle alongside the road and fell into step with me.