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selection for the procedure is scheduled.”
    “Procedure?” Bluma asked. Lilo touched the
O
on her arm. Her mother had the same letter. There had been some discussion in the women’s barracks about the meaning of the various letters that had been inked on their forearms. It was a code of some sort. It had been rumored that the letters might indicate a medical procedure. But no one could quite figure it out. Now Lilo knew immediately what Good Matron was talking about.
    “What are you talking about?” Bluma asked.
    The Good Matron now took Bluma’s arm and tapped the
O.
Lilo was astounded by her own blindness, her sheer stupidity. How had they never figured this out? How had they believed that such medical experimentation was said only to be done at Ravensbruck?
    “Sterilization.”
    “I’m too old anyhow to have babies,” Bluma said.
    “They don’t think that way, and your daughter isn’t.”
    “They wouldn’t!” Bluma’s face froze into a mask of horror as she stared at the
O
on Lilo’s forearm.
    “They will. Today at noon, there is a selection. You might escape, but your daughter won’t.”
    “B-b-but only at Ravensbruck. Not here,” Lilo protested.
    “They do all sorts of medical experimentation here. Why do you think they finally brought women in?” Good Matron replied.
    “It can’t be!”
    “It will be. Believe me. I can’t help you both, but I can help you.” She looked at Lilo. “This detail ends in another hour. Meet me at the pig barn. It’s right over there.”
    An hour later, Lilo was buried beneath a mountain of pig feces, and now she realized that although there was no God, there was this woman whom she had named Good Matron. Lilo knew she could no longer look to heaven but it would be on earth in a heap of pig shit that she found a divine spark of what used to be called humanity.
    From the smelly camouflage, she could hear the voice of the camp commandant, Karl-Otto Koch, in the square as he proceeded with the selection. She could picture him walking with his two leashed dogs and most likely his red-haired wife, Ilse, at his side. There were terrible rumors about this woman and the things she did to prisoners — rumors about skin taken from dead prisoners to make lamp shades. Lilo swore she could hear the click of the woman’s high heels walking across the pavement. The loudspeaker squeaked and hissed, temporarily drowning out the growls and barks of the dogs as the commandant began to speak.
    “Listen to me, inmates. Today we shall be selecting two dozen of you to become medical pioneers. This will be your service to humanity, and those who volunteer quickly will be eligible for early release.”
    Don’t believe them, Good Matron had warned. Those who resisted would be forced. Furthermore, Good Matron had warned that the dogs Commandant Koch walked with were specially trained to attack recalcitrant inmates.
    Lilo was to stay buried until Good Matron came by whistling the melody of “The Watch on the Rhine,” a favorite patriotic tune of the Nazis. But it had to be that song and not what had become known as the
“Buchenwaldlied,”
the official camp song that was blasted through the loudspeakers every morning and evening. She could hear the commandant’s voice extolling the marvelous wonders of the Reich’s scientific endeavors. “You are to be a part of history!” He went on for what seemed like forever.
    And then Lilo heard the voice of the commandant’s wife, Ilse Koch. High and shrill, it seared the air. “Ladies — if I might call you Gypsy scum
ladies
— you still, we assume, have breasts. You still have genitals. . . .” Lilo pressed her fingers in her ears. She would stuff pig shit in her ears to block this woman’s voice.
But how will I hear the song? I must hear the song.
So she took away her hands and waited. The shrill voice called out names: “Brenna Wilfmore, Alana Kranz, Elsa Reinhardt, Bluma Friwald.” Every muscle in her seized. It was as if an