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Back in the long factory roo to our wet backs, we had to pick up patches with our prisoner nu with another patch that was supposed to shohat kind of prisoner you were – all red triangles for us, which meant ere political prisoners Then we had to learn to say our numbers in German I remembered my nuht me how to count to twenty in Dutch, or Low German, or whatever it really is, when I o The trouble was that when Effi Moyer tried to teach me how to say my number, I tried to tell her I wasn’t French

‘Franz&outausendvierhundertachtundneunzig,’ she promptedwhat the Luftwaffe pilots had calledover my papers in Mannheim, I said to Effi: ‘Ich bin Amerikanerin’ I pointed to the others then to myself and shook my head ‘I’m not French Amerikanerin’

Effi looked me in the eye with a face full of disdain and irritation and said, ‘Franz&outausendvierhundertachtundneunzig’ – and honestly my German has not improved very much, but I know that is what she said, because51498 for six months

I repeated the numbers But not the ‘French political prisoner’ part, because I wasn’t French I was trying to behave lared atfor rin She tossed back the golden bangs – she’d ed to keep her hair, presuestured quickly at our badly fitting dresses with one finger Swap you

We started to strip the dresses off again, right there We didn’t think anyone would care, because everyone ahead of us was being ain so we could sew the red patches and our prisoner numbers on to our sleeves But I hadn’t counted on Effi Moyer She’d noticedprisoner who shared her name, the one who’d failed to save her a Hershey bar, the one who’d argued with her about being American

Effi sawover to us and grabbed therabbed Elodie by her hair, close to her scalp, and dragged her over to sit down on the floor right next to the desk Effi jerked one arm fiercely in my direction to tell me to follow Elodie – she wanted to keep an eye on us both as ed on our patches

Elodie suddenly seemed totally cowed Stark naked, she hunched over the dress, covering her lap with it; her shoulders shook a little as if she were sobbing She didn’tso humiliated and so mad We had to wait for soot one, Elodie dropped it Then she couldn’t find the patch with her number on it after she’d threaded the needle We scraot whacked over the head with one of Effi Moyer’s clipboards Then, when it was my turn to use the needle, I couldn’t find my number

Elodie had it She handed me the patch quietly, and her rin The scar on the side of her face made her pretty smile lopsided

It wasn’t till I was sewing it on my sleeve that I realised she’d swapped our nu around had just been a show to distract Effi Moyer froht of hand She’d sewn my 51498 on to the sleeve of her pale-blue shirtwaisted sailor dress with the too-long skirt that ca collar ripped off so that it wouldn’t hide the contrasting prison X across the front and back of the bodice And now I sewed Elodie’s 51497 on tosure we put on the dumb dresses we’d been ‘issued’ with, she hadn’t paid any attention to the nu clothes back on, wearing each other’s numbers, and lined up in front of the quarantine block to be counted

The siren for the 9 o’clock roll call had coone to bed, but for us it was our first real roll call – Z&auhts, the long shadows of the dogs and the infinite rows of barbed wire h concrete walls It seemed to take forever We stood there until after they turned the street lights out, the SS guards shining flashlights in our faces andsure we didn’t try to sit down

Elodie and I were still the last two in our group, so by the tiuards were utterly fed up with everybody and ready to go to bed too, and here ere, the last two ‘French’ wo way round

‘Fabert, Einundf&uu! Justice, Einundf&uu!’ – Fabert 51497, Justice 51498 Somebody prodded Elodie’s sleeve with a club

‘No, I’uide us out of line while a third stood hanging on for dear life to one of the awful Ger down at her clipboard with its endless list of naht tucked under her ar in her eyes and she looked incredibly grouchy She didn’t watch us at all She couldn’t have cared less as going on She was just waiting to get the stupid nuain

They gavetruncheon wallops – in the stomach and the small of my back and over my shoulders – the first blow madeasping and reeling, they got out those dreaded shears and cut all Elodie’s golden hair off I didn’t have any hair to cut off, so I got beaten up instead

When they’d finished battering and disfiguring us, one of them took Elodie’s dress with my number on it and threw it at me, and then took my dress with Elodie’s nuain And then they shoved us back in line and checked our numbers off the list – Fabert 51497, Justice 51498