481YY_tx.indd 1
25/07/2019 06:31
cilka's prelims RHB.indd 1
06/06/2019 12:33
Born in New Zealand, Heather Morris is an international number one bestselling author, who is passionate about
stories of survival, resilience and hope. In 2003, while
working in a large public hospital in Melbourne, Heather
was introduced to an elderly gentleman who ‘might just
have a story worth telling’. The day she met Lale Sokolov
changed both their lives. Their friendship grew and Lale
embarked on a journey of self-scrutiny, entrusting the
innermost details of his life during the Holocaust to her.
H E A T H E R M O R R I S
Heather originally wrote Lale’s story as a screenplay –
which ranked high in international competitions – before
reshaping it into her debut novel, The Tattooist of
Auschwitz. Her second novel, Cilka’s Journey, follows on from this international bestselling work .
481YY_tx.indd 2
25/07/2019 06:31
cilka's prelims RHB.indd 2
06/06/2019 12:34
H E A T H E R M O R R I S
481YY_tx.indd 3
25/07/2019 06:31
cilka's prelims RHB.indd 2
06/06/2019 12:34
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by
zaffre
80–81 Wimpole St, London W1G 9RE
Copyright © Heather Morris, 2019
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the
prior written permission of the publisher.
The right of Heather Morris to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events
and incidents are either the products of the
author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library.
Hardback ISBN: 978–1–78576–904–7
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978–1–78576–913–9
Also available as an ebook
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Typeset in Simoncini Garamond by
Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
Zaffre is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK
www.bonnierbooks.co.uk
481YY_tx.indd 4
25/07/2019 06:31
To my grandchildren
Henry, Nathan, Jack, Rachel and Ashton
Never forget the courage, the love, the hope
given to us by those who survived
and those that did not.
481YY_tx.indd 5
25/07/2019 06:31
481YY_tx.indd 6
25/07/2019 06:31
This is a work of fiction, based on what I learnt from the first-hand testimony of Lale Sokolov, the tattooist of
Auschwitz, about Cecilia ‘Cilka’ Klein, whom he knew
in Auschwitz-Birkenau, from the testimony of others who
knew her, and from my own research. Although it weaves
together facts and reportage with the experiences of
women survivors of the Holocaust, and the experiences
of women sent to the Soviet Gulag system at the end of
the Second World War, it is a novel and does not repre-
sent the entire facts of Cilka’s life. Furthermore, it contains a mix of characters: some inspired by real-life figures, in
some instances representing more than one individual,
others completely imagined. There are many factual
accounts that document these terrible epochs in our
history and I would encourage the interested reader to
seek them out.
For more information about Cecilia Klein and her
family, and about the Gulags, please turn to the end of
this novel. I hope that further details about Cilka and
those who once knew her will continue to come to light
once the book is published.
Heather Morris, October 2019
481YY_tx.indd 7
25/07/2019 06:31
481YY_tx.indd 8
25/07/2019 06:31
CHAPTER 1
Auschwitz Concentration Camp,
27 January 1945
Cilka stares at the soldier standing in front of her, part
of the army that has entered the camp. He is saying
something in Russian, then German. The soldier towers
over the eighteen-year-old girl. ‘ Du bist frei.’ You are free.
She does not know if she has really heard his words. The
only Russians she has seen before this, in the camp, were
emaciated, starving – prisoners of war.
Could it really be possible that freedom exists? Could
this nightmare be over?
When she does not respond, he bends down and places
his hands on her shoulders. She flinches.
He quickly withdraws his hands. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean
1
481YY_tx.indd 1
25/07/2019 06:31
to scare you.’ He continues in halting German. Shaking his head, he seems to conclude she doesn’t understand
him. He makes a sweeping gesture and slowly says the
words again. ‘You are free. You are safe. We are the Soviet
Army and we are here to help you.’
‘I understand,’ Cilka whispers, pulling tight the coat
that hides her tiny frame.
‘Do you understand Russian?’
Cilka nods yes. She grew up knowing an East Slavic
dialect, Rusyn.
‘What’s your name?’ he asks gently.
Cilka looks up into the soldier’s eyes and says in a clear
voice, ‘My name is Cecilia Klein, but my friends call me
Cilka.’
‘That’s a beautiful name,’ he says. It is strange to be
looking at a man who is not one of her captors and is so
healthy. His clear eyes, his full cheeks, his fair hair
protruding from beneath his cap. ‘Where are you from,
Cilka Klein?’
Memories of her old life have faded, become blurred.
At some point it became too painful to remember that
her former life with her family, in Bardejov, existed.
‘I’m from Czechoslovakia,’ she says, in a broken voice.
2
481YY_tx.indd 2
25/07/2019 06:31
Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp,
February 1945
Cilka has been sitting in the block, as close as she can
get to the one stove that provides heat. She knows
she has already drawn attention. The other able-bodied
women, her friends included, were forcibly marched out
of the camp by the SS weeks ago. The remaining prisoners
are skeletal, diseased, or they are children. And then there
is Cilka. They were all meant to be shot, but in their haste
to get away themselves, the Nazis abandoned them all to
fate.
The soldiers have been joined by other officials – counter-
intelligence
agents, Cilka has heard, though she’s not sure
what that means – to manage a situation the average soldier
has no training for. The Soviet agency is tasked with
keeping law and order, particularly as it relates to any
threat to the Soviet State. Their role, she’s been told by
the soldiers, is to question every prisoner to determine
their status as it relates to their imprisonment, in particular if they collaborated or worked with the Nazis. The
retreating German Army are considered enemies of the
State of the Soviet Union and anyone who could be
connected to them is, by default, an enemy of the Soviet
Union.
A soldier enters the block. ‘Come with me,’ he says,
pointing to Cilka. At the same time, a hand clutches her
right arm, dragging her to her feet. Several weeks have
passed and seeing others being taken away to be
3
481YY_tx.indd 3
25/07/2019 06:31
questioned has become part of the routine of the block.
To Cilka it is just ‘her turn’. She is eighteen years old and she just has to hope they can see that she had no choice
but to do what she did in order to survive. No choice,
other than death. She can only hope that she will soon be
able to return to her home in Czechoslovakia, find a way
forward.
As she’s taken into the building the Soviet Army are
using as their headquarters, Cilka attempts a smile at the
four men who sit across the room from her. They are here
to punish her evil captors, not her. This is a good time;
there will be no more loss. Her smile is not returned. She
notices their uniforms are slightly different to those of the soldiers outside. Blue epaulettes sit on top of their shoulders, their hats, placed on the table in front of them, have
the same shade of blue ribbon with a red stripe.
One of them does eventually smile at her and speaks in
a gentle voice.
‘Would you tell us your name?’
‘Cecilia Klein.’
‘Where are you from, Cecilia? Your country and town.’
‘I’m from Bardejov in Czechoslovakia.’
‘What is the date of your birth?’
‘The seventeenth of March, 1926.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘I came here on the twenty-third of April in 1942, just
after I turned sixteen.’
The agent pauses, studies her.
‘That was a long time ago.’
4
481YY_tx.indd 4
25/07/2019 06:31
‘An eternity in here.’
‘What have you been doing here since April 1942?’
‘Staying alive.’
‘Yes, but how did you do that?’ He tilts his head at her.
‘You look like you haven’t starved.’
Cilka doesn’t answer, but her hand goes to her hair,
which she hacked off herself weeks ago, after her friends
were marched from the camp.
‘Did you work?’
‘I worked at staying alive.’
The four men exchange looks. One of them picks up a
piece of paper and pretends to read it before speaking.
‘We have a report on you, Cecilia Klein. It says that
you in fact stayed alive by prostituting yourself to the
enemy.’
Cilka says nothing, swallows hard, looks from one man
to the next, trying to fathom what they are saying, what
they expect her to say in return.
Another speaks. ‘It’s a simple question. Did you fuck
the Nazis?’
‘They were my enemy. I was a prisoner here.’
‘But did you fuck the Nazis? We’re told you did.’
‘Like many others here, I was forced to do whatever I
was told by those who imprisoned me.’
The first agent stands. ‘Cecilia Klein, we will be sending
you to Kraków and then determining your fate from there.’
He refuses, now, to look at her.
‘No,’ Cilka says, standing. This can’t be happening. ‘You
can’t do this to me! I am a prisoner here.’
5
481YY_tx.indd 5
25/07/2019 06:31
One of the men who hasn’t spoken before quietly asks,
‘Do you speak German?’
‘Yes, some. I’ve been in here three years.’
‘And you speak many other languages, we have heard,
and yet you are Czechoslovakian.’
Cilka doesn’t protest, frowning, not understanding the
significance. She had been taught languages at school,
picked others up by being in here.
The men all exchange looks.
‘Speaking other languages would have us believe you
are a spy, here to report back to whoever will buy your
information. This will be investigated in Kraków.’
‘You can expect a long sentence of hard labour,’ the
original officer says.
It takes Cilka a moment to react, and then she is grabbed
by the arm by the soldier who brought her into the room,
dragged away, screaming her innocence.
‘I was forced, I was raped! No! Please.’
But the soldiers do not react; they do not seem to hear.
They are moving on to the next person.
Montelupich Prison, Kraków, July 1945
Cilka crouches in the corner of a damp, stinking cell.
She struggles to register time passing. Days, weeks,
months.
She does not make conversation with the women around
6
481YY_tx.indd 6
25/07/2019 06:31
her. Anyone overheard speaking by the guards is taken out and brought back with bruises and torn clothing. Stay
quiet, stay small, she tells herself, until you know what is
happening, and what the right things are to say or do. She
has torn off a section of her dress to tie around her nose
and mouth in an attempt to minimise the stench of human
waste, damp and decay.
One day, they take her out of the cell. Faint from
hunger and exhausted by the effort of vigilance, the
figures of the guards and the wall and floors all seem
immaterial, as in a dream. She stands in line behind
other prisoners in a corridor, slowly moving towards a
door. She can lean, momentarily, against a warm, dry
wall. They keep the corridors heated, for the guards,
but not the cells themselves. And though the weather
outside must be mild by now, the prison seems to trap
cold from the night and hold on to it through the whole
next day.
When it is Cilka’s turn, she enters a room where an
officer sits behind a desk, his face bathed in greenish light from a single lamp. The officers by the door indicate she
should go over to the desk.
The officer looks down at his piece of paper.
‘Cecilia Klein?’
She glances around. She is alone in the room with three
burly men. ‘Yes?’
He looks down again and reads from the paper. ‘You
are convicted of working with the enemy, as a prostitute
and additionally as a spy. You are sentenced to fifteen
7
481YY_tx.indd 7
25/07/2019 06:31
years’ hard labour.’ He signs the piece of paper. ‘You sign this to say you have understood.’
Cilka has understood all of the officer’s words. He has
been speaking in German, rather than Russian. Is it a trick,
then? she thinks. She feels the eyes of the men at the door.
She knows she has to do something. It seems she has no
choice but to do the only thing in front of her.
He flips the piece of paper and points to a dotted line.
The letters above it are in Cyrillic – Russian script. Again, as she has experienced over and over in her young life,
she finds herself with two choices: one, the narrow path
opening up in front of her; the other, death.
The officer hands her the pen, and then looks towards
the door, bored, waiting for the next person in line – just
doing his job.
With a shaking hand, Cilka signs the piece of paper.
It is only when she’s taken from the prison and pushed
onto a truck that she realises winter has gone, spring never
existed, and it is summer. While the warmth of the sun is
a balm to her chilled body, her still-alive body, the glare
of it hurts her eyes. Before she has a chance to adjust, the
truck slams to a stop. There, in front of her, is another
train carriage, on a cattle train painted red.
8
481YY_tx.indd 8
25/07/2019 06:31
CHAPTER 2
A Train Bound for Vorkuta Gulag, Siberia,
160 km North of the Arctic Circle, July 1945
The floor of the closed railway wagon is covered in
straw and each prisoner tries to claim a small space
on which to sit. Older women wail, babies whimper. The
sound of women suffering – Cilka hoped she’d never have
to hear it again. The train sits at the station for hours,
the heat of the day turning the inside of the compartment
into an oven. The bucket of water left to share is soon
gone. The infants’ cries turn wretched and dry; the old
women are reduced to rocking themselves into a trance.
Cilka has placed herself against a wall and draws comfort
from the small wisps of air that make their way through
the tiny cracks. A woman leans on her from the side and
9
481YY_tx.indd 9
25/07/2019 06:31
a back is shoved up hard against her raised knees. She leaves it there. No point fighting for space that doesn’t
exist.
Cilka senses that night has fallen as the train makes its
first jolting movement, its engine struggling to pull the
unknown number of carriages away from Kraków, away,
it seems, from any hope of ever returning home.