Cilka's Journey

Everyone affected by war, captivity or aggression reacts differently, and away from it people might try to guess how they would act, or react, in the circumstances, but they do not really know.

Did I tell you about Cilka?" "No, Lale, you didn't. Who was Cilka?" "She was the bravest person I ever met. Not the bravest girl, the bravest person.

His eyes seem to see nothing. He is a man whose soul has died and whose body is waiting to catch up with it.

It is this fire, then, that keeps her going. But it is also a curse. It makes her stand out, be singled out. She must contain it, control it, direct it. To survive.

Anger is what we feel when we're helpless.

It's time to live now, Cilka," he says. "Without fear, and with the miracle of love." "Is that a poem?" she asks him, smiling through her tears. "It is the beginning of one.

But she -- she will live. She doesn't know why she has always been sure of that, why she feels she can persist -- keep picking up this needle even though it's as heavy as a brick, keep sewing, keep doing what she has to do -- but she can.

The last word must go to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. “I dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it,” he wrote in the foreword to his classic study, The Gulag Archipelago. “And may they please forgive me for not having seen it all, nor remembered it all, for not having divined all of it.

Such a small space of time has passed, but the words have been so large.

She wonders if her feelings for men are to be only fear and pity?

18 million people passed through the Gulag system from 1929 until Stalin’s death in 1953,

It is time to live now, Cilka,” he says. “Without fear, and with the miracle of love.

She has never had any choices. Everything has simply happened to her. No matter how much she wants it, she can never hold on to people. She is alone. Completely alone in the world.

She hopes she will be able to explain to Josie later that he can have her body and that is all; he cannot have her mind, her heart, her soul.

Stories like Cilka’s deserve to be told, and I’m humbled and honored to bring it to you. She was just a girl, who became a woman, who was the bravest person Lale Sokolov ever met.

Everyone affected by war, captivity, or oppression reacts differently—and away from it, people might try to guess how they would act, or react, in the circumstances. But they do not really know.

She is just surviving, Cilka has often thought. There is no one way to do it.

I'd thought you'd given up on me.

What you are doing, Cilka, is the only form of resistance you have – staying alive.

She has to go back because the women Cilka shares a hut with have become her family. Yes, they don’t always agree. There have been many fights, some of them physical, but that is what large, complex families endure. She remembers the arguments and pushing and shoving that went on between her and her sister while they were growing up. But the cooperation, and the sharing, outweighed the conflict. Women had come and gone, but the central unity of the hut remained, with the gruff Antonina Karpovna an integral part.

She was just a girl, who became a woman, who was the bravest person Lale Sokolov ever met.

To have lost everything. To have had to endure what she has endured, and be punished for it. Suddenly the needle feels as heavy as a brick. How can she go on? How can she work for a new enemy?

Whatever it is, don’t argue, don’t fight with them; try to be invisible and do as you are told.

Deeply and instinctively, Cilka still often reaches for prayers. Her religion is tied to her childhood, her family, traditions and comfort. To another time. It is part of who she is.

I would pretend I wasn’t a nurse if someone came to me in labor—that’s scary, two people to worry about.