Her numbers.

Her numbers.

23977. The number that haunted her; her arm scarred for life by five numbers that she dreamed about nightly, invading her every thought like a plague of the mind. At thirty-five years old, Lina did not know what they meant. Her mother Dana Muller had avoided that conversation for over twenty-five years, promising an answer would one day come, but Lina continued to wait. Memories of her first years of life were clouded beyond recognition, with only images of a grassy meadow infiltrating her dreams at night.

Home-schooling followed by working with her mother learning how to sew had ensured that Lina had not yet experienced much of the world. With no television or radio, and tired of conversing with her mother, Lina spent most of her afternoons sitting at the dining room window of her family’s run-down cabin in snowy Feldberg, writing in her diary, praying for a reason to continue living. Her father, Rudolf, was not much of a talker and worked long days lopping trees in the nearby forest. Living remotely and far-removed from wider society, Lina’s life had been one of little human interaction, and she was miserable for it. Despite knowing no different, something inside her was screaming at her that this was no way to live, that something was missing.

The Mullers were exceptionally poor, and with Dana’s inability to work now due to arthritic hands, living solely off her father’s very modest income, basic resources were difficult to acquire, and Lina was without not only necessities, but answers. Answers to her greatest question: “Who am I?”

Lina knew she was adopted by her Jewish family - it was one of the only things Dana had been open about - although her details were lacking in clarity, and just like the numbers, the conversation was swiftly diverted. No matter how Lina approached it, Dana would cleverly find a task for Lina to complete or distract her with ramblings about the forest pines, or the native bicolored shrews.

Just before her thirty-fifth birthday on the 23rd September 1977, Lina read in a newspaper of a job opportunity in Hamburg for a seamstress. Desperate to escape the confines of her dull little life, and with her decade’s worth of acquired sewing practice with Dana, Lina knew that this was an opportunity she could not pass up. She made her arrangements with the small amount of savings she had and regretfully but firmly told her parents that she felt an intense need to pursue it. Something within her was pulling her towards it. Rudolf only brought that newspaper home once a month, and she took this as a sign.

“I am scared for her Rudolf! This world is going to eat her alive. And I don't want her to find out how we found her. If she knew…”

“We must let her go, Dana.” Rudolf interjected. “She needs to find herself; a job; love. She will never find those things here, and you know it, my love. You knew this day would come.”

On arrival in Hamburg two days later, after a long and tiresome train ride, Lina checked herself into a cheap and dingy hostel in the city centre and was soon filled with anxiety and dread as the noises of the strange city penetrated the thin glass of the window. There was only a shabby single bed, a trestle table, a sink and faucet, a clock-radio, and a lamp. She considered how desolate this seemed even in comparison to her poverty-stricken household in Feldburg. Sadness overcame her as she contemplated her potential mistake. She missed her mother and father already and was terrified of being alone in such a strange place. The resounding confidence she began the journey with was dwindling with each passing car.

Lina fiddled with the radio dials, amusing herself so as not to go completely insane in her aloneness - 97.4, 97.5, 97.6 – clicking her tongue as she went. At 97.7FM, a news broadcast came on – finally something other than white noise. A plane crash near Leipzig several days prior saw seventy-seven men, women, and children die on impact. Nine miraculously survived. “The cockpit has been completely incinerated and the tail end was found more than two hundred metres away. Identities of those deceased are yet to be confirmed.” harped the presenter. As Lina prepared her clothes for the next day’s interview, she heard the unmistakable sound of those numbers: “23977!” She stopped and listened intently as the man’s voice continued to announce that anyone who understood the relevance of the number 23977 should call the Leipzig News Centre in connection with one of the passengers.

Lina froze in place with her blouse and slacks in-hand; heart pounding; blood draining from her fingertips. She looked down at her wrist, ensuring she had not gone completely mad – her nerves frayed by the anticipation of tomorrow’s prospects, and by the sound of those numbers.

23977! As clear as crystal. Unmistakable.

Lina looked at the clock-radio, and at 2.39 AM she had still not slept a peep, her mind wandering, eyes darting in sync with the incessant thumping of her heart against her ribs. “Surely this was some coincidence”, she thought. Surely in the morning she would wake up and realise this was nothing but a dream, some fantastical manifestation of her inner-most curiosities about those inky stains on her arm. She was hearing things. She was being hysterical.

Waking at sunrise, feeling exhausted, Lina rose quickly, dressed herself and tidied her hair before leaving her room at 6.30 AM to the hostel reception.

“Good morning madam, we hope you have found our accommodations to be adequate. Would you like some coffee before you leave us?”

Lina noticed the attendant’s swift glance at her wrist, and a quizzical look in his eye. “Yes please, I have an interview this morning at 9 AM. The room was okay, but I could not switch off. The noise in the city is quite unnerving! I could do with a pick-me-up. Black, please!”

“Of course, Madam.” The attendant moved off and came back swiftly with the morning elixir.

“Thank you.” As Lina sipped the bitter, grainy coffee, the attendant again turned his gaze to her wrist.

“Young lady, your arm!”

“Yes, what of it?”, she replied, hastening to cover it with the sleeve of her blouse.

“Those numbers. I think you need to make a call!”

“To whom?” She queried innocently, but she knew exactly to whom.

“To the Leipzig News Station Madam. I am quite sure those numbers were announced on last night’s radio broadcast. 23977… yes, I am sure of it! Did you hear it?”

Lina’s hands shook as the realisation came to her that last night was not a dream. She was not hearing things, she was not hysterical, nor was she the only one who deemed this coincidence to be all too uncanny.

“Yes, I heard it.” She replied reluctantly, “What number should I call? What do these numbers mean?” Her voice was trembling.

“I will dial the number for you dear, but I shan’t speculate.”

Rather than waste precious time asking the attendant more questions, Lina took the phone from the attendant and proceeded to nervously converse with the operator, who was extremely skeptical, and very abrupt.

“I assure you these numbers are imprinted on my arm. I have had them ever since I can remember.” She assured him.

“Very well Miss. Excuse me for one moment.” The operator retrieved his supervisor.

“Franz Kopfurt speaking, I understand you are enquiring about last night’s broadcast?”

Before she knew it, Lina was in Leipzig, surrounded by men and women frantically asking her questions and bombarding her with flash-photography. Having never seen this many people in one place, let alone surrounding her like vultures over a carcass, she collapsed with anxiety, waking moments later with her arms slung around the necks of two men.

“You okay miss? You fainted there, hit your head. Here is some ice for it”, said Jurgen, the man standing to her right. “She wasn’t lying Stefan, look, here on her wrist.”

“I see it Jurgen, I see it! Let’s just get her seated first.”

She was taken to a bench inside the foyer of the news station, which was quiet without the incessant noise of the rabble outside. As Lina gathered her overwhelming thoughts and held the ice to her head, she was handed a leatherbound, little black notebook.

“I know you must be shocked by all this Madam, but I think you need to take a look inside.”

Inside the front cover were the initials A.J.S, and an inscription:

‘If you are number 23977, you are my daughter – Amelia. I have spent three decades trying to find you. If you are out there, everything I have is yours. My full name is Aleksander Josef Schmidt and I am ashamed to admit that I was a Nazi soldier. I had a secret love affair with your mother, Zusanna Nowak, a Polish prisoner in Auschwitz where you received that tattoo. She was the most beautiful, kind, and pure-spirited woman I have ever come to know. She fell pregnant, and after birthing you, she raised you in that abhorrent camp for just 3 years and 45 days before falling fatally ill. She made me promise to keep you safe, so I gave you to my brother, Hansel, before the Nazi’s could take you. He swore to protect you until the war ended but was shot dead by the Americans. His body was found in a field. The day I lost my only brother was the day I lost you, my only daughter. I pray every day that you are still alive my sweet girl. Should anything ever happen to me, I truly hope this finds you! Please know I did everything I could to try to find you. Everything! – Love, your father, Aleksander.’

Lina felt as if her heart had spontaneously stopped pumping its blood. Completely awe-struck, weak, yet relieved, she stood up.

“Miss, you might want to sit back down for this,” said Jurgen gently. She sat. “You have inherited 20,000 Deutsch Marks. A formidable sum! These numbers on your arm are the only proof we need that you are the daughter of Aleksander Josef Schmidt. Very few people still alive today have these numbers. As you can see, it is all written here in this book, along with Mr Schmidt’s last will and testament. It is miraculous that you are alive!”

Lina felt an overwhelming sense of relief combined with unrelenting grief. The numbers she had obsessed over for decades, and the reason Dana and Rudolf had avoided telling her who she really was, finally made sense. She felt alive for the very first time, but also felt sadness like she had never experienced before.

In the coming weeks, the press was incessant in the pursuit of her story. But Amelia - as she now called herself – refused every interview, every talk show opportunity, and every radio broadcast. She traveled back to Feldberg to inform her family, and to tell them that she understood now why they kept such horrors from their adopted daughter. The Mullers shared their accounts of finding her tiny little malnourished body in that meadow, barely even able to crawl on all fours. They spoke of the horrors of Auschwitz and the war. Amelia began to wonder how many others like her there might be out there.

Amelia Nowak used her unexpected inheritance to write and publish her story and by 1982 had sold over six million copies. In writing her story, Amelia realised all the moments her numbers had appeared before her in the days before being handed that book: the FM frequency of the broadcast; the time on her hostel clock; the number of passengers who died in the crash; and the date she received the newspaper. Those numbers led her to her destiny, and to find out who she really was.