Cilka's Journey

Cilka decides to stay in Hut 29 out of loyalty to her friends. When Cilka returns to the hut, the women tell her that the administrators sent Olga home because her sentence was over. Cilka is sad because she wasn’t able to say goodbye. The hut is quiet that night, and a few men come to visit, including Boris. He tries to talk to Cilka about their relationship, telling her he loves her. Cilka says she doesn’t know what love is.

In June of 1953, Cilka has been in Vorkuta for eight years. The camp is restless, and the prisoners threaten to go on strike, refusing to work in an attempt to gain better living and working conditions, and convince the administrators to remove the barbed wire removed from the fences and the numbers from their clothing. Over the next few days, the number of prisoners on strike rises into the thousands. Stalin’s death in March has increased prisoner communication among the other Gulags and fueled a call for a mass walkout. The prisoners overrun the camp jail, releasing many maximum-security prisoners, and the strike lasts for six days, when guards finally quell the rebellion by opening fire on the protesters and sending numerous victims to the hospital. There, Cilka and the other nurses work nonstop to help them until a uniformed man enters the hospital ward and demands a list of every striker who enters the hospital. When Yelena says they’re too busy, he slaps her across the face, making her fall with the force of the blow, and demands the list in one hour’s time. Cilka helps Yelena to her feet and begins creating the list of names. The two-week strike is over, and Cilka grieves for their failed resistance.

As Cilka continues collecting names, she sees Hannah in a bed with bullet wounds in her chest and arms. Hannah begs for Cilka’s help, and Cilka wraps her arm with a tourniquet and puts gauze and pressure on her chest. Cilka sees past Hannah’s addiction and admires her bravery, knowing she did what she had to do in order to survive. Before Hannah dies, she tells Cilka not to let her oppressors break her. Later, life in the camp returns to normal, but Hut 29 mourns Hannah’s death. The administrators and guards don’t punish the strikers, and some workers remove the numbers from their clothing without consequence. On the way to work one day, Cilka sees Alexandr, and the sight lifts her spirits for days.

The winter darkness returns. Boris walks through a blizzard to visit Cilka and tells her the prison is releasing him in a few days. He’s trying to get Cilka released with him so they can start a life together.

Flashback to Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1944. Schwarzhuber tells Cilka he cares about her, and Cilka lies, telling him she cares about him, too. She uses this opportunity to ask the commandant to give Lale his job as a camp tattooist back. Schwarzhuber says they’ll visit him tomorrow, and Cilka thanks him.

In Vorkuta, Cilka lies to Boris in the same way that she did Schwarzhuber, telling him she loves him. At breakfast the next morning, Cilka talks to Anastasia and Elena about Boris’s imminent departure, and Elena advises Cilka to move into the nurses’ quarters to avoid the other men who plan to take Boris’s place as her bedmate. When asked for help in this matter, Yelena promises not to let anyone else harm Cilka.

Cilka’s new living quarters make her life easier and more comfortable. Cilka distracts herself from missing her friends by cleaning the nurses’ barracks and making the other nurses’ beds. One day, Elena is in the hospital for a self-inflicted burn. She uses the opportunity to ask Yelena to tell Cilka that Boris is looking for her. In order to protect Cilka, the women told him that she was taken back to the hospital and would likely die. Boris flew into a rage at this news. Elena warns Cilka to stay away from Hut 29, as bad men have already come looking for her. Yelena reassures Cilka that she’s safe in the barracks, but Cilka worries that she’ll never see her friends again.

That winter, Cilka notices fewer prisoners are working the mines than before. She learns that many prisoners have been released early, and few new prisoners are coming into Vorkuta. Spring arrives, and Cilka feels calm despite her great sense of loss. One day, Cilka goes with the ambulance to the sewing room, where she and Elena embrace and quickly exchange news before Cilka looks at a patient who complains of chest pains. Cilka tells Kirill and the other ambulance worker to load the man into the ambulance as she says goodbye to Elena.

The white nights return, but Cilka resists going to the general compound during her walks out of concern for her hut-mates. She looks for Alexandr instead but doesn’t see him. Cilka is grateful when winter returns, eliminating the temptation to visit her friends. Prisoners are no longer forced to work in the harsh winter weather, so the patients at the hospital are often the victims of fights. Cilka’s building hope is crushed when she realizes this is how humans will always treat each other. On an ambulance call one day, Cilka stops when she sees a man lying in the snow, his blood staining the snow red.

Flashback to Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1944. A loud banging on Block 25’s door wakes Cilka, who walks through the barrack yelling at the women for the SS to hear. More quietly, she whispers prayers and apologies to the women. She opens the door and watches the women file past her. After the truck leaves, Cilka hears a woman call her a murderer and declare that she has much blood on her hands as the SS. The woman walks away, and Cilka tears her gloves off and begins scrubbing her hands furiously in the snow. Dana and Gita help Cilka up, and she asks them if they can see the blood.

Cilka breaks free of her memory and tells Kirill to get the stretcher. The man lying in the snow is Alexandr.