Prisoner B-3087 (14 page)

one mornInG after roll call at auschwItz,
we were told we were being moved. All of us. I had
never counted, but there had to be five thousand of us
at roll call every day, give or take a few hundred.
Workers were needed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, the officer of the watch told us, and we
were being sent to fill their barracks.

I could feel the other prisoners tensing around me. If
we could have whispered and talked, we would have.
Every day, Allied planes flew overhead, and the bombs
they dropped got closer. Sometimes at night we would
even hear the sound of guns. Big guns. Tank guns, antiaircraft guns. At the beginning of the war, the Germans
had taken the fight to France, to Belgium, to Holland,
to Russia. Now the fight was happening in Germany.
So when the Nazis said they were moving us to
Sachsenhausen because the camp needed workers, none
of us believed them. The Allies were getting closer.
They were pushing back! Any day now we might be
liberated. That was the talk in the barracks. The Nazis
were probably moving us away from the front lines.

There were no trains to take us to Sachsenhausen,
the watch officer told us, so we would walk. That was
another good sign for the end of the war, if the
Germans had to use all their trains for the war effort.
But it was bad for us. I had no idea where Sachsenhausen
was, or how far we would have to go, but just the
thought of walking all day made me feel exhausted.
There were others, I knew, who would never make it a
kilometer. But walk we would, some in bare feet and
some in odd-sized wooden clogs, in our thin uniforms, in the middle of winter.

The Nazis gave us each a half a loaf of bread, and
told us it was to last us the whole trip. But how many
days would that be? None of us dared ask. I decided
right away that I would eat just a bit of my bread at a
time, to make it last. If I ended up with extra, I would
eat the rest at Sachsenhausen.

Under the whips and clubs of
kapo
s and SS officers,
we marched out through the front of Auschwitz.
You come in through the front gate, but the only way
you leave is through the chimney,
the guards had told
us when we arrived.
Ha! Look at me now
, I wanted to
shout,
walking out through the front gate, the way I
came in!
I had survived the ghetto, I had survived
Plaszów, and Wieliczka, and Trzebinia, and Birkenau,
and now Auschwitz. I was going to survive it all. I was
going to be alive when the Allies liberated us. This I
swore.
But nothing had prepared me for the death march.
That is what we began to call it, as our numbers dwindled. We marched for hours upon hours each day,
stumbling and staggering along as best we could. We
walked, and we walked, and we walked, and I began
to think there was no Sachsenhausen. That the Nazis
merely meant to walk us to death. Those who could
not keep up were shot and left by the roadside. The
crack of guns behind us was our constant companion,
and you knew you had slowed too much if the guns
got too loud.
Snow fell on us most days, and the dirt road we
walked on was frozen when we were lucky, freezing
slush when we were not. Those without shoes were the
first to fall behind and die. Some tore strips from their
canvas jackets and wrapped them around their bare
feet, but once the canvas got wet it was worse. I at least
had wooden clogs to keep my feet off the frozen earth,
but without socks my feet were blocks of ice anyway.
There was no water. We ate snow when we stopped
for the night, caught flakes on our tongues as we
walked. We slept in the open when there was no barn
or shed to be found, which was most nights, sleeping
on top of one another like dogs for the warmth. The
kapo
s and Nazis had fires to keep them warm. At least
in the camps we had shelter to keep the weather off us
at night. Out here, the elements killed more prisoners
than our guards did.
On the fifth day— or was it the sixth? I had lost
count— I woke up and I was sure I couldn’t go on
any farther. My arms and legs were so cold I couldn’t
make them move in the morning, and I was sure a
Nazi would shoot me. But there were others like me,
many others. One man’s ear had frozen to the ground
in the night. The Nazis gave us time to wake and stir
before resuming the march, which was a small mercy.
Perhaps they just didn’t have bullets for us all.
As we shambled along later that day, I looked at the
men around me. We were skeletons. Ghosts. Filthy
toothless creatures in oversized, soiled prisoner uniforms. The hair on our heads was growing in thin
and scraggly from not-too-recent shavings. Our fingers were long and bony like vampires from some
Hollywood horror movie, the skin on our faces
cracked and drawn back like mummies. The older
men had the beginnings of beards on their gray skin,
and we all walked like zombies, stumbling more than
striding, trying always to stay just one step ahead of
the Nazis and their guns.
Not long ago, all these half-dead creatures around
me had been people, I realized. Which of them had
been doctors? Teachers? Musicians? Businessmen,
like my father? Which of the boys had been students like me? Playing ball in the streets after school,
laughing and calling to their friends?
It seemed like a lifetime ago. Years. How many
years? Like the days, I was beginning to lose count.
Five years? Six? Had it been that long? I had been ten
when the war started. That made me — I counted the
years out on my fingers, too foggy headed from weariness to do the simple addition— that made me at
least fifteen. Maybe sixteen by now. Yes, sixteen years
old. Was I really that old? I should almost be done
with school and thinking about a career, or maybe
even university. Mother and Father had always wanted
me to go to university. But there had been plenty of
time to think about that, once. Years and years prepare. Years that were gone now. Stolen from me by the
Nazis.
I closed my eyes, half-walking and half-sleeping,
listening always for the crack of the guns at my heels
to know when to pick up my pace. There was the danger of passing out, of being shot while I slept, but I
couldn’t help it. I had only half my bread left, tucked
into the waist of my pants. I had stretched it as far as
it would go, and still I had no energy left to walk on.
Something droned in the distance, and our shambling column — so much smaller now than when we
had begun our journey— slowed to look up. Three
enormous planes flew by, high up in the clouds, raining tiny black specks from their bellies.
Bombs. They were Allied planes, dropping bombs
somewhere in the distance! We heard the rumble of
explosions and saw smoke rise over a hill on the horizon. I wanted to cheer them on, to raise my fists and
cry,
“Yes! Yes! Stick it to the Nazis!”
but I knew I had
to keep silent. I wasn’t sure I had the strength to shout
anyway. The
kapo
s cracked their whips and we got
moving again, but secretly I was still urging the Allies
on to victory.
One of the prisoners began to sing. He was Czech,
I think. It sounded like Czech, from what I’d heard of
it in the camps.
“Bejvavalo dobre, bejvavalo dobre,”
he sang, his voice weak but insistent.
“Za nasich
mladejch let, bejval svet jako kvet.”
I tensed, sure one
of the soldiers would shoot him, but they let him continue. Another prisoner, another Czech farther along
the line, joined him, and then another behind me.
Then a Pole beside me began to sing, and I recognized
the refrain:
“Hey, hey, hey falcons, pass the mountains,
forests, pits. Ring, ring, ring my little bell, in the steppe,
ring, ring, ring. Sorry, sorry for the girl, for the green
Ukraine. Sorry, sorry your heart is weeping. I’ll never
see you again.”
Another Pole took up “Hey, Falcons!” with him, and
then there was a chorus. Then the German Jews began
to sing a different song, and the Italian Jews another. I
heard a Dutch voice, and an English one, and behind
me came the most beautiful French voice I had ever
heard, though I didn’t understand a word of his song.
We sang as we walked, all of us, singing a hundred different songs, and the Nazis let us sing. Another small
mercy. Or perhaps they too missed the way the world
had been before the war.

nIne days Into our lonG march — or was It
ten? — I found myself walking next to another boy
about my age. His face was red and his eyes were half
shut, and he staggered with each step. He was about as
close to a Muselmann as you can get without actually being one, without crumpling to the ground and
not being able to get up again. He almost swayed
into me once, so I picked up my pace and got ahead
of him.

I couldn’t stop thinking about him though. He
reminded me of Fred, sick in his bed and not able to
get up and work. Fred, who had been such a friend
to me when I had so desperately wanted one,
needed
one, at Auschwitz. I kept looking back at the boy,
watching him weave through the shuffling lines. Once
he stumbled and fell, only climbing back to his feet
after a struggle. Very soon now he would be at the
back of the lines, where the SS and their pistols waited.

I couldn’t help it. I had to go back to him. I slowed
down until we were alongside each other.
“Hey,” I said. “Hey — you have to walk faster.”
The boy said nothing. There was no life in his eyes,
no hint that he’d even heard me. I grabbed his arm.
“Hey, listen to me. Just one more day, yes? You can
make it one more day, and then you can sleep tonight,
and start tomorrow fresh. You just have to keep
walking.”
The boy tripped and stumbled into me, and I caught
him. I propped him up under his shoulder, letting him
lean on me, but he never broke away. Perhaps his body
knew that if he let go, he would fall again. He slumped
against me, and suddenly I was carrying half the boy’s
weight. He wasn’t really heavy— none of us were,
anymore — but I was already so weak and tired from
the march and from eating my bread sparingly that I
barely had the strength to carry myself. Within just a
few meters I stumbled under the weight of him, but I
didn’t let go.
What was I doing? Had I gone crazy? Uncle Moshe
would be scolding me right now. I could hear his voice.
We have only one purpose now:
survive.
Survive at all
costs, Yanek
. Each step I took was harder than the last.
Why was I wasting my energy carrying along a sick
boy who would most likely be dead before we got to
Sachsenhausen? I hadn’t thought this through, and
now here I was holding the boy up.
I should let him go,
I thought over and over.
Let him
make his own way. I should save myself.
That was how
you survived the camps: You saved yourself. No one
else was going to do it for you.
But this boy had a face. He had a name too, though
I didn’t know it. He had a mother and father, probably
dead now, but he had family. A home somewhere. He
could have been me. He could have been Yanek
Gruener, son of Oskar and Mina, of 20 Krakusa Street,
Podgórze, Kraków. If it were me, wouldn’t I want
someone to help me? Even if I was out of my mind
with hunger and exhaustion, wouldn’t I want the boy
who was helping me to stay there under my arm, to
help me just a little farther along the way?
Surely somebody else had to feel the same way. If I
could just find someone to help me, if we shared the
load, we would all make it, even this nameless boy.
“Please,” I said to the man nearest me. “Please
help me.”
The man heard me, but he wouldn’t look at me.
Instead he picked up his pace and left us behind.
“Just help me carry him,” I begged another man.
“Don’t be a fool,” the man said, and he too
moved away.
“Leave him,” another prisoner told me.
“He’s going to die anyway,” said another. “Let him
go, or he’ll take you with him.”
Crack!
I jumped. Somewhere behind us another
prisoner had fallen too far behind, and the Nazis had
shot him. They would shoot me too if we fell behind,
even though I wasn’t the sick one.
Why wouldn’t someone help us? It didn’t have to be
this way, every man for himself! If we all helped one
another, if we became one another’s family now, when
all of our real families had been taken from us, we
could be stronger! More of us could survive! But too
many of them thought like Uncle Moshe. Too many of
them would only look out for themselves. I wanted to
yell at them, argue with them, but I was too tired. It
wouldn’t do any good anyway. I was right, but so were
they, in their way. The only person you could trust in
the camps was yourself.
I should never have helped the boy. I knew that. But
now that I was helping him, I refused to let him go.
I was becoming stubborn now that I was sixteen. I
walked along, giving the nameless boy all the energy
I could spare. I longed to have a bite of my bread, but
it was tucked into the waistband of my pants behind
my back, and I couldn’t reach it and carry the boy at
the same time. I would have to wait for nightfall and
our scheduled stop before I could eat again. It was better that way, I figured. My bread would last longer. So
long as I survived to eat it.
But as we walked along, step after step, kilometer
after kilometer, my stomach began to gnaw away at
itself. I was so hungry! Just a bite of bread, just a pinch,
and I could quiet my aching stomach for a few more
hours. The only way to eat was to let go of the boy
though, and we were already near the back of the lines.
I couldn’t stop. But I was so hungry I cried.
The gray clouds in the sky meant more snow, but
they also meant night would come earlier, and maybe
an earlier end to the day’s marching.
Just a little farther,
I told myself.
One more step. Then another.
If I
fell, it would be hard for me to get up again— and
impossible for me to lift the boy. If I dropped him
now, all this torture would have been for nothing,
and that seemed worse than having helped him to
begin with.
But I wasn’t going to make it to nightfall, not even
with the gray clouds overhead. Just when I thought I
couldn’t take another step, my load lightened—
another prisoner stepped in to take the boy’s other
arm! He was an old man with sunken, bloodshot eyes,
deep cracks in his face, and a grizzled beard. He looked
like I might be carrying him next.
“Can’t walk so well myself,” he rasped, “but I’ll
help you the rest of the way today.”
Tears streamed down my face. I should have said
thank you, but I was too tired to speak. The old man
seemed to understand. “Keep walking,” he told me.
We walked along in silence the rest of the evening, the
only sounds the crunch of the frozen mud beneath our
feet and the cracks of the
kapo
s’ whips. I tried to block
out everything else and focused on putting one foot in
front of the other. It was still a struggle to carry the
boy, but with someone else to help I was rejuvenated.
Darkness had long since fallen when we reached the
top of a hill and found no barn or house in sight. The
guards stopped us and told us the frozen ground
would once again be our bed. None of us complained.
My companion and I dropped the boy to the ground
as quickly as we could, and before I could thank him
he disappeared into the crowd of prisoners huddling
together for warmth as they slept. I stood over the boy
a moment longer, wondering what his name was, and
if he would even survive the night. His breath was
ragged, and his body barely moved. Had I used up all
that energy for nothing?
Before I could sleep, I had to eat. I reached for what
was left of my half loaf of bread tucked into my pants,
but it wasn’t there! In a panic, I patted all around my
waistline, even checking to see if it had slid down
inside my pants. I was so cold and my pants were so
big I might not have noticed. But there was nothing
there. My bread was gone! It must have slid out while
I was carrying the boy, and I hadn’t noticed. Half of
my food, lost! And who knew how much longer we
would be walking? I fell to my knees, sobbing. Without
food, I would never survive.
I looked down at the nameless boy again, and my
hands made fists. I wanted to hit him. It was all his
fault! I would never have wasted all that energy, would
never have lost my food, if it wasn’t for him! But I
pounded my own bony legs instead. It wasn’t the boy’s
fault. It was mine, and I knew it.
And then I saw it. A lump in the boy’s pocket. What
was left of his bread. It was as much as I’d lost, maybe
more. I reached a hand out to take the bread from the
boy’s pocket, but I stopped. Had it come to this? Was
I so desperate to survive that I would steal bread from
a sick boy? I quickly moved behind the boy and nestled in close, so we could keep each other warm in the
night. But as I lay there under the starless black sky,
my stomach moaning — or was it me moaning? — all
I could think about was that bit of bread. So little I
might have left it on my plate after dinner once, a long
time ago, before the war. But now that little bit of
bread was everything. It was the difference between
life and death.
He’s sick,
I told myself.
He’s mostly dead already. He’s
a Muselmann. In the morning he won’t be able to get up,
and they’ll shoot him where he lies. He doesn’t need that
bread. It would probably make him sick to eat it now
anyway. If I take it, at least one of us will survive.
Face it,
I told myself.
He’ll be dead by morning.
Still, I couldn’t take it. Not when I could feel him
breathing, not when I could feel his heart beating in
his bony chest. He might die by morning. Probably
would. But I could wait until then. I would not steal
bread from another living prisoner. Instead I closed
my eyes and hoped that sleep would at least let me
forget my hunger for a few hours.