But death hardly needed their help. The cold was conscientiously doing its work. At every step, somebody fell down and ceased to suffer.
From time to time, SS officers on motorcycles drove the length of the column to shake off the growing apathy:
“Hold on! We're almost there!”
“Courage! Just a few more hours!”
“We're arriving in Gleiwitz!”
These words of encouragement, even coming as they did from the mouths of our assassins, were of great help. Nobody wanted to give up now, just before the end, so close to our destination. Our eyes searched the horizon for the barbed wire of Gleiwitz. Our only wish was to arrive there quickly.
By now it was night. It had stopped snowing. We marched a few more hours before we arrived. We saw the camp only when we stood right in front of its gate.
The Kapos quickly settled us into the barrack. There was shoving and jostling as if this were the ultimate haven, the gate- way to life. People trod over numbed bodies, trampled wounded faces. There were no cries, only a few moans. My father and I were thrown to the ground by this rolling tide. From beneath me came a desperate cry:
“You're crushing me…have mercy!”
The voice was familiar.
“You're crushing me…mercy, have mercy!”
The same faint voice, the same cry I had heard somewhere before. This voice had spoken to me one day. When? Years ago? No, it must have been in the camp.
“Mercy!”
Knowing that I was crushing him, preventing him from breathing, I wanted to get up and disengage myself to allow him to breathe. But I myself was crushed under the weight of other bodies. I had difficulty breathing. I dug my nails into unknown faces. I was biting my way through, searching for air. No one cried out.
Suddenly I remembered. Juliek! The boy from Warsaw who played the violin in the Buna orchestra…
“Juliek, is that you?”
“Eliezer… The twenty-five whiplashes… Yes… I re- member.”
He fell silent. A long moment went by.
“Juliek! Can you hear me, Juliek?”
“Yes…” he said feebly. “What do you want?”
He was not dead. “Are you all right, Juliek?” I asked, less to know his answer than to hear him speak, to know he was alive.
“All right, Eliezer… All right… Not too much air… Tired. My feet are swollen. It's good to rest, but my violin…”
I thought he'd lost his mind. His violin? Here?
“What about your violin?”
He was gasping:
“I…I'm afraid…They'll break…my violin… I… I brought it with me.”
I could not answer him. Someone had lain down on top of me, smothering me. I couldn't breathe through my mouth or my nose. Sweat was running down my forehead and my back. This was it; the end of the road. A silent death, suffocation. No way to scream, to call for help.
I tried to rid myself of my invisible assassin. My whole desire to live became concentrated in my nails. I scratched, I fought for a breath of air. I tore at decaying flesh that did not respond. I could not free myself of that mass weighing down my chest. Who knows? Was I struggling with a dead man?
I shall never know. All I can say is that I prevailed. I suc- ceeded in digging a hole in that wall of dead and dying people, a small hole through which I could drink a little air.
“FATHER, ARE YOU THERE?” I asked as soon as I was able to utter a word.
I knew that he could not be far from me.
“Yes!” a voice replied from far away, as if from another world. “I am trying to sleep.”
He was trying to sleep. Could one fall asleep here? Wasn't it dangerous to lower one's guard, even for a moment, when death could strike at any time?
Those were my thoughts when I heard the sound of a violin. A violin in a dark barrack where the dead were piled on top of the living? Who was this madman who played the violin here, at the edge of his own grave? Or was it a hallucination?
It had to be Juliek.
He was playing a fragment of a Beethoven concerto. Never before had I heard such a beautiful sound. In such silence.
How had he succeeded in disengaging himself? To slip out from under my body without my feeling it?
The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek's soul had become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played that which he would never play again.
I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget this concert given before an audience of the dead and dying? Even today, when I hear that particular piece by Beethoven, my eyes close and out of the darkness emerges the pale and melancholy face of my Polish comrade bidding farewell to an audience of dying men.
I don't know how long he played. I was overcome by sleep. When I awoke at daybreak, I saw Juliek facing me, hunched over, dead. Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant lit- tle corpse.
WE STAYED IN GLEIWITZ for three days. Days without food or water. We were forbidden to leave the barrack. The door was guarded by the SS.
I was hungry and thirsty. I must have been very dirty and di- sheveled, to judge by what the others looked like. The bread we had brought from Buna had been devoured long since. And who knew when we would be given another ration?
The Front followed us. We could again hear the cannons very close by. But we no longer had the strength or the courage to think that the Germans would run out of time, that the Russians would reach us before we could be evacuated.
We learned that we would be moved to the center of Germany.
On the third day, at dawn, we were driven out of the barrack. We threw blankets over our shoulders, like prayer shawls. We were directed to a gate that divided the camp in two. A group of SS officers stood waiting. A word flew through our ranks: selection!
The SS officers were doing the selection: the weak, to the left; those who walked well, to the right.
My father was sent to the left. I ran after him. An SS officer shouted at my back:
“Come back!”
I inched my way through the crowd. Several SS men rushed to find me, creating such confusion that a number of people were able to switch over to the right—among them my father and I. Still, there were gunshots and some dead.
We were led out of the camp. After a half-hour march, we arrived in the very middle of a field crossed by railroad tracks. This was where we were to wait for the train's arrival.
Snow was falling heavily. We were forbidden to sit down or to move.
A thick layer of snow was accumulating on our blankets. We were given bread, the usual ration. We threw ourselves on it. Someone had the idea of quenching his thirst by eating snow. Soon, we were all imitating him. As we were not permitted to bend down, we took out our spoons and ate the snow off our neighbors' backs. A mouthful of bread and a spoonful of snow. The SS men who were watching were greatly amused by the spectacle.
The hours went by. Our eyes were tired from staring at the horizon, waiting for the liberating train to appear. It arrived only very late that evening. An infinitely long train, composed of roofless cattle cars. The SS shoved us inside, a hundred per car: we were so skinny! When everybody was on board, the convoy left.
PRESSED TIGHTLY AGAINST one another, in an effort to resist the cold, our heads empty and heavy, our brains a whirlwind of decaying memories. Our minds numb with indifference. Here or elsewhere, what did it matter? Die today or tomorrow, or later? The night was growing longer, neverending.
When at last a grayish light appeared on the horizon, it revealed a tangle of human shapes, heads sunk deeply between the shoulders, crouching, piled one on top of the other, like a cemetery covered with snow. In the early dawn light, I tried to distinguish between the living and those who were no more. But there was barely a difference. My gaze remained fixed on someone who, eyes wide open, stared into space. His colorless face was c
overed with a layer of frost and snow.
My father had huddled near me, draped in his blanket, shoulders laden with snow. And what if he were dead, as well? I called out to him. No response. I would have screamed if I could have. He was not moving.
Suddenly, the evidence overwhelmed me: there was no longer any reason to live, any reason to fight.
The train stopped in an empty field. The abrupt halt had wak- ened a few sleepers. They stood, looking around, startled.
Outside, the SS walked by, shouting:
“Throw out all the dead! Outside, all the corpses!”
The living were glad. They would have more room. Volunteers began the task. They touched those who had remained on the ground.
“Here's one! Take him!”
The volunteers undressed him and eagerly shared his garments. Then, two “gravediggers” grabbed him by the head and feet and threw him from the wagon, like a sack of flour.
There was shouting all around:
“Come on! Here's another! My neighbor. He's not moving…”
I woke from my apathy only when two men approached my father. I threw myself on his body. He was cold. I slapped him. I rubbed his hands, crying:
“Father! Father! Wake up. They're going to throw you outside…”
His body remained inert. The two “gravediggers” had grabbed me by the neck:
“Leave him alone. Can't you see that he's dead?”
“No!” I yelled. “He's not dead! Not yet!”
And I started to hit him harder and harder. At last, my father half opened his eyes. They were glassy. He was breathing faintly.
“You see,” I cried.
The two men went away.
Twenty corpses were thrown from our wagon. Then the train resumed its journey, leaving in its wake, in a snowy field in Poland, hundreds of naked orphans without a tomb.
* * * * *
WE RECEIVED no food. We lived on snow; it took the place of bread. The days resembled the nights, and the nights left in our souls the dregs of their darkness. The train rolled slowly, often halted for a few hours, and continued. It never stopped snowing. We remained lying on the floor for days and nights, one on top of the other, never uttering a word. We were nothing but frozen bodies. Our eyes closed, we merely waited for the next stop, to unload our dead.
THERE FOLLOWED days and nights of traveling. Occasionally, we would pass through German towns. Usually, very early in the morning. German laborers were going to work. They would stop and look at us without surprise.
One day when we had come to a stop, a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wagon. There was a stampede. Dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs. The worker watched the spectacle with great interest.
YEARS LATER, I witnessed a similar spectacle in Aden. Our ship's passengers amused themselves by throwing coins to the “natives,” who dove to retrieve them. An elegant Parisian lady took great pleasure in this game. When I noticed two children desper- ately fighting in the water, one trying to strangle the other, I implored the lady:
“Please, don't throw any more coins!”
“Why not?” said she. “I like to give charity…”
* * * * *
IN THE WAGON where the bread had landed, a battle had ensued. Men were hurling themselves against each other, trampling, tear- ing at and mauling each other. Beasts of prey unleashed, animal hate in their eyes. An extraordinary vitality possessed them, sharpening their teeth and nails.
A crowd of workmen and curious passersby had formed all along the train. They had undoubtedly never seen a train with this kind of cargo. Soon, pieces of bread were falling into the wag- ons from all sides. And the spectators observed these emaciated creatures ready to kill for a crust of bread.
A piece fell into our wagon. I decided not to move. Anyway, I knew that I would not be strong enough to fight off dozens of violent men! I saw, not far from me, an old man dragging himself on all fours. He had just detached himself from the struggling mob. He was holding one hand to his heart. At first I thought he had received a blow to his chest. Then I understood: he was hiding a piece of bread under his shirt. With lightning speed he pulled it out and put it to his mouth. His eyes lit up, a smile, like a grimace, illuminated his ashen face. And was immediately extinguished. A shadow had lain down beside him. And this shadow threw itself over him. Stunned by the blows, the old man was crying:
“Meir, my little Meir! Don't you recognize me…You're killing your father… I have bread…for you too… for you too…”
He collapsed. But his fist was still clutching a small crust. He wanted to raise it to his mouth. But the other threw himself on him. The old man mumbled something, groaned, and died. Nobody cared. His son searched him, took the crust of bread, and began to devour it. He didn't get far. Two men had been watching him. They jumped him. Others joined in. When they withdrew, there were two dead bodies next to me, the father and the son.
I was sixteen.
IN OUR WAGON, there was a friend of my father's, Meir Katz. He had worked as a gardener in Buna and from time to time had brought us some green vegetables. Less undernourished than the rest of us, detention had been easier on him. Because he was stronger than most of us, he had been put in charge of our wagon.
On the third night of our journey, I woke up with a start when I felt two hands on my throat, trying to strangle me. I barely had time to call out:
“Father!”
Just that one word. I was suffocating. But my father had awak- ened and grabbed my aggressor. Too weak to overwhelm him, he thought of calling Meir Katz:
“Come, come quickly! Someone is strangling my son!”
In a few moments, I was freed. I never did find out why this stranger had wanted to strangle me.
But days later, Meir Katz told my father:
“Shlomo, I am getting weak. My strength is gone. I won't make it…”
“Don't give in!” my father tried to encourage him. “You must resist! Don't lose faith in yourself!”
But Meir Katz only groaned in response:
“I can't g o on, Shlomo!… I can't help it…I can't go on…”
My father took his arm. And Meir Katz, the strong one, the sturdiest of us all, began to cry. His son had been taken from him during the first selection but only now was he crying for him. Only now did he fall apart. He could not go on. He had reached the end.
On the last day of our journey, a terrible wind began to blow. And the snow kept falling. We sensed that the end was near; the real end. We could not hold out long in this glacial wind, this storm.
Somebody got up and yelled: “We must not remain sitting. We shall freeze to death! Let's get up and move…”
We all got up. We all pulled our soaked blankets tighter around our shoulders. And we tried to take a few steps, to shuffle back and forth, in place.
Suddenly, a cry rose in the wagon, the cry of a wounded animal. Someone had just died.
Others, close to death, imitated his cry. And their cries seemed to come from beyond the grave. Soon everybody was crying. Groaning. Moaning. Cries of distress hurled into the wind and the snow.
The lament spread from wagon to wagon. It was contagious. And now hundreds of cries rose at once. The death rattle of an entire convoy with the end approaching. All boundaries had been crossed. Nobody had any strength left. And the night seemed endless.
Meir Katz was moaning:
“Why don't they just shoot us now?”
That same night, we reached our destination.
It was late. The guards came to unload us. The dead were left in the wagons. Only those who could stand could leave.
Meir Katz remained on the train. The last day had been the most lethal. We had been a hundred or so in this wagon. Twelve of us left it. Among them, my father and myself.
We had arrived in Buchenwald.
AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE CAMP, SS officers were waiting for us. We were counted. Then we were directed to the Appelplatz
. The orders were given over the loudspeakers: “Form ranks of fives! Groups of one hundred! Five steps forward!”
I tightened my grip on my father's hand. The old, familiar fear: not to lose him.
Very close to us stood the tall chimney of the crematorium's furnace. It no longer impressed us. It barely drew our attention.
A veteran of Buchenwald told us that we would be taking a shower and afterward be sent to different blocks. The idea of a hot shower fascinated me. My father didn't say a word. He was breathing heavily beside me.
“Father,” I said, “just another moment. Soon, we'll be able to lie down. You'll be able to rest…”
He didn't answer. I myself was so weary that his silence left me indifferent. My only wish was to take the shower as soon as possible and lie down on a cot.
Only it wasn't easy to reach the showers. Hundreds of prisoners crowded the area. The guards seemed unable to restore order. They were lashing out, left and right, to no avail. Some prisoners who didn't have the strength to jostle, or even to stand, sat down in the snow. My father wanted to do the same. He was moaning:
“I can't anymore…It's over… I shall die right here…”
He dragged me toward a pile of snow from which protruded human shapes, torn blankets.
“Leave me,” he said. “I can't go on anymore…Have pity on me…I'll wait here until we can go into the showers…You'll come and get me.”
I could have screamed in anger. To have lived and endured so much; was I going to let my father die now? Now that we would be able to take a good hot shower and lie down? “Father!” I howled.
“Father! Get up! Right now! You will kill yourself…”
And I grabbed his arm. He continued to moan:
“Don't yell, my son…Have pity on your old father…Let me rest here…a little…I beg of you, I'm so tired…no more strength…”
He had become childlike: weak, frightened, vulnerable.