Prisoner B-3087

by Alan Gratz

  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 sixteen years old now. 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 to 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.

  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 kapos 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 kapos’ 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.

  It was my stomach that woke me the next morning, more than the light. My first thought was the boy’s bread, but the rise and fall of the boy’s chest told me he hadn’t died in the night. He was still alive! How was it possible? And not only was he alive, but his breath was much less shallow. There was color in his face again too. The sleep had done what I promised him it would — it had given him the rest he needed to face a new day of marching.

  I shook with anger and frustration. He was supposed to die! I needed him to die, so I could have his bread.

  I closed my eyes. What was I thinking? I wouldn’t steal bread from a living boy, but I would wish death on him so I could take it without guilt? What were the camps doing to me? What had the Nazis turned me into?

  Faced with two evils — stealing from a living boy, or wishing him dead to take his food guilt-free — I realized I could more easily have the sin of stealing on my conscience. I needed that bread to live, and I was going to take it. The boy owed me, after all. He was alive only because I had helped him.

  Slowly, my hand shaking, I reached around the nameless boy for the bread sticking out of his pocket. I touched it. I had it in my fingers when the boy’s eyes opened wide and he stirred.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” he said.

  I yanked my hand back. “Nothing! I was — I was just trying to see if you were still alive.”

  The boy pushed the bread farther down into his pocket. “Well, I am,” the boy told me. He pushed himself to his feet.

  “Wait,” I said. “I’m the one who helped you yesterday —” I started to say, but without so much as a thank-you the boy staggered away to join the march.

  I would have cried again, but I was too tired. A kapo came around, kicking the last of us still on the ground, and I picked myself up. I wasn’t a Muselmann. I might be starving, and I might be that nameless boy the others saw staggering through the ranks by midday, but I wasn’t dead yet. My name was still Yanek, and I was going to survive.

  Three days later, I staggered through the gates of Sachsenhausen. I barely knew where I was, or who I was. All I remembered of the last three days was an enormous radio tower in the distance, growing larger and larger as we marched. “That’s Berlin,” someone had said. “That tower is in Berlin.” The tower was in Berlin, but we weren’t; we were in Sachsenhausen, and I was so tired and hungry that I didn’t care if I lived or died. Death seemed like such a welcome release.

  If the Nazis had put us right to work, I might have died that day. I might have curled up on the ground like a Muselmann and never gotten up again. But they sent us to our barracks instead, where they fed us soup and bread. I was starving — I had been without food for days now, with only snow to eat each morning before we began to walk again — but all I wanted to do was sleep. When would they let us lie down?

  They wouldn’t let us get into our bunks yet, so I sipped at the soup. It was nothing better than flavored water, but it was warm. So blessedly warm! My dry mouth tried to hang on to every last drop as I swallowed it down. The bread I couldn’t eat. Not yet. I didn’t put it in the waist of my pants this time though. I clung to it like it was a precious jewel, hoarding it like a dragon.

  At last they told us it was time to sleep, and I crawled up into a single bed with five other men. There were so many of us we couldn’t sleep on our backs, but I fell asleep right away just the same. Just being out of the cold felt like paradise.

  It seemed I had just closed my eyes when morning came and the kapos roused us up out of our beds. In the light of day, we could see the camp was filled with corpses. Sometimes they lay alone, up against the wall of a barrack, as though they had simply fallen asleep there. Sometimes there were piles of them, built neatly in rows of four, one level turned this way, the next level turned that way, so they would stack evenly. Sometimes the bodies looked like they had just been tossed aside where they had died, in the middle of a path, out behind the latrine. I had seen death many times by now. I had seen men killed, and I had watched men die of starvation and cold right in front of me. But here in Sachsenhausen, death was so common, so ordinary, that the dead were l
ike fallen trees in the forest — so unremarkable that they were only moved when they got in the way.

  Before roll call we would wash, the Nazis told us, and they marched us out to some pumps. There were no brushes, no soap, no towels, but I rinsed myself off anyway. The water was freezing, but I was filthy from the march. As I ran a wet finger across my teeth, a memory suddenly came to me, unbidden. I remembered the first day my mother had brought me home a toothbrush. I must have been no more than three or four. The toothbrush was shiny and plastic and green. That moment seemed like a million years ago. Had I ever really owned something so amazing as a toothbrush? Had I ever really lived in a world with such wondrous things in it? Even the simplest of possessions seemed like treasures now.

  On the way to roll call, I ate what I could of last night’s bread. I had clutched it throughout the night, and woke to find myself still protecting it. The soup and sleep and bread had done me good. I was no prize now, all bones and skin and shaking hands, but I wasn’t so far gone that I couldn’t work.

  The Nazis lined us up for roll call near the front gate, which had the words Work Makes You Free on it, just like at Auschwitz. Our new masters didn’t seem interested in making us work though. Not right away. Instead we stood at attention, our feet sinking into the freezing mud while they called our numbers. Again and again they went through the roll call.

  Sleet began to fall, and the Nazis left us standing in the yard while they went inside to warm themselves by the fire. They watched us from the windows, making sure none of us moved. We stood there for hours, for no reason other than the delight of our captors.

  One man wiped the wet sleet from his face, and the Nazis saw him. They rushed outside and beat him, then ordered him to give what they called the Sachsenhausen salute. They forced him to squat with his hands held out in front of him. If he moved in any way, if his arms lowered, or his legs moved, or he fell over on his side, the Nazis would kill him. And they never let him up, either. It was torture. Everyone could see that. Our legs were barely strong enough to hold us up, let alone to squat for hours. Even a healthy person would fall over in time. The man’s legs began to shake, and his arms started to quiver, but still he held the salute. It was only later, when the Nazis had resumed the roll call and we had all forgotten about him, that the man finally fell over. The Nazis ran to beat him, but he never felt it. He was unconscious. Maybe even dead. I didn’t know. The guards dragged him away, and I never saw him again.