by Alan Gratz
Suddenly one of the prisoners near the end of the line broke off and ran. The Nazis saw him right away and yelled for the guards at the gate to catch him, but he wasn’t headed for the gate. In a stumbling, broken run, the prisoner threw himself on the high-voltage electric barbed wire that lined the fence. His body sparked and thrashed in the wires and bled as the barbs cut him. Within seconds his body hung dead and limp. The Nazis had to turn off the electric fence to get him out. His shirt and pants were scorched from the electricity, and his skin was black where the wires had touched him. I couldn’t look, but at the same time I couldn’t look away.
The Germans laughed as they threw his body down in front of us for everyone to see.
“Would any other Jews like to throw themselves on the fence?” they asked. “Go now! We won’t stop you! We’ll be glad to be rid of you!”
No one else took them up on their offer.
After roll call we were finally put to work. I broke rocks again in the quarry pit. Why the Germans needed so much gravel I never understood, but I broke big rocks into medium-sized rocks, and medium-sized rocks into small rocks, and small rocks into gravel for them — pound, pound, pound, pound — my hammer getting heavier and heavier with each strike.
At lunch, a half dozen other young men and I were pulled away from our scant meals of watery soup and hard bread. We looked at one another nervously. Was this it? Were we all going to be lined up along a trench and shot? I fought down waves of terror as I walked. Had I survived the death march and gotten my strength back, such as it was, all so I could die in a muddy ditch? I didn’t want to die. Not after surviving so long. Not after coming so far. I scanned the camp as we walked, watching for where they were taking us. If it was a death pit, what would I do? Run? Turn and fight? Yell and scream? Or would I let them shoot me without fighting back, so that no one else would have to suffer because of me?
But it wasn’t a ditch the Nazis took us to. It was the soldiers’ mess hall. I was even more confused. Were they going to feed us? In the soldiers’ canteen?
No. It was a trick, of course. All part of the Nazis’ game. And in Sachsenhausen, they played the game with relish. The other boys and I were lined up in front of the soldiers’ tables, and we were told to sing. For an hour we were their choir, our weak, raspy voices serenading them as they laughed and talked and ate — and the food they ate! Big, heaping plates of meat and potatoes and gravy, and steaming black coffee. I tried to look away so my stomach wouldn’t rumble, but just the smell of it made my mouth water. They weren’t going to feed us any of it, of course. When they were finished eating we were sent back to our barracks, where we found no food left for us.
That afternoon, they put me to work chopping firewood to heat the soldiers’ quarters. Chop, chop, chop, chop. Every swing meant survival, I told myself. Work to live. Live until the Allies come. There were planes overhead here too, and the rumbles of explosions in the distance. Berlin was under attack. The war had come to Germany. But would the war end before the Nazis killed me?
That night at roll call the Sachsenhausen guards wanted entertainment, so they had a boxing tournament. They made some of the prisoners be the boxers and forced the rest of us to watch.
When the guards at Sachsenhausen tired of us, they shipped us off by train to Bergen-Belsen. We traveled by cattle car again, and again prisoners died of starvation and suffocation along the way. Once the Nazis dropped three loaves of bread in our car through a hole at the top, just to watch us fight for it. As our train pushed farther north, there was more room to breathe as the dead dropped to the floor.
The train arrived at Bergen-Belsen in the morning, my seventh concentration camp in less than three years. The commandant of the camp took one look at us and started screaming at our guards. “What did you bring me? Look at these skeletons! How do you expect these walking dead to work?” The commandant moved among us, pointing at prisoners. “Him. Him. Him. Him,” he said, and soldiers pulled the men out of the ranks. I puffed up my chest to try and look as strong and healthy as I could, but the commandant took one look at me and moved on past, picking other prisoners.
My heart cried out. No! I had to be strong enough to work! Work was the only way to survive!
When the commandant had pulled seventy-five prisoners out of our lines, he had them marched to the other side of the tracks and ordered his soldiers to shoot them. They were gunned down before we surviving, wide-eyed prisoners even had time to react. I quickly turned away. I couldn’t watch. The commandant hadn’t chosen the strongest, he’d taken the weakest. I just couldn’t tell the difference. How he could, I didn’t understand. I felt terrible for it, but secretly I was glad it had been somebody else who was killed, and not me.
“Take the others back to the barracks,” the commandant said with disgust. “No work for a week, until they regain their strength.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. No work for a week? What kind of trick was this? I could see the other prisoners glancing at one another, wondering the same thing. But it was no trick. When we got back to the barracks, we were fed the thickest, richest soup I had eaten in six years, and big pieces of fresh bread, hot from the oven! I was so thin and miserable I thought I could gain weight just from the smell alone. There was no gas chamber here either, and no chimneys burning red in the night. Maybe Bergen-Belsen really was better than all the other camps. Maybe this was the place where I could survive until the war ended.
I scarfed my piece of bread and washed it down with that delicious, meaty soup, but an hour later I learned that even in kindness, the Nazis were cruel. Every one of us woke with the most terrible stomach cramps we’d ever had. Our poor stomachs weren’t used to such hearty food. We spent the night changing places with one another on the two barrels left in the barrack. I finally drifted off close to dawn, still hunched over from the pain in my gut.
The next day they brought us more of the thick soup and warm bread, but this time I was careful. I remembered reading about medicine back in Kraków and learning that dry toast helped settle an upset stomach. So I traded my soup for more bread and toasted the bread over the wood stove in the barrack. I hated to give up the delicious soup, but the bread sat better with me, and I slowly began to get stronger.
A week later, as promised, we were put back to work. It was the same as always — chopping wood, breaking rocks, building new camp buildings. One day I was hard at work hauling boards for the walls of a barrack when one of our new kapos called me over. I studied him as I approached. He had a big, round face that was covered with acne pits and scars.
Without a word, he punched me in the face. My world exploded. Pain shot from my nose to my brain, and my head snapped back like I’d been hit with a shovel. I fell to the ground clutching my face.
“What did you do that for?” I cried. “What did I do?” I knew I shouldn’t have said anything, but I didn’t care. I was too stunned. My nose was already swelling up so badly I couldn’t breathe through it.
“You looked at me the wrong way,” the kapo told me. His eyes glittered with amusement before he told me to get up and get back to work.
My head was throbbing. It was hard to stand. Dark red blood splotched my blue-and-gray-striped uniform. I held the back of my sleeve to my nose — gently, tenderly, it still hurt so badly — trying to stem the bleeding. I hoped my nose wasn’t broken. If it was, there was nothing I could do about it. I made it back to the boards I’d dropped, trying not to let my tears spill over.
“Moonface,” one of the other prisoners said as he fell in alongside me.
“What?” I said.
“Moonface. That’s what we call him.” He nodded to the big, round-faced kapo who’d slugged me. “They say he killed three men before the war. The Germans put him in prison, but when the war started they made him a kapo. We’ve got murderers for guards.”
I knew our guards were murderers now, but I didn’t know some of them were convicted killers in the past. I made sure to stay well clear of M
oonface after that, but somehow I always managed to be assigned to work duty near him. He seemed to notice me wherever I went too, and soon I became his pet project. Moonface kicked me and hit me and beat me whenever he could.
Bergen-Belsen might have been the place for me to survive until the end of the war, but for Moonface. I had to get away from him. When I heard the Nazis were rounding up workers to send them to another camp, I made sure I was at the front of the line. But the Nazis weren’t looking for volunteers. They had their own method for choosing us already figured out.
“Only the strongest and healthiest prisoners will be transferred,” the Nazi announced. “To prove which of you is most able, there will be a race.”
More games. Each of us had to take off our clothes, roll them into bundles, and dash from one side of the barracks to the other. The Nazis watched and laughed as we staggered through the maze of beds. When it was my turn, I took off my uniform and was surprised, again, at how skinny I was. Even after a week of rest and better food, my arms and legs still looked like toothpicks.
“You!” one of the Nazis yelled at me. “Run!”
I ran as fast as I could. I had to win this race. I had to get out of Bergen-Belsen. I had to get away from Moonface! I was running for my life. I stumbled around one of the beds, and crashed into another, bruising my thigh very badly, but I still flew through the doorway at the other side of the barrack faster than some of the other prisoners. When I burst outside, all I wanted to do was collapse on the ground until my lungs stopped burning and my legs stopped shaking, but I knew if I did that the Nazis would never pick me to move on. Instead I forced myself to stand up and look relaxed, like I’d just taken a stroll in the park.
“He can work,” one of the guards said.
I took my time putting my uniform back over my bony body, bending over so they couldn’t see me gasping for breath. I spotted Moonface, out in the yard, pushing another prisoner to the ground and kicking him.
Another cattle car awaited me, and so did another camp, but at least I had gotten away from Moonface for good.
Buchenwald concentration camp. JUST the looks on the faces of the prisoners already there told me all I needed to know. They were scared. Wide-eyed. And not just at roll call, or when a kapo passed by. It was all the time, like at any moment death might come for you. And at Buchenwald, as I was to learn, death came in many guises.
After our first roll call, I was assigned to the stone quarry. Instead of breaking rocks, I was told to carry them up a long hill. I had to carry the big rocks on my back, with my arms behind me to hold them in place. If you took a stone too large, you would drop it and the Nazis would shoot you. If you took a stone too small, the Nazis would shoot you for being lazy. Picking just the right size stone became a kind of competition among us. Another fine joke from the Nazis.
Some of the prisoners pulled carts instead of carrying stones on their backs, but that wasn’t a job you wanted either. The Jews were chained to the carts like a team of draught horses and whipped like animals. Only these animals were also required to sing. The Germans called them their singing horses. They had to carry a tune as they hauled enormous loads of rock up the hill. I had already been part of the prisoner chorus at Sachsenhausen. I was grateful I didn’t have to do it strapped to a horse cart here.
It was only at our second roll call of the day that I saw the Buchenwald zoo.
I had seen the fenced-in area at the first roll call, but not the animals. There were deer, monkeys, even bears — bears! — right there in the concentration camp.
The zoo, I learned, was the idea of the camp’s commandant, Karl Koch, and his wife, Ilse. The commandant had built it so his guards and their families would have something to entertain them. We starving prisoners stood at attention, with our hunched shoulders and gaunt faces and oversized, filthy clothes, while healthy, well-fed children and their mothers came to see the animals. The little girls wore pretty dresses and shiny black shoes and ribbons in their hair. The little boys wore shorts and jackets and caps, just as I used to. Sometimes they sucked on lollipops, watching us the way they watched the animals. What were they thinking, those little German children? Did they see animals when they looked at us, or people? I wasn’t so sure myself anymore.
The bears in the zoo were fed better than the prisoners. At roll call, we’d watch as big bloody steaks were fed to the bears. I was so hungry I would have fought one of the bears for that meat and eaten it raw — steak and bear. One day the Nazis gave two prisoners the chance. They dropped a piece of raw meat in the mud between two men and told them to fight for it, and they did. The SS officers laughed at them and hit them with clubs while the Jews scrambled in the mud for their dinner. The animals in the zoo were never treated so badly.
The camp’s commandant was a brutal man, but his wife was worse. Prisoners called her the Witch of Buchenwald and the Beast of Buchenwald. As with Amon Goeth years before — years! — I did my best to stay away from both Herr and Frau Koch.
One day at roll call, the Witch of Buchenwald walked up and down the rows of prisoners with one of the SS guards. She came to me, checked the number tattooed on my arm, and moved to the next prisoner. She read the number tattooed on his arm and checked it against a list on a clipboard the soldier carried.
“You,” she said to the prisoner. “I am told you have another tattoo.”
The prisoner nodded nervously.
“Show it to me,” Ilse Koch said.
The man pulled his sleeve up his thin, bony arm to show her a faded tattoo of a crescent moon.
“Yes,” the witch said. “Very nice. Mark him down,” she told the soldier. He made a note on his clipboard.
When they were gone, I heard the man beside me give a little whimper, like he was trying not to cry. What difference did it make that he had a tattoo? Why had it made the Witch of Buchenwald single him out? He must have been asking himself the same questions. All that mattered was that he was on the Witch’s list. He had been noticed, and surviving meant never being noticed by the Nazis. After the roll call, I never saw the man with the other tattoo again.
One day I was washing myself at the camp water pump, part of my daily ritual, when I saw two SS officers lure a deer to the fence of their enclosure in the zoo. It was a sleek animal, with tall, broad antlers. While it nibbled at the food one of them offered, the other officer tied its antlers to the fence with a leather strap. The buck only discovered that it was caught when it tried to pull away. It snorted and stamped and whipped its head back and forth, trying to pull itself free, but it was trapped. The SS officers laughed at it and taunted it, and left it tied to the fence.
I had seen the Nazis do terrible things. Inhumane, unimaginably cruel things, and I had started to become numb. But somehow seeing that deer there thrashing around, trying to free itself from the fence, made my blood boil. I wanted to run over and untie it, to set it free, but I couldn’t. There were too many other German soldiers around. If they saw me near the zoo I’d be shot.
So I turned my back on him. I left the buck tied to the fence. As much as I wanted to help him, I had to look out for myself.
At roll call that night, the two SS officers who had tied up the deer were pulled off duty by the commandant. Word of what they had done had gotten back to Koch, and he berated them in German. Their zoo privileges were taken away, and they were not allowed to watch films in the camp movie theater for three months.
Cruelty to prisoners the Nazis could abide. But not cruelty to animals.
At roll call a few days later, they told us we were being moved again. Gross-Rosen needed workers, and there were no new shipments of prisoners coming in from the countryside. The prisoners in the camps would be reassigned from now on as each camp needed workers.
The Nazis had killed so many of us, they were running out of Jews.
They took us by train. They packed us in again, so tightly we could do nothing but stand, and gave us no food or water for the trip. People died all around
me, just like before, but now I hardly took notice of it. I had been surrounded by death for so long, seen so many men die before my eyes, lived with so many dead bodies piled and stacked and strewn about like so much human firewood, that I almost couldn’t care anymore. Almost. I closed my eyes on the train, trying not to see the death all around me, but I knew it was there. Sleep was my only refuge from the horror, the thirst, and the starvation, so I retreated there, dozing on again and off again as the train shuddered and creaked on its way to a new camp.
I had long since stopped hoping that each new camp would be better. Each was no better or worse than the last. They were all different rooms in purgatory, each different but each the same, and the Nazis made it all the more nonsensical by shuttling us around from one to the other, as though it made any difference.
Planes flew over the train, so low just their passing shook the cars, and we heard the patter of bullets. A bomb exploded so near the tracks we could feel the heat from it. The train stopped, and suddenly I had a vision of a bomb falling right on us, killing us all. And for a moment I wanted it to happen, the way Fred had so long ago. Anything, anything that would get me out of this nightmare.