The platforms loudspeaker changed station. Moved to dance music. We stood there, three boys and father, thin and beardless. Father raised his head, Avrum caught father’s arm, Yitzhak took two steps towards SSman.
Avrum forcefully pulled Yitzhak into the line. Whispered, what d’you think you’re doing.
I stood like a heavy stone thrown into an abyss. Spin, spin, spin, thump.
Like a stone that had crashed on a rock.
Father was silent, pressing my arm like hot pliers.
A calm German officer signaled with his finger, right, left, left, left, left, and right again.
The orchestra changed the dance. The officer had eyes like the crack of a window.
He wore white gloves. He had shiny buttons and a wine-drinking face.
We went right. Whoever went right went to work. Whoever went left, went.
I saw smoke traveling not far from a cloud. I remember it, a black cloud, special. The smoke came out of the chimney of a large building, a huge building, the smoke drew mushroom . I asked father, what’s that?
A steel factory, Dov.
Father, answer me.
It’s a factory, Dov. A steel factory for the war.
This is where they burn Jews, father, that’s the smoke of Jewish flesh.
Father jumped as if he’d trodden on a snake, no. No, of course it isn’t, it’s a factory, that smoke is from machines, Dov.
Soldiers called out, mechanics, any mechanics here?
I shouted, I’m a mechanic, me, me. I jumped out of the line. Jumped alone.
I wanted to run as far away as I could. I wanted to escape the piles of flesh in the smoke to come. Father, Avrum and Yitzhak remained behind me.
I didn’t look back, I wanted forward, far away.
Soldiers in polished shoes and leggings like tarpaulins took me to a two-storey building. They put me on a storey with German political prisoners. German prisoners with blond hair, and one with a mustache. The prisoners had received food packages from home. They sat eating in a group. They had a wooden box at the end of the bed. A box with a lid and a medium sized lock.
I sat on the last bed and observed the mouths of the people in the room. I watched them take a bite with their teeth, gurgle, chew, swallow, chatting, offering to each other, saying thank you, sucking, wiping, burping, scratching, laughing, wrapping left-overs in a napkin, putting them back in the box, locking it and going to sleep. The German prisoners didn’t notice that I’d come, they were oblivious. For them, I was a bit of dirt on the wall.
The smell of food drove me mad. My mouth filled with saliva. I could smell sausage and cakes. Bread and smoked fish. And peanuts and chocolate. I heard sounds in my belly. I smacked my belly. The sound didn’t stop. I took off my shoes and lay down on my back. A Jew from Budapest came in to sleep next to me. A fat, older Jew, about sixty. He had drops of sweat on his cheek. He breathed heavily, like an old train engine. He told me about the enormous farm he’d left behind in Hungary. I was shocked. A Jew with lands? Yes, boy, lands the size of three villages. Really? Yes, boy, and what use is it to me now that I’m dying, dying of hunger. What’s your name, boy?
Bernard, that’s my Christian name. At home my name is Leiber.
How old are you, boy?
Sixteen and a bit.
The man caught hold of my shoulders, shook me firmly, staring at me, one eye healthy the other made of glass, and said: Bernard, look at me, I don’t stand a chance, you do. Steal, kill, live, do you hear me? You’re young, Bernard, you’re a boy with a good chance of coming out of this war, understand?
I made a small movement with my head, understand. The fat man fell back on his bed. We fell asleep in a second. The next day he was gone, in the way of Auschwitz, as I understood in time. One moment you’re talking to someone, the next moment he’s gone.
Chapter 3
Yitzhak
At Auschwitz, in the year 1944, I received a new name.
55484 was sewn onto the side of my trousers and this was my new name. I was given striped clothing. A shirt and trousers from the same fabric, like the pictures we see today. I was given a striped hat and plastic shoes with wooden soles. We stood in the dark, rows and rows of prisoners, everyone the same. Like a convoy of ants with numbers on the chest and side.
We were put in Bloc 12. In the bloc were three-tier beds. Not really beds, more like sleeping benches. We were ordered to stand in a line next to the beds. Avrum and I stood next to each other. Avrum was eighteen and asked where Dov was. I was fifteen and a bit, a year younger than Dov and didn’t know where he was. Avrum was at least a head taller than me. Avrum had broad shoulders and the bristles of a beard. I had room in my shirt at the shoulders and a smooth face with no sign of a beard. In the Bloc were other children my age. They stood among the older prisoners, looking down at the floor. I glanced at my brother, fiercely rubbing the thumb of my left hand. I couldn’t stop rubbing.
An SSman entered the bloc. He stood straight with legs apart and a hat on his head. He stood with one hand on his hip and the other playing on his thigh. He pursed his lips as if whistling and slowly passed from one prisoner to another. Advanced. Stopped. Went back. Stopped at a boy of maybe thirteen, maybe less.
The thirteen-year-old puffed out his chest and belly, made himself taller and taller and taller.
SSman beckoned with his finger.
Boy stepped out of the line. Boy cried quietly. Boy trembled.
SSman hit him on his thigh. Thwack. Boy fell silent.
SSman scratched his neck with the long nail of his little finger. Slowly scratched his bristles. I heard the scratch of sandpaper on a board. He scratched, scratched, scratched, stopped.
I stopped breathing.
SSman pursed his lips. Began to scan us again.
A boy opposite me pinched himself on the arms. I saw him stand on tiptoe. Fall. Stand. Fall. A boy beside me pulled his shirt away from his trousers, as if he’d grown fatter since standing in the line. Someone at the end of the line fell. They dragged him to the boy standing on the side.
SSman took three children and the one who’d fallen and they left.
I didn’t know the crematorium. But I did know I mustn’t go outside with SSman. I understood everything through the crack in his eyelids. I was fifteen and a bit, thin as a match, and it was my great good luck not to go out with them. That was my first stroke of luck. And there was a second stroke of luck. Two brothers from my village saved me. They were in the bloc, two beds away from me. Two large brothers, with swollen muscles in their arms, and bull like necks. The brothers lifted me onto the third tier of the bed.
Covered me with a straw mattress, saying, when there’s appel – counting – you don’t come down, understand, Icho? I stayed on the third tier for four days. SSman came to our bloc every day or two, took small thin prisoners. Avrum gave me bread. Avrum whispered the situation to me from below.
After a week they announced over the loudspeaker: Going to work, not counting. The two brothers from my village didn’t believe the loudspeaker. They told the group, they’re taking us to the crematorium. The two brothers climbed onto the bed and help me to get down. I get down from the third tier and feel my legs fold by themselves. As if they’d been filled with margarine. I held onto the wall and looked at my brother. Avrum grabbed me by the hips and stuck out his tongue. Dragged me to the door. We were the last to leave and I glanced at the fence. An electric, barbed-wire fence at least four meters high. I saw a sign with the drawing of a skull and several words.