Prisoner B-3087 (19 page)

from Gross-rosen we were to be moved
again, this time to a camp called Dachau. And once
more, we would walk.

It was late in the winter, almost spring, but the
ground was still frozen, and there was snow on
the ground. The wooden clogs I wore were terrible
for crossing icy patches and clomping through snowdrifts, but I was still better off than those who had lost
their shoes, or never had any to begin with. If you
could keep good care of your feet in the camps, especially on the marches, you could survive.

The sides of the road were littered with the dead
bodies of Jews who had marched this way before us.
They were blue and frozen, lumped into the ditches
along the side of the road so cars could still pass. The
bodies were a constant reminder to us to keep up
the pace.

As we walked past the frozen corpses, I wondered
who else used this road. Somebody else had to,
surely— someone besides the German army. Who
were these people who passed the bodies of dead Jews
in the ditches every day on their way into town to
work? How could they not see what was happening?
How could they be all right with this?

Along the way, we passed through villages and suburbs. Little houses lined the roads, houses with painted
shutters and wreaths on the doors. Electric lights lit
the windows, and inside we could sometimes see a
family sitting down to listen to the radio together, or
washing dishes in the kitchen. Every now and then
from a doorway hung a Nazi flag, bright red with a
black swastika in a white circle. It was warning enough
that we should keep our heads down and stay quiet as
we passed through.

The route from Gross-Rosen to Dachau, north of
Munich, took us through Czechoslovakia and back
into Germany again. Czechoslovakia was still held by
Germany— it had been one of the first countries to
fall at the start of the war — but the homes we passed
now were Czech, not German. Germany had conquered them, but that didn’t make them love the
Germans any more. If anything, the Czechs hated
their Nazi overlords. There was a change in the
SS officers guarding us when we crossed into
Czechoslovakia. They still walked like they owned
the place, but they were more wary, watching the
doorways and crossroads for any sign of trouble.
There were no Nazi flags to welcome them here.

No Czech revolutionaries jumped out from behind
the bushes to free us, but the Czech people fought
back in less violent ways. In one little village, there
was bread left out on a windowsill. Bread! One of the
prisoners saw it and ran for it. Others joined him, and
the bread was gone before the Nazis could yell at them
to stop. I saw a loaf of bread on the doorstep of another
house, but it was gone before I could get it — snatched
up by starving prisoners and devoured on the spot.
Every Czech village we passed had some little food set
out. Not nearly enough for us all, and not nearly
enough for those lucky enough to get a bite to eat, but
it was something.

Farther inside Czechoslovakia, some of the villagers
hung out of their windows to throw whatever they
had to us— crusts of bread, half-eaten apples, raw
potatoes. The Czechs couldn’t share much— there
was a war on, after all, and food was hard to come by.
But their kindness in the face of the Nazi soldiers and
their guns warmed my heart. It was easy to think the
worst of humanity when all I saw was brutality and
selfishness, and these people showed me there was still
good in the world, even if I rarely saw it.

The
kapo
s took as much of the food as they could
for themselves, but a little still made it into the hands
and mouths of the prisoners. The SS officers were mad
about that, but they yelled at the Czechs, not us Jews.

“Can’t you see you’re helping traitors to the
Fatherland?” they cried. The Czechs didn’t care.
Germany wasn’t their fatherland, and how were we
Jews traitors anyway? What had we done other than
to exist?

We marched on for three days, and I still hadn’t
been lucky enough to get any food from the kindhearted Czechs. I was starving, and I knew I would
die of hunger before the cold got me. I was already
struggling to keep ahead of the prisoners at the back
of the column. Any farther back, and I would end up
one of the frozen Jews on the roadside with a bullet in
my head.

There was a
kapo
in front of me with four big loaves
of Czech bread slung over his back in a cloth sack. I
stared at the bread as I walked, imagining having such
a feast. Four loaves! That bread would go bad before
that
kapo
ever ate all four loaves. The
kapo
s were
healthier and better fed than the rest of us, but they
were still not fed as well as the Nazis. He couldn’t possibly eat that much and not get sick. What if I could
talk him into giving me some? Not every
kapo
was a
monster.

I summoned what little strength I had left and
moved up closer to the
kapo
. I couldn’t speak to him
now, here, on the road. There were too many other
kapo
s around. But maybe if I stayed close to him,
made him see me as a real person, the way the Czechs
saw us, maybe when I asked him tonight for bread he
would take pity on me and give me some of his hoard.

I sidled up alongside the
kapo
, but when I saw his
face I gasped.
It was Moonface.
Moonface, the
kapo
who had beaten me whenever he
could at Bergen-Belsen. Somehow he’d been transferred
to Gross-Rosen, and now he was marching south with
us to Dachau.
Moonface turned and would have seen me, but I
quickly backed away. What terrible luck! I wanted to
cry again. So much bread, so much more bread than
one person needed, and it was Moonface who held it
all! Moonface would never give it to me, or to anyone
else. He was too cruel.
But as I trudged along, I couldn’t help staring at that
sack of bread. If I didn’t get food by the end of the day,
I would die. I knew it. My arms shook on their own,
and the green spiky leaves and toxic red berries of hollies growing alongside the road started to look
appetizing. I’d be eating poisonous fruit and bark by
nightfall if I didn’t get some of that bread.
I marched up beside Moonface again, my hunger
making me brave. What could Moonface do to me that
hunger and the cold weren’t already doing? I walked
right alongside him until he looked down and saw me.
I smiled at him, trying to make him remember me not
as the boy he used to punch in the face, but as one of
his best workers at Bergen-Belsen. Moonface frowned
at me like he was trying to remember who I was, then
ignored me.
I did everything I could to get his attention, short
of talking to him. I crossed back and forth in front of
him. I walked right beside him on the left and right,
matching him step for step. When he walked faster, I
walked faster, even though my feet were sore and frozen and my legs were so weak they wanted to quit. I
wouldn’t let them. Not yet.
That night we stopped in a field. I watched where
Moonface went, away from the other
kapo
s. Maybe he
didn’t want to share with them either. Moonface
opened his sack and pulled out one of his loaves
of bread, and I inched closer. I glanced around to
make sure none of the other
kapo
s were watching. If
they saw me, if they heard what I was about to ask,
Moonface would beat me to death. He would have to,
to save face. But Moonface had sat far enough away
from the other
kapo
s that they didn’t notice me. The
only people around were the mute living skeletons —
my fellow prisoners.
I moved close enough to stand over Moonface, and
he looked up at me with his scarred, pitted, round
face. I faltered. This was the face I had avoided so often
at Bergen-Belsen. This was the face I had fled to GrossRosen to avoid. Moonface would beat me senseless
for what I wanted to ask him. But what choice did I
have? I cleared my throat and spoke for the first time
in days.
“Do you remember me?” I croaked.
Moonface grunted and tore a bit of bread off with
his teeth.
“If you remember me,” I said, my voice cracking,
“then you know I’m a good worker.”
The other prisoners on the ground around us looked
up at me with wide eyes. They must have been thinking the same thing I had, that Moonface would kill me
just for talking to him. I pushed on before my courage
left me.
“I— I want to work, but I won’t make it on the
march another day if I don’t get some bread. I haven’t
eaten in three days, and I was— I was hoping you
could give me some.”
Moonface stared at me, his mouth slowly chewing
on the bread like a cow working its cud.
“I— I would like to be able to work,” I told him.
“But I can’t work without food.”
Moonface laid his bread aside and pulled out a knife.
He stood and put it against my throat. I tried not to
flinch, but I could feel where the knife nicked my skin.
Blood from the cut ran down my neck. The prisoners
around me seemed to hold their breath, waiting for me
to die. Or maybe it was me holding my breath. I
couldn’t tell. All I could do was stand there, as tall and
strong as possible, and wait for Moonface to decide
my fate.
Moonface held the knife against my neck, staring
into my eyes. I stared right back, showing him how
strong I was, showing him I wasn’t afraid to die.
Neither of us blinked. Another long minute went by.
If he was going to kill me, I wished he would just get
it over with. I was ready to scream!
At last, Moonface pulled the knife away from my
neck and I breathed again. To my amazement and to
the amazement of the other prisoners watching us,
Moonface cut a hunk off the loaf with his knife and
tossed the bread to me. A murmur of surprise went
through the prisoners around us, but Moonface
silenced them with a glare. I nodded my thanks to the
big ugly
kapo
and hurried away before he changed his
mind and killed me.
My heart was racing as I found a place to lie down
and eat. With shaking fingers I tore off a small piece and
lifted it to my cracked lips. No bread had ever tasted
so good in my life. I wanted to eat it all right then and
there, but there was no telling how much farther we
would have to walk. I had to save as much as I could.
Moonface had found it in his heart to be generous
once, for whatever reason. But just this once.