The screaming of the train’s brakes and the cars’ bumpers banging and shuddering jarred me from my snooze. It was a starless night. My senses were numb, but one thing was crystal clear: I was starving. Hubert was slumped over motionless. His raspy cough let me know he was still with me. I heard someone yelling from outside the train. Was it what I thought they were calling out: “Five-minute stop for lunch?”
“Alle Leichen ausladen!” a boche repeatedly screamed.
No, it was only my wishful thinking. The SS were ordering us to unload the dead bodies. After being in this car for three days, I thought, a little exercise would do me well.
With the ever-present threat of Allied bombers, only dim blue electric lights illuminated the train station. From all the cars, bodies started raining onto the snowy platform. It looked as if the Muselmänner were erecting a bulwark of flesh for a last stand against the Nazi crusaders. In pairs, we dragged the bodies to the last car, which the SS had cleared out. There were still mounds of dead when that car was filled, so a second morgue car was started.
On my fourth trip I came across a body I could handle alone. I took hold of the corpse by the trousers, but the cord used as his belt gave way and I fell on my ass with the pants in my hands. A couple of Häftlinge passing by with a corpse had a good chuckle at my Laurel and Hardy pratfall. Their laughter might have seemed somewhat perverse, but for many of us a sense of humor was the only thing that preserved what little sanity we had left. In Monowitz, I had witnessed a couple of Häftlinge laugh with the noose around their necks. That was true gallows humor. Laughter really pissed off the guards at Buna. Swinging their rifle butts, they would scream, “Lachen verboten! Lachen verboten!” as if they thought we were enjoying our holiday in hell.
The body of a tall yellow triangle, barely older than I, landed at my feet. Taking hold of his ankles, I started to drag him across the platform when he began to move. He blinked his big dark eyes and breathed deeply. The snow must have revived him. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t utter a sound. He licked his lips. I knelt and put a handful of snow into his mouth. He tried a grateful smile, but it came out as a grimace. I brought him to his feet. I wasn’t about to put him in that morgue car.
“This boy is still alive!” I yelled as I hoisted him into a car, a task I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish if he hadn’t been a Muselmann of the first order.
After dragging another body to the morgue car, I found the kid lying on the platform again. He had the look of someone who had wakened from an unfathomable dream. I was flushed with anger, and before I knew it I was shouting into the car.
“Was ist los mit euch Drecksäke? Der lebt doch noch!” (What’s the matter with you dirt bags? He’s still alive!)
“Go screw yourself! He’s croaking!” someone barked back, a Kapo no doubt.
I turned around to find that my fussing and fuming had attracted the attention of a young SS officer. The kid must have seen him, too, because he rose feebly, staggered, then fell on his face.
“Was ist denn mit dem los?” (What’s the matter with him?), the officer asked me.
“He’s still alive.”
“I’ll show him where to go.”
The SS unholstered his Luger.
“Nein, nein,” the kid said and started crawling away on all fours.
The Nazi smirked. He must have found the kid’s futile struggle quite amusing. Play possum, you fool, and he might not waste the bullet.
The barrel of the gun was only inches from the back of his head when the boche pulled the trigger. The kid went limp and sank into the snow. Thin whiffs of smoke rose out of the hole in his skull.
The officer holstered his gun and walked away. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t look twice. He didn’t even blink. Why should he?
He was only exterminating vermin.
There was a noble innocence to the boy’s struggle that trans-fixed me, reminding me of the stranded baby sparrow I had found when I was seven. It didn’t cry out or look frightened; it was just determined to fly back to its nest. I figured I would adopt it until it was truly ready to be airborne, when an alley cat pounced. At least that animal had a reason behind its act of violence, I thought, as I dragged the boy’s body to the second morgue car.
What was it inside that boy, inside me, inside Hubert, and inside so many others on the train that made us still want to live?
Were we clinging that tightly to the fairy tales society had sold us before it went insane? Is the instinct to live that Herculean? Or were we that overwhelmed by our fear of the unexplored void of death? I didn’t have the answer, but after witnessing men at their most foul, I was straining the limits of my creativity to find a good reason to keep moving forward. But as I glanced at the handful of Muselmänner around me dragging our dead and the ever present SS, I realized there was a good enough reason, an imperative one.
With the Allies closing in, staying alive, keeping Hubert alive, was now a form of warfare on the boches. The more of us, the more of them who couldn’t aim a rifle at a Soviet, British, or American soldier. Also, surviving would ensure that we would have our day of vengeance. I was going to be the one to permanently wipe the smirk off that SS officer’s face, I dreamed, as I filled my cap with snow for Hubert.
CHAPTER 17
I found Hubert on the opposite side of the car, in the area where everyone was relieving himself. He was sitting in the filth and dampness.
“Pierre, Pierre,” he cried. His trouser legs were soaked with blood from being stepped on, and his eyes were glassy and dull from his burning fever. I felt incredibly guilty. I had been gone for only a short while, but I should have anticipated this. I shouldn’t have left him. Hubert held out his hand to me. It was covered with blackish goo. “Chocolate,” Hubert murmured.
The smell left no doubt what it really was. I took a ragged blanket, which wasn’t much cleaner than his hands, and wiped away his illusionary confection before he could eat it. I lifted him to his feet and jammed him against the wall.
“You stole my chocolate,” Hubert whimpered.
“I’m sorry.”
There were tie-downs on the walls. I grabbed an ownerless blanket, pushed it through one of the rings, weaved it under Hubert’s armpits, and made a knot over his chest. With his blanket wrapped around his head and shoulders, he dozed off right away. I sat down. My legs were swollen and soft, and yellowish flesh was bulging over the tops of my wooden shoes. In another day, perhaps two, I wouldn’t be able to stand.
Hubert awoke delirious, calling out my name over and over again. Nothing I did or said could quiet him. As the train raced down a hill, I shared a blanket with Antoine, a red triangle Frenchman who had been in one of my Kommandos.
“Why don’t you throw him overboard and end his suffering?”
I shook my head. “I couldn’t live with myself.”
Again I tried to quiet Hubert. I didn’t want his whining to get on anyone’s nerves, especially those Kapos. How had my hallucinating friend only a few days before managed to drag me to Gleiwitz?
Was his effort to keep me alive the reason he was sick now? Probably. I must not allow anyone else to die so I could see tomorrow. I could not be propped up by Hubert’s bones.
Somehow I fell asleep against Antoine’s shoulder. He nudged me awake. It was dark and Hubert was still calling for me.