“Gee, thanks,” Wayne said sarcastically.
Samuel continued in a whisper, “My brother Ari is the prisoner detail leader for the new armament plant. How’d you like to leave the quarry pit for a cushy job sitting down turning screws on an assembly line or some shit like that?”
Wayne replied without hesitation, “Anything would be an improvement.”
“Consider yourself in. Tomorrow’s gonna be your last day in that fuckin’ quarry pit,” Samuel proudly informed his hurting friend. He tapped Wayne on the knee and crawled away.
Wayne knew from what he had observed since he had been at Hollenburg that Samuel was a man of his word. When Samuel said he was going to do something, he had always seemed to follow through. Wayne, who loathed the daily routine of working in the quarry, considered it a fair trade — twenty-five lashes of punishment in exchange to not have to break his back in the quarry anymore. No more frostbite. No more pains shooting through his bad back. No more blistery lips from the cold wind blowing. Wayne anticipated the start of his new job. He found himself full of hope again that his luck was changing for the better, but that faded fast as the reality set in that all that had really happened was that he had gotten an opportunity to leave the quarry. Wayne moans turned into snores.
During his final day in the quarry, an incident occurred which only fanned the flames of abomination that Wayne had been feeling towards those who were in charge of running the camp.
Two days prior, a fresh shipment of prisoners from the ghetto had been thrown into the already overcrowded camp. To Wayne, the new prisoners were indistinguishable from the ones that he had arrived with almost two months earlier. He noticed how the new inmates wore the same sad, defeated empty expressions on their faces as the people he had been on the train with had. Some of the new arrivals had been assigned to barracks 19. Since there were more men assigned to the barracks than there were bunks, most of the new slave laborers ended up sleeping on the cold wooden floor.
Most of the new arrivals had been assigned to the quarry, as had been customary. It was the worst place in camp to work, and new inmates had no connections or voice in anything that might have affected their lives in camp.
At some point during mid-morning, a boy, who Wayne figured could not have been more than fourteen years of age, innocently asked one of the SS guards, as he wiped his sweaty brow, “Sir, may I please sit down for a little bit. I do not feel well.” It had been the boy’s first day of labor and he obviously did not know any better.
“Go ahead,” the SS pig told the boy and pointed to a spot roughly thirty meters from the edge of the pit.
The boy, who reminded Wayne of himself, walked to the appointed spot. Before he could sit down, a bullet penetrated his heart. Death came instantly. The SS guard who had given the boy permission to sit down arrogantly reloaded another round into his shiny rifle.
Wayne, having witnessed the incident from his vantage location, knew that the youngster had been deliberately instructed to cross the guard line. In doing so, the guard could explain the boy’s death as the result of stopping a prisoner “attempting to escape”. Wayne had seen other prisoners coerced into crossing the guard line on different pretexts only to be shot down, but never a boy. In his 1995, that boy would have been entering high school with his whole life ahead of him. The sickest thing about what had happened, Wayne found out that night through the grapevine back at the barracks, was that the SS pig that he would “stop an escape attempt” that day. That boy’s life had been worth nothing more than two beers to an SS man. Wayne, in the quarry on that day, wanted to shed a tear for the boy, but nothing came out. All of the death he had seen and all of the tears he had shed for the victims, and all of the evenings he had cried himself to sleep, and all of the tears he had shed for the baby who had been suffocated by her mother in the prisoner holding area, and all of the tears of helplessness had finally caused Wayne’s tear ducts to dry up and cease function. If he cried again, he might willfully cross the guard line himself. Wayne could not cry anymore.
CHAPTER SIX
Samuel had kept his promise. Wayne, without any explanation given by the prisoner detail leader, was transferred to the new munitions plant. Wayne and the other prisoners were bussed to the plant under heavy guard. He recognized four of the two-dozen silent men on the rickety bus from his barracks. He didn’t know their names, or ever really socialized with them, but they were familiar. There was an air of excitement throughout the bus. It felt great to Wayne to leave the camp for the first time since he had been interned there, even if it was just to travel to work.
As the bus pulled up in front of the munitions factory, Wayne observed how dreary and depressing the new plant looked. The size of the windowless factory was enormous, measuring over twenty-seven thousand square meters. The munitions plant was one of seven new ones that the Reich had built because of escalating Japanese threats. Armaments were built in the munitions plants and stored in regional sites nearby military bases. The Germans carried out their weapons production and distribution with efficiency of a well-oiled machine.
The laborers were led off the bus, through a metal detector, and into the vast building. Ari, the detail leader for the factory, was in charge of all work allocation for the prisoners. Inmates were shipped in six days a week from the large pool of men’s and women’s labor camps that were located within a hundred kilometer radius of the plant. Ari had lived most of his life as a concentration camp prisoner. He was a very hard worker, as well as honest, and had impressed his superiors enough so that he was steadily promoted into important positions of responsibility, despite being a prisoner himself.
Ari the new workers into the plant. As Wayne approached, he noticed something familiant about him.
Ari put his hand out, “I’m Ari.”
Wayne shook his hand and said, “Wayne. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Ari said, “Samuel tells me that you’re a good, hard-working guy. Just be productive and nobody will bother you here. Come on, let me show you to your workstation.”
As Ari led Wayne through the munitions factory, Wayne looked around the big building in awe. It seemed to go on forever. Everybody that Wayne passed by kept their eyes firmly on their work. The guards posted throughout the plant seemed watchful, but they didn’t seem to have the twisted, sadistic look on their faces like the guards back in Hollenburg. This was a new, better place Wayne would be spending his long days.
Ari halted Wayne at a workstation, where half a dozen prisoners, male and female, were busy working on electronic gadgets. Wayne thought one of the women looked familiar to him. Where had he seen her before? Her short dark hair tugged at his memory. Wayne ran through a quick mental checklist. NYU? No. High school? No. Hometown? No. Summer job? No. Nothing registered. The woman was staring back at Wayne, too.
“Do you two know each other?” Ari asked.
The young, attractive woman answered, “I have never seen this guy before.”
“Little Bear,” Ari called out.
A tall, tough looking woman, dressed the same as the other prisoners in her blue worn out slacks, blue denim shirt, and dull black shoes walked over.
“Little Bear,” Ari said, “this is Wayne.” He turned to Wayne and informed him, “Little Bear’s in charge of this work station. She’ll show you what to do. Take care.”
As Ari strolled off to attend to his numerous daily tasks, Wayne called out to him, “Thank you, Ari.”
Wayne felt extremely grateful to Ari for acting as his savior and rescuing him from the quarry. He was sure that if he had continued at the quarry, he would have quickly died one way or another.