Cyuri walked with his head lowered. Something seemed to have gone out of him. He hadn’t said much since lunchtime, and there was a heaviness to his step that looked like more than just tiredness.
Somewhere along the way, two other prisoners relieved us of our load, and I went over to Gyuri and laid a hand on his shoulder. “It gets a little easier," I told him. "Not better, but a little easier."
He looked at me, and for a second I thought he was going to say something, maybe call me out on my outrageous lie, but he just nodded and turned his head away.
As we neared the main gate, we heard music—the camp orchestra, playing a military march to greet us upon our return. The Kapo shouted at us to look sharp and quicken our stride.
"Walk straight," Vilmos told Cyuri. "Head high, eyes forward."
Gyuri looked at him questioningly, but he followed our example and did as he was told. We all fought to find the energy to straighten our stooped backs, raise our chins, and add a swing to our arms.
Because at the gate stood a gang of SS doctors. They were scrutinizing us closely. These doctors were angels of torment instead of mercy; purveyors of death instead of healing. Their job was to cull the prisoner population by identifying the sick and those too exhausted to perform slave labor for the Third Reich. They looked for signs of illness, lethargy, an extreme depletion of body mass—the latter relative, of course, because all of us had lost a great deal of weight.
And if one of them pointed at you, or inscribed your number in his little black notebook, you were on your way to the gas chambers, and then up the chimney.
So I lengthened my stride and tried to look as healthy as possible. I kept all trace of the pain each step was causing me off my face. I tried to swell out my sunken chest, to project an air of robustness. And all the while I prayed that I would not be chosen, and felt a great shame at being so weak and helpless.
I kept my gaze straight ahead as we entered the camp. Looking into the eyes of an SS officer was a grave offense. But in the periphery of my vision I could see the faces of our tormentors. They were chatting and laughing even as they glanced at us contemptuously. They were as sure of their superiority as a cat who toys with a captured mouse.
I carved their faces into my mind, searing them into my memory with a blazing hatred. As long as I lived, I told myself, I would not forget these faces; I would not forget these men. If a miracle happened, if by some chance I survived this place, I would hunt these men down. Hunt them down and kill them.
9
Vilmos and Cyuri and I hurried to the Appellplatz and joined the other prisoners for Appell—roll call. We stood in lines often, utterly silent, and waited to be counted. Sunset came late in Poland in July, so there was still light, but the western sky was black. The crematoriums still devoured the victims. The chimneys continued to spew the smoke of death.
We were supposed to stand motionless, but all around I could see prisoners swaying with exhaustion or squirming with agony as their bowels spasmed with diarrhea. I was suffering from a mild case of it myself and could only hope I’d have the strength to not soil myself. We had not been allowed to go to the latrines upon our return to camp. First, the Germans had to ensure there had been no escapes.
I prayed there hadn’t been, and hated myself for it. Because if the count revealed that a prisoner was missing, we would be made to stand here for hours until he was accounted for.
SS officers walked up and down the lines of prisoners, counting. We, and the other kommandos, had laid those who had died during the workday beside our lines, and the SS officers, sticklers for accuracy, made sure to include the dead in their count.
There were thousands of us, so this took some time. As happened more often than not, the count arrived at by one SS officer did not match that of his colleague, so they commenced counting from scratch. And all the while, as they counted, as they compared results and argued over discrepancies, we continued to stand.
Gradually, a deep ache settled in my lower back. It started out as a whimper, progressed to a cry, and eventually grew to a wailing shriek. I gritted my teeth against the pain and told myself it would soon be over, that the pain would diminish when we were allowed to move.
But it was not over soon. There was a problem with the count. Or the Germans simply wished to torture us. Some of them liked to see us suffer. Others viewed us with utter indifference. A couple of weeks earlier, I’d overheard two guards make a bet as to how many of us would collapse during roll call that evening, as though they were betting on a horse race and not the lives of human beings.
Two rows in front of me, a prisoner toppled to the ground and was still. No one tried to help him up. No one dared. We were not allowed to move. I kept my eyes on the fallen man, and under my breath muttered, “Get up, get up, get up," but he remained lying there, motionless.
Finally, roll call was over. Thousands of prisoners began moving in all directions, like an ant colony prodded with a stick. Surrounded by the noise of hundreds of conversations in a medley of languages, I rushed to the fallen man. Another prisoner had already knelt beside him and had turned him over. His open eyes left no room for doubt or hope. The man was dead. I helped place his corpse with the other dead bodies and sprinted to the latrine.
The short while between the end of roll call and night curfew was the only free time we truly had. One could barter with other prisoners, or wash up, or visit friends or relatives in other blocks—provided any of them were still alive.
But first there was dinner.
Vilmos and Cyuri and I stood in line for our evening bread. Dry, rough, moldy, and infused with sawdust, eating it was like munching on sand. The quantity of bread was as inadequate as its quality—barely enough for a grown man who had spent his day lounging at the office; gravely insufficient for one who had done hard physical labor for ten hours. In addition, each prisoner received a small pat of margarine. Other nights we got a bit of cheese or sausage or a tablespoon’s worth of marmalade, but nowhere near enough to smear across the entire bread.
Decision time. Should I eat the entire bread now? Or would it be better to save a portion for breakfast tomorrow? On the one hand, my stomach was sending distress signals; it wanted the whole thing right now, tomorrow be damned. On the other, a breakfast of only coffee or tea would leave me with nothing solid to eat from now until lunchtime at the earliest. There were no good options, and the hunger was making it difficult to think.
"Is it really true?" I heard a small voice say. "Are they really all gone?”
The speaker was Cyuri. He was holding his bread in both hands, staring at the columns of smoke rising from the chimneys and fire pits. His face was a mask of agony and grief.
"I’m afraid so," Vilmos said. "I’m so sorry.” He made a motion as if to lay a comforting hand on Cyuri's arm, but he stopped midway and let his hand fall back to his side. He was a good man, Vilmos, and he longed to help Cyuri in his mourning. But none of us had been prepared for this place. None of us knew the proper way to console a man whose entire family had been gassed to death, a man who in one day had lost everything and been turned into a slave. We didn’t even know how to console ourselves.
Cyuri bit his lip. He took a deep breath and gave a determined nod, like a man reaching a fateful decision. Alarm bells began ringing in my head. I took a step closer as realization began to set in. Gyuri’s eyes met mine. He offered me a sad smile that had the odd effect of making him look happy. He shifted his gaze from me to Vilmos. “Thank you both," he said. "Thank you for all you’ve done for me."