"What’s your name?" my appointed guardian asked me. He was in his forties, short, with a bulbous nose and a hangdog face. His eyes were a wet nutmeg, and one of his front teeth was chipped.
I told him my name was Adam and he said his was Jakob. He was a Pole, and he’d been in Auschwitz since early 1943. His German was impeccable.
"The Kapo is a real bastard,” he said, "and he meant every word. You’re not thinking of doing anything stupid, are you?"
"Stupid?"
"You know what I mean. You can’t save them, so don’t even try. All you’ll do is make the Germans kill them all, including those who would have been selected to go into the camp, and us as well. So just do what you’re told. You’ve got no choice."
The Kapo yelled an order, and we marched the short distance from the men’s camp to the train platform. There, we were ordered to stand and wait. SS officers and guards swarmed the platform, some with dogs. They chatted among themselves, sharing jokes by the looks of it. Just another day of exterminating Jews. Nothing to dampen the mood.
The guards were armed with machine guns or rifles. The officers each had a pistol. The dogs looked ferocious, their tongues hanging out between their teeth in the building heat of morning. The Germans were ready in case anyone tried to disrupt the orderly process of death. On occasion, the Nazis would have a prisoners' orchestra play cheerful music to lull the new arrivals into complacency. But that day there was no music. There was just the routine sounds of camp life, and why shouldn't there be? This was the regular order of business here. What the camp was for. What was about to happen was nothing special.
We stood motionless for a long time on the platform, the sun baking our faces.
I was terribly thirsty, and sweat was making the rash on my side itch like crazy. The wound on my foot was sending dull waves of pain up my leg. Suddenly, off in the distance, a sharp whistle sounded. Then the clack-clack of train wheels. I glanced to my left. A plume of smoke rose into the sky, a harbinger of worse things to come.
The train materialized like a living nightmare. A black snake carrying a cargo of the soon-to-be dead in its belly. It entered the camp like the needle of a syringe full of poison, rolling on the rail spur between the women's and men’s camps, and screeched to a halt in front of us. The engineer leaned halfway out of the locomotive. ‘They’re all ready for you,” he hollered to a group of SS guards, his mouth gaped in a psychotic grin. The guards laughed. A few of the dogs barked, straining at their leashes. The SS doctors, a separate group among the officers, continued their conversation, but now they were looking not at each other but at the train, as though they were guests at a dinner party, their eyes on the covered main course just before the lid is removed.
Stenciled on the cattle cars in large letters were the words Deutsche Reichsbahn, German Reich Railway. From inside the cars came the sounds of frantic banging and pleading. The cargo was desperate to get out.
"Remember,” Jakob whispered to me. "You can’t save them. So don’t be stupid. Just follow me and do as I say.”
But I was barely listening. My eyes were roving about, counting the number of guards and officers, noting their positions and weapons. The train was long, with many cars. Two thousand people at least. Maybe more than three. And four dozen or so men in our kommando to lead them in revolt. Enough to overwhelm the German soldiers, to tear them apart and take their weapons. This was our chance. To kill them. To stop them killing us. To avenge the victims. Gyuri’s family. Vilmos’s family. My family. And all the other families the Nazis had wiped out.
An SS officer barked a command. The guards hustled, some moving to take up controlling positions on the platform, others going to the train cars. The Kapo shouted at us to do our duty and obey orders.
My heart was pounding a manic rhythm. I thought nothing of the boy Franz. Of my mission. All I could think of was that this was the moment in which I would strike back at the oppressors. The moment in which Jews would rise up to show the Germans that we could fight and we could kill. It would be glorious. Some of us would die; maybe many of us. That was unavoidable. But it was worth it.
“Don’t warn them,” Jakob whispered. The panicked urgency in his voice made me turn to look at him. He knew what I was thinking. “It wouldn’t do any good. They’re already dead.’’
He was lying. I was sure of it. Surer than I’d ever been of anything. He was a miserable coward, nothing else. He wanted to live, and he didn’t care that so many others would die.
"You think you're the first one?" He grabbed the sleeve of my shirt. “You think I haven’t thought of it a hundred times? It won’t work. You’ll only get everyone killed."
I pulled my arm free, not bothering to answer him. My face was hot, and not because of the sun. I was burning up on the inside with rage and, yes, with blood lust as well. My nerves vibrated with anticipation. My fingers tingled. I was aching to spill German blood. I looked at the train, where my army of Jews awaited. An army that would crush these German soldiers to dust.
Another command sounded. The guards unbolted the train cars, pulling the doors open. They shouted and motioned for those inside to come out. And from the black holes of the cattle cars, the vanguard of my Jewish army emerged.
They jumped down onto the platform, blinking around in disorientation, their eyes blinded by the glare of sunlight after days of near total darkness in the cars. They shrank under the shouts of the SS guards and the frenzied barking of the dogs, then turned to help their fellow passengers out. Those they helped were women and children, some infants, and also the middle-aged and the elderly. Some were so exhausted, they could hardly stand straight. A few leaned on canes or crutches. Some simply sprawled on the ground, utterly spent. Many had a dazed look on their faces. This was no army, I realized with a slap of grief and resignation. These were terrified, bewildered, exhausted citizens. Unarmed and disorganized. Many of them were too old or too young to be soldiers. And as for the women, many of them were holding children.
They had not had a proper meal in days. Nor sufficient water. Nor a breath of fresh air. If they’d slept at all, they’d done so fitfully. They had traveled in cattle cars so crammed with people that sitting or lying down was possible only for a fraction of them at a time. They'd had to relieve themselves in a bucket, in the company of strangers. They'd had to fight each other for every sliver of space. They were in no shape to fight the Germans.
And I had been a fool to believe otherwise for even a second.
For hadn’t I been in their shoes not too long ago? Didn’t I remember with frightful clarity how exhausted I’d been coming out of the train? How confused? How my mind had struggled to make sense of all I was seeing and hearing and smelling: the fences, the blocks, the stench of death, the SS officers, the strange men in striped uniforms and clogs. Didn’t I remember that all I’d wanted was to make sure my family was safe? That even if someone had tried to tell me that soon all of my family would be dead, I would not have believed him? For who could believe a place like Auschwitz existed?
Seeing how these poor Jews held onto their luggage, the tiny bit of former property they’d been allowed to bring with them, I knew they would not believe me either. I knew that Jakob was right. I could not save these people. They were beyond my help. They were already dead.