See ya sometime,
Lizaveta.
Chang walks up behind me. I hear his feet crunching the snow. He stands beside me, puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “She’s dead.”
I stand there for a minute and say, “Yeah, it’s cold. Let’s get out of here.”
We walk back to the car, in silence.
TWO HARD WORKERS
One’s name was Josiah. Josiah was not very smart. The most common thing said about him was, “I think he might have brain damage.” Josiah was a hard worker but not a good worker. At the concentration camp they were forced to make boots for the Nazis and Josiah kept messing up and causing problems for the other workers. People were always saying, “We’re in a concentration camp probably to die at any moment, and Josiah is making things worse for us.”
The other’s name was Yosef. Yosef was a hard and good worker. But Yosef never stopped talking. Yosef would start talking as soon as he woke up till the second he went to sleep. Yosef didn’t need anyone to respond to anything he said. He would keep talking no matter what. People were always telling Yosef to shut up but Yosef never listened. People often said of Yosef, “Why won’t he shut up, we are so miserable, life is so hard, and he keeps talking.”
Yosef would also do things like if he stepped on a nail and got cut he would go around telling everyone how he got his foot cut and people would reply, “Yosef, we’re in a fucking concentration camp waiting to die, who cares about a little cut.” Yosef wouldn’t respond to that though, and would go on telling everyone about his cut foot.
Yosef also made friends with the Nazis. He would talk to the Nazi bosses and try to make friends with them. People would tell him, “Yosef, the Nazis hate us. They’re laughing at you.”
Yosef would respond, “No, the Nazis love me.”
People would walk away in anger.
Josiah though made great potato soup with very little ingredients. Josiah would prepare the soup and everyone would feast and people would say, “Josiah messes up a lot, but he does make great soup.”
One day there was no food. And many were close to starvation, so Josiah took it upon himself, maybe because of empathy, bravery, or because he actually had brain damage, to steal some food.
Josiah crawled through deep snow and through barb wire in the night to break into the Nazi food supplies. Josiah broke into the supply shed and got out one box and pushed it slowly through mud and snow while crawling for over two hours back to the barracks for people to eat, knowing the whole time if he were caught it would be the last thing he ever did.
Everyone was so hungry they chewed on the uncooked potatoes in the night. Yosef, though, did not eat the potatoes. He went to the Nazi bosses and told them what Josiah did.
The Nazis marched in the barracks where the starving Jews were. The Nazis grabbed the potatoes from their starving fingers. One Nazi ripped the food out of a small girl’s mouth. The Nazis shot Josiah in the head. Josiah lay there still and quiet never to mess up at work again. The starving Jews looked at dead Josiah, the person that tried to save them who they always said had brain damage. Then they looked up at Yosef standing next to the Nazis. Yosef stood smiling with not an ounce of remorse on his face.
The Nazis shot all the starving Jews that ate the potatoes. They lay there dying. Their waiting was over. In their last moments they didn’t know who to blame: Josiah for stealing, Yosef for snitching, or the Nazis. They bled to death before they could decide on someone to blame.
The Nazis never killed Yosef. Yosef lived through the war and still lives. No one ever knew Yosef did that. The starving Jews were dead and the Russians killed the Nazis there that night.
After the war was over, Yosef went to America and became a successful businessman. He got married and divorced several times and had several kids. He can be found in Florida living in a retirement community getting a tan next to a pool.