They would make us march until we died. We would walk, tripping over everything, exhaustion tugging at us, pulling us under until we fell, collapsed. Died. Or nearly died. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. “March!” They would shout, kicking us and shouting, “March!” And we would march. Because if we didn’t march, we would die. And yet if we did march, eventually we would die too. Either way, the possibility of death was there, always lingering, like a dark cloud on a summer’s day. Only there was no summer’s day. There were just clouds and more clouds.
They made us march everywhere. We would march through towns, endless towns, where people would stand and laugh at us, point at us. Our suffering was comical to them. And if it wasn’t, the soldiers would make them pretend. Everyone laughed, because they had to laugh, or they wanted to laugh, or they didn’t know better than to laugh. Sometimes, we would collapse in the streets and die there, trash on the side of the road, and they would laugh even more. Sometimes they cheered. I’m not sure how far gone I was when it got to the point I didn’t care when another one of us died. We dropped like flies, and we mourned that way too.
They turned us into their sheep, like we were things to be numbered, ordered, moved around like chess pieces on a chessboard. This piece goes here, and this piece is knocked over by this piece, and this piece goes 3 steps the left. At the start they took away our homes, our possessions, and moved us into our own little villages, Lego lands of despair and decay. Then we were put into striped pajamas, the same model for every person, and we were numbered, the way you might number a cow on a farm. All of us got the same food, the same things to do, the same dirty looks, the same beatings, the same pain, rejection, loss. We were all stripped bare. Naked, vulnerable. They sucked the life out of us, bottled it up and destroyed it. And then they destroyed us. Again and again and again.
They were doing good, they said to themselves. They were changing the world. For the better. They mustn’t feel remorse, no no, they mustn’t feel regret. They must look forward, to the bigger picture. The better picture. Because it had to be done. We were Jews. We didn’t deserve homes. We didn’t deserve possessions, or jobs, or friends, or health. We didn’t deserve life. No, we didn’t even have the right to simply exist. Our presence was too much for them to bear. So they murdered us. They murdered us, and they believed it was the right thing. When is death ever the right thing? When can you kill and be glad of it? When can you murder hundreds of people and feel noble, feel good? When, can you murder hundreds of people, and get away with it?
They took us from the Ghetto, ‘rescued’ us when we were on deaths door and put us on trains, hundreds into a carriage, crowds forcing their way through. And we rushed in, squeezing past people, jumping, bustling, forcing our way to the front in acts of desperation. People everywhere, so many people in the train we could barely breathe, couldn’t move for hours. Air thick with body odour, dirt, grit. Vomit littered everywhere. The stench, so much stench. Weak bodies turned weaker. Bones touching bones. But we got on. We got on because we thought they were taking us somewhere better, somewhere that wasn’t the Ghetto. Anywhere that wasn’t the Ghetto. We weren’t to know we were being taken somewhere worse. We weren’t to know there was somewhere worse.
They piled us out of the trains into concentration camps. We were surrounded by high barbed wire fences, a promise that there was no way out, no escape from hell. We were split up, women on this side, men on this side. Older people here, younger people here. I was lucky. I was a young man. They didn’t kill me on arrival. But I watched my Mother leave me, promising we’d see each other, promising we wouldn’t be kept apart, fighting to keep the tears at bay as she melted into the crowd. I never saw her again. She died with my little sister and dozens of other women that were tossed into the ‘not suitable to work’ column. It was like they were picking teams for a sports game. Team to the left lives, team to the right dies. Easy as 1,2,3.
They rationed us on everything. Rationed rooms, bunk beds squeezed next to each other, row by row of condensed space. Rationed food, so little you’re bones stuck out at all angles, and food played in your mind like a song stuck on repeat. Rationed lives, with rationed sleep and rationed happiness and rationed family. They rationed and they forced and they pried and they belted. I remember that they would line us up, one by one, and force us to spit on the Torah. “Spit.” They would say, “Spit or get shot.” And they would walk down the line, forcing us to spit. And we spat. Once, my friend Yankel didn’t spit. He stood in line, tall and proud even though he was wearing dirty pajamas and you could see every bone in his body sticking out at all angles. He shook his head and he didn’t spit, and they shot him in the head. I remember he didn’t make a sound as he fell to the floor.
They took us on another march at the end. We walked through the concentration camp in the rain, cold and shivering as hailstones fell from the sky and the wet made our clothes stick to our skin. We huddled together, dozens of us trembling in the cold as we moved in a slow rhythm. Left, right, left, right…. We were led into a big room, where they shaved our heads until they were shiny and bald. We all looked the same, in that room after they shaved our heads. They removed any personal trait we used to have, our weight, our hair, our clothes, and replaced it with one united look. They even broke down our personalities. Who was I, at the end? Did I even know?
Then they told us to remove our clothes. I remember having a childish sense of embarrassment when I undressed in that big room. Even at the end, I held on to a sense of naïve vanity. But I was just bones now. We were all just bones. They told us we were having a shower. A convenient excuse. They made it seem like they were doing us a favour, ridding us of lice and cleaning our dirty skin. Thank us, Jews! For we are helping you!
They led us into the ‘shower,’ crowded us in like they had on the trains. Only we weren’t going anywhere this time. I remember the exact moment it happened. They shut the doors, and locked us in and them out. We stood there for a few moments, a sense of puzzlement slowly washing over us.
And then the gas started raining down from the sky. It fell like snowflakes, washed over us so quickly we barely had time to think. And we were murdered in there, choking, spluttering in that room, as they calmly waited outside for us to die. Did they care? Even a little? Did anyone care? Who was there to save us, in that moment? And as the remains of our bodies were burnt, and as our ashes wafted into the sky, one question lingered in the air.
What was this world that we lived in?
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