Prisoner B-3087 (16 page)

when the Guards at sachsenhausen tIred
of us, they shipped us off by train to Bergen-Belsen.
We traveled by cattle car again, and again prisoners
died of starvation and suffocation along the way. Once
the Nazis dropped three loaves of bread in our car
through a hole at the top, just to watch us fight for it.
As our train pushed farther north there was more
room to breathe as the dead dropped to the floor.

The train arrived at Bergen-Belsen in the morning,
my seventh concentration camp in less than three
years. The commandant of the camp took one look at
us and started screaming at our guards. “What did
you bring me? Look at these skeletons! How do you
expect these walking dead to work?” The commandant
moved among us, pointing at prisoners. “Him. Him.
Him. Him,” he said, and soldiers pulled the men out
of the ranks. I puffed up my chest to try and look as
strong and healthy as I could, but the commandant
took one look at me and moved on past, picking other
prisoners.

My heart cried out. No! I had to be strong enough
to work! Work was the only way to survive!
When the commandant had pulled seventy-five
prisoners out of our lines, he had them marched to the
other side of the tracks and ordered his soldiers to
shoot them. They were gunned down before we surviving, wide-eyed prisoners even had time to react. I
quickly turned away. I couldn’t watch. The commandant hadn’t chosen the strongest, he’d taken the
weakest. I just couldn’t tell the difference. How he
could, I didn’t understand. I felt terrible for it, but
secretly I was glad it had been somebody else who was
killed, and not me.
“Take the others back to the barracks,” the commandant said with disgust. “No work for a week, until
they regain their strength.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. No work for a week?
What kind of trick was this? I could see the other
prisoners glancing at one another, wondering the same
thing. But it was no trick. When we got back to the
barracks, we were fed the thickest, richest soup I had
eaten in six years, and big pieces of fresh bread, hot
from the oven! I was so thin and miserable I thought I
could gain weight just from the smell alone. There was
no gas chamber here either, and no chimneys burning
red in the night. Maybe Bergen-Belsen really was better than all the other camps. Maybe this was the place
where I could survive until the war ended.
I scarfed my piece of bread and washed it down
with that delicious, meaty soup, but an hour later I
learned that even in kindness, the Nazis were cruel.
Every one of us woke with the most terrible stomach
cramps we’d ever had. Our poor stomachs weren’t
used to such hearty food. We spent the night changing
places with one another on the two barrels left in the
barrack. I finally drifted off close to dawn, still
hunched over from the pain in my gut.
The next day they brought us more of the thick
soup and warm bread, but this time I was careful. I
remembered reading about medicine back in Kraków
and learning that dry toast helped settle an upset
stomach. So I traded my soup for more bread and
toasted the bread over the wood stove in the barrack.
I hated to give up the delicious soup, but the bread sat
better with me, and I slowly began to get stronger.
A week later, as promised, we were put back to
work. It was the same as always— chopping wood,
breaking rocks, building new camp buildings. One
day I was hard at work hauling boards for the walls of
a barrack when one of our new
kapo
s called me over. I
studied him as I approached. He had a big round face
that was covered with acne pits and scars.
Without a word, he punched me in the face. My
world exploded. Pain shot from my nose to my brain,
and my head snapped back like I’d been hit with a
shovel. I fell to the ground clutching my head.
“What did you do that for?” I cried. “What did
I do?” I knew I shouldn’t have said anything, but I
didn’t care. I was too stunned. My nose was already
swelling up so badly I couldn’t breathe through it.
“You looked at me the wrong way,” the
kapo
told me.
His eyes glittered with amusement before he told me to
get up and get back to work.
My head was throbbing so badly it was hard to
stand. Dark red blood splotched my blue-and-whitestriped uniform. I held the back of my sleeve to my
nose — gently, tenderly, it still hurt so badly — trying
to stem the bleeding. I hoped my nose wasn’t broken.
If it was, there was nothing I could do about it. I made
it back to the boards I’d dropped, trying not to let my
tears spill over.
“Moonface,” one of the other prisoners said as he
fell in alongside me.
“What?” I said.
“Moonface. That’s what we call him.” He nodded to
the big, round-faced
kapo
who’d slugged me. “They
say he killed three men before the war. The Germans
put him in prison, but when the war started they made
him a
kapo
. We’ve got murderers for guards.”
I knew our guards were murderers now, but I didn’t
know some of them were convicted killers in the past.
I made sure to stay well clear of Moonface after that,
but somehow I always managed to be assigned to work
duty near him. He seemed to notice me wherever I
went too, and soon I became his pet project. Moonface
kicked me and hit me and beat me whenever he could.
Bergen-Belsen might have been the place for me to
survive until the end of the war, but for Moonface. I
had to get away from him. When I heard the Nazis
were rounding up workers to send them to another
camp, I made sure I was at the front of the line. But the
Nazis weren’t looking for volunteers. They had their
own method for choosing us already figured out.
“Only the strongest and healthiest prisoners will be
transferred,” the Nazi announced. “To prove which of
you is most able, there will be a race.”
More games. Each of us had to take off our clothes,
roll them into bundles, and dash from one side of the
barracks to the other. The Nazis watched and laughed
as we staggered through the maze of beds. When it
was my turn, I took off my uniform and was surprised, again, at how skinny I was. Even after a week
of rest and better food, my arms and legs still looked
like toothpicks.
“You!” one of the Nazis yelled at me. “Run!”
I ran as fast as I could. I had to win this race. I had
to get out of Bergen-Belsen. I had to get away from
Moonface! I was running for my life. I stumbled
around one of the beds, and crashed into another,
bruising my thigh very badly, but I still flew through
the doorway at the other side of the barrack faster
than some of the other prisoners. When I burst outside, all I wanted to do was collapse on the ground
until my lungs stopped burning and my legs stopped
shaking, but I knew if I did that the Nazis would never
pick me to move on. Instead I forced myself to stand
up and look relaxed, like I’d just taken a stroll in
the park.
“He can work,” one of the guards said.
I took my time putting my uniform back over my
bony body, bending over so they couldn’t see me gasping for breath. I spotted Moonface, out in the yard,
pushing another prisoner to the ground and kicking him.
Another cattle car awaited me, and so did another
camp, but at least I had gotten away from Moonface
for good.