The door on the opposite side to the showers opened, and they all left to line up outside. It was now seven at night. Three hours passed as Marc stood in roll call waiting, standing, the entire time naked.
He listened to the noises of the camp, which were unlike anything he had ever imagined. It was not actually a camp to him as much as a strange city.
A group of prisoners then came to the block of naked men and led them through the camp to a long house. Inside, each prisoner sat down in a chair while another prisoner ran shears over his head. Soon the floor was covered in the discarded hair. Men began to cry and sob. The razors burned Marc’s scalp. His emotions died inside of him, and his mind bleached dry with exhaustion. A sense of dread filled his chest as he pondered whether he had died and was now in hell.
In the next room of the long house, Marc dunked himself in the vat of soapy water. Men vomited. Others refused to get into the baths. The guards would then beat them.
In another long house, Marc was nearly running through it, as prisoners tossed him trousers and a shirt, and he was given some wooden clogs. Nothing fit exactly and the clothing had rips and tears in it.
“You are to wear these bands at all times. If you do not, you will be shot,” the prisoner yelled at them.
Marc took the armband, with a red triangle on it, and pulled it up and over his left arm. All of the prisoners he noticed had the same shirts on. Each had a red triangle with “P” next to it.
The summer sun blinded Marc, now seven in the morning. There had been no sleep and there was a new roll call. The SS stood behind a desk in front of the block of prisoners, going through the names of the manifest and calling each prisoner forward, one by one. A doctor came to the guards and the interviews stopped.
“We are in great need of medical help here. If you are a doctor, or a nurse, then please step forward. If you have any medical training whatsoever, please tell these men and you will be given a very good work assignment,” the SS officer said. Marc heard the disingenuous call in the man’s voice.
“What is your profession?” the guard asked Marc.
“Craftsman.”
“What do you make?”
“Metal, I work with metal.”
“Machinist then?” he snapped.
“Yes,” Marc responded without any emotion.
The guard then looked toward another SS officer, and then pointed and said, “Over there.”
Marc had overheard other prisoners talking. Rumors were flying about what jobs they were going to do. He felt physically exhausted, though his mind was still alert. He knew he absolutely did not want to say anything about hospital work. There was no hospital here.
Marc marched with about two hundred men out of the camp and down the road for several kilometers. Soon, the group marched into a new camp. It was late afternoon, and Marc stood again for another roll call. Then the men were divided amongst the guards. The camp returned to the compound and Marc became part of a larger roll call. His mind had sunk into hell. He was now convinced he would never sleep, or eat, or even be allowed to die.
After the long roll call, the camp prisoners broke, and Marc walked through a new line where he was given a slice of dark bread and a cube of margarine. He devoured it.
In the barracks, he found his slot in the bunks.
“Marc,” he heard from across the way. “Marc, is that you?” he heard a second time.
Marc then looked across and squinted, “Georges?”
“Yes, it is me, Georges,” the man said back. “In the morning, not now, Marc, in the morning, we can talk.” And Marc finally slept.
“Jean is in another block,” Georges said as they got ready for roll call in the morning. “If you can make it, Marc, three days, you can make it three weeks, and, if that, then three months,” Georges said to Marc as they left the block.
“I have been here now three months, and they say that means I have a chance at surviving the war. Did you hear anything? Is it true, about the Americans?” Georges asked.
Marc just turned and nodded.
“You can talk here, Marc. We are all the same,” Georges said.
Marc realized it was pointless now to keep silent. He had remained silent yet had been shot at, beaten, and tortured. “Yes, it is true. In June sometime. I am not sure when. That is all I know.”
Marc’s words carried, and there was a strange, silent affirmation from the other prisoners as they lined up for roll call.
“Eyes right, caps off!” the commander yelled across the blocks of prisoners.
Three days became three weeks, and then three months. At night, Marc collapsed into his slot, then he scrunched to the side as his bunkmate piled into the slot with him. He closed his eyes and fell asleep so fast, there seemed to be no transition between life and death.
Morning came, and everyone rolled out to line up. Marc stood near the rear of the line for the soup. He had tried to stand near the front and ask the prisoner to dunk the ladle down deep into the pot in hopes of getting a little bit of potato, but he would not. So, Marc tried to hang near the rear in hopes of getting something from the bottom once all the top soup was gone. He stared intensely at the soup as he approached. Marc willed the ladle to go down to the bottom and bring him the precious solids. His plan worked, at least for this morning. His inner will had manifested for him a bowl of soup with precious potato.
At the factory, once the guard left the room, everyone slowed their pace. Marc matched the others in the room, glancing over at Georges and Jean, who had been assigned now to the same machine room.
Marc took the bread in his hand that night and then broke off a small piece and tucked it away into his pocket. The rest he ate quickly. A man had died in the block, but the
kapo
had told the guards he was sick. The
kapo
would then take the rations for himself.
Marc’s mind became blank with pain. He had no thoughts now except bread, soup, and water. He thought again—maybe he was right and he had died. This was hell after all, but there was nothing but sleeping, eating, roll call, and work.
Marc climbed into his bunk. He placed his soup bowl under his head. Jean and Georges climbed into their spots. If the
kapos
believed someone knew someone from before, they would separate them. Marc felt rich having two friends near. Men would talk endlessly about past celebrations or dinners. Others would shout at them to be quiet, as the thought of food brought too much pain. Marc focused just on the present, using bricks in his mind to wall off the past. Most of the men who’d been in Marc’s railcar had disappeared over time.
Bombs dropped near the camp to the north that night. The noise brought shock waves to the building. Marc wondered if he could hear the machinery in the factory being torn apart. In the morning, work would be canceled.
“I am sorry. The factory is gone, but you all may have as many pancakes today as you want,” the German commander’s proud voice echoed in Marc’s mind.
“Marshmallows—can we have marshmallows, too?” Georges or Jean would ask.
“Yes, of course,” the guard would say, as if it was silly to ask such a question.
“Marshmallows for all this day!” the commander said over the loudspeakers. The camp went wild.
Marc must have fallen asleep, just between the bombs falling and the camp getting all the food they wanted from the German guards. He was back on the
Lancastria
. He folded his clothes on the side of the ship. The water rose up the plates, coming toward him.
Then out of the portholes they started to come. First the ones down by the creeping waves, but soon all along the side of the ship. They rose from within until they spilled out into the ocean all around. The waves turned white with the angora rabbits. The black plates of the ship disappeared under the rabbits, covering up the snapping rivets as it sank further into the sea.
“
Bling, bring-bling,” he heard and turned. Sister Clayton rode on the chrome bike down the side of the ship and the rabbits parted for her, like Moses and the Red Sea. Beside her, on both sides walked a dog, followed then by the boy and the girl from Belgium.
They all stopped right in front of Marc, and up from a porthole rose the burly Scotsman holding out a silver platter with the white angora rabbit upon it. Marc knew it was wrong to think the rabbit was food. Rabbit, at first, seemed so wrong to eat in Paris, but not by 1944. Rabbit was like steak to all who could afford it. Is this for me? My own rabbit? No, no, I should not think of it that way. Marc remembered that the rabbit was to be the Scotman’s daughter’s pet once he made it back home.
Sister Clayton then got off the bike. It fell into the rabbits all around her. She walked toward the Scotsman, Horus, keeping eye contact the entire time with Marc. He could see his words, but could not hear them. He only heard them in his head, but could see Horus’s lips move. Sister Clayton took the rabbit and then handed it to the little girl. She petted it and then handed it to the little boy. The boy looked up then into Marc’s eyes, as he walked toward him, lifting up the rabbit, the words reaching Marc’s mind before he said them with his mouth, “Bon Chance.”
February 15, 1945
Monowitz, Subcamp III of Auschwitz
T
he
kapo
ran through the block yelling, “Roll call! Roll call now!”
Marc awoke from the dream with a jolt. As he climbed down from his slot and grabbed his soup bowl, he could not shake the sight of the little Belgian boy from his mind. The freezing morning air blasted his face as he passed through the door of the block, running with the prisoners to the main assembly area to line up again for roll call.
“Number present?” the guard asked the
kapo
. Marc heard his voice, distant and preoccupied.
“Block eleven, forty-five present, two infirmary, two dead and one missing,” the
kapo
said to the guard. The guard just nodded. Marc glanced at the guard.
Normally one missing meant a search for the prisoner
, Marc thought, but the guard did not request a search at all.
“One missing?” the guard asked the
kapo
.
“Yes, one is missing.”
“Very well.”
Marc knew something was wrong when he did not send them all to search for a missing person. Normally it was a suicide, but nevertheless, the rules were, alive or dead, they must be counted. Marc became anxious as each block reported their counts. The mood among the guards changed. Their arrogance had faded and their faces betrayed they had a problem to solve.
“We are evacuating the camp. Those too sick to leave will be left behind, and once the Communists arrive, they will surely kill anyone left, so if you wish to survive, you must go,” the commandant said.
“One hour, the final roll call will be in one hour. Now break,” and his words set off a bomb of activity in the camp. Prisoners took extra shirts and pants, anything they could wear. Some looked like clowns from some circus graveyard, their feet wrapped in think bundles of extra clothing to protect themselves from the snow.
Marc stuffed into his pocket two pieces of bread and two pieces of sausage, which were the only rations. He felt rich beyond all measure to be trusted with so much food. Marc stood in line with his bowl for soup, as the prisoner hurried to fill each bowl. Men would gulp down the thin, watery stew in just seconds, and the truth in their eyes said this time, it was a matter of life or death.
“You must march or you will be shot,” the commander then said at the second roll call. Marc knew it was not for him. It was for the others, but not him. Marc’s mind wore the feathers of the raven, a dead bird that yet lives.
Those words are for the doves
because ravens never die,
his mind told him.
Oh, if the doves are shot, maybe I can steal their food
, the raven thought to himself. But then, Marc stopped the thought and tried to let that part go. The more he resisted the thought, the stronger it grew. A peculiar madness fell upon him like clouds of snow.
Yes, shoot the doves who cannot keep up, and we will take their food, and then we ravens will have their pancakes with marshmallows.
Marc clung to the food in his pocket.
If you are real good, maybe a dove will give you some bread before it falls
, another voice said inside him. Marc pretended the voices were not his own, but the thoughts of other prisoners he now could hear.
Georges arrived with Jean back at the main square just as the blocks began to form again for the final roll call. Jean wore several layers of shirts, and Georges’s feet were bundled up to his ankles.
“Marc, Jean, come. Let’s march up front. Let’s not be looking at what is going on behind us.” Marc joined them.
“Block 5, march! Block 9, march!” It started to snow again. “Block 11, March!” Marc, Jean, and Georges began then to march through the camp gates.
“Halt,” the guards called out after a few kilometers. After several minutes, the command came: “Turn around, and go back.”
“Are we coming or going?” Jean asked the open winter air.
“Halt, halt,” the guards then called out through the line, striking a note between fear and anger.
“Right, attention, turn around and go forward,” another officer commanded next.
Soon two men made a break for the woods but did not even get twenty yards before they were shot dead.
“They don’t know where we are going,” Jean whispered to Marc.
“Quiet, you’re right,” Marc said.
But soon, this business stopped and the march went on and on through the woods and along the road, which had mainly snow with some exposed patches of dirt. And from time to time, Marc could hear a shot behind him. Sometimes close, but usually in the far rear of the line.
A shot then rang out from the woods and all the guards looked up at once. Then came a second and third shot. The guards knew it was not one of their rifles. All at once, the same thought came to their collective minds: “A patrol!”
“Run, you lazy dogs, run!” and everyone started to run. Marc’s body ached, and his head caught fire with pain.