“You have to. We have to.” Without a morsel of fat or muscle left on my body, I’m as good as useless while trying to pull him toward the ladder, but I continue pulling anyway. “Come on, Hans.”
“Go without me,” he says, the sound of his voice hardly forming.
“No, I won’t.” I grit my jaw tightly and yank him over my shoulder, pulling him down to the ground with me. My knees threaten to buckle, but I keep my focus straight ahead, trying to remind myself mind over matter will win. I shove my shoulderunder his arm and keep him upright as we shuffle our way out of the barrack.
The lineups are different this morning, for as far down the column of blocks as I can see against the sun’s glow peeking over the horizon, people are being shoved in different directions and shouted at. Yet, we will sit here and watch until they do the same to us, likely without any further explanation.
“No, I can’t—” the man in front of me moans before falling to the ground, face first.
I bend down to try to and help him back up, but he doesn’t budge. I can’t move him, and Hans is swaying beside me. I close my eyes and take a breath, holding it within my chest. “Please God, take care of this man laying here before me. Let his soul rest in peace,” I mutter.
“No, he’s—Fr—Frank, wake up,” Hans stutters. “You promised you wouldn’t die today. You told me last night.”
“Brother, he can’t—” Hans gently sways back and forth like a toy top about to make its last round. “Hans, look at me,” I tell him, grabbing his shoulders. He peeks through one squinted eye and shakes his head. “Youcanmake it another day. Focus on tomorrow.”
I clap my hands around his face, trying to spark him into standing up straight. He gasps for air and winces. “How much longer?” he asks.
“Not much,” I lie. I lie like we all do, telling each other we’re going to make it, and that this is almost over even though there are no clues pointing to this possible end.
My vision blurs as I try to see more of what’s happening down the line of people, but the sun scalds my eyes like metal rods.
“Thank you for dragging me out here,” Hans mumbles. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. We’re in this together. We’re making it through this. We are.” I don’t believe the words, but I believe they may help someone listening.
The group of guards makes their way to our section, grabbing shirts and arms and tossing people like rubbish off to one side of the dirt path.
Before I can consider what will happen if Hans and I are separated, it happens. My body is thrown up against our barrack and I fold in half, recoiling from the pain shuddering through my bones and skull.
When I regain my focus and try to push through the consuming pain, half of us are gone, out of sight, as if they’d never existed in the first place. “Hans?” I shout. “Where are you?”
“Get to work,” a guard screams at me and a few others who are trying to pick themselves up. I scour the area, looking in every possible direction to see where the others must have gone. It’s as if my mind is playing tricks on me, but there’s a stick shoved into the center of my back, stabbing at me to move faster. My head is heavier than a cannon and it’s nearly impossible to hold it upright. My feet trip over each other no matter how hard I try to walk in a straight line. I’m not sure I’m still living.
I pass Block 5, the sick bay block, staring at the wooden door as if I could burn a hole through it with my eyes. Would Emilie be inside? Is she still here? Is she still alive?
Or is this place hell? She wouldn’t be there. People like her don’t go to hell. People like me, Jewish people, don’t believe in hell, yet, here I am, not sure what else to call this place.
“Emilie!” I shout, wishing she could hear me. “They took Hans. He’s gone too.”
“Shut up, rat. Keep moving,” a guard shouts from behind me, throttling his stick into my back again.
FORTY-SEVEN
DANNER
APRIL 1945
Munich, Germany
With a weightless body drooping between my tired arms, I shake and wobble while bringing yet another deceased man to the wagon where the other bodies wait. The few remaining SS guards on site told us to move these people away from the crematorium that can’t be used at the moment. No one said why and no one knows where the rest of the guards went. They’ve just told us to move the pile of bodies.
The repetitive motions are mindless, allowing me to multi-task—work and dwell while I tell myself that I’ll soon be one of those bodies, strewn like a dirty rag. Then I switch thoughts to worry about Emilie—where she is and what she’s doing, if she’s forgotten about me, or worse… There are never answers, and there have been plenty of questions circling around the barracks because only half of us remain of the population that was here a few weeks ago. We don’t know why.
Last week, when most of the SS left the camp, they took half of us and sent them marching away to God only knows where. They took my only friend—the only person I had left. There wasno reason why it was him instead of me, and I’ll never know. I just know that I’m here and he’s not, and there must be a reason for why there are only a few guards remaining here.
“Do you hear that sound too?” the guy standing next to me with a matching shovel asks through a hoarse whisper.
“Gunshots?” another grave digger replies.
