Authors: Jason Fields
Aaron sat quietly, downcast.
“Here, you’ll need this,” Novak said, passing Aaron a stained but very heavy coat from a hook. Then, from under his desk, he pulled out an old pair of warm boots.
Aaron found both a little large, but still he was grateful — especially as the boots had already been broken in. He remembered the pair he’d been given when he’d first joined the army. He still had scars from where they’d cut into the backs of his ankles.
Within a few moments of Aaron’s dressing, there was a knock on the door and Novak rose to open it. Two Blue Policemen that Aaron had never seen before came in.
“Take Mr. Chaim Rosen here to his train,” Novak said.
Aaron was again jerked to his feet. He turned with a question to Novak.
“Yelena?”
“I don’t know,” Novak said brusquely.
Finally, it dawned on Aaron to ask the most obvious question of all.
“How did you find me? Why are you here?”
“Don’t you people believe in luck?” Novak asked, his eyebrows raised.
There was no time for Aaron to say a final word to his cruel savior. He was quickly out the door, through the corridor and down several flights of stairs. Every time he tried to stand on his own, he had his legs knocked out from under him by the pace. He wasn’t strong enough to keep up, though the vodka from Novak’s flask helped somewhat with the pain.
However long it felt, it must have only been a few minutes before Aaron found himself without his guards in a sort of pen alongside other prisoners. Some displayed cuts and bruises, but nothing as severe as what Aaron had suffered. Most looked away from him. Aaron, knowing he stood in another man’s place — that he had cost that man his life — was unable to look anywhere but the ground.
Outside the pen he saw many black uniforms with the death’s head insignia, very few blue Polish jackets. Wherever his group was going, there was to be no thin veneer of Polish authority.
“Do you see over there?”
One man had jabbed another with an elbow.
“Where?”
“To your left,” left the older man said.
Aaron looked, too. He saw a line of women being herded into an adjacent enclosure that was similar to his own.
A voice only a few steps away from Aaron called, “Rachel!” The man who owned it ran toward the fence.
The woman turned to meet him. The two locked hands through the wooden boards that separated them and quickly had their heads down, speaking intimately to each other.
There were a few other such reunions, leaving the rest of the men grimmer than before. They stamped their feet to keep warm and tried to reassure themselves that wherever their loved ones might be, they were safe.
Aaron scanned the group of women again and again, but saw no sign of Yelena’s bright hair. There was no one he knew in the group.
“I guess Novak couldn’t find anyone to kill for her,” he said to himself. Prisoners nearest to him tried to edge just a little further away, hearing the bitterness and rage, though not the words.
Everyone stood in the open air for first one hour, then two. The weather, unseasonably warm for much of the day, began to cool. People unconsciously began to huddle together, the women and the men. The few couples, mothers and sons, fathers and daughters who had found each other, had to pull their hands back from the fence to put them in their pockets. There was little chatter now. The words had been said.
Light was dimming as both the cloud cover thickened and the sun sank. Train sounds were heard and then drew closer. A metallic whistle cut through the cold air. People began to talk again, speculation rife on where exactly they were going.
Now the gates of the prison were rolled back, revealing rails and an impromptu platform.
A man with a religious beard turned to another who looked much the same.
“I’m sure that it won’t be so terrible. After all, the women are going to the same place.”
The other nodded. The assumption of gallantry wasn’t dead, Aaron thought, even if the thing itself had galloped away long before.
A locomotive chuffed into view but behind it weren’t coaches. Instead, the cars were made up of wooden slats spaced fairly close together with big doors in the middle. Clearly they were used for freight.
They weren’t empty. It was possible to hear voices calling out from inside some of the cars, and to see limbs waving. Some voices demanded to know what was going on, why the train was stopping, what the final destination was. The wind was blowing from across the tracks and struck the faces of the waiting men and women with the smell of an open sewer. Some turned their faces away. One woman retched thinly.
The train finally came to rest. A few guards swung down from their places between the cars, machine guns pointing toward the waiting crowd. Doors were thrown open on empty compartments and the prison’s soldiers began to shout.
“Raus! Raus!”
The gates of the pens were pulled wide and the men and women, terrified by what they’d seen, heard and smelled, slowly began to walk toward the train.
“Raus!” Move it!
Rifle butts struck backs in the rear of the crowd and the pace began to pick up somewhat.
Suddenly, a woman broke out of the crowd and ran toward an officer.
“I can’t leave! I have a baby! She’ll die without me.”
“Back in line,” said a soldier who had stepped over to protect his officer.
“Please! This isn’t right!” She was crying, yelling.
The officer looked away as if bored. Seeing this, the woman began to shriek.
“You must listen to me!
You must!
”
She threw her fists against the soldier, who pushed her to her knees. The officer calmly pulled his sidearm and walked over to point it at the woman’s skull.
“Please!” she screamed.
The shot silenced her.
The shot silenced everyone in the courtyard.
The woman’s body slumped and then fell to the side.
Still, the officer said nothing, just calmly put the gun back in its holster and returned to where he’d been standing. He nodded to the soldiers who again began shoving the Jews toward the train.
“Raus!”
When it was Aaron’s turn, he put up no more struggle than anyone else. He climbed over the lip of the doorway and then made his way toward the back where there was already a group of men sitting. They weren’t able to sit for long. More and more men followed them into the car. Soon it was crowded and the men tiredly got to their feet. It became more crowded, and more. Fifteen minutes after he had boarded, Aaron was trapped, breathing in the breath the man in front of him had just exhaled.
“It must be nearby, wherever we’re going,” an optimistic voice said.
The door of the car slammed shut. The locomotive’s wheels began to turn.
N
o matter how far the train traveled or how cold the Polish countryside became, there was little fear that most of the occupants inside the cattle cars would freeze. All were packed together so closely that body heat made up for the frigid winds — at least for those in the middle of the car.
Those closest to the center of the pile were the children, shielded by their fathers when it was possible, or by strangers when it was necessary. Some men had tried to take the warmth for themselves, but were severely discouraged by the rest. Many of those who had tried, in fact, were now pressed against the wooden slats that made up the walls of the carriage. There they could enjoy the freshest air and the coldest winds. The air further in had been cycled through too many pairs of lungs, and there was little nourishment in it.
The people were not fed, nor were they given water. Several times along the route, the train stopped for one reason or another. German and Polish guards would climb down from their posts to stretch their legs, warm coats comforting them as they stood about. They would smoke cigarettes, make jokes and a great show of eating and drinking in front of an audience that wished them nothing but death and dismemberment. The guards knew it, and it made them laugh all the harder.
If they became bored, the guards would sometimes throw snowballs at the cars, watching the Jews scramble to grab whatever ice came through the slats and shove it into their mouths to melt as if it were the sweetest ice cream.
The Jews themselves were often bored. Aaron spent some of his time eavesdropping on conversations between neighbors who were searching for small commonalities and temporary friendships.
“You grew up on Krasno Street? I lived just a block away for years,” one man said to his thinner comrade. “Funny we never met. Did you ever go to Weiss’ bakery?”
“I loved that place. When did it close?”
“Oh, some time before the war. I think that’s actually one thing we can’t blame the Germans for.”
The men gave each other faint smiles.
A corner of Aaron’s mouth quirked, too.
Aaron didn’t participate in much of the talk. His body and soul were in no shape to reach out. He was trapped upright, pressed against a changing cast of fellow travelers. He had no doubt that several of his ribs were broken. Each breath was a source of shocking pain that was becoming familiar.
He was tortured by his inability to sort his memories from his nightmares. Sometimes he couldn’t see any difference between the two.
What had he told Clausewitz? Who had he betrayed? Were his friends being tortured, were they dead because of what he’d said as he wept? Were they meeting Clausewitz themselves and giving up other friends in turn? Would it stop before the entire fabric of the ghetto had been torn apart like so much tissue paper?
But Clausewitz had spoken, too … Had given Aaron a piece to his puzzle … To Berson’s death.
What the hell had he said?
The answer was drowned in Aaron’s immediate misery, the swaying of the train, the pressing of the bodies around him, each breath that he struggled not to take. He didn’t sleep, but he did pass out.
He woke as the train slowed. Inertia caused his fellow passengers to squeeze harder against his rib cage, bringing on fresh pain. It was nighttime and snow was falling heavily. People muttered that they hoped the weather wasn’t the reason for the stop. No one was exactly sure how much longer they could survive on the train. A number had fallen, and efforts to wake them had come to nothing. No one wanted to admit that they were dead.
Aaron squinted to see beyond the flakes and the darkness. There was something nearby. He was sure.
A harsh beam of light proved him right and blinded him at the same time. A second spotlight quickly followed. When Aaron could see again, men with dogs and guns were coming to meet the train. The guards on board jumped down to meet their relief.
The commander of the train, his face and breath visible in silhouette, spoke with a man who carried himself as if he were in charge of something. There was paperwork exchanged and full-armed salutes. Aaron could only guess that heels were clicked. The snow would have muffled the sound.
One by one, the carriages were emptied. Most of the passengers could walk, albeit stiffly. Others, alive and dead, were carried out by their fellow Jews. On orders from the commandant, the dead were thrown into a waiting ditch. Those alive but unable to walk were shot. The ambulatory were again made to throw the bodies into the ditch.
Aaron’s car was the third to be unloaded. Even those who couldn’t walk did. People lent one another a shoulder, an arm or a hand. The dead, however dear they had been in life, could not be helped.
For a moment, Aaron wasn’t sure how he was going to leave the train, on his feet or back. A youngish woman who had come aboard to clear the dead slipped him her hand to clutch. Whatever deprivation she had lived through since the invasion, she had a reserve of strength Aaron felt flow through him. As they strode together, Aaron stood taller and took more weight on his own feet.
At last, the ten cars of the train held no one else. Hoses were turned on them to flush out the excrement that had covered the floors in noisome mud. One soldier playfully squirted a Jew, adding a deeper cold to his misery.
The guards formed the Jews up into squares of sixty-four, dividing men and women into separate columns. Temporary reunions were broken up. Sons were taken from mothers, daughters from fathers. The shrieks of both parents and children filled the night until a gunshot silenced them. An example having been made, the Nazi soldiers marched the survivors into the compound. Everyone was given “soup” made out of warmish water and God alone knew what else, and then were marched further, into barracks.
The barracks contained nothing more than floor-to-ceiling rows of bunks comprised of rough wooden slats, like the walls of the cattle cars. The beds were stacked so tightly they resembled nothing more than bookshelves. To husband resources, the builders — slave laborers — had used as few boards as possible, making the gap between them dangerous for a man who rolled onto his side.
As each new trainload of workers arrived, the barracks filled beyond capacity. Men were forced to share shelf space with two or more companions. There were few blankets, so in the winter the warmth was much appreciated, if not the company.
The overcrowding wasn’t a permanent condition. Over the days, bunks emptied as those who had been using them died from starvation, exhaustion or other forms of cruelty. Each train’s arrival began the process anew.
On Aaron’s first night at the camp, he found himself a place with three other men who had lived there for weeks or months. They were in no better shape than he was himself, perhaps worse. Looking at them, the word that popped into Aaron’s mind was “wraith.” Their clothes were so tattered that even in the darkness, he was able to make out skin stretched thin over ribs, and limbs that looked more like bare bones.
Aaron begged their pardon as he joined them, explaining that their bunk seemed the least crowded of the accommodations available. There was grumbling, but no energy for a fight. The man nearest the wall edged closer to it and the others closed ranks behind him. Rags that appeared to be made from a mixture of old sweaters and coats were the only covering available. The men Aaron had found were even gracious enough to share with him. He added his own coat to the pile and found his eyes welling up at the small, unnecessary kindness the men had offered.