Prisoner B-3087 (13 page)

They were dead. Or dying. The guards would come
in and beat their bodies to make sure they weren’t faking it, and while we were gone to roll call or on a work
detail the bodies would disappear, carted off to the
furnaces to burn like the rest.

One morning the man in the bunk next to me didn’t
wake. I knew what death looked like by now. Death
and I had become old acquaintances. We knew each
other when we passed on the street. This man was
dead, I was sure.

“What is it?” another prisoner asked me. He was a
boy, like me, maybe one or two years older.
“This man is dead,” I told him.
The boy poked him to be sure, then looked around

to see if the
kapo
s were coming yet.
“Go through his pockets,” he said
“What?” I was momentarily surprised by his words.
“See if he still has any bread on him.”
It sounded awful, but if the man did have food on

him he definitely didn’t need it anymore. I put my
hands in the pockets of his striped jacket and found a
lice-ridden piece of bread from last night’s dinner. I
brushed off the lice, tore the bread in half, and gave
half to the other boy. We scarfed down the bread
before the
kapo
s came.

The boy introduced himself to me as Fred. I told
him my name — Yanek. Not B-3087. I hadn’t spoken
my name to anyone for as long as I could remember.
Fred and I shook hands. It was the first intentional
contact I’d had with anyone at the camps since Uncle
Moshe had died. We were all the time touching other
people— lined up at roll call, at work, in line to get
food, in bed at night. But I hadn’t shaken hands or
hugged anyone on purpose in months. It felt good to
connect with someone, even though Uncle Moshe’s
words came back to me again:
You have no name, no
personality, no family, no friends. Nothing to identify you, nothing to care about. Not if you want to
survive.

Fred and I stood together at roll call, but of course
we didn’t say a word to each other the whole time.
When it was time for work detail, we were assigned
together to the gravel pit, where we worked side by
side breaking rocks.

“Where are you from?” Fred asked me while we
worked.
I hesitated, remembering Uncle Moshe’s warnings.
But Fred was the first person close to my age I’d met
since hiding under the floors at Plaszów with Isaac
and Thomas. I loved just talking again. Being human.
“Kraków,” I told him.
“Me too!” Fred said. We compared streets, and discovered we had grown up not too far from each other.
We even went to some of the same parks and stores.
“Every day I would walk my sister to school down
Krakusa Street,” he said, remembering. Then he got
very quiet.
“Where is she now?” I asked.
“She and my parents came here with me. I was sent
to the right. They were sent to the left.”
I knew what that meant. We all did. His family
was dead.
Overhead, we heard the drone of airplanes, and we
all looked up.
“British planes,” someone whispered. I didn’t know
how they could tell, but I hoped they were right.
British planes meant the Allies were advancing, taking the fight to the Germans. The Allies were the
forces aligned against Germany— England, France,
America, and the rest.
The
kapo
s cracked their whips and made us all get
back to work, but soon we heard explosions in the distance. The Allies were bombing close by!
“Sometimes I wish the Allies would drop bombs on
us,” Fred said quietly. “Blow this place to bits, and all
the Nazis and
kapo
s with it. And me too.”
“We can’t give up,” I told him. “We have to
survive.”
Fred tried to smile, but I could tell he was still
thinking about his family. He didn’t say anything
more the rest of the morning. It was only at lunch that
he felt like talking again. He lifted a spoonful of
the tepid, flavorless broth and poured it back into
his bowl.
“You know what I’m going to do first thing, when I
get out of the camps? I’m going to buy a big, warm,
golden loaf of bread. Then I’m going to slice off a thick
piece, and I’m going to spread butter all over it and eat
it in three bites.”
I laughed. “I’ll take five pastries. Oh, and bagels.
Three of those.”
“With cream cheese!”
“Carrot cake with walnuts.”
“Chocolate mousse!”
Just talking about all that delicious food made my
stomach rumble, but it was fun to dream. We kept up
our running menu all through work in the gravel pit
that afternoon, and into the evening in the barracks
while we lay next to each other on our shelf.
“Fresh challah bread!” I said.
“Sauerkraut.”
“Mushroom soup.”
“Stuffed cabbage.”
“Will you two shut up about food?” a prisoner near
us yelled at last. “I can’t stand it any longer!”
Fred and I laughed, but we stopped. It was best that
we got as much sleep as we could anyway. We had a
hard day’s work ahead of us, and nothing good to eat.

Fred and I became inseparable in the camp. We stood
together at roll call, we ate together, we tried to get on
the same work details, we slept beside each other at
night. It was good to have a friend. But one day I
noticed Fred was slower at chopping wood than he
had been the day before, and at dinner he wouldn’t eat
his bread.

“What’s wrong, Fred?”
“I don’t feel good,” he told me. He gave me his bread
and climbed up into bed. I saved the bread for him in
my pocket. He would want it tomorrow, I was sure.
But he didn’t want it then. He didn’t eat his soup at
lunch either. I had to do some of his work at the timber
yard to cover for him too. That night as we lay on our
shelf, I whispered to him that he had to get better.
“I can’t, Yanek. It hurts.”
“What does?”
“My stomach. My head. My throat.”
Fred was sick, there was no doubt about it. But
you couldn’t get sick in the camps. Not so sick you
couldn’t work. There was a camp clinic, but no one
wanted to go there. People didn’t come back from the
camp clinic.
“You’ll be better tomorrow,” I told Fred. “I saved
you some bread for when you’re better.”
Fred wasn’t better the next day. He was worse. He
couldn’t even get out of bed.
“Fred, you have to get up!” I told him. “You have to
move! The
kapo
will come for you soon!”
“No,” Fred moaned. “No, Yanek. Go. You
have to. Go.”
“What’s this? What’s going on?” an angry voice
demanded. It was our barrack
kapo
. He pushed me
aside and poked Fred with his club. “Get up. Time for
roll call.”
“He can’t,” I told the
kapo
. “He’s sick.”
The
kapo
struck me with his club, sending me to the
floor. I put my hand to my ear and felt blood.
“Get up!” the
kapo
told Fred again. He hit him with
the club, and Fred moaned.
I stood up and was about to grab the
kapo
to try
and stop him, but another prisoner took me by the
arm. “Come away,” he whispered. “Come away, boy.”
The
kapo
hit Fred again, and again.
“Fred!” I yelled.
“Get to roll call, or you’ll get a beating!” the
kapo
threatened me.
“Yanek,” Fred moaned. “Go. Please.”
The
kapo
hit him again as the other prisoner pulled
me away.
“He’s going to kill him!” I pleaded with the man.
“Yes, and he’ll kill you too if you interfere. Is that
what you want?”
I stood in line at the roll call, watching for Fred. He
had to get up. He could make it. He wasn’t a Muselmann
yet. He was just sick! He would get better!
Fred arrived at roll call at the very end, but only
because he was dragged there by two
kapo
s. His face
was bloody where they’d beaten him, and he hung
limp, not even trying to stand. I fought back the tears
that came to my eyes.
The
kapo
s hauled Fred to the front of the assembly
yard, where a gallows was built. It was a simple thing:
just two standing poles with a bar between them.
From the pole hung a rope with a noose tied at the
end. The two
kapo
s lifted Fred’s neck into the noose
and tightened it, leaving a chair under his feet to keep
him from hanging. He was so weak he couldn’t even
stand, and the rope cut into his neck, turning his face
blue. I choked back a sob.
“This man says he cannot work,” a Nazi told us.

No
, I thought.
No, he can. He’s a good worker. He’s
just sick.
“Work makes you free,” the Nazi told us. “But if
you cannot work —”
The Nazi nodded to the
kapo
s, and one of them
kicked the chair out from under Fred. He lifted his
head for just a moment, long enough for me to see
his horrified face, and then I couldn’t watch anymore.
That night I said a kaddish for Fred as I ate his
bread, and made another vow never to forget.