Chapter 7 Chapter 5 Buna Concentration Camp

As if hit by an epidemic, the concentration camp was empty and lifeless, except for a few "well-dressed" prisoners wandering among the buildings.Of course, we had to shower first, and the camp supervisor was waiting for us by the bathroom.He is very strong, with broad shoulders, a bull neck, thick lips, curly hair, and looks very kind, with a smile flashing from time to time in his gray-blue eyes.There were several eleven or twelve-year-olds in our group. The officer was very interested in them and ordered them to be fed. We got new clothes and lived in two tents.There we waited to be allocated, put into different labor teams, and then assigned to a certain building.

In the evening, the labor team returned from the construction site.After the roll call, we started looking for acquaintances, asking the "veterans" which labor team was the best and which building we should go to.The prisoners agree: "Bunna is a good concentration camp, people can keep decent, it's better not to be assigned to the construction team..." It's as if we can choose at will... The man who ran our tent was a German with a butcher's face, thick lips, and hands like wolf's paws.The camp food seemed to suit him well, and he was so fat that he could barely walk.Like the camp director, he liked children.As soon as we arrived, he called for bread for the children, soup and margarine (actually, the affection was not out of altruism, as I later learned, gays here keep trading children) .

"You will stay with me for three days in quarantine. After that, you will have to work. Medical examination tomorrow." His assistant—a vulgar-looking boy with rolling eyes—comes up to me: "Do you want to get into a good labor force?" "Of course, but I'm going to be with my father." "No problem," he said, "I can arrange it. But you have to do a little charity: your shoes. I'll give you another pair." I refused to give him shoes.I have nothing but these shoes. "I can also give you a bread with margarine..." He likes my shoes, but I can't bear them.Later, he still took the shoes away, but gave me nothing.

The physical examination was carried out in the open air. Early the next morning, three doctors came and sat on stools. The first doctor didn't check anything and just asked me, "Are you healthy?" Who dares to say that he is sick? The dentist seemed to be more careful, he asked me to open my mouth.In fact, he didn't look at people for bad teeth, but for gold teeth.Write down the number of whoever has gold teeth.I have a gold tooth... The first three days passed quickly.On the fourth day, when we were queuing in front of the tent, some prison heads suddenly came to pick people: "You...you...you..." They pointed east and west, as if they were picking animals or commodities. of.

We followed a young prisoner, who told us to stop at the entrance of the first building, which was very close to the gate of the concentration camp, and it was the orchestra building.He waved us in, and we were amazed: Are we supposed to deal with music? The band was playing marches, they always played marches.Dozens of labor teams walked towards the construction site in tune with the music.Prisoners shouted slogans: "One two one, one two one." The SS holds a pen and records the number of prisoners who leave.The band continued to play the same tune until the last labor team had passed.Then, the baton stopped and the orchestra stopped playing.The prisoner roared:

"Line up!" We stand in line with the musicians, five in a row.We left the concentration camp, there was no music, but we walked in order, and the lingering sound of the march still echoed in our ears. "One two one, one two one!" We talk to those around us, the musicians.Almost all of them were Jewish.Julik is Polish, with glasses and a cynical smile on his pale face.Luis, a Dutch-born violinist of note, complained that Beethoven was banned in concentration camps: Jews were not allowed to play German music.Hans is from Berlin, very young and very quick-witted.The foreman was a Polish man named Frenik, a former student in Warsaw.

Zhulik said to me: "We work in the electrical warehouse, not far from here. The work is not difficult, and it is not dangerous. It's just Edek, the prisoner, who sometimes goes crazy for no reason, you'd better stay away from him Son." "You're lucky, little one," said Hans, with a smile on his face, "you're in a good team..." Ten minutes later, we were standing in front of the warehouse.A German employee, a civilian - we'll call him Meister - came to see us.He looked at us the way a shopkeeper looks at a freshly delivered pile of rags. Our comrades are right - the work is not difficult.We sat on the ground and counted bolts, light bulbs, and assorted electrical parts.The head prisoner gave a tirade about how important the job was and warned us that anyone who was lazy would be punished.The new comrade told me: "Don't worry. In front of Meister, he has to talk like this."

There are many Poles here, and a few Frenchwomen.The women were silent and greeted the musicians with their eyes. Foreman Francick told me to go to a corner: "Don't try to kill yourself! Don't worry! Be careful. Don't let the SS catch you." "Sir... please let me be next to my father." "Okay. Let your father do it here, next to you." We are lucky. There were also two boys assigned to our group.One named Yossi and the other named Taibi, two brothers from Czechoslovakia, their parents were killed in Birkenau.They depend on each other like soul and flesh.

I quickly became good friends with them.They belonged to a Zionist organization and could sing many Hebrew songs.So, we sometimes hum some little songs, those songs remind of the quiet flow of the Jordan River and the holy and beautiful Jerusalem.We also often talk about Palestine.Their parents, like mine, had time to escape but didn't have the courage to sell everything and move elsewhere.We resolved that as long as we lived to the day of liberation, we would never stay in Europe for another day, and we would board the first ship bound for Haifa. Ajiba Duma was still immersed in the mystical teachings. He found a poem in the "Bible", translated it into numbers, and predicted from the numbers how many weeks until liberation.

We moved from the tent to the building where the musicians lived.Now, we each have a blanket, a washbasin, and a bar of soap.The head of the building is a German Jew. We like Jews as leaders.His name was Alphonse, and he was young, but surprisingly wrinkled.He wholeheartedly maintained the building of "himself".Some young people are weak in constitution and regard eating more food as more important than freedom. Whenever possible, he "cobbles together" a big pot of soup for them. One day, as soon as we came back from the warehouse, the secretary of the building stopped me.

"Are you A-7713?" "I'm." "After dinner, you go to the dentist." "But...my tooth doesn't hurt..." "Go right after dinner! Don't delay." I went to the medical building.There were two dozen prisoners waiting in line at the gate, and it didn't take long for us to understand why we had come: They were going to pull out our gold teeth. The dentist is Jewish, from Czechoslovakia.His face was like a death mask, and as long as he opened his mouth, one could see a terrible sight: a mouth full of bad yellow teeth.I sat in a chair and asked humbly: "What are you going to do, sir?" "I'm going to take off your gold braces, that's all." He said indifferently. I suddenly remembered to pretend to be sick: "Can you wait a few days, sir? I don't feel well, I have a cold..." He frowned, thought for a moment, and felt my pulse. "Okay, kid. Come back to me when you feel better, but don't wait for me to call you." I went to him a week later and dealt with him with the same excuse: I still didn't feel well.He doesn't seem surprised at all, and I don't know if he believes me.But he seemed very happy, because I came back as promised without waiting for his call.He allowed me to delay for a few more days. A few days later, the dentist's office closed.He was thrown in prison and might be hanged.Some say he traded prisoners' gold teeth for his own gain.I don't pity him, but I am complacent because of his bad luck.I saved my gold braces, which might come in handy someday, in exchange for bread, or a few days of life.For me, the most important thing at that time was to be able to drink a bowl of soup every day, eat stale bread, and even bread crumbs.Bread and soup—that's all my life.I'm just a shell, not even a shell, just an empty stomach.I count time entirely on my stomach. I used to work next to a French woman in the warehouse, but we never spoke - she didn't understand German and I didn't understand French. I think she looks like a Jew, although some people say she is "Aryan", but she is still forced to do hard labor here. One day Edek went mad again.I walked right in front of him and he came at me like a beast and beat me on my chest and head and threw me on the floor and picked me up and hit me harder until I was covered in blood .I bit my lip tightly, not daring to cry out in pain.He must have mistaken me for contempt for him, and beat him harder and harder. Suddenly, he stopped and told me to go back to work, like nothing happened, like we had a game and it was a draw. I staggered back to the corner, aching all over.I felt a cold hand wipe the blood from my forehead, it was the French girl.She stuffed me with a slice of bread and smiled miserably.She looked straight into my eyes.I knew she wanted to talk to me, but she was too scared to speak.She remained like this for a moment, then, with a gleam on her face, she said in near-perfect German: "Bite your lips, little brother... don't cry. Keep your anger and hatred in your heart and wait for the future, there will be such a day sooner or later. That day will come, not now. Grit your teeth and wait..." Years later, when I was in Paris, I was sitting in the subway reading a newspaper.Across the aisle was a beautiful woman with dark hair and dreamy eyes—I'd seen those eyes before. "Ma'am, do you know me?" "I don't know, sir." "In 1944, you were in Poland, in Buna, weren't you?" "Yes, but..." "You work in a warehouse, a warehouse full of electrical parts..." "Yes," she said, looking confused.She was silent for a long time, "Wait, I remembered..." "Edek, the prisoner... that Jewish boy... and your gentle consolation..." We left the subway together, sat on the terrace of a café, and spent the night reminiscing about our past encounters.Before we broke up, I said, "Can I ask a question?" "I know what you want to ask: Am I Jewish? Yes, I am Jewish, from a devout Jewish family. During the occupation, I used false papers and pretended to be Aryan, so I was assigned to the labor force After they sent me to Germany, I escaped the fate of being locked up in a concentration camp. In the warehouse, no one knew that I could speak German, otherwise it would cause suspicion. I accidentally said a few words to you in German , but I know that you will not betray me..." Once, under the supervision of German soldiers, we installed internal combustion engines on trucks.Edek was next to him, a man with a lot of self-control, and suddenly he went into a rage.This time, it was the father who was unlucky. "You lazybones!" he growled. "Is that what you do?" He beat people with an iron rod.At first, my father crouched and was beaten, and later, like a tree struck by lightning, he snapped in two. I watched my father being beaten without moving.I said nothing.In fact, I really wanted to sneak away so I wouldn't get beaten.In particular, I was very angry at the time, not with the prisoner, but with my father.Why didn't he hide from Edek, why did he provoke him?Life in the concentration camp turned me upside down... One day, Foreman Francick found out that I had a gold tooth: "Give me the gold braces, kid." I said no, I can't eat without gold braces. "I can get them to feed you, kid..." I replied that my gold braces were on the record during the physical examination, and if they were gone, neither of us would have a chance. "If you won't give me gold braces, you'll pay more." There was a sudden change in the jovial, thoughtful young man, and there was a greedy gleam in his eyes.I told him I had to get my father's opinion. "Go, boy, ask, but answer me tomorrow." When I told my father about it, he hesitated, and after a long silence he said: "No, son, we can't do that." "He will take revenge!" "He dare not, my son." Unfortunately, Francick knew how to deal with this kind of thing, he knew my weakness.My father had never served in the army, so he couldn't walk right.But in this place, every time you go from one place to another, everyone has to walk together.Francick found an opportunity to torture him, every day, beating him like a savage.One two one, beat him; one two one, beat him. I decided to teach my father how to walk, how to keep time.We were practicing in front of the building, and I gave the order: "One, two, one." My father stepped forward. The prisoners made fun of us: "Look at this little officer, teaching an old man to walk... Hey, little general, how much bread did the old man give you to teach him?" However, my father did not improve, and he continued to be beaten. "What! Don't know how to walk right? You old bastard!" Two weeks passed without use and we had to give up.That day, Francick let out a wicked laugh: "I know, I knew I was going to win, boy. Better late than never. You've got to pay me a piece of bread for keeping me waiting. I want Give your bread to my friend, a well-known dentist from Warsaw. He will pry your gold braces off, and that bread is his reward." "What? My bread for my gold braces?" Francick smiled. "How about it? Let me tear your face up and knock out your teeth?" In the toilet that night, the Warsaw dentist pried out my gold braces with a rusty spoon. Francick is happy again, and sometimes he gives me an extra serving of soup.But the good times didn't last long, and after two weeks, all the Poles were transferred to another concentration camp.I lost my gold braces and got nothing. A few days before the Poles left, I had another adventure. On Saturday morning, our team was out of work.But Edek wouldn't let us hang around in the barracks, so we had to go to the warehouse.We were amazed by his sudden enthusiasm for work.In the warehouse, Edek handed us over to Francick, who said, "Do whatever you want, whatever you want, or I'll teach you a lesson..." Then he just disappeared. We don't know what to do.Not wanting to curl up on the ground, everyone took turns wandering through the storeroom, hoping to find something, maybe a piece of bread that someone had forgotten to take away. When I got to the back of the building, I heard voices in the next hut.I went over to take a peek and saw Edek sprawled out on a straw mat with a young, half-naked Polish girl. Now I understand why Edek didn't let everyone stay in the concentration camp. He sent hundreds of prisoners away just to have an affair with this girl!I thought it was so funny that I couldn't help laughing out loud. Edek jumped up and turned around to see me, the girl trying to cover her breasts.I wanted to run, but my feet felt nailed to the ground.Edek grabbed my throat. There was a threatening sound of "hissing" in his mouth: "Just wait and see, you boy... There is a price to pay for leaving work without authorization... I will make you pay the price in a while... You go back to me now..." Half an hour before the end of work, the head prisoner gathered the whole team together for roll call.No one knows what happened, why roll call at this time?at this place?Only I know.Prisoner's words are succinct: "Ordinary prisoners have no right to meddle in other people's affairs. One of you doesn't seem to understand this rule, so I'll make him sober and remember it forever." I felt a cold sweat dripping down my back. "A-7713!" I took a step forward. "Crate!" he ordered. Someone brought the wooden box. "Get down! Face down!" I obey. I can't feel anything but the whipping. "One...two...!" he counted. He counted slowly.The first whip is really painful.I hear him counting: "Ten... Eleven...!" His tone was calm, and his voice seemed to reach my ears through a thick wall. "twenty-three……!" Two more whips and I think I'm half unconscious. The prisoner is waiting. "Twenty-four... twenty-five...!" It's over.I lost consciousness and passed out.They poured cold water on me, and I woke up, still lying on the box.I vaguely saw that the ground was wet, and then heard a roar.It must be the head prisoner, I tried my best to distinguish what he was shouting: "stand up!" I must have moved a bit, struggling to remember, but fell on the crate.I do want to stand up! "Get up!" he growled louder. I wanted to talk back and tell him I couldn't move, but I couldn't open my mouth. Edek ordered two prisoners to pick me up and drag me to him. "look into my eyes!" I looked at him, but couldn't see clearly.I was thinking about my father, he would suffer more than me. "Listen, you pig!" Edek yelled coldly. "Your curiosity has been rewarded. If you dare to tell what you saw, you will be punished five times! Understand?" I nod, once...ten times, endlessly.My head seemed to keep going forever. On Sunday, half of the people, including my father, were working; the other half, including me, took the opportunity to rest and stay idle.At about ten o'clock the alarm sounded.After hearing the siren, the building chief asked everyone to stay in the building, and all the SS soldiers hid in the bunker.It was easier to escape by chance - the guards left the watchtower and the power to the barbed wire was cut.The SS was ordered to shoot whenever anyone was found outside the building. The concentration camp soon resembled an abandoned ship.There was no one on the Hedge Lane; two large pots of soup, steaming hot, stood unattended by the kitchen.Two pots of soup!The two pots of soup are in the middle of the road, smelling fragrant, and no one is guarding them!A luxurious feast will be wasted!This is a great temptation!Hundreds of greedy, glowing eyes stared at them, like hundreds of wolves surrounding two sheep.Two sheep without a shepherd, left to be seized by others.But who dares? Fear is more frightening than hunger.Suddenly, the door of Building 37 opened a crack, and a person came out, crawling towards the soup pot like a snake. Hundreds of pairs of eyes watched his every move.Hundreds of people crawled with him, their bodies rubbing against the stone, squirming with his body.Everyone's heart was trembling, mainly because of jealousy.He is the only one who has the guts. He approached the first pot, and everyone's hearts were pounding.He succeeded!Jealousy eats us, burns us.But we don't envy him at all.Poor hero would trade his life for a soup or two... In our opinion, he is doomed. He was lying not far from the pot, struggling to straighten himself up, trying to climb to the side of the pot.Maybe it was too weak, maybe it was fear, he paused for a moment, no doubt to gather strength.He succeeded at last, and climbed over the edge of the pot.In an instant, he seemed to see his own ghostly shadow in the soup, and let out a terrible scream, and he didn't know why.I have never heard such a horrific cry. He opened his mouth wide and plunged into the steaming soup.The gunshot rang out, and our hearts shuddered.The man was lying on the ground, his face was covered with soup, he twisted and squirmed beside the pot for a moment, and remained motionless. That's when we heard the plane.Almost at the same time, the shed began to shake. "They're bombing the Buna factory," someone shouted. I worry about my father, who is working in the factory.But I was still very happy, seeing the factory ablaze - this is retribution!We heard that the German army suffered defeats on several fronts. We don't know if it is true or not. Only today do we realize that it is true! We are not afraid.As long as one bomb fell on the complex, hundreds of prisoners would die.But we are not afraid of death, especially not this kind of death.Every bomb made us excited and our confidence doubled. The airstrike lasted more than an hour.If only it lasted ten hours, a hundred hours... Finally, everything fell silent.The sounds of American planes go with the wind, and we're in our own cemetery.We saw long lines of black smoke on the skyline, sirens sounded again, and the siren was lifted. Everyone came out of the building, breathing the air that smelled of gunpowder and thick smoke, with hope shining in their eyes.A bomb fell in the very center of the camp, very close to the assembly field, but it failed to explode.We had to remove it and carry it outside the camp. The commander of the concentration camp, accompanied by his assistants and chief prisoner, went on a tour.The airstrike left scars of horror on his face. The soup-faced body lay in the middle of the camp, the only victim of the air raid.People carried the soup pot back to the kitchen. The SS returned to the watchtowers and posts, standing behind the machine guns.The interlude is over. An hour later, we saw the labor team return one by one, as usual, all walking in neat steps.I am very happy because I saw the figure of my father. "Several buildings were razed to the ground," he said, "but luckily no warehouses were bombed..." In the afternoon, we happily cleared the debris. A week later, when we came back from our work, we saw a gallows standing in the assembly yard in the middle of the camp. We knew that we could only get soup after the roll call, but this time the roll call took longer than usual and the order was stricter than usual.Strange to say, even the air was trembling. "Hats off!" shouted the commander. Tens of thousands of hats were taken off immediately. "wear a hat!" Tens of thousands of hats were put on their heads like lightning. The gates of the concentration camps are open.A team of SS soldiers came in, with three steps, one post and five steps, one sentry, and surrounded us.The machine gun on the watchtower was aiming at the assembly empty field. "There's going to be trouble," Julik whispered. Two SS men headed for the single cell and returned with a death row prisoner.He was a boy from Warsaw, followed by a prisoner who spent three years in the concentration camp, tall and strong, a giant compared to me. The Warsaw boy turned his back to the gallows and faced the judge, the head of the camp.The boy's face was pale, but his expression was serious and fearless, and his shackled hands did not tremble.He scanned the surrounding SS soldiers and thousands of prisoners with calm eyes. The commander began to announce the order, word by word: "According to Reichsmarshal Himmler's order... Prisoner So-and-so...stolen in an air raid...According to the law...Prisoner So-and-so...is sentenced to death. This is a warning to all prisoners, and he is all prisoners model." People don't move at all. I heard my heart "beep beep" beating.In Auschwitz and Birkenau, thousands of people died every day and sent to the crematorium, and I was numb.However, this child leaning on the gallows still makes me throb deeply. "Isn't this ceremony over soon? I'm hungry..." Julik whispered. The commander waved his hand, and the head prisoner walked towards the young condemned prisoner.Two prisoners served as his assistants in exchange for two bowls of soup. The chief prisoner wanted to blindfold the young man, but was refused. It seemed a long time before the executioner put a rope around his neck.He was about to signal to his assistant to remove the chair from the young man's feet, when the boy suddenly called out, in a calm and powerful voice: "Long live freedom! I curse the Germans! I curse! I—" The executor is done. The order cuts like a sharp sword in the air: "Hats off!" Tens of thousands of prisoners paid tribute to the dead. "wear a hat!" Then, all the prisoners in the concentration camp, in order of building number, lined up and walked in front of the hanged child, looking at the pair of desperate eyes and the tongue sticking out of its mouth.The prison heads forced everyone to look him in the face. Then we were allowed to go back to our building for dinner. As I recall, the soup that night was better than ever! I've seen many hangings, but never a single victim crying.These battered bodies have long forgotten the bitter tears. But there is one exception.The 52nd Labor Brigade is the Cable Brigade, and its second head prisoner is a Dutchman, a tall man over six feet tall, and he is in charge of more than seven hundred prisoners.Everyone liked him like a brother, no one was beaten, and he didn't humiliate anyone. It is a young child who "works" for him, and people call him "follower".He had a delicate and graceful face--a rare face in a concentration camp. In Bekenor, servants are the most hated, and they are often more ruthless than the leader.I saw a footman, only thirteen years old, beat his father for not making his bed.The old man was weeping silently, but the boy was crying, "If you cry any more, I won't give you any more bread. Do you understand?" But everyone liked the Dutchman's little henchman.His face was like that of a suffering angel. One day, the central power plant in Buna suddenly lost power, and the Gestapo was ordered to find out why.In the end, they concluded that it was vandalism.They found clues and followed them all the way to the building where the second Dutch prisoner lived.After some searching, they found a number of weapons. The second prisoner was arrested on the spot.For weeks, he was tortured and beaten, but the Gestapo found nothing.He did not reveal a single name.He was later transferred to Auschwitz, and we never heard from him again. However, his valet stayed on, locked up in a single cell.He was also tortured and beaten, but kept his mouth shut.The SS sentenced him and two other adult prisoners to death because the Gestapo discovered they were armed. One day, when we came back from work, we saw three gallows—like three crows—standing over the assembly yard.After the roll call, the SS rounded us up and machine-gunned us—a routine ritual.Three prisoners are chained—the little servant, a sad-eyed angel, is among them. The SS seemed more tense and worried than ever.Hanging a child in front of thousands of people is no small matter.The camp chief read the order, and all eyes were on the child.He was pale, but still calm.He bit his lip and stood in the shadow of the gallows. This time, the chief prisoner refused to be the executioner, and three SS men took his place. The three condemned prisoners walked together towards the rope, and the noose was around their necks at the same time. "Long live freedom!" the two chanted. But the child said nothing. "Where is the merciful God, where is he?" someone behind me asked. At the signal, three chairs were kicked down. There was silence in the concentration camp.On the skyline, the sun sets. "Hats off!" bellowed the Commander--his voice trembling.As for us, we were all crying. "wear a hat!" Then, everyone marched in front of the dead.Two adults died, their tongues turned out, swollen and slightly purple.But the third rope is still moving, the child is too light and still panting... He was half dead and half alive, hanging for more than half an hour, struggling and wriggling in front of our eyes, and we were forced to go up to see him.When I walked past him, he was still alive, his tongue was still red, his eyes were still open. I heard the man behind me ask: "God! Where is God?" In the depths of my heart, a voice answered: "Where is God? There it is—hanging on the gallows..." That night, the soup smelt of dead bodies. On Sunday, half of the people, including my father, were working; the other half, including me, took the opportunity to rest and stay idle. At about ten o'clock the alarm sounded.After hearing the siren, the building chief asked everyone to stay in the building, and all the SS soldiers hid in the bunker.It was easier to escape by chance - the guards left the watchtower and the power to the barbed wire was cut.The SS was ordered to shoot whenever anyone was found outside the building. The concentration camp soon resembled an abandoned ship.There was no one on the Hedge Lane; two large pots of soup, steaming hot, stood unattended by the kitchen.Two pots of soup!The two pots of soup are in the middle of the road, smelling fragrant, and no one is guarding them!A luxurious feast will be wasted!This is a great temptation!Hundreds of greedy, glowing eyes stared at them, like hundreds of wolves surrounding two sheep.Two sheep without a shepherd, left to be seized by others.But who dares? Fear is more frightening than hunger.Suddenly, the door of Building 37 opened a crack, and a person came out, crawling towards the soup pot like a snake. Hundreds of pairs of eyes watched his every move.Hundreds of people crawled with him, their bodies rubbing against the stone, squirming with his body.Everyone's heart was trembling, mainly because of jealousy.He is the only one who has the guts. He approached the first pot, and everyone's hearts were pounding.He succeeded!Jealousy eats us, burns us.But we don't envy him at all.Poor hero would trade his life for a soup or two... In our opinion, he is doomed. He was lying not far from the pot, struggling to straighten himself up, trying to climb to the side of the pot.Maybe it was too weak, maybe it was fear, he paused for a moment, no doubt to gather strength.He succeeded at last, and climbed over the edge of the pot.In an instant, he seemed to see his own ghostly shadow in the soup, and let out a terrible scream, and he didn't know why.I have never heard such a horrific cry. He opened his mouth wide and plunged into the steaming soup.The gunshot rang out, and our hearts shuddered.The man was lying on the ground, his face was covered with soup, he twisted and squirmed beside the pot for a moment, and remained motionless. That's when we heard the plane.Almost at the same time, the shed began to shake. "They're bombing the Buna factory," someone shouted. I worry about my father, who is working in the factory.But I was still very happy, seeing the factory ablaze - this is retribution!We heard that the German army suffered defeats on several fronts. We don't know if it is true or not. Only today do we realize that it is true! We are not afraid.As long as one bomb fell on the complex, hundreds of prisoners would die.But we are not afraid of death, especially not this kind of death.Every bomb made us excited and our confidence doubled. The airstrike lasted more than an hour.If only it lasted ten hours, a hundred hours... Finally, everything fell silent.The sounds of American planes go with the wind, and we're in our own cemetery.We saw long lines of black smoke on the skyline, sirens sounded again, and the siren was lifted. Everyone came out of the building, breathing the air that smelled of gunpowder and thick smoke, with hope shining in their eyes.A bomb fell in the very center of the camp, very close to the assembly field, but it failed to explode.We had to remove it and carry it outside the camp. The commander of the concentration camp, accompanied by his assistants and chief prisoner, went on a tour.The airstrike left scars of horror on his face. The soup-faced body lay in the middle of the camp, the only victim of the air raid.People carried the soup pot back to the kitchen. The SS returned to the watchtowers and posts, standing behind the machine guns.The interlude is over. An hour later, we saw the labor team return one by one, as usual, all walking in neat steps.I am very happy because I saw the figure of my father. "Several buildings were razed to the ground," he said, "but luckily no warehouses were bombed..." In the afternoon, we happily cleared the debris. A week later, when we came back from our work, we saw a gallows standing in the assembly yard in the middle of the camp. We knew that we could only get soup after the roll call, but this time the roll call took longer than usual and the order was stricter than usual.Strange to say, even the air was trembling. "Hats off!" shouted the commander. Tens of thousands of hats were taken off immediately. "wear a hat!" Tens of thousands of hats were put on their heads like lightning. The gates of the concentration camps are open.A team of SS soldiers came in, with three steps, one post and five steps, one sentry, and surrounded us.The machine gun on the watchtower was aiming at the assembly empty field. "There's going to be trouble," Julik whispered. Two SS men headed for the single cell and returned with a death row prisoner.He was a boy from Warsaw, followed by a prisoner who spent three years in the concentration camp, tall and strong, a giant compared to me. The Warsaw boy turned his back to the gallows and faced the judge, the head of the camp.The boy's face was pale, but his expression was serious and fearless, and his shackled hands did not tremble.He scanned the surrounding SS soldiers and thousands of prisoners with calm eyes. The commander began to announce the order, word by word: "According to Reichsmarshal Himmler's order... Prisoner So-and-so...stolen in an air raid...According to the law...Prisoner So-and-so...is sentenced to death. This is a warning to all prisoners, and he is all prisoners model." People don't move at all. I heard my heart "beep beep" beating.在奥斯维辛和伯肯诺，每天都有几千人死去，送进焚尸炉，我已经麻木了。但是，这个斜倚着绞刑架的孩子还是让我深深悸动。 “这场仪式还不快点儿完？我饿了……”朱利克悄声说。 司令官一摆手，总囚头朝年轻的死刑犯走去。两个囚徒给他当助手，为的是换两碗汤喝。 总囚头想蒙上年轻人的眼睛，但遭到拒绝。 好像过了很长时间，刽子手才用绳子套住他的脖子。他刚要给助手打手势，撤掉年轻人脚下的椅子，男孩突然喊起来，声音平静而有力： “自由万岁！我诅咒德国人！我诅咒！我——” 执行人干完了活。 命令像一柄利剑凌空劈下： “脱帽！” 上万囚徒向死者致敬。 “戴帽！” 接着，集中营的全体囚徒，按楼号顺序，排队从被绞死的孩子前面走过，看着那双绝命的眼睛和从嘴里伸出的舌头。囚头们强迫大家正视他的脸。 而后，我们才允许回到自己的楼里吃饭。 我记得，那天晚上的汤，味道比以往的都好！ 我见过多次绞刑，但从来没见过一个受害者哭泣。这些饱经摧残的躯壳早就忘记了苦涩的眼泪。 但有一次例外。第五十二劳工队是电缆队，它的二囚头是荷兰人，此人身高马大，超过六英尺，他管着七百多号囚徒。大家像兄弟一样喜欢他，谁都没有挨过打，他也没有羞辱过任何人。 为他“效力”的是一个年纪不大的孩子，人们叫他“跟班”。他有一张细腻优美的脸蛋——在集中营里，这种脸极为罕见。 在伯肯诺，跟班最遭人恨，他们往往比头领更残忍。我亲眼见过一个跟班，只有十三岁，因为他父亲没整理好床铺而动手打他。老人在无声哭泣，那孩子却在大喊：“你要是再哭，我就不再给你面包。明白吗？”但是，大家都喜欢荷兰人的小跟班。他那张脸就像受苦受难的天使。 一天，布纳的中央发电厂突然断电，盖世太保受命查找原因。最后，他们断定这是一场人为破坏。他们发现了线索，循迹而来，一直查到荷兰二囚头住的那栋楼。经过一番搜查，他们找到了不少武器。 二囚头被当场逮捕。一连几星期，他受到严刑烤打，但盖世太保一无所获。他没有吐露一个名字。后来他被转移到奥斯维辛，我们就再也没有听说过他了。 但是，他的跟班却留下来，关在单身牢房中。他也受到严刑烤打，但守口如瓶。党卫军宣判他和另外两个成年囚徒死刑，因为盖世太保发现他们有武器。 一天，我们干完活回来，看见有三个绞刑架——像三只乌鸦——耸立在集合空场上。点完名后，党卫军把我们围起来，机关枪冲着我们——这是一种常规仪式。三个囚徒用铁链锁着——小跟班，一个满目忧伤的天使，也在其中。 党卫军好像比以往更紧张、更担心。当着数千人的面绞死一个孩子不是一件小事情。集中营的总头目宣读了命令，所有眼睛都注视着孩子。他面色苍白，但依然镇静。他咬着嘴唇，站在绞架的阴影下面。 这一回，总囚头拒绝担任行刑者，三个党卫军代替了他。 三个死囚一起朝绳索走去，绞索同时套住他们的脖子。 “自由万岁！”两个人高喊。 但那个孩子一声不吭。 “慈悲的上帝在哪里，他在哪里？”我身后有人问。 信号一发出，三把椅子被踢倒。 集中营里一片沉寂。在天际线上，夕阳西下。 “脱帽！”司令官吼道——他的声音在颤抖。至于我们，大家都在哭泣。 “戴帽！” 然后，大家在死者面前列队走过。两个成年人死了，他们的舌头翻了出来，肿胀着，微微发紫。但第三根绳子依然在动，孩子的体重太轻，还在喘气…… 他半死半活，吊了半个多小时，在我们眼前挣扎蠕动，我们被迫走到跟前去看他。我从他身边走过时，他仍然活着，舌头依然是红的，眼睛还没闭上。 我听到身后那个人问： “上帝呀！上帝在哪里？” 在我的心灵深处，一个声音在回答： “上帝在哪里？就在那儿——吊在绞架上……” 那天晚上，汤带有一股死尸的味道。