I Shall Live (39 page)

I was frantic. I had no choice but to join the column, but as we set out I moved up the ranks, row by row, until I reached the head of the column, then gradually fell back to the end so that I had been able to scan each row. A guard saw me and demanded an explanation. I was so upset that without thinking I told him that my brother had been in the column and had apparently got lost, and that I had his food. The guard helpfully suggested that perhaps Sam had died during the night. “What are you worrying about?” he said. “You've
got the food. Let
him
worry!” and laughed heartily at his own joke.

For the first time in years I had tears in my eyes. Warshawski was very kind and kept reassuring me that since we had heard no shots, Sam must be all right. He even suggested that Sam might well be better off than we were, if he was out of the hands of the SS. But I knew that Sam was too weak to be on his own.

About the middle of the day they gave us a brief rest. When we got moving again, I saw a column of prisoners marching on a parallel country road a couple hundred yards away, in the same direction we were going. Suddenly I noticed a prisoner at the end of the column, about at our level in the line of march, whose gait and height reminded me of Sam, and who kept looking in our direction. “I may be crazy,” I said to Warshawski, “but I think that guy over there is Sam.” “You're crazy,” said Warshawski. “Most of us, in our striped uniforms, look alike from a distance, and anyway, how would Sam have got himself into another column? Besides,” Warshawski pointed out, “what can you do about it?”

But I kept looking at the man, and was overcome by the certainty that he was Sam. I said to Warshawski that I was going to tell the SS officer in charge of our column that one of the prisoners on the other road was my brother, who had somehow gotten lost, and that I had his food from the Red Cross box. Warshawski tried to dissuade me; he thought I would be risking my life to say anything. “Even if he were to believe you, what if he goes over to the other column and finds that the guy isn't Sam after all? He might just shoot you.”

But I decided to take the chance. I prepared a short speech in German and rehearsed it thoroughly. The next time I saw the SS officer approaching on his motorcycle, I stepped out of the column with my hands raised in front of me. He stopped in surprise. I saluted (to this day I don't know why) and said, “Herr Obersturmbahnführer,
I wish respectfully to report that a prisoner in the other column belongs to this column. He is my brother, who somehow got lost, and I feel very badly because I have his food supply and he has no food. I would be very grateful if Herr Obersturmbahnführer permitted him to rejoin our group, where he belongs. Thank you.” Then I saluted him again.

The speech in my broken German, together with the salute, must have been comical, because the officer laughed and said, “We shall see about that,” and drove off. I rejoined the column, the other prisoners staring at me curiously. They hadn't been able to hear what I had said, but that was the first time since we marched out of the camp that any prisoner had spoken to the SS commander. As I walked on, holding my breath, I saw the officer ride over the field to the other column, where we could see him talking to the SS man in charge and pointing toward us. Then he rode over to the prisoner I had pointed out to him. I thought my heart would burst from the tension. But then I saw the prisoner leave the other column and cut across the field toward us, a short distance because the two roads were drawing closer. It
was
Sam! I was overcome by a great surge of joy. As he approached I waved my arms to let him see where I was and we fell into each other's embrace, hugging and crying. Warshawski was crying too. “You have a good brother,” he said to Sam.

Another miracle! Sam was still bewildered, and when he calmed down he said he didn't know himself how he had gotten separated. He had gone to relieve himself, apparently got lost, and then became mixed up with the other group, which, unbeknownst to us, was resting nearby. The amazing thing was that no guard had spotted him wandering outside the perimeter and shot him.

The march continued, and so did the killings. The distribution of the Red Cross boxes evidently hadn't changed the SS's standing order: Any prisoner who couldn't keep up with the pace was to be
shot to death. They were not letting anyone out of their hands alive. However, the shootings weren't quite as frequent now as they had been the day before the food arrived. Those parcels had given us a life-saving infusion of energy and hope. Now once more, as at the beginning, it was legs giving out or injuries to them rather than failing strength that were the main causes of the killings. The column was moving more slowly now, too, and the guards were not hurrying us so much.

Again we stopped for the night at the edge of a forest. The moment of liberation was very close, and we had some food again. If only our legs would hold up, we had a good chance of making it. I slept well that night, and the next morning, April 28, I felt better than I had in a long time. That day went by uneventfully. Sam, Warshawski, and I stayed close together. We ate a little more of the food from the Red Cross, and it was heavenly.

The next morning, after we had marched for an hour or so, we saw a number of dead horses lying on the road, evidently victims of Allied strafing. Frenziedly the prisoners ahead of us were throwing themselves on the carcasses and cutting off hunks of flesh with their stone-sharpened spoons. Some were even trying to tear off pieces with their fingers and teeth. As long as the prisoners stayed on the road, the guards didn't interfere. When the crowd around the carcasses had thinned out a little, Sam and I and some of the other prisoners toward the end of the column cut off some meat for ourselves. It was a grisly business and our spoons weren't sharp enough, but we persisted and got at least a couple of pounds. None of us had anything to put it in, so we stuffed our jackets inside our pants, tightened the pants, and carried the meat inside the jackets above the waist. The meat was bloody, and soon our jackets were soaked with blood. The column looked like a bunch of butchers on the march.

Still there was no relief from the killings; prisoner after prisoner was shot down. It seemed utterly senseless. By now we couldn't be far from the North Sea, and a mad thought struck me: Perhaps the Red Cross had boats waiting to take us to Sweden.

That night we stopped near another forest. A few of the prisoners had brought matches with them from Sachsenhausen, and soon there were hundreds of little fires going. We all sat around them cooking our horsemeat, using the sharpened ends of wooden sticks to hold chunks of it over the flames. This was the first meat I had tasted in almost two years. It was very tough, but I kept at it, doggedly chewing each piece as long as I could, knowing that this extra energy could mean the difference between life and death. We ate only part of the meat, saving the rest, for it was still impossible even to guess how much longer we would have to hold out. Why was it taking the Allies so long to reach us? Most of the prisoners were very subdued, as if the long march had dulled our senses; the last few days we had been shuffling along in a sort of stupor.

On the morning of April 30, we were about to resume our march when the little white Red Cross trucks appeared again on the road. Sam and I still had some food left from the first parcel, but many of the others had long since eaten all their share. We greeted the trucks with cheers, not only because of the food, but also because their arrival meant that someone on the outside knew we were alive, cared about us, and was in touch with the SS on our behalf. This time each box had to be shared among five prisoners, so the portions were a little smaller. But with the horsemeat and what was left over from the first box, our food reserve was building up and Sam and I could afford the luxury of eating a larger part of our portion.

Once again Allied planes appeared, in large numbers and flying very low. We could see them diving in and out over a wide road not far from us that had on it a heavy concentration of German tanks,
armored cars, and trucks. They could see us very well, and were clearly taking pains not to hit the column—which was no help to the unfortunate ones who couldn't keep up, and who were still being executed with the same cold, mechanical ruthlessness as before.

When we stopped again for the night, fires soon started up again to cook more of the horsemeat. I didn't eat much of it this time, since I preferred the food from the Red Cross box. Again I slept well in the open air; it was quite warm for that time of year. When the morning of May 1 came, someone suggested that maybe the Russians had been holding off until today, their big national holiday, to liberate us. We marched off once again, still surrounded by the guards. This evacuation, if it could still be called that, was taking much longer than anyone had anticipated. Prisoner after prisoner was killed, the bodies still littering the road. I knew that if it hadn't been for the Red Cross food, it would have been far worse; many more prisoners would have been dead by now.

I looked around. We were all filthy, unshaven, our striped suits soaked with blood from the horsemeat. Many were stumbling along, unable to walk. I occupied my mind with wondering how those food parcels had reached us, but could arrive at no explanation. We came upon more dead horses lying on the road and replenished our supply of meat, throwing away what had been left from before; it had started to go bad.

In the evening we stopped at the edge of another forest, and the SS guards stationed themselves as usual around us to make sure no one escaped. Now that we had a fresh supply of meat, hundreds of fires started again. A Pole who had been walking along with Sam, Warshawski, and me during the last few days, who had been a truck driver before the war, ate prodigious quantities of the horsemeat with relish, but I had to force myself. That truck driver was a good-natured fellow who probably suspected that we were
Jews but never asked outright, and we of course volunteered nothing. For dessert I ate a little more of the chocolate I had left, promising myself that if I survived, I would eat nothing but chocolate for the rest of my life.

Night fell, the fires were extinguished, and we went to sleep. From time to time I woke up at the noise from the military vehicles moving along the road. Early next morning, before we had to set out on the march again, the fires were started up to cook some more of the horsemeat. We were all sitting around our fires, holding chunks of the meat on sticks over the flames, when a voice came from the edge of the forest: “The guards are gone.”

At first no one reacted; it was as if we hadn't heard it. But the voice kept repeating, “The guards are gone. There are no more guards!” When it finally sank in, our reaction was very odd. No one shouted with joy. No one screamed with excitement. No one jumped up and down with happiness. There was no hugging or kissing, no tears, no laughter. Most of us just went on cooking our horsemeat.

Perhaps our minds had been numbed by the long death march, and we had been too drained emotionally for any kind of response. I felt a surge of hope and happiness in my heart, but it was mixed with a certain incredulity and caution. Could it be true? Would the guards just run away at night, disappearing like a bad dream? Suddenly I knew I couldn't wait another minute to find out. I had to know for sure.

“Let's not just sit here,” I said. “Let's see what's happening.” I started walking toward the road, Sam, Warshawski, and the truck
driver following me, past groups of prisoners who were sitting or lying around their little fires. We came to the edge of the forest, where we could see the road. It was true—the SS guards were gone, vanished as if by magic! The road was clogged with abandoned German military vehicles standing bumper to bumper as far as the eye could see: tanks, half-tracks, jeeps, cannons, and trucks of all sizes, but there wasn't a single German soldier or SS man in sight. It was an eerie scene: thousands of machines, and not a soul to man them.

My heart started to pound with joy. It was true. We were free! Now we shouted with laughter and hugged one another. We were free, free, free! For years we had longed for, scarcely dared hope for, this wonderful moment; hoped against all reason, against all odds, amid the most nightmarish conditions. And now that the impossible dream had finally come true, and the gift of life was given back to us, we could not savor it fully, taste it all in one big gulp. We just weren't capable of taking it in all at once. My thoughts flew to Fred, Felek, and Hanka. If only they were alive too!

Many other prisoners were emerging now from the forest onto the road. Some of the German army trucks were loaded with food, and we started to break open cases of canned fish, meat, margarine, marmalade, biscuits, and all sorts of other good things. Some people were going crazy, stuffing themselves with all the food they could cram into their bellies. Sam and I and a few others tried to warn them not to overeat; our stomachs were not used to so much food, and they might make themselves ill. Only a few paid any attention to us; they seemed to be trying to make up for all the years of starvation in one giant meal.

Sam and I were so loaded down with cans and packages of food we could hardly walk. Suddenly a jeep appeared with two soldiers driving along the side of the road. We scattered, but as it
drew nearer we could see they were not German. Their uniforms were beige instead of the German green, and they were waving at us and smiling. They were British. No one among us understood a word of English, and apparently they spoke no other language, but they made the V for Victory sign. We surrounded the jeep and shook hands with them, and they took out a carton of cigarettes and passed them around. They were Lucky Strikes, the first I had ever seen. The soldiers kept pointing toward the road in the direction from which they had come, apparently urging us to go that way. Then they drove away, laughing and waving to us.

We sat down at the side of the road and ate some more of the food from the trucks. So the Western Allies had beaten the Russians to the punch, and liberated us first. It was a surprise; we had always assumed it would be the Russians, because before the final offensive had begun the Russians had been much closer to us—all the camps were in the East. As we were discussing this, a motorcycle approached and stopped. The rider had a red star on his helmet; he was a Russian. Within a single hour, we had met our liberators from the West and from the East!