The Fighter (19 page)

^a
Arbeter
is the Yiddish word for worker. In German, it would be
Arbeiter
.

^b
Pronounced Osviaitsim and Bzhaisinka.

^c
For
Kameraden Polizei
.

^d
This is probably a Yiddishism. In proper German, it would be
Blockälteste
.

^e
The German word used was
Prominenten
, or important persons.

^f
Nobody knows why a dying person was called a Muselman—Yiddish for Moslem. Some say that the word actually stood for “fakir,” meaning a very thin person. I've also read that a great famine affected the Moslem province of Bengal (today's Bangladesh) in the early 1940s. Three million people died of hunger. Maybe someone first used the word after seeing pictures of skin-and-bone Bengali Moslems.

^g
“Vélodrome d'Hiver,” a covered stadium for winter bike races, located near the Eiffel Tower. It doesn't exist anymore.

^h
Thirty German criminals came from the Dachau and Sachsenhausen camps in May 1940 to build the fence. They were numbered one to thirty. Then Polish prisoners, mostly underground fighters, built the barracks and the watchtowers from August 1940 on.

ⁱ
This chapter describes the situation in 1942, when there were five small gas chambers in Auschwitz. In the spring of 1943, it was decided that bodies would be burned rather than buried. Crematories were imported from Germany and grouped in a new building that included large underground gas chambers.

The new gas chambers bore signs saying “Bathroom.” Sentences like
Rein macht fein
(Clean is healthy) were posted in the changing rooms. There were hooks for hanging the clothes. The enamel plate that showed the hook's number also said: “Remember your number!” The last thing the Jews did before dying was to remember the number of their hook.

In official documents, the Germans never mentioned gas chambers. They wrote “SB,” for
Sonderbehandlung
(special treatment). In the camp, they were more cynical. They just said: “The shower.” The prisoners had their own slang. The gas chamber was “the bakery,” because of the ovens. The men in white were “bakers.” An angry kapo would shout, “You'll all end up in the bakery! From here nobody gets out except through the chimney….”

^j
Krankenbau,
infirmary.

^k
Jawischowitz (pronounced Yavishovits) was the German name of the Polish town of Jaworzno (pronounced Yavozhno), located twelve miles from Auschwitz.

^l
Foreman, in miners' slang.

^m
“Undermen.” According to the Nazis, people who did not belong to the superior “Aryan” race were inferior beings, not quite human.

ⁿ
Ohrdruf was the first concentration camp liberated by the American army—on April 6, 1945.

^o
Having refused to obey the SS and be evacuated, the Buchenwald prisoners liberated the camp themselves on the next day, April 11, a few hours before the American army arrived.

^p
Cake.

Copyright © 1998 by Jean-Jacques Greif
Translation copyright © 2006 by Jean-Jacques Greif

All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
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may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

First published as 
Le Ring de la Mort
 in 1998 by École des Loisirs, Paris
First published in the United States of America in September 2006
by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers
Electronic edition published in October 2012
www.bloomsburyteens.com

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Bloomsbury BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Greif, Jean-Jacques.
[Ring de la mort. English.]
The fighter / by Jean-Jacques Greif. — 1st U.S. ed.
p.    cm.
Summary: Moshe Wisniak, a poor Polish Jew, uses his physical strength and
cleverness, plus luck, to help him survive the horrors he is subjected to in the
concentration camps of World War II. Based on the life of Moshè Garbarz.
1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Juvenile fiction. [1. Holocaust, Jewish
(1939–1945)—Fiction. 2. Concentration camps—Fiction. 3. Jews—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.G86242Fi 2006    [Fic]—dc22    2006001291

ISBN 978-1-61963-073-4 (e-book)