Survivor

         There just wasn’t anything left to live for. Days dragged together until they were just a pulsating lull of hunger and dirt. Days faded without notice and nights grew shorter. This was no way to live. Just surviving wasn’t good enough anymore. I had to do this.
         This was my justification as I stepped out into the bitter cold for role call.


         The light blinded me as I clumsily stepped down and away from the cattle car. I blinked rapidly, squinting my eyes against the sudden sight of the sun. Its rays wrapped around me like a warm hug of greeting. It was good to be able to stretch out and breathe in some fresh air. The gloom, futile pleading, and impending darkness which held the smell of fear and death of the train car already seemed like a distant memory. I could hardly remember what I was so scared of in there…
         I was suddenly reminded, as my few moments of happiness and peace quickly ended with an abrupt blow to my back, that I wasn’t here for my enjoyment or that I had chosen to come here. And like the speed of the train, the memory of my fear rushed to me as I lined up beside an elderly man in nothing but what seemed like a brown bed sheet. We’d been caught by the Gestapo and were here to die.
         Men were lined up in one line, women and young children in the other. I barely understood what was happening as the line moved up until I got to the front. I’d noticed that at the front of the lines was a man, and as he looked each of us, by “us” I mean the other passengers that’d been on the cattle car, over, he pointed with one of his thumbs where to go. The elderly man was sent to the left, I to the right.  It was then that I realized that he was sending people to their death with just a flick of his wrist. I was lucky. I was only about 24 years old and in good health. The elderly man was too weak, so he was sent to his inhumane and unnatural ending.

         
         This was disgusting. My friends were being dragged out of the housing, if you could call it that, and piled up in the line to make the count on the blasted sheets match the count of the prisoners.  I looked at the Nazis that had caused so much pain and so much grief with a loathsome and pained eye that I hoped convey the message I was aiming for. Unfortunately, my skeleton of a body probably softened the blow I was attempting to send. My eyes, however, were said to hold all the pain of the world.
         This is going to be worth it, I told myself.


         The first few nights spent in the barracks were horrible. I wasn’t allowed to shower or change clothes, and each prisoner was only allowed a certain amount of food. We were all piled into a small room with bunk upon bunk for sleeping. I had been used to at least a blanket to protect me from the cold, but here we were treated as animals, not humans with thoughts and feelings and needs.
         Such thinking was made fresh in my mind day by day as more and more people were chosen to go to the gas chambers. The cries of grown men as they were chosen during role call for the trek to their death haunted me as I attempted to sleep at night.
         The smoke from the chimney of the gas chamber was always spiraling up to the heavens. This, as strange as it may seem, gave me a sense of peace as I watched the almost black residue slowly disappear into the gray sky. It dawned on me one day that the smoke was reaching out to God, pleading him to accept the people burned in the ovens into the pearly gates of heaven with streets paved with gold and the heavenly choir singing songs of praise, and He was accepting them. It gave me hope.
         I eventually adjusted myself to the way of living in the camp. I never agreed with the treatment we received, but I tolerated it, for a time. I even made some friends. It was with these friends that I huddled with every night to try and escape the chill of the harsh winter. One woman in particular kept me company on the days I felt as if it just wasn‘t worth living anymore. Her name was  Anne, and she was the sole reason I hadn’t gone off on a guard and gotten myself killed. She would stay with me when sickness gripped my body and shaken me so much that when I woke up from a nap, I didn’t know who or where I was.
         “Leone, Leone, my Leone,” she would whisper. It dawned on me that I had never really considered myself being involved in a serious relationship, but in my months, or was it years?, at Auschwitz and knowing Anne, I promised her that as soon as we got out of that rat hole, we would be married. Little did I know how false my promise was.

         

         The soldier walking in front of the line of men had a rigid jaw set in a locked position, as if he had the lock-jaw disease from stepping on a rusty nail. He eyed each of us as if we were hardened criminals, ready for our punishment. I was still in the same tattered clothing I had arrived at the camp in and probably didn’t seem like a big threat right that minute, but boy were they about to be surprised.
         “You, you, you, you…” the soldier said as he pointed to each man with a stubby finger which happened to be cleaner than us and sent them off to the gas chambers to join the rest of the still spiraling smoke. Men broke down crying right then and there like I’d never seen before. It broke my hardened heart. Then the soldier came to the last person in line. “And you.” His stare was supposed to slice through my soul like a piercing blue dagger, but all it did was infuriate me.
         That was when I slipped the makeshift wood club from under my frayed shirt and attacked.



         “Leone, why do you do that?” The quiet voice startled me from my trans-like state of observation of the smoke. I turned to see Anne staring at me with her head cocked to one side and a puzzled look dancing across her face. I smiled weakly and walked over to her.
         “I like looking at the smoke.” She was obviously startled by my answer. I could read her like an open book. I smiled again and gave her a weak hug.
         “You know that those are former friends and family right?” she inquired in a worried tone.
         “I know. That’s why I like to watch them ascend to a better place.” I held her closer for a little while before we headed back to our barracks. If I’d known that that would be the last time I ever saw her, I would’ve held her a little closer just a little while longer.
         The next morning I awoke with a deep pain in my chest. I shook it off and headed out for role call, watching as bodies whose souls had moved on in the night were dragged out into the bitter cold. The day passed just like every day before, except the pain wouldn’t leave my chest. I had to stop from my pointless work of breaking up rocks and cleaning out the barracks frequently to stop and catch my breath. Finally towards the middle of the day the pain was so unbearable that I had to hide away under a straw mattress in my barrack to rest. I slept for the rest of the day until I was awoken by a hand gently rocking me side to side to wake me. My drowsy eyes only registered that it was dark and four heads were facing me.
         The voice coming from the darkness startled me. “I’m so sorry Leone.” Then everything clicked. I cried out in physical and spiritual pain as everything came together. Why the smoke seemed so dark today. Why I hadn’t seen Anne or anyone at all that resided in her barrack. And finally why I had seen so many new faces. And why I was in pain today.
         Anne was gone. She’d been made into the billowing smoke that gave me peace so many days. She’d been made into what she feared. I spent the night crying and breaking things. For an extremely weak person as I was then, I broke quite a few of the empty bunks. I got not a wink of sleep. And at dawn, when the men of my barrack decided to revolt, I was right there with them.

         


         I lay face up on the ground watching the sky with parched mouth and dry lips. I had killed three men that morning. They deserved it. That was all I knew. I couldn’t feel any part of my body and there was only one thought running through my mind. I heard the sound of boots crunching gravel and approaching me.
         “My God. Are you still alive?” I opened my eyes to look at a young Nazi soldier standing above me, the swastika staring down at me from his arm. I moved my lips in a futile attempt to respond to his question. He quickly kneeled beside me with a concerned look in his eye. He was a young man. Not too bad looking either. He was the first Nazi I ever met that had a concerned look in his pale green eyes. He was staring into my eyes now, shocked and bewildered that I was still alive.
         “You were shot five times. You should be dead by now. You do know that, right?” He looked almost like an angel as the sun beat down on me. I tried to smile, but instead all that came out was a minute whisper. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” the young man asked.
         “You…” I whispered though my dry throat. “You took her away. The smoke got her…”
         “My God. What have we done?” he whispered back. This time I smiled and looked past his green gaze. Before I shut my eyes for the last time, I saw the smoke. It was being blown across the sky, spiraling up, and up, and up. The strangest thing crossed my mind when I saw it.
         Why couldn’t I be part of the smoke?
         The last thing I experienced on earth was feeling suddenly warm and hearing the young man standup and say in a defeated tone, “Heil Hitler.”