Shalom, The Little Mouse

word count: 459

I was born in 1936, on a farm, near the small village of Dolice, Poland.

Papa says I am big for my age, taller and heavier than most eight year old boys. We laugh together, when he tells me, “Menashe, you have big bones just like your grandfather.” I must believe what Papa says, because I never knew my grandfather, he died before I was born.

I found a mouse crawling at my bare feet. I bent and cupped it in my hands, touched its soft back and decided to keep it as a pet.

“Look, Papa, I have a pet, he won’t eat a whole lot will he?”

My father didn’t answer for a moment and then he finally said, “No, Menashe, a mouse will not eat a lot. Have you a name for your new friend?”

“Shalom. I will call my mouse, Shalom.”

“That’s a good name, Menashe, Shalom means peace.” Papa said, turning his head away.

Papa gave me a square tin, with a gold lid, for Shalom to sleep in. He said it once held tobacco and would make a fine bed for a mouse. During the day I hide the tin in a crack in a stone wall. When we go to work, I put Shalom in my pocket where he sometimes tickles my leg, but I never make a sound.

I work with Papa and other men, sorting clothing, putting silks in one pile, cottons alone and wools in another. Sometimes we find gold rings, silver watches and beautiful hat pins, but these we don’t put in a pile, they are given to the men that watch over us. One day I saw a man put a watch in his pocket. The men standing at the door saw him too and took him away. I never saw the man again. Papa said, “Don’t worry about him, Menashe; he is probably working in a different building.” I don’t know why Papa was sad because the man was working somewhere else, but he was.

At night, I put scraps of cloth in the tin for Shalom to rest on. I share crumbs of bread I have found in the pockets of the clothing with him and tell him stories about the farm near Dolice.

As we marched to work today; soldiers stopped us. They made us line up in front of a great doorway. Above the door, written in Hebrew, were the words:

“This is the Gateway to God. Righteous men will pass through”.

“Are we going in there, Papa?”

“Yes, Menashe, and before we do, why don’t you take Shalom from your pocket and give him his freedom?”

On that day, Shalom stayed at Auschwitz and Papa and Menashe went through the Gateway.