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“All? We have our packages…”

“Sure, you and your friend, and ten other friends of yours. Some of you Poles get packages. But what about us, and the Jews, and the Russkis? And what if we had no food, no organization from the transports, do you think you’d be eating those packages of yours in peace? We wouldn’t let you!”

“You would, you’d starve to death like the Greeks. Around here whoever has grub, has power. ”

“Anyway, you have enough, we have enough, so why argue?”

Right, why argue? They have enough, I have enough, we eat together and we sleep on the same bunks. Henry slices the bread, he makes a tomato salad. It tastes good with the commissary mustard.

Below us, naked, sweat-drenched men crowd the narrow bar­racks aisles or lie packed in eights and tens in the lower bunks. Their nude, withered bodies stink of sweat and excrement; their cheeks are hollow. Directly beneath me, in the bottom bunk, lies a rabbi. He has covered his head with a piece of rag torn off a blanket and reads from a Hebrew prayer book (there is no shortage of this type of lit­erature at the camp), wailing loudly, monotonously.

“Can’t somebody shut him up? He’s been raving as if he’d caught God himself by the feet. ”

“I don’t feel like moving. Let him rave. They’ll take him to the oven that much sooner. ”

“Religion is the opium of the people,” Henri, who is a Commu­nist and a rentier, says sententiously. “If they didn’t believe in God and eternal life, they’d have smashed the crematoria long ago. ”

“Why haven’t you done it then?”

The question is rhetorical; the Frenchman ignores it.

“Idiot,” he says simply, and stuffs a tomato in his mouth.

Just as we finish our snack, there is a sudden commotion at the door. The Muzulmen scurry in fright to the safety of their bunks, a messenger runs into the Block Elder’s shack. The Elder, his face solemn, steps out at once.

“ Canada! Antreten! But fast! There’s a transport coming!”

“Great God!” yells Henri, jumping off the bunk. He swallows the rest of his tomato, snatches his coat, screams “Raus” at the men below, and in a flash is at the door. We can hear a scramble in the other bunks. Canada is leaving for the ramp.

“Henri, the shoes!” I call after him.

“Keine Angst!” he shouts back, already outside.

I proceed to put away the food. I tie a piece of rope around the suitcase where the onions and the tomatoes from my father’s garden in Warsaw mingle with Portuguese sardines, bacon from Lublin (that’s from my brother), and authentic sweetmeats from Salonica. I tie it all up, pull on my trousers, and slide off the bunk.

“Platz!” I yell, pushing my way through the Greeks. They step aside. At the door I bump into Henri. “Was ist los?”

“Want to come with us on the ramp?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Come along then, grab your coat! We’re short of a few men. I’ve already told the Kapo,” and he shoves me out of the barracks door.

We line up. Someone has marked down our numbers, someone up ahead yells, “March, march,” and now we are running towards the gate, accompanied by the shouts of a multilingual throng that is already being pushed back to the barracks. Not everybody is lucky enough to be going on the ramp… We have almost reached the gate. Links, zwei, drei, vier! Mützen ab! Erect, arms stretched stiffly along our hips, we march past the gate briskly, smartly, almost gracefully. A sleepy SS man with a large pad in his hand checks us off, waving us ahead in groups of five.

“Hundert!” he calls after we have all passed.

“Stimmt!” comes a hoarse answer from out front.

We march fast, almost at a run. There are guards all around, young men with automatics. We pass camp II B, then some deserted barracks and a clump of unfamiliar green — apple and pear trees. We cross the circle of watchtowers and, running, burst on to the highway. We have arrived. Just a few more yards. There, surrounded by trees, is the ramp.