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Trucks leave and return, without interruption, as on a monstrous conveyor belt. A Red Cross van drives back and forth, back and forth, incessantly: it transports the gas that will kill these people. The enormous cross on the hood, red as blood, seems to dissolve in the sun.

The Canada men at the trucks cannot stop for a single moment, even to catch their breath. They shove the people up the steps, pack them in tightly, sixty per truck, more or less. Nearby stands a young, cleanshaven “gentleman,” an SS officer with a notebook in his hand. For each departing truck he enters a mark; sixteen gone means one thousand people, more or less. The gentleman is calm, precise. No truck can leave without a signal from him, or a mark in his notebook:

Ordnung muss sein. The marks swell into thousands, the thousands into whole transports, which afterwards we shall simply call “from Salonica,” “from Strasbourg,” “from Rotterdam. ” This one will be called “Sosnowiec-Będzin. ” The new prisoners from Sosnowiec­-Będzin will receive serial numbers 131—2 — thousand, of course, though afterwards we shall simply say 131—2, for short.

The transports swell into weeks, months, years. When the war is over, they will count up the marks in their notebooks — all four and a half million of them. The bloodiest battle of the war, the great­est victory of the strong, united Germany. Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Führer — and four crematoria.

The train has been emptied. A thin, pock-marked SS man peers inside, shakes his head in disgust and motions to our group, pointing his finger at the door.

“Rein. Clean it up!”

We climb inside. In the corners amid human excrement and abandoned wrist-watches lie squashed, trampled infants, naked little monsters with enormous heads and bloated bellies. We carry them out like chickens, holding several in each hand.

“Don’t take them to the trucks, pass them on to the women, says the SS man, lighting a cigarette. His cigarette lighter is not working properly; he examines it carefully.

“Take them, for God’s sake!” I explode as the women run from me in horror, covering their eyes.

The name of God sounds strangely pointless, since the women and the infants will go on the trucks, every one of them, without exception. We all know what this means, and we look at each other with hate and horror.

“What, you don’t want to take them?” asks the pockmarked SS man with a note of surprise and reproach in his voice, and reaches for his revolver.

“You mustn’t shoot, I’ll carry them. ” A tall, gray-haired woman takes the little corpses out of my hands and for an instant gazes straight into my eyes.

“My poor boy,” she whispers and smiles at me. Then she walks away, staggering along the path. I lean against the side of the train. I am terribly tired. Someone pulls at my sleeve.

“En avant, to the rails, come on!”

I look up, but the face swims before my eyes, dissolves, huge and transparent, melts into the motionless trees and the sea of people… I blink rapidly: Henri.

“Listen, Henri, are we good people?”

“That’s stupid. Why do you ask?”

“You see, my friend, you see, I don’t know why, but I am furious, simply furious with these people — furious because I must be here because of them. I feel no pity. I am not sorry they’re going to the gas chamber. Damn them all! I could throw myself at them, beat them with my fists. It must be pathological, I just can’t under­stand…”

“Ah, on the contrary, it is natural, predictable, calculated. The ramp exhausts you, you rebel — and the easiest way to relieve your hate is to turn against someone weaker. Why, I’d even call it healthy. It’s simple logic, compris?” He props himself up comfortably against the heap of rails. “Look at the Greeks, they know how to make the best of it! They stuff their bellies with anything they find. One of them has just devoured a full jar of marmalade. ”

“Pigs! Tomorrow half of them will die of the shits. ”

“Pigs? You’ve been hungry. ”