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German Army. Anyone who still owns gold, silver, or watches
must hand them over now. Anyone who will be found to have
kept any of these will be shot on the spot. Secondly, anyone who
is ill should report to the hospital car. That's all."
The Hungarian lieutenant went around with a basket and retrieved the last possessions from those who chose not to go on
tasting the bitterness of fear.
"There are eighty of you in the car," the German officer
added. "If anyone goes missing, you will all be shot, like dogs."
The two disappeared. The doors clanked shut. We had fallen
into the trap, up to our necks. The doors were nailed, the way
back irrevocably cut off. The world had become a hermetically
sealed cattle car.
THERE WAS A WOMAN among us, a certain Mrs. Schächter. She
was in her fifties and her ten-year-old son was with her, crouched
in a corner. Her husband and two older sons had been deported
with the first transport, by mistake. The separation had totally
shattered her.
I knew her well. A quiet, tense woman with piercing eyes, she
had been a frequent guest in our house. Her husband was a pious
man who spent most of his days and nights in the house of study.
It was she who supported the family.
Mrs. Schächter had lost her mind. On the first day of the journey, she had already begun to moan. She kept asking why she had
been separated from her family. Later, her sobs and screams became hysterical.
On the third night, as we were sleeping, some of us sitting,
huddled against each other, some of us standing, a piercing cry
broke the silence:
"Fire! I see a fire! I see a fire!"
There was a moment of panic. Who had screamed? It was Mrs.
Schächter. Standing in the middle of the car, in the faint light filtering through the windows, she looked like a withered tree in a
field of wheat. She was howling, pointing through the window:
"Look! Look at this fire! This terrible fire! Have mercy on
me!"
Some pressed against the bars to see. There was nothing. Only
the darkness of night.
It took us a long time to recover from this harsh awakening.
We were still trembling, and with every screech of the wheels, we
felt the abyss opening beneath us. Unable to still our anguish,
we tried to reassure each other:
"She is mad, poor w o m a n …"
Someone had placed a damp rag on her forehead. But she nevertheless continued to scream:
"Fire! I see a fire!"
Her little boy was crying, clinging to her skirt, trying to hold
her hand:
"It's nothing, Mother! There's nothing there…Pleas e sit
down… " He pained me even more than did his mother's cries.
Some of the women tried to calm her:
"You'll see, you'll find your husband and sons again…I n a
few days… "
She continued to scream and sob fitfully.
"Jews, listen to me," she cried. "I see a fire! I see flames, huge
flames!"
It was as though she were possessed by some evil spirit.
We tried to reason with her, more to calm ourselves, to catch
our breath, than to soothe her:
"She is hallucinating because she is thirsty, poor w o m a n …
That's why she speaks of flames devouring h e r … "
But it was all in vain. Our terror could no longer be contained.
Our nerves had reached a breaking point. Our very skin was
aching. It was as though madness had infected all of us. We gave
up. A few young men forced her to sit down, then bound and
gagged her.
Silence fell again. The small boy sat next to his mother,
crying. I started to breathe normally again as I listened to the
rhythmic pounding of the wheels on the tracks as the train
raced through the night. We could begin to doze again, to rest, to
dream…
And so an hour or two passed. Another scream jolted us. The
woman had broken free of her bonds and was shouting louder
than before:
"Look at the fire! Look at the flames! Flames everywhere…"
Once again, the young men bound and gagged her. When they
actually struck her, people shouted their approval:
"Keep her quiet! Make that madwoman shut up. She's not the
only one here… "
She received several blows to the head, blows that could have
been lethal. Her son was clinging desperately to her, not uttering
a word. He was no longer crying.
The night seemed endless. By daybreak, Mrs. Schächter had
settled down. Crouching in her corner, her blank gaze fixed on
some faraway place, she no longer saw us.
She remained like that all day, mute, absent, alone in the
midst of us. Toward evening she began to shout again:
"The fire, over there!"
She was pointing somewhere in the distance, always the same
place. No one felt like beating her anymore. The heat, the thirst,
the stench, the lack of air, were suffocating us. Yet all that was
nothing compared to her screams, which tore us apart. A few more
days and all of us would have started to scream.
But we were pulling into a station. Someone near a window
read to us:
"Auschwitz."
Nobody had ever heard that name.
THE TRAIN did not move again. The afternoon went by slowly.
Then the doors of the wagon slid open. Two men were given permission to fetch water.
When they came back, they told us that they had learned, in
exchange for a gold watch, that this was the final destination. We
were to leave the train here. There was a labor camp on the site.
The conditions were good. Families would not be separated.
Only the young would work in the factories. The old and the sick
would find work in the fields.
Confidence soared. Suddenly we felt free of the previous
nights' terror. We gave thanks to God.
Mrs. Schächter remained huddled in her corner, mute, untouched by the optimism around her. Her little one was stroking
her hand.
Dusk began to fill the wagon. We ate what was left of our food.
At ten o'clock in the evening, we were all trying to find a position
for a quick nap and soon we were dozing. Suddenly:
"Look at the fire! Look at the flames! Over there!"
With a start, we awoke and rushed to the window yet again.
We had believed her, if only for an instant. But there was nothing
outside but darkness. We returned to our places, shame in our
souls but fear gnawing at us nevertheless. As she went on howling, she was struck again. Only with great difficulty did we succeed in quieting her down.
The man in charge of our wagon called out to a German officer
strolling down the platform, asking him to have the sick woman
moved to a hospital car.
"Patience," the German replied, "patience. She'll be taken
there soon."
Around eleven o'clock, the train began to move again. We
pressed against the windows. The convoy was rolling slowly. A
quarter of an hour later, it began to slow down even more.
Through the windows, we saw barbed wire; we understood that
this was the camp.
We had forgotten Mrs. Schächter's existence. Suddenly there
was a terrible scream:
"Jews, look! Look at the fire! Look at the flames!"
And as the train stopped, this time we saw flames rising from
a tall chimney into a black sky.
Mrs. Schächter had fallen silent on her own. Mute again, indifferent, absent, she had returned to her corner.
We stared at the flames in the darkness. A wretched stench
floated in the air. Abruptly, our doors opened. Strange-looking
creatures, dressed in striped jackets and black pants, jumped into
the wagon. Holding flashlights and sticks, they began to strike at
us left and right, shouting:
"Everybody out! Leave everything inside. Hurry up!"
We jumped out. I glanced at Mrs. Schächter. Her little boy
was still holding her hand.
In front of us, those flames. In the air, the smell of burning
flesh. It must have been around midnight. We had arrived. In
Birkenau.
:using this context