Hostage by Elie Wiesel

afraid our schools are going to be banned.”
    My father looked at me. I had seldom seen him look so troubled.
    For one or two weeks, the count, even-tempered, came back for our chess games. As usual, he brought bread and sometimes even butter or plum jam. In principle we were equal opponents before the chessboard. He found my game increasingly daring; his was inspired. We always learned a great deal from each other.
    “When I was thirteen,” he remarked one day, “I was as good as you are. And then I lost my father. He was killed in action. For a whole year, I couldn’t look at a chessboard. The image of his mutilated body haunted all my thoughts. I swore I would take revenge.”
    I felt my opponent was becoming increasingly preoccupied, perturbed, melancholic. Could my father be right? Was the count a harbinger of turmoil and renewed harassments?
    Now, in the place where I am, between these four filthy walls, a toy in the hands of my torturers, I discovered that in life, though man doesn’t know it, he sometimes plays with or opposite Death. Is the choice in our hands?
    Yes, my father had been right in his apprehensions.
    • • •
    That afternoon we had expected Friedrich von Waldensohn at the usual hour, but he had not arrived. While we waited for him in our little room, Father boiled water and Arele studied the Midrash of the Psalms. I was in front of the chessboard trying to work my way through the game that had been left unfinished at our last meeting. At twilight, the count walked in without knocking, empty-handed. He didn’t take his place at the table, as was his habit, but remained standing and addressed my father.
    “Time is short. You’re going to leave this place and the ghetto. I’ve prepared a secure shelter for you. Take as few things as possible. Hurry up.”
    He looked at me and said, “We’ll finish our game some other time. Right now we’re playing against a common opponent, and he’s powerful.”
    A common opponent? I wondered if he was referencing a previous conversation when he had talked about destiny and death to my father. What if the two were the same?
    While my father looked around deciding which things to take, he asked the count what would happen to my mother: Her intestinal disorder had become worse, the pain unbearable, and the physicians had planned on surgery. “Don’t be afraid; we’re not going to prevent her being operated on! We Germans aren’t savages, sir!”
    And what was going to happen to the other Jews in the ghetto, our cousins and nephews and nieces, among others? Could we help them too? The count answered in a firm, steady voice.
    “Only one part of the ghetto will be evacuated at dawn.Unfortunately I can’t do anything for the other members of your family. I don’t have space for that many people. And eventually it would get around. You have to admit, the risk is too great, for you and for me.”
    “But where will they be taken?” my father asked. “And for how long?”
    “I repeat: Time is short. Don’t keep asking me questions that I can’t answer.”
    “And what about my mother? Are you sure she’ll stay here?”
    “And that we’ll see her again soon?” my cousin added.
    “There are some good surgeons in the ghetto. After all, don’t they say that Jewish doctors are the best?”
    The count was lying shamelessly. The Jewish hospital was about to be cleared of its occupants. And the patients, even my poor mother, even those unfit to be moved, were dragged into military trucks and driven to the freight station, among the first deported.
    But we didn’t yet know this.
    Night was falling. The sky had become gray and clouded, and a fine, slow rain streamed down as we left the ghetto, like shadows, preceded by the count.
    We were saved.
    We were the only survivors.
    My mother, Miriam, with her smile, her lullabies. My uncle Leib, a furrier; his wife, Tsirele, and their three children; my cousins Itzikl, Shloimele and Sorele; my aunt Revtsu, a