stories. This wasnât the first time that randomly selected men had made an early-evening journey to Feixâs place. Only four of them, if that, would return to the camp. The only question was by what means one or all of them would die. It wouldnât be a quick deathâthat much was certainâas a quick death has insufficient entertainment value.
The walk seemed to last forever, yet when they arrived at the spot where they were ordered to form a line it seemed to Moshe that they had arrived too fast. He hadnât had the time or ability to recall all the important memories he had always imagined he would want to relive if given a few minutes warning before his death. He could no longer call up the planes and the shadows of Hadassahâs face, and this saddened him. He had recalled too few of the special moments with his mother in her kitchen, the scent of baking apples filling the air between them as she spoke of her plans for him. He had thought about his sistersâ babies, their downy heads under his hand and the warm, sleepy weight of his tiny niece as she curled against his chest, but there was so much more about them he knew he should remember.
Time had run out.
Under a soldier-straight line of chestnut trees, the tender leaves not yet mature, whispering against each other in the breeze, the men stopped, their gazes fixed to the ground. They were not permitted to make eye contact with the men and women, a dozen or so, assembled a few feet away making cheerful cocktail talk.
The voice of the commandant rose above the rest, silencing the chatter. He expressed his profound pleasure at the presence of these important guests, promising a spectacle of impressive novelty.
And then he pointed at the prisoner in the center position, next to Moshe, and ordered him to step forward.
âKill!â Feix barked.
The German shepherd at his side leapt forward, grabbing the man by the throat.
The killing of a man by a dog, even by a large, expertly trained dog, is a noisy process, and a long one. The snarling and the shrieking rose into the darkening sky, meeting what sounded to the prisoners like a couple of women giggling nervously.
After some time, the entertainment was dead.
The dog sensed this and released what was left of the manâs neck.
âGood dog,â the commandant said. The animal was still, but hot, alert, quivering with what seemed to Moshe anticipation of more.
The night grew deadly silent, each prisoner certain he would be the next to die, hoping, actually, to be next, not third or fourth after this.
âGo. Take them back,â the commandant finally growled at the guard.
The remaining prisoners turned sharply and began the walk back to the camp at the brisk pace expected, leaving one of their number behind. Moshe hadnât known the man who had died just inches away from him. But he remembered every detail, every second of what had happened. Had he prayed for that manâs soul as he died? He couldnât recall. He hoped he had.
He did know one thing. Standing an armâs length away from a long and tortured death changes a personâeven here, surrounded by death and dying.
Near the end of 1942, the Edelman brothers received the first piece of information about Krasnik that had crossed the camp walls in many months: All three thousand of Krasnikâs remaining Jews had been loaded into railcars and transported to the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The news came the way all such news did. Sympathetic Poles brought their lunches wrapped in newspaper pages which they purposefully discarded near, but not into, trash cans, so a watchful prisoner could pluck them up. The reports that the prisoners received in this way always circulated quickly, but on this day the information spread with ferocious speed. Almost everyone at Budzyn had relatives in Krasnikâall of them now dead, the prisoners assumed.
âDo not show emotion. You must control
The walk seemed to last forever, yet when they arrived at the spot where they were ordered to form a line it seemed to Moshe that they had arrived too fast. He hadnât had the time or ability to recall all the important memories he had always imagined he would want to relive if given a few minutes warning before his death. He could no longer call up the planes and the shadows of Hadassahâs face, and this saddened him. He had recalled too few of the special moments with his mother in her kitchen, the scent of baking apples filling the air between them as she spoke of her plans for him. He had thought about his sistersâ babies, their downy heads under his hand and the warm, sleepy weight of his tiny niece as she curled against his chest, but there was so much more about them he knew he should remember.
Time had run out.
Under a soldier-straight line of chestnut trees, the tender leaves not yet mature, whispering against each other in the breeze, the men stopped, their gazes fixed to the ground. They were not permitted to make eye contact with the men and women, a dozen or so, assembled a few feet away making cheerful cocktail talk.
The voice of the commandant rose above the rest, silencing the chatter. He expressed his profound pleasure at the presence of these important guests, promising a spectacle of impressive novelty.
And then he pointed at the prisoner in the center position, next to Moshe, and ordered him to step forward.
âKill!â Feix barked.
The German shepherd at his side leapt forward, grabbing the man by the throat.
The killing of a man by a dog, even by a large, expertly trained dog, is a noisy process, and a long one. The snarling and the shrieking rose into the darkening sky, meeting what sounded to the prisoners like a couple of women giggling nervously.
After some time, the entertainment was dead.
The dog sensed this and released what was left of the manâs neck.
âGood dog,â the commandant said. The animal was still, but hot, alert, quivering with what seemed to Moshe anticipation of more.
The night grew deadly silent, each prisoner certain he would be the next to die, hoping, actually, to be next, not third or fourth after this.
âGo. Take them back,â the commandant finally growled at the guard.
The remaining prisoners turned sharply and began the walk back to the camp at the brisk pace expected, leaving one of their number behind. Moshe hadnât known the man who had died just inches away from him. But he remembered every detail, every second of what had happened. Had he prayed for that manâs soul as he died? He couldnât recall. He hoped he had.
He did know one thing. Standing an armâs length away from a long and tortured death changes a personâeven here, surrounded by death and dying.
Near the end of 1942, the Edelman brothers received the first piece of information about Krasnik that had crossed the camp walls in many months: All three thousand of Krasnikâs remaining Jews had been loaded into railcars and transported to the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The news came the way all such news did. Sympathetic Poles brought their lunches wrapped in newspaper pages which they purposefully discarded near, but not into, trash cans, so a watchful prisoner could pluck them up. The reports that the prisoners received in this way always circulated quickly, but on this day the information spread with ferocious speed. Almost everyone at Budzyn had relatives in Krasnikâall of them now dead, the prisoners assumed.
âDo not show emotion. You must control
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