Paper Stars

Chapter 33

33

“No.”

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Each day I remained trapped within the electric fences of Dachau, I felt stomach receding and my feet growing even more mangled and raw. The snow persisted. I am not telling you of the labour, of every second of this life, for there are many other pieces of prose and life accounts that can tell you what I suffered. They can tell you of the cold, the pain, the hunger, the death—things that I shan’t forget for all my life. I do not need to reiterate them. All I can tell you is that in situations like those, your mind shuts itself down. You turn off and distance yourself from your emotions. You grow used to the ever-present starvation and frostbitten limbs, to the endless exhaustion and the piles of frozen bodies. If you keep yourself open, the pain only increases when you see them, when you see the ice-covered children with their shaven heads and naked feet, motionless among the hundreds of other lost souls. This life made me hate God, made me want to throw back my head and scream: “Where were you when we needed you? Why have you forsaken us? Why aren’t you listening?” 

The only things that kept me from complete numbness were the hope of liberation and Benjamin: the thought that maybe, just maybe, I would see him again, I would feel his arms round me and believe that somehow there was still life and goodness in this world. And my wish was granted when Klaus brought me to him four days later, as he promised. He led me past the guards, through the separating electric fence with his hand upon my shoulder, gun at my back, telling me he would beat me, kill me, as the other soldiers nodded in approval. He kept this charade until we reached barrack number five.

“Please be careful,” he murmured. “Good luck, Sara.”

            Benjamin and Daniel were waiting for me at the entrance: Klaus had told them to do so. They embraced me, and when I was let go, my tin soldier had vanished.

None of the other prisoners knew, cared, or noticed that I was a woman in the following days. They were too enveloped with surviving. But we had something they didn’t have: we had hope. We had two other people in the world that cared about us, that would die for us, and with those small things we saw a light at the end of this tunnel.

            Daniel was having a difficult time. During the admittance to Dachau, he had been given those slipshod wooden shoes just like everyone else; however, instead of a shoe for the left foot and a shoe for the right, he received only two lefts. They hurt his feet terribly, putting him out of congruency as he limped along and lagged behind during work. He turned fourteen that week—another year of his life spent in persecution, and that night, Benjamin switched Daniel’s extra left shoe with his own right one and bore the pain of lopsided feet himself. And yet we still felt almost safe. I slept by Benjamin’s side every night, cradled in his arms; he would squeeze Danny’s shoulders and kiss me goodnight, and for once I would feel warm. These displays of affection, however, were limited to the nighttime hours: while we were working, we stayed close but we never spoke or touched. For three weeks, we were as close to happy as we could ever be in Hell.

            –Until I destroyed it with one word.           

            We were in the frozen trenches one afternoon, digging and chipping through the ice and rock-hard mud. My pick hit the wall and a chunk of mud dislodged itself and fell at my feet, and I remember feeling a soldier’s gaze upon me then.           

“Eat it.”

            I turned slowly, meeting the eyes of the speaker. The man regarded me, his alarmingly attractive face devoid of empathy or humanity. “Are you deaf, or are all Jews just stupid? I said eat it. Pick up that mud and eat it.”