Four Scraps of Bread Read Free Page B

walked but saw nothing, my eyes riveted to the feet dragging in front of me. An aggressive and powerful voice reminded me to speed up.
    I cried from the cold and the tears ran down my face. The pain in my frozen feet was very real to me.
    On the job, I hammered the nails with rage and despair.
    The hideous face with the booming voice had seen everything; without warning he snatched the hammer from my hands and ordered me to follow him. He led me near to a wood fire where no one could see us. With wicked yells belied by a look of kindness, he gesticulated wildly and rubbed my feet with newspapers.
    He took out of his bag a pair of galoshes that he slipped onto my feet.
    With this act of generosity he gave me back my life, and at the same time put his own at risk.
    My good guard became for four months a hidden, caring, and compassionate friend. During these one hundred twenty days, work was less hard and days were less long, because I could see in his eyes my own human face.
    When he left I could cry once more and still hope in the kindness of people.

A USCHWITZ C ONCERTO
    It was twenty-eight years before I could listen again to Brahms’s Concerto for Violin . Each sound tears through my flesh and drags out from me the image of a scorching, shadeless day in Auschwitz.
    At about two o’clock, thousands of deportees gathered around a rostrum made from planks in the middle of the main road. The lucky ones were in the front rows. Those at the back jostled each other and edged their way toward the front. The only place of shade, under the stage, was completely sealed off by the guards and their dogs. Slowly, in procession, walking somewhat tensely but with dignity, the musicians—first-rate artists from different countries—took their assigned seats. Their heads were shaved, and they were wearing blue and gray striped trousers paired with a formal black jacket over their uniform tops.
    With the crowd pressing all around me, I was carried away as they struck up the first movement. Crouched down and trembling with emotion, I found myself drawn into a fairy-tale world where suffering was clothed in a magical beauty. Through small, gentle waves the music soaked into me like the breath of life.
    The beginning of the second movement was just as pure and rich: it laughed and cried in us.
    Time stood still, but the sun was there, breathing us in.
    I grew ill from the swarming of insects around my head and my ears. To this day, when I think of the third movement I have a paralyzing image of venomous stings. I was in and out of consciousness. Little by little the music became disjointed, ending with the pathetic note of an instrument landing on the rostrum, followed by another, and then another. All I could make out was the strain of a violin through a kind of fog. The sun and its arrows had gotten the better of us. The orchestra became like an ageing fabric, wearing out before our very eyes: holes appeared, and it crumbled into dust.
    Although my senses were dulled, I understood the diabolical game of the SS. The pack of dogs arrived. In less than an hour the great ceremony was over. Those of us who still could got up and made our way like drunkards back to the barracks. The dogs sniffed around the others who, dead or dying, lay on the ground like dead leaves after a gust of wind.
    The sun must have shuddered at this sight. I swore that day that I wanted to stay alive. To tell those who forget to remain vigilant.

T O L IVE
    How could I forget the great flames of the crematorium which devoured my childhood?
    Despair gave way to emptiness. Inhuman fatigue took possession of me, and almost made me forget everything. A day, a week, a night, an eternity … all became a blur in my mind. I was alone, and I was nothing. Where did my tears come from? Were they still mine? What a strange sensation, to not belong to myself: reality, dream, and despair overlapped. How easy it would have been to give up, to be swept away by the lure