by Jane Yolen
“But what is it you do in this place?” Gittel asked. “I mean, why are you here?”
“This is a labor camp,” Manya said. “We work in their factory. Our hands are mostly still small enough to do what needs to be done.”
A tiny stir in the air as the entire group of children nodded their heads.
“And what happens when your hands get too big?” Bruno shot back.
A sensible question, Chaim thought, surprised that it was Bruno who’d asked it.
“Ah . . .” Manya said. “We don’t know for certain. So far all of those who grow too big simply . . . disappear.” She made an odd motion with her right hand, pointer finger raised and twirling toward the roof.
“And we’re afraid to ask them outright,” put in one of the shorter boys, who was still a bit taller than Chaim.
“Afraid to know?” Chaim marshaled three of his precious words.
“Maybe afraid of guessing right,” Sophie said.
“Oh, we know,” said Manya. “But we don’t talk about it. We just say this . . .” Again the pointer finger making that odd motion.
For a moment everyone was silent.
Then tall Gregor spoke. “Nobody wants to be thought of as a troublemaker.”
“Why not?” asked Bruno.
“Because troublemakers do not last long here,” Gregor said.
The uniformed scarecrows moved closer, and one of them added, “Gregor’s twin brother asked that question on our first day here. He was never seen again.”
Gregor walked away from the group, toward the door, his back rigid.
Twins, Chaim thought, wondering if that was some sort of sign. He glanced over at Gittel, but she was too much in shadow for him to see her eyes. Still, he thought, We must talk to Gregor. And then he shivered. He couldn’t think why.
Manya leaned forward, speaking—or so Chaim thought— especially to him. “Don’t judge us till you’ve been here as long as we have.”
A clanging bell shattered the quiet conversation. “Ah!” said Manya. “That’s the call.”
“Call to what?” squeaked Sophie.
“To breakfast.”
“Food!” cried Bruno. “I’m starving!”
Manya shook her head as if in pity. “So are we all,” she said. “So are we all.”
There was a long moment of silence, and then Gittel asked, “Can we wash up before we eat? We’re filthy.”
Something akin to laughter, an almost soundless giggle, ran around the scarecrows, a butterfly’s-wing-wave of sound.
Finally Manya raised a hand, which silenced them. “Next time it rains, you can wash. Outside. If it’s not too cold. You wouldn’t want to catch your death.”
That butterfly laugh flew around again.
It was Chaim who understood first. Papa used to call that kind of joke Galgenhumor, the German word for gallows humor. By which he meant laughter in the face of death. That wasn’t a pleasant thought . . . now.
“And don’t be late getting to the food,” Manya added, “because the slowest are left with the least to eat.”
“But . . . but . . . but,” Chaim began. However, even as he was stuttering to get out his question, the ghostly crew had already headed through the door, like a single body.
Gittel cried, “Follow them,” she said. “Manya and the others.”
They raced out after the ragtags into a gray day that was indistinguishable from dusk, holding their boots in their hands.
* * *
• • •
A brisk two-minute walk, with Bruno complaining at every step, and they arrived at the dining hall, a medium-sized room filled with a line of shuffling people. There were about thirty adults dressed in the same striped trousers as Gregor and mismatched, patched coats. And of course, the children were on the line, too. Some—like Manya and Gregor—Chaim recognized, but a lot he didn’t.
There was also a variety of camp guards already at a table, their plates laden with food. They barely looked at the prisoners.
The smell of the food made Chaim’s stomach gurgle. But he stayed in the line. He wasn’t going to be the troublemaker here.
Up against the wall stood a single table stacked with wooden bowls, which the prisoners grabbed up as they shuffled by. Then they started toward the head of the table, where a single server stood, slopping a carefully measured ladleful of something gray into each bowl.
By the time Chaim, Gittel, Sophie, and Bruno had joined the end of the line and picked up a bowl each, plus a wooden spoon, there was little of the gray food left.
What was dumped into their bowls was small, unappetizing, gritty, and way too salty—but they ate it quickly anyway.
At first Chaim thought it overcooked porridge, then fish stew, because the grit could have been overcooked bones. He even licked the bowl, feeling embarrassed, until he saw he wasn’t the only hungry person doing so.
After, he and Gittel, Sophie, and Bruno put on their boots.
When the other children filled their bowls with water from a pump outside the back door, they did the same. The water was a rusty brown and smelled like sewage.
They drank it nonetheless.
Chaim felt his stomach clench. It was only by sheer force of will that he managed to keep both food and water down.
But Sophie turned to one side and—violently shaking—threw up her entire breakfast into a little ditch that ran by the side of the pump.
Gittel put her arm around Sophie and held on till Sophie stopped shaking.
Just then Manya walked past, slowing only when she came into their hearing and said out of the side of her mouth, “Don’t let her become ill. Don’t even let her seem to be ill. Otherwise it’s the chimney for her.” Again, that finger making the rotating motion.
With that cryptic message, she was off, the band of children trailing after her, heading toward a low, one-story building that seemed to be sitting in the only patch of sunlight.
Chimney? Gittel mouthed at Chaim.
“Smoke,” he said, making the same motion with his finger that Manya had made.
They stared at each other for a long moment, and suddenly both understood what Manya meant. Chaim shuddered. Gittel did the same, but neither of them named it. Nor did they speak of it to Sophie and Bruno. At least not then.
* * *
• • •
The adult prisoners, the ones dressed in the black and white pajama bottoms and jackets, were heading in a different direction from the children. No one seemed to be escorted by guards.
Is that because the soldiers know no one will try to escape? Chaim looked around at the high fencing, the tower where soldiers stood with their hands on machine guns, carelessly chatting. And even if we got past the guards, Chaim thought, where would we escape to?
“Psssst,” he whispered to Gittel. “That way.” He indicated with his head toward the low, sunlit building.
She looked over, grabbed the back of Sophie’s dress, and pulled imperceptibly at it, but Sophie was not yet ready to move on. “Sophie, we have to hurry.”
The words finally caught Sophie’s attention. Wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her dress, she pulled herself together. In the gray light, she looked incredibly pale, almost bone white.
The sight of Sophie so ghostlike made Chaim’s stomach churn once more. “Bad water from the pump,” he whispered, and Sophie nodded, misery in her dark eyes.
With that, they turned toward the disappearing ragtags, prepared to follow, just as rough hands grabbed them.
“No workroom for you four yet,” someone behind them said, voice as rough as the hands. “Processing first.”
The speaker was about Papa’s height, most of his weight residing in his shoulders and chest. His eyes were so heavy-lidded that what shone there—humor or cruelty—was well disguised. Like a mask.
“Schnell!” the man said.
Whatever processing is, Chaim thought, it has an ominous sound. He turned toward the man to ask, and then realized processing was not as ominous as chimney. Not as immediately debilitating as the brown water.
And because the twin habits of schnell and silence had kept them safe so far, Chaim and the others followed the heavy-lidded man without question.
* * *
• • •
They were quick-marched toward a two-story building, the one they’d passed the night before on their way to the barracks.
Behind it was another, smaller building, one story, low, mean. It sported the huge chimney that dominated the camp. The chimney was clearly too big for this house, more like a factory’s chimney. Chaim signaled sorrow to Gittel.
The four of them entered the processing place with a kind of bouncy step, almost as if beguiled by the building’s hominess. But the minute Chaim came in, he knew something was terribly wrong.
The smell was appalling: a sharp, acrid, burnt-toast odor that went into the nose, down the throat, scraping the insides raw.
He thought about asking. But before he could get even one word out, the guard had opened a door on the left and wordlessly ushered them in. Then he closed the door behind them, locked it from the outside, and went off without giving them any kind of instructions.
Inside the building, Chaim felt a deep, abiding cold, not like the damp cold of Barracks 3, which was uncomfortable and unsettling enough. More like the woods they’d so recently slept in, the ones in which the partisans had been so efficiently murdered. This cold felt as if both dreams and people had died here.
Bruno tried the door, but the handle didn’t turn.
“Why . . . ?” He looked back at the others, the single word pregnant with meaning. Fear clearly showed on his normally mocking face.
“Come in, children,” called a voice from another room, as a different door opened behind them. “Time to clean you up.”
Clean us up? The children in Barracks 3 had been anything but clean. But Chaim didn’t waste his precious words on what he knew would soon be explained, nor did he want to be seen as a question-asking troublemaker. So he just walked through the open door.
The others trailed behind, whispering their cautions to his back.
“We don’t know . . .” That was Sophie.
“What if he’s a . . .” Bruno began.
Always the most direct, Gittel said what they all feared. “Maybe that’s another word for kill . . .”
For a moment Chaim stopped and, turning, spat out his five words like bullets. “They could have killed us . . .” Then added a sixth, and a compound word at that, which shut them all up, though it took him three tries to get it out. “An . . . an . . . anytime.”
After a long pause, Gittel answered, “Still can.” But she signed sorrow to him with her left hand drooping and trembling.
The man in the room didn’t look like a killer. He looked like a ghost. His hair—what there was of it—was white, his face whiter. He was so thin, Chaim thought it might be possible to map the man’s bones through his skin. He, too, wore striped pajamas, but he had on a matching top and looked as if he had just gotten out of bed. Though Chaim noted that there was a jacket, much the worse for wear, hanging over a chair. He wore a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that looked too big for his face.
“First, you must let me cut your hair,” the man said, pointing at Bruno and then at the chair with the jacket. “And get rid of any lice you may have.”
“I don’t have lice,” Bruno retorted.
“Of course you do,” his sister said. “Probably ticks, too. Comes from sleeping on the ground for weeks. No baths, no clean water. No . . .”
“Listen to the girl,” the man said, but despite the curtness of the statement, his voice was soft. Like a father’s, or like a favorite uncle’s.
Chaim wasn’t sure that was recommendation enough to trust him.
“She’s my sister,” Bruno said, “and I never listen to her.” He smiled at the man, clearly trying to be both funny and charming, but missing both.
“Then perhaps you should start now,” the man said. “This is a place where you will need all the friends and family you can keep around you. It’s best not to make enemies. Not even of your sister.”
Bruno sat down in the chair gracelessly, having made his one attempt at charm. The man readjusted his glasses, then he took out a pair of barber scissors from his pants pocket. The four of them relaxed until, with a quick twist of his hand, he brought out a mug of shaving soap and rubbed it over Bruno’s head. Stunned by the unexpected soap, some of which ran down into his right eye, Bruno didn’t move.
Then the man, sadness written all over his face, took out a straight razor.
At that, Bruno screamed as if the man was intending to kill him. “What are you doing?”
Sophie ran over and held Bruno’s hand. “He has to do that to get rid of the lice. Don’t struggle, little brother.”
“Your sister tells the partial truth. And if I have to send out for the guards to force you to sit still, it will go roughly for all. For me, too. You see, we are alive by the sufferance of these Nazi swine, and because children have fingers small enough to work in their factory. Have you had time yet to wonder why there are so few adults here? They keep our numbers small so there will be no resistance. So they do not need to have a great guard presence. We clean the barracks, cook the food, monitor both the prisoners’ kitchen and the guards’ kitchen. We make the camp run efficiently. As long as we grown-ups have a role, we have a life.”
Chaim perked up at the old man’s claim.
“This is a labor camp, after all, not a death camp,” the old man continued.
Death camp! At the phrase, Chaim drew in a quick breath. And he wasn’t alone.
“Which doesn’t mean,” the man continued, “that there are no deaths here. But at least if we work hard enough, there’s a chance we will stay alive.”
“Then it’s truly a war,” Sophie said quietly.
Chaim understood, too. War had always meant countries fighting one another, soldiers against soldiers. Big battlegrounds. Flags planted. Bombs. What they had faced in the ghetto had been a form of oppression—not war. Even the king of the ghetto cooperated with the Nazis. That way you got to live another day. In the ghetto, winning meant outwitting and outwaiting the enemy.
In the forest they’d been running, only occasionally fighting. But there had been no pitched battles, only partisans trying to get them to safety. Only people killed as they slept.
But this—this awful factory, children stolen to be part of a mockery of work—that even Chaim could see was war.
The man began shaving Bruno’s head. For a moment, Chaim thought that now would be a good time to protest. This man was not a guard. He was a prisoner, as they were. But still Chaim said nothing, because suddenly he couldn’t think of anything to say.
The other children, too, were strangely silent. The only sound was that of the straight razor moving across the top of Bruno’s head, the soft whispers as his hair—curled by the soap—rained down onto the floor.
Finally, the man began speaking again. “Living till war’s end. That is the goal, children. If the cold and the small rations or another typhoid epidemic don’t kill us first. But if we all do our individual jobs without complaint . . .”
Typhoid? Chaim thought, and a strange shiver ran across the back of his neck. He’d only heard of that sickness. But what he’d heard hadn’t been good.
The old man took another pass over Bruno’s head. “Remember, to the Nazis, we Jews are infinitely replaceable. One is the same as the other. And whenever one or more of us go up the chimney, our masters find new fleas to perform in their circus.” The last of Bruno’s hair was gone, fallen like wet snow.
“Fleas?” Bruno
said. He was looking terribly confused.
“By that I mean new prisoners,” the man added, though Chaim had thought it had needed no explanation.
Instead, Chaim pounced on the mention of the word chimney, for now there was no disguising what that meant. He twirled his right pointer finger toward heaven as Manya had done.
The barber nodded. “Yes, yes. The chimney is where the bodies are burned, some before they are even quite dead. The chimney belches its foul, oily smoke, and we mourn silently, the prayers for the dead in our hearts if not on our lips. And then we let them go.” He swiped a hand under the glasses, which left a dab of soap beneath his right eye. It looked as if he’d been crying. He didn’t seem to notice, just wiped off the soap from Bruno’s naked scalp as tenderly as if Bruno had been his own son.
“Do my hair next,” Gittel said. She helped Bruno off the chair, kissed the top of his bald head, then sat down in the chair without flinching.
“No!” Chaim had meant to take the next turn. He wanted Gittel’s hair to remain as it was. For as long as it could. But he was too late. With a snip of his scissors, the old man had already cut off Gittel’s braids and was preparing to soap her scalp.
Meanwhile, Bruno sat down on the floor and Sophie sat close to him, her arms wrapped around him as if she’d never let him go.
Maybe as a reward for Gittel’s compliance, maybe out of loneliness or a need for compassion, the barber said, “My name is Mandel. My friends used to call me Manny.”
“What do they call you now?” Gittel asked.
“I have no friends left,” he answered in a whisper.
“The chimney?”
Manny nodded. The soap tear under his eye flew off and fell to the floor.
Suddenly Chaim let loose with a cannonade of six words. Even he didn’t know where they’d come from. “Then we’re your friends now, Manny.”
Manny ducked his head, almost bowing to Chaim, and turned away so as not to shame them further with his tears. Or shame himself.
Chaim suddenly understood something. After being silent in the forest with the knife at his throat, he was like a horse already broken to the plow. But both the girls, and Bruno, too, were his family. And now Manny. Chaim knew he might not make an outward protest, but he could make silent ones. Finger signs. Poems written in his head, though no longer spoken aloud. Not even to be written in any journal, lest they be found and he punished for it. And his friends punished with him. He nodded silently at Manny and hoped that silence would be enough.
