by Liz Kessler
But now? Now I have nothing. I am an empty vessel. They will gain nothing from me, and they cannot take anything from me. There is nothing to take.
So I let them drag me out of the barracks. I walk between them along the wide path in between these hated buildings.
I know this is my death march.
The thought brings relief.
I will never again stand here to call out my number.
I will never hold a dirty bowl in my hands, bracing myself to swallow the thin gruel it contains because it is all I will get to eat that day.
I will never crouch over a dirty puddle, slopping its contents into my mouth because the instinct to avoid the horrors of dehydration pulls at me harder than the fear of disease.
I will never see a beetle scuttle across the ground and curse myself that it can outrun me because otherwise it would have been a meal to outdo all others.
I will never see any of it again. And at this moment, that is my one joyful thought.
‘In there.’ A guard orders me through a gate.
Three guards are waiting inside the courtyard. Two of them have rifles over their shoulders. One is holding a pistol. I look down at the floor.
‘Stand over there,’ one of the guards says, pointing towards a wall at the far end of the courtyard. I have heard about this wall. I know what it is.
And the strange thing is that as I walk towards the wall, I no longer feel afraid. Greta promised we would escape today and she was right. I have always known there is only one way to leave Auschwitz.
‘Turn around,’ one of the guards shouts.
I turn to face them.
The guard nudges the one with the pistol. ‘Here you go,’ he says with a broad smile. ‘Birthday present. You get to shoot your first Jew.’
The other guard is looking down at his pistol. He seems uncertain, hesitant.
‘What are you waiting for?’ one of the other guards asks. ‘It’s only a Jew.’
His hesitation is making it worse. I want him to get it over and done with. Get this life over and done with.
I look up at him, ready to plead with him to finish me off if it will make it happen faster. But then I catch his eye.
And in that moment, everything falls away. The years. The camps, the deaths, the losses. All of it fades to nothing, leaving just one thing behind.
My voice is a dry husk. It takes every scrap of effort I can muster to squeeze the word out of me.
‘Max?’
MAX
This was it, the moment. The defining moment. Everything came to this. Years of training, hungering to be part of the Nazi regime. To take his place. This was the point it had always been leading to.
So why did he feel so nervous? Why was he standing here questioning whether he could do it?
Was it because it was his first time? Did everyone feel this way the first time? Did they all have to push hard against the instincts that tried to stop them, just that one time? Would it get easier?
Or was there more to it than that? Was the old Max still in there somewhere? He knew that if he did this, it would define him for ever. Was that what he wanted?
Underneath his soldier’s uniform and his bravado, there was still a boy calling out to be praised, to be loved, to be part of something bigger than himself. Was this really how he had wanted it to happen?
Did they all ask themselves these questions the first time? If he just knew that, he could get on with it.
Could he ask the others?
‘What are you waiting for?’ Rolf asked from somewhere behind him. ‘It’s only a Jew.’
No. He couldn’t ask. He had to do it.
Rolf was right. Only a Jew. He could do this. He braced himself.
And then…
‘Max?’
The prisoner spoke.
The word jolted him like a shot of electricity through his body.
It didn’t make sense. This bald, filthy, barely standing, twig-thin prisoner knew his name? It wasn’t possible.
And yet…
The voice was familiar. It felt like an itch, way below the surface of Max’s skin. A treasure long buried and lost for thousands of years.
‘Come on, Max,’ Rolf urged. He was starting to sound impatient. ‘We haven’t got all day. Karl wants to get home for dinner, remember.’
Max wiped his forehead. It was wet with sweat, despite the cold. He took a sharp breath and lifted the pistol. This Jew didn’t know him. He was imagining things.
He curled his finger around the trigger. Took aim.
And then she smiled at him.
And even though it was years since he’d seen that smile, even though this prisoner in front of him was unrecognizable from the girl he had played with in Vienna, Max knew her smile like he knew himself. It was like a ray of sunlight breaking through clouds. He wanted to give in to it, sink into it, climb it all the way to the warmth of the sun.
‘What are you waiting for?’ The guards were shouting now.
Still he held the gun, his finger tight on the trigger, his hand shaking.
Still she held his eyes, pinning him to the spot while the world around them froze.
‘Come ON!’ The guards were still shouting, somewhere on the other side of all of this. Angry now. ‘DO IT!’
Max’s hand shook so much he thought he might drop the gun. Just squeeze the trigger, just do it.
But her face was still there in front of him. The face of a girl who had once been the best friend in the world to an innocent young boy called Max. He had once childishly believed he would marry this girl.
Max’s chest throbbed with the thought of what might have been; the life he could have led.
Such a different life.
All Max had ever wanted was to fit in. But this? This had never been part of it. Or had it? Underneath everything, had he always known deep down inside that this was where his desire to fit in was going to lead him?
And did it matter either way? The truth was, he had chosen this life as much as it had chosen him, and now he was here, surely there was no turning back.
The gun was slippy against his sweating palm. Only a Jew. He could do this.
He tightened his grip on the pistol, crooked his finger against the trigger.
And then she spoke again.
‘Max, it’s me. Elsa.’
Elsa: the name was like a bomb exploding inside him.
Elsa: a firework, coursing through his body, lighting up the parts that had lain dormant and dark for years.
Elsa: his best friend. His first kiss.
And now… and now…
The guards were shouting so loud. Their patience wouldn’t last much longer. It didn’t matter who Max had once been. This was the Max he was now.
He held the pistol with both hands to try to stop the shaking.
ELSA
Moments ago, I didn’t believe I had anything to live for. Death meant nothing to me. It was just the end of suffering.
And now…
His eyes are a bridge into another world. Another lifetime. I can’t even think of it as the past as I can barely believe that was my life. But it was a life. And now he is here in front of me and I remember that life is something worth fighting for.
I can’t let it happen. I’m not just fighting for myself. It feels bigger than that. Am I fighting for Max? For all of us? If I can remind him who he was – who he must surely still be, somewhere beneath that uniform – then perhaps there is a chance I can believe in something again.
‘You don’t have to do this, Max,’ I say quietly enough that the other guards won’t hear me.
He has both hands on his pistol. But he is still resisting. How can I find the words to get through to him?
And then I have a thought. I have something better than words.
‘Wait! Please! One second!’ I beg him.
I need to get it. Need to show him.
He won’t shoot me when he sees it. He has to remember. Has to see me.
<
br /> I don’t have long. Fevered and frantic, I pull at my sleeve. My fingers hardly work, they are so weak.
Luckily, my dress is even weaker and the fabric tears easily.
Finally, I have it. I pull it away from my ragged clothes. My one remaining possession. The only thing I have left in my life.
I hold it out to him. ‘Here,’ I say. ‘I kept it.’
The guards behind him are yelling. Max still has the gun aimed at me. He’s holding it in both hands, but his hands are shaking. His forehead is soaked in sweat.
My hand is shaking too as I hold the photograph out to him.
‘We thought the world was ours to share,’ I say. ‘Remember?’
MAX
His eyes had clouded with tears. Still holding the gun, he used his arm to swipe his sleeve across his face. But it was useless as the tears kept coming. It was as though a dam had burst inside him and the tears would flow for ever, until they had destroyed everything in their path.
He knew what she was holding.
He thought he had killed his memories when he’d destroyed his own copy. He thought his heart had hardened into a stone, like his father had always wanted.
But here it was again, risen from the flames like a phoenix that was telling him he could fly.
Just like he’d believed he could all those years ago. Up there, standing beside her and Leo on the Ferris wheel.
‘You left me,’ he found himself saying. His voice felt like the gravel under his feet.
He knew that the day Elsa said she was leaving was the day he’d begun to break. The day the dark chasm of his loss had begun to engulf him.
And then he’d lost Leo, and then his home and his city. And then he’d lost himself.
No. That was a lie. He couldn’t pretend he had sat back and passively let this happen to him. He had yearned to be taken. He’d welcomed it, sought it out. He’d run from the boy he had been, desperate to find who else he could become instead.
All he had ever really wanted was to be loved, to be part of something, to make someone proud.
She took a step towards him. ‘I’m still here,’ she said. She was still holding the photo out to him.
‘SHOOT HER! NOW!’ Thomas was beside him, screaming in his ear.
Was Thomas what Max would become? A monster, a cog in a machine that did nothing but hate and kill, hate and kill until there was nothing left?
She was holding his eyes. ‘You don’t have to do this, Max,’ she said.
And she was right. He didn’t have to do this. He didn’t have to do any of it.
The realization hit him like a bullet. It wasn’t work that set you free. It was love. All these years, he’d told himself what he had to do to fit in, to be happy, to earn his place in the world.
Through Elsa’s eyes, he finally saw clearly. It was a lie. Every bit of it.
He smiled at her. He almost went to her. So nearly. And then…
‘Come on, Max,’ Thomas said. ‘Don’t test me.’
Wait. A test. This was a test. Just like all the other tests of his true commitment to the regime. This was the moment for him to prove himself.
All those questions he had asked himself as he had come to the courtyard. The questions he’d wanted to ask a real soldier. He was that soldier. He was the man with the answers.
Of course everyone questioned themselves the first time. Of course they all hesitated. But then they remembered who they were, why they were here.
This was the moment to leave the boy behind for ever. This was how he would became a true Nazi.
He lifted his pistol.
ELSA
He knows me. He recognizes me. He won’t kill me. I know it in my heart.
The joy is overwhelming. I didn’t know that I still had the capacity to feel joy. If someone had told me yesterday I would ever know this feeling again, I would have called them a cruel liar.
And yet, here it is, filling up my heart.
All those years of surviving, and now it has led us here. Back to each other.
The guards behind him are still yelling at him. Their faces are red, eyes bulging with rage. Max ignores them. He only sees me; I only see him.
He’s walking towards me. He’s smiling.
And then the soldier beside him is saying something in his ear. Max is listening. His smile turns cold, freezes.
The air around me turns cold with it. My skin prickles. I can feel everything change and I know that I’ve lost him.
He raises his pistol. His hand is shaking.
He takes a step closer, grits his teeth.
And then—
BANG.
MAX
Max fell so hard he almost knocked her over.
Her face was a mask of shock and horror as she stared at the guards. ‘What have you done?’ she cried as she fell to her knees beside the boy on the floor.
Rolf had turned to stone. He couldn’t speak.
‘Rolf!’ Thomas hissed. ‘What have you done?’
‘I’d had enough of waiting. Someone had to kill the Jew.’
‘He was about to shoot her!’ Thomas said. ‘And you didn’t kill the Jew, you killed Max. The son of a senior officer!’
‘He – he got in the way,’ Rolf insisted. ‘He started walking towards her. I thought he wasn’t going to do it.’
Thomas looked around them, his face white. ‘Look. No one is here but us,’ he said. ‘Get the pistol.’
Max’s pistol had fallen away from him when the bullet hit him in the head. Rolf grabbed it and took it to Thomas. He already knew what the other soldier was thinking. ‘He shot himself,’ he said while Thomas curled Max’s fingers around the gun and arranged his arm so that it pointed to his head.
Elsa was still kneeling by Max’s side. ‘You’ve killed him! You’ve killed him!’ she cried, her tears flowing freely.
The soldiers ignored her and spoke to each other. ‘He was always weak, everyone knows it. They laugh about it behind Herr Fischer’s back,’ Thomas said. He stood back and examined their work. Yes. That looked real. ‘They will believe us,’ he said.
‘Stupid fool,’ Rolf agreed, already believing their own lie. ‘Killing himself over a filthy Jew.’
Finally, Elsa turned away from Max. Brushing the dust from her legs, she got up and looked at the guards, her eyes black with rage. She stood tall and straight, her chin lifted up, her tears already drying on her cheeks.
‘Do it,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I have nothing left. Take the last thing from me. My life. I’m done with it.’
And then she closed her eyes. She would not give them that. She would not let them into her soul while they emptied out their own.
It was over.
As she fell, the photograph fluttered to the ground beside her.
Three children who owned the world, smiling at the sky.
LEO
A strange thing happened today. I was walking with Annie, climbing a hill. We got to the top and stood looking down at the town as the day began to draw to a close.
It felt familiar and I couldn’t work out why. I’d never been up this hill before. I’d never looked down on this town.
And then I remembered. It wasn’t this town in my memory. It was Vienna.
I smiled as I thought of that day. My best friends, Elsa and Max. I still thought about them every day. I wished so much that they could have met Annie.
Maybe they would meet her one day, when this was all over.
I closed my eyes and I was there with them. That day when we thought the world was ours. We thought we could do anything. Childish dreams. Beautiful dreams.
I felt the warmth of the sun on my face and didn’t want to open my eyes.
And then, out of nowhere, a pain flashed across my chest so fiercely it doubled me over.
‘Leo, are you okay?’ Annie was crouching in front of me.
I held my hand on my chest and tried to calm my breathing. I nodded. Breathed. Counted to ten.
It ha
d moved off. I stood up and took her hand.
‘You all right?’ she asked.
‘Yeah. I’m okay now.’
‘Look,’ she said, pointing at two clouds in the sky that had drifted together into one. Light beamed through a tiny break between them, like a hazy white ladder to the sun.
I put my arm around Annie and we stood watching together.
The pain in my chest had gone but it had left a dull ache behind.
It felt a bit like grief.
PAPA
When the orderlies were sent in to do their work, one of them noticed something on the ground beside the girl. He reached down into the mud.
‘What are you doing?’ one of the others asked him. ‘You’ll get whipped for that.’
‘I don’t care,’ the man replied.
He wiped the card on his sleeve and stood looking at it. It was a photograph.
The man knew this moment. He knew this photograph. He remembered the laughter of that day. He allowed himself a small luxury. He closed his eyes and let his mind wander.
He thought of three happy children, running and laughing and pointing at a city as if they owned it. And the photographer, the man who lived for other people’s smiles, who had plenty of his own to go around – did that man still exist? Beneath these tattered clothes and the body that was little more than a skeleton. Was he still in there somewhere?
‘Grunberg, come on!’ his friend urged him. ‘We need to get this done and get back before the guards start asking why we took so long.’
Mr Grunberg nodded. But still he kept looking at the photograph. His eyes misted and his throat closed over as he ran his fingers across the face of the boy on the left. His beautiful son. Was he all right? Did he get away? And the boy’s mother, his own wife, was she alive?
No. He had to stop. He could not survive such questions.
So he put the photograph in his pocket. And then he stood for a moment, saying a quiet prayer before wiping his eyes and getting back to the job they’d been sent to do.
The gentleness in his hands as he lifted the bodies felt like an act of rebellion in itself.
