each other and joined hands. When the bullets mowed them down, they were still grasping each other.
As each new crop of prisoners arrived, additional details about the outside world flowed in, and they learned that the extermination of the Krasnik Jews was merely part of a much bigger program to rid Poland of all Jews for all time. Every ghetto had been or would be liquidated.
Many of the prisoners came to believe that once all the Jews in the ghettos were killed, the Jews in the labor campsâthe last of the Jews in Poland not trenched so deeply underground that they couldnât be discoveredâwould be executed as well. Thus, the arrival of dozens of SS late one afternoon in August 1943 caused alarm. The prisoners were ordered into their barracks without supper, and the doors were barred from the outside.
Moshe stood at a window and watched as SS milled about the fence, inside and outside, clustering, heavily armed, a group here, a group there, some smoking, some talking.
âThis is the end,â one of the prisoners said softly.
A few men began praying, and several more drifted toward them, a corner of prayer that grew larger and louder. Others sat apart from the praying, as Moshe, Yankel, and Zalmen did, and spoke of their families and of dreams unrealized. A few cried quietly.
The inevitable had finally arrived. Tomorrow they would all be in the ditch.
âThis part, the waiting, is worse than the dying,â someone said. Moshe agreed.
The hours ground on, the Nazis still massed and huddled outside, the sluggish passage of time almost unbearable.
At five a.m. the next morning, the sound of the bar being lifted from the other side of the door shook the prisoners into full alert. They rose, some reaching out to give a final pat on the shoulder to a friend, moving forward to face what they knew they had to face. When they emerged into the early-morning gray, expecting a spray of gunfire, the yard was empty. The SS had gone.
A shout rang out from a tower. âGo to the washroom, go to the outhouse, and get ready to go to work.â
The prisoners learned later that day that the Nazi high command had ordered the Budzyn prisoners killed. But the executives of the Heinkel plant, informed that their workforce was about to vanish, begged officials to reconsider, arguing that these particular Jews were crucial to Germanyâs war efforts. Sometime in the wee hours, the elimination order was canceled.
That episode, along with all the other episodes of survival, strengthened the faith of some, made them even more devout. For others, however, the level of cruelty they had witnessed was sufficient evidence that there was no God, and they shed their faith, layer by layer, until nothing at all remained. The extremes of opinion sometimes led to heated words. On the eve of Yom Kippur in the year that Feix had randomly chosen more than one hundred men to shoot, the same year of the near extermination of the whole camp, some of the prisoners in Mosheâs barracks ate supper quickly and gathered in a corner to recite the Kol Nidre prayers.
Several agnostics, disgusted, formed their own knot. âLook at them, praying to God who has forsaken us. Commandant Feix decides who shall live and who shall die. They are fools.â
Mosheâs own feelings were conflicted. On the one hand, his religious upbringing had taught him to love God under any circumstance. Even though he had been less than devout once he reached his teen years, some shards of these teachings continued to prick at him. On the other hand, there was the reality of the last three years. He was too hungry and exhausted to arrive at any meaningful position, but it troubled him, this unsettled business of his faith, worsened, he supposed, by the specter of being killed at any moment.
Even Yankel, the most devout of the brothers, struggled.
âWill it be me next?â Yankel asked Moshe one day. âI donât want to know. But I will
As each new crop of prisoners arrived, additional details about the outside world flowed in, and they learned that the extermination of the Krasnik Jews was merely part of a much bigger program to rid Poland of all Jews for all time. Every ghetto had been or would be liquidated.
Many of the prisoners came to believe that once all the Jews in the ghettos were killed, the Jews in the labor campsâthe last of the Jews in Poland not trenched so deeply underground that they couldnât be discoveredâwould be executed as well. Thus, the arrival of dozens of SS late one afternoon in August 1943 caused alarm. The prisoners were ordered into their barracks without supper, and the doors were barred from the outside.
Moshe stood at a window and watched as SS milled about the fence, inside and outside, clustering, heavily armed, a group here, a group there, some smoking, some talking.
âThis is the end,â one of the prisoners said softly.
A few men began praying, and several more drifted toward them, a corner of prayer that grew larger and louder. Others sat apart from the praying, as Moshe, Yankel, and Zalmen did, and spoke of their families and of dreams unrealized. A few cried quietly.
The inevitable had finally arrived. Tomorrow they would all be in the ditch.
âThis part, the waiting, is worse than the dying,â someone said. Moshe agreed.
The hours ground on, the Nazis still massed and huddled outside, the sluggish passage of time almost unbearable.
At five a.m. the next morning, the sound of the bar being lifted from the other side of the door shook the prisoners into full alert. They rose, some reaching out to give a final pat on the shoulder to a friend, moving forward to face what they knew they had to face. When they emerged into the early-morning gray, expecting a spray of gunfire, the yard was empty. The SS had gone.
A shout rang out from a tower. âGo to the washroom, go to the outhouse, and get ready to go to work.â
The prisoners learned later that day that the Nazi high command had ordered the Budzyn prisoners killed. But the executives of the Heinkel plant, informed that their workforce was about to vanish, begged officials to reconsider, arguing that these particular Jews were crucial to Germanyâs war efforts. Sometime in the wee hours, the elimination order was canceled.
That episode, along with all the other episodes of survival, strengthened the faith of some, made them even more devout. For others, however, the level of cruelty they had witnessed was sufficient evidence that there was no God, and they shed their faith, layer by layer, until nothing at all remained. The extremes of opinion sometimes led to heated words. On the eve of Yom Kippur in the year that Feix had randomly chosen more than one hundred men to shoot, the same year of the near extermination of the whole camp, some of the prisoners in Mosheâs barracks ate supper quickly and gathered in a corner to recite the Kol Nidre prayers.
Several agnostics, disgusted, formed their own knot. âLook at them, praying to God who has forsaken us. Commandant Feix decides who shall live and who shall die. They are fools.â
Mosheâs own feelings were conflicted. On the one hand, his religious upbringing had taught him to love God under any circumstance. Even though he had been less than devout once he reached his teen years, some shards of these teachings continued to prick at him. On the other hand, there was the reality of the last three years. He was too hungry and exhausted to arrive at any meaningful position, but it troubled him, this unsettled business of his faith, worsened, he supposed, by the specter of being killed at any moment.
Even Yankel, the most devout of the brothers, struggled.
âWill it be me next?â Yankel asked Moshe one day. âI donât want to know. But I will
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