[The following is told from the perspective of Markus Reich, a seventeen-year-old Jewish Polish boy who grew up in Bochnia, Poland, and who spent much of the Second World War in or escaping from various prison and concentration camps throughout Eastern Europe.]
Months later, the Germans ordered all the prisoners out of Plaszow and into death camps. Markus, Max [Markus’s cousin], and Max’s wife, Erna, were part of a group that had to walk thirty miles (fort-eight kilometers) to Auschwitz – a camp that would become the site of the greatest mass murder in history.
During the march, prisoners too feeble to take another step were shot where they fell. Erna, weakened by hunger and illness, began to stumble, so Max carried her until he, too, was exhausted. “I can’t carry her anymore, Markus. Help me.”
Markus himself was frail and having difficulty walking. But he had to help. After all, Max had saved his life. Here was a chance to repay him. So Markus put Erna on his back – she weighted only eighty pounds (thirty-six kilograms) – and plodded on for a whole day until they arrived at Auschwitz.
*So this is where I’m going to die,” Markus thought.
For the next three months, he saw people being led to the gas chambers, people being shot as they stood in formation, people being hanged. And every day he wondered if this would be the last day of his life. Clad in a blue-and-white-striped prison uniform, Markus was nothing but skin and bones. He was beyond fear, beyond even caring.
Source:
Zullo, Allan, and Mara Bovsun. “So This is Where I’m Going to Die. Markus Reich’s Story.” Survivors: True Stories of Children in the Holocaust. Scholastic, 2004. 64-5. Print.
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