Stephen Shooster Mostly, I languished with the rest, waiting, fearful of a truck to arrive that might take us to Birkenau, or excited that a liberator might show up at the door to give us our coveted freedom. My life remained in limbo. Anything could happen. Still, the most pressing problem was the lack of food. Without it, I had to conserve the little energy I still had. We all did. No one knew when we could expect any support or if they would reach us in time. The little energy I had, I used to scavenge for food. Day after day, there was nothing I could find, except snow and plenty of it. Cold, weak, and tired, everything slowed down to a crawl except my thoughts that were punctuated by the sounds of battle. Possibly hallucinating, I heard my father’s voice, “You will survive. You will live longer than everyone else...” I had already outlived my whole family. Sur- vival would be a different story. My life hung by a thread. With no food, we were all wasting away. So, a few of us got together and became fix- ated on the field just outside the gate. We spoke about it and knew there was a stash of frozen potatoes left by the trucks when they dumped them for our commissary. Near delirious, all of us walking skeletons, we started to head towards the gate, but when we got close, the old Nazi guards fired upon us. Confused by where the shooting was coming from, and dismayed by not being allowed to rummage for the frozen morsels, we scattered and turned back to avoid any more shooting and continued to wither. At one point, however, I did manage to scrounge some dry onions that I could press into squares. Struggling for anything to eat, I ate this, but all it did was make me very thirsty. At least there was plenty of snow with more falling from the sky to quench my thirst. I don’t think this was what the ancient Israelites meant by manna from heaven, as the snow could not satisfy my hunger. I struck up a conversation with the male nurse. He was a pleasant fellow from War- saw and a prisoner just like me. I told him about my hometown. He told me about his. I asked him about how he came to Buna. There were so many sick and dying around us, but there was little we could do to help them. So, we spoke for a long time, and I asked him, “Do you know my friend Moshe Katz? He got hurt by a railcar incident on his inner thigh.” While talking to him, I remember looking at his eyes. They seemed to remember, but he acted the part of a fool. It didn’t matter whether he knew of him or not. I was just trying to occupy the time. I’m sure he saw hundreds of terrible tragedies, so I did not press it. It is hard to explain when you’re in such a dire position, but sitting there, talking to him, I missed the organized life of the camp, my friends, and espe- cially the meager, but consistent food. Not knowing what would happen next weighed heavily upon us. I sighed, resigned to my fate. Also in the infirmary was Primo Levy. Suffering from scarlet fever, he had red splotch-
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