In the silence an hour passed unnoticed. Time was nothing. Another hour of another day, but these days were different. It was for most of them the last days of their lives.
Henri had arrived only yesterday, and was processed so haphazardly that he still had half a cigar in his pocket, missed by the camp guards who were uncharacteristically harried. The past few trains skipped the delousing altogether, let alone the taking of their clothes, though they were dispossessed of their belongings. His blessing was that he was an old man who had never married, and who had no family. Henri had no one to mourn, and not so curiously, there was no one to mourn Henri.
Sebastian, however, was young, and had no idea where his wife and children were, nor what had happened to his parents and sister. Last he had seen his mother and father they were being forced to watch as the soldiers raped his sister, having beaten him senseless and barely conscious. He could feel his mother's sobs as his sister screamed. Even then a soldier had stood on his neck... Sebastian did not talk, but everyone knew his story. He was the book seller from Wroclaw, though some thought he was a Slovak. He was a grade school teacher too. Now it wasn't even clear he was mentally present. He was broken, unreachable. But he worked like the rest.
But Piotr, he had God. It was said Piotr was a rich man before the war, from Krosno. He and his wife, their daughter, were swept up as they travelled for Belgium to meet with fellow parishioners from his church after the Russians had burned the town. They were pulled out as Jews, though it was clear to everyone there they were not. "Our God was an all powerful, all loving God", he told everyone. He cried out to the soldiers, "I am no Jew!" but he and his family were taken anyway. The others in his group were shot where they stood. He prayed constantly, and gave freely of God's grace. He knew his wife and daughter were in the camp, for they had travelled together, and he thanked God daily for their being here near him. He was an annoyance, but harmless, reading and quoting salvation from his bible, which the guards threw back at him in processing, laughing, telling him to find his God in the camp, perhaps on a piece of bread, and beg Him to save them. Piotr praised God he had been given back his bible.
It was busy these past few days, the awful, foul smoke dense in the camp from the factory. But there were no more trains, and the rumor was that the senior camp officers had left this morning. The prisoners had been digging huge pits behind the camp under the guns of the guards. Being busy lead to the mercy of death for some of those who had been here too long. The soup was less with each passing day this past week, and now seemed mostly thin broth, if it had any flavor at all. It was not enough to sustain the sick, the old, and the weary. It was not enough to sustain the well or the young either.
Piotr had gathered after the meal with his fellow believers, some pagans who had no where else to turn for solace, some Jews, some Polish Christians, like him, labeled as Jews, and were praying, thanking God for their having survived another day. Except for Johannes, for whose soul they prayed. He collapsed this morning and the guards left him where he lay in the mud. Henri had lit his cigar, and had smoked it nearly to its end, which was good as it took his last match. He listened to the droning on of the prayers and hymns and was lulled. He barely noticed as Sebastian stepped over suddenly, took his cigar and buried it in Piotr's eye.
"Perhaps by morning God will regrow you an eye for you are surely righteous and I am damned!" Sebastian did not stop as the others ran to the howling Piotr. He opened the door and kept walking. He walked to the fence, and he began to climb. The wind slammed the door shut, almost covering the sound of a single shot.
In the morning Piotr was still blind in one eye. Sebastian hung where God had left him on the fence. And the pits they had dug, God filled them with bodies and ashes of those burned in the ovens. That night no one gathered to pray.
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