“Arbeit Macht Frei”/ Work Makes One free

Samuel dragged his lead-like leg up to another step of the stairs. He had to carry boxes of coal and dump them into a pit, where men like him would be shoveling them into a funnel. The whole room was heated up with steam from that funnel. Samuel gasped in the smoke and tried to breathe a bit of fresh air. There were only men in this place and they all looked the same. They were the same height, wore the same clothes with navy blue and white stripes, had the same bony frames, and had the same scary eyeballs sticking out from their faces. There was no light of hope in those eyes. 

“Stop what you are doing and go to the showers right now! Hurry up if you don’t want any whip landing on you.”

Men jostled to get down the stairs, Samuel among them. A person in front of him elbowed an old man. Without any weight to keep him balanced, he fell off the stairs and was impaled by a shovel on the ground. Blood oozed out from his chest, but no one dared to feel pity for him. The crowd kept propelling forward as if nothing had happened. 

Finally, this was the first shower time in a month. People quickly took off the uniforms that strangled them with labor and inferiority. Because of their lack of food, their bare ribs were covered by only a thin layer of wrinkly skin. Samuel unbuttoned his top and touched the long stitch stretching over his abdomen. This reminded him of his daughter and wife. He hadn’t seen their faces, nor heard their sounds since he stepped out from that train a month ago. Samuel threw his clothes away and joined the long line slowly moving into the shower room. 

On the other side of the camp, Samuel’s wife and daughter were in a large group of ladies folding the uniforms on the cold ground. Staring at the fences miles away, she remembered being pushed onto a train with Samuel and her daughter. It was crowded with the smell of humans and rotten meat, clearly, she didn’t like it. It stopped in front of a line of buildings with an open gate. She had seen people lining up, walking to a lonely circular building when she just got here. Strangely, she had never seen that group of people coming out again. That day, she had spotted a figure in the distance. It mingled with blue and grey but quickly stood out from the rest of the clutter of tottering dead men. Samuel, that was her husband: Samuel Hoffman. She froze on the stool with her jaw-dropping. 

“Mommy, is that daddy? Mommy, mommy, I want daddy! Let’s go find him.” The young girl screamed after following her mom’s gaze.

“Yes, you’re right, baby girl. Stay with them, okay? Don’t fool around. Mommy will get your dad soon.”

Gravel wore out her heels as her tender feet pressed against the rough ground. She had never run without shoes before. In fact, she hadn’t run for years after giving birth, and she was already suffering from cramps after a few seconds. 

“Sam! Sam! Honey, can you hear me? Don’t you dare go into that house! Samuel, listen to me!”

She could see the shape of the crowd as she ran closer. It was a huge line; there seemed to be no end to it. Her husband was in the very front with only relatively loose underwear hanging below his waist, like her daughter’s diaper. 

He spotted his wife, opened his mouth, and tried to break loose from the crowd. His fingers press against people around him, but accidentally are squeezed into the front.

“Samuel! Sam, no! Please stop, I beg you!”

The first ten entered the metal-covered building without any noise.

“Sam, they’re gonna kill you all! Wait! Please don’t do this!”

It was Samuel’s turn to step into the building. His wife was tripped by a wire that pierced her skin, her body forced her to kneel down to the ground. She lowered her pleads because of the pain. 

“Sam, please, Sam, Samuel...”

Her voice died. Tears welled up in her eyes, tumbled down from her chin, and dripped to the ground. The sound of water mixed with Zyklon B splashed the metal wall inside the chamber. 

A few moments later, the funnel next to the chamber spat out its smoke ring of flesh. It burned the sweat of people’s loved ones. Something blurred her eyes, but she couldn’t tell whether that was the water in her eyes or her Samuel in the smog. She imagined herself trapped inside, breathing the poisonous gas with her dead husband.

“Mommy, where’s daddy?” The cry of her daughter broke though her as the heaviness of truth landed in her heart and she wept, holding her little girl in her emaciated arms. She could no longer control her crying.