The Auschwitz Detective

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I had never seen a man cry like that.

He lay prone on his bunk, second level of three, and bawled as though he had been driven mad. As he howled his pain out, his entire body quaked in jerky spasms, like an exposed heart beating erratically. His limbs jolted and flailed about, banging hard against the rough wooden slats that bore his weight.

Each sob was so deep it must have originated in the center of the Earth. It then chewed its way upward through rock and dirt, pierced the crust of the hard Polish ground on which the camp sprawled, burrowed through the floor of our block, and wormed its way into the crying man’s soul. From there it finally erupted from his mouth in a scream of such primal agony that it would have shattered our hearts at any other time, in any other place. Right then, it only hurt our ears.

The man had arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau eleven hours ago. Soon after that, his wife and six children were led to the gas chambers and exterminated. Someone had informed him of this fact five hours ago. His denial had lasted for three. He had been crying for the past two.

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