CHAPTER 4A Cartwheel
At some point in the summer of 1944, Magda and I realize that no
more Hungarian Jews are arriving at the camp. Later we will learn that
in July, Prime Minister Horthy, tired of bowing to German authority,
put the deportations on hold. He was too late. Hundreds of thousands
of us had already been sent to the camps, four hundred thousand of
us killed in two short months. By October, Horthy’s government fell to
the Nazis. e two hundred thousand Jews still remaining in Hungary
—mostly in Budapest—weren’t sent to Auschwitz. ey were force-
marched two hundred miles to Austria. But we didn’t know any of
this then, we didn’t know anything of life or the war outside.
One winter morning, we stand in yet another line. e cold bites.
We are to be tattooed. I wait my turn. I roll up my sleeve. I present my
arm. I am responding automatically, making the motions required of
me, so cold and hungry, so cold and hungry that I am almost numb.
Does anyone know I’m here? I used to wonder that all the time, and
now the question comes at me sluggishly, as if through a dense and
constant fog. I can’t remember how I used to think. I have to remind
myself to picture Eric, but if I think about him too consciously, I can’t
re-create his face. I have to trick myself into memory, catch myself
unawares. Where’s Magda? at’s the ĕrst thing I ask when I wake,
when we march to work, before we crash into sleep. I dart my eyes
around to conĕrm that she’s still behind me. Even if our eyes don’t
meet, I know that she is also keeping watch for me. I’ve begun saving