The Choice

are desperate to get out. We rush toward the air and the light. We
practically fall out of the car, tumbling against one another in our
hurry to descend. Aer several days of the ceaseless motion of the
train, it’s hard to stand upright on ĕrm ground. In every way we are
trying to get our bearings—piece out our location, steady our nerves
and our limbs. I see the crowded dark of winter coats amassed on a
narrow stretch of dirt. I see the Ęash of white in someone’s scarf or
cloth bundle of belongings, the yellow of the mandatory stars. I see the
sign: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. Music plays. My father is suddenly cheerful.
“You see,” he says, “it can’t be a terrible place.” He looks as though he
would dance if the platform weren’t so crowded. “We’ll only work a
little, till the war’s over,” he says. e rumors we heard at the brick
factory must be true. We must be here to work. I search for the ripple
of nearby ĕelds and imagine Eric’s lean body across from me, bending
to tend a crop. Instead I see unbroken horizontal lines: the boards on
the cattle cars, the endless wire of a fence, low-slung buildings. In the
distance, a few trees and chimneys break the Ęat plane of this barren
place.
Men in uniform push among us. Nobody explains anything. ey
just bark simple directions. Go here. Go there. e Nazis point and
shove. e men are herded into a separate line. I see my father wave
to us. Maybe they’re being sent ahead to stake out a place for their
families. I wonder where we’ll sleep tonight. I wonder when we’ll eat.
My mother and Magda and I stand together in a long line of women
and children. We inch forward. We approach the man who with a
conductor’s wave of a ĕnger will deliver us to our fates. I do not yet
know that this man is Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous Angel of
Death. As we advance toward him, I can’t look away from his eyes, so
domineering, so cold. When we’ve drawn nearer, I can see a boyish
Ęash of gapped teeth when he grins. His voice is almost kind when he
asks if anyone is sick, and sends those who say yes to the left.