CHAPTER 5The Stairs of Death
We march for days or weeks again. Since Auschwitz, we have been
kept in Germany, but one day we come to the Austrian border, where
we wait to cross. e guards gossip as we stand in the interminable
lines that have become for me the illusion of order, the illusion that
one thing naturally follows another. It is a relief to stand still. I listen
to the conversation between the guards. President Roosevelt has died,
they are saying. Truman is le to carry out the rest of the war. How
strange to hear that in the world outside our purgatory, things change.
A new course is determined. ese events occur so far from our daily
existence that it is a shock to realize that now, even right now,
someone is making a choice about me. Not about me speciĕcally. I
have no name. But someone with authority is making a decision that
will determine what happens to me. North, south, east, or west?
Germany or Austria? What should be done with the surviving Jews
before the war is over?
“When the war ends ...” a guard says. He doesn’t ĕnish the
thought. is is the kind of future talk that Eric and I once
entertained. Aer the war ... If I concentrate in just the right way, can
I ĕgure out if he still lives? I pretend that I’m waiting outside a train
station where I will buy a ticket, but I have only one chance to ĕgure
out the city where I am to meet him. Prague? Vienna? Düsseldorf?
Prešov? Paris? I reach into my pocket, feeling reĘexively for my
passport. Eric, my sweet love, I am on my way. A female border guard