The Choice

ere’s no Ęame. I open my eyes, and I can see jeeps rolling slowly in
through the pine forest that obscures the camp from the road and
from the sky. “e Americans have arrived! e Americans are here!”
is is what the feeble are shouting. e jeeps look wavy and blurry,
as if I am watching them through water or in an intense heat. Could
this be a collective hallucination? Someone is singing “When the Saints
Go Marching In.” For more than seventy years these sensory
impressions have stayed with me, indelible. But as they happen, I have
no idea what they mean. I see men in fatigues. I see Ęags with stars
and stripes—American Ęags, I realize. I see Ęags emblazoned with the
number 71. I see an American handing cigarettes to inmates, who are
so hungry they eat them, paper and all. I watch from a tangle of
bodies. I can’t tell which legs are my legs. “Are there any living here?”
the Americans call in German. “Raise your hand if you are alive.” I try
to move my ĕngers to signal that I am alive. A soldier walks so near to
me that I can see the streaks of mud on his pants. I can smell his
sweat. Here I am, I want to call. I’m here. I have no voice. He scours
the bodies. His eyes pass over me without recognition. He holds a
piece of dirty cloth to his face. “Raise your hand if you can hear me,”
he says. He barely moves the cloth away from his mouth when he
speaks. I work to ĕnd my ĕngers. You’ll never get out of here alive,
they’ve said: the kapo who ripped out my earrings, the SS officer with
the tattoo gun who didn’t want to waste the ink, the forewoman in the
thread factory, the SS who shot us down on the long, long march. is
is how it feels for them to be right.
e soldier shouts something in English. Someone outside my ĕeld
of vision yells back. They’re leaving.
And then a patch of light explodes on the ground. Here’s the ĕre.
At last. I am surprised that it makes no noise. e soldiers turn. My
numb body suddenly Ęushes hot—from Ęame, I think, or fever. But
no. ere is no ĕre. e gleam of light isn’t ĕre at all. It is the sun