A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy by Elie Wiesel, Thomas Buergenthal Read Free Book Online Page B

with our neighbors, who were trying to get away from the soldiers and their incessantly barking
     dogs that seemed to be trained to attack when their handlers yelled “
Jude!
” (“Jew!”) My father pushed through the crowd, trying to lead us out of the courtyard with his
Werkstatt
pass in hand. Whenever he recognized one of his workers, he would urge them and their families to follow him. Gradually,
     some twenty to thirty people joined our group.
    Along the way, we tried to find my grandparents, but they were nowhere to be found. I never saw them again. To this day, I
     can still see them — their smiles when I entered their little apartment — and the feeling of peace and happiness their embraces
     and kisses brought me.
    As my father led us toward the ghetto wall and the entrance to the
Werkstatt,
we were stopped again and again by heavily armed soldiers, who would yell and point their guns at us in a most threatening
     manner. That was very scary. There was still a lot of shooting all around us. Dead people were lying in the streets, and we
     could not be sure that the German patrols we encountered would not shoot us as well. As soon as we were stopped, my father
     would inform the soldiers, in roughly the same tone of voice as they used when addressing us, that he was under strict orders
     by the commandant of the city to protect the
Werkstatt
. We would then be allowed to continue. “Never show them that you are afraid of them,” I remember my father telling me time
     and again.
    When we reached our destination, my father locked the gate and told everyone to settle down for the day. The shooting continued
     all around us for much of the afternoon. After a while, some men in our group pleaded with my father to let us march out “before
     they come in and kill us all for disobeying orders.” He would have none of it and insisted repeatedly that our chances for
     survival were much greater if we remained in the
Werkstatt
until things had calmed down in the ghetto.
    We stayed in the
Werkstatt
a few more hours. Had we wanted to, we could have escaped from there into the Polish part of the city, but without false
     papers and a lot of money we would soon have been caught and most likely executed. So we remained in the
Werkstatt
until the shooting had died down. At that point, my father decided that the time had come for us to move out. Once again,
     we were stopped repeatedly by German patrols. My father would inform them that he was under orders to bring the workers of
     the
Werkstatt
to the officer in charge of the evacuation. We would then be allowed to continue on our way to a large square.
    Along the way, we passed a group of German soldiers. They had surrounded two young Poles who were on their knees, pleading
     for their lives. Next to them were two sacks with part of their contents strewn around. One of the Poles was wearing the whitest
     shoes I had ever seen. The soldiers were kicking the young men and yelling that looting was punishable by death. Then they
     shot them. For years afterward, whenever I saw or heard that someone had been shot, it would invariably revive memories of
     that terrible scene — the young man on his knees, and those white shoes.
    As we approached the square, we could see a group of Gestapo and
Schutzpolizei
officers facing a large crowd of ghetto inmates, all pleading to be allowed to cross over to the other side of the yard,
     where the people were standing who had been selected to remain in Kielce after the liquidation of the ghetto. As we entered
     the yard with my father in the lead, the commandant of the
Schutzpolizei,
who was a frequent customer at the
Werkstatt,
recognized my father. “We need him,” he exclaimed, “he runs the
Werkstatt!
” and he motioned my father to the other side. My mother, holding on to me, followed. When a soldier tried to stop us, the
     officer motioned him to let us through. Once we were together, my father pointed to the group he had led out