The Fighter by Jean Jacques Greif Read Free Book Online Page A

myself I’ll do it as soon as I’m free again. Yeah, and I’ll climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower, too.
    The bus joins a herd of others in the courtyard of the Austerlitz train station. My brother’s face, which was very dark, lightens a little.
    â€œWe’re staying in France. If we went to Germany, we would start from the
Gare de l’Est
.”
    We board a train very similar to the ones I used to take on weekends. Those were happy times! We go across quiet suburbs. I recognize the lazy bends of the Seine, then the Fontainebleau forest. Now we see fields and meadows. The train stops in a small town named Pithiviers. All the passengers feel relieved. Nothing bad can happen to us this close to Paris.
    We discover the camp.… According to the military guards, it was built to house German prisoners at the beginning of the war, when France still hoped to win. It contains twenty wooden barracks with corrugated iron roofs, a dispensary, some offices. The barracks are on the spartan side. They’ve made two-tiered bunks with rough planks and covered them with straw. I think of the carters in our courtyard, who slept in the stables with their horses.… They give us very little food.
    â€œIn the German concentration camps,” Jacques says, “they always keep the prisoners hungry. This breaks their will and their resistance.”
    At least the guards let us write to our wives, and soon our wives send us parcels full of food.
    By and by, we learn what happened. They arrested 3,500 Polish Jews and a few dozen Czech Jews on May 14. They sent them to Pithiviers and to another town nearby, Beaune-la-Rolande. The official statement says they had toarrest foreign Jews, all of them parasites and illicit peddlers whom they would put to work.
    Jacques finds it pretty funny.
    â€œBefore the war, all these anti-Semitic parties complained that the Jews took work from the Frenchmen. Now they tell us we’re lazy parasites and they want to put us to work!”
    â€œI’d like them to give us some work. Doing nothing all day makes me nervous.”
    â€œYou know this camp is full of Jewish scholars? People who came to France to study science or medicine. I heard they’re planning conferences.”
    â€œGo to your conferences. I just wish they’d give us a ball so we could play soccer.”
    In July, the camp’s commander says our families will be allowed to visit us. Weeks before the day, I imagine the moment when I’ll see my Rachel and my little Élie. Then this moment comes and it is over so fast. In two months, my son has changed. He speaks better, he has a new way of smiling….
    On June 21, 1941, the Germans attack the Soviet Union without any warning. In 1939, Stalin had signed a treaty with Hitler, because he wasn’t ready for a war. I hope he is ready now. The German army won’t reach Moscow as easily as Warsaw or Paris, so the war will last a long time. Maybe I’ll stay years in this camp and my son will grow up far away from me.
    The guards are looking for guys willing to work outside the camp. I go and fetch Jacques as fast as I can.
    â€œCome, Jacques, this is a fantastic chance!”
    â€œYes, this will relieve us of this dreadful boredom.”
    â€œI mean a chance to escape. Once we’re outside, it will be easy.”
    No luck. They separate us: they send Jacques to a Pithiviers workshop, me to a big farm with twenty comrades. As I’ve always lived in a city, I’ve never seen a peasant. I thought peasants were poor people, like factory workers, exploited and oppressed by the rich. Well, the peasant who owns this farm doesn’t merely exploit us—he treats us like slaves. We must harvest, plow, make hay, tend the cattle. It’s really tough. It never stops. He feeds us so little that we can hardly stand. He seems to resent having workers who cost him nothing. Instead of thanking us, he insults us.
    â€œYou