A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy by Elie Wiesel, Thomas Buergenthal

would blow against us and pass right through our thin clothes. I was wearing my mother’s boots,
     which she had given me before we reached Auschwitz. My socks had been taken away when I had arrived at the camp. In their
     place, I used some rags to keep my feet warm. Michael, Janek, and I stayed close together, trying to keep warm. We were getting
     tired and realized that those of us from the children’s barrack, having been ordered by the SS guards to the front of the
     column of marchers, had it harder than those who followed on the snow and ice we had already trampled down. By late afternoon,
     Janek, Michael, and I found it increasingly difficult to keep up and decided to let the marchers pass us until the rear of
     the column was almost upon us. Then we jogged to the front again. Once we realized that this maneuver worked, we kept repeating
     it. Of course, we were getting pushed aside or bumped by the marchers, but that was a small price to pay for the respite it
     gave us.
    It was already dark when the SS halted the march for the night and allowed us to sleep on the road where we had stopped and
     in the drainage ditches on either side. By that time, some marchers had already died. Those who could not go on and sat down
     by the side of the road or simply collapsed were shot by the SS guards, who kicked their bodies into a nearby ditch. Over
     the next two days, many more would die in this manner. After a while, I would no longer jump when yet another shot was fired.
     As I got ever more tired, and the cold, windy air began to hurt, I wondered whether it would not be easier to lie down and
     let them kill me. The prospect had its attraction because it would be speedy and liberating. But I would almost immediately
     banish that thought and push myself even more. “If I give up, they will have won,” I kept muttering to myself. Staying alive
     had become a game I played against Hitler, the SS, and the Nazi killing machine.
    After marching for three days, we reached Gliwice (Gleiwitz), a town some seventy kilometers from Birkenau. These three days
     have become blurred in my mind, making it difficult for me to identify the specific day on which a given event occurred. For
     example, I can no longer say with any degree of certainty whether it was toward the end of the first day or the second day
     that the SS decided that the children’s barrack was slowing down the march. But I remember very clearly that it was just beginning
     to get dark when the SS halted the march and ordered the group from the children’s barrack to the side of the road, to be
     taken “to rest in a nearby convent.” At that moment, Michael, Janek, and I were not in front with our other friends from our
     barrack. Instead, we were once again doing our rest-and-jog routine and had come to a stop near the middle of the column.
     Despite the orders of the SS for children to come forward, we decided to stay where we were. Some men around us tried to push
     us out, but we fought them off. The three of us had learned long ago not to trust the SS. “Rest in a convent” sounded too
     good to be true. I was told later that our friends from the children’s barrack had all been murdered. I do not know whether
     that is true, but I never saw any of them again.
    A group of Russian prisoners of war was marching in formation in one part of the column. I had not seen them when we were
     leaving Auschwitz and thought that they might have joined our transport at some later stop. They attracted my attention because
     it was never easy to get around them when Michael, Janek, and I moved from one end of the column to the other. We were afraid
     of the Russians because we thought they kept jostling us in order to grab our bread. We held on to it as tightly as we could
     whenever we came close to them.
    One evening the column was halted, and we were all ordered to sit down on the road. Everybody but the Russians obeyed the
     order. They remained standing and