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

began to sing what must have been a patriotic song. An SS guard blew a whistle, and more
     than a dozen SS guards materialized out of nowhere and moved toward the Russians. “
Alle hinlegen!
” (“All down!”) the SS officer in charge shouted. The Russians remained standing. Then the officer shouted something, and
     the SS guards opened fire. They must have killed some of the Russians, for a number of them went down. The shooting continued
     until the survivors sat down. I no longer know, if I ever did, what prompted this tragic episode. What I do remember, though,
     is that the standoff gave me an opportunity to rest and that I dozed off at some point, with the shooting and the screaming
     still ringing in my ears.
    The next morning, after we had spent what I think was the second night sleeping on the road, I noticed that more people had
     died overnight and that others were too weak to continue. At that point, what was happening around me had become routine:
     the SS would kill those who refused to continue and order some nearby marchers to push the dead into the closest ditch. Increasingly,
     I blocked these scenes from my consciousness and no longer registered what was happening around me. I seemed to be in a trance
     as I struggled to walk in order to stay alive.
    In the mornings, as soon as Michael, Janek, and I were fully awake, we would encourage each other to jump around and to rub
     our numb limbs. When I told them that I thought I could not feel my toes, Janek told me to wiggle them. I did, but that did
     not seem to help all that much. The cold was getting unbearable. We ate our remaining bread and licked a few handfuls of snow.
     That was our breakfast. Oh, what would I have given for even a few spoonfuls of that terrible Auschwitz turnip soup or, for
     that matter, anything warm!
    We reached Gliwice, a Silesian industrial center, on the last day of our march and entered what appeared to be an empty labor
     camp. I began to fantasize that heated barracks, beds with blankets, and even warm food awaited us. But I was almost immediately
     torn out of this dreamworld when we came to a stop at the edge of a run-down sports field. A group of SS officers stood in
     the middle of the field, which was ringed by a large number of heavily armed SS guards and their dogs. It did not take me
     long to realize that another selection awaited us: those among us who could jog to the other side of the field would live;
     the rest would be eliminated. By this time, I could barely walk. Michael and Janek were not doing all that much better. We
     were exhausted, hungry, and cold, but we wanted to live, and we were not going to give up now after all we had been through
     on the march. As we looked out over the field, we could see people trying to make it across; some appeared to collapse along
     the way or simply just sat down. Every so often the guards would run over and drag these unfortunate people to the side of
     the field. When our turn came, we held hands to support each other and ran as fast as we could, which was not very fast. Dirty,
     with clothes torn, we must have looked like beggar children emerging from a dark cellar. We could hear the SS officers laugh
     hilariously as the three of us passed. These hated voices invigorated us and gave us the strength we did not have just minutes
     before, and we made it across.
    We must have stayed in Gliwice for a number of days. Here we were able to rest and recover some of our strength. The food
     was no better than what we were given in Auschwitz, but at least we got some warm soup, and the bread portions seemed somewhat
     larger. Just as I was beginning to believe that we would remain in Gliwice, we were ordered to march out of the camp and proceed
     to a nearby railroad station. Here open rail cars, like those used for transporting coal or sand, awaited us. We were herded
     into these cars with so many other prisoners that there was hardly any room to move. Michael, Janek, and