I Have Lived a Thousand Years by Livia Bitton-Jackson Page A

disheveled, and stand in a scraggly formation like doomed souls. The only human emotion visibly animating them is fear.
    From time to time I watch them as I work from our site on the mountain. I see them being marched to a barrack off the square. What will they do to them?
    Then about ten people are marched out into the square, and lined up against the center wall opposite the flagpole.
    One SS man does the shooting. Like target practice, he fells the civilians, one by one.
    The next row of ten is shot by another SS soldier. Against the same wall the next ten are lined up. In order to reach the wall they are obliged to step over the bodies of the first ten victims. I see a young woman, also in a gray trench coat, fall on the body of a man she is about to step over, and remain lying draped over the body until a German soldier hauls herto her feet and thrusts her against the wall. He shoots her along with the others.
    Row after row, the firing squad concludes its task and marches off. The bloodied bodies remain scattered about the square. Suddenly, one body, a man, begins to crawl in the direction of the departing Germans. One of the German soldiers notices it, and turns. At that moment, the condemned victim hurls himself on the soldier and tackles him to the ground. The other soldiers rush to their comrade’s aid and free him from the grip of his profusely bleeding attacker. The wounded civilian is finally felled by bullets discharged from three German guns simultaneously.
    The indifference of my fellow inmates is shattered for the rest of the afternoon. At the risk of grave punishment, we keep glancing down at the prone bodies in the central square of the camp below us.
    This was my first direct encounter with death. Or was it? What we had just witnessed, and its aftermath—dead bodies strewn in the dust, gray, indifferent, colored by pools of blood—was this death? Or was it something else, something much more inexplicable?
    Toward the evening, as we approach the camp, my throat tightens. I am apprehensive about having to pass the blood-soaked bodies on our way to Zählappell. Will there be a smell? I have heard that corpses decompose fast in the heat. These corpses have lain in the sun all day.
    To my great relief, by the time we reach the camp the corpses have been cleared away. The square is empty except for the large pools of blood. After Zählappell we are ordered to carry pails of water from the well beyond the last barrack and wash and sweep away the blood.
    Touching the blood with my broom creates a curious bond with the fallen victims. Grief, compassion, and fear—successfully repressed on the mountain—now well up in an overwhelming tide. I can barely control my nausea.
    Who were they, these men and women in elegant trench coats with dignity intact? Who were they and what had they done to be crushed so ruthlessly, so cruelly? What did their last defiant gesture mean?
    Oh, how I hurt for them. How I hurt for these alien heroes. For the futility of their heroism. How I hurt for the futility of it all.
    What is death all about? What is life all about?

T HE U PRISING
    PLASZOW, JULY 1944
    In mid-July a diarrhea epidemic sweeps the whole camp. In a few days it reduces us to raglike dolls barely able to walk. I am dizzy, and Mommy keeps encouraging me to breathe deeply and walk erect. I have violent abdominal cramps. The pain is unbearable. The routine continues, however. Zählappell, march to work, twelve-hour workday. On the verge of collapse, we carry on.
    Until one day. It is a cold, rainy day, and by early afternoon we are drenched to the bone, digging the heavy, soggy ground with heavy, wet shovels. A sudden downpour sends us scampering for cover under nearby barracks on stilts. While we huddle under the dripping planks, a team of SS officers headed by Camp Commandant Goetz arrive to survey our work. Their indignation fills the air with shrill tones and the barking of dogs. The Kapo’s henchmen wield whips