Hours? Minutes? Days? Weeks? Perhaps for all eternity it has been this way; the sway of the cattle cart; the decay of the dead; flies licking the fluids from our bodies. Now change. This is different. There is a new smell in the air as our feet grow accustomed to the new sensation of walking. An SS man holds his gun by the side of our new path. He is not the only one. Underneath the mournful sky of smoke and change are two lines of uncaring, black souls. Snickers of glee run down the lines of guns as they seek the living. To the sides of me are bodies, underneath me are bodies. I feel a burning hatred rise for the SS. Will I die too? Panic and disgust.

Tzipora clutches mother and they turn away. Panic, I grab at my father’s familiar figure. Panic and desperation. We must not get separated. I have nothing now except for father. No hope, no joy, no identity in this giant mass of humanity. I am a lonely figure in the land of desolation as the wind chills my joyless soul. Panic. Do not get separated. I hold tighter to my icon of familiarity, my one figure of safety, comfort and peace.

Furnaces glow with inner fire and I notice the sparse trees. Fuel, they need fuel, I think and shiver at the solution. To the sides of me are bodies, underneath me are bodies, above, in the smoke of crime, are bodies. Panic, I don’t want to die! The furnaces mock me as they continue to belch up their gruesome meals. My numb feet now carry my unwilling body forward.

I don’t want to! I scream silently, but my feet won’t listen. Mother, Tzipora, I groan. Are they now being eaten, consumed in the bellies of the greedy furnaces? Panic and nausea. I press closer to Father for comfort. We must not get separated.

Are we going to burn too? Will we smell our own flesh wither, and feel it dry and crack. What will death feel like? Will we float on the breeze also, descending gradually to cover the earth with death? Panic. Should we fight? Tommy guns leer at us from all sides as the older of us beg the younger ones not to. Shall we just go as a lamb to the slaughter then? Docile, meek, submissive? Yes. Panic and a sense of impending doom. Do not get separated from father. My first day at Auschwitz, my last day of hope for a bitter year.