The Night of Broken Glass

Continued from page 1

And my father told me he was sent

into an immense room with high ceilings.

He was told to sit with his legs wide open,

the next man told to sit inside his legs.

And the next, and the next.

He sat until the SS finished counting

how many would fit in the room.

It was eight thousand.

I.

I'd shine their shoes at night and put them under their beds

so they'd pick me, my father says.

I was in barracks 18, section 1, almost 2,000 men in each section, racks

of bunks. When the bunks were full, straw mattresses on the floor. If

the kapos picked me to sweep, wash and polish the floors, I wouldn't

have to stand out in the cold.

Each morning, at 4 o'clock, we were marched outside.

We sang songs for hours in the cold, the songs were taped, played

on the radio to show how happy, how well taken care of, we were

An SS officer would come into the bunk, check my work,

and I stood at attention, took off my hat, did not speak

unless spoken to. Sometimes he

told me to continue and left.

II.

I'd volunteer to be a kosttrager, a food carrier.

While the others waited in the roll call line, three of us carried

two cast iron buckets, enough to hold vegetable soup for 1,000 men.

Two would hold the handles on the outside. I was in the middle,

holding the handles on the insides. A kapo marched us

one-half mile from the kitchen to the space between the barracks

where ammunition bread, kommissbrot, was piled up

like bricks on the tables where we ate.

The kapos said, "Kirchheimer is the best kosttrager we have."

Some men wouldn't eat the soup. They said it wasn't kosher,

but I ate it.

I knew they wouldn't put any meat in it.

a man went crazy in the barracks.

We told him to stop, my father said, told him

the SS would take him, tried to stop his screaming, his flailing arms.

The kapos heard him, came and tried to restrain him.

They took him into the latrine, put his head under water.

They couldn't stop his screaming, his flailing arms.

They called from kapo to kapo, from barracks to barracks,

until it reached SS headquarters. The SS came, took him outside.

We heard the hoses turned on him, then a shot. Then we went to sleep.

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