Stunned by the blows, the old man was crying: ‘Meir, my little Meir! Don't you recognize me…You're killing your father… I have bread…for you too… for you too…’ He collapsed. His eyes lit up, a smile, like a grimace, illuminated his ashen face. With lightning speed he pulled it out and put it to his mouth. Then I understood: he was hiding a piece of bread under his shirt. At first I thought he had received a blow to his chest. He had just detached himself from the struggling mob. “I saw, not far from me, an old man dragging himself on all fours.Men were hurling themselves against each other, trampling, tearing at and mauling each other.” (pg. “In the wagon where the bread had landed, a battle had ensued.The worker watched the spectacle with great interest.” (pg. Dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs. “One day when we had come to a stop, a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wagon.“In the early dawn light, I tried to distinguish between the living and those who were no more.We were stronger than cold and hunger, stronger than the guns and the desire to die, doomed and rootless, nothing but numbers.” (pg. We had transcended everything-death, fatigue, our natural needs. “We were the masters of nature, the masters of the world.To break rank, to let myself slide to the side of the road…” (pg. To no longer feel anything, neither fatigue nor cold, nothing. To no longer feel the excruciating pain of my foot. “The idea of dying, ceasing to be, began to fascinate me.“I couldn't help thinking that there were two of us: my body and I.“Those whose numbers had been noted were standing apart, abandoned by the whole world.This must be how one stands for the Last Judgement.” (pg.
Hundreds of eyes were watching his every move. “A man appeared, crawling snakelike in the direction of the cauldrons.Two lambs without a shepherd, free for the taking. Two lambs with hundreds of wolves lying in wait for them. “Two cauldrons of soup! Smack in the middle of the road, two cauldrons of soup with no one to guard them! A royal feast going to waste! Supreme temptation! Hundreds of eyes were looking at them, shining with desire.“I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip… Only the first really hurt.” (pg.He moved one hundred prisoners so that he could copulate with this girl! It struck me as terribly funny and I burst out laughing.” (pg. “Now I understood why Idek refused to leave us in the camp.Tired of huddling on the ground, in hope of finding something, a piece of bread, perhaps, that a civilian might have forgotten there.” (pg. Why couldn't he have avoided Idek’s wrath? That was what life in a concentration camp had made of me…” (pg. What’s more, if I felt anger at that moment, it was not directed at the Kapo but at my father. In fact, I thought of stealing away in order not to suffer the blows. “I had watched it all happening without moving.The stomach alone was measuring time.” (pg. The bread, the soup- those were my entire life. “At that moment in time, all that mattered to me was my daily bowl of soup, my crust of stale bread.Had the situation not been so tragic, we might have laughed. “In a few seconds, we had ceased to be men.“The Kapos were beating us again, I no longer felt the pain.” (pg.Our senses numbed, everything was fading into a fog. “For us it meant true equality: nakedness.When they actually struck her, people shouted their approval.” (pg. “Once again, the young men bound and gagged her.
“There no longer was any distinction between rich and poor, notables and the others we were all people condemned to the same fate-still unknown.” (pg.