The former concentration camp and notorious death factory of G. had been converted into a camp for displaced persons.

The death factory, the giant monster that had desecrated and poisoned the land had been silenced forever, but the memory of its brutal terror persisted,

The American liberators had done what they could; they had arrested the criminals in charge, they had buried the victims in a huge, mass grave and sprinkled quicklime over it, but the marks of the bloody past could not be erased, they lingered on sickeningly alive and real. ,

Greyish twilight stole slowly through the barred windows of Barrack C5, which was reserved for convalescents not bedridden. Slowly 'the inmates woke from troubled sleep. Morris Feldstein rubbed his eyes, all atremble with the terror of a regularly returning nightmare. Once again he had dreamed that the presence was but a dream and that the hellish days of the past were the reality. His bunk-neighbor stirred, groaning in his sleep. "Wake up Chaim, it's morning." Morris Feldstein put a bony hand on his neighbor's shoulder, shaking him feebly.

Slowly Chaim Rothmann's eyelids opened. "Oh, it's you!" The ghost of a smile flitted across his thin lips.

"I had an awful dream, I dreamed. . . ." "Don't tell me," Morris Feldstein quickly cut him short.

They were of the same age, eighteen. They were friends. Their marred and stunted youth, the unspeakable crime that had been committed upon them, had drawn them together in friendship. They were young in* years but old in suffering. They were baldheaded and their skin was yellowish and creased like old parchment; the veins stood out on their hands in thick cords and when they walked their breath wheezed like an outdated engine.

The room stirred, the makeshift cots creaked, bare feet padded unsteadily towards the washroom. They shuddered away from the cold water and sparingly, almost reverently, used their sliver of soap. In the damp greyness of the washroom their scrawny necks and bluish upper arms had the puffed, dead look of killed fowl.

While they put on their rags, Sergeant MacCafferty, a kid from Brooklyn appeared and switched on the light with cruel suddenness.

"Morning, boys!" he boomed into the chilly silence with off-key cheerfulness. "How did you sleep?"

"Fine," they replied timidly. They stared at him out of their enormously big eyes. They shrank away from his pink, blustering, almost offending health. He was a giant to them, a giant from a fabulous world. "Good morning, Mr. Sergeant!"

Professor Goldberg piped all of a sudden with his broken, old man's voice. "How are you?" Prof. Goldberg was the spokesman of Barrack C5, being the only one who mastered English. Once in another world he had been a teacher of foreign languages.

They sat down to their meager breakfast consisting of hot cocoa and bread. They had been told repeatedly that the liberators did all in their power and, could not do more. But conditions were bound to improve. They listened to these promises with vacant smiles. They lived in a state of unreality, a dim, dreary world, broken only by the daily visits to the hospital and the meals. They were not well enough to follow any other routine. They drank their cocoa and talked. They spoke in low, colorless voices. "The cocoa is good today," old Professor Goldberg remarked. "My wife used to make such beautiful coffee cake, you know with three layers, poppy seed, sliced apples and nuts, a beautiful cake." Suddenly he was silent, he remembered how his wife had died. He rose abruptly, upsetting his messkit, and walked away.

"My brother wrote me from Palestine," Morris Feldstein turned to his friend, Chaim Rothmann. He pulled a creased, much read letter from his torn coat pocket and smoothed it reverently on the table. He said, "He's going to get a certificate for me, all I have to do is get well."

"They're plucking oranges now on his farm. The whole valley smells of oranges and everybody can eat as many as he can hold. And in the evening they sit around and sing, but I have to get well first, they won't let me in if I am not well. Do you think I am going to get well?" He turned imploringly to his friend. "I mean completely well, just like everybody else?"

"I guess so," the latter nodded noncommitally. "I wish my uncle in New York would get in touch with me," Chaim sighed. "I think he will, for after all I am the lone survivor of the family, only it takes such a long time. Just imagine, he lives in an apartment that's steam-heated, the whole house is heated by steam. He's not rich and yet he has everything, good food and clothes and freedom. He does what he pleases, just imagine that. Oh, I wish he'll send for me, I wish. . . ."


Early in the afternoon Sergeant MacCafferty appeared bringing great news. "Boys, happy tidings, the clothes truck has arrived! "

"The clothes," they gasped, "Thank the Lord, we sure need them." They scrambled toward the yard as fast as they were able to. They surrounded the truck, breathless with excitement. But the clothes were uniforms. Black, well fitting uniforms, made of good, durable material and smelling strongly of disinfectant. From their collars and cuffs braids and insignias had been torn off.

Suddenly a shudder of recognition, icy with horror passed over their features. SS uniforms! Discarded SS uniforms!

"No," they protested unanimously. "No, we're not going to wear these! Rather keep our rags." There was a near riot. Sergeant MacCafferty scratched his head thoughtfully and at last he went for the Lieutenant in charge. The Lieutenant came to survey the situation.

"Folks," be said raising authoritatively his hand, "I am awfully sorry about this But these are the only clothes available. For the time being and considering the bad shipping situation, I ask you to accept these clothes. In the near future, we hope, we'll be able to supply you with more suitable apparel."

Corporal Eisenberg hurriedly translated the Lieutenant's speech. The riot died down as quickly as it had started. After all, the SS uniforms were dry cleaned and warm—better than their rags. Finally they all agreed to wear the uniforms, all except but Morris Feldstein. Emphatically, almost hysterically he refused to wear the henchman's uniform. "No," he cried. "No, better in rags, better to die than walk around like a Hitler thug." They shrugged their shoulders and left him alone. An hour later all the inmates of Barrack C5 with the exception of Morris Feldstein had exchanged their rags for the SS uniforms. Strange as it seemed, the well tailored, warm uniforms lend their poor, infirm bodies a more substantial and more solid appearance. They walked straighter, held themselves more erect and talked louder. Somehow, miraculously the enemy's uniform had, bolstered their moral.

"You're a fool," Chaim Rothmann said to his friend, Morris Feldstein. He stood astride in his tight-fitting breeches and looked down at his friend who sat shivering in his rags on the cot. "You're a fool! Why, you'll freeze to death in these rags."

"Please do not talk to me," Morris Feldstein whispered between blue lips. "Leave me alone, I can't bear looking at you."

"Now, now," Chaim stammered. "What's come over you?"

"Take this uniform off, I can't stand looking at you," Morris begged with strange intensity. "Take it off, you remind me. . . . " He did not finish the sentence and abruptly turned around pulling the army blanket over his head.

Chaim stared bewildered at his friend, then sighing deeply he also laid down on his cot for a short rest.

Fear gripped Morris Feldstein. A terrible fear, primeval, overpowering, it crowded out every other emotion, it was stronger than himself—bigger than the world.

Later in the afternoon they marched or rather limped in formation to the hospital to receive their daily treatments. Unconsciously they fell into rank. They marched in the same stiff order the nazis had taught them, in the same order they would have marched to their death's had the Americans arrived a day later.

Chaim Rothmann walked beside Morris Feldstein. "What's come over you a while ago?" Chaim inquired.

Morris Feldstein raised his troubled eyes. "Take that uniform off." He croaked in a hoarse whisper. "Take it off, you remind me of the SS man, that one who drove my mother into the gas oven, take it off! " he hissed, clenching his fists.

"Shut up!" Chaim gasped. "Shut up, you fool."


The hospital was a clean white world frozen in antiseptic whiteness. Thanks to the fastness of the conquering Americans, the hospital had been captured intact. The doctor went quickly and efficiently about his business. Each patient received his treatment and a few kind words into the bargain. Morris longed to confide his mental plight to the doctor, but the doctor was so busy and he was afraid. The curtain, the terrible, black curtain that was to shut off his reason was coming down faster, and he knew ft.

At supper they all spooned eagerly the thin bean-mush, all but Morris. He could not eat. He had been looking forward so much to these meals, but now he was unable to eat. He was surrounded by SS men, he sat at the same table with them. The swastikas and crossed skulls were gleaming in the uncertain light.

"The doctor was very kind to me today," Professor Goldberg said to Isaac Gottlieb, the former dress manufacturer. "He said in a couple of weeks I'll be able to do some work, I would not need any medical care any longer. I could leave the camp if I wanted to."

"You could leave the camp if you had money and a place to go to." Isaac Gottlieb commented with dispassionate cynicism.

"Don't you think," he went on, "I too would like to leave this place where every nook and every corner reminds me of the past? I would go this very minute if I had a place to go to! Isaac Gottlieb paused and took a sip of water. "Sometimes I wonder," he began again, "Why the Jews of America don't help us."

"Maybe they are trying to help us, but they can't," Professor Goldberg remarked timidly.

"Maybe," echoed Gottlieb shaking his head. "Maybe."

"The doctor said today in three or four months I'll be all right," Chaim Rothmann turned to Morris Feldstein, forgetting his friend's recent strangeness.

"I implore you, I beg you take off that cursed uniform," Morris whispered. "Take that uniform off before I'll do something."

"Now I have enough," Chaim Rothmann cried, losing his patience. "You're crazy."

"Boys, boys!" Professor Goldberg raised an admonishing finger. "Behave yourselves."

After supper Morris timidly approached Sergeant MacCafferty. "Please Mr. Sergeant, please," he begged, "Change my cot. I can't sleep next to Chaim Rothmann, I can't, please."

"Why?" Sergeant MacCafferty inquired. "Because," Morris gulped. "Because he reminds me of that SS man who murdered my mother!"

"Nonsense," Sergeant MacCafferty snorted. "'Where do you suppose we'd get if everybody would come to us with such wacky ideas? You just forget about the whole business like a nice boy." Sergeant MacCafferty good-naturedly patted Morris' shoulder. "Go to sleep, forget about the whole thing.

"Yes, Mr Sergeant, yes." Morris nodded obediently.


Morris woke up. Night surrounded him, pressed closer upon him. The night full of vague fears, of memories of untold misery, a cruel night of wakefulness. Morris sat up in his bed. His heart beat in his throat like a frantic bird trying to escape, and then, suddenly, the curtain of darkness, the curtain against which be had pitted his poor strength came down with a thud.

In the cost next to him slept Chaim Rothmann, his fellow-sufferer. He had not taken off his uniform for the blankets were inadequate against the biting cold. But no—it was not Chaim Rothmann who was sleeping there. It was the SS man, the very same SS man who had murdered his mother.

Morris reached under his pillow and pulled out the bread knife he had stolen from the canteen. Cautiously he slipped out of bed and with drawn knife he approached his victim. Then with the terrible, inhuman strength of the insane, he plunged the knife into the flesh of his friend who was wearing the SS uniform.