Between Darkness And Light – Chapter 1 Page 6
photo credit: Daniel Jorge Houche
Still standing in front of the wash basin in the synagogue’s bathroom, Henry Greenberg felt a particularly strange emotion begin to stir up inside him. In matter of fact, he had not even come close to crying in over eighteen years. So when he looked up at the mirror once again, and noticed drops of water running down both sides of his face, seemingly originating from his eyes, he at first did not know what to make of it.
On his eighteenth birthday, on October 14th, 1943, after spending two hundred and forty eight days in the fiery furnace of hell they called Sobibor, he took out the knife concealed under his armpit and slit the throat of the SS officer standing in front of Lager II. All was quiet and going according to plan. He quickly glanced to his left, making sure his twin nine year old sisters were still well hidden beneath the large pine tree. He was supposed to kill an SS guard in Lager III, as quietly as possible, before they were all to make their way to the main gate for their escape. As he snuck up behind him and drew out his knife, a gunshot rang out. Something, he knew, had gone terribly wrong. The SS guard swiveled around, and Henry lunged forward, sticking the knife with tremendous force deeply into the soldier’s heart.
He ran to collect Esther and Malka, and with a sister’s hand in each of his, ran towards the main gate. Machine gun fire could now be heard, and with his little sisters not being able to keep up with him, he scooped them both up, one under each arm.
The main gate was open, but their plan had been discovered, and the SS officers and guards were spraying bullets as they rushed to shoot down the attempting escapees. Friends were being killed on all sides of Henry as he just kept running, trying somehow to maneuver in such a way as to shield his twin sisters from the gunfire. As he ran through the gate, he noticed a huge amount of blood running down his right leg.
When he reached the forest surrounding the death camp, and the gunfire now barely within earshot, he located a well hidden tree and sat down with his back up against it’s trunk. He unfurled his sisters from beneath his arms, and realized that the source of the blood he had earlier noticed was a gunshot wound in Malka’s chest. He felt for a pulse, and finding no sign of life, he closed her still open eyes and removed a handkerchief from his pocket and covered her face.
Her twin sister, Esther, was unharmed, but in a state of shock. She did not cry as she watched her older brother tend to Malka. She began to wander away as she realized Malka was dead.
After covering his dead sister’s face, Henry turned his head to locate Esther. He then heard a loud explosion.
Esther had stepped on one of the thousands of hidden bombs the Nazi’s had placed in the mine fields in the forests surrounding Sobibor. Henry did his best to locate and gather her scattered body parts in order to give her a proper burial.
You are reading Between Darkness And Light Read other pages in this story
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment