Prisoner B-1941

The Roll Call

We carry on walking until we see a sign which states, ‘Work makes you free’. It must mean that if I work hard enough maybe me and my sisters can go! Anne and Rebekka look at me to see what I think of it; I smile and grab their hands. We walk through the gate with pride, but I can see that Anne is finding it tough. I look down at her wooden shoes; they’re massive on her! I quickly try and to swap our shoes over but out of the corner of my eye, I see a soldier coming towards us.

I turn around to see the same soldier who I saw earlier. Getting ready to be beaten, I hide my face with my hands.

Nothing happens.

I slowly look up to find him staring at me with a twinkle in his eye. Then he slips a note into my hand and then pretends to scold me. Without delay, I catch up with my sisters, we are then told to meet up with the other prisoners, then to just turn round and go back the camp.

Everyone is told to get into lines of ten in which they do a ‘roll call’. For a few hours nothing happens and we aren’t allowed to move a muscle. Then the person next to me suddenly stumbles,

“Prisoner B-7940, get out of the line!”

Hastily, she creeps past everyone and is told to go with one of the soldiers with a group of other people who stumbled or flinched. My only guess is that they get beaten. They’ll be back later. Won’t they?

We stand like that for hours on end until we are finally told to go to certain barracks. Luckily they put me with Anne, Rebekka and a lot of people I knew back in our village in Frankfurt. I turn around to see a pile of corpses being carried in a wheelbarrow somewhere. The realisation of what is happening here in what people are calling Auschwitz is overwhelming. How could they do this to innocent people?