Lost and Found (ONC2024)✅

Chapter 16

Percy

Time meant nothing. For all I knew, I'd been here for six months or it could have been six weeks or days. It didn't matter. I was only alive because I was a six foot tall, hundred and eighty pound man who didn't look like he was about to crumble and die any second. If the prisoners had more energy, they'd probably try to kill me because I was so healthy and spoke German. I'd picked up a few Polish words, but that was it.

Fear wasn't the right word to describe my initial reaction as I stepped off the platform. The train ride was bad enough, but the sight before me, along with an unmistakable smell of burning flesh, were things I'd never possibly forget. Surreal wasn't the right word, either. There was nothing dreamlike about this place. I felt like I'd entered the depths of hell where all sense of humanity had disintegrated. Humanity no longer existed, just like God. Any ounce of belief I had vanished in a second.

Yet, I'd had this feeling before as if I was having an outer body experience where I, Alonzo "Percy" Richler was ordered to the right while mostly everybody else who got off that cattle car stepped to the left. There was no time for goodbye. My great aunts were gone, on their way to the gas chamber. But they didn't know that. For all they knew, they were going to the showers like the few on the right.

Only those chosen for work received a number, a tattoo etched in our skin as we all lost our sense of being. We were no longer human.

Jude Prak existed in another world, in another life or lifetime. A million years ago—or so it seemed—I watched Jude disappear the minute the SS invaded the basement, shouting and ordering everybody out.

Since then, I'd fallen asleep, but everyday I woke up in this hell. No matter how exhausted I was, I only slept a few hours a night, if I slept at all.

I was never one to do any sort of manual labor. It's a miracle I survived more than one day.

And I experienced an exhaustion I'd never experienced in my entire life. I was never an athlete, I never mowed the lawn or shoveled the driveway. If my parents were lucky, I shoveled the front steps.

I kept my head down, followed orders, and prayed I wouldn't get shot or chose to be a selected one. We all knew what that meant.

At night, as I shared a bunk with three other men in this foul-smelling, overcrowded barracks, I imagined eating my favorite meal, a Thanksgiving dinner. If I ever made it home, I'd ask my mother to make a Thanksgiving dinner, even though it was March.

As a grown man, as I lay there, I wanted my mother. I wanted to hug my parents and sisters again. I missed everyone. I'd never take anyone or anything for granted again.

I wasn't raised with any religious affiliation, but we celebrated Christmas. I had no idea there was Jewish blood in the family. My dad was a great storyteller and I was sure he would have shared his father's tory if he knew it. I planned on finding out more if I ever made it home.

If...

I felt like an actor in a Holocaust documentary, but this wasn't a documentary. If I made my way back home, I'd have to thank my German teacher for being such a hard ass. I understood the German commands, better than my comrades. I witnessed human brutality at its very worst.

But, day after day, as my stomach growled more and more, hunger over took me. Growing up in an upper middle class family, I never experienced any kind of hardship, especially hunger. As tempted as I was, I fought off the urge to attack other human beings for a slice of moldy bread.

But, a few more days, I was t so sure I'd be able to fight it off, risking certain death.

This morning, I woke beside a dead man, but I didn't tell anyone he was dead, just so I could get his food ration for the day. Other men probably needed it more than I did, but humans had an instinct to survive.