Chapter 3

Kiku and Mrs. King had finally solved the problem with the video and succeeded to start the movie. It was a documentary about their destination, Auschwitz. Gilbert put on a pair of headphones that he had brought with him. Then he sat with his feet on the seat beside him where no one wanted to sit.

When the movie started showing actual pictures of the trains that came to the concentration camp, and the people who stepped out of them and so on, Elizabeta finally began to relax from the anger she had felt for Gilbert, but only for a little while. Suddenly she noticed that Roderich who sat next to her had begun to shake uncontrollably. She leaned closer to him so that no one would discover it.

"Are you allright?" When Elizabeta didn't get any response, she put her arms around Roderich and hugged him. It took several minutes but after a while he stopped quivering. Elizabeta looked inside her backpack were she found her own headphones, then she lent them to Roderich. "Close your eyes and pretend to sleep so you don't have to see or hear the movie." She whispered, and Roderich gratefully accepted the offer, but he didn't start to listen at once.

There was one thing that Roderich had never told anyone, not even for those he knew had rescued him from the Bergen-Belsen camp. The first few months after he was taken prisoner, he had spent in Auschwitz. He had been put to work immediately after he left the train and gone through all these countless queues that determined one's fate more or less, his fate had gotten him a job in the gas chambers, to remove the corpses after the gassing.

The very first day he had stopped counting the times when he had seen the condemned in the window into the gas chambers, how they desperately tried to get out, their facial expressions that he still dreamed about. He had also lost the stretching of how many he dragged to the crematoria, only the first day. He had almost forgotten who he was.

The only reason that Roderich hadn't skipped this school excursion was the impact it would have, 10,000 words, which would take several days to write. Then it was better to come along to the camp, it would only take one day and then it would be over. That was at least what Roderich had thought when he decided to do it, now he was not so sure anymore, not after Gilbert's whim to buy a denial book. But now it was anyway too late for him to change his mind, he would not be able to return home without the teacher realizing that he was no ordinary human student.

Another thing that was almost too much for Roderich was the film that the teacher had brought. It was a documentary from the time, pictures he had already seen, in reality, but that he could not tell anyone. The fact was that he could not even tell the few people who would actually believe him, that is, the other countries, it was simply too painful, still. He was the only Holocaust victim who would not grow old and die, get away from the hell that it meant to remember.

But even though it was very difficult to see Roderich could not take his eyes off the movie. It was almost as if someone held a gun to his head and forced him to watch.

***

Elizabeta watched the film too, but with only one eye. The other eye kept looking at her friend. Roderich was probably not aware of it but he was staring as hypnotized at that movie, and he trembled as if he were naked in minus degree water.

Elizabeta wondered if Roderich had seen this movie before, she had seen it for a school project she had done with Luke Bondevik, Eduard von Bock and Ivan Braginski. She knew it was only a few seconds left until they would see something that she didn't know if Roderich would be able to see, he had, after all, spent some time in a concentration camp. She had taken care of him afterwards, until he no longer looked like a skeleton. And he had told her a lot of atrocities that Elizabeta realized that he really would rather forget.

To be prepared for the worst Elizabeta took up her bag in her lap and opened it, she had just got out her other mp3 player as Roderich had put the one that she had lent him away. When the pictures from inside the gas chambers began to roll by on the small TV screen Elizabeta carefully turned to see how Roderich managed it. She would only use the mp3 player solution if it turned out to be the last resort.

When the images inside the gas chambers began to appear in the documentary and narration explained what they saw, Roderich began to tremble if possible, even more than before and not only that, Elizabeta thought he heard quiet moans from him.

She did not have much consideration, she started the mp3 player, raised the sound on it and pushed the headphones over Roderichs ears and stopped by giving him a big hug, which forced him to turn his face away from the film.

It worked, Roderich stopped shivering after a while, or at least he trembled much less. When the movie was over, Elizabeta first thought that Roderich had fallen asleep, his trembeling had stopped a long time ago and he seemed quite calm except that his face was full of tears that he hadn't managed to wipe away.

It was when Elizabeta tried to get up to sit completely on her own side as she realized that Roderich was still awake. He grabbed her arm to keep her in that comforting hug, then he took off his headphones and wiped her tears and began to whisper quiet.

"There is one thing I haven't told you about you know what" Elizabeta hugged him a little more to get close enough to listen to him.

"You mean this?"

"Yes ... As you know, Canada and Britain rescued me at Bergen-Belsen" Roderich swallowed before he continued, "before I got there, I spent a few months in Auschwitz and I was part of the Sonderkommando. My work was to carry out the dead bodies from the gas chambers and ... drag them to the crematoria " At this Roderich began to sob again so Elizabeta started to pat him on his back to calm him down so that he could continue if he wanted to. She had time to listen to him. "Every day, we had to see how the people inside of the ovens tried to escape when they realized what was going to happen, and once ... it was a young boy, even younger than I seem to be ... it was his first day at crematory, and he happened to vomit on a SS officer "Roderich wasn't able to finish that part, right there, he began to cry again, and this time he couldn't stop.