Toby Gotesman Schneier

Dreaming of the Cake

The young boy crouched just behind the notorious chimneys. The air was foul and thick from the  bodies burning inside. He had become, tragically, accustomed to the stench, not knowing for certain what was happening in the chambers. He knew deep in his tired, little bones that something very bad was going on there. He heard the awful moaning and begging from inside every day. There were those particularly nightmarish days when the lines of desperately numb people were wrapped all the way around the menacingly ominous edifices, each somehow knowing that this was, indeed, the end. Somewhere in the back of his very young mind, he was brought back to the Shabbats of seemingly very long ago, when his family would go to the synagogue all together. The lines would be long at certain times, on special Shabbats. As he daydreamt from his very hidden position, he saw these very same people right here and now, dressed in their Shabbat finery. The women stood proudly in their pretty, colorful dresses, the men were larger than life in their special, black hats. The children were laughing and playing in the scene.