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.

There were no children laughing here in the camp. In fact, he realized in that moment, that there were hardly any children at all. But he did not wonder where they had gone. He had witnessed such atrocities and tragedies consistently for close to a year now. He had seen children falling, bleeding from gunshots to the head. In those horrific times, he often wondered why HE, himself, was not dying as they were. The child was already experiencing deeply the beginnings of a lifetime of "survivor guilt".

Somehow, by the grace of God,(if God actually visited THIS particular place , Auschwitz-Birkenau), the boy had ALWAYS found a way to hide from the Nazi soldiers. He had spent close to a year running and hiding and digging within the camp, and they just simply did not see him. It defied logic actually.

He was, after all, right there in front of their cruel and evil faces.

But they NEVER saw him.

Never.

He had developed a kind of routine to attach himself to in the scariest moments. He would close his eyes and imagine that he was sitting at the kitchen table in his house with Mama puttering around and preparing his favorite thing in the world-a slice of her delicious, chocolate cake. It was fluffy and rich and gooey. Oh, how he had loved those moments with Mama and the cake. His little heart broke just a bit more every time he thought of her in her yellow apron. His beautiful Mama with her fiery, red hair and her soft, gentle voice. . Where was she now? There was no Mama or her yummy cake in this dirty, lonely place.

There was just fear and death and old, hard pieces of something resembling bread. His bread came from the ground where the crumbs sometimes landed, as he always remained low to the ground, so as not to be seen.

He was starving and cold and SO SO sad. But every time he thought of the chocolate cake and the cozy kitchen, unbeknownst to him, he actually disappeared into thin air. Some kind of miracle happened to him whenever there was danger nearby. It always happened the same way. He would see some version of huge, white "wings "just in front of him. And then everything would turn to into a foggy mist. The mist felt slightly cold against his scratched and dirty skin. Cold and GOOD somehow. In the mist, the sounds of the camp became very distant, as though he was hearing them from very far away.

This boy/this man, would be reminded of that feeling of the mist and the fluttering of the huge wings every day for the rest of his life.

The Liberation of Auschwitz happened just a few days after this particular scene.

The War was over.

The boy had survived.

The boy was my father