It had stopped snowing. The wind had died away. The cold wasn’t so biting. A small unseen sun brought a faint warmth. Perhaps only one degree, but to me it felt like a breath of life. I got to my feet. I ached all over. I stretched and continued to wander around the camp. I wanted to go back to the station, all things considered it is the most important place in the camp, the most cruel, the place where everything is decided. It was here that the men, the women, the terrified children, the babies sleeping in their own filth arrived at the end of the line. They are still dressed as they were in the city, they carry a suitcase, a bag, a briefcase, a toy, the women carry their babies, hug them to their breasts, fingertips gently stroking their cheeks, sheltering them from the cold, from the sun, they have their papers on them, their watches, their jewellery, money in their pockets. And that yellow star on the lapels of their jackets, true, the Judenstern, a badge of shame, but it signifies only that they are Jews; it is possible to dislike them, it doesn’t matter, no one can be expected to like everyone. Others are shamefaced, the gypsies, the dark-skinned people, the sick, with their strange pallor and their frail voices, the old men and women pitiful to see so far from the life they once led, and what of the children who can neither grow up nor pretend to be grown-ups nor understand what is going on around them, what is being done to their parents. But this station is not like any stations in the world. And this star is not like any star in the heavens. It is here, on the Judenrampe, on this wasteland around the station that the selection took place, that they were separated, registered, tattooed, where they dressed in camp clothes, lined up and here they waited for someone, some deus ex machina beset by terrible fears, some Bonzen, to give the order. They wait for hours and every minute is endless. For the old, the sick, the children, this is where it ends. They will see no other day. They do not know it, some of them suspect, but something that has not yet happened, something you have not seen with your own eyes is simply a speculation, life is still possible: the doors to the gas chambers are already open and the Sonderkommandos are waiting for them, standing to attention, by their wheelbarrows, the stench of rotting flesh and the stony silence helping them to forget what they have come to. In a few hours, they will be smoke rising into God’s heaven, the deaf, blind, cruel God to whom they have been praying all their lives. How is it possible to believe in such a God? A cat, a rat, a cold-blooded snake affords humanity more warmth. It is a life rubbing up against another life. For the able-bodied men and women, this is where it begins. In this place they are forever stripped of their autonomy, their dignity, their memories, their humanity. Everything. It is at this moment that they truly become Abgewandert. Death is a formality that will come later, when they have earned it through good, honest work.