As I dwelled in envy while watching him eat, it didn’t take long for the inmate’s stomach to betray him. I could tell by the way his gait became more labored, how his arms wrapped around his midsection, how he stopped searching for food. My envy transformed into sympathy, and I willed him to keep going, to resist the pains assaulting his insides, but the situation was beyond his control. After a few agonizing minutes, the häftling crouched in the road, unable to keep going, while others moved around him until the final column passed, leaving him exposed to the guards. A bullet ended him before sickness had a chance.

Keep walking. Live. Fight. Survive.

Despite the severe cold, we maintained a vigorous pace all day. I clustered around my fellow prisoners for warmth and stayed toward the edge of the group so I could be near Irena. When the woman beside me fell and told me to leave her behind, I pulled her to her feet and draped her arm across my shoulders before the guards saw us lagging. Together, we pressed on.

I supported the woman until she gingerly released me. We walked in silence for the next few minutes. Then she ran.

One of the SS men drew his pistol and aimed at her. The woman broke into the woods, where she tripped and collapsed with an agonized scream. Her face contorted in pain, and I caught sight of a glistening bone protruding from her leg while her desperate shrieks carried across the open road.

“Shoot me, please shoot me!”

The man aiming at her lowered his gun. None of the other guards drew theirs. The woman’s pleas drowned in the sound of footsteps.

Keep walking. Live. Fight. Survive.

Outside Miedźna, we stopped for the evening. Covered in snow and ice, skin chapped and raw and bleeding, delirious, little more than walking corpses, we stumbled into a large barn, our shelter for the night. As I fell onto a makeshift straw bed, the throbbing pains that assaulted my body were unbearable, but exhaustion took over, pulling me into its murky depths.

I’d hardly closed my eyes before someone ordered me awake again. The only thing on my mind was hunger. The ache was familiar, but there was no getting accustomed to it, and it overpowered everything, even the debilitating cold and my exhausted, blistered feet. I didn’t want to move, I wanted to stay on the filthy, itchy straw and let starvation or cold or a bullet bring this dreadful existence to an end. But I got up and filed out of the barn.

Irena stood outside the barn door, watching as we exited. When I passed her, she grabbed my arm to hurry me along. As she did so, her free hand brushed mine, so briefly no one noticed. I closed my fingers around the morsel of bread she’d slipped into my palm.