"The three victims mounted
together onto the chairs.
The three necks were placed at the same moment within the
nooses.
"Long live liberty!" cried the two adults. But
the child was silent.
"Where is God? Where is He?" someone behind me
asked.
At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped
over...
Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer
alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the
third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was
still alive.
For more than half an hour he
stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying
in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full
in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front
of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet
glazed.
Behind me, I heard the same man
asking:
"Where is God now?"
And I heard a voice within me answer him:
"Where is He? Here He is--He is hanging here on this
gallows..."
That night the soup tasted of corpses."
Ellie Wiesel