AuschwitzPage 1234 BirkenauPage 123 Other Plaszów
Kraków
Gestapo HQ, Auschwitz
<< BackNext >>

"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