The Extra Read Online Free PDF

own. He can do it.”
    Django just shook his head wearily. “Tonight at midnight, go around to the back of the barracks. You know where the rabbit hutches are?”
    “Yes.”
    “They are using that drive to load up the transports. Be there at midnight. You might see him.”
    “All right.” She opened her mouth to say something more.
    “Don’t thank me,” he said.
    A few minutes before midnight, Lilo and her mother made their way from their barracks as if they were going to the latrines. Behind the latrines, they cut toward the rabbit hutches. There were twenty or more of the small structures that perched on short stilts so the rabbit droppings could fall out to the ground and easily be swept up. She heard small grinding noises.
    “What’s that?” she whispered to her mother.
    Her mother tapped her teeth. “They grind them.”
    But there were also other sounds — soft cooings and then the occasional thumps.
What do they talk about?
Lilo wondered. Would it be preferable to be a rabbit, numb to any danger, any threat? Yes, they wound up in Nazi stews, but they never knew anything different until the moment their throats were slashed. They had probably been raised in captivity, had no memory of scampering through a meadow, all blowy with the scents of spring. If there was no memory, there could be no fear.
    “Look!” her mother said.
    Lilo’s thoughts about rabbits were quickly replaced by the scene at the fence. Half a dozen women were huddled against the barbed wire — not just huddled, but embracing it. Lilo and Bluma joined them. They saw two parked transport buses. Then there were the sharp cries of the
Lageralteste,
the senior prisoner, and his chief
Kapo.
“Line up — ranks of five.” It was the same formation as for roll call. Then the
Kapo,
one of the inmates who aided the Nazi commanders in exchange for certain privileges, began calling out numbers. And the men answered. There were perhaps sixty men in all, and when they were one-third of the way through the rolls, in the midst of the scores of prisoners answering
“Hier,”
they both heard one that made their hearts leap. “Look right there!” cried Lilo. It was Fernand Friwald. Like a shadow, he stood at the near edge of one of the lines. But the shadow had turned toward where they stood and shouted,
“Hier!”
The shadow had spoken, exclaiming that he was here to his wife and daughter.
    “It’s him!” Bluma whispered hoarsely.
    Then the ranks of men began boarding the two buses and the shadow that was Fernand Friwald was swallowed into the dark hulk. The engines started. The gleaming swastikas emblazoned on the sides flashed in the moonlight.
    Many of the women began to cry, but not Bluma Friwald. Her face was carved into a grim expression. As she clutched Lilo’s hand, they made their way back to the barracks through the mewling, thumping, softly gnashing rabbits in their hutches.
    Lilo looked up. It was a starry night. She saw a recognizable autumn constellation. Orion. It had been in Piber, far from the city lights, where she had first seen this constellation. Her father had taught her how to recognize so many. The swan and the dolphin and the little horse, which seemed like a guardian constellation special for Piber. And now on this night there was Orion, the blind huntsman, who stumbled across the night sky. But the stars smeared in the night as she began to weep. There was certainly no God in Buchenwald, and if there was one in heaven, she thought he was as blind as the huntsman.
    The next morning, their work detail was changed. Both Lilo and her mother were to report to the garden to dig for the winter root vegetables. This was supposedly a good detail. One could sneak carrots and potatoes and eat them raw. They had not been digging long when someone dropped onto the ground on her knees between them.
    Lilo turned, expecting another inmate, but it was Good Matron.
    “Listen to me. Don’t say a word.” She turned to Bluma. “A