“You will be my wife tonight” — The terrifying fate of the young men chosen by the block leaders.
In the hell of the camps, there was hunger, cold, and beatings. But there was an even darker circle, a circle that no one talked about after the war: the circle of the privileged despite themselves. We called them the Puppenjungs, doll boys. Young men chosen not for their strength or work, but for their very hunger. Chosen by almighty Kapos to become night wives, to eat their fill in exchange for their bodies. It’s the cruelest dilemma a man can face: feed the beast to not become a corpse. The story of Lucas is that of a pact with the devil. A story where the sweetness of a hand placed on a shoulder is more terrifying than a gunshot.
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The wolf’s gaze. My name is Lucas. I am 97 years old. I’ve never had a wife. I never had children. I live alone with my cats. People think that I am a shy old boy. They don’t know that I was married in 1944. But my husband was not a woman; he was a monster, and my wedding dress was striped pajamas that were too big.
I was 17 years old when I arrived at Buchenwald. I was a kid from Paris, a baker’s son. I had blonde curls, huge blue eyes, and skin burnt by the sun. I was, as my mother said, pretty as a picture. In Buchenwald, being pretty was not a chance; it was a curse. The first few weeks were classic. The hunger that twists the insides, the work in the quarry, constant fear. I melted visibly. My ribs were piercing my skin. I became a Muselmann, a Muslim, as those who are at the end of their tether, ready to die, were called.
That’s when Bruno saw me. Bruno was the Blockälteste, dean of block 24. He wore a green triangle, a German common law criminal, a killer released from prison to reign over the camp. He was huge. He ate his fill, he had muscles, rosy cheeks, and he wore his boots polished like a king wears his crown. He had the right of life and death over us all.
One evening, after roll call, as we came home freezing to the block, Bruno stopped in front of me. I was shaking. I thought that I had made my bed wrong or that I had marched crookedly. I was expecting a blow with a stick, but Bruno did not lift his stick. He raised his hand. He touched my dirty cheek with his leather-gloved finger.
“Are you cold, Kleiner?” he asked in a low, almost gentle voice.
I didn’t answer. Answering could be fatal. I looked down, staring at his shiny boots. He laughed softly.
“You’re too skinny. It’s a waste. A face like that shouldn’t end up in an oven.”
He put his hand in the pocket of his jacket. He took out something. It wasn’t gold. It was much more valuable: a piece of sausage. A real piece of greasy, odorous meat. The smell hit my nose like a gunshot. My mouth filled with saliva instantly. My stomach screamed. Bruno held out the piece towards me.
“Take it.”
I hesitated. In the camp, nothing is free. If a Kapo gives you something to eat, he wants something. Maybe he wants you to denounce a comrade. Maybe he wants to trap you. But hunger is stronger than reason. Hunger is an animal that doesn’t think. I held out my skeletal hand. I took the sausage. I shoved it in my mouth in one second without chewing, swallowing everything whole lest he change his mind. Bruno watched me eat with a satisfied smile. A man’s smile who has just bought a pet.
“Is it okay?” he asked. I nodded, unable to speak.
“I have others,” he said. “I have soup, real soup with potatoes and bacon, not hot water.” He leaned towards my ear. I smelled his tobacco smell and cheap after-shave. The smell of a clean man in the middle of the stench of death. “Come to my room this evening after curfew. The room of the Kapo at the bottom of the block.” He marked a pause. “Don’t be late. I don’t like to wait when I’m hungry.”
He straightened up, gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder—a pat that made me shudder in horror—and set off towards his quarters. I stood there, the taste of fat on my tongue and a new coldness in my heart. I knew what that meant. Everyone knew. Bruno was looking for a new Puppenjung, a new doll. His last favorite had died of typhus the previous week. The place was free.
I looked around me. The other prisoners stared at me. There was no compassion in their eyes. There was jealousy and contempt. Look at him, their eyes said, the little whore of the Kapo. I had a choice: don’t go, stay on my pallet, die of hunger in two weeks or be beaten to death tomorrow for insubordination; or go, eat, live, and lose my soul. I was 17 years old. I wanted to live.
So when silence fell on the block, I got up. I crossed the barracks in the dark. Around me, hundreds of men were sleeping, snoring, moaning, or dying. The air was icy, damp, full of the smell of dysentery. But at the end of the corridor, there was a varnished wooden door. A door that seemed to lead to another dimension. I knocked three shy knocks.
“Herein!”
I entered and pushed the door. The shock was physical. A heat wave hit me in the face. Real warmth, dry, enveloping. There was a melting stove that snored in a glowing corner. And the light—it was not the bare and pale bulb of the dormitory. It was a lampshade placed on a table broadcasting an almost intimate yellow light.
Bruno was there. He no longer had his uniform jacket. He was in his shirtsleeves, suspenders hanging on his thighs, sitting on a real wooden chair. In front of him, on the table, there was a bowl. Not the rusty bowl of prisoners, but a deep porcelain plate. And inside, it was smoking, thick soup. I saw pieces of potatoes, carrots, and pink lard cubes.
I remained frozen on the threshold, dazzled, hypnotized by the plate. I didn’t even see Bruno anymore. I only saw the calories, the life.
“Close the door,” said Bruno without looking up from his newspaper. “You’re letting the cold in.”
I closed the door. The sound of the lock clicking resonated like a shot. I voluntarily locked myself in with the wolf.
“Approach!” he ordered.
I advanced. My clogs were clicking on the floor, which here was clean, swept. He pushed the plate towards me.
“Eat.”
I didn’t ask for a spoon. I took the plate with both hands. It was hot. This heat passed through my frozen palms like a blessing. I lifted the plate to my mouth and drank. I swallowed the pieces without chewing. The bacon fat coated my throat. It was an explosion of flavor that I had forgotten. Salt, meat. I ate trembling, watching Bruno out of the corner of my eye for fear that he’d take the plate back.
He watched it happen. He had placed his newspaper down. He scrutinized me with clinical attention, almost tenderly, but with a tenderness that sent a cold shiver down my back. He looked at my oily lips, my thin neck swallowing. When the plate was empty, I licked the bottom. I didn’t want to lose one drop. I put it down gently.
“Thank you, Herr Blockälteste.”
Bruno smiled. He stood up. He was huge in this little room. He dominated everything. He approached me. I felt my body shrink. The flight instinct screamed inside me, but my full belly told me to stay. He reached out and grabbed the fabric of my striped jacket. He rubbed it between his fingers with distaste.
“You stink, Lucas!” he said. “You smell like the camp. You smell like the dead.”
He let go of me and pointed to a corner of the room. There was an enamel basin placed on a stool and a steaming jug of hot water. Next to it, a piece of real soap and a white terry towel. White. I hadn’t seen a white towel in 6 months.
“I don’t share my bed with filth,” declared Bruno. “Wash yourself.”
He returned to sit in his chair, crossed his legs, and lit a cigarette. I froze. Wash naked in front of him? In the dormitory, nudity had no more meaning. We were asexual skeletons. But here, in this heated room, under this yellow light, nudity became something intimate, sexual again.
“Come on, schnell!” he snapped.
I started to undo my buttons with my numb fingers. I took off my jacket, my dirty shirt. My torso appeared. My ribs protruded like the bars of a cage. My skin was gray, covered with louse bites. I pulled down my pants. I found myself naked, standing in the middle of the room, hiding my penis with my hands.
Bruno exhaled a long puff of blue smoke. His eyes roamed my body from bottom to top. He didn’t look at my thinness with pity. He looked at it hungrily.
“You’re a good bone,” he said. “A little too sharp, but we’ll fix that. With my rations, you will get back in shape. You will be magnificent.” He pointed to the basin. “Rub well everywhere, especially at the bottom. I want you to be impeccable.”
I approached the water. I took the soap. It smelled of lavender. A smell of a woman, a smell of home. I started to wash myself. It was surreal. I washed myself with luxury soap, warm, stomach full, but I felt dirtier than ever. Every move I made was observed. I felt Bruno’s gaze weigh on my skin like a physical hand.
“Turn around,” he ordered.
I obeyed. I washed my back, my buttocks.
“It’s good!” he whispered. “You have soft skin despite everything.”
When I finished, I took the towel. It was rough and hot. I wiped myself frantically, wanting to dress myself faster. I reached out my hand to my pile of dirty rags on the ground.
“No,” said Bruno. He stood up. He went towards a small cupboard and took out something. A nightshirt. A long white cotton shirt. He threw it at me. “Leave your rags on the ground. This evening, you are not a number. Tonight, you are Lucas.”
I put on the shirt. It came up to my knees. I floated in it. I looked like a child dressed as a ghost or a young bride. Bruno approached me. He was very close now. I felt the warmth of his massive body. He stretched out his hand and stroked my wet hair. His fingers moved down my neck, causing shivers of terror. He wasn’t brutal. It was worse. He was the owner.
“There you go,” he said softly. “Now you are clean. You look presentable.”
He turned towards the bed. A real bed with a mattress, a feather duvet, pillows—absolute luxury, the dream of every prisoner. Bruno sat down on the edge of the bed. He patted the place next to him. The mattress sank beneath his weight. He looked at me with a smile that was no longer paternal at all. His eyes shone with a dark, predatory glow.
“Come, my little wife,” he said. “In bed, you have to pay for dinner.”
I stood still for a second. I thought of my mother. I thought of my baker father. I thought of the girl I had kissed at the cinema in Paris in 1940. All that had disappeared. There was nothing left but the soup in my stomach and the fear. I took a step, then two, and I mounted the feather scaffold.
The lamp went out. Blackness returned, but it was not the familiar black of the dormitory, filled with sighs and moans. It was a heavy silence. I felt the mattress sink further. Bruno’s weight, 100 kg of muscle and fat fed by the black market. I lay on my back. I stared at the invisible ceiling. I decided at this precise moment to no longer be there. I left my body. I left my skin, my bones, my muscles on this feather bed. I, Lucas, climbed to the ceiling. I hid in an imaginary crack in the wood. What happened next did not happen to me. It happened to a thing, to a rag doll.
Bruno was not brutal like a Kapo who strikes. He was slow. He was taking his time. He murmured words in German that I didn’t want to understand. Sweet words. Mein Schatz. Mein süßer Schatz. My treasure. So sweet. It was worse than insults. Hearing words of love in a death camp pronounced by an executioner who is using you as a garbage receptacle—it is the ultimate destruction of the mind.
I didn’t move. I didn’t scream. I didn’t even cry. I counted the seconds. One, two, three. I concentrated on the sound of the stove, the crackling of wood. It was the only pure sound in this room. I felt his breath on my neck, the smell of cold tobacco, his heavy hands which ran over my body as if it belonged to him. And it did belong to him. I sold it for soup.
When this was finished, Bruno heaved a long sigh of satisfaction. He rolled onto his side. He didn’t throw me out. He didn’t hit me. He pulled the eiderdown over the two of us.
“Get out, Kleiner!” he growled. “You did a good job!”
In less than 2 minutes, he was snoring. A powerful, regular snore. The sleep of the righteous. The sleep of the man who has a full stomach and met needs. I remained with my eyes wide open in the blackness. I was hot. For the first time in six months, I was hot down to my toes. The bed was soft; it was physical heaven. But I wanted to vomit. I felt dirty. Not camp dirt, this black dust which washes away with water. No, an inner dirt, a layer of weight that clung to my soul.
I looked at Bruno’s back. I could have strangled him while he slept. I could have taken his pillow and pressed down, but I didn’t move because tomorrow there would still be soup, and I was a coward. I had become a 17-year-old prostitute who was afraid of losing his customer.
I don’t know if I slept, perhaps intermittently. The awakening was brutal but silent. No siren here, just the sound of Bruno getting up. Daylight filtered through the curtains. I sat in the bed, hugging the white nightshirt against me. Bruno was getting dressed. He put on his pants, his boots, his cap. He once again became the Blockälteste, the leader. He turned towards me and smiled. A real smile.
“Hello Lucas. Slept well?”
I nodded, mute. He went towards his wardrobe. He rummaged through it. He came out with a pair of shoes. Not wooden clogs that injure the feet, but leather shoes, black ankle boots, almost new. He threw them on the bed. They landed on the duvet.
“Here, this is for you. Your clogs make too much noise, and a woman must be well shod.”
I looked at the shoes. It was a priceless treasure. With these, I will not fear frost anymore. With these, I could run. With that, my chances of survival increased by 50%. It was the price of my night. Soup and boots. This is what my innocence was worth.
“Get dressed,” said Bruno. “The call will ring. You return to the ranks. This evening, you will come back.”
I dressed myself again. I put my dirty striped uniform back on. I left the white shirt on the bed. I put on the ankle boots. They were a little big but comfortable. I had the impression of putting my feet in the blood of someone else, because these shoes had belonged to a dead man. It was sure.
Bruno opened the door for me. Before I went out, he pinched my cheek. “Until this evening, my beauty.”
I went out into the cold hallway. The contrast was violent. I walked towards the main dorm. The other prisoners began to wake up, chased by the subordinate Kapos. When I arrived at my usual place for roll call, heads turned. They saw. They saw everything. They saw that I was no longer hungry, that my lips were no longer cracked, and above all, they saw my feet. Black leather ankle boots shone like an insult in the middle of dirty clogs.
A murmur ran through the ranks. Puppenjung. Whore. He slept. A former prisoner, a French communist who had sometimes protected me at the beginning, looked at me. He didn’t say anything. He spat on the ground, just in front of my new boots. Then he turned his head away.
I was alone. My feet were hot. I had a full stomach. I was protected by the block leader. But I had lost my family. The camp had rejected me. I was no longer one of them. I was Bruno’s thing. I had gone to the other side of the invisible barrier. And as the siren screamed, announcing another hellish day, I realized something terrifying: I couldn’t wait for the evening. Not for Bruno, but for the soup. I had become a domestic animal, and the animal was hungry.
The days transformed during the week. A monstrous routine took hold. By day, I was untouchable. I no longer worked at the quarry. Bruno assigned me to the potato commando. I was sitting in a shed peeling vegetables sheltered from the wind. It was the work of the weak or the protected. The other prisoners didn’t talk to me. If I came closer, they moved away as if I had typhus. I had lost my name. I was no longer Lucas. I was the whore of the 24th.
But in the evening, I returned to the room. I was eating, I was gaining weight. My cheeks had regained some rosy color. Bruno was proud of his work. He weighed me with his eyes like one weighs a pig being fattened.
“You are becoming beautiful,” he said, passing his hand over my arm that was growing. “Very beautiful.”
One Saturday evening, the atmosphere changed. Bruno was nervous. He had waxed his boots twice. He had taken out a bottle of schnapps, strong alcohol stolen from the SS reserves.
“This evening, we receive,” he told me. “Be kind, be docile.”
He made me put on black civilian pants, too short for me, and a clean white shirt. He combed my hair himself, plastering my blonde hair with odorous brilliantine. “You stay seated on the stool. You only speak if someone speaks to you. You smile, understood?”
Around 8 p.m., they arrived. Three other Kapos, thick brutes, red hands, eyes shiny with alcohol. Hans, the leader of block 10; Fritz, the quarry executioner; and a third that I didn’t know who had a scar that ran across his nose. They entered the small room bringing with them noise, smoke, and the smell of violence. They sat around the table. Bruno poured alcohol. I was sitting in my corner on the stool, hands on my knees like a porcelain doll placed on a shelf.
At first, they ignored me. They talked about work, death quotas, cigarette trafficking. They laughed loudly, their mouths open, showing their yellow teeth. Then the alcohol started to take effect. Hans, the leader of Block 10, turned towards me. He pointed at me with his lit cigar.
“Is it him?” he asked with a fat laugh. “The little Frenchman?”
Bruno smiled proudly. “It’s him, Lucas, look at him. A month ago he was a skeleton. Look what I did with him.”
Hans stood up. He swayed a little. He approached me. I stopped breathing. Hans had the reputation of killing a man with a single punch for a sideways look. He leaned down. He grabbed my chin with his huge and calloused hand. He turned my head to the right, to the left, as one examines a horse before buying it.
“Not bad!” he growled. “Beautiful skin, clear eyes.” He let go of my chin and turned towards Bruno. “He looks tender. Mine at block 10 is broken. He coughs blood. He’s no longer of any use.” Hans took out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “I’ll exchange him with you. For 10 packets of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka.”
I froze. I was merchandise. They were discussing my price above my head. If Bruno accepted, I was going to block 10 with Hans. Hans who beat his dolls. Hans who broke them.
Bruno took a sip of schnapps slowly. He relished his power. He looked at me, our eyes met. I put all my distress in my eyes. I silently begged the monster that I knew not to deliver me to the monster I didn’t know. This is the height of horror: hoping to stay with your rapist because it is less worse than the other.
“No,” Bruno said calmly. “I’m keeping him. I trained him. He is well-behaved.”
Hans insisted. “Come on, and I’ll give you my new leather boots.”
“No,” Bruno repeated, more dryly. “Don’t touch. He’s mine.”
Hans shrugged his shoulders, disappointed but not aggressive. He came back to sit down. “Too bad. If you change your mind, warn me before he becomes too old. At 20 years old, they are screwed up.”
The evening continued. The alcohol flowed freely. For fun, Fritz, the quarry executioner, had an idea. “Make him sing,” he said. “The French know how to sing, right?”
Bruno gestured to me. “Sing Lucas, sing something happy.”
I stood up. My legs were trembling. What to sing? I only knew sad or patriotic songs. I sang the only thing that came to me: a lullaby that my mother sang to me in the moonlight. My voice was weak, broken. I sang a child’s song in the middle of four drunken assassins in a room heated by the deaths of others.
Au clair de la lune, mon ami Pierrot…
They listened in silence, not because they were moved, but because it was exotic. It was a circus spectacle. When I finished, they applauded.
“Well done!” said Hans. “Come here, canary.” He patted his knees. “Come sit here. Papa has a present for you.”
I watched Bruno. I was looking for his authorization or refusal. Bruno laughed. “Go ahead, be nice to the guest, but just 5 minutes.”
I had to sit on Hans’ lap. He smelled of stale sweat and alcohol. He put his arm around my waist. He squeezed me hard, too hard. His hand went up and down my thigh. “You are soft,” he breathed on my neck. “Really too bad Bruno is selfish.”
I let him do it. I was a thing, a rag doll. I didn’t feel anything anymore. I had turned off my brain. I looked at the crack in the ceiling. It was still there. It was my only friend.
Suddenly the door opened forcefully. A young SS guard entered. The music, the laughter, everything was arrested. The Kapos rose quickly, knocking over the chairs. I slipped from Hans’ lap and fell to the ground. The SS guard looked at the scene: the bottles, the smoke, and me—the young boy in the white shirt and civilian pants among his men. He was frowning. He knew. Everyone knew. But the rules officially prohibited this type of too visible debauchery.
“Blockälteste Bruno,” said the SS guard coldly. “The night call was poorly made. A man is missing from block 24.”
Bruno paled. “Impossible, Herr Scharführer. I counted myself.”
“So you don’t know how to count. Come out right now and take your friends with you.”
The SS guard looked at me. A look of absolute disgust. “And put this thing back to work. If I see him dressed like a bourgeois again, I’ll send him to the bunker myself.”
The SS guard went out. The party was over. Bruno was furious, humiliated in front of his friends, frightened by the SS. He turned towards me. His eyes were no longer those of a protector. They were those of a hunted beast. It was my fault. It was always the fault of the victim.
“Clear out!” he hissed. “Take off your clothes. Get out!”
I removed the white shirt trembling. I put back on my rags. He pushed me towards the door. He kicked me in the behind. “Go back to the dorm and don’t show yourself.”
I went out into the black corridor. I kept the leather boots. It was the only thing I had not removed. I returned towards the bunks. I found a free place in the dirty straw. I curled up. I was cold. I was scared, but above all, I was hungry. Fear had pitted my stomach, and I understood that my position was much more fragile than I thought. Bruno loved me like you love a dog as long as we don’t get into trouble. As soon as the master is threatened, he kicks the dog. Or worse, he beats it.
The fall is not slow; it is vertical. The next day, I was not reassigned to the potato commando. On the call list, my number, 4852, had been moved. Steinbruch. The quarry. The worst place in the camp, where stones and men are broken.
Bruno didn’t look at me during roll call. He stood straight, screaming orders, hitting his boot with his riding crop. I tried to meet his look. I looked for a light, a sign to hold on to. Nothing. He looked through me as if I were transparent, as if the nights passed in his bed, the heat, the soup had never existed. I had become compromising waste, living proof of his fault before the SS, and you get rid of the evidence.
I left for the quarry. I still wore the leather ankle boots. They were my only protection, but they had become a danger. In the marching column, I felt the looks of other prisoners stick to my feet. New leather boots on a kid who is going to the quarry. It’s an anomaly. It’s a target.
The work started. We had to carry granite blocks on our backs and climb the steps of the staircase of death. I no longer had muscles. The fat I had gained thanks to Bruno’s soups melted in three days. I was staggering. At noon, during the hot water soup break with three turnip greens, I isolated myself to eat my miserable ration.
Three men approached. They were Muselmänner, hungry skeletons, but they had the rage of despair. They didn’t talk to me. They didn’t ask. One of them hit me on the head with a stone. I fell, stunned, the taste of blood in my mouth. I didn’t try to defend myself. I knew what they wanted. They tore off my boots. They pulled on them frantically, twisting my ankles.
“Give them. Give them.”
They took Bruno’s shoes. The shoes of the price of my innocence. They left me there, barefoot in the icy mud of the quarry. They also took my bowl of soup. I stayed lying down, looking at the gray sky. I didn’t cry about the shoes. I cried because I understood that the parenthesis was closed. I became prey again, and this time, I no longer had a protector.
In the evening, I returned to camp barefoot. My feet were blue, cut by stones, insensitive. I went to block 24. I dragged myself to Bruno’s door. I don’t know why I did that. Hope is a mental illness. I thought maybe he would have pity, that he would give me an old pair of clogs, that he would give me a crust of bread. I knocked. The door was open.
Bruno was there. He was eating a sausage. He saw me. Dirty, barefoot. Face bleeding, trembling with fever. His face hardened. He saw that the other prisoners watched. He had to prove that he had nothing left to do with me. He had to show his strength.
“What do you want?” he yelled so that the whole dormitory could hear.
“Bruno, please, my shoes… they stole them from me.”
He let out a cruel, theatrical laugh. “My name is not Bruno for you, Häftling. I am the Blockälteste, and I don’t talk to beggars.”
He lifted his boot—this boot that I had polished—and he hit me right in the chest. The blow threw me backwards. I fell in the hallway, out of breath. Bruno came out of his room. He had his riding crop.
“Are you coming to my door? Do you think it’s the Salvation Army here?” He raised his arm. Slap. The whip slashed at my face just under my eye. The skin opened. “Clear out! Get out before I kill you.”
He hit hard. He knocked to kill the memory of what he had done. He hit to erase his own shame. Every blow said: “I never touched you. I never loved you.” The other prisoners watched the scene without moving. Some smiled. Seeing the favorite being beaten by her master was ironic justice for them.
I crawled. I fled like a rat. I hid under a bunk, far away, all the way at the back, near the stalls—the stinkiest but safest place. I curled into a ball. I touched my open cheek. Blood was flowing into my mouth. It no longer had the taste of sausage; it tasted like iron.
That night, I had a fever. In my delirium, I saw the yellow lamp again. I felt the warmth of the eiderdown. And I asked myself the terrible question. What was worse? To be beaten in the mud or to be caressed by the monster that beats you now? I realized that the blows hurt less than the caresses. The beatings are clear, it’s hatred, it’s war. The caresses were the lie; it was the perversion of the soul. He stole my body, then he threw it away when I became cumbersome.
I stayed hidden for three days. I no longer went out for roll call. I hid under the dead so that they wouldn’t see me. I ate the crumbs that I found on the ground. I was going crazy. I was talking to myself. I was talking to my mother. Mom, I’m dirty. Mom, I was his wife. Forgive me.
On the fourth day, I heard a different noise. It wasn’t the barking of dogs. These were not the cries of Kapos. It was a distant rumble like thunder. The ground was shaking. A prisoner ran past near my hiding place.
“They’re leaving!” he shouted. “The SS are leaving. The Americans are here!”
I didn’t move. I didn’t believe it. Bruno? Was he leaving too? I imagined Bruno taking off his uniform, putting on civilian clothes, fleeing with his stolen savings. I wanted to get up to kill him, but I had no more strength. I couldn’t even stand up anymore. My bare feet were necrotic. I stayed there in the shadows, waiting for the end of the world or the beginning of another. A broken doll thrown in a corner waiting for someone to come and clean up its disorder.
On April 11, 1945, the gates of hell opened. These were not angels who entered; they were the tanks of the Third American Army. The ground shook, not from fear, but from weight—the weight of freedom. An American soldier found me. I weighed 35kg. I was curled up in my excrement under the bunk, squeezing my necrotic feet. He was huge. He was chewing gum. He had the smell of blond tobacco and mechanical grease. He lifted me up as if I were a feather.
“It’s okay, boy, you’re safe now.”
He carried me towards the light, towards the central courtyard. Outside it was chaos. The SS had fled, but some Kapos had not been fast enough. Prisoners, released, crazy with rage and pain, settled their accounts. It was savage justice, blood justice.
I was placed on a stretcher near the entrance. And there I saw him. They had found Bruno. He no longer had his cap. He no longer had his riding crop. His jacket was torn. He was being manhandled by three Russian prisoners. They dragged him towards the shooting wall. Bruno screamed, he cried, he was drooling. The great lord, the king of block 24, was nothing more than a trembling bag of meat.
Suddenly he saw me. He saw the stretcher. He recognized my blond hair, now gray with filth. A glimmer of crazy hope lit up his eyes. He struggled. He held out his hands towards me.
“Lucas!” he yelled. “Lucas, tell them!” He searched my gaze. He wanted me to be his lawyer. “Tell them I fed you. Tell them I protected you. I gave you soup. Tell them we were friends!”
The Russians stopped for a second. They looked at me. They were waiting. If I said a word, maybe they would hesitate. Maybe they would hand him over to the Americans for a fair trial.
I looked at Bruno. I saw the soup again, I saw the yellow lamp again, I saw the eiderdowns again. But I also saw the crack in the ceiling again. I felt his weight on me again. I felt the humiliation of his caresses. I felt the kick in the chest when I was no longer useful.
He said that he had fed me. It was true. But we do not feed a human being to love him. We feed a pig to eat it. He hadn’t saved me. He had consumed me. Bruno begged me with his look: Save me, my little wife.
I took a deep breath. Clean spring air entered my lungs for the first time. I turned my head. I looked at the American soldier and I closed my eyes. I said nothing. Silence was my verdict.
I heard Bruno scream. “No, Lucas! You fat whore!”
Then I heard dull noises, knocks, and finally, definitive silence. I didn’t open my eyes.
I returned to Paris in June. My parents were alive. They cried with joy. They killed the fatted calf. Our son is alive. He’s a hero. He survived hell. They never asked me questions about details. And fortunately, how could I say to my baker father, a simple and worthy man, that his son had survived by selling his body to a German criminal for potatoes? How could I have told my mother that I wasn’t a hero but a doll?
So I kept quiet. I buried the secret. I tried to live. I tried to love. At 25, I met a wonderful girl. Claire. She was gentle, patient. We went to the cinema. She took my hand. Her hand was warm, soft. At the moment when her skin touched mine, I had a violent urge to vomit. I pulled my hand away suddenly. I saw the hand of Bruno. I smelled the smell of brilliantine. I left running. I left her there. I could never explain. I could never let someone touch me again.
Each caress, even the most innocent, awakens the memory of submission. For me, love is linked to nausea; intimacy is linked to death. Today, I am 97 years old. I am alone. People say, “The poor old man, he never found shoes that fit.” It’s ironic. I had shoes. Black leather ankle boots. They cost me my soul.
Sometimes at night, I dream again. I’m in the Kapo’s bedroom. It’s hot, the soup is steaming. Bruno hands me the spoon. Eat, my treasure! And in my dream, I’m hungry. I’m so hungry. So I eat, and I cry while eating. I never really got out of that room. The Americans liberated my body, but a part of me stayed there. Sitting on this stool, waiting for orders, smiling out of fear, wearing a white nightgown.
There are victims that we speak of with pride: the resistance fighters, saboteurs. And there is us, the dolls, the victims of the shadow, those who had to become monsters of docility to not be broken. We carry a shame that is not ours, but which sticks to the skin like tar.
If I speak today, it is to say one thing to the young people who listen to me. Dignity cannot be eaten, it’s true. But when you lose it, you never find it again. And to those who judge what men do to survive: don’t judge. You don’t know what the soup tastes like when you are at death’s door.
A solitary and repetitive sound which walks away.
The sexual exploitation of men and boys in concentration camps is one of the last great taboos of the Holocaust. These men, doubly victims of Nazi brutality and social stigma—homophobia, male shame—have often taken their secret into the grave, unable to tell the unspeakable. Lucas broke the silence so that his story is not forgotten.
If this story made you uncomfortable, if it touched you by its psychological cruelty, leave a message. Write the word “doll” in the comments to say that Lucas was not an object, that he was a man. And subscribe, activate the bell. So many stories remain hidden in the shadow of history. We must bring them to light, even those that hurt the eyes. Thanks for listening. Until the next story.
