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| The dead man who was still walking |
To live without looking, to live by excluding from its field of vision a whole portion of the world, the inhabitants of the villages which surrounded the accursed place had become accustomed to it. It happened, however, that their eyes betrayed them and went, in spite of themselves, towards the furnace, towards that frankness of hell that the invader had opened on their land. At night, the flames rose to the sky to lick the foolish clouds of this sad plain. They could still be seen, thrilling, thirty kilometers away, those flames. They never looked at them, or at least never to many. This common look would have called a comment, an exchange to which all refused. But when you were alone, urinating in a farmyard at nightfall, you could not help but take a look at this conflagration, as if to make sure that the sinister curse on the country was still effective. . In the morning, in the air frozen by the cold, the column of smoke rose straight, like a waving tube, to go to smoke up to the throne of God and show him that the devil, here, had taken control. Then the wind rose. That day, he came from the East and Karol Grzegorczyk understood that he had designated them as a target. This day would be theirs.
He hitched the mare under the black snow that had been falling on the region for several months without stopping. But you had to live, you had to breathe that air, you had to never look in the direction of the cursed place. Maja, the heavy mare, set to work with her habitual placidity. Behind the little plow, the land of Poland turned on its sinister fertilizer which, at once, began to cover it again. Here, fed by the ultimate crime of men, potatoes came out of the ground that his wife and daughter were eager to pick up and put in baskets. Three years earlier, this work was done by telling jokes, singing songs and even laughing, sometimes, while passing a jar of clear water. Three years earlier, it was not rushed, just back to the farm, to clean the precious tubers from their stain. Three years ago, and still today, it was hard to imagine for a moment that this lost, untrammeled corner of Treblinka would become such a sad day.
This morning of August 2nd, 1943, the sun shines on the horizon and the earth, watered the day before of a short shower, already smokes. The ashes are so thick that Karol put his handkerchief in front of his mouth. For two hours now, noises have been coming from the camp and have come to strike the surrounding countryside as one knocks on a door behind which all the consciences of men have been hidden. These are shots slamming in this early morning. These shots, even if they are not exceptional, seem today more numerous, different also. They look like a battle, but a battle is the most unlikely thing that can happen in hell. Over there, everyone knows, even if nobody talks about it, we decided to exhume and burn tens of thousands of corpses, bodies massively buried under Polish soil for more than one year. It seems that the wind of history is itself spinning and that the devil of Berlin, caught in a sudden fear or modesty, has decided to erase the traces of his unspeakable crime.
The sun rises in the sky and Karol removes her wool. The heat will not delay to overwhelm them as already overwhelms the darkness that flies all around them. His wife and daughter wave to him and call him. He stops Maja with a click of his tongue and she immediately submits. Hanna points to the direction of the camp. The detonations are less numerous, but it seems that this time, it is the whole complex that flames. But there is something else.
Karol puts his hand in visor. As pushed by the sun, a column of men comes to them. Hanna joined him and stuck to his side with Agnieszka, their daughter. His wife's hand squeezes his forearm. A few words, which fear has repainted in the same black as rain, come out of his mouth with difficulty.
- Let's go back quickly Karol! Let's go in ... something is happening. Something we should not see. Something that ...
- Yes, let's go home!
But they stay there, all three. Frozen by the spectacle that is offered to them.
They may be a thousand and they are moving right in their direction. They flee as if some force had banished them from hell. Karol, his wife and daughter, have now all three carried their hands in visor. All three, side by side, right leg forward, stand in slight imbalance on their ground broken by the plow. All three seem to pose for a photo that, if it had been taken, would have gone around the world for centuries. Agnieszka still holds a potato in his hand. She suddenly looks at her and seems to be wondering what to do with it. The basket is too far for her to throw it in. The column is approaching. Karol sees them better now. They are not men, but dead who walk towards them driven by the rising sun. They have no face, those who are bare-bones have only a thin cover of skin resting on their skeletal frames.
They are always moving forward. Agnieszka cries softly and Hanna shudders as if an icy wind had just risen. Karol now sees that some of these dead are carrying weapons. There is nothing scary about these weapons, they seem terrible burdens to all those bodies without muscles. They are almost on them now. The sun is still so low on the horizon, that it seems that this strange and frightful troop is preceded by another. This one lies on the ground and undulates on the plowed land. These shadows, Karol thinks, seem to want to tear themselves away from the control of their masters and flee faster than they do.
They are now all around them. They looted, like a flight of starlings plundering the sky, all the apples from the baskets. Some, almost without stopping, lean in a furrow on this earth, black ashes of their brothers. They then pick up one of these tubers forgotten by the Grzegorczyk, rub it on their legs and munch it raw. One of them, almost a child, suddenly crashes in front of Agnieszka that the stupor froze on an ultimate tear. Without a word, she gives him his potato that he puts in his pocket. He looks at her for a long time. He is only a look, his eyes have devoured his head. He stares at her as if it were her, not him, who seemed to come from another world. Finally, as if pushed by the collective consciousness of these beings, he leaves and loses himself among them.
All have passed and without ever having asked their bodies, the three have rotated and now look away. Maja herself turned around, before burning violently, as if to drive away this nightmare vision from her big animal head. This little army does not know where it is going, if it is not far from the flames. Tonight, almost everyone will have been caught and killed.
Agnieszka will die sixty-two years later, day to day, and even, almost, hour to hour. She will shake between her eyelids, just before the rocking, this image of a little dead man who was still alive.
On August 2nd, 1943, the deportees of the Treblinka camp revolt. They seize weapons and fight. A thousand of them escape and fifty will survive. To tell...
