Free Trusting Calvin by Sharon Peters Page B

his friends would whisper a warning, alerting Moshe to lower his head and look especially busy. When he made an assembly error, someone quickly reached over and corrected it.
    Moshe had learned to listen for every signal and movement, to walk with a determined step even though he could see almost nothing. He had become so adept at sensing his surroundings and adapting to the slightest pressure from a brother or friend who steered him almost imperceptibly, that the guards suspected nothing. It was nerve-racking, nonetheless, these around-the-clock maneuvers to avoid detection.
    After five months in Flossenbürg, Moshe’s sliver of vision diminished to almost nothing. He knew the charade couldn’t continue much longer. If the guards learned of it, he would be killed, and his friends as well. If a mistake left their station because he couldn’t recognize objects, their overseers would assume sabotage, and they all would be hanged. He couldn’t allow that to happen. He was not ready to die, but he knew he couldn’t avoid it much longer.
    It was time.
    Moshe sat with Zalmen and spoke fast and earnestly, leaving no room for debate. “If you have your sight, if you have your legs, you can walk, you can see where you walk. You can postpone death—it’s possible. I can’t see where to walk. Death is coming to me. I don’t have to look for it, it’s coming, and I refuse to have others die as well, with me, because of me. That would be unconscionable.”
    â€œWe have managed this long,” Zalmen snapped. “We will continue. Live this minute and the next minute and the rest of the day. Work, sleep, and get up the next morning and start over again.”
    For a few more days Moshe did as his brother asked.
    But one morning in early February 1945, when he awoke, the narrow sliver of blurry vision had vanished. He was completely blind.
    He had to stop working.
    â€œI can’t see any tools,” he told Zalmen and Yankel. “You must understand: I cannot risk the safety of the others. My life isn’t worth anything anyway. Whatever will be, will be, but I can’t go to work anymore. We must report this.”
    He felt his brothers staring at him, mute, trying to find the right words to say.
    Finally Zalmen arose from the bunk and crossed the room to speak with the barrack supervisor, a German gentile named Erich, a political prisoner wise in the ways of survival, who had demonstrated that, although strict, he was fair.
    â€œMoshe can see nothing,” Zalmen said to Erich. “He is completely blind. He cannot work any longer.”
    Zalmen didn’t look into the German’s eyes as he spoke the words, nor did he ask for leniency. Neither was permitted. Erich looked at Zalmen and then across the room at Moshe. “Go back to your bunk,” he said, nothing more.
    Zalmen and Yankel didn’t sleep at all that long, awful night, knowing their brother would be shot or gassed soon after daybreak.
    Moshe spent the hours trying to remember every moment of happiness and peace in his past. He had done what was necessary to remove the others from the jeopardy created by his blindness, and whenever a gust of panic about the coming morning blew through him, he reminded himself of that. Even if by some miracle he somehow managed to survive this hell, he thought, as he lay there in the dark, this life wouldn’t be worth living. Completely blind, unable to work or care for himself.
    It was done, and it was right that it was done. He had no regrets.
    At morning roll call—his last, he knew—his brothers pressed closer than usual.
    There was a shuffling sound. Someone had sidled in next to him.
    â€œGo back and get in the top bunk,” the voice of Erich said.
    Erich had made a decision. He didn’t explain it, then or ever. He barely knew this young man named Moshe, but he had decided to protect him, knowing full well the consequences of hiding a