Free The Shadowboxer by Noel; Behn Page B

front of the drift-covered frame buildings of the summer Kinderkamp . Gestapo men piled out of the first bus. All were lean and bony. Each had a three-day growth of beard. Gestapo Auxiliary women debarked from the second bus. They too were thin.
    The fifty men and women crossed the frozen recreation field, entered a chilly dormitory, hung up their uniform overcoats and filled the two rows of facing chairs. Orderlies draped coarse sheets about their shoulders. Barbers clipped away their hair and shaved the skulls clean.
    Clerks waited at the far end of the room to receive watches, rings and other valuables. Receipts were logged. Clothing cupboards were assigned. In the men’s were torn striped trousers and jackets; in the women’s, cotton prison dresses.
    The women lined the north wall, the men the south. An order was given. All began to undress.
    The bald men and women stood naked, embarrassed and shivering on the frigid slat flooring as orderlies moved among them, distributing tattered undergarments and flat-handled, short-bladed pig knives. They each taped a knife to the inside of the thigh, then pulled on the unwashed, faded uniform.
    The new “prisoners” moved along to the leather-coated team of corporals. A variety of footwear was distributed. Some received ragged shoes or worn boots, others cardboard slippers. Six were given only uneven strips of burlap with which to bind their feet.
    The “prisoners” assembled on the paradeground. Ten men and ten women were given axes and led to the woods, where they began felling trees. The remainder received rough-handled shovels and began digging up the frozen earth as the third and fourth buses arrived.
    The new contingent of twenty-six men and twenty-three women were shaved, processed and sent out to join the others with either ax or shovel. The fifth and sixth buses arrived an hour apart. Twenty-one more women and eighteen men joined the labor battalion.
    Work ceased at ten that evening. One hundred and twenty-eight new “prisoners” trudged into one unheated simulated barracks, were fed a thin soup scattered with occasional bits of old potatoes and were allowed to sleep two to an unmattressed wooden bunk for a full four hours. Men and women could not share the same bed.
    At three in the morning they were mustered in the recreation area in a snowstorm. Instructions began in concentration-camp procedure. Roll call was practiced a dozen times. Food-line procedure took even more rehearsal. Marching received slightly less attention. Other details followed. Two more buses arrived. Thirty-seven more women joined the contingent.
    There was no breakfast or lunch. Digging and chopping began at six in the morning and lasted until nine at night. Twenty-three men dropped out from exhaustion or exposure. The casualties for women totaled fifty-five. Twelve men and fifteen women were placed in a special barracks to recuperate, to be given another chance. The remaining fifty-seven were put into ambulances and sent on to Munich.
    The third day’s schedule was the same as the second. By nightfall the ranks had thinned to thirty-six men and thirty-one women.
    No one was wakened until nine on the fourth morning. The sixty-seven survivors gathered in the heated dining hall for a meal of Wurstel with mustard, Bortchen, beer and coffee. Most could not eat. Cigarettes were passed out as orderlies climbed onto a small stage at the end of the room and set up three easles. Large diagrams and photographs were placed on them.
    The “prisoners” stood to attention. Webber entered, crossed the room, mounted the platform, took up a long wooden pointer and stepped beside the first easel. The audience was ordered seated.
    â€œThis is Oranienburg.” The pointer rapped against the large diagram divided by thick green lines. “Sometime between midnight, the twenty-fifth of February, and midnight of the twenty-sixth, an escape attempt is expected.” The