Only Love is Creative

In the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1941, 600 men of Block 14 stood at attention in the boiling sun. A prisoner had escaped earlier and the Nazis were preparing retaliation.

None of the men knew exactly what the punishment would be but it was rumoured that several of the men would be chosen for the hunger bunker, a particularly gruesome form of death by starvation. Several prisoners had keeled over in the unbearable heat and were left to lie. Finally, as the sun went down, Deputy-Commander Fritsch, second-in-command to Commandant Hess, appeared freshly bathed and dressed in the finest and cleanest uniform and boots. He had come to announce what measures would be taken against the block. The men were lined up in ten rows of sixty men each. As Fritsch surveyed them, all were trying to be inconspicuous, invisible, so as not to be singled out. There was total silence. Fritsch announced that as the escapee had not been found, ten men would be chosen to die by starvation. He then…