Read Sunrise West for Free Online Page B

than these base antisemites could ever hope to be, we were not in a position to argue with the brutes.
    At this point something unreal happened, something amazingly beautiful. From behind the Sherman tank that had smashed through the camp’s wire fence, a small squad of infantry emerged, as in a dream, and they sped towards the Polish flag. ‘ Cze ść , chłopcy! ’ they shouted. ‘Greetings, boys!’ The Polish prisoners responded enthusiastically with ‘Long Live Poland!’ — to which the battle-weary squad leader reciprocated, again in Polish: ‘And may she live forever and ever!...’
    â€˜But gentlemen,’ he added, looking around. ‘We are Jews, from New York. Are there any of our brethren amongst you?’

    Â 
    Â  Vision of Survival  
    On the eighth of May 1945
    I walked out of camp
    a homeless tramp.

    Out of camp into an open world, but with nowhere to go. Suddenly freedom, but without being free. So much to celebrate, but with whom?

    In the small hours of the night I discovered my own corpse, lying on a heap of other corpses outside the crematorium. They were really only bones, covered in a veneer of skin with no flesh to speak of. ‘Who sent for you? Who needs you?’ said the bones. ‘We were here first. Where’s your respect?’
    â€˜Friends, please,’ my corpse replied. ‘Surely we’re all one brotherhood. Is it not written somewhere that only by knowing death can one begin to live? Doesn’t this put us in an enviable position?’
    â€˜Oho, that damned socialist, I remember him from the ghetto,’ scoffed a nearby skeleton. ‘Even there he spoke of brotherhood, how only an exiled nation can understand its true meaning, how only a people in exile can be true children of the prophets. When our Messiah arrives we’ll makesure that your kind, with your rotten jargon, remain outside the gates of our promised land.’
    â€˜You forget,’ another pile of bones cut in, ‘that we’re too far gone. We ourselves are tired of waiting, and our prophet Ezekiel lies dead.’
    I felt my body recoil in alarm. ‘How can you say that? I disagree wholeheartedly with your cynicism. Life is worth living even in the most heinous of circumstances. Remember what a great bard once wrote: the worst is not, so long as we can say “this is the worst” . I can see that you dwell on the very brink — only your will, only your imagination can protect you now from sinking into an abyss of iniquity.’
    That last remark drove the bony corpses into paroxysms of laughter, a crazy rattling laughter, like a ghostly refrain from deep inside a hollow-throated chorus.
    But I was prepared to argue my case. ‘Please, sirs, don’t laugh at imagination. Any worthwhile poet will confirm that fantasy outlives death. Trust me, this is a profound truth, on which I have built my whole world.’
    â€˜Stop him, somebody stop him!’ shrilled the bony heap. ‘His words, God forbid, might deprive us of our daily bread!’
    â€˜Don’t make fun of me,’ I replied, trying to remain calm. ‘Don’t take fantasy so lightly. Think of Noah. His ark was but a hoax, and so was his white dove. He only dreamt it all, yet the dream saved his life.’
    â€˜Maybe so,’ a youngish cadaver retorted, ‘but you still have no place here amongst us.’
    â€˜I have, I definitely have! There is no reason why you should view me as an outcast. I belong to you, not to theworld ruled by bullies and sadists. Yes, I know that the Great Leper himself is dead, but his bequest lives on, and I fear that the wicked will again give birth to a new brood of reigning bandits, fools, despisers of memory.’
    â€˜Well, long live stupidity!’ the first skeleton cried. ‘Sages are thinkers not doers. Fools are the ones that build. Look at us — where would we go now if not for the