The Sunflower_ On the Possibilities and - Wiesenthal, Simon copy

My gaze wandered to the “pipe,” a narrow, fenced passage running round the inner camp
and ending at the sandhills where the executions usually took place.
Sometimes men waited for two or three days in the “pipe” before they were murdered.
The SS fetched them out of the huts or arrested them in the city, where they had been in
hiding. They operated a “rational” system of shooting a number of men together, so several
days would sometimes pass before the number was large enough to warrant the SS
executioner's effort to make his way to the sandhills.
On that particular evening there was nothing to be seen in the “pipe.” Arthur told me why.
“There were five today but they had not long to wait. Kauzor fetched them. A fellow in our
hut knew them and said they had been unearthed in a good hiding place in the city.”
Arthur spoke calmly and quietly as if he was recounting something very commonplace.
“There was a boy among them,” he continued after a while, and now his voice was a little
more emotional. “He had lovely fair hair. He didn't look the slightest bit Jewish. If his
parents had put him into an Aryan family, he would never have been noticed.”
I thought of Eli.
“Arthur, I must talk to you. In the High School, which they are now using as a military
hospital, I had an experience today which I am not finished with. You might laugh at me
when you hear it, but I want to know just what you think about it. I have faith in your
judgment.”
“Go on,” he said.
“No, not now. We will talk about it later. I want Josek to be there to hear it.”
Was I right after all to tell them what had happened? I thought of the five men in the
“pipe” who had been shot that day. Was this SS man more to me than they were? Perhaps it