The Nazis stormed into the house of Stanislavsky Lech, who was Jewish, herded the entire family out at gunpoint, packed them into an overcrowded train, filled with the stench of death and despair, and sent them to Krakow.
Then, before his eyes, Lech saw his entire family shot. Somehow, he managed to live from one day to the next, in a numb, oblivious, zombie-like state. Impatiently, he awaited his own death. But one day, he realized, that his own death was not an unavoidable truth. He could, in fact, do something about it: he could make an attempt to escape.
Once he had made his decision, he didn’t know how to execute it. He only knew one simple thing: his decision was irrevocable, and, somehow, he had to find a way to act on it.
As the weeks passed into months, he interrogated his fellow prisoners. “How can we escape?” he would ask. He became a nuisance, an irritation. “It’s hopeless,” they would echo. “Stop hurting yourself,” they would plead. Some would abuse him openly; others would turn away in silence.
In turn, he rejected their answers, their silences, their overbearing despair. There has to be a way, he told himself, and I will find it. This is my revenge: by surviving I will prove that the Nazis aren’t invincible and that they don’t have complete control of our wills and that they can’t do what they like with us.
