For a Holocaust remembrance project in an English course, Giovanna Napoleone writes a tragic yet captivating short fiction story about a man named Daniel, who marches the infamous Stairway of Death in the Mauthausen concentration camp during World War II.
The Stairway of Death
By Giovanna Napoleone
Up and down the Stairway of Death my brothers and I march.
Eleven O’Clock to Nine O’Clock
How will we ever abound?
Your legs will carry you
186 steps up
And 186 down.
But what is it that you bring?
Somehow
There’s a weight upon your back, a frown.
It is stone - a burden in tow.
There is only one way to die here, you know.
You can not sorrow
You can not rest
Because you reap what you sow.
***
Up and down the Stairway of Death my brother and I march. It is eleven o’clock in the morning, and I can feel my back arch.
“Come on, Daniel,” I hear to my left. Mark is next to me, barely a skeleton of bone. “Just reach the bottom,” he repeats. “And then they’ll leave you alone.”
Thank you, I say to him in my head, not finding the energy to talk. But it’s not like my work is over once I reach the top. The process repeats and starts all over again for hours. However, I need some sort of motivation, some encouragement to keep marching on. Everything here is faded - my sense of time and my sense of smell. All has ceased to exist. All that I know is the mocking, cold hard weight of stone.
Mauthausen in 1942 is brutal. It is an ordinary occurrence that fellow men carrying the plow die from broken arms or spines. Broken bones means inability to function, which means you are not useful to work. And here, when you are not useful enough to work you are not useful enough to live.
I want to live, but the average lifespan here is barely four months.
I’ve been here three out of four.
I grunt, arms and shoulders burning, and continue to move on. My feet move on their own accord, dragging the cart behind me. If you have a will to live there’s no need dwelling on the pain. Pain itself has become a fact of life, proof that you are still existing, but also proof that you are almost dead. Carrying heavy stone with only fifteen other men uphill for 186 steps in the heat takes a toll on your mind and body. I am only twenty years old, but my body aches as if I were fifty, and my mind wanders so much that sometimes I feel like I am going insane.
Why do they make us march in the afternoon, in the middle of summer? Heat can kill you too, you know.
“Mark, brother. What do you think we are having for dinner tonight?” I comment, needing the distraction.
What a random thought, I think. But what else is there to talk about? What else matters anymore?
“I don’t know,” he says. He is only two years younger than I, but he has always been much stronger. “It’d be nice to have some bread.”
Bread.
The word brings water to my mouth. Here, we have never gotten bread, but I can imagine it. Warm, soft, fresh bread coming right out of the oven. Imagine wildly devouring it for days.
I am so hungry that I would eat the ants beneath my feet crawling in the dirt if only the Nazi officers would let me stop for a moment, give me a minute to rest. But so far, nobody here has been kind enough to do that.
“Quiet!” Hisses a Nazi guard, his voice and gun raised in a threat to strike.
Everyone’s head ducks down including my own, not making eye contact to avoid a beating. Pounding us with a gun would be just as deadly as a bullet because we are so fragile.
The Nazi knows this.
“Don’t worry, we’re almost there,” whispers Mark.
Thankfully, his words are true. Sure enough, we reach the labor camp far from the stone quarry we came from. We are sweating in our striped prisoner uniforms and everyone is dying for a sip of water or a chance to relieve themselves. We are finally - but only temporarily - off the Stairway of Death.
My shoulders sag with the others behind us who were also sharing the weight of the plow as the cart drops with a loud thump to the floor.
“We made it,” I tell Mark, smiling like a fool.
“Yes, brother. We did.”
Every walk down the steps is an accomplishment. So far, we have made one round-trip out of the three we must do every day.
Although we still have to unload the cart, the heaviness off of our spines are a relief. Somehow, in today’s morning march nobody had stopped, collapsed and broken their backs, or fell from exhaustion. Nobody was shot or died. But then again, it was only morning. Was it really something to be happy about?
“Unload the cart and stack’em up!” Yells the Nazi officer. We obey, stretching out our shoulders and walking over to the cart.
Us, prisoners of the Stairway, are hunchbacked as we manage to reach in and keep pulling out the hated blocks of stone. Stone after stone after stone after stone. Hate after hate after hate after hate. All in a day’s work. For a minute I irrationally imagine bashing the Nazi guards’ head in with a giant block. Would it hurt as much as my own body does right now? Would they have the time to shoot me before I did it?
“Alright. You get five minutes to rest. Get some water.”
Rest! The moment we all wait for!
Immediately, Mark and I sit with our backs up against the now unloaded pile of stone bricks. The material is cooler than our skin and offers shade from the sun - a perfect place to lie. My brother and I doze for five minutes, asleep. If not for these five minute breaks, most of the workers at the camp would die quicker than flies.
I feel my mind drift, and I have daydreams - reality mixed with insanity. The things I would do if I were saved, the things I would do before I die.
“Everybody up!”
The things that I would do to be relieved of this torture.
“Grab a handle!”
I grab a handle of the mercifully empty cart.
“Down we go!”
Downhill - the easy part.
Mark sighs, and together we lift up the bare cart along with fifteen other men. We have always shared our burdens in life with one another, but this is by far the heaviest one. I can’t wait for the sun to set, for night to fall. I can’t wait for more rest.
I want to sleep.
“Count!”
This is nothing new.
The Nazis sometimes make us count down the steps in the Stairway. It is how I know that there are 186 steps. It is another form of psychological games. It makes us want to reach the goal.
186 steps left to go.
“One,
Two,
Three,
Four…”
Time seems to slow, my hands grow clammy, my feet lethargic and tired.
“...Fourty,
Forty One,
Forty Two,
Forty Three…”
What if I were to give up now? This time, I imagine I am counting not steps, but sheep.
“...Seventy One,
Seventy Two,
Seventy Three
Seventy Four...”
What if I were to have an accident, a fall?
“...One hundred and eighty three,
One hundred and eighty four,
On hundred and eighty five -“
I stop counting.
“Daniel!”
How could I have missed a step?
I slip,
I trip,
I tumble,
I fall.
Was this an accident? I don’t know, I can’t recall.
I seem to fly through time and space before my head hits the ground hard. Sticky, hot, liquid blood coats the 186th step - the goal. I gasp, the sun piercing my blue eyes as I lay on the floor.
There is agonizing pain for a second. What just happened? Where am I? Have I lost all sanity in my mind? The heat must have gotten to me, because I can see a white light, I can hear my dead mother, I can smell fresh bread.
“Daniel!” A familiar voice sounds, distant and far away.
Am I dreaming? I wonder.
No. It is called the Stairway of Death for a reason, and at last, my mind sings to me.
Daniel,
Your legs have carried you
186 steps up
And 186 down.
There is no more burden in tow.
You reap what you sow.