Vénissieux Camp
August 27, 1942
Despite his exhaustion, Justus had not been able to sleep at all. One thought consumed him: getting out of the camp. He did not know why he kept fighting. The animal instinct surpassed reason. He was young with abundant energy and simultaneously alone and lonely. The only way to deal with his situation was to hold fast to the fight and resist. He was not born to give in.
Samuel, who had arrived at the camp before Justus, showed him where the bathroom was and then the mess hall. There, Justus introduced his bunkmate to Lazarus and the young men he had befriended on the truck the day before.
“Are you still thinking about how to get out of here?” Lazarus asked.
“What other option do we have? Let ourselves be led like lambs to the slaughter? I’d rather die fighting.”
Lazarus and his two friends looked at Justus with a mixture of admiration and fear. They were drawn to his confidence and clarity of thought.
Inside the mess hall, they were served watered-down coffee and black bread. It was far from filling to four growing young men.
“You see the hogwash the French give us? So just imagine what the Germans will do to us,” Justus said, trying his best to gnaw off chunks of the hard, tasteless bread.
Abraham asked, “How will you get out of here?”
“Well, I’m going to fake peritonitis. It’s hard to detect and very dangerous. They’ll have to take me to the hospital, and the security won’t be as tight there.”
Lazarus and his friends were unimpressed. They had begun to think of Justus as a kind of savior who could help them all get out of their circumstances.
“So then how can we get out?” Lazarus finally said.
At first, Justus had no answer. He did not feel qualified to give advice, but he came up with something. “Ambulances are pretty big, and underneath they have crossbars for the suspension or something. If you grab on to them from underneath, you could maybe get out without being seen.”
“That’s a crazy plan,” Juan said, breaking his silence.
Justus shrugged. It was the best he could come up with, and he felt like he had done his duty by them. His plan could cost them all their lives. If the gendarmes discovered them and stopped the ambulance, they would all get sent back to camp.
“Well, we’ll try it anyhow,” Lazarus said.
Samuel was unconvinced. “Not me, friends. You three go ahead, but I’ll figure out something else.”
* * *
There were fewer people at the infirmary than the day before. Several patients had died, but many others had recovered enough from the long bus journey to go to the barracks.
Justus put his hand on his stomach. He went inside the infirmary and explained to one of the nurses that he felt really bad and was in a lot of pain.
“You can lie down here,” she said and went to get the doctor.
Jean Adam came directly from the commission meeting as most of the other Amitié Chrétienne workers dispersed for their various tasks.
“What’s going on, young man?” he asked Justus kindly.
“It hurts really bad here on my side. I don’t know what it is.”
“Does it hurt here?” The doctor applied pressure to the skin.
“Yes, a lot.”
Jean Adam frowned. “It could be peritonitis. I’ll have to send you to the hospital right away for an operation.”
Justus nodded but, to his surprise, the doctor leaned over and whispered, “When you get to the hospital, fake it on the other side. The appendix is on the right.”
Justus was momentarily speechless.
“Nurse!” Dr. Adam called. “Call for the ambulance! This young man has to get to the hospital right away!”
Within minutes, two men with a stretcher were carrying Justus to the ambulance. As soon as they went to the front, two of Justus’s new friends hid below the ambulance, and Juan crept into the back.
“What are you doing?” Justus asked, startled.
“It’s a terrible idea to hide underneath, but there’s room for me here.” Juan crouched down under the stretcher and covered up with a blanket.
At the camp gate, the gendarmes stopped the ambulance and checked the drivers’ paperwork. They opened the back doors and gave a cursory glance before waving the vehicle through.
A few miles down the road, when the ambulance stopped at an intersection, Lazarus and Abraham let themselves fall to the ground. Juan slipped out and shut the door gently behind him, ducking so that the driver would not see him in the mirror. The boys were already hidden in a clump of trees when the ambulance started up again. They had agreed to try to find Justus in Valence and escape south together, crossing into Spain.
Fifteen minutes later, Justus arrived at the hospital. The medics took him right away to the operating room. Justus tried to talk with the doctor, but a nurse placed a mask over his face, and he was soon in deep sleep. Two hours later he woke to searing pain in his right side. He looked down in horror to find an angry incision still red with blood. His plan had worked too well. They had indeed removed his appendix.