The bed next to me is occupied now. Wolfgang was replaced quickly.

I recovered from my stomach-ache. But not from my inclination to stay up late after bedtime. My new neighbour, exhausted by the Kalish routine, sleeps like a log as soon as his head hits the pillow.

So I’m bored. But I’ve got an idea, one I’ve been harbouring for a while.

Girls.

We’re separated from them. You get a glimpse of them when they arrive and climb out of the trucks, and then poof! They disappear. But I know they go through the selection process before leaving. Here, at night. I know they’re completely naked for the selection process.

I get out of bed and find the warden. Of course, rather than telling her I’m going to spy on naked girls, I tell her that I have to speak to Doctor Ebner. It’s late and the warden is grumpy; she frowns, hesitates, and then lets me go. She doesn’t have a choice; she’s obliged to agree to requests from BBFH, especially when he asks for his protector, Doctor Ebner. Especially since Wolfgang’s death. Because, since that day, BBFH treats the wardens like shit. He tells on them when he sees them smoking in secret. He tells on them when he sees them going to rendezvous with soldiers outside the monastery wall. Or when they sneak some of the supplies. Or when they’re on their break and they turn off the radio during a broadcast of one of our Führer’s speeches. BBFH denounces them at every opportunity, even when they’re not breaking a rule. BBFH is not afraid to lie. BBFH knows that the Führer encourages people to inform on others.

The selection of newcomers takes place in two basement rooms: one for boys, and one for girls. When I ask Doctor Ebner’s permission to stay with him in the boys’ room, he seems surprised, but doesn’t say no. Johanna Sander has told him how well behaved I am, and what a good influence I am on my buddies. Sometimes, of course, I do misbehave, but hardly ever and, besides, my occasional slip-ups make me seem more like a real little Polish kid in the eyes of my buddies. My nightly wanderings annoy the staff but, after all, isn’t insomnia a sign of a strong character? My presence during the selection process could be useful. Dirty and exhausted, after their long train trip in overcrowded carriages, the new arrivals would see a flesh-and-blood example of what Kalish will make of them in a few weeks: an attractive, lively child with pink cheeks, clean hair and smart clothes. (BBFH’s cheeks and clothes no longer sport traces of Wolfgang’s blood, and now he’s got a smile on his beautiful angel face.) I would calm their fears.

Doctor Ebner agrees on condition that I stay in the corner and don’t interrupt. I promise to be as good as gold. I sit on a stool and I’m so quiet that after a while no one notices when I slip into the next room.

It was a good move; there are lots of girls! Blonde, blue-eyed (maybe I won’t bother mentioning those particular details anymore), aged between two and twelve. And, just as I’d imagined, they’re all naked. I’m only interested in the older ones, not the little girls, who snivel when a warden takes away their teddy bear or a favourite toy they’d managed to hold on to during their kidnapping.

The older ones are snivelling too, because a warden with a club is hitting them—to make them drop their arms and stop trying to cover their breasts. It’s just a gentle tap; they can’t be damaged before the selection process. I don’t see why the girls are carrying on like that. They’ve got nothing to hide. Just two little budding titties, some more prominent than others. Most are mere bulges, nothing resembling decent breasts.

It’s funny how they obediently drop their arms, only to put their hands straightaway over their lower belly to hide what’s down below. So, hey presto, another hit from the club to keep their arms at their sides. And they’ve got nothing to hide down there either, in my opinion. No pubic hair at all. Nothing, just the outline of the slit between two bits of pink flesh. I know exactly what that is. I saw it in Poznan when the whores took off their clothes to have sex with the SS soldiers. A big tuft of pubic hair and, underneath, a slit that stretches open, like an elastic band, to let the SS penises in.

The girls line up in front of a Sister in a white lab coat. She measures them with a ruler: head, hips, pelvis. For some it’s over quickly. ‘Bad impression,’ says the Sister, before moving on to the next girl. I can tell that’s a code expression. ‘Bad impression’ means ‘Discard’. Translation: ‘Kill’, or, better: ‘Transfer to a camp.’

On the other hand, those who make a ‘good impression’ (‘Keep’) line up in front of a second Sister in a white lab coat who takes photos of them. A photo of their body, especially their breasts, pelvis and buttocks, and a photo of their face, front-on and profile. At this point—it’s really quite complicated—the girls who made a ‘good impression’ are separated into two groups. One group leaves immediately for the Homeschool in Illenau, a school like Kalish for girls only, where they’ll be Germanised, like my buddies, and then adopted by German families.

The girls in the other group line up in front of a third Sister in a white lab coat. She starts feeling their titties. She squeezes them, pinches them, pulls and pushes them, and measures them. Is she trying to guess what they’ll look like later: large, small, round, pear-shaped, eggs sunny-side up? Will they produce a lot of milk, or not very much?

Next, she makes them lie on a table while she measures their pelvis again, to check her colleague’s earlier calculation, and then she spreads their legs.

To look at their slit.

Now the girls are in a total panic. They start crying again, shouting, their legs shaking so much that a warden is called in to hold them down. They are terrified that the Sister will stick the examination torch right inside their slit. But she doesn’t, obviously. You don’t stick a torch in a slit. That’s where a penis goes. An SS penis. It’s the only thing that can get inside there. I saw it in Poznan.

Once they’re off the examining table, the Sister calls out another code expression: ‘Good for the Führer’s fertility program.’ (That code language is just too obvious; at least for me it is.) To finish off, the girls line up in front of a fourth Sister in a white lab coat, who gives them a tattoo, using an instrument like a long pencil that emits smoke. She draws a sort of lozenge shape on their forearm and on the nape of their neck. It doesn’t look that painful. The girls scream and fight to get out of the clutches of the warden, but, once the pencil starts tattooing, they stop screaming and don’t even flinch.

I need to stop and think. There’s something I don’t get. What’s the difference between the tattooed girls and the others? Tattooed or not, they’re all heading for Illenau; they’re all registered for adoption. But that damned tattoo must have a meaning, some particular purpose? They’ve been branded, so they’ll be recognised.

One girl is making a huge fuss, yelling and throwing herself around so much that all the Sisters have rushed over to help the warden. While they’re distracted, I sneak a look at the adoption register, where I see that the tattooed girls are being marked in a special column headed with the number sixteen.

What on earth does that mean? I’ve only learned code words, not code numbers. Okay, let me work it out like a maths problem. I go over the wording of the problem: the girls get a tattoo after their slit is examined, when the sister says that their slit is ‘good for the Führer’s fertility program’.

I’ve got it!

Sixteen means sixteen-year-old. The tattooed girls are adopted up until the age of sixteen, to give them time to grow, for their slit to get big enough for an SS penis to enter it. That’s it! At sixteen they’re made to have sex with the SS and produce babies. Beautiful blond babies with blue eyes. Presents for the Führer. Just like I was!

So, if I pursue this line of reasoning, the tattooed girls are the whores of the future, who will make babies like me. Does that mean my mother—my biological mother, the one I have no memory of, apart from the stomach-ache when she left me—was also a whore? Is that why, when the teacher asks me in class, I’m the only one who can say that my mother was a whore? I guess so. That could also explain why I got on so well with the whores in Poznan, who liked to pop me on their knees and give me champagne…Yes, that all seems highly likely.

So, in the meantime, the tattooed girls are only future whores. No breasts, no pubic hair. They’re not having much fun. And they’re not fun to look at. The whole show is repetitive: measurements, table, photos, tattoo.

I’m tired. I’m not used to doing maths problems this late at night. It’s bedtime for me.

Back in the other room, I’m about to say goodnight to Doctor Ebner, when I stop in my tracks. Suddenly I’m not tired at all. There’s no way I’m off to bed now. I hop back on my stool again and stare, wide-eyed.

My beautiful, bright, blue eyes fix on a pair of eyes just as beautiful, just as bright, just as blue. Those eyes are mesmerising, with a fierce, arrogant expression, and not the slightest trace of fear. It’s the real thing: the look of one of the Führer’s young wild animals, ready to bare his teeth and pounce. That expression alone says loud and clear, ‘Fuck you, whoever you are.’

Above that pair of eyes, the blond hair has never been stained by dirt or sweat. Those eyes and that hair belong to a boy. He’s tall. You can tell he’s only recently got skinny. Even though his rib cage is visible, his shoulders are broad, and his thigh and calf muscles are prominent. If he were given the same food rations as BBFH, after a few days he’d be back to his normal strength. He’s much older than I am, perhaps twelve, or older? But it’s crazy how much he looks like me. I feel like I’m looking in a mirror at myself in a few years’ time.

This boy is me at his age. This boy could be my older brother.

I even wonder if the mother-whore who gave birth to him is the same as mine? It must be an error. Either the boy is not Polish, or I’m not German. In that case, perhaps the story I like telling my buddies, while we work in the garden in the afternoon, might actually be true? I don’t know. I’m not sure of anything anymore. The only thing I’m certain of is that I want to be with this boy. He has to make it through the selection process, so that we won’t be separated. It’s the first time I’ve understood why, at Poznan station, the children screamed so much when they were torn from their brothers and sisters, and why here, too, brothers are desperate to see each other, to exchange a few words, even if it means they’ll be whipped, or end up in the chapel.

It’s almost the same selection process as for the girls. The boys are naked, but they don’t have to lie on a table for the examination torch (that’s the advantage of having a dick hanging on the outside and nothing inside). But that doesn’t stop the older ones from having the same reflex as the girls, as soon as they’re naked. They cover their dicks with their hands. All except the fierce-looking boy, who couldn’t care less about displaying his dick. And he’s right, because that means he avoids being beaten.

The first doctor (there are two officers in white lab coats, as well as Doctor Ebner) measures the boys. Head, neck, torso, legs, arms. And out come the code words, different ones from those used with the girls. This time they’re saying that the children represent ‘a desirable increase in the population’, ‘a tolerable increase’, or that they’re ‘undesirable’. Too easy. No need to translate that.

The fierce-looking boy is put into the ‘desirable’ group. Phew! He made it through the first stage. As soon as I saw him, I was sure that would be the case, but you never know, and you can’t always trust the measurements, as they have to correspond to a precise grid. He has his photo taken, then he’s sent on to the second doctor. I would have preferred him to be examined by Ebner himself, but he’s supervising the process from his desk, providing a new name and date of birth for the chosen children, without getting directly involved in the selection. I’d really like to ask him to go and oversee his colleague—or, even better, for him to examine the fierce-looking boy himself. Doctor Ebner is infallible, there’s no one better at recognising the specimens of the Nordic race. I’d also like to go and give this advice to the boy: Don’t be frightened, you’ll get through. It was the same deal for me—examination, measurements—at birth, and afterwards. You’ll be fine.

But the boy doesn’t look a bit frightened. He’s not moving at all, not the slightest twitch on his face. It’s like he’s wearing a mask.

A doctor examines his penis. He pulls on it and measures how long it is; he ties a ribbon around it to measure its width; and he pushes up the foreskin and squeezes the head of the penis for a long time, pressing and crushing it, as if he was testing its elasticity. Next he palpates the two balls on either side. (They’re called ‘testicles’.) He weighs them in his hand to make sure they’ve descended into their sacks; perhaps also to calculate, like with the girls’ breasts, whether they’ll end up decent-sized or small and shrivelled. The other boys are terrified, shaking, backing away from those fingers manhandling them so crudely.

But not the fierce-looking boy. On the contrary. For the first time, his face relaxes, his jaw muscles are no longer clenched, his mouth falls open slightly, and there’s a trace of a smile on his lips. His eyes—his beautiful, blue, bright, mesmerising eyes—light up as he stares at the doctor bent over his penis. No child, boy or girl, ever smiles during the selection process. And especially not at this point! What’s up with him? Is it, does it really…feel…like in Poznan, when the whores held the SS dicks in their hands? The SS guys looked like they really liked it; they begged the whores not to stop…But, hang on, something’s wrong. The doctor is a man, not a whore…Oh, I get it. The boy I thought was like our Führer’s young wild animals…like my big brother…he’s just…a homosexual. A homo. A dirty little homo. Oh, no. That’s terrible. The Führer hates homos. Homos have to wear a pink triangle and they get sent to camps. That damn boy, HE’S HAD IT!

No. I’m wrong. The boy is not smiling like that because it feels…whatever…while his dick and balls are being fondled. He’s smiling because right now he is pissing in the doctor’s hands. And we’re not talking about a little accidental dribble. This is one huge intentional piss. A magnificent, powerful spurt of urine that traces a perfect arc and, given the doctor’s position, sprays not just his hands, but his entire face, too.

I’m about to burst out laughing, but I stop myself, terrified.

They’re going to tear him to pieces, smash his beautiful angel face. He’ll be completely disfigured. The doctor who got piss all over his face is furious; he gives the boy a violent punch that knocks him to the ground. So now the boy is pissing blood: his nose is broken and blood is pouring from it. His lip is split. But his little mocking smile is still there, so one of the officers swings his boot and lands him a huge kick in the face, smack in his eyes, his beautiful, bright, blue, mesmerising eyes. They won’t stay like that for long. His right eye is already swollen, his eyelids puffy, and his cheekbones are sunken.

‘Filthy dog! Piece of shit! Polish vermin!’ bawls the officer, as he signals the guard on duty at the door.

I know what that means: ‘Take him away!’ ‘Kill him!’

No! I don’t want this boy killed!

Just as I’m about to leap from my stool and get Doctor Ebner to intervene, he himself gestures to the soldier who has the boy by the hair. He gives the order for silence and asks the doctor to bring him the sheet of paper with the measurements of the dick that pissed on him.

Let’s hope it measures up well. I’m quite convinced there’s nothing to worry there—his dick is beautiful! And his balls too! Well descended. And they’re big! What’s more, I can’t believe Doctor Ebner hasn’t noticed the physical resemblance between this boy and me. He’s a ‘desirable’ of the highest quality. They can’t kill him just because he pissed on an officer. (I try to erase the memory of Wolfgang, killed for a much more minor misdemeanour.)

The boy lies sprawled on the ground, dazed after the blows he’s just received. A few minutes pass while Ebner stares at him. My heart is racing. Ebner should have looked at him earlier, when his nose wasn’t bleeding and his eyelids weren’t swollen. Now he looks like nothing on earth, and no longer like me, that’s for sure.

I’m waiting for Ebner’s verdict. I’ve got pins and needles in my arms and legs, I’m struggling to breathe, my chest is heaving faster and faster, and my fingernails are digging into my hands because my fists are clenched so tightly. I just want to go and punch that officer’s face in. And Ebner’s too, if his verdict is negative. Or better still: have I got time to run over and grab the gun in the soldier’s belt? For sure. I’m a fast runner. This place has taught me that. As soon as I’ve got the gun, I’ll shoot anyone who moves.

Silence. Three seconds more and I’m off. Then, finally, Doctor Ebner orders the soldier to take the boy to the warden in charge of handing out clean clothes, so that he can then get in line outside Ebner’s office.

End of incident. Everyone gets back to work, and I can breathe again.

He’s through. He just has to wait his turn. Once he receives his new name and date of birth, he’ll be sent to the big kids’ dormitory, where I’ll go and find him. I can’t wait to see what name he’ll be given.

When his turn comes round, Ebner consults his notes for the boy’s Polish name and date of birth, then dictates to his secretary:

‘Lukas. Born 18th March, 1932.’

Lukas. Lukas, with a ‘K’, like Konrad, like Krupp steel. Excellent choice. I love that name. But, the date of birth…I do the maths in my head: 1942–1932 = 10. Lukas isn’t ten, he’s at least two years older. Doctor Ebner knows that, but he also knows that German families don’t adopt children older than ten. The false birthdate shows that Doctor Ebner is convinced Lukas will make a perfect German adolescent, a magnificent Jungmann.

But…

‘Mam na imie¸ Lucjan! A nie Lukas! Jestem Polakiem! A nie Niemcem!’

Oh, what an idiot! What’s the matter with you? Have you got rocks in your head?

‘My name is Lucjan! Not Lukas! I’m Polish, not German.’

That’s what he just shouted at Doctor Ebner, staring straight at him.

The warden immediately raises her whip and belts him. The boy ignores it and shouts the same thing again.

A second lash of the whip, which knocks him to the ground like before. But he lifts his head and shouts, ‘Lucjan! Ma na imie¸ Lucjan!’

A third lash of the whip. His new clothes are all torn, and his skin underneath, too, striped with three long red welts from which blood is pouring.

A fourth lash of the whip.

That’s the one I took. When I leaped off my stool and threw myself on top of Lukas.