The Gravedigger's Promise

*This is based on a true story, as it was told to me by my great uncle Eddie. It's not pleasant, but he'd be happy to know it's being told.*

Eddie Weinstein wiped the sweat from his palms on the back of his pants. His heart pounded as if it wanted nothing more than to burst forth from within his chest, sprout legs, and make a dash for the woods.

God, I’m not ready for this, Eddie thought, but who could be ready for such a thing? 

Not being ready—not being able to predict the future—that’s what led to this day, after all. No, Eddie wasn’t gifted with any sort of foresight, and if he was, maybe this land wouldn’t feel so unnatural. He looked around at the trees, the ones that hid him beneath their dense shade at a time when hiding was the only option he had. In those days, he felt like a worm, a worthless coward who could do nothing but lay in his moss-covered hole and wait for someone to rescue him.

He still felt that way, on the bad nights, when the cries of the little ones filled his head. The images of their reality-riddled faces broke him day-after-day. No one so young should see the devil in man’s clothing. He wondered if any of those children made it past the fences built by ruthless hands. As far as he knew, none had. None but him. It isn’t fair. He clenched his fist and felt his nail pierce the skin on his liver-spotted hand. 

It never is. 

“Eddie, dear,” a voice called, “are you ready?” 

Eddie turned to see Judy, the love of his life and the first person who had helped him make sense of the world. Like Eddie, Judy was a survivor—she, her sister Charlotte, and their family had fled Poland right before the round-ups happened. Before, the ghettos popped up in the hearts of towns that were once pinnacles of joy. Twisted, darkness filled the ghettos, and that darkness grew each day one spent inside—something Eddie could attest to, but Judy luckily, could not. No, Judy and her family got out of Poland before the nightmare grew fouler, but her path was not an easy one. When she arrived in the states, only her sister stepped off the boat with her; what happened to the rest of Judy’s family is a mystery to this day. Eddie had the luxury (if one could call this kind of knowledge a luxury) of knowing what had happened to his family. They were in the crowd for his speech. Waiting. 

He felt tears well up.

“Eddie, if you need more time—”

“No, no,” Eddie cleared his throat, “I believe I’ve had more time than most. I’m ready.” 

He wasn’t’. 

No one could ever be ready to deliver the speech he had been chosen to give. He’d gone over what he wanted to say for the past 60 years, but still, he didn’t know if he could make the words come out. Not even as a child had Eddie envisioned himself being in a position to speak to so many, to tell his tale to millions, to be atop a stage—albeit one this important. But he made a promise, a promise that started in the Ghettos of Poland. A promise that traveled in a train car packed with more humans. A promise that he made right where he stood now—Treblinka.

Eddie bent down and picked up a handful of gravel. He smelled the air; it was crisp yet lifeless as if the Earth itself knew the history of the place. He looked up at an innocent sky that had no notion of the living-hell that had taken root in the dirt below it so many years ago. After all this time, Eddie Weinstein was back in the place where he’d nearly died trying to escape. The bullet wound in his leg ached, and Eddie gently massaged it. Maybe the scar has a memory of its own?

His hands certainly did; they were shaking so much he wouldn’t dare pick up a glass of water. They remember, alright. They remember the digging. The hours of shoveling out ditches large enough to bury his friends and family. Large enough to bury the parents of the children that would wait by his side as the SS soldiers would drop in new batches of corpses, hoping to God that their parents weren’t the ones getting covered in mud and dirt. 

The children! 

Images of little skeletal things, all sunken-eyes and bones, filled his mind. They had come every single day to watch Eddy, the gravedigger. So many of them. Some no more than a few years old, barely able to speak, yet they understood what was happening. Just not why it was happening. When they gave Eddy the job of the gravedigger, he thought it would help his chances of survival. It was a job that had been in constant demand in the camps. That thought alone disgusts Eddie to this day, but survival was the only way to think back then. So, Eddie dug the graves. He dug them for days. He dug them in the rain and in snow. He dug them while the children watched. 

But then he stopped.

He stopped digging the day he found the body of one of the younger children in the pit of adult corpses. The lad had often sat near Eddy as he dug, but now, there was a bullet in his emaciated head. Eddie could remember shouting at the German officer monitoring him, a reckless choice, but his rage burned too great for caution.

“Why? Why is this child here?” Eddie had shouted. 

“It was asking me too many questions,” The officer smiled. “I don’t like questions.”  

That was when the officer had shot Eddie in the leg. 

Eddie couldn’t remember everything that happened next, he was in a bit of shock, but he was escorted away by his friend Izrael. The instructions were to take Eddie to the chambers, but Izrael had other plans; his friend took Eddie into the laundry building and hid him beneath a pile of clothes that were to be transported out. As silly as it sounds, the plan worked; the guards didn’t check his bin, and during the transport, Eddie was able to hop off the train, wounded leg and all. He hid in the woods behind where he stood now. For weeks he stove off infection while hiding in a hole not even fit for a gopher. Somehow, whether through the grace of God or sheer luck, Eddie Weinstein lived. 

He lived while so many others did not. He lived with a promise, a promise to never, ever, forget. Because the past is a knife dulled by time, but with the right person, it can be sharpened anew. Eddie lived to make sure that knife would never meet a new blacksmith. That it would never regain its vile edge.

That was Eddie's promise. And today, he was going to tell the millions listening that he had tried his best to keep it. 

Judy grabbed his hand, and he felt the tremors stop. He looked at her and she at him. She smiled. That was all he needed. It was time for Eddy to speak. Eddie Weinstein walked out onto the old tracks that led to Treblinka. He looked out to his audience, and the tears started to fall. 

There wasn’t a living person within fifty miles of where Treblinka stood, but Eddie knew his audience was there...all six million of them.