The officer reached for Moses and grabbed him with his knife-wielding hand. Moses whimpered in terror as more tears fell.
“You’d better give up, buddy, if you don’t want your little prig brother to have a bad time,” the policeman called to Jacob, breathing hard.
“Let my brother go, you pig!” Jacob screamed in fury.
Moses seized the moment to bite the policeman’s hand as hard as he could, and the gendarme pulled his hand back with a howl. Joseph jumped on the man’s back, but the gendarme whirled around like a madman with the child clinging to his neck. Moses kicked him hard in the groin, bringing him to his knees with another howl. Jacob sent his knee firmly into the man’s face, and the other boys pummeled him with all their strength.
Before long the policeman had collapsed on the floor. Jacob searched him for the key to the door, opened it, and the boys flew out of the room. They did not stop running until they were as far as possible from the gendarme. They climbed to the top tier of stands and mixed in with a group of children playing games led by a few women trying to make their confinement a little less unbearable.
“What are we going to do?” Joseph whispered to his friends.
“We’ve got to be more careful, stay out of sight, figure something out at night. We’ve just . . . We’ve got to get out of here,” Jacob said.
Moses was still white as a sheet. “I’m scared,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” Jacob consoled him. “I won’t let them do anything to you.” Then he quirked an eyebrow. “Hey, did you see his face when you kicked him in the crotch? You’re a real hero!”
The three boys grinned. At least they had escaped uninjured. When they had fully calmed down, they snuck back to their hideout in the basement of the velodrome.
Once night had fallen and the buzz of voices had quieted, they reemerged from their hiding place. They hoped the gendarme would not be out at those hours of the night, much less after the beating the man had endured. But they needed to stock up on food for their escape before the police searched the entire stadium to find the boys who had beaten an officer.
Jacob crept to the food tent, taking care that he was not being watched, and slipped in as the other two boys stood guard. On the left, Joseph watched the main entrance and the stands. Any sign of alarm would complicate things. Moses kept his eyes on the lower entryway and the guards who made their rounds.
All around they heard the background noise of the whining, crying, and coughing of thousands of prisoners crammed together inside the stadium. The main stadium lights were off, but the emergency lights and some from the main track remained lit.
It left Joseph in a stupor to see the masses of people spent by hunger, heat, and fear. He wondered if they could at least find refuge for a few hours in dreams, clinging like shipwreck victims to the vanishing remains of life. He imagined his parents and siblings in a place like the velodrome, then tried to get the picture out of his mind.
Moses heard a wail and saw a dirty, naked little girl crying and moving all around her mother. Her eyes were swollen and tears made a mess of her face, the part not covered by matted blond hair. The mother looked to be asleep, but when the child knelt and shook her, Moses understood the woman was dead. All around them slept an indifferent crowd. The dehumanizing objectives of the cruel French police and the Germans for the terrified, humiliated masses were being met.
A chill ran up Moses’s entire body. Then he felt a hand dig into his shoulder. He did not want to look around, but the dark uniform left no room for doubt. “I knew the rats would come out sooner or later,” a voice growled. Fat, sweaty fingers grasped Moses’s clothes, and the boy felt something slice through his thin shirt. He screamed, and two more policemen approached. Joseph turned at the noise and saw his friend’s face, his eyes bulging in terror. There was nothing Joseph could do. He fled to the stands to hide in the shadows.
Jacob’s heart skipped several beats when he heard his brother’s scream. He hesitated. If he ran to help him, he would surely be caught—but he could not