Fifteen-year-old Thomas Gève had survived the selection for the gas chambers thanks to the protection of German Communist prisoners in the camp, who assigned the tall German Jewish boy to work alongside them on their building brigade. As their open goods wagons pulled through the crowded Silesian stations, Gève was struck by something unprecedented. German civilians were looking at the freezing prisoners in their striped concentration camp clothing with envy and resentment: for they had places on a train.6
