WurmbrandНамуна

Easter dawned on room 4 with unusual force. Richard’s ministry had turned atheists into Christians, murderers into ministers, and prisoners into preachers. That morning, a prisoner smuggled in a package and handed it to Valeriu Gafencu, an Iron Guard trooper.

“Open it!” someone shouted.

Gafencu unwrapped the paper, revealing two small lumps of sugar. The prisoners couldn’t believe their eyes. Years had passed since they had seen the enticing white substance. Their bodies, having wasted away from malnourishment, craved even the slightest taste of the sugar’s sweetness. Everyone watched Gafencu as he decided what to do with the Easter gift. He rewrapped the sugar in its paper shelter and placed it beside his bed.

“I won’t eat it yet,” he said. “Someone might be worse off than I during the day.”

Several days later, Richard’s head throbbed from fever. He grew so faint he couldn’t even sit up. The inmates passed the sugar from bed to bed until it reached him.

Richard thought for a moment about eating it. Everything in his body yearned for the irresistible cubes, but he declined. A few days later, he gave the sugar to Soteris, an aged Greek Communist  on the verge of death. Soteris had fled to Romania at the end of the Greek Civil War, and even though he was arrested for cowardly combat, he always seized the chance to brag about his exploits. At Mount Athos, where monks had not seen a woman for two thousand years, Soteris had brought a band of young ladies.

“You should’ve seen those old boys run!” he crowed, giddy with pride.

As death approached, Soteris begged God to save him. Richard guided the former atheist brute into eternity with gentle whispers of God’s love and forgiveness.

For two years the prisoners shuffled the sugar cubes from one man to another, each surrendering the package to someone in a more desperate condition. Not one man was selfish enough to devour the precious white grains.