Antelme marching with others, led by the SS, through the woods. A column of 4000 silent men marching through silent trees. Then: shots: first, a deluge, then more isolated. The men do not turn. One of their number has been shot. The column moves ahead. In the silence they hear ‘the sound of solitary fear and nocturnal, diabolical terror’. Terror: but the column march, they can only march. What will happen? Each fears another 50 will die – then another 50; perhaps they will all be killed. Meanwhile, they must march and march until there is no more column for the SS to lead.
An Italian is summoned by the SS: ‘Du, komm heir!’. The SS man is looking for a man to kill; anyone will do. The victim blushes. He knows he has been selected by chance. He does not ask: ‘why me? Why not another?’; there are no criteria. None of the marchers is worth more or less than anyone else.
The column is silent. Each tries to ready himself to be chosen at random to die. Each is afraid for himself, but Antelme notes ‘we probably have never felt such solidarity with each other, never felt so replaceable by absolutely anybody at all’. Think of the one who stood next to the Italian. Hearing: ‘Du, komm heir!’ and seeing another go forward in his place, Antelme writes, he 'must have felt half his body stripped naked'.
Nakedness, nudity, exposure: someone will die in your place, just as you might die in the place of another. It is the possibility of this mortal substitution which allows each to feel solidarity with the other.