Mrs. Schächter, like Moishe, is another good and kind character. She is a middle-aged woman. She wasn’t guilty of anything, but who cares? She goes crazy after she’s separated from her husband and packed into a cattle car headed to Auschwitz. Throughout the long nights in the train, she punctuates the imprisoned Jews’ journey with screaming and rambling about fire and flames, warning and begging the Jews to see the fire. She was trying to protect people. But no. Unwilling to listen to her warnings, the Jews beat her rather than acknowledge the danger they are in. She does not only foreshadow the death that is to come for all of them but the literal way everybody will die—their bodies burned in the furnace of Auschwitz.
Mrs. Schächter in the Essays
Author: Wilma Daniels