Football in Auschwitz

Our footballing team did especially well that summer [of 1944]. Our legs had grown terribly spindly by then; but, contrary to what people are wont to believe, an emaciated state can be singularly advantageous from an aerodynamics standpoint. Shocked you would have been, dear, to have seen us in those days, our bony little legs whirling around and around like the spokes of active wagon wheels. It became a point of pride with us and a matter for boast to see which among us had skinnier calves. Ideally, the curve of a fellow's calf had atrophied into a straightness like that of a stick, for the thinnest among us were always the first to be picked by the captains of the footballing teams.