Bohdan Szozeck's care for and protection of Dov Cohn

Bohdan Szozeck's care for and protection of Dov Cohn gives the novel one of its clearest pictures of prisoners trying to look after one another inside a system designed to destroy them. Bohdan is more than an older companion: he watches over a bereaved fifteen-year-old, and, when he believes he is about to be taken, makes one last journey to warn the boy rather than leave him searching blindly. Dov's testimony preserves both the intimacy of that bond and the danger that ultimately surrounds it.

A young survivor and his protectors

Dov Cohn is a fifteen-year-old German Jew whom the narrator locates in Block 4(vi) of Kat Zet III, a camp still under construction and then housing a colony of builders. He had already been separated from nearly his entire family. In autumn 1941, he and his relatives were driven from a Jews' House in Dresden and taken to Theresienstadt camp. On the next transport, his mother, four younger sisters, three grandparents, two aunts, and eight younger cousins were selected to the left. His father and two uncles survived for about three months while digging drainage ditches; after that, Dov was alone.

The narrator learns that Bohdan had been Dov's Pikkolo, a term Hannah Doll used for a younger companion or charge whom an older prisoner looked after. The narrator distinguishes this from Piepl, a more explicitly sexual term: Pikkolo could describe a relationship of guardianship. Hannah had seen Dov in the Dolls' garden and described the two prisoners as very close. Their connection therefore extended beyond a brief assignment of practical help: Bohdan had become someone Dov could identify as looking out for him after the destruction of his family.

Bohdan was not the only person to take responsibility for Dov. Asked who cared for him, Dov reluctantly names Stumpfegger; he also confirms that Professor Szozeck had done so for a time, but is gone. The answer makes Bohdan's absence tangible without suggesting that Dov had no other support. It also shows that the care of a vulnerable boy was passed between people within a landscape where protectors themselves could disappear.

The warning at the villa

Before his last morning, Bohdan walked from the Stammlager to see Dov. He came to say goodbye and specifically warned him not to look for him at the villa. Bohdan then returned, already convinced that they would come for him. The visit turns their closeness into an act of protection under imminent threat: Bohdan could not promise Dov safety or explain away his own fear, but he could prevent the boy from going to the villa in search of someone who had told him not to come.

Dov's certainty about what was happening is stark. When the narrator asks whether Bohdan knew that they would come for him, Dov confirms that he did. The account does not present the farewell as a hopeful misunderstanding. Bohdan had anticipated what awaited him, and the warning was the last thing he could do for the boy he had been guarding.

Compassion witnessed as weakness

Dov also recounts the scene that helps explain Bohdan's fear. On his last morning, Bohdan had gone to the Ka Be to have the dressing on his infected knee changed, so he reached the villa garden later than usual. He was in the conservatory when Paul Doll came reeling out of the breakfast room in pyjamas, one hand pressed to his face. For a moment, Bohdan mistook the disoriented commandant for a prisoner. Doll then saw a tortoise crossing the lawn, picked up a shovel, and struck its shell with the flat blade.

Bohdan did not hide. He went out to help Paul Doll, placed him on a stool in the shade, and fetched him a bottle of water. Doll waved him away. Dov later asks why Bohdan did not hide, giving voice to the practical terror of a boy who understood that being seen could be fatal. Bohdan's action was nevertheless characteristic of the care Dov describes: even when confronted with a powerful man behaving violently, he responded by helping the person in distress. In this instance, the act of mercy exposed him to danger rather than earning protection.

Dov identifies what made the encounter perilous: Bohdan had been present when Paul Doll showed weakness, and had seen him cry. The episode reverses the usual direction of power without changing its brutal terms. For a brief moment the commandant is helpless and the prisoner offers water; afterward, the witness understands that such knowledge can mark Bohdan for removal. The text connects Bohdan's anticipated fate not to a failure of care but to the danger of having seen past the authority Doll performed.

Dov's testimony and the bond's afterlife

The relationship reaches the reader through Dov's recollection, prompted by the narrator's search for what happened to Bohdan. The narrator had pieced together a possible sequence of events, but Dov supplies the decisive human details: Bohdan had been his protector, had come to say goodbye, and had warned him away from the villa. His testimony shifts the account from conjecture about camp events to the specific knowledge of someone Bohdan tried to protect.

After listening, the narrator gives Dov the rest of his Camels and ten US dollars, telling him to put them somewhere safe. That small exchange does not replace Bohdan's guardianship, nor does it resolve what became of the boy. It does, however, continue the chain of attention opened by Bohdan: Dov is heard, his account is taken seriously, and someone offers him a modest material precaution. The relation's significance lies in that fragile continuity. Bohdan's warning cannot undo the camp's violence, but it survives in Dov's memory as evidence of care practiced within it.