Cattle Metaphor
Simon believes that the people outside the prison view the prisoners not as men being marched and worked to their deaths, but as cattle being taken to the slaughterhouse. This is a metaphor for the way in which they view the prisoners as men who are doomed to die anyway and for whom any intervention would be fruitless.
Askari Symbol
The Russian soldiers who had defected and went to work under the Nazis were called Askaris, which was what the black people who had fought with the Germans in East Africa had been called. This was a metaphor for the fact that the Russians were fighting against their own, and also for the way in which the Nazis saw them as second class citizens and almost their slaves, rather than as their equals.
Death Certificate Metaphor
"Each of us carried around our own death certificate with only the date missing." This is a metaphor for the way in which the locals surrounding the camp saw the Jewish prisoners, rather like dead men walking, whose death was inevitable, but as yet had no specific date on it.
Machines Simile
'We marched like machines along the street". This is a simile Simon uses to convey that the prisoners; brains no longer had the need to, or capacity for, making decisions, but that they marched as if programmed to do so and largely because the people in front were marching before them.
Kick the Bucket Metaphor
To kick the bucket is a metaphor for dying. It's origins stem from centuries ago when men were hung from the gallows; they would stand on top of a bucket in order to reach the noose, and then the hangman would kick away the bucket they were resting on, leading to their hanging and subsequent death.
