Last Stop Auschwitz Read online

  When Hans entered the ward with his bowl of soup, people yelled out to him from all sides. “Pfleger, give me some soup.” They pulled out the margarine they’d saved up and their bread from the previous day to buy the soup from Hans.

  There were plenty of Pfleger who played along with things like that. The camp had a fully functioning black market. There were even fairly fixed prices. A liter of soup went for half a ration of bread or a whole ration of margarine. Some Pfleger and room orderlies exchanged five or more liters of soup for better quality food every day. There were even doctors who smuggled bowls of soup out of the window for some extra margarine. If caught, they would be kicked out of the Krankenbau, but they didn’t let themselves get caught. Hans stayed aloof from all this buying and selling. It wasn’t that he was so very virtuous; he didn’t need it as badly.

  Back downstairs, Zimmer called him to one side and pressed a packet in his hand. “This week’s package arrived today.”

  Hans had to disappear quickly with his packet. The other Poles weren’t allowed to see it; they would ridicule Zimmer for his kindness. He opened it in a corner of the nurses’ room. It contained two apples, a piece of cake, and a piece of bacon. He ate one of the apples and a bit of the cake immediately, hiding the rest under his mattress for Friedel. Then back to work: washing up bowls, sweeping the room. Kuczemba, the quartermaster, called. There was bread that had to be fetched and he needed a couple of sturdy lads: 120 loaves of bread—that was 375 pounds—in a carrying frame. Then another kettle Kommando: evening tea. On top of it all, a ticking off from Paul: “Du Dreckhund, haven’t you seen that tea’s been spilt on the outside steps?” The outside steps were one of Hans’s responsibilities. “A job like that’s an honor. The steps are our block’s visiting card. You have to do your best to honor our block. Go and clean them up, fast. Give them a good scrub. Throw a couple of buckets of water over them, then with the broom. Yes, you know how.”

  Hans certainly did. He ran through the corridors with the buckets of water like a man possessed and made as much fuss as possible to show everyone how hard he was working. That way he avoided one of his bosses reserving him for a subsequent job and was able, once he’d mopped the excess water off the steps, to slip into Ward 3 for a moment.

  Ward 3 was the psychiatric department, where Eli Polak was the doctor. Eli was sitting in his corner at a table and staring drowsily into space. He was always a bit down and never seemed to have much energy. Although he was only thirty-five and physically robust, he often gave the impression of being a worn-out old man who wasn’t up to anything anymore.

  It was understandable. Just three weeks after coming to Auschwitz he had heard that his wife and child—like all women with small children—had gone to Birkenau and “up the chimney” immediately after arriving from Holland.

  “You know,” he began telling Hans, “I was standing in my line. My wife was loaded onto the truck and I believe she fainted right then. I think somehow she’d caught on to what was going to happen.”

  “Don’t talk rubbish,” Hans snapped. He felt powerless to comfort Eli and in situations like this people often hide their embarrassment behind coarseness. “What could she have noticed? And you know very well that they would have gone to the crematorium no matter what, whether she fainted or not.”

  Then Walter started: “In the name of the Führer, I, Walter, have been chosen as the thousand-year Reich’s eternal delegate to the moon. I am the ruler over all stars and planets. My sister gave me three Reichsmarks and that enabled me to maintain my economic control over the Hermann Göring Works. With our new weapons I have succeeded in tightening my hold on the universe and in the name of the trinity—Hitler, Goebbels, and Göring—I am the viceroy of the great regions. My power knows no bounds. The Führer commands. The crazies in the ward will now hold a free election. Vote, vote, vote. You first, you dead loss, you sleepyhead, vote for the salvation of our Pan-Germanic empire. You damned democrat, will you wake up for once?”

  He gave the poor imbecile who shared a bed with him a good shaking and hit him hard on the head. The man sat up and muttered something incomprehensible.

  “Millions, millions are marching under our banners. Our blood has impregnated the eternal Goddess of Truth and she has given birth to the Führer, who will show us the way to the greatest realm of perfection. My children are the worms of blood and soil, their castings fertilize the earth that brings forth the corn with which we will withstand the blockade of England. You dirty, disbelieving dog. Get up. March in our ranks. Judenblut spritzt vom Messer. Everything is in our favor. March!”

  And again he hit and kicked the poor bald-headed fool, who in his fear raised his hands to Walter in supplication. Eli had gone over and was trying to calm Walter down.

  “That’s right, Walter, the procession is tomorrow. You have to go to sleep today.”

  “I shall never sleep, Doctor. I am Siegfried, watching over the eternal maiden Brünhilde. She is slumbering in the tavern with the dragon, the Führer’s father. I am the bodyguard of the brown blood. I am the banner of triumph. Hurrah, hurrah! I am Germania’s son. Our columns are marching. March, march!”

  He had leapt out of bed and was now marching back and forth across the room while roaring in ecstasy. All the madmen were in an uproar under Walter’s rabble-rousing influence. Sitting on the sides of their beds, they were swinging their arms and legs. Pathetic idiots, otherwise completely calm, were slurring out inarticulate songs. A blissfully smiling hydrocephalic beat time on his bowl, while his cataract-covered eyes bulged in his horrifically swollen head.

  Walter carried on marching, with Eli in hot pursuit.

  “I am the boss. I am the apostle. I am the Führer of the whole madhouse.”

  “That’s right,” Hans said.

  Then the roar of swearing drowned out the tumult: “Herrgott Sakrament, verflucht noch mal—what’s going on here?” It was Paul, who had been alerted by the hullaballoo and had come to investigate.

  It was soon over. He grabbed Walter by the scruff of the neck and sat him down on his bed. The whole meeting started to ebb away. “Give him an injection, Polak. What are you standing there for, you good-for-nothings?”

  Eli gave Walter his injection and things gradually calmed down. Paul pulled a chair up to the table.

  “Listen, lads, you can’t let things get out of hand so quickly. I’ve been in this madhouse for ten years now. You think I’m going to let myself be bullied around by a nutcase who thinks he’s the Führer? The Führer himself hasn’t cut me down to size yet.”

  “Achtung!” rang through the building. Paul ran out of the room. Eli started cleaning his needle and Hans grabbed a broom and began sweeping diligently. “Bewegung!”

  It was the SDG on his daily round. At first he’d ranted and raved, but recently he’d been mild. Zielina, the head doctor, had discovered his weak spot: now when the SDG went into the Blockältester’s room, there was always a packet of cigarettes waiting for him. The Poles were happy to take turns offering one up out of their packages to avoid troublesome inspections. They could keep clothes in their beds, cook in the big stove now and then, and commit lots of other small transgressions. It wouldn’t last much longer. The SDG would soon be transferred and a new one would come in his place. The camp leadership knew all too well that every guard, no matter how fierce, eventually comes to some level of accommodation with his prisoners. That’s why the SDGs and all those who had a lot of contact with the Häftlinge were regularly transferred.

  Three weeks later the new SDG showed up. He was a tall man with a blond mustache. He came to look around a little the first day and seemed very moderate. But a few days later he ordered all of the patients in the Polish ward out of bed. What was going on?

  If it had been the Jews, they would have thought it was a selection, because they came there more or less every week to pick out the unfortunates. But the Poles?

  Hans and the Stubenältester had to empty all of the beds and open all
of the packages. All kinds of things appeared: clothes, shoes, old rags, moldy bread, and hundreds of other things. Everything was thrown on a pile. They were allowed to keep most of the food from the packages, but the SDG pocketed the tobacco and any special items like sardines or chocolate.

  Meanwhile he carried out random checks, searching the patients and looking under the mattresses to make sure everything had been removed. Those who were wearing more than a single undershirt had to throw it on the pile and got a few slaps in return.

  Zimmer scowled. He had received a magnificent woolen jumper and a pair of boots in the false bottom of a package. Now he was going to lose it all. It was already winter; one of these days he might be sent out in a Kommando.

  The clothes and all the other gear were packed in blankets and the SDG said that it all had to go to the Blockältester’s room. He had just started to count the bundles when a shot sounded outside in the street. The SDG walked over to the other side of the room to look out of the window and Hans seized his opportunity. With a bundle under each arm he slipped into the corridor.

  When he came back, the SDG was standing over the bundles. Hans beat him to it: “I’ve already taken one away.”

  “Good, five more.”

  Hans walked back and forth five more times and the SDG paid careful attention that nothing disappeared out of the bundles. When everything was in the Blockältester’s room, he locked the door and took the key with him. He would come back later to pick it all up. But Zimmer’s jumper and boots and the other choice items were already in the attic.

  That evening Hans was rich. Zimmer had given him half a pound of bacon when he’d returned his things. Just like that, in public, and the others whose possessions Hans had rescued didn’t dare hold back either: bacon, sugar, apples, white bread, and more. He was beaming as he stood near the Block 10 window to tell Friedel about his adventures.

  “I’ll bring you some of it tomorrow.”

  “Keep enough for yourself.”

  “I will.”

  But he knew he would give most of it to her because, when he saw her at the window, he heard her coughing and she had already asked for cough medicine once before. He had asked her to take her temperature and she’d done it now for a couple of evenings: 99.1°F and 99.5°F under the arm. “It’s nothing,” she said.

  But Hans was scared. He’d already spotted a new enemy: TB. He would fight against it. He would look after her. Sending food was all he could do, but he would do it, as long as he could. When he was lying in bed and thinking of how he had outsmarted the SDG, he felt a sense of satisfaction. A calmness he hadn’t known for a long time came over him and he fell asleep with a smile on his face.

  One morning Hans was called in to see the Blockältester: “Van Dam, you have to go to quarantine.”

  He was shocked and thought he was being kicked out of the Krankenbau again, but Zielina, who was also present, laughed and reassured him: “They’ve got scarlet fever in quarantine and they need a doctor. For the time being, patients aren’t allowed to be admitted from there to the Krankenbau. They’re not allowed to go to the main outpatients to get their wounds dressed in the evenings either. That’s why we have to send a doctor there to do the work on the spot.”

  An hour later Hans arrived in quarantine. He was taken to the Blockältester, who met him with an ironic smile: “So, this is the doctor, is it? That means you’re the boss here now. Well, it will all be fine then.”

  He led Hans to one of the rooms. In the corner a small cubicle was curtained off with blankets; behind them was an ordinary triple bunk. The Stubenältester slept on the ground floor with the clerk above him. The top bunk was for Hans.

  The Stubenältester gave him a few tips on how to behave here in the quarantine block. Whatever else, he had to take it easy and not get wound up about anything.

  If he had heeded that advice, everything would have been all right. But right from the start, he began making conscientious and precise requests for all of the measures he deemed necessary. A dish containing disinfectant solution for people to wash their hands was needed at the door of every room. Everyone had to be subjected to a medical inspection every morning to identify new cases of scarlet fever as quickly as possible. There had to be an outpatients’ clinic every evening. A small room needed to be cleared for the patients who, according to instructions, were not allowed to go to the Krankenbau, and for possible cases of scarlet fever. A few quarantined French doctors could help him. When Hans presented his list, the Blockältester answered with that same ironic smile: “It will all be taken care of, Doctor.”

  Hans was busy all day with these measures, none of which were carried out. There were no dishes for disinfectants. The Krankenbau chemist refused to supply medicine for non-hospital blocks. The Blockältester didn’t have a spare room to set up a ward for the sick. After all, there were 1,200 people in his block. They were already sleeping three to a bunk.

  But Hans felt that, more than just the impossibility of enacting his measures, it was deliberate obstruction. Heinrich, the Stubenältester whose cubicle Hans was sharing, even said as much. He wore a purple triangle next to the number on his breast, the symbol for Bible Students. Every evening there was a small meeting when all of the Bible Students would gather with Heinrich. There weren’t many: five or six in all of Auschwitz. That hadn’t always been the case, Heinrich told me.

  Everyone in Germany who used the Bible to demonstrate the evil of the Nazi system and predict its downfall—the “Jehovah’s Witnesses”—had been systematically picked up. The same had happened to those who believed in other prophecies, such as the divine message of the Great Pyramid or the prophecies of Nostradamus.

  At one stage there were eight hundred of them together in Dachau.7 The Lagerführer had them all line up on Roll Call Square. “Who still believes in the truth of Biblical predictions?” All hands were raised. The Sturmmänner picked out ten men, who were shot on the spot. Then again: “Who still believes…” Again all hands were raised, again ten victims fell.

  It went on like that, but with every round of that dance of death, more people were struck by doubt and fewer hands were raised, until finally only the “converted” were left—though only after a hundred of the best had fallen.

  They were sometimes wearying, the Bible Students, because no matter what you said, no matter what happened, they were always ready with a Bible quote, regardless of how irrelevant it was. But they were honest, they had your best wishes at heart, and they knew what was what in the camp.

  “Be careful, son,” Heinrich warned Hans. “Don’t make things too difficult for them with all your precautions. Before you know it you’ll be in deep trouble.”

  A few days later the SS doctor came. He kicked up an enormous fuss and gave Hans a dressing-down because all kinds of measures to prevent an epidemic hadn’t been taken. Stupidly, Hans was too sporting to answer that he had ordered the measures but hadn’t received any cooperation from the Blockältester. Now the Blockältester was thwarting him even more, because he thought Hans’s silence had been motivated by fear.

  The only one to help Hans at all was a young Czech colleague. He had been put in the camp as a homosexual, but because he wasn’t Jewish and, as a Czech, could speak Polish with the Blockältester, he was sometimes able to get things done. Ivar became a good friend. He told Hans how he had got his pink triangle.

  “A party member in Prague had an old debt to me. When I insisted on payment, he set the Gestapo on me with a statement about how he had supposedly caught me performing homosexual acts. Anyway, Hans, you know how German justice works. I never admitted anything and nothing was ever proven. But a single Nazi witness counts more than the best alibi. I could have proven I wasn’t in Prague at all on the day of the ‘crime,’ but they don’t give you a chance.”

  The next day Hans experienced German justice firsthand. He was at work upstairs in a corner of the attic—where ten unfortunate patients were bedded down on a thin, filthy layer of s
traw—when the gong for the roll call sounded. As it took at least half an hour from the gong until the arrival of the SS man, the Stubenältester hurried down to Hans’s room to let them know to take him into account. But when Hans went downstairs a little later, the count had still been wrong. The Blockältester had been called in and the moment Hans entered the room he started to abuse him, shouting “Cholera…” and a hundred other Polish swear words.

  Hans tried to clarify the situation and apologize, but the Blockältester grew more and more agitated and then, without warning, punched him several times hard in the face. Blood gushed from Hans’s nose and his glasses lay shattered on the floor.

  But worse than the smashed glasses and his crooked nose—broken by the first blow—he was now a lost cause in quarantine. All of the Stubenälteste and their assistants, the clerks and orderlies, were laughing at him. Nobody listened to him anymore.

  That evening Hans discussed it with Krutkov, one of the few Russians who spoke a little German. He had been the head of a kolkhoz, a collective farm with some 2,500 workers. When the Germans arrived, they had all refused to continue working. A lot of them were shot dead on the spot. He was here in the camp with a couple hundred of his people.

  They all had black triangles: antisocial, work-shy. Imagine, people who had worked like horses, who had turned their village with its hovels and muddy fields into a fabulous vast farm, who knew better than anyone in the whole world the meaning of community, a community of workers and peasants, and working for that community, labeled here as antisocial.

  What did it matter what kind of triangle you wore here, how you were appreciated here?