The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery Read online

  So I became a stubendienst [room supervisor], but not for long.

  Although we maintained exemplary order and cleanliness on the block, Aloiz did not care for the methods we used to achieve this.

  He warned us several times himself and also through “Kazik” (an intimate of his), and when this got him nowhere, he exploded and kicked several of us out into the main camp for three days saying: “Just so you see what it tastes like to work in the camp and get to appreciate better the comfort and peace you have here on the block.”

  I had noticed that fewer people returned from work every day, and I knew that they had been “finished off ” at one task or another, but now I was to discover the hard way what a day “in the camp” looked like for a normal häftling.

  Everyone had to work.

  Only the stubendiensts [room supervisors] could remain on the block.

  We all slept side by side on straw mattresses laid out on the floor. Initially we had no bunks at all.

  Everyone’s day began with a gong at 4:20 a.m. in summer and at 5:20 a.m. in winter.

  At this sound, summoning us with its seemingly inexorable command, everyone came to their feet.

  We quickly folded our blanket, boxing it carefully. The mattresses had to be carried to one end of the room where they were grabbed by the “mattress orderlies” to make a mattress pile. On leaving the room we handed in our blanket to the “blanket orderly.” We finished dressing in the corridor.

  Everything was done at the double and in a rush, for Bloody Aloiz, shouting “Open the windows,” would charge into the room with his club and we needed to hurry to get in line for the toilet.

  Initially we had no toilets in the blocks. We all ran to a number of latrines where there were very long queues, sometimes of one hundred to two hundred men. There were few actual toilets. Inside stood a kapo with a club who counted to five and hit over the head anyone slow getting up. More than one häftling fell into the latrine.

  After the latrine we all ran to the pumps, of which there were a number on the parade ground. Initially, there was no waschraum [washroom] on the blocks.

  Several thousand people had to wash under these few pumps.

  This was obviously impossible.

  You forced your way to the pump and caught a little water in your canteen.

  However, in the evening we had to have clean feet. The block chiefs, going around the room in the evening while a “room supervisor” would report on the condition and number of häftlings lying on their mattresses, would simultaneously check the cleanliness of our feet, which had to be held up from under the blanket so that the sole was visible. If a foot was not sufficiently clean, or if the block chief thought it was not, the culprit was beaten on the table. He would receive between 10 and 20 strokes.

  This was one way to wear us down, all under the beautiful cloak of hygiene.

  Another way to wear us down was the destruction of our constitution in the latrines by having to do everything at the double and to order, or the nerve-jangling chaos at the pumps, or the endless rush and laufschritt [doing things at the double] employed everywhere during the camp’s initial phase.

  From the pump everyone ran to the block for so-called coffee or tea. A warm liquid was brought into the room in large pots—a pale imitation of these beverages.

  A wretched häftling hardly ever saw any sugar.

  When I saw that some of my comrades who had been there for a few months had swelled faces and feet, the medical men whom I asked told me that this was due to a surfeit of liquids. Kidneys or the heart were failing. The body’s enormous effort when doing physical labor while ingesting only liquids: coffees, tea, awo [a sort of broth] and soup; I resolved to avoid liquids which brought me no benefit and stick to just awo and soups.

  One had to control one’s desires.

  Some did not want to forgo warm liquids, on account of the cold.

  Smoking was even worse. Because, during the initial stages of his time in the camp, a häftling had no money, for at first letters could not be sent. He waited a long time for that. Then before any kind of reply could arrive, about three months would elapse.

  Anyone who could not overcome this and who sold bread for cigarettes was “digging his own grave.”

  I knew a great many like this; every one of them died.

  There were no graves. All the bodies were burned in the newly constructed crematorium.

  So I did not race back to the block for hot dishwater; others pushed their way through, earning blows and kicks.

  If a häftling with swollen feet then managed to get a better work assignment and food, he regained his strength and the swelling would subside, but suppurating boils would form on his feet, oozing a stinking fluid and sometimes phlegmon, which I saw here for the first time.

  Eschewing liquids, I successfully managed to avoid this.

  Before everyone had managed to get some hot dishwater, the “room supervisor” was using his club to empty the barrack room, which had to be tidied up before roll call.

  Meanwhile the mattresses and blankets had been arranged according to the style in fashion in that block, and the blocks competed amongst themselves in arranging their “bedclothes.”

  Now the floor still had to be washed.

  The gong for morning roll call was sounded at 5:45 a.m.

  At 6 o’clock we were all standing in dressed lines (each block formed up in lines of 10 to make counting easier).

  Everyone had to attend roll call.

  If someone was missing, not because he had escaped, but because some new arrival had naively hidden himself, or someone else had simply overslept and the numbers did not match the camp’s roll, a search was begun, the man was dragged onto the parade ground and almost always publicly killed.

  Occasionally a häftling was absent: he had hanged himself somewhere in an attic, or right during roll call he “went for the wires,” then shots rang out from a sentry in a watchtower and the inmate fell riddled with bullets.

  Inmates usually “went for the wires” in the morning, before another day’s torment; before nightfall, when there was a break of a few hours in the agony, this happened more rarely.

  There was an official order which forbade inmates preventing their comrades from taking their own life. If caught “preventing,” a häftling was punished with a stint in the “bunker.”

  All the camp’s internal authorities were recruited exclusively from among the inmates. Initially they were Germans, but then other nationalities began to clamber up to responsible posts.

  The block chief (wearing a red armband with the word “Blockältester” in white on his right arm) wore down an inmate on the block with strict discipline and his club. He was responsible for the block, but had nothing to do with a häftling’s work.

  However, a kapo wore down an inmate with work and his club in a kommando (work detail) and was responsible for that kommando’s work.

  JG

  An inmate shot by guards as he “went for the wires.”

  ABM

  Lagerältester (Head Inmate) Bruno Brodniewitsch—Inmate No. 1.

  ABM

  Lagerältester (Head Inmate) Leo Wietschorek—Inmate No. 30.

  The highest authority in the camp was the so-called Lagerältester [Head Inmate].

  Initially, there were two of them: Bruno and Leo, both inmates.

  They were two bastards before whom everyone trembled in fear.

  They murdered in front of everyone, sometimes using clubs or fists.

  The first one’s real name was Bronisław Brodniewicz [also written Brodniewitsch], the other’s—Leon Wieczorek [also written Wietschorek]; both ex-Poles working for the Germans...

  Dressed differently than everyone else in high boots, navy-blue trousers, jackets and berets. (A black armband with white lettering on their left arm.)

  They were an evil pair, often seen together.

  However, all these internal camp authorities, recruited from “people inside the w
ire,” were as nothing before any SS man, to whose question they would reply only after removing their cap and standing at attention.

  Just imagine how much less significant was an ordinary gray häftling...

  These “super-human” authorities in military uniform, the SS, lived outside the wires in barracks and the town.

  I return to the daily camp routine.

  Roll call. We stood, clubbed into lines straight as a wall (in fact I yearned for the well-dressed Polish lines of 1939). We were transfixed by the terrible scene before us.

  In front of us were the ranks from Block 13 (old numbering system)—the SK [Strafkompanie (Penal Company)], being dressed by the block chief Krankenmann [Krankemann in some sources] using a radical method—a simple knife.

  At that time all the Jews, priests and some condemned Poles went straight to the Penal Company.

  It was Krankenmann’s responsibility to finish off as quickly as possible the almost daily intakes of häftlings. Clearly this man’s character was well suited to his duties.

  If someone inadvertently moved a few centimeters too far forward, Krankenmann would plunge the knife carried in his right sleeve into the victim’s stomach.

  He who, through an excess of caution, moved too far back, received a thrust in the kidneys from this murderer running around the ranks.

  The sight of the falling man kicking the sand and screaming drove Krankenmann into a rage. He would jump onto the man’s chest, kick him in the kidneys, in his private parts, finishing him off as quickly as possible, which forced us to stay silent.

  This sight ran through us like an electric current.

  Then, I felt a single thought coursing through these Poles standing shoulder to shoulder, I felt that finally we were all united by the same anger, a desire for revenge, I felt myself in an environment perfectly suited to begin my work here and discovered within me a semblance of happiness...

  A moment later I was afraid that I had taken leave of my senses. To feel happiness here, for whatever reason, was absurd... abnormal!

  I looked carefully inside myself and now felt happiness with full certainty, above all because I wanted to start work and so I had not cracked.

  This was a key psychological breakthrough.

  In medicine we would say that the crisis had successfully passed.

  However, for the time being, all my efforts were needed to stay alive.

  The gong after roll call meant: “Arbeitskommando formieren! [Work kommandos fall in!]”

  On this order everyone rushed to whichever kommando seemed best.

  There was still chaos with assignments (not like later when everyone quietly went to the detail where his number was registered), inmates ran in all directions, crisscrossing, which was the cue for the kapos, block chiefs and SS to stick out a foot, to push and club the running and tripping men, always kicking the most tender spots.

  I was to spend the three days Aloiz had punished me by sending me into the camp carrying gravel in wheelbarrows.

  Simply not knowing where to stand and not having a chosen kommando, I joined the “fives” of the hundred taken off to do this work.

  For the most part Warsaw lads were working here.

  The older “numbers,” in other words, those who had been there longer, those who had survived so far, had already taken the better “jobs.”

  Those of us from Warsaw were ground down en masse by all manner of tasks, sometimes by carrying gravel from one pit to another and then back again.

  I was among those who were carrying gravel needed to complete the construction of the crematorium.

  We were building the crematorium for ourselves.

  The scaffolding around the chimney rose ever higher.

  We had to move quickly with a wheelbarrow filled by the vorarbeiteren [foremen], toadies who showed us no mercy, and then push the wheelbarrows at the double over planking.

  Every 15 to 20 paces stood a kapo with a club, which he used to beat the passing inmates shouting “Laufschritt! [Move at the double!]”

  We pushed the wheelbarrows up slowly. With an empty wheelbarrow, laufschritt applied all the way.

  Here muscles, cunning and eyes competed in the battle to stay alive.

  You needed strength to push the wheelbarrow, you had to know how to keep it on the planks, you had to see and pick a suitable moment “to take a breather” to help one’s tired lungs.

  It was here that I saw how a great many members of our intelligentsia were unable to cope with difficult and merciless conditions.

  Yes—we were going through a harsh selection process.

  Sport, and my early physical training, were coming in very handy here.

  The intellectual, looking helplessly around seeking better treatment or help from someone, as if almost demanding it because he was a lawyer or an engineer, now came face to face with a hard club.

  Here is some lawyer with a tummy, or a landowner clumsily pushing his wheelbarrow which falls off the planking into the sand and he cannot pull it back up.

  There a teacher in glasses, or an older gentleman, present a pitiful sight of helplessness.

  All those who were unsuited to the work, or who had no strength to run with a wheelbarrow, were beaten, and when they fell over with their wheelbarrow they were beaten to death with clubs and boots.

  It was at moments like this, when someone ahead was killed, that like a real animal one would stop for a couple of minutes and draw some breath into one’s overworked lungs and slow down one’s racing heart.

  Fortunately, in the Third Reich’s orderly world overtaking those ahead had not been foreseen.

  The lunch gong was greeted with joy by everyone in the camp and was, I think, in those days sounded at 11:20 a.m.

  Between 11:30 and 12:00 the midday roll call was held, usually quite quickly and from 12:00 to 13:00 was the time assigned to lunch.

  After lunch, a gong again summoned everyone to his arbeitskommando and the misery continued until the gong for evening roll call.

  I worked like this for three days “on the barrows.”

  On the third day, after lunch I thought that the gong would never come.

  I was by now very tired and I understood that when they ran out of weaker people to kill, my turn would come.

  Bloody Aloiz, who was satisfied with our efforts on the block to maintain order and cleanliness, generously agreed to take us back after three days’ hard labor in the camp saying: “Now you know what work in the camp means. Paßt auf [take care] with your work on the block, or I’ll kick you back out into the camp for good.”

  In my case he quickly made good on his threat.

  I did not use on my comrades the methods demanded by him and recommended by Kazik, and was kicked off the block with a bang, under circumstances which I shall relate below.

  I now want to write about the early stages of the work I was starting there.

  The main task was:

  To set up here a military organization in order to:

  — keep up my comrades’ spirits by providing and distributing news from outside;

  — by organizing, whenever possible, additional food and distributing clothes amongst the members;

  — send information out of the camp; and, as the crowning glory,

  — prepare our own detachments to take over the camp when the time came in the form of an order to parachute in arms or troops.

  I began my work the same way I had in ’39 in Warsaw and even, with a few small exceptions, with the same people whom I had brought into the TAP 8 in Warsaw.

  I now set up the first “five” to which I swore in Colonel 1 [Władysław Surmacki], Captain Dr. 2 [Władysław Dering],9 Cavalry Captain 3 [Jerzy de Virion], Second Lieutenant 4 [Alfred Stössel], as well as 5 [Roman Zagner] (I am writing a separate key to the numbers).10

  Colonel 1 [Władysław Surmacki] commanded the “five”; it was Dr. 2’s [Władysław Dering’s] responsibility to take over the prison hospital where he was already working
as a pfleger [nurse]. Poles were not officially permitted to work as doctors and could only be nurses.

  In November, I sent my first report to High Command in Warsaw through Second Lieutenant 6 [Tadeusz Burski]11 (he was living at 58, Raszyńska Street in Warsaw before the Uprising), who had worked in Intelligence and who had been bought out of Auschwitz.

  Colonel 1 [Władysław Surmacki] moved his operations to the baubüro [construction site office].

  Later I set up a further four “fives.” Each of these “fives” knew nothing of the existence of the other “fives,” believing itself to be the apex of an organization which it developed downwards as extensively as the sum of its individual members’ abilities and energy allowed.

  I did this as a precaution so that if a “five” was rolled up, it would not bring down the next one.

  Eventually, the expanding “fives” began to make contact and sound out one another.

  Then on more than one occasion members would come to me to report that “you know, there’s some other organization working out there.” I would reassure them that they needn’t worry about this.

  But this all lay in the future. For the time being there was only a single “five.”

  Meanwhile, back at the block, one day after morning roll call I went to report to Aloiz that there were three sick men on the block, who could not go out to work (they were almost completely done in).

  Bloody Aloiz flew into a rage. “A sick man on my block?!!...I don’t have sick men!... Everyone works... you too! Enough!” He rushed into the room behind me with his club. “Where are they?”

  Two of them were lying by the wall panting heavily, the third one was kneeling in the corner praying.

  “Was macht er? [What’s he doing?]” he shouted at me.

  “Er betet [He’s praying].”

  “He’s praying?!! Who taught him to do that?”

  “Das weiss ich nicht [I don’t know],” I replied.

  He rushed over to the praying man and started to insult him and shout at him that he was an idiot... that there was no God... that he, not God, gave him bread... and so on, but he did not strike him.