The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery Read online

  He then ran over to the two men lying by the wall and began to kick them in the kidneys and so on, screaming “Auf!!! [Get up] auf!!!...” until they, seeing death before them, dragged themselves to their feet with what little strength they still had left.

  Then he began screaming at me: “See! I told you they weren’t sick!... They can walk, they can work. Weg!!! [Get out!!!] Off to work! And you too!”

  Thus he threw me out to work in the camp.

  He himself took the one praying to the hospital.

  He was a strange man, that communist.

  On the parade ground I found myself in an odd position.

  Everyone was already standing in his kommando waiting to march out. To run over and join the “fives” as a tardy häftling was asking for a beating and a kicking from the kapos and SS.

  I noticed that on the parade ground around me stood a detachment of those who did not belong to work details. At that time those inmates not required for work (the camp was still being built and there were few kommandos) “did PE” [physical exercise] on the parade ground.

  For the moment there was no sign of kapos or SS busy around them forming up arbeitskommando columns.

  I ran over and stood on the parade ground in a circle to “do PE.”

  I used to enjoy PE, but after Auschwitz I don’t quite have the same appetite for it.

  From six in the morning, sometimes for hours on end, we stood around freezing dreadfully.

  Without caps or socks and wearing thin prison clothes, in that autumn of ’40 we trembled from the cold in that foothills climate, the mornings almost always misty.

  Our feet and hands, sticking out from trouser legs and sleeves cut short, turned blue.

  We were left alone.

  We had to stand and freeze.

  The cold hastened our exhaustion.

  Passing kapos and block chiefs (often Aloiz) stopped, laughed and said with a knowing hand gesture imitating rising steam: “...und das Leben fliiiiieeegt [...life’s just seeping away]...Ha, ha!”

  When the mist dissipated, the sun shone through and it became somewhat warmer and it appeared that lunch could not be far off, a pack of kapos began to get us “doing PE”; it might just as well have been called heavy physical punishment.

  For this type of PE there was still far too much time before lunch.

  “Hüpfen! [Hop!], rollen! [roll!], tanzen! [dance!], kniebeugen! [do squats!]”

  Just one of those “hüpfens” could do you in.

  It was impossible to frog-hop around the large parade ground, not because we were in clogs, for we were holding them, not because we were barefoot and the gravel ripped the skin of our feet till we bled, but because our muscles were unable to accomplish such a feat.

  Here again my past involvement in sport saved me.

  Here again the weak intellectuals with tummies, for whom frog-hopping even a short distance was beyond them, were finished off.

  Here again clubs crashed down on the heads of those who kept falling over every few steps. There was more beating and merciless finishing off.

  And again, like an animal, one would take advantage of a pause to get one’s breath while the pack with clubs pounced on some new victim.

  After lunch—part two.

  By evening a great many corpses and semi-corpses, who quickly succumbed in the hospital, were dragged off.

  Two rollers were working alongside us on the parade ground. They were supposedly levelling the parade ground.

  They were working to finish off the people pulling them.

  To one of them, the smaller, were harnessed priests with a few other inmates—Poles, altogether about 20–25 men.

  About 50 Jews were harnessed to the second one—the larger.

  On the rollers’ towing bars stood Krankenmann and some other kapo, who with their own weight increased the load, pressing the towing bar into the backs and shoulders of the inmates pulling the rollers.

  From time to time the kapo or block chief Krankenmann with philosophical calm smashed down his club on someone’s head or struck out at some other human beast of burden with such force that he sometimes felled him immediately, or he pushed the stunned man under the roller, beating the other inmates not to stop.

  Over the course of a day from this little factory of corpses a great many were pulled out by their legs and laid out in a row to be counted during roll call.

  Towards evening, Krankenmann, walking around the parade ground with his hands behind his back, looked with a smile of pleasure at these former inmates now lying peacefully.

  I did this “PE,” called the “circle of death,” for two days.

  On the morning of the third day, I was standing in the circle wondering what percentage of those still “doing PE” were weaker and less fit than I was, and calculating how much longer I could go on, when suddenly my situation changed abruptly.

  The kommandos were marching out to work. Some of them to work inside the wires and some marched out to work beyond the fence.

  The Lagerführer [Camp Head], together with a group of SS men, was standing near the gate at a lectern. He was reviewing the departing kommandos and checking their numbers against the roster.

  Next to him stood an arbeitsdienst [work assignment leader], Otto [Otto Küsel] (a German who never struck a Pole). His duty was to assign specific inmates to work. He was responsible for filling specific kommandos with workers.

  Standing in the arc of the circle nearest to the gate I noticed that Otto was running straight towards us.

  I instinctively moved even closer.

  The arbeitsdienst, with a worried look, charged straight into me: “Vielleicht bist du ein Ofensetzer? [You’re not by any chance a stove fitter?]”

  “Ja wohl. Ich bin ein Ofensetzer [Yes, sir. I’m a stove fitter],” I replied without a thought.

  “Aber ein guter Meister? [But are you a good one?]”

  “Gewiß, ein guter Meister. [Of course, I’m a good one.]”

  “Also schnell!... [Quickly then!... ]”

  He told me to take four others out of the circle and to follow him at the double to the gate to Block 9 (old numbering system); they gave us buckets, trowels, bricklayers’ hammers, lime, and our “five” lined up before the lectern of the Lagerführer, who at the time was Fritsch [Karl Fritzsch].

  Only now did I look at the faces of my chance companions.

  I knew none of them.

  “Fünf Ofensetzer [Five stove fitters],” reported Otto, out of breath.

  They assigned two SS men as guards and we marched out of the gate towards the town.

  It turned out that Otto had been meant to line up a few fitters to change out the stoves in some SS man’s apartment, that he had forgotten and had saved the day at the last minute by bringing in the five of us, while the earlier kommandos were being counted at the gate.

  ABM

  Arbeitsdienst (Work Assignment Leader) Otto Küsel—Inmate No. 2.

  Yad Vashem/Otto Dov Kulka

  Inmates working on one of the many new buildings being constructed at Auschwitz.

  ABM/SS Dietrich Kamann

  Female inmates, brought to Auschwitz beginning in 1942, digging the foundations for one of the new buildings next to the main camp.

  The guards were now taking us to an SS man’s flat.

  In one of the houses in town, the flat’s owner, an SS man, addressed us in German, but in a normal tone of voice, which by now sounded odd.

  He asked who was the foreman and he then explained to me that he was gutting the kitchen. His wife was coming, he wanted to move the ceramic tiles here and the stove to another room. He thought that there were too many of us, but above all he wanted the job to be done well, so we could all work there, and if a couple of us had nothing to do, we could tidy up the attic. He would stop by every day to check on our work. Then he left.

  I checked whether any of the others knew anything about stoves and when it turned out that no one did, I set the four of them to
bringing water, digging clay, dismantling and so on.

  The two soldiers stood guard outside.

  I was on my own. What did I do with the stove? The less said the better.

  A man fighting for his life can do more than he ever imagined he could.

  I took the stove to pieces carefully so as not to break the tiles, and I carefully noted where the flues went and how they were assembled.

  Then I installed the stove and the range in the indicated spots.

  I spent four days on it.

  However, when on the fifth day I was to go and lay a trial fire in the stove, I lost myself so successfully in the camp, that although I heard them calling for the foreman stove fitter, they did not find me.

  No one thought to look among the gardeners in the Camp Commandant’s garden …

  No one had taken our numbers, for at that time even kommando kapos did not always take down numbers of “fives.”

  I never did find out whether the stoves worked well, or smoked …

  Let me return to the moment when I first found myself in the SS man’s apartment in town.

  I am supposed to stick to dry facts …

  I had already seen some terrible sights in Auschwitz; nothing had managed to break me.

  And now here, where no club or kick threatened me, I suddenly felt my heart rise into my throat and I felt worse than I had before …

  I know… no need to remind me, that I am to describe only facts, so I am describing it just as it really was. However, this comes from within me and perhaps that is why it’s not so dry.

  I was alone with my “stove problem,” but this was not a stove issue … What—was there still a world outside where people lived normal lives?

  Here there were houses, gardens, flowers. Happy voices. Games.

  Yet right next door—hell, murder and the destruction of everything human, everything good...

  There, this same SS man was a murderer, a torturer; here, he pretended to be human.

  So where did the truth lie? There... or here?

  At home he was arranging his nest. His wife was coming, so he occasionally had to have some feelings.

  Church bells, people praying, loving and giving birth, and right next door... all this killing.

  It was then that an urge to fight back arose within me.

  It was a moment of powerful struggle.

  Then four days going to work on the stoves and, for a change, seeing this hell, this patch of earth, was like being continually shoved into heat and then back into cold.

  Yes! This tempered me!

  Meanwhile the “first five” took a few steps forward and a few new members were sworn in.

  One of them was Captain 7. His name was Michał [Michał Romanowicz].

  Captain Michał’s method was to help form up the ranks going out to work in the morning. In the presence of the kapos he would curse at and berate his comrades, quickly dressing the ranks and sparing many an inmate a kapo’s blows, while making a great deal of commotion and noise, and giving everyone a knowing wink when the kapo’s back was turned.

  The kapos decided that he was suitable to command a “twenty” and assigned him four “fives,” making him a vorarbeiter [foreman].

  It was Michał who saved me on that critical day when I had to avoid the kapos, by packing me off to the “twenty” of a friend of his, an unterkapo [deputy kapo], which was one of the kommandos going to work outside the wires.

  I ended up in a detail working in the fields next to the Camp Commandant’s villa.

  Meanwhile they were looking for the ofensetzer back in the camp until Otto grabbed another inmate and the “five” set off for the stoves, as usual.

  All day long it rained and the wind blew.

  Working in the field out of which we were hastily making a garden for the Commandant we were all soaked, so it seemed, to the very core and it seemed too as if the wind blew right through our bodies. Not a dry stitch was on us. The wind turned us around, since one couldn’t stand facing it for long. It froze the blood in our veins and only rapid motion with a spade eked out a little heat from our own reserves of energy. And we had to husband our energy, since it was not certain we would be able to replenish it.

  We were told to take off our prison clothes. In our shirts, without socks, our clogs bogging down in the mud, without caps, our heads and faces streamed with water and whenever the rain stopped we steamed like horses after a run.

  The year 1940, and especially the autumn with its frequent rain, especially at roll call, had it in for the inmates of Auschwitz. Roll call in the rain became a regular occurrence. Even on a good day which could be put in the fine weather column. Everyone got soaked at roll call: those who had worked outside all day in the fields, as well as those who had been working indoors.

  “Old numbers,” in other words those who had arrived two or at most three months before us,12 got the jobs indoors.

  These three months made a huge difference in “jobs” (for all the indoor ones had been filled) and also in experience.

  In general, an inmate who came a month later, was not different because he had spent 30 fewer days there, but because he had not experienced the same torture methods which had been used barely a month before; the methods kept changing and yet the whole constellation of supervisors, whippers-in and other shady sorts who wanted in this disgusting way to ingratiate themselves with the authorities still had plenty.

  It was the same during the succeeding years. However, no one then was thinking in terms of years. Kazik (in Block 17) once told us: “The worst is getting through the first year.” Some smiled politely. “A year? We’ll be home by Christmas. The Germans won’t last! England, etc., etc.!” (Sławek Szpakowski)... filled others with foreboding. “A year? Who could survive a year here?” When one played blind man’s bluff with death on a daily basis... not today... perhaps tomorrow!—and a day sometimes seemed as long as a year.

  Stranger still, a day dragged by like an endless nightmare. At times, when one ran out of steam for work, which nonetheless had to be done, an hour seemed like an age, while the weeks passed quickly. It was all strange and yet that is how it was—sometimes one felt that either time or one’s senses were at fault...

  That our senses were no longer those of ordinary people... those of people way out there in the real world... was a given.

  We died the same people who had once walked the earth, but we were becoming someone else.

  Not infrequently we heard one of us cry out, summing up his life in words: “What a fool I was!”

  So, after some difficult moments we had grown together and the experience of hitherto unimagined stress had tightened the bonds of friendship more strongly than in the real world...

  ... When you had your “pals” who helped one another, sometimes at the risk of losing their own life... and then suddenly, my friend... before your very eyes, one of your pals is killed, is murdered in the most frightful way... what then?!...

  There appeared to be but one course of action...rush the killer and all die together… Indeed that was tried once or twice, but only led to just another death...

  No, that was not a solution! That way we’d all be dead in no time ...

  So we watched a comrade’s slow death and one died, as it were, with him... watching, one felt oneself to be dying with him... and yet... one went on living ... one recovered, one revived... one survived.

  And if one dies like that, let us say if only ninety times, then, no way for it, one becomes someone else.

  But thousands of us were dying there... tens of thousands... later, hundreds of thousands.

  So the outside world and the people in it seemed to us comical, busy with what in our eyes were irrelevant matters.

  Thus did we tie ourselves up in emotional knots.

  Not everyone reacted like that.

  Camp was a proving ground of character.

  Some—slithered into a moral swamp.

  Others—chiseled themselves a charact
er of finest crystal.

  We were cut with a sharp instrument. Its blade bit painfully into our bodies, yet, in our souls, it found fields to till...

  Everyone eventually went through this process of transformation.

  Like soil turned by the plough, some already ploughed into fertile ridges on the right, while on the left lay earth which would be turned only during the next pass.

  From time to time the plough would bounce over an inner stone leaving some of the soil unturned and infertile—a useless strip—a barren patch...

  We lost all our titles...

  Ranks, diplomas were left far behind in the world outside...

  As if already in the spirit world, we looked at these shapes still clothed in earthly inessentials, we could see all our pals in their former lives: this one with this and that one with that title, and one could but smile indulgently the way one does at children...

  We were all by now on first-name terms.

  We addressed formally only zugangs, for they as yet understood nothing.

  To do so amongst ourselves was usually meant as an insult.

  Colonel R [Tadeusz Reklewski], whom I inadvertently addressed as “sir,” turned on me saying: “Will you just drop that...”

  How different things are in the outside world.

  There, some Tom, Dick or Harry would boast to his friends that he was on first-name terms with someone two ranks higher.

  Here—all that had vanished without trace. We had all become just our bare essence.

  A man was seen and valued for what he really was...

  I worked for two days in the Commandant’s garden.

  We levelled and laid out flowerbeds, paths. We shifted soil from the deeply sunken paths. We filled in depressions with thick layers of crushed brick. We also demolished a couple of small houses nearby. In fact, all the houses near the camp, and especially those in the belt between the kleine postenkette [inner security perimeter] and the große postenkette [outer security perimeter], an area with a radius of several kilometers, had to be demolished.

  The German supervisors attacked these structures built by Poles with special zeal and even fury.