The fear that the gas chambers would be Konrad’s destination grew stronger as the lift abruptly shuddered to a halt. Its gates loudly rattled open and the Kapos, who had accompanied the prisoners, were the first to emerge. They secured the lift and locked the swinging gates in place, after which the order was given to Konrad and the prisoners to leave the cage and file into two columns. Pointedly, now that Konrad was free from the suffocating confines of the cage, a mixture of the cold and fear caused him to shiver uncontrollable.
After a few moments of standing and shivering in line Konrad spotted a familiar face amongst the lines of anonymous faces. Gigolo.
Gigolo, despite the years of hunger and work at the camp, still cut a dashing figure amongst the prisoners, and at his side was his constant companion, Erik. Konrad had formed a business relationship with Gigolo months previously. Between them they would exchange food, clothing and most important, information. If you wanted to know when the next selections for the gas chambers were due or where there was a stash of pilfered food-packs or how many sugars the Commandant took in his coffee, Gigolo was the man in the know. But standing in the line, here in the cold and the gloom, it would appear that Gigolo’s fabled line of communication had failed spectacularly.
Gigolo himself had once been a famous actor back in Germany. Unfortunately for him, he was remembered more for his good looks rather than for his acting skills. His most famous role had been that of “Heinz” in the epic Eastern film (the Nazi version of the American Westerns) Land Of My Fathers. The popular film told of a small SS unit battling to protect a family of German settlers from a ferocious band of Bolsheviks. After a rollicking battle, during which most of the SS men sacrifice themselves to protect the colonists, the villainous natives are defeated. The most famous scene from the film was when Gigolo’s character, who at the start of the film appeared to be cowardly, but who eventually proved his bravery during the climatic battle at the besieged farmhouse, hoisted the family’s swastika flag above a pile of bloody Bolshevik bodies. After the film proved to be a success, Gigolo appeared in dozens of films and television shows, usually playing dashing heroic characters in numerous Easterns, war epics and glitzy dramas. But during the filming of what turned out to be his final production, a romantic comedy set on board a Strength-Through-Joy cruise ship called A Matter of Taste, Gigolo set in motion a course of events that would eventually lead him to prison.
The film studios in Munich where Gigolo was making his latest film were paid a visit by the local Gauleiter along with his family. They were shown around the set by the film’s producers and, of course, introduced to the film’s stars. Publicity shots of the Gauleiter and Gigolo were taken. As the actor and Nazi stood side by side the star-struck official beckoned his pretty wife forward and squeezed her in between himself and Gigolo. Unfortunately for Gigolo, women had always been his vice. Star or extra, all fell under his spell. So when the Gauleiter’s wife brushed herself against Gigolo and their eyes met, he knew he would have to have her – Gauleiter’s wife or not. His opportunity came soon after as the Gauleiter naively allowed the film star to take his wife on an alternative tour of the studios. The Nazi assumed the actor was showing his beloved around the huge promenade-deck set or even the space-station sets that were being constructed on the stage next door for an upcoming science-fiction film, but he was wrong. Instead, his wife was busy in Gigolo’s dressing-room giving the actor a blow-job. When the Gauleiter found out after his wife drunkenly confessed all, he unleashed all the forces at his disposal against Gigolo as if the film star was a mass murderer or a political dissident.
Yet Gigolo’s story did-not end there.
How Gigolo fell in with Erik demonstrated how captivity can make strange bedfellows. Before, during his old life, Gigolo had never harboured any homosexual feelings. It was strictly female flesh that had aroused him. But this attitude changed, like so many things, after he had been confined upon the rock in space. At the same time, his new feelings were restricted and exclusive, their focus on only one person – Erik. Gigolo had first spotted Erik shuffling into his dormitory. Erik, no doubt, would have been totally disorientated after being cast into the circle of Hell he found himself in, surrounded as he was by all manner of unfamiliar faces, both good and bad. It was this palpable disorientation experienced by the youngster that made Gigolo feel sorry for him as he had settled on the bunk opposite. It was first time that Gigolo had experienced that feeling for any other prisoner, be it a freshman or veteran. He usually felt resentment for new arrivals because new faces meant new competition for the already scarce resources of the camp, however, his sorrow soon turned into desire.
At first, during work details, Gigolo would snatch glimpses of the young prisoner. But Gigolo always found it was at night, when they were in the dormitory, that his new lust dominated his thoughts. He would stare at Erik for hours as he slept, the darkness fuelling his fantasies. However, Erik wasn’t the innocent he appeared to be. He was fully aware of the affections lavished upon him by Gigolo, and after all, he needed a guardian angel to protect him from the predators, so one night, after waiting for the other prisoners to fall asleep, Erik dropped from his bunk and crept across the dormitory and joined Gigolo in the darkness.
‘Gigolo,’ Konrad whispered. ‘Gigolo, what’s the story? Do you know what we’re doing up here?’
Gigolo turned and whispered his reply. ‘There’s no need to fret, my friend. I’ve heard that the Nazis are expecting the arrival of some special guests.’
‘Guests, eh?’ The relief was evident in Konrad’s voice. ‘I was expecting the worst.’
‘Do you really think I’d be stupid enough to be tricked into those damned gas chambers,’ Gigolo said triumphantly. ‘I don’t think so. This is Gigolo you’re talking to, not those other saps in the dormitories. As soon as word spread on the grapevine that we were expecting visitors, I quickly got Erik and I onto the work-detail. Whatever those Nazis want us to do, it’ll most certainly beat working in that damned foundry. The smoke does so ruin my looks and that will never do!’
‘Do you know if these guests we’re expecting will be in striped uniforms like ours?’ Konrad then asked.
Gigolo shook his head. ‘Very different uniforms, I’m afraid. Black uniforms with a swastika motif,’ he stopped for a moment as a Kapo walked by. ‘I believe a whole bloody nest of them are arriving,’ Gigolo said once the Kapo was out of range. ‘And we’ve been brought up here into the attic to be their baggage handlers.’
As Gigolo finished, a set of heavy gates opened. A steep ramp lay beyond, at the top of which stood a number of SS guards. Their breath smoked like dragons as they roared at the prisoners to come up inside the cavernous hanger. Konrad always thought the factory galleries were large, but the hanger dwarfed even those industrial chambers. To him, who was so accustomed to the claustrophobic confines of his dormitory and the dank corridors of the colony and the artificial heat of the foundries, the hanger was the closest to being outside the camp’s suffocating walls.