I was pissed, angry with myself for being so foolish and gullible. I would have kicked myself, but the way things were going, it seemed certain I would be getting an SS boot in the ass soon enough.
From the shadows appeared ghastly creatures dressed in blue and gray striped uniforms. They shuffled toward us, bent over like hunchbacks. I had to pinch myself. I couldn’t believe they were human. They went along the tracks gathering up our scattered luggage and throwing it into a heap. They slithered among our rows without uttering a sound. Their vacant eyes ignored our existence.
What horrible secret weighed on those sagging shoulders?
“I bet we’ll all look like them pretty soon,” predicted a voice behind me.
There’s no way that can happen, I thought.
The hunchbacks loaded our belongings onto handcarts and pushed them into the night. Since we had nametags on our bags, some found it reassuring, as if those gaunt fellows were bellhops delivering our bags to our suites. It was amazing how willing we were to delude ourselves with the slightest hint of hope.
A snarling dog on a taut leather leash sniffed at my legs. I curled my hands into a fist, not wanting the beast to mistake my fingers for bratwursts. Another barking German Shepherd, his hot breath steaming, passed by, dragging his handler. For some odd reason it made me think of an anti-Semitic cartoon that I had seen in the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer ten years before, when my family vacationed in Berlin just as “the god with a moustache” was coming to power. The caption read, “Jewish Beggar Bites German Shepherd.” The Nazis had sure gone to some length to make sure that would never happen.
A convoy of big dump trucks approached, slipping and sliding in the mud, splashing everything in their path. The tailgates were dropped, and we were ordered to climb onto the coal-dust–covered beds. We were packed so tightly that none of us could move our legs an inch but the warmth produced by our close proximity was welcomed. When the last man was loaded, SS guards took their places on the trucks’ running boards and the convoy started out.
Our truck slipped into the ruts in the road, then lurched sharply out of them. The low railing around the bed cut into my flesh. I tightened my muscles to resist the truck’s jolting. Someone dug an elbow into my ribs, and then I was thrown against the man next to me. He didn’t utter a sound and kept his gaze downward. I could tell he was petrified. So was I. We were all petrified. There was something depraved here. The place reeked of it and none of us were prepared to confront it. We all feared that if we looked, if we stared deeply, if we acknowledged it, our fate would be worse than Lot’s wife.
The trucks splashed packs of shadows struggling along the left side of the road. I couldn’t believe it. The women and old men—the people who were supposed to be riding—were walking. Now I understood why the man on the loudspeaker had struggled to keep from laughing. I tried to observe each shadow in hopes of spotting Stella, but it was dark and foggy and most of the women were shrouded in their blankets. As the truck hurtled me away from them, I craned my neck to see the lead group being directed off the road and onto a muddy footpath.
The road improved and the convoy gathered speed. We passed through a grove of pine trees. Branches slapped and beat my face.
A rosy shimmer on the horizon silhouetted the final string of skeletal pines. What the hell could that be, I wondered? It was too early for dawn. Coming out of the woods I got my answer. Past a sweeping black field stood a foreboding complex of mammoth factory buildings bathed in a sea of light. With monolithic chimneys spitting fire at the stars, it was the largest industrial complex I had ever seen, at least five miles long.
As we got closer, the acrid smell of smoke became unbearable.
The road began to run parallel to the plant. We sped by immense factory warehouses, and the strident concerto of the machinery inside drowned out our truck’s motor. On the other side of the road sat a cluster of fenced-in barracks. The convoy swooped under a bridge and crossed a web of train tracks, the tires squealing on the wet rails. We went through a metallic gorge of massive tanks reeking of methanol. With the racket of the trucks’ motors echoing violently against their walls, the tanks seemed poised to crush us.
The molten metal from a blast furnace momentarily created daylight.
At a crossroads we turned right and descended a gentle incline.
Ahead was a sea of barracks lit by sweeping searchlights and walled off by a high barbed-wire fence. The trucks passed through the gate, then the brakes squealed and the tires grated on the gravel.
We all pitched forward, then fell back onto one another. The SS guards ordered us off the trucks. Stiffly, I jumped down.
Rubbing my frozen ears, I looked at the rows of barracks, speculating whether the men sleeping inside worked at the factory complex. Since guessing games were pointless, I turned my attention to a broad-shouldered fellow with thick, wavy gray hair staring us down. He was a handsome man who could have been mistaken for a matinee idol, but the folds around his square jaw and his sharp, unblinking eyes left no doubt that he was an unmitigated brute. He wore a black uniform with riding breeches trimmed on the sides with wide red stripes, which were tucked into high black boots. He had a black cap on his head and a riding crop tucked under his arm.
It would have been easy to presume that he was an SS officer, but there were no Nazi insignia on his uniform. Instead, sewn on his jacket was a patch with a green triangle and the number 4. The men who gathered our belongings had colored triangles and numbers on their striped uniforms, so I could only assume that he was a fellow prisoner. But why was he dressed so differently?
“Zu fünf aufstellen!” (Line up by fives!) His accent was clearly Prussian.
A blond Austrian in his twenties tried to gain favor. He stepped out and shouted in French: “Line up by fives!”
The Prussian stiffened. “Was bist du?” (What are you?)
“I’m Max, your interpreter,” he answered self-assuredly. Max was a socialist who had spent a few months in a concentration camp when Germany annexed Austria, then fled to France where he had been rearrested.
The Prussian moved slowly toward Max.
“Here is my best translator.”
The blows from his whip sent Max rolling into the mud. The callousness of the boche startled me. The handful of SS members in Drancy had kept a low profile, and the only time I witnessed a German lash out was to break up an illegal dance we had going in a vacant room. His half-hearted kicks to clear us out sprang from irritation, as when you swat flies. This Prussian’s eyes sparkled with sadistic glee as he beat Max. What filled me with dread wasn’t the violence, but that this was the action of a fellow inmate. I could only hope that he was the exception.
“Los marsch!” commanded the Prussian.
As we started walking, a handful of men dressed in the stripped garb approached from between two barracks. I recognized one of them. He had been shipped out of Drancy in December. It was a relief to see that he hadn’t become one of those hunchbacks.
“Comment que c’est ici?” (How is it here?) the man next to me asked them.