“Why did you confess?”
The man from the HKB[2] was standing over me.
“Why did you confess?”
I shrugged. “Somebody had to or we would’ve been there till doomsday.”
“You foolish kid.”
He shook his head and smeared a soothing ointment on my ass, which had swollen up like two balloons. He must have repeated my words to Herbert, because from that moment on he treated me kindly, giving me double rations and making a hero of me. Unfortunately those perks lasted only a week, at which point we were all transferred out of the quarantine Block and assigned to Kommando 136.
CHAPTER 7
I sat with twenty other Häftlinge of Kommando 136 around an oil-drum brazier inside a shelter of discarded planks and sheet metal somewhere on the Buna plant grounds. It was our lunch break. No one spoke while we ate. The sound of twenty-one famished men slurping up the brownish water the Germans had the audacity to call soup nearly drowned out the snowstorm howling outside. For the last four weeks the weather had been increasingly cruel.
Yes, I had already been in the camp for a whole month. The time had passed quickly, and nothing distinguished one day from the next. Morning roll call, work, work, work, back to camp, evening rations, sleep, wake, repeat. It was as if I had fallen into a well that had no bottom. And day in and day out it was the same food and never enough of it. At least in Drancy we got three meals, with plates that usually consisted of a piece of meat and a few vegetables.
I would still be hungry, but compared to the “Buna soup,” the food in Drancy was a king’s buffet.
Monowitz’s repetitive routine and my body’s lack of nutrients were erasing all my interests and desires. The only thing I cared about was my stomach’s incessant crying. It was the only thing any of us gave a shit about.
I stirred the contents of my rusty mess tin with my wooden spoon, hoping to find even a microbe of soggy, rotten beet. It was a hopeless struggle. The plant’s owner, the German chemical company I.G. Farben, provided our lunches, but the Häftlinge in the kitchen diverted most of the food to Monowitz’s thriving black market. I became aware of the black market after seeing a Kapo wearing the plaid flannel shirt I had gotten in Drancy. It’s not surprising that the Kanada Kommando—the “bellhops” who collected the belongings of the new arrivals—supplied most of these goods.
Food, clothing, shoes, blankets, cigarettes, jewelry, gold teeth—anything that had some value to someone could be found on this black market. The problem was that you had to have something to barter with. Only German and Polish Häftlinge could receive packages from loved ones on the outside, so many of them prospered on the black market. For the rest of us, only those good at “organizing”—camp slang for stealing—could enjoy an extra bowl of soup or wear a warm sweater.
I slurped up the final drops in my mess tin, licked my spoon clean, then put it back in my pocket. My shoes were soaked from the snow, so I held my feet up to the brazier. The coke’s bluish red flame radiated blistering heat. My shoes began to steam. I felt revitalizing warmth on my legs, stomach, and chest, but my back-side was still ice. I stood up and backed up to the brazier. Quickly the heat became unbearable and the smell of freshly ironed clothes filled the shelter.
“Pierre, passauf” (Pierre, watch out), came a voice from the other side of the brazier.
It was our Kapo, Hans, a green triangle who reminded me of the American movie star Spencer Tracy. Growing up, his movie Captains Courageous had been one of my favorites.
“If you burn the seat of your pants, the rubber hose of the Blokowy will burn your ass.”
Blokowy was Polish for “Blockälteste.” Most non-German Häftlinge addressed their barracks’ supervisor using this easier-to-pronounce word. When a Häftling broke any of the rules, it was the Blockälteste who doled out the punishment of his choice. If the infraction was severe enough, he would be the one reporting it to the SS. You were always better off with a red triangle Blockälteste than a green triangle, whose past incarceration in a German penitentiary usually made him a rabid dog waiting for the slightest excuse to pounce. From what I had seen and had been told by old-timers, red triangle Blockältesten, as well as Kapos, didn’t take advantage of their authority or relish exercising physical discipline.
A siren sounded outside. It was time to go back to raising factory buildings for “the fatherland.”
“Auf geht’s!” (Let’s go!)
Hans opened the door and our arctic tormentor blew in, making my nose tingle. “Los schneller!” (Faster!) We went out into the snow in single file, each of us walking in the tracks of the man in front of him. I quickly wrapped my hands with Fusslappen. There was an abundance of the rags in my Block.
Our job on this construction site was to drill holes in the brick walls so windows could be anchored. With my mallet and chisel in one hand, I climbed up a ladder to an opening in the wall. I brushed away the snow that had accumulated and put one leg over the ledge.
At least through the afternoon I would be more comfortable straddling the wall because I had “organized” an empty cement sack to sit on. Some Häftlinge stuffed sacks inside their clothing for insulation. I put mine under my ass because I wanted to avoid chafed thighs, since I already had enough patches of irritated skin.
On one side of me was a screen of snowflakes, on the other a black void that was the interior of the building. I hugged the wall with my thighs so that a gust couldn’t sweep me from my perch.
Someone took away the ladder. There was only one ladder for every five windows. If I had to piss, I would have to make yellow icicles over the ledge. I pounded out holes the best I could. When my legs became stiff from the cold, I started to bicycle in the air. The Häftling who had tattooed my number had given me one good piece of advice.
“If you want to survive, work only with your eyes.”
I stopped pedaling. Yes, I had to expend as little energy as possible to economize the precious few calories I was getting.
My mind wandered to Stella. Had she been lucky enough to be taken under the wing of a camp veteran? Was she getting advice that would help keep her from being sent to the crematoriums of Auschwitz’s second camp, Birkenau? The ovens and gas chambers were no secret to us in Monowitz. I had heard plenty of filtered-down accounts from members of the Transportation Kommando who delivered our corpses and near dead to Birkenau.
Stella could have been consumed in those flames weeks ago, but until I had proof I had to keep hoping. My survival depended on it.
A few days before, I bumped into Mordechai, the butcher from my hometown. He was a shuffling shell of his former self. Somehow he had gotten word that his wife and seven daughters had been exterminated that first night. In camp slang, he had become a Muselmann, the German for Muslim. Like many others, Mordechai had become so emotionally and physically broken down that, shrouded in his blanket, he looked like a gaunt pilgrim on the road to Mecca.
In Auschwitz, there was only one road and it led straight to the crematoriums. This was a path I was determined not to step onto, and I hoped my Stella had the same resolve. In truth, her will would have to be monumentally stronger than mine. In all likelihood, her father and yellow triangle mother were dead, and Stella was just as aware of that as Mordechai was about the rising smoke of his family.
2
The name of the Man from the HKB is Siegfried Halbreich, a Polish Jew who was incarcerated at Sachsenhausen and Grossrossen before being shipped to Auschwitz.