The driver was now in such a rush to get to the crematoriums that he didn’t bother to avoid the numerous potholes, and I was certain I was going to find myself face-down in one of them. Was the asshole trying to make up for lost time? Or did he want to ensure that his precious eels were delivered alive and squirming?
Each jolt momentarily animated the corpses, sending arms and legs flailing, sometimes tapping me on the back. A few more bumps, I daydreamed, and the driver will raise the dead and be marched in front of a firing squad for letting his load escape the ovens.
The truck came to jarring halt right outside one of the gates of Birkenau. SS guards screamed at me to move away from the vehicle and not to talk to any of the Häftlinge. What Häftlinge, I thought?
There wasn’t a soul about except the guards. I put a wide berth between me and the truck as the Kapo and the driver stayed in the cab, chatting and smoking.
A significant distance past the barbed wire stood two large red brick structures with black plumes streaming from their chimneys.
I had never laid eyes on them before, but I knew exactly what those buildings were. They were why the air reeked of grease burning in a skillet.
As if on cue, members of the Sonderkommando (Special Detail) came out of one the buildings, pushing flatbed handcars. The Sonderkommando was responsible for the disposal of all the dead—those that were delivered to them like our load and those murdered in the “showers.” I had never seen such a strange and disturbing group of men. Even though they were walking and breathing, and seemingly well fed, there was no life in them. Their eyes, their faces, had less expression than the corpses that they hauled off the truck. They all moved—no, glided—with shoulders hunched and arms hanging limply at their sides. They worked fast, silently, and without a wasted gesture. It was as if I were watching a ballet of Dante’s Inferno. On how many corpses had they rehearsed this gruesome choreography? Birkenau is German for “birch groves,”
and when I first heard the name I imagined a peaceful sanitarium where the truckloads of Muselmänner were nursed back to human beings. What wishful thinking!
On the way back to camp we stopped in the Auschwitz main camp and picked up a load of men’s clothing. There was a shortage of the striped uniforms in our camp, and the SS were supplementing with civilian clothes that had a square piece of striped material stitched on the back. We then made a detour to the Buna plant’s civilian kitchen, where the driver delivered his eels and a bag of unaltered clothes. He came back with a smile and a few packs of Navy Cut, a British brand of cigarettes that an English POW had traded with the cook.
“Gee, they smell delicious,” I told the Kapo.
“You’re too young to smoke,” he said.
“But not too young to burn.”
He laughed and handed me one.
Loading the truck the next morning, all I could think about was the Jehovah’s Witness. My sleep had been wracked with images of her naked body shivering as hundreds of eels burrowed through her. Feigning sick had crossed my mind, but I feared the Kapo’s fury more than watching her be poured out of that sack. I could definitely survive seeing another dead body; another beating was a different story.
My stomach was twisted in knots by the time the truck pulled under the bridge. I carried the smallest corpse I could find down to their fishing spot. The SS driver was in a jolly mood, certain that “the whore” had brought him a prize catch. I closed my eyes as he and the Kapo extracted her. When I heard her body drop on the bank I couldn’t keep my eyes shut any longer. Her mud-streaked corpse glistened in the sun. The ugly welts on her body had receded in the cold water. She sure had put a spell on me, because by the time I heard him, the Kapo was screaming in my face.
“Hey shithead, get moving!”
I struggled to carry her up the embankment. I didn’t care that my “pajamas” got dirty and wet. She deserved better than being dragged by her bluish white ankles, but how I wished that the cold water had closed her milky eyes. Not wanting to stare at her ripped-open belly, I laid her on her stomach. I felt guilty, but I couldn’t help admiring her still firm buttocks. Doubtless she had been a virgin until they dragged her kicking and screaming into that whorehouse. As a final act of desecration, an eel slowly slithered out from under her. I stomped on its head with my heel and ground it to gelatin. The SS driver came up the embankment yodeling. A fat catfish had erred into his sack.
“This one I will keep for myself,” he announced.
I looked at the dead eel at my feet and thought, I’ll do the same.
On the way to Birkenau, I hid the eel in the tube that reinforced the side panel of the truck, then sat down next to the girl’s corpse.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
I didn’t even know the name of this decent, fervently religious human being whose God had forsaken her. It was no wonder that I was an atheist. In this place, God validated my choice every day.
Again, the SS ordered me to stand away from the truck as the Sonderkommando shuffled through their dance. When two of them turned the girl over, exposing her eviscerated belly, they froze for a second, shook their heads, then resumed their roles. After all the corpses had been removed, the Sonderkommando loaded the truck with over forty old cement bags filled with human ashes. They stacked the bags in neat, tight rows to prevent them from spilling.
Once the tailgate was closed I climbed into the bed. When I was eight, an elementary school pal showed me the urn that held the ashes of his grandmother. I had a hard time believing that a canister no bigger than a small coffee can could hold a whole adult.
There had to be at least twenty to twenty-five men, women, and children in each of the cement bags, which meant I was staring at all that was left of one train load of human beings.
As we drove away I peered inside one of them. I had never seen human ashes before. The ashes were grayish brown and coarse like sand, and peppered with blackened pieces of bone. I looked back.
The smoke from the red brick chimneys was beginning to eclipse the sun. Goodbye, you innocent, devout creature. I am sure I’ll see you again in my nightmares.
The truck turned onto a dirt road leading to vast fields of cabbages. We stopped at a patch being tilled by a Kommando. The driver blew his horn and yelled at them to unload the truck. As they approached, I realized that the Häftlinge were women—black triangles from the Ukraine. I handed the bags down to them, and a few immediately started spreading the ashes along the rows of cabbages. The Nazis made sure nothing went to waste, and from the looks of those bulging, green heads, we made excellent fertilizer.
I wanted to see if one of the women would circulate a message for Stella through the women’s camps, but none of them spoke any of the languages I spoke. At least seeing that the SS had a use for them bolstered my optimism that I would see Stella again. Yet I couldn’t help thinking that there was a father, perhaps even a boyfriend, who was confident he would see that Jehovah Witness again.
After the women loaded our truck with cabbages meant for our camp’s kitchen, the driver once again stopped at the plant’s civilian kitchen to trade his morning catch, along with a large number of the cabbages. When we arrived at our kitchen I helped unload.