“Merci pour le cadeau” (Thank you for the present), he muttered.
My laughter was cut short when I spotted a group of SS officers passing by, pointing at buildings and jotting down notes. Standing at the rim of the trench, our jittery Kapo and Vorarbeiter pushed us harder. As we chopped away at the earth, we nervously watched the strutting, high-ranking Nazis. Their presence was highly unusual, and from a Häftling’s perspective, any deviance from the daily routine was a bad omen. These boches though seemed preoccupied with something more pressing than the labor of a filthy bunch of Untermenschen (subhumans).
The following morning I found myself behind Joseph, the oldest member of our Kommando, as we goose-stepped through the camp’s gate. He was a frail, middle-aged Dutch Jew who wasn’t very bright. Many Häftlinge addressed one another by their first three numbers, which indicated one’s transport. Joseph’s first three numbers were 175, and that made him the butt of many jokes in our Kommando.
“Bist du ein Hundertfünfundsiebzieger?” (Are you a 175?) they would teasingly ask him.
“Ja, ich bin ein Hundertfünfundsiebzieger,” he would answer with a grin that always caused fits of laughter. Joseph never caught on to the joke. One hundred seventy-five was the number of the paragraph in the Nazi penal code that outlawed homosexuality, and as far as I could tell, Joseph was a simpleton but he wasn’t a “pinkie.”
This particular morning Joseph had diarrhea, and the brownish yellow liquid was streaming down his pant legs as we marched. I was splashed and sprayed with every step, as were the men goose-stepping in front of him. As a matter of fact, they were getting it worse. Humiliated, poor Joseph weeped, wiping his tears and nose with his sleeve. When we arrived at our work site, the Kapo ordered Joseph to wash his pants at a faucet at one of the factory buildings across the road. Sniveling and bent over from cramps, “175” did as he was told.
The Vorarbeiter had us digging double-time on a new section of trench as the Kapo paced anxiously, continually looking down the road as if he were expecting an arrival. I noticed that there were German soldiers with binoculars positioned on the roofs of the factory buildings. This had to have something to do with the officers who were surveying the area the day before.
Joseph returned bare ass, his wet pants in his hands. Incensed, the Kapo ordered him to put his pants back on and dig in an area of the trench away from the rest of us. When the Kapo saw a shivering Joseph leaning on his shovel, he pointed at him and barked at the Vorarbeiter. “Helmut, let’s make a good impression!”
The Vorarbeiter jumped into the trench and snatched the shovel from Joseph’s hands. Crying, Joseph sank to his knees. He didn’t see the Vorarbeiter raise the shovel, and he didn’t even moan as he slumped to the ground with his head caved in. None of us stopped digging. None of us even hesitated. We all knew it was coming.
The Kapo screamed at us to hide the Drecksack (dirt bag), and a quick thinking Häftling covered Joseph’s body with an overturned wheelbarrow.
A few minutes later the Kapo and the Vorarbeiter took off their caps and stood at attention as a black Mercedes convertible led by two motorcycles slowly passed by. I recognized Reichsführer Himmler,[6] the boss of the SS, sitting in the backseat. Flanked by two of the plant’s engineers, he had come to inspect the fruits of his slaves’ labor. That was what all the fuss had been about. That was why 175’s body was under a wheelbarrow.
CHAPTER 13
Every morning, once the Kommandos were counted and through the gate, the goose-stepping stopped and we became our true selves—a haggard, shuffling horde of slaves. A half-mile later, the Kapos would halt us at the Buna gate, where we would wait for the arrival of the British POWs. For some unknown reason, they and their Wehrmacht (German Army) guards had to enter the plant first.
Always whistling some popular tune, these well-dressed and well-fed POWs marched by us like strutting roosters. I would watch them go by with a twinge of envy and resentment, thinking that they wouldn’t be whistling such a happy tune if they were in my ill-fitting wooden shoes.
These strong fellows didn’t seem to mind working, mainly delivering supplies to the multitude of buildings that made up the plant. Pushing flatbed pushcarts, they would buzz back and forth, laughing and joking among themselves. It was probably a welcome relief from the idle monotony of their Stalag. They definitely enjoyed the opportunity for some contact with the civilians—the female civilians, to be precise. The POWs received chocolate in their Red Cross packages, and some of them bartered the sweets for “romance” with the local Polish girls working in the plant. With thousands of niches and dark corners, and not enough guards to cover the twenty square miles of plant grounds, it was easy for a hungry couple to duck away for a quickie. Hell, I would be whistling in the morning if I could soak my biscuit once in a while, but I would bust a lung singing if I could get my hands on one of those chocolate bars.
Häftlinge weren’t allowed to mingle with the POWs, but there were always opportunities to have a quick, furtive conversation. In the winter that usually happened around a barrel with a fire blazing inside, where we warmed ourselves during lunch breaks. From time to time POWs would stop to thaw out, and they would always dis-creetly pass out a few cigarettes to us “stripees.” With the coming of spring, the pace of everyone’s toiling outdoors slowed, and that brought more opportunities to chat with our allies.
In halting English I asked a blond, well-tanned sergeant pushing a cart of steel pipes, “What new, mate?” Having overheard fragments of their conversations, I thought “mate” was a common first name for Aussies and “bloke” was a first name for most of the British POWs.
The sergeant gave me a smile and said, “We’ve landed in Normandy, and Jerry is running back to the ‘fatherland.’ We’ll all be going home soon.” No wonder they marched as if they were in front of Buckingham Palace.
“Take it easy,” the Aussie said, winking as he left. With his drawl, “easy” sounded like “dizzy,” so I thought he expected me to be dizzy with delight about the landing.
A few days later we were digging a deep trench between two warehouses. The sergeant sauntered by with a few of his “mates.”
“Is this a mass grave?” the sergeant joked.
I didn’t find it funny because it could easily have become one.
“Is war over?” I shot back.
He told me a few battles had stalled the whole campaign, em-phasizing “battles” with a swear word that with his accent I took to mean as “foggy,” which explained to me why they were held up. It sure would be difficult to shoot those Nazis in that thick Normandy fog.
6
There is no official record of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler visiting the I.G. Farben plant or Auschwitz in the spring of 1944; it is possible this was one of his doubles.