A ribbon of blue carbide fumes weaved from the top of the monstrous smokestack and was swept away by the morning breeze.
The red and orange basket that hung from the smokestack was at its lowest position. When the basket was raised to the top of the smokestack, it signaled that Allied bombers had crossed into German territory. Because we were working in such close proximity, the squeaking of the basket’s pulleys was our initial warning. The first time I heard it, I thought it was a flock of birds gathering on the smokestack. The blast of the air raid sirens was our last warning, and by that time the bombers would be almost overhead.
A few Häftlinge had left to fetch our barrels of soup when I heard the birdcalls. The artificial fog began to blanket the trench, stinging our eyes and burning our lungs. We heard shrill sirens in the distance, then those in the factory began to wail. We watched civilian workers race to their air raid shelters or cling to fleeing trucks. None of us was in a rush. For a Häftling, an air raid was a game of roulette. Pick an open space away from the plant buildings or lie down in the hole you were digging and wait and see if the bombs fall on top of you. So I gathered a few dandelions as the fog thickened.
“What are you doing, picking flowers for your funeral?” someone laughed.
“No one else will.”
The truth was that I was munching my bouquet in hopes the vitamins in the weeds would strengthen my bleeding gums. I plopped down with the others in the dirt between the kiln and some nearby warehouses. Häftlinge working in the factory buildings joined us. If it weren’t for those lying on their stomachs with their arms over their heads, and those who had placed discarded planks on top of themselves, it would have looked like we were waiting for an afternoon concert in the park. Someone near me mumbled a drawn-out prayer in Yiddish. We lay there in the Nazi fog for a half-hour. Some of the men even dosed off. There weren’t many chances for a slave to enjoy a siesta.
A squadron of fighter planes buzzed by—Messerschmitts, from the sound of their motors—then the sudden cacophony of an in-tense air battle. A violent opera of screaming planes, barking machine guns, and thundering anti-aircraft batteries played behind the curtain of fog. All at once everything became quiet. The silence was oddly oppressive. The planes were gone. Why hadn’t they bombed the plant? They had been directly overhead. Did they have some other objective?
My ears began to buzz strangely. I sat up and saw a man looking toward the sky as he placed an empty cement bag over his head.
Shit, how could I have forgotten about the splinters of anti-aircraft shells and the planes’ errant machine gun bullets? Someone cried out and crumpled to the ground, holding his head in his hands. The lethal shower fell thick and fast. Not far away was a section of cement sewer pipe. With my mess tin as a helmet, I sprinted and dove inside. Fragments peppered the pipe. Outside, Häftlinge were running, screaming, and dropping. The fog machines were depleted and the wind had swept away any remnants of the plant’s cover. I peeked out. The sky was sprinkled with little silvery stars, a second wave of Allied bombers out of reach of the anti-aircraft cannons.
All at once the earth trembled and heaved, and the air filled with a terrible roar. My shelter began to roll and skip. I felt myself lifted into the air and savagely dashed to the ground. In a panic, I pressed my arms against the pipe to prevent myself from slipping out. I caught glimpses of buildings erupting in flames. The air was choked with dust and smoke. A bomb exploded next to me and gravel cut into my face as the pipe spun like a top, then rolled into the bomb’s crater. My body twitched from the concussion of the blast. My hands, arms, and face were covered with blood, but I felt no pain. Because everything sounded muted, I thought the crater was incredibly deep. When the tinkle of anti-aircraft shrapnel stopped, I dragged myself out of the pipe and discovered that the crater wasn’t that deep at all—thirteen feet at the most. Everything sounded muted because the blast had ruptured my eardrums.
Crawling out of the crater, I found myself in a new world. A firestorm was sweeping through a complex of warehouses. Thick clouds of black smoke rose from the butane reservoirs. Steam from the boilers hissed from broken pipes. Train tracks were flayed from their ties, and the remains of boxcars were scattered along them.
The sight of all this destruction filled me with joy. I knew that soon much of Germany would look like this.
You would have thought that everyone lounging in grass around me perished during such devastation, but only two Häftlinge didn’t get back up. It was the hardships in the days that followed that dropped us like flies. The camp’s kitchen ran on steam produced by the factory, and with the pipes broken we received neither soup nor coffee for three days. No bread, either, since the trains couldn’t run. Seventy-two hours without anything to eat. We were starving, but nevertheless they made us work, clearing away the rubble.
Every night we carried back scores of dead Muselmänner, and each morning the pyramids for Birkenau grew higher. The camp’s band should have been playing Chopin’s “Funeral March” as we went out the gate. I was sure that the Allied raids were helping to bring a quicker end to the war, but with all the added misery, I couldn’t help but wonder how many of us would be left to see it.
I stabbed the earth with my spade, being careful of the heels of the Häftling in front of me. Tossed the dirt, took a step, and stabbed where he had just dug. The man behind me did the same just as the man behind him did and the man behind him and the man behind him. I felt like an oarsman on a Roman galley. Ten of us in single file moving in unison; one full shovel, one step forward. We moved very smoothly, digging a narrow, shallow ditch for a single pipe.
We were digging not far from our entrance into the plant. I wasn’t sure but it seemed like our ditch was going to be part of a pipeline running to either our camp or the British P.O.W. camp.
The rest of the Kommando, ninety men and our Kapo, were exca-vating for a larger project. A red triangle Vorarbeiter followed us with half-hearted demands to put our backs into it. If his voice rose, it wasn’t because we weren’t working hard enough, but because there was an SS guard in earshot. When one of us had the urge for number one or number two the Vorarbeiter grabbed the shovel and joined our chorus line. We had no Scheisshaus, just a Scheiss trench, a six foot pit with a wooden plank laid across it that you could hang your ass over.
The Vorarbeiter stepped in for the man in front of me. Lunch would be coming soon, I thought. A smart Häftlin g made sure to empty his bowels before the Buna soup arrived, never after. You wanted to give you body enough time to absorb everything it could from the gruel before saying adieu. That’s if your bowels were stout enough to have a say in the matter.
A shriek and a loud splash jammed a cog in our motion. The Vorarbeiter stopped and looked over his shoulder. So did I. So did everyone in the work party. The Häftling who should have been sitting over the shit trench wasn’t there and neither was the plank.
The Vorarbeiter went over and we all followed. The flimsy board had broken at a knothole. Our comrade was treading in the ooze. I didn’t remember the stench being so offensive when my ass hung over the plank. His thrashing had churned the brown pond too well.