“Idiots! Don’t stand there! Get him out of there!” the Voribieter ordered.
A couple of recent Häftlinge lowered their shovels but the shit covered figure couldn’t get a good grip. No matter how much the Voribieter screamed and threatened, none of us were going to reach our arm down to help pull him up. He tried to claw his way up the side of the pit, but it was just too slimy. Shovels were lowered again.
“Back to work, you dirtbags. The creep is not worth cleaning.”
We were so engrossed and repulsed by our comrade’s predicament that none of us had noticed the SS guard who had walked up.
He stared at us with pistol in hand. We stepped back as one.
“You heard him!” the Vorarbeiter yelled. “Back to work.”
POP! One shot. We moved, fast. Some of the newcomers were flabbergasted. Old timers like myself weren’t fazed. He could have just as well shot into the air instead of the trench. Maybe the Boche thought he was doing us a favor. Maybe he hadn’t fired his pistol in a few days. Whatever his reason, he had just made our day shittier.
Alive or dead, dripping in human waste or not, that man had to come back to camp with us to be counted.
When the Vorarbeiter was confident the SS brute wouldn’t be strolling back, he ordered two of the new arrivals to get pickaxes and retrieve the body. It was not an easy task. We must have dug for thirty minutes before the two men reported that they had snagged him. The Vorarbeiter promised Nachschlag, an extra ladle of Buna soup, to whoever cleaned up the mess. My workmates were ready to throw up their meager breakfasts. I raised my arm. After my coronation as Roi du Chateau in Drancy no sight or smell fazed me.
There was no water faucet with a hose, but luckily for me there was an abundance of steam valves all over the plant. With some doing, I got the body into a wheelbarrow and pushed it over to a valve, which was to a steam pipe that provided heat to our camp. I draped the body over the wheelbarrow’s handles, which were resting on the pipe. I turned the body as if roasting a side of beef. As I cleaned him, the steam warmed up the shit and the stench almost overwhelmed a Scheissmeister like me.
Trying to clean him with his pajamas on wasn’t working, so I stripped them off. He was a yellow triangle. I was sure he was one of the recently arrived Hungarians. He was still in good shape for a Häftling.
The Vorarbeiter, a red triangle Prussian, looked over my shoulder.
“Throw his pajamas back into the pit,” he said in German, then grinned. “Although, it would be fun to dump it at the doorstep of the SS barracks.”
I chuckled in agreement. “What a waste. He was worth three Muselmänner.”
“And now I’ve got to write an accident report.” the Voribeiter said as he left.
By the time I shoved the body into two cement bags it was bleached and well done.
When the Kommando arrived at the camp’s gate that evening, the Kapo announced to the guards, “Ninety-nine and one dead.”
The man’s body was on a warped plank shouldered by four Häftlinge. I wasn’t one of them. I had gotten my extra ladle of soup.
As luck would have it, on a late summer Sunday I was again assigned to Kommando 15. Because of my screw-up that rainy Easter, I tried to wiggle my way out of it, but my Blockästester wasn’t passing out favors that day. It was four months ago, a near lifetime in Auschwitz, I consoled myself. Kommando 15’s Kapo and Vorarbeiter could easily have been demoted or died. Lining up in the Appelplatz, I saw that was not the case. I hoped that they wouldn’t remember me. My ribs couldn’t withstand another round of their soccer kicks.
Again, a pathetic parade marched to waiting freight cars in the plant. We passed the glass warehouse, which was now nothing more than a heap of splinters and shattered glass. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Bonjour, Pierre,” whispered a familiar voice.
Hubert was grinning from ear to ear and looking fit without the jaundice. I could have hugged him.
“I’ve been looking for you.”
“And I’ve been looking for you.”
“Never at the same spot at the same time, I guess,” Hubert laughed.
Mon ami told me his Block and Kommando number and how his survival had been going. “I’ve got a janitor job in one of the buildings that’s still standing.”
“You’re lucky. Mine went poof.”
We lined up for a count next to the train cars. After giving his instructions to the Vorarbeiter, the Kapo retreated to the crudely assembled shack that was his office. The Vorarbeiter moved along the line, writing down our identification numbers. He stepped up to me. Gazing at my feet, I rattled off my numbers. He began to write them down, then suddenly stopped. I looked up to find him staring at me, nonplussed. His reaction puzzled me, but I kept a blank face. He quickly regained his composure and continued down the line. What the hell was going on? He looked scared, as if he saw me as a threat. Did he believe I had been punished for my Easter nap and was looking for vengeance? I sure wasn’t a physical threat to him. He was well fed. When he divided the Kommando into work gangs and left me out, I became concerned. Had he been punished for allowing me to wander into the warehouse and was now planning to even the score?
As Hubert and the others started working, the Vorarbeiter grabbed me by my jacket. “The number on this jacket isn’t yours!”
His face was flushed red as he shook me, and his breath was pungent with garlic.
“And who do you suppose it belongs to?”
His behavior frightened me, but strangely I felt I had the upper hand.
“Roll up your sleeve.”
“Why?”
“Do what I say, Drecksack!”
I pulled my sleeve up. I remembered that he had copied my number from my arm. What was the big deal?
“You have a nine on your coat and a three on your arm.”
“I beg your pardon, but I have a nine on my arm.”
He grabbed my forearm and examined it closely.
“Goddamn! What cretin tattooed you?”
“He didn’t bother to sign his masterpiece,” I chuckled nervously.
“You dare laugh?” He shook me. “Don’t you know that someone was hung in your place?”
I was staggered.
“What do you mean?”
“Because a three was written in the report. A three instead of a nine.”
“Are you sure?”
I had assumed that either he or the Kapo had failed to turn in a report or that it had been lost. “Go to the latrine and be quick about it!” he ordered.
“Why?”
“Move before I bash in your skull!” He hissed, raining blows on my back. “If the Kapo sees you, we’ll both dangle from a rope.”
The latrine was deserted, but I took down my pants in case of an inspection. With my cap, I kept a swarm of big blue flies at bay.
The stink was nauseating, but I barely noticed. The Vorarbeiter’s words kept ringing in my ears: “Someone died in your place.” It was my neck that was supposed to be stretched. I was the one who should have been fertilizing the cabbages, but I was alive, and all because of one wrong number. A three instead of a nine. What shithouse luck.