The Häftling assigned to create these masterpieces would use two wooden planks that looked like oversized trowels to iron the wrinkles or creases from the blankets. Then he would have to position all the pillows so the SS officer could look down the row of bunks and see that all the pillows were aligned. If our beds couldn’t make “the god with a moustache” happy, everyone in the Block would go hungry that night.
Evening chores included washing the Block’ s three or four thirteen-gallon soup containers. This was the most treasured task.
Where most other chores paid with an extra half ladle of soup, the Häftlinge who washed the soup containers had the right to whatever remained in the bottoms and clung to the sides. Up to four ladles of soup would be left in those barrels, and there was an unquenchable demand for it on the camp’s black market.
Another evening chore was doing a stint as night watchman. It took a good deal of fortitude and endurance to stay awake for that two-hour shift after twelve hours of labor, but the loss of sleep got you a full ladle of soup.
When I was the night watchman, I sat underneath the night-light, where I had a good view of the door and the night watchman’s clock hanging on a bedpost. I was also within earshot of the men filling the piss pail. In our Block there had been many fights over who would be the one to empty that pail. Many times I took it out myself to ensure quiet during my shift. Peace would be a better word—the Block was never quiet. When everyone was awake, there was coughing and spitting and swearing and arguments, and snoring and pitiful moans when they slept.
One night I heard men swearing in French outside the Block. I went to investigate and found two men scratching, biting, and clawing each other by the latrine. They were enraged beasts, and I had difficulty separating them. One brawler was a Parisian and the other had a southern French accent. They were real Muselmänner and had spent what little strength they had in their fight. On hands and knees, their chests heaving for air, they sobbed like children. The fight had been ignited by a culinary difference of opinion. The Parisian preferred to cook with butter while the southerner swore by olive oil. I stared at the sad fools and wondered if they realized that they would never taste food cooked in either fat ever again.
Another evening, I noticed that the night watchman’s clock was gone. My heart stopped. How did it disappear right from under my nose? Did someone steal it when I emptied the piss pail? Had I fallen asleep? Regardless, I absolutely had to find it before the Blockälteste woke. The clock was his prized possession. Every morning he locked it up in his makeshift quarters. If I didn’t find it, I might as well count my bones.
Like a man possessed, I scurried from one end of the Block to the other. I tiptoed up and down the rows of bunks, hoping to hear it. It had to be in the Block since no one had gone outside. Finally, my ears caught a muffled ticking. I was ecstatic and at the same time boiling mad. The thief was going to pay for this. I stole up, then unclenched my fists. The clock was in the Stubendienst’s bunk.
There was nothing I could do to that snoring pig. He must have taken it to show the Blockälteste that I was incompetent, so that one of his buddies could have my job. You’re not going to make me look like a fool. Gingerly I lifted his pillow, retrieved the clock, and hung it back in its place.
While I was in line for my bread the next morning, the Stubendienst smugly asked if I had slept well.
“Oh, very well, thank you,” I smiled.
“Slept during your watch?”
“Oh, I never sleep then.”
“Then how could I’ve taken the clock?”
I pretended to be astonished. “What clock? Nobody could’ve taken it since it was there this morning.”
“You took it out from under my pillow.”
“Pillow? I would never dare do that. You must have dreamt it,”
I said, staring at him innocently. He threw me an incredulous look and walked away.
After that episode I applied for a different chore, washing the Blockälteste’s laundry. I had a cordial relationship with Wilhelm, whose dignified air clashed with the green color of his triangle. He had been imprisoned for embezzling funds to pay for his mistress’s lavish lifestyle. He was still grieving for his only son, who had died in the battle of Stalingrad and hadn’t ever visited his father in prison. Wilhelm enjoyed practicing his knowledge of foreign languages with me and seemed to treat me better than most. Washing his laundry got me access to soap and warm water in the shower room, some extra food, and a bed of my own whenever possible.
As I was licking my bowl clean of the tasteless evening soup, I noticed a bored SS officer standing just inside the doorway. Wilhelm yelled orders for us to undress. It was a “selection.” We were hustled into one corner, and the boche handed out the green cards that we had filled out on our arrival. One by one we filed past the Nazi.
He took my card, looked me up and down, then examined my back-side. Why was he dragging this out? I’m no Muselmann. I just turned nineteen. On September twenty-sixth, to be exact.
“Der Bengel ist noch ganz kräftig” (The rascal is still strong), Wilhelm said.
I turned around. The SS officer gave me another look, then shrugged indifferently. He took my card out of his pocket and put it on the table with the others. “We’ll wait until next time,” he told Wilhelm.
I rejoined my companions on rubbery legs. I ducked the reaper again. But did I have any real reason to be thankful? With a frigid winter almost on top of us, there was no possibility of putting on weight and regaining strength before the next SS officer looked me over. I was a condemned man who had been given only a short reprieve. If my “selection” was inevitable, then wouldn’t it be better to get it over with than endure another month or two of pain and suffering before they pulled my card?
A few days later they rounded up the “selected.” Dressed only in their tattered shirts, the chosen from the Blocks piled into the back of a truck. They had been told the same old lie—“You’re being taken to a rest camp to recover”—even though the Nazis knew that every “selected” Häftlinge was well aware of the truck’s destination.
They weren’t going to take a chance of anything disrupting the steady flow of traffic into their gas chambers. Sitting on the truck bed, silent and shivering, most of the men didn’t care anymore what was going to happen to them.
“Don’t worry!” a Kapo yelled as the truck pulled away. “Soon you’ll be warm, even too warm!”
From that moment I was determined to do whatever I had to do to make sure my card wouldn’t end up in that officer’s pocket again. My bones weren’t going to stoke their fires. And, I fantasized, if my goose was cooked, then I would make sure one of those SS pricks joined me.
In the bunk below me slept Moishe, a yellow triangle from Yugosla-via who had been scooped up by the fascist Croatian militia. He was in his twenties with the face of an adolescent and was a big shot in the camp’s black market, thanks to his connections with Häftlinge in the Canada Kommando. His cohorts called him Moi. Because of his salesmen in Kommandos that worked inside the plant buildings, Moi was profiting handsomely from the civilian employees. He was also the Stubendienst’s assistant. The Stubendienst’ s cut insured his eyes were closed to the steady flow of visitors Moi had every night, since Häftlinge weren’t supposed to enter other Blocks.