As the days went by I realized how enormous and elaborate the underground plant was. The two main tunnels, which were about a mile long, worked as assembly lines fed by a total of forty-six tunnel workshops. If the top of the Kohnstein hill were shaved off, the plant would look like a ladder. The two German Häftlinge who became my mentors at the workshop told me the names of the strange contraptions we were building: the V-1 and V-2 rockets. Both in their late twenties, Bruno and Siegfried had been Luftwaffe technicians working at Peenemünde, which was on an island in the Baltic sea, where the Nazis created and first tested the rockets. When the island became a target for Allied bombers, the Germans moved the construction of the V-1s and V-2s to Dora, which had been a gypsum mine.
While working in Peenemünde, Bruno and Siegfried carried on affairs with a couple of Danish cuties. When their wives got wise to their infidelities, they went straight to the Gestapo and the two men were stripped of their uniforms and stuffed into “pajamas.”
“That was a dirty trick those bitches pulled on you,” I said, wanting to sound sympathetic. “Just because they were jealous?”
Bruno raised his bushy eyebrows. “No, because we were associating with the enemy. Our wives are good Nazis.”
“Basically, they did us a favor,” Siegfried laughed. “We’re much safer in this tunnel.”
From them I learned how lethal and intricate those futuristic-looking weapons were. The V-1s carried 551 pounds of explosives, but they weren’t effective because their accuracy depended solely on the direction and speed of the wind, which made the V-1 an easy target for a fast fighter plane.
The V-2s were a different matter. These long-range missiles flew at twice the speed of sound, carried over two thousand pounds of explosives, and had guidance systems. With a sarcastic smirk, Bruno informed me that “the god with the moustache” had promised that the rockets would turn the tide of the war. Even if Bruno had his doubts, I was determined to do all I could to ensure that “the god with a moustache” couldn’t keep his promise.
The slightest shock would render the precision instruments I installed in the electric circuits useless, and I saw to it that they got it good. Who could accuse me of sabotage? There was no way to prove I was responsible because it couldn’t be detected until the rocket was fired. They would have to write it off as a manufacturing defect. I daydreamed that some of the V-2s might errantly explode over Berlin. Finally I was able to do real damage to the Nazi war machine—at least that was what I told myself.
One day the SS discovered sabotage in one of the shops. They didn’t bother with an investigation. They simply hung the whole Kommando, Kapo and all. Fifty men were tethered to a rail that was then hoisted into the air by a crane used to lift the V-2s. They were left hanging near the tunnel entrance as a reminder to us to be good little slaves. Passing before those dangling bodies—that row of purple faces with protruding eyes and tongues—didn’t deter me from my sabotage. It just gave me more fuel to be relentless in my mission.
After a sixteen-hour shift, climbing the hill back up to the camp strained the limits of my endurance. I would stumble along that frozen trail with heavy legs, and many times my heart would palpi-tate, then seemingly stop beating. I’d put my hand to my chest and wouldn’t feel a thing. I would become dizzy. Everything in front of me would begin to fade. And just when I would think I was dying, my heart sparked and I would have enough energy to drag myself to my bunk, where I wondered in astonishment how I had held out for another day. Luckily there were times we stayed in the tunnel for a couple days straight, taking catnaps at our benches or wherever it was comfortable. That was okay with me. I was safe from the Allied bombs, and I didn’t have to drag my ass up and down that damn trail.
Our Blockälteste, Ludwig, a green triangle from Hanover, was a vile dog. He had been dismissed from his teaching job for clobbering his pupils and had been locked up for printing phony money.
Having been wounded on the Western front during the First World War, Ludwig was a fanatic Francophobe and picked only those who spoke French for his daily trouncings. In his sadistic rages he even beat a few Muselmänner to death. After I found myself under his lash, I joined a group determined to kill him.
“This must look like a natural death or the SS are going to hang the whole Block,” I told them. “I’m not going to die because of that prick. The end of this war is too close.”
From the tunnel I smuggled a small container of glass cleaning fluid, a mixture of ether and detergent. The following night, two Belgians, a Fleming and a Walloon, whose ethnic feuding was centuries old, started a noisy, diversionary fight at the piss pails. Once the night watchman and the Stubendienst were distracted, five of our most able-bodied cohorts charged into Ludwig’s private quarters while I stood lookout. They pinned him down and covered his face with a rag soaked with my lethal contraband. After his body went limp, they opened the window, and I rushed over to separate the Belgians. In the morning, Ludwig looked very peaceful.
For lunch the Nazis delivered an infusion of roasted acorns that they had the gall to call coffee. In my workshop I was assigned the lucky task of returning the empty container. There was nothing in the bottom except a few drops and the grounds, which had no nutritional value but appeased my stomach for a while. One day after delivering the container I went to the toilet and found a Häftling struggling on the plumbing of one of the bowls. He was lying on his stomach, swearing in French and banging his tools. I coughed and the fellow rolled onto his back. I stared at him astounded. It was Marius, the Corsican plumber who befriended me in Drancy. He looked me over in disbelief, then jumped up and hugged me, blowing his trademark garlic breath in my face.
“Boy, you look like shit!”
He didn’t have to rub it in. I knew that without the assistance of a mirror. “Well, you’re the expert on shit. You look pretty good in ‘pajamas.’” He had hardly changed. “How long have you been here?”
“About a year. Before that I was in Compiègne.”
Compiègne was a camp in northern France, by the Marne River. “I heard that camp was only housing the so-called ‘enemy aliens.’”
“Well, there are two camps,” Marius said. “Remember that couple from Honduras with the twins? They put them in that camp and dumped me in the political one. I repaired the plumbing in both. The bastards liked my work so much they sent me here.”
“In what tunnel is your shop?” I asked.
“I’m all over this place, wherever I’m needed. I even have those bastards and some of the civilian workers from Nordhausen bringing me their faucets and the like to repair. They slip me extra food.”
That’s how he got the garlic.
“Ciao, I have to get back. Look me up when you have a chance.
I’m in the electric shop.”
“You’re an electrician? Good for you, boy. My trade has saved my ass.”
It was encouraging to see someone from the train to Drancy alive and weathering the ordeal well. It made me think that someone else might have been lucky, too.