Thankfully I had been an obedient student. Kristian, besides being very impressed, appreciated that a non-German made the effort to fill out reports using this elaborate alphabet. In any other circumstance it would have been comical how one could take advantage of a German’s nationalistic vanity.
One morning, my Kommando arrived at the plant to find a crate, almost seven feet high and sitting on a dolly, blocking the entrance to our shop.
“What the hell is this?” Kristian swore.
He tried to push it aside, but it wouldn’t budge. It took five Häftlinge to finally move it out of the way. Kristian fetched an engineer, who looked over the invoice glued to the crate. The night shift had screwed up and it would be our job to deliver the crate to the right location. Kristian rounded up six French Häftlinge, then turned to me.
“Since you speak both French and German, you’re in charge.”
Three Häftlinge manned the rope that was attached to the four-wheel dolly and the rest of us got on either side of the crate to keep it steady.
“Don’t leave yet,” Kristian ordered. “You need an overseer, or whatever his title is, to accompany you.”
Our watchdog turned out to be a fifteen-year-old Hitler Youth, who was decked out in a brown shirt, swastika armband, and short pants, and who had an Italian carbine slung over his shoulder.
Showering us with insults as we struggled with our load, he led us down the tunnel farther than I had ever gone before. We came to a locked gate guarded by a Landswehr, an elderly reservist. Germany was sure scraping the bottom of the barrel to keep its war machine sputtering along. The Hitler Youth swaggered up and ordered the old man to open the gate. The guard didn’t appreciate the kid’s cocky tone, but did as he was told.
We entered a ballbearing factory that none of us Häftlinge knew existed. One of the dolly’s wheels jammed into the railroad track.
With the kid swearing and kicking at us, we struggled to dislodge it. We attempted to lift the dolly, but it wouldn’t budge, and this sent the Hitler Youth into a rage. His tantrum attracted two young secretaries dressed in flowery print dresses. The pair stared aghast at the seven of us. Obviously they didn’t know such creatures existed on the other side of the gate. The Hitler Youth decided to show off for them, pounding us with the stock of his gun.
“Genug! So behandelt man nicht Hunde!” (Enough! You don’t treat dogs that way!) one of the girls screamed.
The shithead turned his attention to the girls, which gave us a momentary reprieve from his adolescent brutality. “Shut up, you whore! They’re the enemy!”
The girls fled with tears in their eyes. Reluctantly, the Hitler Youth allowed me to go search for something that would help free the dolly. When I returned with a length of pipe and a brick, the kid and a middle-aged civilian in a suit were screaming at each other. The secretaries watched from a distance.
“I’m in charge here, you snotty brat!” The civilian barked as he pointed to the swastika button on his lapel. “I was a Party member before you were born.”
The kid flipped the bayonet out from under the barrel of his gun and pointed it at the man, who continued spewing insults. Neither one of them was willing to lose face. The other Häftlinge were cowering behind the crate. If this kept escalating, I was certain the brat would pull the trigger and mow us all down. I took a breath and stepped up to the screaming jackals.
“Could you two move a little so we can free this?” I asked in German.
Surprisingly they stepped to the side but didn’t stop arguing. If it hadn’t been for the gun, the whole thing would have been farcical.
I slid the pipe under the dolly and used the brick as a fulcrum.
“Dèmarez tout le monde pousse quand je souslève, pour qu’ on puisse s’enaller” (Everybody push when I lift, so we can get out of here), I ordered my crew.
But freeing the dolly had no affect on the German hotheads. I came up with an idea. I took off my cap and stood at attention.
Using my best Berlin slang, I respectfully addressed the brainwashed little creep. “Herr Wachtmeister, wo sollen wir die Kiste abladen?” (Sir watchmaster, where should we unload the box?) They stopped arguing and looked at me surprised. My Berlin dialect had hit them like a bucket of ice water. I’m sure they were asking themselves how this cockroach could be speaking their language. The civilian pointed to a corner. The kid lowered his gun and without a word followed us as we unloaded the crate.
The civilian called me over and pulled a half a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. “Thank you. Distribute those to your men.”
I slipped one to each of my crew and kept the rest for myself.
After all, I was the big shot who had saved the day.
The Hitler Youth kept quiet as he led us back to the shop. He and I reported to Kristian.
“No problems?” Kristian asked.
“Everything went smoothly,” I said.
The brat nodded in agreement.
Back at my bench, I thought about the stunned looks those two secretaries gave us. I wondered, as I did when I stared at the bullet hole in the railroad worker’s forehead, how much the civilian population really knew about the concentration camps. How were they going to feel when they found out the whole truth? They all knew that Jews had been rounded up, but what would they say when they learned how many cement bags their ashes had filled?
With the Allies rolling farther into Germany, not a day passed without an air raid. Nordhausen was constantly encircled in a red halo.
The fire brigades were no match for the firestorms caused by the bombings. The civilian workers would come into the tunnel coated with black soot and dust, and you could see the demoralization in their eyes. I could also see it in the eyes of the SS and, as in Auschwitz when the Red Army was edging closer, our fate became my overriding fear. Soon there would be no place the Nazis could keep us. Were they planning to kill us all, eradicate the witnesses to what had to be the crime of the century, or would we wake up one morning to find that they had stole away in the night?
CHAPTER 19
One fine April morning we started out for work as usual, but we were halted half way down the hill. From the edge of the trail I could see a waiting train and the guards beginning to cram Häftlinge into the boxcars. I knew there was no way the Germans had any provisions or water for us on that train. Those boxcars were our coffins.
I heard the roar of an airplane and turned to see a fighter with a white star on the side strafing the entrance of the tunnel. I could clearly see the American pilot as the plane zipped by. Our guards hit the ground. The American looped back, and in a steep dive dropped the bomb strapped to the belly of his plane. It exploded on the tracks between the entrance and the train. The Nazis stayed prone with their hands clasped over their head and their weapons lying next to them as the American plane circled above us like a hawk. I looked at the cowards and thought how easy it would be to overwhelm them if a few of us would just grab their guns.
Two Häftlinge ran toward the camp, disappearing over a hill of bulldozed earth. I ran after them. This is the only chance I have to be left behind, I thought, zigzagging up the slope so I wouldn’t be an easy target if there was a guard who wasn’t cowering.
Back in the camp, I hid in an empty Block. The fighter could be scouting for an advancing column of American tanks. Was freedom only a few hours away? My wait lasted until the next morning, when I was awakened not by the sound of tanks crashing the camp gate but by dogs barking. The Nazis rousted us strays and marched us down the trail. Now at least I was prepared for the trip. Hidden in my blanket were three containers filled with water that I had scrounged during the night. Having slept alone in that Block, I was surprised to see that there were about a thousand of us filing into twenty cattle cars. Some of the men probably had come straight from their shift in the tunnel. With only forty of us in the car, at least I would be comfortable for the journey to the next “Pitchi Poi.”