Moving among the warehouses were dozens of women prisoners, some hauling various items of property, others sifting through the mountains of belongings. Each was wearing a headscarf in one of a number of colors. White, red, black.
"Why the different colors?" I asked Stefan.
"They work in groups. Each group has a different headscarf."
We came to a stop before the first warehouse, where the Kapo gave us our orders. Stefan and I and a few others were directed to unload a truck packed to the brim with luggage. Probably the same luggage I had loaded onto this truck yesterday.
There were suitcases with names and places painted on them in white block letters. I recognized some of the towns. All in Hungary. Were there any Jews still left in the country I had once viewed as my homeland?
"Come with me,” Stefan said, and I followed him up into the bed of the truck. Finding a precarious purchase on the unstable pile of luggage, we began lowering items to other prisoners, who added them to one of the ever-growing heaps leaning against the warehouses.
Stefan had been right. This was easier work than digging trenches. But I still built up a sweat. Partly it was the heat, and partly the fact that the air was so thick with smoke that it was difficult to draw in a proper breath.
Other than that, I was feeling better. The rash on my side still prickled, and my throat was parched, but the pain in my foot had lessened considerably now that my skin was no longer rubbing against the rough interior of my clogs.
The new pair was wider and much longer than I would have liked, but I’d managed to remedy this imperfection by wrapping my feet in rags and stuffing a rolled-up cloth into the tip of the clogs. After weeks of being tightly squeezed on each step, my feet were slowly growing accustomed to their new-found freedom.
As we worked, I saw German guards patrolling among the prisoners, their eyes shifting side to side. Keeping watch. Making sure the Third Reich was not deprived of the spoils of its conquests.
We finished with one truck and moved to another, where the process repeated itself. The Kapo came over to inspect our work. Stefan had been right about him, too. He did not beat anyone, nor raise his voice unnecessarily, and if you needed to relieve yourself, he let you, as long as you made it quick. A couple of times, when no guards were around, he even offered a word of encouragement or appreciation. I’d known there were decent Kapos, but I’d never worked under one. It made the job easier.
Midmorning, while working on our fourth truck, I heard an unmistakable, terrible sound: a train whistle, shrill and close. For a few seconds, work ceased, and all eyes turned in the direction of the train platform, where soon a new batch of victims would emerge.
"All right, everybody,” the Kapo said. "Get back to work. Focus on your tasks." His tone did not match his words, though; it was soft and subdued.
We did as we were told. But while earlier there had been idle chatter among Stefan and me and the other prisoners with whom we worked, now there was a grim quiet, each man deep in thought and memories.
Soon, the faint breeze carried over to us the barking of dogs and the tumult of weary passengers disembarking into hell. The same sounds I’d heard yesterday when I’d been working on the platform. The same sounds that had surrounded me when my family and I had arrived in Auschwitz. Confusion, fear, the anguish of separation. Wails, cries, shouts. It took a while for things to settle. For the new victims to be cowed into order.
"Goddamn the Germans,” Stefan hissed under his breath. “May they all burn in hell."
Over on the train platform, the first selection was taking place. I could not see it, of course, but I could picture it. Rage and despair swirled and sizzled in my stomach like a lightning storm. My teeth were clenched so tight my jaw ached. Closing my hand around the handle of a suitcase, I imagined it was the butt of a pistol, and that the muzzle was pointed at a Nazi officer who was cowering at my feet. Never in my life had I felt such a desire to spill blood.
"Hey, you sleeping?" came a voice, yanking me back to reality. "Come on, hand it over." It was one of the other prisoners, hands outstretched to receive the suitcase I was holding. I passed it to him and resumed working.
We worked until noon, and then got our soup. It was thicker than my usual fare. And hotter.
"The cooks take care of us, and we take care of them," explained Stefan, which I took to mean that food from the luggage of the dead was being smuggled to the cooks. I thought of Vilmos and wondered how he was doing. What sort of soup was he eating? Or was he already dead? I felt guilty knowing that if he still lived, his meal was poorer than mine.
"You said you could get food from the luggage,” I said to Stefan. "What sort of food?”
"Anything and everything," he said, chewing on a potato. "Bread, jam, cans of all sorts, tins offish in oil, fruit. Chocolate, too. Wine and liquor. But we can’t drink those. The Germans take them. Or the functionaries."
I recalled my shock at seeing the food in the Lageralteste's room, the wine bottle on his table. This was where it all came from.
"Doesn’t it feel strange, eating the food of the dead?" I asked.
"It’s no longer any use to them, is it?" Stefan said, an edge of irritation underlying his voice. Then he took a deep breath and sighed, rubbing his mouth. "At first, I swore I would eat nothing I found, but very soon I was so hungry I couldn’t resist. I felt terribly guilty about it for a while. Still do, kind of, but not as much as before. I figure it’s better for me to eat it than for it to go to waste or for some guard to enjoy it. That it’s what the dead would prefer.”
The way he said it, I wasn't sure his conscience was entirely satisfied with this reasoning, though I could find no fault in it.
"What about other things?” I asked.
"You name it. Clothes, of course, and also photographs, documents, perfume, books, diaries, hairpins, hand mirrors, pens, toys. And religious items like yarmulkes and phylacteries. Once I even found a rolled-up Torah all by itself in a suitcase. Most of this is useless to us, of course. Then there’s money and jewelry, all of which the Germans take special precautions with. You get caught trying to steal jewelry and you’re dead.”
"What about medicine?"
"If you're talking about headache powders and the like, then, yeah, you can occasionally find those. If you mean real medicine, that’s very hard to get."
“But not impossible."
"No, I suppose not." Stefan looked around to see no one was eavesdropping on our conversation and lowered his voice. “There are people here who know how to organize, how to get stuff. The good stuff.”
“Who?"
"A guy named Ludwig is one of the best. He knows how to get stuff into the camp."
There was that name again. Ludwig. Franz’s buddy.
"How does he do it?" I asked.
"No idea. I haven't dared to try to smuggle anything in myself."
I was about to ask more about Ludwig when sounds of agitation drifted over from the north—a commotion dotted with barked orders and commands. I rose to my feet, hesitated, and then started walking in that direction, drawn by the noise.
“Adam, don’t,” Stefan said.
I paid him no heed. Just kept on walking.
He grabbed my arm. "Don’t go there, Adam. You don’t want to see that."
I gave him a hard glare and yanked my arm free. I hastened my steps, pushed onward by some force I didn’t comprehend. With each step, my heartbeat quickened and anxiety constricted my throat further, so that when I got near the fence, my heart was galloping and I was gasping for breath.