We had already moved on to the Kanada, where the confiscated goods were sorted and warehoused before being distributed, when the chimneys of the crematorium that we had just left began to smoke, spreading that same sweetish, hideous smell I had experienced in Belzec. Höss, noticing my discomfort, commented: “I’ve been used to this smell ever since I was a boy. It’s the smell of cheap church candles. My father was very religious and took me to church often. He wanted me to be a priest. Since there wasn’t enough money for wax, they made the candles from animal tallow, and they gave off the same smell. It’s due to a chemical compound, but I’ve forgotten the name; it was Wirths, our head doctor, who explained it to me.” He also insisted on showing me the other two crematoria, colossal structures, inactive at that time; the Frauenlager, or women’s camp; and the sewage treatment station, built after repeated complaints from the district, which alleged that the camp was contaminating the Vistula and the surrounding aquifer. Then he took me to the Stammlager, which he also had me visit from top to bottom; finally he drove me to the other side of town to show me rapidly the Auschwitz III camp, where the inmates working for IG Farben lived: he introduced me to Max Faust, one of the factory engineers, with whom I agreed to return another day. I won’t describe all these installations: they are very well known and are described in many other books, I have nothing to add. Back at the camp, Höss sought to invite me horseback riding; but I could barely stand up and wanted a bath more than anything, and I managed to convince him to drop me off at my quarters.
Höss had assigned me an empty office in the Stammlager Kommandantur. I had a view of the Sola and of a pretty square house surrounded by trees on the other side of the Kasernestrasse, which was in fact the home of the Kommandant and his family. The Haus where I was staying turned out to be much quieter than the one in Lublin: the men who slept there were sober professionals, passing through for various reasons; at night, the camp officers came to drink and play billiards, but always behaved correctly. We ate very well there, copious helpings washed down with Bulgarian wine, with Croatian slivovitz as an after-dinner drink, and sometimes even vanilla ice cream. My main interlocutor, aside from Höss, was the chief physician of the garrison, Sturmbannführer Dr. Eduard Wirths. He had his offices in the SS hospital in the Stammlager at the end of the Kasernestrasse, opposite the premises of the Politische Abteilung and a crematorium due to go out of service any day now. Alert, intelligent, with fine features, pale eyes, and sparse hair, Wirths seemed exhausted by his tasks, but motivated to overcome all difficulties. His obsession was the struggle against typhus: the camp was already going through its second epidemic of the year, which had decimated the Gypsy camp and also struck, sometimes fatally, SS guards and their families. I spent long hours in discussion with him. He reported, in Oranienburg, to Dr. Lolling, and complained about the lack of support; when I let on that I shared his opinion, he opened up to me and confessed his inability to work constructively with a man so incompetent and furthermore addled by drugs. He himself was not an IKL professional. He had served at the front with the Waffen-SS since 1939, and had won the Iron Cross, second class, but he had been discharged because of a serious illness and assigned to camp service. He had found Auschwitz in a catastrophic state: for almost a year, the desire to improve matters consumed him.