Finally, after this brief respite, the Soviets launched the long-dreaded offensive from their bridgeheads over the Vistula. Our meager covering forces were swept aside. The Russians, during their pause, had accumulated incredible firepower; their T-34s rushed in columns across the Polish plains, smashing our divisions, imitating our 1941 tactics with brio; in many places, our troops were surprised by enemy tanks when they thought the lines were a hundred kilometers away. On January 17, Generalgouverneur Frank and his administration evacuated Cracow, and our last units withdrew from the ruins of Warsaw. The first Soviet tanks were already penetrating Silesia when Schmauser launched Fall-A. For my part, I had done everything I thought possible: stored cans of gasoline, sandwiches, and rum in our two vehicles, and destroyed all the copies of my reports. On the night of the seventeenth, I was summoned by Bär along with all the other officers; he announced that according to Schmauser’s instructions, all fit inmates would be evacuated, by foot, starting the following morning: the roll call under way that night would be the last one. The evacuations would take place according to the plan. Each column commander was to make sure no inmate escaped or stayed behind on the road; any attempt would be pitilessly punished; Bär urged them, though, to avoid shooting inmates as they passed through villages, so as not to shock the populace. One of the column commanders, an Obersturmführer, spoke: “Sturmbannführer, isn’t that order too severe? If a Häftling tries to escape, it’s normal to shoot him. But what if he’s simply too weak to walk?”—“All the Häftlinge who are leaving are classified as fit for work and must be able to do fifty kilometers without any problems,” Bär retorted. “The sick and the unfit will remain in the camps. If there are sick prisoners in the columns, they must be eliminated. These orders must be applied.”
That night, the camp SS men slept little. From the Haus, near the train station, I watched pass by the long columns of German civilians fleeing the Russians; after crossing the city and the bridge over the Sola, they poured into the station, or else laboriously continued westward on foot. SS men were guarding a special train reserved for the families of the camp personnel; it was already packed, husbands were trying to heap bundles in next to their wives and children. After dinner, I went to inspect the Stammlager and Birkenau. I visited some of the barracks: the inmates were trying to sleep, the kapos told me that no additional clothes had been handed out, but I still hoped it would happen the next day, before they left. In the lanes, piles of documents were burning: the incinerators were overflowing. In Birkenau, I noticed a big commotion near the Kanada: under the glare of spotlights, inmates were loading all sorts of merchandise onto trucks; an Untersturmführer supervising the operation assured me they were being directed toward the KL Gross-Rosen. But I could see that the SS guards were also helping themselves, sometimes openly. Everyone was shouting, running about frantically, uselessly, and I felt that panic was overtaking these men, that all sense of moderation and discipline was escaping them. As always, they had waited till the last minute to do everything, for acting earlier would have been showing defeatism; now, the Russians were upon us, the Auschwitz guards remembered the fate of the SS captured in the Lublin camp, they were losing all notion of priorities and sought only one thing, to escape. Depressed, I went to see Drescher in his office at the Stammlager. He too was burning his documents. “Have you seen how they’re looting?” he said to me, laughing into his goatee. From a drawer, he took out a bottle of expensive Armagnac: “What do you think of this? An Untersturmführer I’ve been investigating for four months but haven’t managed to nab offered this to me as a goodbye present, the bastard. He stole it, of course. Will you have a drink with me?” He poured two measures into water glasses: “Sorry, I don’t have anything better.” He raised his glass and I imitated him. “Go on,” he said, “make a toast.” But nothing came to mind. He shrugged: “Me neither. Let’s drink, then.” The Armagnac was exquisite, a light, sweet, burned sensation. “Where are you going?” I asked him.—“To Oranienburg, to make my report. I have enough already to prosecute eleven more men. Afterward, they can send me wherever they like.” As I was getting ready to leave, he handed me the bottle: “Here, keep it. You’ll need it more than I.” I put it into my coat pocket, shook his hand, and left. I went to the HKB, where Wirths was supervising the evacuation of the medical material. I spoke to him about the problem of warm clothes. “The warehouses are full,” he assured me. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to have blankets, boots, coats distributed.” But Bär, whom I found around 2:00 a.m. at the Kommandantur in Birkenau in the process of planning the order of departure for the columns, didn’t seem to be of that opinion. “The goods stored are the property of the Reich. I have no orders to distribute them to the inmates. They’ll be evacuated by truck or by train, when possible.” Outside, it must have been ten degrees below zero, the lanes were frozen over, slippery. “Dressed like that, your inmates won’t survive. Many of them are almost barefoot.”—“The ones who are fit will survive,” he asserted. “The others, we don’t need.” More and more furious, I went down to the communications center and got in contact with Breslau; but Schmauser wasn’t reachable, nor was Boesenberg. An operator showed me a telegram from the Wehrmacht: Tschenstochau had just fallen, the Russian troops were at the gates of Cracow. “It’s getting hot,” he said laconically. I thought of sending a telex to the Reichsführer, but that wouldn’t do any good; better to find Schmauser the next day, with the hope he’d have more common sense than that fool Bär. Suddenly tired, I went back to the Haus to go to bed. The columns of civilians, mixed with soldiers from the Wehrmacht, were still flowing in, exhausted peasants all bundled up, their things piled up on a cart with their children, pushing their livestock in front of them.
Piontek didn’t wake me, and I slept until eight o’clock. The kitchen was still working and I had an omelette with sausage. Then I went out. At the Stammlager and in Birkenau, the columns were pouring out of the camp. The Häftlinge, their feet wrapped in whatever they’d been able to find, were walking slowly, at a shuffling pace, surrounded by SS guards and led by well-fed, warmly dressed kapos. All those who had one had taken their blanket, which they generally wore draped over their heads, a little like Bedouins; but that was all. When I asked, I was told they had received a piece of sausage and bread for three days; no one had received any orders about clothes.