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THE CREMATORIES
A FEW DAYS after Hanka’s death, I was signed out of the hospital. I stood
at the entrance to the Sauna, just where I had waited when I first
arrived, swaying on my feet shivering through the cold, anger and
bitterness. How could I stand the cold, the roll-calls? This was February.
As the same time I realised that it was almost Spring. I had been sick
almost all winter. I was receiving parcels, the war must end some time. I
must have gone through the worst, and if I succeeded, mother, friends were
waiting.
But how could I live without Zosha, without so many others? It could not
be true that Zosha was no longer here. At that moment I could see her
clearly as she had been before the arrest. She was setting the table
wearing a white apron and smiling. She took an underground newspaper and
two counterfeit identity cards from under the tablecloth and winked at me
mischievously:
‘We’ll fool the Nazis—right Krysha?’
And in the meantime ... Someone called from the Sauna, ‘You’re a real
Musselman if there ever was one. Come in. After all you worked here before
you took sick.’
Is Magda still here?’ I asked.
‘Yes. That dirty skunk! Only the decent ones die.’
I entered the Sauna and saw my reflection in the window pane. I looked
like a skeleton. I was still covered with abscesses and there were still
scars from sores. Bits of hair stuck out all over my head. I touched my
scalp.
‘Don’t be too happy. They’ll come out again,’ an experienced prisoner
scoffed at me.
‘Again?’
‘After the typhus ... understand?’
I was really indifferent. The most important thing at the moment was to
what sector and what block they would assign me. I waited in complete
indifference while everyone who passed bumped against me in anger.
‘Musselman, where are you standing? Move!’
Finally I was told that I had been assigned to the functional block, where
those who worked under a roof slept. It was obvious that Wala had taken
care of that. She arrived in time, just as always, when my case was being
decided.
‘Well, Krysha, chin up. You stayed in bed a little and now we must find
work for you—and you’ll write poems again.’
They pushed us out toward the exit and lined us up in fives, the old
routine. Just across the way they were carrying out cauldrons with soup.
The kapo was shouting at a woman who had stumbled.
Near us, a husky peasant woman and a few others were lugging a cauldron.
We were taken to help. I stumbled and swayed under the weight. They had to
set the cauldron on the ground. Looking at me with contempt the peasant
woman said, ‘Yes, yes, there are some people that are made of shit …’
The head kapo was beating a girl, triumphantly pulling a few potatoes from
under her striper. They had been stolen from the kitchen. Just opposite,
on the camp street, miserable, grey, frozen figures were pulling a cart
and Aunt Clara was brandishing an iron rod … the same, the same. Only now
the women and girls were different, from other transports which had
arrived in the meantime. The old ones had died. These were not Dutch but
Czech and Italian women but they looked just like the others.
I was the only one to return from my transport. With whom was I going to
stand at the roll-call today? And the block-senior—would she beat us up? I
looked around.
High up, the chimney was exuding red flames. Just the same. An SS man rode
by on a bicycle. He kicked an old woman in passing. She gave a piercing
cry.
Beyond the barrels of soup, through the stripers, the sun suddenly
appeared and was reflected in the mud. Far beyond the wire fence appeared
the outlines of snow-capped mountains. Thanks to Wala, I was assigned to
the property-registry squad which took over and stored the personal
effects of people who had been sent to the camp by the Gestapo. These
prisoners were called the “card-worthy”. They had personal dossiers upon
which, on admission, was recorded their names and other particulars. The
ultimate fate of the prisoners was also registered on these cards. This
last entry could only be death, transfer or release. “Dead” (verstorben)
was entered on the majority of the dossiers which the messengers brought
from the hospital-office. The possessions of the deceased were then
confiscated by the Third Reich. Only the belongings of the Reichsdeutsch
were sent home.
The property-registry was the office in which these records were kept and
where the name-index and records of deposits were compiled. Orders to the
store-huts in which the possessions of the prisoners were stacked and
guarded, were issued from this office.
This was undoubtedly the highest position one could attain in the
camp-hierarchy. The work, come what may, benefited the prisoners. Its
purpose—to protect the possessions of our friends. Our working conditions
were the best in the camp. It was always possible to “organise” something
out of the confiscated property of the dead. These things could be
exchanged for potatoes or some delicacy from a parcel, if one did not get
parcels.
I received parcels quite regularly so that I could partly satisfy the
hunger I had developed after the typhus. The roaring in my ears was
growing weaker. I made new friends. Immediately after the roll-call I went
to work. I did not have to wait around on the wiese nor die slowly in the
hospital.
I felt useful because I worked. Slowly I returned to life. Even the
attitude of our boss was better—he treated us like office workers. My hair
was getting longer.
Toward the end of March, the property-store-squad hut was shifted to a
meadow just behind the camp gates. I kept the name-card index of the whole
camp. Automatically and without thinking I stamped verstorben on the cards
according to the list of the dead.
On the horizon rose the smoke from the trains passing the Auschwitz
station. I could smell the spring air through the open window of our hut.
‘What are you doing now?’ Basha asked. She was a funny Musselman with
glasses and swollen legs.
‘The December death-list,’ I answered.
‘Friends?’
‘Almost our whole transport.’
‘And you pulled through? That’s strange. And spring’s coming as if nothing
had happened.’
At that moment I noticed the name: Drews, Wieslawa—further Czerwinska,
Zofia; Sikorska, Zofia; Hiszpanska, Natalia. I took out Czerwinska,
Zofia’s card. My Zosha—I read it several times. I stamped it and wrote
verstorben, XII.20.1943’.
‘What’s the matter?’ Basha asked. ‘You’ve turned pale all of a sudden.’
‘Nothing, only the whole Pawiak is in these lists.’
‘I understand,’ Basha said. ‘My whole transport went in December and
January. The healthiest and the strongest. I don’t know how I, all skin
and bones, pulled through.’
The train whistled in the distance and again awakened our longing.
‘If we could only catch up with it,’ Basha sighed. Looking at her I could
not imagine that not so long ago she had known a prosperous home, the
luxuries of theatres and concerts and the gay life of the cafés.
‘Kraczewicz, Zofia—verstorben’
‘Pioterczyk Hanka—verstorben’
‘Skapska, Maria—verstorben.’
I began to stamp the cards again. remembering each one as through a haze.
Remembering them as they had been when we left Pawiak, then on the wiese,
the quarantine, our conversations, discussions, our hopes and our plans.
What remained of all this? Death-list files.
After work I would visit the hospital, making use of the break before the
lights-out. I could not forget the sick women begging for one drop of warm
water. Not so long ago, I had been there, without help. One evening, I
slipped in for a glass of water. The kapo, a woman in trousers wearing a
black winkel, was coaxing a girl into the empty washroom. ‘Come here. I’ll
give you some hot potatoes.’ The girl did not understand. Someone offering
potatoes! Another woman? What could that mean? She approached with
distrust, examining the expression on the other one’s face—the moist eyes
and licentious movement. And suddenly, the hungry girl understood. She
leapt behind the hut, the black winkel after her and disappeared in the
evening dusk.
I took this chance and hurried into the washroom.
Todzha, a Polish woman, who cleaned the faucets and washed the floors,
quickly placed a pot on the stove. I washed my hands. Every minute
counted. In a short while Todzha handed me the boiling water, smiling in
her usual good-humoured and sympathetic manner.
I slid past the guard into the hospital. A large number of corpses were
piled beside Hut 24. Something was moving between the wires. At first I
wanted to run but something forced me to look. I moved closer. A small,
three-year-old child was sitting behind the hut and sucking the finger of
a dead hand. As I opened the door the fetid air struck at me so strongly
that my head reeled. I took hold of myself and walked in. In the dim hall,
I finally found my friend. She had tuberculosis. I knew that she would
die. I gave her the water. She clasped with the cup in her trembling
hands. Near her Marysha from Pawiak lay completely lifeless. Stefa was at
her side crying. Dr. Nulla, always so lively and vigorous was now lying in
the doctor’s room, paralysed. Her huge black eyes sadly followed the
movements of the busy nurses. The fact that she was needed hurt her most.
And she could not help, she could not get up.
A truck loaded with corpses stopped in front of the barrack. Two men from
the corpse-squad jumped out of the driver’s compartment. They called on
nurses from the barrack to come out and help. Two girls from the
corpse-squad wearing gloves took a corpse at both ends and began to swing
it. Then they flung it expertly on the truck.
One of the girls was smiling and the other was humming. A
seventeen-year-old nurse looked on with wide-eyed horror. These girls from
the corpse-squad were very tough.
‘I can’t touch a corpse,’ muttered the nurse, ‘I tried but it’s so cold
and horrible.’
No one paid any attention to her. The men called another nurse to the
driver’s seat. She climbed up with them. They kissed. At the same time a
swinging corpse flew through the air and fell on the truck with a thud.
I ran out of the hospital. Just as I entered our block, the lights went
out. Simultaneously I heard whistles and shouts: ‘Camp-closed!
Camp-closed! Do not leave the block!’
We huddled in the corner of our hut whispering in the dark: ‘Who? Whom
will they take today?’ We listened in tense silence for an hour or maybe
two—no one knew how long.
The sound of motors broke the silence.
‘The hospital,’ someone whispered, ‘they’re going to the hospital.’ The
trucks stopped. We tried to catch each sound but could hear nothing.
Frightened of this silence, we were also afraid to speak.
The trucks moved. The hum of the motors became louder. At the same time we
heard voices:
Allons, enfants de la Patrie ...
What’s that? I pressed my ear against the barrack wall. We remained still.
These were French women going to their death. The hymn penetrated to every
corner and filled us with mortal hate.
* * *
One morning, our chief, a tall, slim SS man with a long moustache,
Romanian by birth, walked into the office and said in his cool, dry voice.
‘We’re going to Birkenau tomorrow.’ Birkenau was where the crematories
were located. A number of huts had been prepared there to store the
belongings of the Jewish transports. Our chief had obtained a few huts for
our squad. Transports were arriving in increasing numbers and so our
premises had become too crowded.
At the beginning of April 1944, we were moved to Birkenau. We were all
afraid of this change. There we would have to look at close range at the
people going to their death. I tried not to think about it. This work was
a chance won on the lottery where only one in a thousand could win the
chance to live. I must not hesitate. I had seen so many die. Nothing could
be worse. The most important fact was that I did not have to work in the
fields. Some preferred to work in the fields, afraid of the experience and
afraid that our squad would be changed into a Sonderkommando—because we
would know too much. The Sonderkommando was decreed to die regardless of
the remaining prisoners. They were put out of the way at certain intervals
because they were the only eye-witnesses of what happened in the
crematories. They were then replaced by new prisoners which knew that they
had only a short time to live.
All this information reached us in the form of rumours. We were frightened
but we always arrived at the same conclusion: ‘They will get rid of us in
the end, it makes no difference where we are, there are wires all around.’
Yet, when I first passed through the gate to Birkenau, I was oppressed by
fear. I kept repeating as we marched: ‘I won’t give up now. I have
suffered so much. If the typhus did not kill me, I won’t die because of a
nervous breakdown. Besides I know everything about the gassing. I even saw
it, but I still can’t believe it. Perhaps they’re not gassing anymore.’ I
tried to reassure myself.
‘Why should we bother about the crematories,’ Basha said as if in answer
to my thoughts. ‘We’ve got our work and our purpose. I barely escaped with
my life. I won’t let it worry me.’
She walked at my side swaying on her swollen feet in the clumsy
“post-typhus” walk.
* * *
We occupied four huts in Birkenau. Three of them were packed with bales of
clothes, the fourth served as our office. Now all the entrants were to
come to Birkenau and from there, after changing their clothes and washing
in the local Sauna, they were to be quarantined in the camp.
Our huts were separated from the men’s barracks by the width of the camp
street. Simply a street. Only instead of houses—barracks; instead of
vehicles—carts piled with sacks and pulled by prisoners.
On the next street stood our residential block. The other blocks on this
street belonged to “Canada”. This name stood for fabulous wealth. It was
given by the prisoners to the huts containing Jewish possessions.
A small piece of land stretched on the other side of our residential
block. That was where our latrines stood. Just opposite was a crematory.
We were separated from it by a wire fence. From behind this crematory
towered the chimney of the second crematory. And from the side of the
barrack where our office was located, we could distinctly see the third
crematory. The Sauna stood alone to the left of all the streets. Far
behind the Sauna we could see the shape of the fourth crematory.
All the crematories looked alike from the outside. Wide, two storey
buildings made of red brick with two jutting chimneys. All were surrounded
by a wire fence. Branches were woven through the wire to screen the
buildings from sight. We could see only the chimneys.
The Birkenau Sauna had been built with more imagination and more care.
Thousands passed through it. It was a solid brick building. Inside there
were showers and dressing-rooms as well as fumigators for delousing
clothes, and hot running water day and night. There were furnaces in the
cellar and a cloakroom so that the arriving prisoners could dress
immediately.
And surrounding everything—wires, wires, live wires.
The landscape around Birkenau was quite diversified. Several birch tree
woods were scattered through the district. The Polish name for the
village, Brzezinka, must have been taken from the Polish name for this
tree, brzezina. Outside the gates a road led to the crematory right by the
“little white house”. On both sides of the road stretched fields of
buckwheat and lupines. Potatoes and vegetables grew between our barracks.
Closer to the barracks were lawns or flower gardens. The most romantic
spot was in the vicinity of the crematory behind the Sauna. The “little
white house” inspired one with carefree joy and confidence. When the sun
shone on that part of Birkenau, one was under the impression that the
“little white house” was a rural retreat where gentle folk could find
peace and rest. But—this “little white house” was where they carried out
sentences of death. The prisoners were shot and the walls inside the house
were spattered with blood. In this manner they could take care of up to a
hundred prisoners at a time.
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