Holocaust (15 page)

A former Austrian army officer, a Jew, went to the camp commandant one day and complained of these barbaric practices. He was told that as an old army man, his advice would be carefully considered. Then he was taken out, made to kneel in the central square in front of the other prisoners and killed with a shot in the back of his neck.

One night in the crowded, foul barracks, the loudspeaker broadcast the surrender of France. Karl, Weinberg and the others in his “block” listened with heavy hearts as the news came over the speaker.

“France thus joins Holland, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Austria and Czechoslovakia and greater Poland as parts of the New Order in Europe. The Führer has renounced all territorial claims and wants only peace and security for Europe. To this end, England will be asked to submit to …

“Christ,” Weinberg said. “He’s got it all, except Switzerland and Russia. Sure he has no more claims.”

The loudspeaker went on: “Once again the Führer has emphasized his cordial and fraternal relations with
the Soviet Union and sent his warm wishes to Comrade Stalin …”

“Just wait, Stalin,” Weinberg said. He was sewing a lace-trimmed pink slip. “It’ll come your turn.”

“When will ours come?” Karl asked.

“Don’t ask me, Weiss.” Weinberg leaned over his upper bunk and whispered, “I hear some guy bought his way out. Fifty thousand Swiss francs to the SS commandant. His wife sneaked the money in.”

“Wife,” Karl said. “I haven’t seen mine in two years … and no letters, not a sign.”

“They’ve written us off, kid. But don’t let it get you down.” Weinberg hopped off the bunk and showed Karl the garment he’d been sewing, holding it up like a salesgirl. “Like that? For SS Sergeant Kampfer, for his whore.”

Karl smiled. “Don’t tease me, Weinberg.”

“Who’s teasing? Just to show you it’s all business. I make fancy underwear for Kampfer, I get extras.”

“You amaze me, Weinberg. Maybe you’ve got the right idea. Survive, laugh, act as if nothing’s changed.”

“Don’t sneer, kid. I made a pair of lace drawers for Kampfer last week—sometimes I wonder maybe he’s queer and wears them himself, but he says its for this Polish whore—and look what he gave me.”

The tailor furtively took a half loaf of rye bread—real, fresh bread—from inside his striped prison tunic. He offered it to Karl. “Take half.”

“I can’t, Weinberg. You did the work. All I do is complain.”

“Don’t be silly. Be my guest. Rye bread like I used to buy in Bremen.”

Karl thanked him and broke off a piece, and they sat there, chewing thoughtfully. As they did, Melnik, the kapo, came wandering through.

“Swallow fast,” Weinberg said. “Hide the bread.”

But during his detention in Buchenwald, Karl had been changing. It happened to many prisoners. They entered frightened, full of concepts of honor and decorum—and they became tough, bent on self-preservation.
Karl was no fool; he never had been. And he was slowly learning that one stood up for oneself, in various ways, or perished. For example, in the tailoring shop, with Weinberg’s support, he had battled for a seat near the only stove in the room—an important advantage—and won. Sad to say, the Nazis saw the value of pitting Jew against Jew. It explained the sadism of the kapos. And it explained how a passive man like my brother could develop a tough hide, a cunning, an ability to resist.

Karl glared at Melnik.’ “To hell with him,” he said loudly to Weinberg.

“Weiss,” the kapo warned. “Eating in barracks is forbidden.”

Weinberg pleaded with Melnik to look the other way. But the kapo was a victim no less than they were. If the SS found out, he’d lose his soft job.

“You’re a Jew like us, Melnik,” Karl said. “Give us a break. We’re not eating. We’re just sampling it.”

“Shut up. Give me the goddam bread. Every crumb.”

“No,” Karl said. “Weinberg earned it. This is for the tailors, not for a lousy cop and informer like you.”

Melnik yanked the hard rubber truncheon from his belt and walked toward the bunk. “Fancy doctor’s son from Berlin, eh, Weiss? Too good for us other prisoners. Give me that fucking bread.”

“Give it to him, Karl,” Weinberg said. He shoved his chunk of the loaf at Melnik. But Karl refused. He was starving, and the taste of the good bread had reminded him of all that he had lost, his life of freedom, wife, family, his skills.

When Melnik tried to snatch the bread from him, Karl went for him. They wrestled about, and the kapo began to beat Karl with his short hard-rubber club. Karl had become a demon—screaming, kicking, biting, trying to wrest the club from Melnik’s hands.

Weinberg tried to intercede, and he, too, began to get clubbed. The other prisoners watched, cheering Karl on, but refusing to take part. The penalty for
fighting in barracks could be death—a single quick shot in the neck, or public hanging.

“Weiss, Melnik,” Weinberg cried, “for God’s sake cut it out, Jews fighting Jews!”

“The little bastard attacked me,” the kapo roared. “Guards! Guards!”

Another kapo came running in, and he too, a former criminal like Melnik, waded into the melee, smashing his club at Karl’s clinging arms, then against the side of his head.

In seconds, both my brother and Weinberg were subdued, beaten almost senseless.

Punishment was meted out at once. The SS sergeant in charge ordered them to the “trees.”

The trees were wooden T-shaped structures in the courtyard, on which a modified form of crucifixion was practiced.

Karl and Weinberg were tied with coarse ropes, their arms secured behind them, on the wooden crossbar. Their feet were left dangling about two feet above the ground. Circulation in both arms and legs was thus impeded, and their breathing became labored. Men were known to die after a day of this torment.

Weinberg remembers that Karl became incoherent after several hours. He kept repeating his wife’s name, “Inga … Inga …”

“Easy, kid,” Weinberg said. “Save your breath.”

“I’ve quit, Weinberg. I want to tell them, they win, they’ve beaten me. Let them kill me.”

“No, no, Weiss. It’s always better to live. There’s always a chance. Each of us who lives sanctifies God. I think I have that right. I’m not a religious man, but the rabbis tell us that.”

“I don’t want to live.”

“Sure you do. Groan, if it’ll help.”

Weinberg assured Karl they’d be cut down in another day. Water would revive them. In fact, Weinberg had a friend in the Buchenwald dispensary who would fix them up. And the useful sergeant, who craved
fancy underwear, would not let Weinberg, the best tailor on the post, or Weinberg’s friend, die.

Since the assault on her on New Year’s Eve, my sister Anna’s health had begun to fail. She who had been so lively and happy refused to eat, to bathe herself, and finally, by July, to my mother’s horror, she refused to speak.

There is a medical term for this state, Tamar tells me. Anna would sit hunched in the corner of the studio, her head against the wall, her body oddly contracted, arms bent and held tight against her chest, her legs drawn up. She would not take food, and my mother and Inga tried to force nourishment down her throat. Once the cleanest and sweetest of girls, she now turned away from soap and water, would not change her clothing, made no sounds except small whimpering noises.

Despite the fact that it was wartime, and that special medical services for civilians—let alone Jews!—were scarce, my mother and Inga thought they could appeal to a certain Dr. Haefer who had known my father, and was considered a rather liberal man. As far as they knew, he was not a party member, and still had a large practice in neurology.

My mother did not have the heart to go with Inga and Anna. Besides, it was best she remain in hiding. Inga did her shopping, advising her to stay in the studio as much as possible.

Dr. Haefer looked at Anna’s hunched, withdrawn, motionless figure and seemed genuinely sympathetic. In private, Inga had told him what had happened to Anna and how she had gone into a decline since then—nightmares, hysterics, irrational behavior, and now this withdrawal from the world, this inability to take care of herself.

“And what is it you wish, Mrs. Weiss?” he asked.

“Perhaps some therapy. A sanitarium that will take her. I know I may be presuming. Considering she is a …”

Dr. Haefer nodded his head. He was being diplomatic. “Perhaps I can be of some help. There is an institution at Hadamar to which I have sent similar cases.”

“We would be grateful, doctor.”

At that moment, Inga had no idea if she was doing the proper thing. But the sight of Anna, huddled in the corner, her eyes blank, unfocused, her arms locked over her chest, convinced her that she had no options. It tormented Inga. The brutal, senseless incident. Anna’s treatment at the hands of three of her countrymen—they might have been men she knew—filled her with a numb disgust. She could not conceive of a world so blind, so cruel, so bent on inflicting pain and humiliation.

To destroy someone as lively and as good as her young sister-in-law? For what purpose? To whose benefit? Inga was not a well-educated woman, but she had decent instincts. And now she saw a sweet young girl ruined, turned into a vegetable, unable to take care of herself. Inga had reported the crime to the police. When the sergeant learned that the girl involved was a Jew, he had dismissed Inga with a smirk. “A whore, surely, Mrs. Weiss, even if she kept it a secret from the family.”

Inga spared my mother this story. She lied to her that the police would try to find the rapists.

“And what good will that do?” my mother asked. She was beginning to feel defeated, unable to go on. “It will not bring back my child’s mind or restore her health. Oh, we are doomed, Inga.”

As Inga thought of my mother, alone, at last breaking down, her iron will melting under the series of blows to her family, she heard Dr. Haefer telling his nurse to phone the sanitarium in Hadamar and see if they had space available for a patient. Apparently there was an efficient system of transporting people there at government expense.

“Will she be treated well?” asked Inga. “You know what I mean.”

She meant, of course, that Anna was a Jew.

Haefer ignored the thrust of her query. “Within the limits of a wartime economy.”

“You say she will leave today?”

“In a few hours. She can remain in my office until the bus comes.”

A foreboding of terror overcame my sister-in-law. She had never heard of Hadamar. Anna was now rocking back and forth slowly, her arms locked around her chest. It was as if she were trying to contain demons in her, suppress an intractable pain, Inga thought. All the love that she and my mother had lavished on Anna after the ordeal had not liberated her from this private hell.

The doctor assured Inga that trained attendants would look after Anna at the sanitarium. Therapy would be administered. Certain new drugs might prove effective.

The nurse entered to escort Anna to a waiting room.

Inga put her arms around her and kissed her cheeks. But my sister did not respond. “Anna, Anna, my child, I’m Inga, Karl’s wife. You must know me. Don’t you remember Rudi? A wedding in the garden? The house on Groningstrasse?”

Anna’s eyes were filmed, removed from the world.

“When you are better, I’ll come for you. Mother and I will bring you home.”

And still no response from my sister. Inga kissed her again.

“Doctor, I cannot believe what has happened,” she said. She was crying. “She was the bravest and liveliest of girls. And now …”

“These cases are puzzling, Mrs. Weiss.”

“Am I doing the right thing? Please tell me. Perhaps she should remain with her mother and with me. But she seems to get worse, less functional.”

“The girl is deeply disturbed, almost autistic. The peculiar rocking motion—we call it perseveration. A certain sign of deep psychoses. You do well to surrender her to professional care.”

The word
surrender
chilled Inga momentarily.

“You’ll be advised of her progress,” the physician
said. “And do give my regards to your mother-in-law. An accomplished pianist, as I remember.”

He could not, Inga thought, be a bad man, or a man who would hurt Anna. Polite, sympathetic, he even remembered my mother. After all, he had known my father years ago.

“Goodbye, Anna,” Inga said.

For a moment Anna raised her eyes—as if somewhere in her mangled mind a connection had been made, that someone who loved her was departing from her life. But the eyes remained vague, the mouth slack.

With a few comforting words, the nurse led her out of the room.

Warsaw
August 1940

Hans Frank is governor-general of that part of Poland we have not formally annexed to the Reich. A dark intense man with sensual lips, he tries to be tough, hard, but I see in him a certain defensiveness, a weakness. As if he were the intellectual boy in the class who tries to outdo the bullies with fake bombast.

Heydrich has sent me to Poland to see how our resettlement plan is working. We are moving hundreds of thousands of Jews east, concentrating them in places like Lublin and Warsaw.

Frank got off on the wrong foot with me, by mocking me as “Heydrich’s new boy.” I resented the word
boy
and told him so.

“Don’t take offense, Major Dorf. His eyes and ears, so to speak. I imagine he sent you to Warsaw to check up on me. See how I’m administering the new regions.”

“As a matter of fact, he did. First, your complaint that you need forty thousand more civil servants to administer the influx of Jews and the Polish labor force, and second, your statement that in Poland, you represent a greater force than the SS.”

Frank’s eyes narrowed. “So that’s it. I know what they call me. ‘The vassal king of Poland.’ Looter, schemer.”

“Let’s get to the point,” I said. I saw at once he was not a man to fear. “Forty thousand civil servants are out of the question. Let the Jews and Poles run their own population. We want the Polish nobility, intelligentsia and influential clerics destroyed. The mass of Poles will be used for forced labor, as will the ghetto Jews.”

“You’re pretty cocky for a twenty-eight-year-old kid,” Frank said. “You really must have Heydrich fooled.”