Holocaust (38 page)

Moses took his arm. “You and Anelevitz and Eva, you were right all along. You knew. You understood.”

Zalman tugged at his cap. “Come on. We have to tell the resistance.”

Some time later in Anelevitz’ headquarters on Lesano Street, they discussed Zalman’s report. Few of them in the Jewish Fighting Organization—Kovel, Zalman,
Eva, Lowy, all the young people—had ever believed the Nazis’ lies. But the bulk of the ghetto dwellers, with an infinite capacity for self-deception, the ever-present hope that “things would get better,” yet put their faith in “family camps” and “resettlement.”

They listened hopefully to the BBC shortwave broadcasts, for some hint that the world knew of their fate and would make it public.

The announcer talked about gains in North Africa on the Libyan front, and of 140 sorties flown by Allied planes over the channel.

“Word from Polish resistance forces states that the Nazis are engaging in atrocities against Polish civilians, singling out priests, teachers and anyone who might form a Polish leadership,” the BBC announcer said. “Shooting of Polish civilians is an everyday occurrence, for minor infractions.”

It was true, of course. But not a word had been uttered about the fate of the Jews in Poland.

“They’ve known about Treblinka for weeks,” Uncle Moses said. “And not a word from them. They’ve been liquidating the Warsaw ghetto since July—and nothing. What is wrong with the BBC?”

“Now you know why we are Zionists,” Anelevitz said. “We do it for ourselves, for no one else will.”

“Maybe they can’t believe the reports,” my father said.

Eva added, “Or refuse to believe them.”

“We got word out through the Swedes,” Zalman said. “The Jews of Poland are being systematically destroyed. ‘Broadcast it!’ we begged. You know their response. ‘Not all of your radiograms lend themselves to publication.’ What the hell does that mean?”

Anelevitz turned off the radio. “It means they choose not to believe. Or they think we are lying. The crime is so enormous, they won’t believe it. That’s what the Germans are counting on.”

Kovel nodded. “There’s only one answer. More guns. The ghetto is being reduced every day. If only a few hundred of us fight, it will mean something.”

It was decided that my Uncle Moses and the boy Aaron would make another trip, several if necessary, outside the wall, to try to get help from the Polish resistance.

My father—my mother also was present at this meeting, Eva recalls—-then got the idea of setting up a clinic at the rail station, the so-called Umschlagplatz. He would attempt to take people off the transports, younger, stronger people who might be useful to the resistance, who would join the fight.

“It may help,” Zalman said gloomily. “But the only response is guns.”

Someone called. A roundup was taking place.

Several of the resistance fighters went to an upper room, and from the cracks in a boarded-up window they watched SS guards marching off the people destined for Treblinka. At one point two young men broke away; one actually fought with the SS guard before he was shot dead. The other was dragged out of a building and also shot.

“At least they are not going so willingly,” Anelevitz said.

“But why don’t they all fight?” Zalman asked. “There are hundreds of thousands of us, a handful of guards. We will die anyway.”

My mother put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, Josef. The boy with the briefcase. He is one of my students. He is thirteen years old.”

“You don’t have to look, Berta,” my father said.

“Why not?” asked Kovel—not cruelly.

And so they were marched out to their doom—six thousand Jews a day from the Warsaw ghetto, to the death camps. Only now and then did they resist—sporadic, wild acts of defiance. For the most part, they left quietly, telling themselves that they were going to a “better place.”

My father’s attempt to set up a clinic near the rail station, and rescue a handful of Jews from the gas
chambers, can be looked on in retrospect as a foolhardy, trivial attempt to counteract the enormous crime.

My wife Tamar, a realist, a true sabra, tends to scoff at my accounts of it. “Nothing important,” she says. “The world has had enough symbolic gestures from Jews. Mass action is all that matters. Power. Strength. Policies.”

In any case, during the deportations to Treblinka, one summer morning, a vacant store near the rail station reopened. The windows were draped with clean white cloth. A Red Mogen David hung over the door, on which was written “Railroad Branch, Ghetto Hospital.”

Max Lowy and his wife were among the first people saved by my father.

Lowy was important to the resistance—he was a skilled printer, crucial to the underground press. When my father saw him sitting disconsolately on his baggage, awaiting, with a mass of other Jews, the train to the “east,” he went into action.

In his white coat, stethoscope around his neck, clipboard in hand, my father approached the Lowys.

“Hey, doc, what are you doing?” the printer asked.

“Stick your tongue out,” Papa said. “Let me feel your pulse. You’re too ill to travel. Your wife too. Get into the clinic.”

“What? The SS will notice.”

“Never mind. You know what will happen to you if you get on that train. Go on, it’s all right.”

“But …”

“Act sick. Hold your head. You’re incubating typhus.”

Lowy caught on. “You don’t have to tell me twice. Come on, Chana.”

In that manner, my father rescued a family of three, some strong young men—potential soldiers in the fighting organization—and a few others.

As he was herding the last of the people into the clinic, a kapo named Honigstein followed him. Inside,
my mother, in a nurse’s uniform, was making people lie on cots, thrusting thermometers into their mouths. Uncle Moses was running a modest dispensary.

The kapo entered a few paces behind Papa.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked.

My father ignored him. “Aspirin for those two,” he said. “That man in the corner may have cholera. He must be isolated.”

“What is this?” Honigstein asked.

My father did not even look up. “Rail-station clinic. To make sure the transports aren’t infected.”

“If this shipment is short, you’re in trouble, Dr. Weiss. And me too.”

“This has been fully authorized. Get out of my clinic. We have orders not to let people who might spread contagion get on the trains.”

The kapo left, but my mother, standing at the window, saw that he was talking to an SS man. “Oh, dear God … he’s telling him,” she said.

“Papa said, “Lowy. You and your wife leave by the rear door.”

Moses passed out aspirin and water to the other family. The two young men remained on cots, simulating illness.

The kapo returned with the SS man.

“He says it’s a special clinic,” the kapo said.

The SS man was a dull-eyed clod, and he seemed fooled. He looked at the people on the cots, my mother in white uniform, Moses moving about like an orderly.

“This woman has typhus, and her children may have it also,” Papa said. “I have orders not to allow infected persons on the trains.”

He made it sound logical. The SS man scratched his face, waited. All knew that if the ruse was discovered, my parents and Moses would be the next to leave for Treblinka.

“Nurse,” my father said. “Cover that woman. And the children may have to go to the hospital.” He turned to Moses. “Can we get some disinfectant soap?”

“I’ll try.”

The charade seemed to work. Outside, the loudspeaker was ordering the Jews to begin boarding the trains. People were being told to stay together, so that they could be assigned living quarters at the “family camps.”

The SS man and the kapo, anxious to push the loading along, departed. Everyone was relieved for a moment.

My parents and Uncle Moses watched the Jews of Warsaw climbing aboard the trains to their death.

“And so they leave,” Papa said. “Six thousand today, six thousand tomorrow.”

“Josef,” Moses asked. “Does it mean anything … the five or six we spare?”

“I have to think so,” my father said.

Auschwitz
May 1943

In a sense I am being punished.

My failure to crack the artist-conspirators at Theresienstadt has not helped my reputation with Kaltenbrunner. He was furious at the way the Jewish artists defied us. But he has bigger problems at the moment—the annihilation of the Jews, a pressing matter indeed, now that the Russians are on the offensive.

Erratic, paranoid, he in no way fills Heydrich’s boots, yet he has taken over all his posts—the Security Office, the Gestapo, and the RSHA, which is largely concerned with the Jewish problem.

Kaltenbrunner senses my fear of him. He has assigned me to the death centers, as a kind of roving reporter, to brief him on the progress of Maidanek, Sobibor, Belzec, and most of all Auschwitz, which is becoming the heart of our efforts.

Hoess, the commandant, proved a thoughtful host for me, and for a certain Professor Pfannenstiel, an
expert on hygiene from the University of Marburg. The commandant explained that not only is each of the several camps at Auschwitz surrounded by barbed wire, but that each block
within
the camp, an area holding about four thousand inmates, is surrounded on all sides by barbed wire. The exterior barbed wire is a double fence, strung on concrete, the space between patrolled by dogs and armed guards.

“Himmler is afraid of an Allied air attack,” Hoess told us. “He fears some of them may escape.”

I questioned him about some reports of deliberate sadism on the parts of guards. (Unfortunately, our lower ranks do not always attract the finest kind of German soldier.) Hoess conceded that the famous Sergeant Moll, whose job it is to dump the Zyklon B crystals into the chamber, once took “target practice” against a party of Jewish women. The women were naked, quite beautiful, it was reported, and not all died immediately of their wounds. He was reprimanded.

A woman guard named Irma Grese, obviously a deviate of some kind, is said to have cut open the breasts of Jewish women with her whip. These women were then operated on without anesthesia by a physician, while Miss Grese watched. Hoess claimed he would look into it, but such activities, he explained, were known as “making sport.”

As for medical experiments, Hoess shrugged. This was not his department. He had orders from above, he claimed, to let them proceed. My old friend (and nemesis) Artur Nebe has supplied gypsies for sea-water experiments, in which they were forced to drink salt water, and died in excruciating pain.

I knew about the selecting process, and did not care to see it. The Jews arrive from all over Europe, in filth-strewn, crammed cars. A triage is made at the rail siding. Those fit to work are sent to the barracks; the aged, infirm, children, mothers with young and any potential troublemakers are marched at once to one of Hoess’ four installations.

On this lovely May morning, I stood with Pfannenstiel
on the roof of one of the chambers. To one side, in a parklike setting, an orchestra of women prisoners in blue uniforms played airs from
Die Fledermaus
.

A lawn and hedges have been cultivated on the roof of the building. Some distance away are the famous plantings of trees I had been told about, where the Jews are made to stand while awaiting their turn.

Hoess and Pfannenstiel indulged in some technical discussion of disposal problems. They discussed the furnaces connected with the larger and newer crematoria, where bodies are burned immediately, as opposed to the outdoor system at the older units, where bodies have to be dragged out by the Sonderkommandos—special squads composed of Jewish prisoners who eventually are gassed themselves—and burned in the open.

“Human fat is a remarkable fuel,” Hoess was saying. “We use dippers to draw it off and start new fires. Of course, in the ovens, everything is consumed at once.”

The chimneys behind us were working, and I had to cover my face. The odor was quite strong. Polish residents for miles around could smell it. Apparently our technology has as yet perfected no way to stifle the stench of burning flesh.

I now saw the first files of Jews approaching. They were made to run from the barracks area to the small forest. Women tried to hide their breasts, their pudenda. I saw one woman, still wearing underpants, pleading with a guard to let her keep them on. Furious, he slapped her face, then yanked them from her legs, ripping them apart.

Voices drifted up to me. “Don’t carry on, don’t worry,” a guard was saying in Polish. “It’s only a delousing operation. Once you’re out and free of lice, you’ll get your job assignments.”

I stared for a while at a woman holding a child in her arms. Two old people supporting one another. A beautiful young girl with soulful eyes. Suddenly she began to scream at a guard, “I am twenty-two! I am twenty-two!” He silenced her with a blow with a rubber
club. I wondered why such a lovely woman had not been pulled out for service in the camp brothel. It is no secret that such an institution is maintained—several, in fact, both for officers and for enlisted men and rankers. But the women are largely Poles and Russians. Himmler is strict about “race defilement,” hence, I suppose, even a Jewish Venus cannot be spared from the fires.

Pfannenstiel wandered off to study the door, to look through the peephole—the chamber was not in operation—and Hoess took me aside. “So Kaltenbrunner got rid of you.”

“That’s not true.”

“I’m told he wants you to get a bellyful of this. I hear your stomach isn’t too strong, too much desk work in Berlin.”

“It is quite strong enough, Hoess.”

“Yes, I imagine it is. You helped us get Zyklon B.”

The professor returned, and Hoess took us into the vast chamber. He pointed out the shower heads, the pipes, the faucets, the tile walls.

“We’re managing twelve thousand a day here, when they’re all going,” he said.

Pfannenstiel was impressed. “Incredible. At Treblinka I’m told you processed a mere eighty thousand in half a year.”

“That lousy carbon monoxide,” said Hoess. “Bad stuff. Slow. Sometimes we had riots. The Jews suspected what was in store for them and raised hell. Here, we get it over fast, and they stay fooled right to the end.”