The Dentist Of Auschwitz (35 page)

I decided not to say who I was. I would just act mildly interested, as any tourist would. I said, “I noticed a cemetery up the hill. I understand that a lot of people perished here?”

He stepped away from the window and came to me. He led me to the door, pointed at the bay, and said, “Three ships sank here, and thousands of people drowned. I wasn’t here when it happened, but for years bones drifted up to the shore. Many a time I found some myself on the beach.” I was here on a pilgrimage, to recover all the secrets he had willingly shed. But then an elderly woman came in, and the man greeted her. I knew that our conversation was over and that this was all I would learn from him. I left with a heavy heart full of painful memories. I had revisited a nightmare.

In July 1985 I joined a group of Jewish men and women from the United States on a fact-finding mission to Eastern Europe. We went to Poland. Each site brought back more bitter memories. This is where it all began. At Auschwitz, where civilization once ceased, time and weather had rotted the structures and watchtowers of the camp. Children now played there, unconscious that they were walking on the same spot where thousands of Jewish kids took their last steps. Lawns and houses had replaced the once bare landscape. In Birkenau lay shambles of the noxious crematorium. The sign over the gate, “Arbeit Macht Frei,” obscene and offensive, was still there. There were many tourists reading on a marker that four million people had been killed there. It didn’t tell the real story.

The Block Smierci, the death block where I saw the showcase of inhumanity, was most poignant: stacks of clothes, shoes of all sizes—large, small, and even tiny baby shoes—suitcases with names, mounds of human hair, eyeglasses, canes, teeth, and other personal objects. I had not seen this before. It filled me with so much pain that I couldn’t fathom it.

Outside the block, I stood transfixed and looked up to the sky. Where are the souls of the millions of people who rose up in ashes? Now, I thought, the guilty prosper, raise families, and are good fathers and grandfathers.

I went to the museum’s archival offices. When I gave my name, Tadeusz Iwashko, the archivist, said to me. “We know who you are. You were the dentist in Auschwitz
III
, Fürstengrube.” Then he reached out and pulled a book from a shelf. Its title was
Hefte von Auschwitz
. “Look inside,” he said. “You’ll find your name and number there, and your father’s and brother’s.” I read with glassy eyes my name, Bronek Jakubowicz, number 141129, and the numbers of my father and brother. Another note told of my posting as a dentist in Fürstengrube.

To fulfill a secret desire within me, I went to my former home, the little village of Dobra, where I was born and lived for nearly twenty-two years. When I was arrested in 1941, I left there with bitter memories. After the war, not a single Jewish person returned to Dobra, where Jews had lived for five hundred years. The gravestones from the Jewish cemetery paved the village sidewalks. I sat for a long time in silence, gripped with pain. Then I began to cry.

When I raised my head, an old woman with a weather-beaten face stared at me. “I live just a couple of houses from yours. I knew your mother very well before she and your sister, Pola, were deported. Esther said to me, ‘Milka! If we are to see one another again, it will have to be in the other world.’” An irony suddenly struck me: Dobra means good in Polish.

I drove the road to Chelmno that my sister and mother were once driven along. Suddenly Dr. Schatz’s confession unfolded before my eyes. There Mama and Pola suffocated, and there they died.

Despite the sunny day Chelmno seemed bleak and dreary. It was a painfully morbid and desolate place. Four hundred thousand Jews were killed there, and in retaliation for the mid-1942 assassination of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, two thousand Christian children from Lidice, Czechoslovakia, were also murdered. One monument depicted the twisted faces of victims. With gut-wrenching indignation I read what was below, words written by the few Jews kept in a room to process the bodies arriving daily for the crematorium: “We are writing with our blood to let the world know that these are our last days. Here we are being killed by bullets and gassed—our bodies burned—our ashes are being spread in this forest!” Above this was a single giant word,
Pamitamy
(Remember). I will remember the images of that day forever.

Chelmno’s crematorium was capable of turning 5,000 bodies each day to ashes, I also read, more even than those in Auschwitz. The maximum at Auschwitz was 4,600. Here were the souls of my mother and my sister!

Seeing Chelmno was more painful for me than being at Auschwitz. A few German students were standing there at the monument, also visibly moved. I wondered how their fathers and grandfathers would explain this to them.

I left the country where my family and my ancestors had lived for years, relieved that I did not live there anymore. I no longer looked upon Poland as my home, and I had forever cut my ties with my former homeland. I returned to Boston with a renewed spirit, with a sense of homecoming.

I still can’t believe that all of this happened to me—in one lifetime. I have not spent much time examining the unanswered questions: Who was to blame for this? Could any of it have been prevented? If it could have been, why wasn’t it? These and many other remaining questions are the assignment for the future. Perhaps more light is necessary to explain this stormy phase in our people’s history.

⁶
I am the least important person in this book. It is the memories of the events that overtook us that must be remembered.

[_*%(fl)I%]n what is apparently the only English-language article on the
Cap Arcona
sinking, J.L. Isherwood writes in a British periodical:

The
Cap Arcona
, launched on May 14, 1927, was probably the most luxurious ship on the Hamburg to South America route until the second World War….

In April 1945, with the Russian quick advance, in three of her trips, she evacuated 26,000 Germans on the Baltic from east to west. Thereafter, in April 1945, she took on 6,000 concentration camp prisoners.

It was while in this capacity, lying in Travemünde bay with a number of other ships, that on May 3 British bombers attacked the port. A number of ships were sunk, the largest being the
Deutschland
and the
Cap Arcona
. Including the prisoners, guards and ship’s crew, she had aboard at the time about 6,000 people.

Severely damaged and set on fire by the bombs, the
Cap Arcona
eventually capsized and the appalling death toll was estimated at 5,000 people.

The wreck of the charred and twisted steel of the
Cap Arcona
, the tomb of 5,000 bodies, lay for nearly five years. In 1949 it was broken up for scrap metal.

[J.L. Isherwood, “Steamers of the Past: The Hamburg-South American Liner
Cap Arcona
,”
Sea Breezes
, May 1976.]

Isherwood’s account is borne out by British Operations Record Books, labeled “Secret” and obtained for me by the Hamburg-Südamerika Dampfschiffahrts-Gesellschaft and the Hamburg-Amerika line.

Detail of Work Carried Out by 197 Squadron for the Month of May 1945

[Time up, 1515; time down, 1635] DD771. Shipping strikes in Lubeck Bay. All the bombs were dropped on a motor vessel of 15/20.000 tons at 0.0208. The ship was already burning as a result of attacks by 263 Squadron and we scored two direct hits. Now left burning in five places and later seen capsized and burning,
CAT
. I.

[Operations Record Book,
AIR
27/1109, 5822, p. 1, Public Record Office, London]

From the Records of the Auschwitz Museum

SS-Unterscharführer Karol Baga
: Baga was the Sanitätsdientsgefreiter at Auschwitz I and at Fürstengrube between May 1944 and January 1945. In light of his willingness to cooperate with the Polish investigation authorities, he served only a brief sentence in the Kraków penitentiary.

SS-Unterscharführer Gunther Hinze
: His name was found in the Fürstengrube dentist reports as Sanitätsdienstgefreiter and in the records of the SS-Hygiene Institute. [Log 8, S. Kr 409, BL 87 u. 207, Microfilm 323]

SS-man Koch
: A Fürstengrube kitchen chef, Koch was tried in absentia and, since no particular charges were filed, his trial was dismissed.

SS-Hauptsführer Otto Moll
: Arrested in 1945, Moll was tried by the Kraków High Tribunal and found guilty of terrible crimes. He was sentenced to death and hanged the same year.

SS-man Ohlschlager
: He was a guard at Auschwitz I and at Fürstengrube. He was tried in absentia but since no specific criminal acts could be established the trial dismissed. [
APMO
. Sign. Mat. 616a, Bd, 48, S. 71]

SS-Unterscharführer Pfeiffer
: As Rapportführer at Fürstengrube, Pfeiffer’s signature was found on camp records. But since accusations were not available, his trial was dismissed. [GmbH, Nr. 72829, B1.230]

SS-man Unterscharführer Erich Adolf Voigt
: According to dental station reports, Voigt was a Sanitätsdienstgard at Fürstengrube beginning in May 1943 and at Dora-Mittelbau in 1945. No specific accusation could be established. His trial was dismissed. [SS trial, Sign.Mat./589]

Many crimes at the hands of the SS men at Fürstengrube were not documented, largely because few Jewish survivors had returned to Poland after the war.

For additional records of the Fürstengrube SS team, see Tadeusz Iwaszko,
Hefte von Auschwitz
(Auschwitz: Verlag Staatliches Auschwitz-Museum, 1978).

Other Records

Adolph Eichmann
: After the war Eichmann escaped to South America and eventually settled in Buenos Aires. in May 1960 he was captured by israeli agents. In a Jerusalem court
he was tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity
. Sentenced to death, he was hanged on May 31, 1962. [
Encyclopedia Americana
, 1990, vol. 9]

Dr. Josef Mengele
: A long-awaited U.S. government report on the case of Nazi war criminal Mengele confirms that the “Angel of Death” of Auschwitz, wanted for the murder of 400,000 innocent victims, was in fact detained by American authorities as early as 1945 in two P.O.W. camps, but was released because his true identity was unknown. Mengele fled to South America in 1949 and found asylum in numerous countries there, including Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina. On February 7, 1979, he was found dead on a beach near Sao Paulo. [Gerald Posner and John Ware,
Mengele: The Complete Story
(New York: McGraw Hill, 1986).]

Walter Rauff
: Rauff organized the development and production of the mobile gas vans estimated to have killed 97,000 Jews and Russians. He died of lung cancer in Santiago, Chile, in May 1983 after the failure of several attempts to secure his extradition. [Posner and Ware,
Mengele
.]

Hauptscharführer Max Hans Peter Schmidt
: The case of Kommandant Schmidt is vastly more complicated than those of other Fürstengrube officials. From testimony given to the investigating attorneys from Germany, the United States, and Israel, the following facts emerged: that Schmidt (1) shot exhausted inmates; (2) killed an inmate returning from the work Kommando “Humbold-Deutz”; (3) shot a Jewish attorney from Czechoslovakia; (4) shot 20 inmates pulling a wagon loaded with rations because they were unable to continue; (5) shot inmates unable to keep up; (6) ordered the shooting of inmates he had found hidden in a barn; and (7) witnessed the shooting of inmates on marches, including the march to Dora-Mittelbau.

The defendant did not take the stand. However, his attorney entered a plea of not guilty, stating that Kommandant Schmidt was not responsible for deaths or shootings and had no knowledge of such.

On April 19, 1979, Landesgericht Kiel of Schleswig-Holstein stated in its verdict as follows:

There was no confirmation that the accused had participated in or had any knowledge of these incidents. It is quite possible that he was not present during this part of the march. It must also be considered that the witnesses’ testimonies can be considered only partially because of their weakened condition and diminished ability to remember what they saw during that time. Furthermore, after thirty years, it is possible that they may be fantasizing. Therefore, no definite conclusion can be reached that those shooting actually took place, who did the shooting, and if the accused took part in such.

Based upon this, there is not sufficient evidence that the accused had participated in or had any knowledge of these incidents. Nor can the accused, Schmidt, be responsible for the shooting of inmates marching from Turmalien to Magdeburg in April 1945. Nor can he be held responsible for killing inmates hiding in the barn, or the killing of Eichler, Boot (or Booth) and the Russian inmate, name unknown.

Also, the time of such trials has expired. Only for murder, manslaughter, or accessory to murder could the defendant be brought to justice.

Therefore, Landgericht Kiel dismisses the trial. April 19, 1979.

[vgl.
BGH
St 22, 275. Mandated by Bartels Court Representative. Certified (signature illegible). Official seal of the Justiceminister des Landes Schleswig-Holstein. This quotation translated by Benjamin Jacobs]

Three survivors not present at the trial, including this author, testified to having seen Schmidt kill inmates. None of this testimony surfaced at the trial. Perhaps the verdict was predictable. The exoneration of Schmidt for all of these crimes was incomprehensible and outrages.

The Boston office of the German General Consul has urged the German Justice Department to reopen the trial. So far the department has remained silent. It is well known that the German Justice Department is still riddled with many former Nazis. It will take generations for Germany to free itself of its past.