We were soon outside the factory gates. Immediately there was a commotion somewhere in the column and we stopped abruptly. I tried to remain composed or at least like the others but I wanted to see what had happened without looking inquisitive. I heard shouting, the guards were beating someone in the line and a sense of suppressed agitation passed through the ranks. They had seen it all before and so had I, but this time I was not a spectator. I was one of them. In this garb I had already ceased to exist in the eyes of my captors. My life could as easily be snuffed out as theirs. In putting my plan together I had felt in charge because I was taking the initiative again but in reality I was as powerless as those around me. I knew I needed a lot of luck.
In time we were moving again. It wasn’t an especially long march but it was painful and lethargic. To those around me, each step of that trudge was an effort. Think of a condemned man, shackled, weary and full of foreboding and that is how they were; that’s how I tried to appear. I was entering the unknown.
Peering through the ranks before me as we shuffled along, I caught glimpses of the lolling bodies. An arm was flopping loosely. The leg of another kicked pendulum-like as with each step it caught the earth passing below. The body carriers were showing signs of fatigue, their backs were arching with the weight, gnarled fingers were weakening as they stumbled along. Without warning one man crumpled and the body he was carrying dropped to the ground. A burst of violence descended on him almost instantly. I heard the smack of fists, the dull thud of rifle-butts or clubs on frail bodies.
Another
Häftling
took over the carrying and we were moving again, the feet of each man dragging along the ground in that prolonged, hopeless shuffle. Four times we stopped in the course of that journey and each time I heard the impact of blows on ribs or shoulders.
By then I could see our destination – a sprawling overcrowded camp with low barracks buildings enclosed in an overhanging, double barbed-wire fence. And somewhere in amongst it all was a naked wire carrying a high-voltage current. Watchtowers placed at intervals kept constant vigil and SS guards patrolled the perimeter. We dropped off the main track and headed towards the entrance. This was where their short lives were played out, where they jostled for a crust or succumbed.
It was still light when we passed through the gate and I saw the sign bearing the cruel promise ‘
Arbeit Macht Frei
’ – work sets you free.
I didn’t know then that the irony of those words would scream across the decades. This was Auschwitz III-Monowitz.
Evening was slowly approaching and somewhere far above us
in the softening light was a clear sky. I sensed it, I knew it was there but it didn’t fully register, not then. I never saw a blue sky the whole time I was a prisoner in that godforsaken place. I didn’t look up. Just as I had refused to read my mother’s letters in the desert, now even a glance at the beauty up above would have been a dangerous distraction. It would have blunted my purpose, reminding me of the vast expanse of the world and freedom.
From somewhere an order was shouted and we whipped the caps from our heads. I pulled myself upright just like the rest. I abandoned my hangdog expression. I knew we had to look to the SS like we could work another day. They were already pulling someone from the line. There was no begging, no pleading or protest. They were too weak. At the time I felt some of them had been brought so low they welcomed the end when it came. I never saw what happened to him but I knew he would be on the lorry to Birkenau and the gas chambers before long.
Once through the gates I began to take in the layout of the camp, with its sprawl of shoddy barracks buildings.
With the wind in the quarter it was then, the sweet, ghastly smell of the distant crematoria swept across the site, catching in my nose and throat. It was a sickly, stench that joined all the other smells around me produced by filth and decaying people.
Further into the camp a shaven-headed body was hanging motionless from a gibbet. His neck was broken and twisted, forcing his head to one side. If his hands were tied I couldn’t tell. If there was a sign round the neck saying what he had done to end up there, I didn’t take it in.
I was used to bodies by now but the torment that preceded death can be seen in the shape of a hanged man. His body had been left as a warning to everyone. ‘
Aufpassen’ –
beware, it screamed. It shook me, that. Strung up or not, they had all of us by the throat. They could jerk the noose tight when they wanted.
The body carriers were on the move again. With fatigue carved on their sunken cheeks, they arched their backs for one final
effort. They took the skeletal remains to one side and tipped them into the dirt. With barely a sound, one by one the corpses slid to the ground. Then the body carriers straightened their backs and rejoined the rest of us and the dead were counted once more.
I had no intention of trying to escape, that wasn’t why I was there, but I surveyed the scene out of habit, taking in the layout, looking for exits I would never be able to use. To run was pointless. Once inside, there
was
no way out. If I was identified as an imposter I was dead. There was no Plan B.
The
Appelplatz
was raised slightly, and as our ragged column dragged itself into place, lining up alongside markings on the ground, I became aware of something strange.
From somewhere across the parade ground, above the barked orders, the shuffles and the coughs, I heard the prisoners of the camp orchestra playing classical music.
I
knew, standing there mid-column on the
Appelplatz
, that if I were betrayed there would be no witnesses beyond the poor devils at my shoulder. How many of them would be alive in three months? Not many. I’d have been shot or carted away with the orchestra providing a ludicrous soundtrack. I heard later they were forced to play at executions.
I kept my head bowed but my height meant I could watch the faces of the SS guards without straining. Any change of mood or attention on their part might signal danger. If a
Kapo
had turned me in he might have got a reward but he would risk falling under suspicion too. There was no eye contact. It didn’t happen. I started to breathe more easily.
When the latest count and recount were completed and the numbers were agreed, we were dismissed and the passive ranks around me came to life. I scanned the rows of bony faces, looking for the men I had to follow in that mass of worn stripes. I couldn’t afford to attract attention by looking disorientated. If I had gone to the wrong barracks I would have been revealed as an outsider. I was focused and my pulse raced but I couldn’t let it show. I had to go on thinking strong and acting weak.
The inmates were already shuffling away when I got a glimpse of one of my men and, without saying a word, I headed off behind him towards his barracks. We entered into a narrow passage which led to the sleeping area.
I gagged on the foul air as I squeezed through. The men were
sandwiched between the rough timber bunks which climbed up in three tiers around the dingy room.
Many climbed in and collapsed straight away. I followed my two guides and we did the same without saying a word. This was the cramped bunk they normally shared with Hans. I clambered in and hid myself away to watch and listen.
These were not ordinary bunks. Instead of lying lengthways as is normal, we were to sleep three to a bed, crossways to the frame. We lay head to foot but as the bunk was little over five feet deep I had to curl my legs up to fit in at all. It also meant that the middle person had a pair of stinking feet either side of his head.
I kept my head down towards the inside of the bunk with my feet towards the corridor so I couldn’t be seen. Behind our heads was a tiny wooden divider and beyond that another set of bunks and more festering prisoners. For now my partners lay head to head and I got my first look at them close up. Both faces were drawn and weary, old beyond their years and yet they looked stronger than some.
One was a German Jew, the other Polish. The German was easier to communicate with. My knowledge of the language was basic but improving and he spoke a bit of English. The camps operated largely in German but it didn’t mean everyone spoke it well so dialogue with the Pole was limited.
I could hear raised voices in strange tongues coming from the passageway near the entrance. It sounded like an argument. The nightly bartering that I had heard so much about had begun. Anything picked up during the day, anything that was a
thing
, anything that you could possess, however small, was traded here by the men squashed into the gangway. A button, a thread of cotton, if you needed one, all these had a value, even a nail. If it could be turned into something useable, if someone wanted it, it could be traded and re-traded for a few extra calories.
I had no watch but from the light outside when we arrived and the time that had passed, I guessed it was seven or eight o’clock
in the evening. Most of those around me were already played-out and didn’t move unnecessarily. They lay, trying to conserve energy.
I was startled by the crash of metal and another putrid smell filled the room. The nightly soup had arrived in a large vat. The barracks were crammed and airless but that pungent odour quickly overpowered all other smells. Everyone jostled into line, presented their bowls and then hobbled back to their bunks to eat it.
I stayed put. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself and I couldn’t have swallowed it anyway. It was ghastly stuff made of rotten cabbage and boiled-up potato peelings with God knows what else. The smell alone turned my stomach. I was still feeding on adrenalin and avoiding the soup was easy. The others had no choice. They had to eat it.
Each prisoner guarded his metal bowl with his life, they were even tied to their belts. Without a bowl there was no soup and without that ghastly soup there was no life. Later, as sleep took them, the bowls became a hard pillow that they clung onto, even when unconscious.
I never asked the names of my protectors but I remember thinking at the time that they didn’t look especially Jewish. But then, what did Jews look like? I wasn’t sure I knew. With the barracks lost in darkness it was easier to talk. It wasn’t a flowing conversation. I put questions in German and English and we struggled in whispers. My bunkmates had the sunken eyes common to all but they seemed less traumatised by their surroundings than most. I had the impression they were new to the camp.
I told myself they were buoyed-up by the cigarettes I had got to them through Hans and by the thought of those they would receive when I was safe – cigarettes they would trade for calories.
I guessed there were between a hundred and a hundred and fifty people in that barracks hut. I was sure many had known comfortable lives; they had been professors, teachers,
businessmen who had been stripped of everything and thrown together. Now I was gasping for air alongside them amidst the stench of faeces and sweat. It smelt of death in there and no mistake. It was sickly and overpowering.
Little by little in hissing tones, my bunkmates gave me a picture of life in Auschwitz III. They told me of the fenced-off hospital block, the
Krankenbau
, with no facilities where the seriously ill were sent. If they weren’t back on their feet within a fortnight at most, they were on the lorry to Birkenau to be gassed.
They told of the women held in captivity in the
Frauenhaus
and used as prostitutes. There were sixteen or seventeen of them, I was told. It was usually the German
Kapos
that got to go there. It was payment for the punishments they inflicted.
The bestial torment of it flashed in grainy images before my eyes in the darkness. God almighty! Given the type of men the
Kapos
were, career criminals, possibly rapists and murderers – it was unthinkable.
I tried to memorise their names and those of the SS guards but I was frustrated. I had wanted to know more about the selections, the gas chambers, but now I understood that I was in the wrong place for that. The camps were separate but inextricably linked. These people were being driven on relentlessly; falter or weaken and they were sent on the gas chambers. There were many parts but it was one machine.
As the hours passed, my Polish bunkmate dropped into an unsettled sleep. The German struggled on with my questions but the silences grew longer and his words less distinct.
I lay and listened to the wheezing and groaning of the others in the dark. Someone was rambling to himself, endlessly repeating the same locked-in phrases. He was not alone. There were the screams of people reliving by night the terrors of the day, a beating, a hanging, a selection. For others it would be the loss of a wife, a mother, a child on arrival. When they awoke, the nightmares continued around them. For them there was no escape.
When you give up, you don’t even feel pain any more. Every emotion or feeling is cut away. That’s how they were. That’s how it was.
I struggled to breathe again. It was stiflingly hot and there was the putrid smell of ripening bodies. Auschwitz III was like nothing else on earth; it was hell on earth. This is what I had come to witness but it was a ghastly, terrifying experience.
I was hunkered down amongst those fading people but unlike them I had brought myself in here. I had plotted, angled and bribed to see this place and just as I had got in, I was going to get out, not to freedom, not yet, but to a better place than this.
I was going to leave those people to their fate and Hans would be back in that awful bunk. He would have those same anguished noises filling his head. He would try to swim above it all but lying there, six feet tall in an undersized bunk with my knees jammed into the bones of a stranger, I knew in the end it was inevitable. I drifted into a turbulent sleep listening to the broken-tongued words of a man I knew would soon be dead.
I woke with a feeling of utter desolation. The
Kapo
was storming through the hut kicking the timber bunks. He was barking orders that echoed off the rough concrete floor. The lights came on. It must have been about four in the morning.