On the other hand, I do remember that, one day, among the corpses brought out of the gas chamber, the men found the body of an incredibly beautiful woman. She had the perfect beauty of ancient statues. Those who were supposed to put her into the oven couldn’t bring themselves to destroy such a pure image. They kept her body with them for as long as they could, then they were obliged to burn her as well as the others. I think that was the only time I really “looked.” Otherwise, everything happened mechanically; there was nothing to see. Even in the room where people got undressed, you didn’t pay any attention; you had no right to feel moved.
Sometimes, in spite of everything, we were touched, and affected, like the day I saw that woman and her son arrive; they’d tried to hide in the Crematorium yard…. They were part of a convoy from Łódź. There must have been one thousand, seven hundred people sent to our crematorium from this transport. Everything proceeded as usual. The people entered the gas chamber, the German threw in the gas, then our macabre task began. We worked normally all day long, then the night team took over. The next morning, at around eight or nine, one of the men came in surprise to tell us that a woman with a small boy of about twelve were in the Crematorium yard. Nobody knew how they’d managed to get there, but when we looked at them more closely, it became clear that they were part of the group that had been sent to their death the day before. We stared at each other in astonishment. Then I went over to her to try to find out more. I don’t know if she’d climbed up the fence or if she’d passed between the tree trunks and the barbed-wire fence. I really don’t know how she’d done it, since everything was closed off, and she must have climbed over. The fact remains that she’d stayed hidden with her son. The tall grass – it was a summer month – enabled them to hide from the guards. But they then came face to face with the barbed wire, and no way of getting out. When the mother realized there was no exit, she headed in the direction of the Crematorium, hoping to escape that way. She couldn’t stop crying and saying over and over that, for a long time, she had worked in the ghetto as a seamstress for the German soldiers and she could still be useful.
The German on guard realized there was a problem and came into the yard to see what was happening. The woman started to implore him, repeating the same things she had told us. To calm her down, the German told her, “You’re right, Madam, we’ll see what we can do, follow me.” But everyone knew: he was going to kill them as soon as they were inside. I don’t remember whether he told them to get undressed and start off by going into disinfection, but he didn’t waste much time and killed them both with a bullet in the back of the neck. Subsequently, the Germans had the tall grass between the fence and the barbed wire cut, so as to avoid that type of “incident.”
Do you think that that woman, coming as she did from the last ghetto in Poland, knew where she had been sent?
I don’t know what exactly she did know, but it’s true that the deportees who’d been in the ghettos knew much more than the others. They had lost any illusions, they were exhausted, psychologically at the end of their tether after all those years in the ghetto. When they arrived, they allowed themselves to be guided to the “disinfection” room, without really understanding, or trying to understand, what was happening.
One certain thing is that there were very marked differences between those who came from the ghettos and the others. Those who came from Holland or Hungary, for instance, still had a few valuables on them, and were still relatively strong, while the deportees from the ghettos had nothing but lice. You could see that most of them had lost even the will to live. There weren’t many who still had any strength and hope. Seeing them so resigned, I often wondered whether we, too (who also had become docile), could have done something; refused to obey orders. But there was no choice: those who did refuse were killed before the others with a bullet through the back of the neck, end of story.
Did you see anyone refusing to join the Sonderkommando?
Yes. One day, three young religious Jews from Hungary were put to one side so they could join the Sonderkommando. They were still wearing their kaftans, their hats, their long locks. They refused to accept the Germans’ orders. I didn’t see them go in, but I know they were made to get undressed and that they went up the three steps, like those who were executed with a revolver shot. That’s how they died. I suppose that others were immediately taken to replace them. There wasn’t exactly a shortage.
Were there any religious men among you?
Some people prayed every day. I know that in other parts of the camp it was impossible or much too dangerous, but we didn’t run too many risks as the Germans never came up to where the men of the Sonderkommando slept. You could easily pick up prayer books, even though the men in question didn’t need them – they knew the prayers by heart.
I’d never been religious – not even a believer. I always found that respecting the Ten Commandments was enough for me. In Birkenau, I never asked myself this question; since I wasn’t religious, I left God out of all that. But I couldn’t understand why they continued to call on him: “Adonai, Adonai” (“Lord, Lord”)…. What were they thinking? That Adonai was going to save them? What an idea! We were all living beings in the process of crossing the frontier into death.
People often talk of the solidarity that existed between detainees. What was your experience of this?
There was solidarity only when you had enough for yourself; otherwise, you had to be selfish if you were going to survive. In the Crematorium, you could indulge in solidarity, since we each had enough to survive. I’m not talking about helping a friend and taking over from him to give him a chance to recuperate. I’m talking about having enough to eat. For those who didn’t have enough to eat, solidarity was no longer an option. So even when you had to take something from someone in order to survive, many people did so. We had enough to eat and were in a position to try to get food to others, even if this involved taking a few risks. For example, during the week, the men who went to fetch the soup for the Sonderkommando often left it on the way back for the prisoners working on extending the rail tracks. We left our pot, which was full, and took theirs, which was already empty. We didn’t go short, since everyone in the Sonderkommando had enough bread and canned food. Even if the deportees arrived in the Crematorium without their suitcases and not much in their pockets, there were so many of them that we still could find something to put aside. Elsewhere, this wasn’t possible. Showing solidarity was a luxury that few could afford; a mouthful of food given to someone else was a mouthful less for you….
What did the other prisoners in the camp think of the Sonderkommando members?
I didn’t have any contact with the other prisoners in the camp, so I don’t really know. I never went to fetch the soup and I was never in the women’s camp. The question didn’t arise when we were in the camp. On the other hand, I did find out later that some people were jealous of the fact we sometimes got extra. Others held us partly responsible for what happened in the Crematorium. But that’s completely wrong: only the Germans killed. We were forced, whereas collaborators, in general, are volunteers. It’s important to write that we had no choice. Those who refused were immediately killed with a bullet through the back of the neck. For the Germans, it was no big deal; if they killed ten, another fifty arrived. For us, we had to survive, get enough to eat … there was no other possibility. Not for anybody. And then, we could no longer reason with our brains and think about what was happening … we’d become robots.
These days I often ask myself: what would I have done if they’d forced me to kill in person? What would I have done? I don’t know. Would I have refused, knowing full well that they’d have killed me on the spot?
Did you ever ask yourself that question while you were in the camp?
No, not in the camp, never. There, you didn’t even have the possibility of asking yourself those questions. It was only after the Liberation that those questions came to haunt me. We had to help the elderly people get undresse
d, but what if we’d been ordered to kill them? The Germans were capable of every perversion to humiliate us. For example, just for fun, a German would order a father to whip his son. If the father refused, it was the other way round: he ordered the son to strike his father. The father himself told his son to obey, and if both of them refused, they were both whipped, often to death. That was how things were – it was sadistic. You had to be lucky to avoid that kind of situation. And when you couldn’t avoid them, then you were faced with terrible decisions; you had no control over anything.
Your only choice was to get used to it. Very quickly, too. On the first days, I wasn’t even able to swallow my bread when I thought of all those corpses my hands had touched. But what could you do? A person had to eat…. After a week or two, you got used to it. You got used to everything. The same way that I’d gotten used to the sickening smell. After a while, you stopped registering it. You’d gotten onto a treadmill. But you didn’t even realize, since, quite simply, you stopped thinking! During the first two or three weeks, I was constantly stunned by the enormity of the crime, but then you stop thinking. The first day, I was unable to close my eyes all night. I kept thinking of this terrible situation, of the way I’d allowed myself to be caught and brought to such a place. Even these days, the same questions continue to haunt me.
Unlike me, my brother has never wanted to recount his experience to schoolchildren. He often says to me: “Think about it – I myself often imagine that it was all just a bad dream, that it couldn’t have existed. So put yourself in the place of others who are hearing this story now!” But I think it’s precisely for this reason – because it is so completely unimaginable – that those people who can tell their story must do so. Those of us in the Sonderkommando may have had better conditions of day-to-day survival; we weren’t as cold, we had more to eat, suffered less violence – but we had seen the worst, we were in it all day long, at the heart of hell.
And what if you’d been able to swap places with someone else in the camp?
Immediately – like a shot! Even though I realized that, in that instance, I might not have enough to eat. I’d have done it immediately, without hesitating for a second, at the risk of suffering a slow death. And yet I know how terrible it is to be hungry and the appalling pain it involves, but never mind. Even during the “death march” and later, in the camps to which I was evacuated and where I suffered like the other prisoners, I felt relieved that I’d left the Crematorium.
Did you never seriously think of escaping?
No, it was impossible, especially for a member of the Sonderkommando. Everyone was recaptured – and where would I have gone? I didn’t speak Polish, and the risk of being denounced by the peasants was too high. The only ones who did try to escape, while I was in Birkenau, did it without planning, when an exceptional opportunity presented itself. I’m talking about Errera, of course, but he was recaptured and killed.
Did you ever talk or think about the future?
No, my horizons were restricted to the moment when I would be killed. Some people say they resisted because they still hoped to get free one day. But I didn’t think I’d ever be able to free myself from that hell. I don’t think any of the men in the Sonderkommando maintained such a naïve hope. There was no way of getting out. Except by miracle…. But nobody believed in miracles any more. We just carried on, day after day, knowing that the end was approaching.
Sometimes, in spite of everything, a slender hope would filter through, such as when we learned about the assassination attempt on Hitler. The Germans were beside themselves with rage that day, but for us it vaguely awakened a glimmer of light. Or when we learned that a member of our family was still alive. As on the day when I saw, or thought I saw, my sister….
That day, I happened to be in Crematorium II. I sometimes happened to go there, when it wasn’t my turn to work, to meet my friends from Greece. Crematorium II looked out on the women’s camp. That day, I was leaning against the window, absorbed in my thoughts, when I thought I glimpsed my sister facing me, in front of the barbed-wire fence around the women’s camp. In hindsight, I don’t know if I did recognize her or just wanted to recognize her. I’d accepted the idea that I’d never see my mother and my two younger sisters again. But I still hoped that my older sister Rachel had been sent to work. I often thought of her, as I was doing on that day, as I gazed through the window at the women’s camp. It was the end of the day, the sun had given way to a gray light, the typical Birkenau mist had hidden the shapes of things, when all of a sudden I caught sight of that shape. I was too far away to make her out clearly, but I thought I recognized my sister. I called, “Rachel!!” The echo carried my voice and she replied in Ladino, “Yes! Who are you?”
“Shlomo!”
“Shlomo! How are you? How very nice to hear your voice!”
We couldn’t talk much, so I told her to come back to the same place at the same time the next day, and I’d have a parcel for her. And indeed, the next day, at the same time, the same figure came up. I’d prepared a bundle to throw over to her, with things to eat and objects that might be of use to her in the camp. Once again, we agreed to meet up the following day. And so on, over the next five or six days. But one evening she did not come, and I thought she must have been transferred or, worse, selected.
When I finally did see my sister, twelve years after the Liberation, she was living with her husband Aaron, in Israel. I went to see her in Haifa. In the taxi taking us to her house, I started to cry. In twelve years, since my deportation, I’d never cried … apart from once, when I cried with rage. But all of a sudden, my emotion at seeing my sister again had made all the poison I’d been building up inside myself all those years pour out. And I couldn’t stop talking and weeping. Meanwhile my sister said nothing. I had kept all that pain inside myself … my mother … everything I’d seen! When I finally got a bit of a grip on myself, I reminded her of the business with the parcels I’d thrown across. She didn’t know what I was talking about. She told me she hadn’t stayed in the women’s camp at Birkenau. And there I’d been, taking so many risks on behalf of a woman I didn’t know and who had pretended to be Rachel! I’d noticed that her voice was a bit different, but everything was different in that place … and then, I couldn’t make her out clearly, I just saw a shape. Still, I’m happy I was able to help that woman; she certainly needed it just as much as my sister.
Did any member of the Sonderkommando around you ever recognize anyone from his own family in the gas chamber?
Yes, it happened to me…. It happened shortly before the Sonderkommando uprising, during the last gassings in the Crematorium. I happened to be in the undressing room, when a group of prisoners selected from the camp hospital arrived. There must have been two hundred or three hundred people; all of them knew why they were there. All of a sudden, I heard someone calling, “Shlomo!” I was surprised and turned around to see who had recognized me. Then the voice repeated, “Shlomo! Don’t you recognize me?” After looking more closely at the man who had called me, I finally recognized my father’s cousin, Leon Venezia. His voice had changed and he was nothing but skin and bone. He’d been deported in the same transport as had I, but hadn’t been selected for the Sonderkommando. He told me he’d been working at building water channels. He’d banged his knee. His knee had swollen up and he’d been taken to hospital. But the hospital wasn’t a place where you got cured – if you weren’t better naturally after a few days, you risked being selected for the gas chamber. This, unfortunately, was what had happened to him; without any first aid, his knee had swollen up and they’d taken him during the selection. He begged me to go and talk to the SS-Unterscharführer who was standing guard, to try to convince the guard to take him into the Sonderkommando. I tried to explain to him that there was no point, since we were all in the same situation. But he insisted – and so, to calm him down, I did go to see the German. He waved me away, “Ah! Das ist scheißegal!” “I don’t give a shit!” I went back to Leon and, to tak
e his mind off the situation, asked whether he was hungry. I knew he certainly wouldn’t have eaten anything much for a long time. He said yes, of course. I ran to fetch a hunk of bread and some canned sardines from under my bed, and I rushed back over so as not to run the risk that he’d already have been [gassed before I could get back with the food]…. I gave him everything. He didn’t even take the time to chew it, he swallowed it all as if it were water, he was so famished. Then his turn came to enter the gas chamber. He was among the last to go in and the German started yelling. I took him by the arm as he continued asking me all those questions that I found so upsetting: “How long does it take to die? Does it really hurt?” I didn’t know what to tell him, so I lied and said it didn’t take long, it didn’t hurt. In reality, ten to twelve minutes gasping for air is a long time, but I told him lies to set his mind at rest, to reassure him. The German started shouting again, so we gave each other a hug and he went in. He was the last to enter and the German closed the door behind him. My comrades supported me and took me away so that I wouldn’t have to see the moment when they opened the door of the gas chamber. It was already hard enough to see him like that. When they brought him to the ovens, the men called my brother and me so we could recite kaddish before burning his body.
There’s another episode I have to relate. One day, while I was presenting my testimony at a school, a young girl asked me if anyone had ever emerged from the gas chamber alive. Her schoolmates laughed at her, as if she hadn’t understood a thing. How could anyone survive in those conditions, when the deadly gas used had been carefully developed to kill everyone? It’s impossible. In spite of everything, however absurd her question may seem, it was quite relevant, since it did indeed happen.
Inside the Gas Chambers Page 11