Inside the Gas Chambers

by Shlomo Venezia

  Few people ever saw and can relate this episode, and yet it is true. One day when everyone had started working normally after the arrival of a transport, one of the men involved in removing the bodies from the gas chamber heard a strange noise. It wasn’t so unusual to hear strange noises, since sometimes the victims’ bodies continued to emit gas. But this time he claimed the noise was different. We stopped and pricked up our ears, but nobody could hear anything. We told ourselves that he’d surely been hearing voices. A few minutes later, he again stopped and told us that this time he was certain he’d heard a death rattle. And when we listened closely, we, too, could hear the same noise. It was a sort of wailing. To begin with, the sounds were spaced out, then they came more frequently until they became a continuous crying that we all identified as the crying of a newborn baby. The man who had heard it first went to see where exactly the noise was coming from. Stepping over the bodies, he found the source of those little wailings. It was a baby girl, barely two months old, still clinging to her mother’s breast and vainly trying to suckle. She was crying because she could feel that the milk had stopped flowing. He took the baby and brought it out of the gas chamber. We knew it would be impossible to keep her with us. Impossible to hide her or get her accepted by the Germans. And indeed, as soon as the guard saw the baby, he didn’t seem at all displeased at having a little baby to kill. He fired a shot and that little girl who had miraculously survived the gas was dead. Nobody could survive. Everybody had to die, including us: it was just a matter of time.

  Some years ago, I had the opportunity of asking the head of the largest pediatric hospital in Rome how he could explain this phenomenon. He told me it was not impossible that the child, as she suckled, was insulated by the strength with which she was sucking at her mother’s breast, which would have limited the absorption of the deadly gas.

  Do you remember any other people, the faces of any others whom you saw before their death?

  Yes, I remember a man of about forty who arrived in a transport of deportees from Belgium. He happened to be in the autopsy room, sitting on the big slab of stone. I caught sight of him by chance, as I passed the room – its door had been left ajar. I immediately saw that one whole side of his face and his neck was wounded, torn, bloody. As soon as he saw me, he said, in French: “I want to die.” “What have you done?” I asked, pointing to his face. He explained that he had attempted suicide with a razor blade, in the train. You could see his carotid, but he hadn’t slit the right veins and the attempt hadn’t been fatal. The Germans had put him in here until they decided what to do with him. I suppose they executed him shortly afterwards. I never saw him again.

  Is it the autopsy room in Crematorium II that you mean?

  No. It’s true that the autopsy room was in Crematorium II. In III, which was identical, but constructed as a mirror of II, the autopsy room was actually used to melt gold. There was a table, and generally there were two Czech Jews designated specially to melt gold; they made ingots from the jewelry and gold teeth found on the victims. That was the room in which I saw the man.

  I never went into the real autopsy room, in Crematorium II, because I never had any particular reason to go into that room. But once, when I happened to be in Crematorium II, the body of a Russian officer was brought in to be analyzed by Dr. Nyiszli, the Jewish Hungarian doctor, Mengele’s assistant. Several SS officers were there to attend the autopsy. I suppose Mengele was one of them, but I wouldn’t have been able to recognize him. When they finished, the corpse needed to be carried to the ovens. The poor man’s stomach was still open, with his bowels hanging out. Nothing shocked us anymore, but seeing his intestine trailing down to the ground and dragging along for seven or eight meters is an image that stayed in my mind.

  I also remember the arrival of an unusual transport of Italians. I suppose they were Italians, but I saw them only when they arrived on the ramp; they hadn’t been sent to my crematorium. This was fortunate, since it would have been a horrible experience for me to see Italians or Greeks being sent to be gassed in my crematorium. I deduced that they were Italians from the fact that the transport was accompanied by soldiers wearing fezzes and pompons characteristic of the Italian military uniform and they carried rifles. When the train arrived, the Germans didn’t immediately open the doors to let out the deportees. The Jews stayed in the train, while the Germans assembled the Italian soldiers, twenty or twenty-five of them, in rows, by twos. The SS took them through the Lagerstrasse. I don’t know what exactly happened to them, but I imagine they joined the prisoners of war, unless they were executed. I never heard any more about them. It was only once the Italians had left that the Jewish deportees were disembarked from the train and sent to their deaths in one of the other crematoria.1

  Did you see any Gypsies in your crematorium?

  No; they weren’t sent to my crematorium. I think that, when the Gypsy camp was liquidated, they were sent to Crematorium IV to be gassed.2 It all happened at night. Although my crematorium was very close to their camp, I didn’t see or hear anything when this sector was liquidated.

  In any case, I never saw any non-Jews being gassed. I know the Gypsies were sent to the gas chamber, but I didn’t see them. The only non-Jews I ever saw in the Crematorium were the Russians who were with us in the Sonderkommando, but they didn’t even work. Once, too, I met a young non-Jewish Pole, a woman, inside the Crematorium. She was a resistance fighter who’d been arrested for blowing up a train, or trying to, I’m not sure. She was captured alive and brought to the Crematorium. The Germans left her in the chimney room while working out what to do with her. I went in by chance and saw her by the window. When she saw me, she started to yell in Polish, “Żyd!” terror-stricken. I soon realized she wasn’t all that fond of Jews…. So I didn’t insist, and closed the door behind me to leave her alone. I’d like to have helped her, but she didn’t seem to want me to. I don’t know what happened to her after that, but she probably was executed with a bullet through the back of the neck.

  What were relations like with the non-Jewish Polish prisoners?

  In Birkenau, I didn’t really ever meet any, apart from the terrible kapo in quarantine. But I do know that the preparations for the Sonderkommando revolt were carried out in coordination with the Polish Resistance both inside and outside the camp. But there was a rumor going around that the members of the resistance on the outside were dragging things out as long as possible and taking advantage to keep asking for more money to buy weapons. What is certain is they were forever delaying the outbreak of the revolt. For us, each wasted day corresponded to hundreds of additional victims and also to the approach of our own certain end. For them, each extra day they got through corresponded to money to get weapons and a greater hope of being saved by the advance of the Soviet troops. But if we’d had to wait for the Russians, the revolt wouldn’t have happened before December: it was only then that we began to hear the sound of approaching artillery.

  1 The fact that Italian guards, set to keep watch over the transports, reached the interior, on the Bahnrampe, is also reported in eye-witness accounts by other Italian survivors, especially the ones set to work on the ramp.

  2 The first Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau arrived in the camp at the beginning of December 1942, even before the December 16, 1942 publication of Himmler’s decree setting out the arrangements for the deportation of Gypsies to the camp there. From February 1943 onwards, they were systematically incorporated into the camp without undergoing selection, and maintained in Sector BIIe (Zigeunerlager: Gypsy camp). On March 22, 1943, a first Aktion put to death one thousand, seven hundred Gypsies suspected of having typhus. Five hundred others were gassed in May. Between May and August 1944, several Gypsies were transferred to camps inside the Reich. Those who remained (2,897 in total) were eliminated in the gas chambers at Birkenau on the night of August 2–3, 1944, when the Zigeunerlager was liquidated.

  5

  THE REVOLT OF THE SONDERKOMMANDO AND THE D
ISMANTLING OF THE CREMATORIA

  The idea of the revolt already had been around long before I entered the camp. It had managed to survive despite various selections, and thanks to certain kapos such as Lemke or Kaminski who had been there for a long time and had taken over the organization of the revolt. Kaminski was the head of the kapos in the crematoria, but he was also the main brains behind the revolt and a man whom everyone respected. He and a few others managed to establish contact with the outside and to coordinate a small group of people involved in organizing the revolt. Contacts took place, as I’ve said, either when it was time to get the soup, or in the women’s camp, to which certain men from the Sonderkommando did, in exceptional cases, have access. Their job was to transmit money that went through several hands before it reached the resistance fighters outside the camp. One of the men who established these contacts was called Alter. He was a Polish Jew, very tall and rather pretentious – I fought him, on one occasion, over a cap that he wouldn’t give back to a friend of mine. I found out only later why he went so often into the women’s camp and the kitchen. He was, in fact, going to pick up the explosive powder that Jewish women prisoners working in the factory near the camp procured for him.1

  I myself was too young and had arrived too recently to be told about these preparations. Like all the other men in the Sonderkommando, I was informed only at the last moment. I didn’t suspect a thing. Everything needed to be kept secret, otherwise one of us might weaken and go tell the Germans what he knew in the hope of saving his own skin. Everything was done with the utmost discretion and the kapos trusted only experienced men. It was only two days before the outbreak of the revolt that it became obvious that something was in the offing. But nobody dared talk openly about it. It was in the air, but not confirmed.

  On the day before the revolt was due to start (I think it was a Friday, but I know that others say it was a Saturday), we were individually alerted by our kapo. The main part of the revolt was to take place in Crematorium II. Every day, at around six in the evening, SS guards passed by the main entrance to Crematorium II to take up their positions in the closed watchtowers where they spent the night. They marched in a relaxed fashion, unhurriedly, with their sub-machine guns shouldered, and we sometimes heard them laughing and joking with each other. The plan was that just as they were passing, some men would open the big gate and jump out at the Germans to kill them and grab their weapons. This moment would be the signal for the revolt in all the other crematoria.

  Everything had been programmed down to the last detail. In the end, it had been decided not to bother with the resistance fighters outside the camp, since they refused to agree on a date. In my view, the revolt was triggered by the Sonderkommando just then because it seemed obvious that the last convoys from Hungary were arriving and very soon there would be nobody left to gas. Then it would be our turn. We had to make one last attempt. Even if the hope was in vain, we were all convinced that it would be better to act and get killed rather than die without having made any attempt.

  Lemke had told us to get ready, but he didn’t use the word “revolt.” He merely said: “Get ready, we’re going to do something to try to get out of here.”

  So I set aside a jacket and a pair of trousers that would be of use to me when I escaped. In general, we had to make a hole in the back and on the side of our trousers to sew in its place a piece of striped cloth with our number. But on this occasion I didn’t make a hole, I merely sewed the striped cloth, so that I could tear it easily and pass unnoticed once I was outside the camp. I hid these clothes in the room that was used to store coal.

  Did you hope that the plan would work?

  Yes, of course, everybody thought it would. Our hope was not so much to survive as to do something, to rise up, so as not to keep on as we were. It was obvious that some of us would perish in the attempt. But whether we died or not, revolt was imperative. Nobody wondered whether it was really going to work or not; the important thing was to do something!

  The revolt was to start at six in the evening. That day, at around two in the afternoon, a transport of deportees arrived on the ramp. There were quite a few of them. Normally, barely half an hour after the arrival of a transport, the train guards were replaced by SS who opened the boxcars and brought the prisoners to the Sauna or the crematoria. But on this occasion, there was no movement, nobody came. We couldn’t understand why this transport was just left there without anyone bothering about it. Later on, we found out that, at the same moment, an SS officer and two non-commissioned officers had gone to Crematorium IV and called two hundred Sonderkommando men by their numbers, ordering them to come down. The men who were getting ready to stage the revolt thought the Germans were starting to be suspicious and wanted to eliminate them before the revolt broke out. Nobody agreed to come down.

  All this we found out only later, through one of the men who was there: Isaac Venezia (another Venezia, but he wasn’t a member of my family, either). He’d managed to get across to our crematorium. I myself didn’t see him, but my brother personally told me what he had heard. He said that the men of Crematorium IV had set fire to the mattresses and thereby triggered the revolt before the scheduled time, convinced as they were that someone had betrayed them. It seems they’d had time to kill three Germans before reinforcements arrived. They set fire to the Crematorium and tried to escape. But almost all were killed on the spot.

  From our crematorium, it was possible to see a strange cloud of smoke rising from Crematorium IV. But we were too far away and had no means of communication to understand what was happening. A German set off the alarm bell and very soon we were all shut off inside the crematorium where we worked. The situation was pretty much the same in Crematorium II, except for the fact that, from there, many men tried to escape. Unfortunately they didn’t get very far.

  Personally, I didn’t immediately see what was happening. Lemke had told me to go down into the basement with one of the Russians and wait for the German guard. It was all as scheduled, but he hadn’t told me exactly what I was supposed to do. We went down. The Russian lit up a cigarette and suddenly brought out from under his clothes a dagger and an ax and showed them to me, gesturing to me to choose between them. I immediately realized what was going to happen and seized the ax. It appeared easier to strike with an ax. I’d never done so, but I had to do it, so I reflected that an ax kept you at a greater distance from the victim than did the dagger. Clutching this ax and trembling with fear, I had to wait until the German came down. The guard, that day, was the man who so enjoyed killing people. Our kapo was to tell him that a water pipe in the basement had gotten clogged and that he needed to come down and take a look. But he never did come down, since he must have been warned of what was happening in Crematorium IV and must have suspected that we were laying a trap for him.

  So we waited there for over two hours, weapons in hand. Finally, one of our friends came down, whistling. This was the agreed signal so that we wouldn’t think he was the guard. He informed us that the plan had failed and told us to go back up to where the others were. Everything was abuzz: the Germans had already occupied the yard.

  What did you know about what was happening at the same time in Crematorium IV?

  Nothing; we found out only the next day what had happened, since the SS had encircled our crematorium and were preventing anyone from leaving. They were wearing combat uniforms and carrying heavy machine guns like the ones they carried for warfare. Lemke saved our lives by telling us not to move. In Crematorium II, all of those who tried to escape were killed. If he hadn’t been so firm, some men probably would have tried to force the gates open in turn. But we stayed put.

  The SS man who was on duty in our crematorium, and had soon fled when he realized he risked being killed, came back with reinforcements. He summoned the Russian who generally looked after the maintenance of his bicycle. With the revolt in mind, the Russian had punctured the bicycle wheels to slow the German should he try to inform the Kommandantur. When he r
ealized this, the German went wild and beat the Russian to death in front of us. I felt relieved about at least one thing: I’d had time, on coming back up from the basement, to go around the Crematorium and pick up the clothes I’d hidden in the coal store. I immediately tore off the number I’d sewn on, since if they’d discovered it without a hole and with my number on it, they’d have realized that I’d been intending to escape.

  We passed the whole night without moving. They didn’t come in.

  The next day, the Germans demanded that thirty men come out to finish the work that hadn’t been completed in Crematorium II. I decided to join this group of thirty men, since I’d lost all hope of surviving otherwise. The soldiers still had the Crematorium surrounded, and it was merely a question of time before they attacked if we didn’t come out of our own free will. Contrary to what I’d been expecting, they didn’t kill us on the spot. We were sent to Crematorium II. There, two or three prisoners who hadn’t tried to escape were still alive and told us what had happened. At that time, we still didn’t know that all of the others, those who’d tried to escape, already had been recaptured and killed. These prisoners told us what they’d done with that man Karol, the German kapo who was a common law criminal and had, it appears, denounced and revealed the projected revolt. The prisoners beat him and threw him into the oven fully clothed, just as he was.

  We set back to work to burn the bodies that had been left in the gas chamber. That evening, our relief should have arrived to take over from us. But we worked a thirty-six-hour shift without anybody bothering to come. Finally, they allowed us to go up and get some rest. It was just then that the bodies of the escaped prisoners were laid out in the yard of the Crematorium before being carried to the ovens to be burned. But it was other prisoners who did so. They didn’t want it to be men from the Sonderkommando who burned the bodies of their own comrades, in case this might inspire a second revolt. Subsequently, the last men who had refused to leave Crematorium III at the same time as we had stayed put finally were transferred to Crematorium II, where they came to join us.