Inside the Gas Chambers

by Shlomo Venezia

  Crematorium III was no longer used after that, and the Germans started to dismantle it shortly after the revolt. Crematorium IV was already out of action, since the Sonderkommando men had managed to blow it up during the revolt. It was the beginning of October 1944, and only Crematorium II was still operating. But not as quickly as before; the transports no longer arrived so regularly.

  So you weren’t subjected to any real reprisals?

  We were convinced that we would be, that the Germans were using us because they still needed us, but that it wouldn’t be long. I don’t know how many men still were alive in Crematoria IV and V, but there can’t have been many of them. We were practically the only ones still left alive.

  The Germans drew up a list of the living and the dead, and concluded that two people were missing. They brought over Kaminski, the Oberkapo of the crematoria, to find out who and where the missing persons were. One was Ivan, a Russian, and the other was Karol, the German. Kaminski had to explain what had happened with Karol and say that he had been burned. The Germans couldn’t believe it. Then, to prove that it was true, it was necessary to sort through the ashes, rummage around among them until the searchers found the metal buttons that Karol always wore on his jacket. Later, we discovered that the Germans had come for Kaminski around four in the morning. They took him away, and we never saw him again.

  Ivan was still missing, and so long as he wasn’t found, the alarm bell continued to ring for a long time without stopping. Ivan was eventually found in a small village, two weeks later. He was brought back alive and killed in the Crematorium. All the other Russians were transferred elsewhere. We were alone in the Crematorium and the Germans started to keep us under strict surveillance. We lost any bit of freedom we once had inside the Crematorium. They even brought in reinforcements of German soldiers to keep guard over us. This was the first time these soldiers had entered the Crematorium yard. Among them, I noticed an SS man who seemed curious to see what was inside. He hesitated, as he probably had no authorization. All the same, he went down there, and then came straight back up. I suppose he didn’t go any farther than the undressing room. He didn’t see any corpses. He wanted to know, but he didn’t see anything.

  Apart from keeping you under closer surveillance, they didn’t impose any other punishment on you?

  A few days later, an officer and two soldiers came into our crematorium. They sounded the assembly bell and made us go into the room with the ovens in groups of five. As we stood waiting at the door, all of us were convinced that they were going to kill us. We couldn’t hear what was going on inside and we couldn’t see anybody coming out. I went and stood among the last in the queue. As I always did, in fact, since in those cases I prefer to have time to understand what’s happening so that I can prepare myself as much as possible. I smoked the last cigarettes I had, out of anxiety and despair. We’d arranged with the ones going in first that if they saw they were going to be killed, they’d start to shout to warn us. We would have done something, out of despair, without the slightest chance of escaping, but just so we wouldn’t be led like sheep to the slaughter.

  When it was our turn to go in, they ordered us to form four groups of five prisoners and to stand in front of the ovens. Each of the two SS men stood at one of the two corners of the room that were facing us. The officer was in the middle, giving orders. He ordered us to get undressed. I told myself: “This is it. It’s all over!” Then he ordered us to place our things in a bundle a couple of yards in front of us. So we stood there, motionless, naked, sweating, waiting to see what he was going to do. Two Germans came into the room and searched all the clothes. Then, when they realized that we had no knives, revolvers, or anything of the kind, they ordered us to get dressed again. And we had to get on with our work.

  You said that the transports had practically stopped arriving. What were you doing at that time?

  Towards the end of October, the order came to start dismantling the crematoria. We continued to work occasionally in Crematorium II, when a transport did arrive in spite of everything. It was this crematorium that stayed active the longest, burning the last corpses. But we worked mainly at dismantling the other crematoria. This took a considerable time, since the Germans ordered us to take everything apart bit by bit. The structures were very solid and had been built to last a long time. They could have used dynamite just as well, but they wanted to disassemble the whole inside of the structures methodically: the ovens, the doors of the gas chamber, and all the rest. And this needed to be done by men from the Sonderkommando, since we were the only ones allowed to see the inside of the gas chambers. On the other hand, when the outer structure was dismantled, other prisoners, including women from Birkenau and prisoners from Auschwitz I, were set to work at this task.

  From time to time I managed to slip into the group of those who were working outside, dismantling the exterior structure. This enabled me to get a bit of fresh air and to try to get some news of people I knew. One day, as I was outside with a group dismantling a guard turret, I drove a rusty nail into my hand. At the beginning, the pain was tolerable. But the wound rapidly got infected. The pain ran all the way up my arm, right to my armpit, where the glands swelled up and hurt dreadfully. I was running a fever, but men from the Sonderkommando couldn’t go to the hospital like the others. A Jewish doctor in the Sonderkommando team told me he’d have to open the wound to evacuate the pus.

  So he took a scalpel and sat me down on a chair. Three or four men took firm hold of me, for there was, of course, no anesthetic. Just as the doctor was about to operate, we heard the sounds of shooting coming from the Crematorium yard. Those who could went over to the window and saw a van transporting six or seven Russians who had been brought from Auschwitz I to our crematorium. Thinking they were going to be killed, the Russians flung themselves at the soldiers as they left the wagon. Faced with the Germans, there weren’t enough of them, and they were cut down like dogs. I remember thinking: “I’m ill, but I’m going to be cured, while those men are in good health and are being cut down like animals.”

  The doctor carried on; he opened my arm and I saw stars! A great deal of pus came out. There wasn’t any bandage to dress the wound, but they’d found some toilet paper among the different things that came in with the victims. This served as a bandage, with a bit of eau de Cologne as alcohol to disinfect the wound. I recovered in a few days, as I was still quite strong. Obviously, it really wasn’t possible for me to say that I was ill. Luckily, the work just then wasn’t as back-breaking, and so I was able to avoid using my hand and thereby showing that I had a problem.

  Did you have any news about people you knew?

  Yes, among the prisoners who came to dismantle the crematoria, I came across my brother-in-law, who had been escorting a group of prisoners from Auschwitz I. He was a good woodworker and, as he had been in the camp for a long time, he’d managed to get himself a position that provided him with several advantages. He could have stayed away from this work, but he, too, wanted to understand what was happening in these structures and to try to get some news of us. He’d already managed to find my sister and even to get her a safe place in a kommando of seamstresses. When I saw him, I asked him to give to my sister a small bag that I’d found: it contained several gold teeth….

  I’d found them when I was rummaging round in the Crematorium yard. It was well known that men from the Sonderkommando were in the habit of burying various valuable objects for safekeeping. We on our side didn’t have much left, since the convoys had stopped arriving and we couldn’t put aside enough food. So I came to an agreement with another Greek from Salonika, Shaul Hazan; he was to be my Shutaf, in other words my “partner” in our searches. Everything we found, we automatically divided between the two of us. While the one searched, the other kept a lookout. In this way, by digging around in the ground, he found a bag filled with gold teeth. We immediately hid it in another place. From time to time we’d go and fetch one of the teeth, which we then exchanged for a
hunk of bread.

  My searches were rewarded too. I remembered that the German guard of Crematorium II still had a dog. One day, the dog went too close to the electrified barbed-wire fence, and was killed. For the German, the death of this dog was a real tragedy – the life of a dog was worth more in his eyes than the lives of a thousand Jews. That day he took it out on us – he didn’t give us a moment’s respite. He finally ordered the Russians to stuff the dog. The dog’s flesh didn’t all end up in the garbage; I know that several prisoners ate it. Even my brother took a taste.

  The German had had a very fine kennel built for his dog in the yard of Crematorium II. It looked like a little brick house, with a small carpet at the entrance. This kennel had to go too, since the whole crematorium was being dismantled. I took considerable satisfaction in destroying that kennel. I waded in with a pickax. I wanted to kill everybody, smash everything; anything I could destroy in that place made me happy, I wanted to be done with that place. Destroy as much as possible…. We didn’t know what they could still do to us, so the more we destroyed, the better we felt. That dog had had the right to more respect and comfort than we had. I was happy to smash up its kennel. The ground inside the kennel was covered with bricks. I smashed them one by one, and then I suddenly noticed something hidden underneath, gleaming. When I pulled the bricks away, I discovered a magnificent gold cigarette case. On the one side, a mechanism transformed the cigarette case into a lighter. I opened it; inside, I found a thousand-dollar bill folded up. I’d never seen such a thing! I immediately went to show my discovery to my Shutaf and we hid it somewhere else in the yard.

  On the day I saw my brother-in-law, I decided to give him my part of the booty to help my sister. I went to tell Shaul as much. He tried to dissuade me. He was worried that somebody might see us and find the place we’d hidden it. I insisted and he eventually had to give in. Unfortunately, he was right, as someone had indeed seen us and when, later, he went back to get his own portion of the spoils, there was nothing left.

  I gave my portion of the gold teeth to my sister. I really wanted to help her so she’d have enough to eat and hence enough strength not to get sick. I’d already exchanged the cigarette case for two bread rolls, a piece of sausage, and – that was all. That tells you how expensive a bit of food was in the camp…. At least that enabled us to survive for a few days longer.

  At that time the remaining men of the Sonderkommando had to come back to sleep in the men’s camp as soon as the dismantling had reached the roof of the Crematorium. So we went back to the isolated barrack in the men’s camp, where we had spent our first nights as members of the Sonderkommando. There were hardly seventy of us in the barrack, so we didn’t lack space to keep our things. It still was strictly forbidden for us to make any contact with the other prisoners. In general, the SS brought us back to the entrance to the men’s camp sector and gave one of us the task of ensuring that nobody left the barrack. If, in spite of everything, anyone did leave, the man charged with standing guard was severely punished also.

  Quite unusually, on the evening of January 17, the SS guard accompanied us to the barrack and told us that we were strictly forbidden to leave. He even added, as if we didn’t know this already, “Really bad things will happen to anyone who even tries!” The fact that he felt it necessary to add something that was so obvious to all of us struck us as suspect – especially since on that day, as we came back to the barrack, we crossed the path of several lines of prisoners leaving the camp as if they were going off to work, even though night was falling (it must have been around six in the evening). On the road, I managed to ask someone, discreetly, “Was ist?” “What’s happening?” He whispered back to me, “Evakuieren!” It wasn’t hard for me to realize that, if everyone other than the Sonderkommando was being evacuated, and we were being strictly ordered not to move, they must be intending to trap us like mice and kill us. We went into the barrack, but no sooner had the German gone away than we came out again and mingled discreetly with the groups leaving the camp….

  Several groups, each one of several thousand prisoners, had been formed, since it was impossible to send everyone to the same place. To begin with, we were sent to Auschwitz I, where we joined other prisoners who were also ready to be evacuated. Night was already far gone. I found my brother-in-law in Auschwitz I, as well as other prisoners I knew, such as my brother-in-law’s cousin, Joseph Mano, and others too. Everyone was given three portions of bread with a little bit of margarine for the road. To preclude anyone stealing mine, I elected to swallow the whole ration immediately and ensure that I’d have at least that in my belly.

  It was midwinter; outside, everything was frozen or covered in snow. It was beastly cold. But I was happy knowing that I was going to leave that place behind, and especially that I’d managed to escape the liquidation planned for the Sonderkommando. From time to time, during the night, a German passed among the prisoners and yelled, “Wer hat im Sonderkommando gearbeitet?” “Who worked in the Sonderkommando?” Of course, nobody replied. Later on, they continued to ask the question regularly, all along the road, since they had no other means of identifying us. That night, the one preceding what was called “the death march,” I didn’t sleep at all. There wasn’t enough room for everybody and I spent the night huddled against the others, standing up. Even so, I was lucky enough to manage to get inside a building, since some people spent the night outside.

  The next morning, we left Auschwitz. In my column, there must have been five or six thousand of us. We marched for days on end, always five by five, through that icy cold. At night, we arrived in a village or a cowshed, and we had to do what little we could to find a decent place to rest for a while. The ones with the most practical sense managed to find a place indoors; the others had to stay outside. Many died of cold during the night, or their feet got frozen. If they could no longer walk, they were killed on the spot. We were dragging our feet, we were thirsty, cold, hungry … but we had to march, march, and keep on marching. Those who dropped from exhaustion were left behind and were executed by the SS who brought up the rear. Other prisoners had to throw their bodies into the ditches.

  This lasted some ten or twelve days.

  Did you encounter any civilians on the road?

  Yes, frequently, even though the Germans avoided taking us through towns and preferred back roads on which we only ever saw isolated farms. The inhabitants watched us pass; they, too, were certainly terrified. I would like to have paid better thanks to an old Polish woman we met on the second day. She threw three or four big loaves of bread to us. I was one of the lucky ones who managed to grab one. It was strictly forbidden by the Germans, but for as long as she could do so, she continued throwing them, then she walked away.

  On several occasions, I managed to pick up things on the road; otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to survive. One evening, for example, we stopped in a barn. When I went in, I saw a little trapdoor on the ground. I smashed it open so I could climb down into the hole. I had to clamber down but I couldn’t make out a thing. I told my brother and [my cousin] Yakob to hold me by my hands and to let me slip down gently. It wasn’t all that deep, and the others came down and joined me. The peasant had rigged out a little cellar just under the ground to store his potatoes under some sand. As soon as we saw the potatoes, we pounced on them and ate them up.

  On another occasion, I slept in a cowshed, on some straw. The place was quite big and the straw kept us a bit warmer. We were absolutely dead-tired and without strength, but the Germans let us sleep for only a few hours, before making us set off again at dawn. This time, a few of us had decided to stay hidden in the straw. But the Germans yelled out to warn everyone that they were going to set the cowshed on fire when they left. We ran to join the others and slipped into our places in the line.

  After three or four days we reached a small country station, where open trains, like those used to transport coal, were waiting for us. In the train, we were packed in so tightly that nobody could
move. It was impossible to sit down. The snow whipped into our faces as the train moved along. This lasted for two days, without a break, and nothing to eat.

  It seemed obvious to everybody that the Germans would eventually just abandon us somewhere so as not to slow down their own escape. I think that’s why relatively few people around us tried to escape from the Germans. Actually, some did try to escape when an opportunity presented itself. When the train stopped, a German gave permission to a few prisoners to get out of the train and relieve themselves. Several took advantage of this chance to escape, but I don’t know how far they may have gotten. I didn’t try anything myself, since I was sincerely convinced that they’d leave us out in the open countryside so they could get away more quickly from the advancing Soviet troops. And I was sure there wouldn’t be anywhere for them to take us. I didn’t want to risk being shot at by attempting to escape, and dying before the Germans left us, free. But that time never came and I spent another four months in the camps.

  Did many people die on the evacuation “march”?