Yes, a huge number of people died. But I didn’t necessarily see them, since people were dropping with fatigue and lying there until they were executed by the last SS in the column. There were some whom we tried to help when they were at the end of their strength. Such as the boy whose first name I’ve forgotten. His brother, Jacquot Maestro, was a lively, cunning youngster who’d often transmitted information to us in the camp. The boy started to vomit blood during the march. So as not to abandon him, I and another man carried him while he recovered. Those of us who came from the Sonderkommando had a bit more strength than the others, and, as much as we could, we tried to help our friends.
On the other hand, in my railcar, a man I didn’t know died next to me. He was a Yugoslav; the poor man already practically looked like a skeleton. He died, but we were so crammed in together that the corpse remained standing, propped up between my brother and myself without anyone realizing. The man had died, but each of us had nearly turned into animals. My first reflex was to rummage round in his pockets, with the absurd idea in mind that he might have kept something edible in there. All I found was a wooden crucifix – I kept it, telling myself that if, by some miracle, I managed to free myself, I would be given a better reception by peasants if they didn’t think I was Jewish. Then we managed to make some room to lay the corpse down on the floor so we could sit on it. The next day, when the train stopped to take on coal for the locomotive, I told the German there was a dead man in our railcar. I understood that he was telling me to chuck him off. But when we lifted the body, he told us: “Nein! Nicht hier. Später!” “No, not here, later!” After the train set off again, we had to throw the corpse out, since it was starting to smell bad.
The train stopped at a place where the tracks had been bombed and we continued on foot for another day. Then we embarked on freight barges on the Danube. The cold was still unbearable, but at least we had a roof over our heads. For the first time in a very long while, they handed out soup to us and we spent the night on the barge. The next morning, at around five, they made us get out and cross a bridge on which a sign said “Linz.” That’s how I knew we were in Austria. As we went through the town, I saw a woman taking out the rubbish bin. When I came close, I sidestepped onto the pavement and dipped my hand into the bin. I snatched out a handful of potato peelings and slipped them under my shirt. Others wanted to do the same, but a guard saw them and started beating them with the butt of his rifle. I was able to keep my peelings and eat them: they smelled awful but … it was still food! A little farther on, we crossed a cultivated field. With our feet, we tried to dig a bit into the soil, in the hope of finding traces of the harvest. There was a moment when I thought I’d found a whole potato: I discreetly picked it up and put it into my pocket, but it was just a stone. In the evening, we slept near a henhouse. Several of us got together to try to catch a hen, but without success. I’d have been capable of eating a hen raw if I’d been able to catch one! All the same, we did find some eggs, which we swallowed there and then. The next day, we finally reached Mauthausen.
1 Róza Robota, Ella Gärtner, Ester Wajcblum, and Regina Safirsztain, who worked in the Kanada and the Weichsel-Union, were publicly hanged by the Nazis on January 6, 1945 for passing gunpowder to the members of the Sonderkommando.
6
MAUTHAUSEN, MELK, AND EBENSEE
I don’t know exactly what day we reached Mauthausen, but I think it was the end of January. Our column of prisoners entered the camp under the enormous main gate. On the right of the door was a big building that we had to go around to reach the Sauna. There were still quite a few of us, in spite of the victims who had died en route: it took two days to get everyone through the Sauna. But before we went in, nobody knew what there was in the building. The prisoners had to go in in groups of five, but we didn’t see them coming out again.
I slept outside for two nights so as to be among the last to go into the Sauna. I was with my brother, my cousins, and other friends from Auschwitz. Soldiers kept passing by regularly, asking “Wer hat im Sonderkommando gearbeitet?” To prevent them finding us, I suggested to my brother that we change our name. Instead of “Venezia,” I’d say, if they asked me, that my name was “Benezia.” My brother didn’t want to change his name and told me it might be better if we were to separate, so that there’d be a better chance of at least one of us surviving.
Finally we went in, reassured to see that it was indeed just a Sauna for disinfection. It was on the small side. And, just as on the first day in Birkenau, we had to get completely undressed, and prisoners shaved our heads and our whole bodies. Then they gave each of us a number. But, unlike in Auschwitz, the number wasn’t tattooed: Auschwitz was the only place where the prisoners were tattooed. They gave us a sort of iron bracelet with a plaque; on mine was written the number 118554. This was my identity number in Mauthausen. When they asked me my name, I said “Benezia,” but they misunderstood and wrote “Benetti.”
When we came out of the shower, we had to get into rows of five, naked and soaked as we were, in the snow and the cold. We had to wait until there were fifty of us in line before we could go to the barrack that was at the far end, on the left. Even if we’d been in our clothes, the cold would have been absolutely unbearable. So you can’t imagine the pain of being naked, after coming out of the shower. But the man accompanying us remained impassive; he waited and forced us not to walk to the barrack too quickly. From the outside, it was similar to the ones at Birkenau, except that I seem to remember you had to go up two steps to enter. Inside there was nothing, no beds. The only positive points were the linoleum on the floor and the windows that were not broken and protected us a little from the cold.
You stayed naked, even when you slept?
Absolutely: naked and packed together like sardines, since there wasn’t room for everybody. The following morning, at around ten or eleven o’clock, SS officers came looking for about three hundred people. They called us out in alphabetical order. I found myself in a group with the two Gabbai cousins, but not with my brother. They eventually sent us to another barrack to give us some clothes. We were also given some soup and then loaded onto some more railcars to be transferred to a new camp: Melk.
The journey lasted six or seven hours, no longer. The barracks were different from the ones I knew, and longer. You had to go up a few steps to get into them. There were bunk beds arranged in rows, but there weren’t enough for everyone. Those who couldn’t find an empty bed had problems, since no one would agree to share his place. You had to find a place somewhere in the system, even if this meant elbowing your way in. I didn’t manage to get a place every day, but in general I got by reasonably well.
Work was organized in three shifts of eight hours (to which needed to be added two hours getting to the place of work and two hours getting back to the camp). When we got back, there were just as many people asleep and we had to find room somehow. You had to be strong to push others out of the way and take their place. That’s why I say that solidarity did not exist. We slept on a sort of straw mattress, without undressing. If we’d taken off any item of clothing whatsoever, even our shoes, they’d have been stolen. And in order to get them back, we’d have had to pay a ration of bread.
What, exactly, was the work you did?
I worked in the kommando of masons, on a worksite belonging to some Austrian civilians. In this camp, the work consisted of building galleries into the mountain. When we arrived at the big square on the worksite, the foremen called out so many people for such-and-such a type of work. With my brother-in-law, my cousins, and friends, we managed to form a small group of fifty or so people all of whom knew each other. We contrived to stay together and always do the same work each time. The foremen and other supervisors were Austrians, but there were also SS guards and kapos. My group had to dig galleries, which had the advantage of keeping us warm and away from the German guards, who stayed outside. Austrian civilians came in from time to time to check. But in general they didn’t need to
come in to know whether we were working fast enough. They just needed to see the rhythm at which the conveyor belt filled with earth came out of the gallery. It was forced labor and we didn’t have enough to eat or enough rest, but in other ways it wasn’t too exhausting.
And the Austrian civilians – how did they treat you, in general?
They didn’t give us orders, just instructions about what needed to be done. They needed a labor force, but whether we worked harder or less hard wasn’t their problem. They certainly realized that some of the prisoners were so weak that they could hardly lift their arms. Sometimes they raised their voices, but they didn’t use violence. Not those whom I saw, in any case. As for the others, I don’t know.
But one day I was unlucky. I didn’t manage to join my usual group. Someone must have slipped into the group to avoid more demanding work. So he took my place and I was forced to go and work in another kommando. I found myself in a group who worked outside, away from the gallery. We had to pull little trucks loaded with cement. When we reached the gallery, we had to push the little wagon onto a goods lift or service elevator and again push them along the tracks to the place where the prisoners needed them. This was extremely hard work.
I found myself pulling the little wagon with a non-Jewish Italian. I didn’t even ask him his name; the only thing I remember is that he told me he was Sicilian. We didn’t even think of talking to each other. Why waste our strength? At a certain point, I became aware that the wagon was weighing more and more heavily on my back. I stopped pulling and, as I was no longer pulling, the wagon stopped too. He was pretending to pull, but in reality he was letting me carry the whole weight of the load practically by myself. I lost my temper, as it was out of the question for me to do all the work by myself. If the chain was slowed down because of us, the German or a kapo would have come to beat us. We set off again. For the first few yards, the weight was again evenly balanced. But after a while I felt the weight growing heavier on my shoulders, and indeed, when I stopped, the wagon stopped too. Then I really did get angry and I threatened to give him a real thrashing if he let me carry the whole weight by myself again. I so longed for this day to be over and I didn’t want to risk being beaten because of him! The very next day, luckily, I managed to join my usual group.
It was particularly cold during this period. The kapo in our barrack wanted us to bring back things he could burn to keep himself warm in his room. In exchange for that he would give us a little more soup. Sometimes we used the thick fabric in which the cement was transported, or else we took pieces of wood. As it was forbidden to bring anything at all into the camp, we managed to make little sections and roll them round our torsos, under our shirts. This meant we were a little less cold on the road, since the wind and the cold filtered through less easily with this bit of protection under our clothes. But one day, when we entered the camp, our group was checked over by the guards at the entrance. Everyone opened his shirt to get rid of those pieces of wood before the Germans could find them on us. If we were caught with them, we could be given a severe beating, as much as a punishment as to serve as an example to others. They’d done this so they could pick up the wood and use it for their own needs.
What did you eat?
When we set out from the camp, we were given a sort of tea, without sugar of course: the only good thing about it was that it was hot. At around eleven thirty, a kapo rang the bell for soup: a cabbage soup with potato peelings. The man serving the soup never stirred it, so the first in the queue got only water. Nobody wanted to go first. But we didn’t always have any choice.
I once happened to be among the first in the soup queue. This is a very unpleasant memory. However strong and cunning I was, I fell for it. The kapo serving the soup was Hungarian and I knew he doled out much more soup to his compatriots, so I pretended I was Hungarian too. As I came up, I said to him “Magyar!” “Hungarian.” But he easily recognized from my accent that I was lying. Instead of giving me more, he served me only water. As I stared into my tin bowl, which contained nothing substantial, I felt a great anger rising inside myself. “How could I have managed to fall so low?” The idea of having to wait another twenty-four hours before eating drove me mad. I looked to the left and the right and I discreetly tried to slip back into the queue to get another portion. But as I was trying to slip in, the prisoners who had seen me started to wave their arms and shout, “Hey! Hey there!” A kapo saw what was happening and came running towards me. As fast as I could, I tried to join the group of prisoners who had eaten already, but he didn’t lose sight of me. He intended to beat me, and he rushed up, threateningly. On his way, he noticed a spade, picked it up, and gave me a great thwack on the shoulders with it. I tried to protect my head with my hands. He gave me another great thwack. If he’d stuck to the side, he’d have smashed my skull. I was left gasping for breath, filled with both pain and rage. I knew this kapo; he enjoyed killing prisoners. Often, at the entrance to the camp, he would announce proudly to the SS who were keeping an account of those going out and coming in, “98 + 2,” to show that two had died at work, since he himself had killed those poor fellows who were at the end of their tether. He was an Aryan Pole; everyone was afraid of him. When he lifted the spade to hit me a third time, I just managed to dodge the blow and I ran away from him as fast as I could. If I’d fallen where I was, he’d certainly have finished me off.
That day, I wept. I’d never wept in the Sonderkommando, but all my rage welled up at just this moment. I wasn’t weeping from pain or sadness (as I did after the war, when I saw my sister again for the first time), but from anger, bitterness, frustration …
How long did you stay working at Melk?
I don’t know exactly, but one day they transferred us to another sub-camp of Mauthausen: Ebensee. They chose a group of two hundred or three hundred people. Luckily, the little group that we had formed stayed together.
The train left us at the foot of a hill. The camp was at the top. The barracks resembled those in Birkenau, with “bunk” beds. There were so many of us that we had to sleep in twos. We could hardly move, the bed was so narrow. Most of the time, we didn’t even know whom we were lying next to. There were already a great many Frenchmen in the barrack, generally non-Jewish, as well as Russians. I found myself sharing a bed with a sick Russian who was coughing all night long. It was certainly because of him that I myself fell seriously ill at the Liberation.
Did you talk to each other?
We did, but we kept conversation to a minimum. Nobody felt much like talking. We’d come back to the barrack after a day’s exhausting work, our brains were empty, and we had nothing to say to each other. There were a few intellectuals among us. But we were the labor force and we’d long since lost our dignity.
As at Melk, the work consisted in digging galleries into the mountain. Except that we weren’t digging into earth but into stone, and the galleries were much damper than at Melk. We were immediately soaked, whatever we did. There was no means of getting dry. We came back to the camp and we had to go to bed with our clothes still wet – and we couldn’t take them off. Luckily, I worked for just ten days or so in those quarries. Subsequently, the Americans bombed the railway station at Ebensee and then the priority was getting the prisoners to rebuild the railway line.
Every day, we had to walk to the train-stop near the camp, then take a little train to reach the place where the tracks had been bombed, and from there continue for another half mile or so until we reached the bombed station at Ebensee. On the road, we passed near a field of rapeseed plants. All the prisoners tried to pick up as much of the edible material as they possibly could. We’d have eaten grass if we’d been able to find any…. But the guards soon moved in and forbade us to approach the field. One day, we came across an old Austrian peasant woman washing clothes in the animal trough. All the prisoners asked her for water as they passed. She got a bucket of water ready and placed it at the side of the road so we could drink from it as we came by. But the Germans forb
ade it. With their rifle butts they beat the old woman who had wanted to help us.
When we reached the bombed site, we had to clear the ground. If we were lucky, we found a cigarette butt among the wreckage, or we found some other object that we did our best to take back with us into the camp. Here, one of the barracks near the latrines had become the place where we exchanged things – did our “trading.” Those who didn’t work found it easy to get there. As for us, we could go in the evenings, before the curfew. When I could, I tried to obtain an extra hunk of bread in exchange for a ragged cigarette butt. The Russians were always after anything they could smoke. Once, a Russian came to see me, and offered “Olej!” oil, in exchange for my cigarettes. I knew the Russians would give anything in exchange for something to smoke, but I wondered what on earth it could be, since it was unthinkable that anyone might have oil in the camp. He motioned me to wait. I was curious to see in what sort of a container he was going to bring the oil to me, since we never could find bottles or even bags. Finally, he brought it to me in an oil lamp, of the kind used to light the galleries. The oil he showed me was black, disgusting. He tried to sell it to me by passing it off as olive oil, full of vitamins, while it was quite obviously motor oil. “Drink it yourself!” I replied. It may well be that some people did drink this oil, just as some people occasionally ate the kind of whitish cream that was found in pieces of Cardiff coal. They must have ruined their stomachs that way.
Our kapo was a German, a small and particularly cruel man. One day, when it was time to hand out the soup, he started to lash out at everybody, without distinction and without reason. One of my friends, Joseph Mano (my brother-in-law’s cousin), was hit very hard, especially on his skull. His skull was almost smashed and nobody would have imagined that he could survive such a wound. But survive he did.
Inside the Gas Chambers Page 14