Chapter 12
Helena
He didn’t take me to the inmates’ infirmary but some strange whitewashed barrack, to which I’d never paid attention before. As soon as we stepped through the doors, the inmate doctor jumped to his feet and froze at attention, propelled by sheer instinct, instilled by months of submission to every SS man’s whim. He was a man of about forty, with the face of an intellectual, prematurely gray hair and a Jewish star sewn on top of a white gown. With infinite longing, I eyed a book which he had been reading and which now lay open on top of his desk. What I wouldn’t give to be able to read a book, at least for a few minutes a day! Just to forget all this horror, just to lose myself for a few precious moments…
Next to me, Rottenführer Dahler cleared his throat, unsure of how to begin. “I need you to check one of my workers.”
The doctor picked up the glasses, in a thin metal frame, from the desk, looked at me and then back at him, inquisitively.
“Yes, her.” Dahler shifted from one foot to the other.
“Am I looking for anything specific, Herr Rottenführer?” The doctor asked him carefully in his correct but slightly accented German, fixing the gaze of his intelligent eyes on me once again.
“Yes, erm… Take a look at her back. I think it needs some tending to.”
The doctor’s eyes barely touched upon Dahler’s whip to express his understanding and condemnation at the same time. No need to clarify, Herr Rottenführer. Familiar business.
“Would you please sit over there and remove your shirt?” The physician addressed me directly for the first time.
I sat where he indicated me with my back to both men and began pulling the shirt off. Some of the blood had already congealed and I winced, in spite of myself, while tearing it off the flesh to which it was stuck. Yet, I didn’t make a sound, unlike one of them, whose sharp intake of breath indicated that the picture before their eyes was not at all pleasant, by any means. Both should have been used to such sights, so the reaction surprised me, whoever it came from.
“Well…” the doctor began, with uncertainty. “I suppose I could clean the wounds, that’s the least I can do to prevent the infection from setting in.”
“Is that all you’re planning on doing? I could have sent her to the showers for the same effect. What kind of a physician are you with such suggestions?”
“I’m a pathologist, Herr Rottenführer.” The doctor replied calmly. Just now, I realized that I was sitting on a dissecting table, which was still wet from hosing off. “In ordinary circumstances, I would have cleaned the wounds, applied the disinfectant, then some vinegar-soaked bandages to draw the heat from the wounds and allowed her bed rest at least for a few hours before cleaning them again and bandaging them. But as I understand, you just wished to ensure that she wasn’t bleeding profusely and could be cleared for work?”
“What do you, Mistkäfer, understand about my wishes?!” Dahler was suddenly incensed. “I told you to tend to her wounds. Tend to her wounds as needed! As you would have tended to your wife’s wounds!”
“My wife has been gassed upon arrival, Herr Rottenführer,” the doctor announced in the same cool, unemotional voice.
I turned to look at Dahler. For a moment, I thought that he would backhand the doctor across his face for speaking out of turn and of matters that were strictly verboten from discussing in the camp and with the SS officers, even more so. However, Dahler caught my pleading glance and exhaled slowly, seemingly collecting himself.
“My condolences,” he said curtly after a pause. “Now, do tend to her wounds, will you?”
“Jawohl, Herr Rottenführer.” The doctor inclined his head respectfully, walked to the medical cabinet and began digging in it for the needed materials.
“Do you have everything you need or shall I fetch some supplies from the SS doctors if you…” Dahler hesitated before continuing. Such concern for an inmate’s well-being was far too suspicious and the doctor was already regarding him with interest.
“Thank you for your generous offer, Herr Rottenführer but I have everything I need. Dr. Thilo’s office keeps the experimenting and the dissecting facilities well-supplied.”
“Can you give her something for the pain?”
Now, the pathologist outright stared at Rottenführer Dahler, positively mystified.
“She’s a good worker,” Dahler murmured, as though in his own defense.
The doctor brought along a roll of aspirin along with bandages and the rest of the medical supplies and made me swallow two of the bitter pills. After that, he turned to Dahler once again. Satisfied? His gray eyes said. Condemnation was still visible in them, despite all of the doctor’s attempts to keep it curbed. It wouldn’t have been needed had you not done all this damage in the first place.
Dahler wouldn’t leave the room even when I had to lie down on the dissecting table, positioning my shirt under me to keep at least some barrier between my bare skin and the cold metal. I preferred not to think of who – or what, to be exact – lay here before me, concentrating on the doctor’s gentle, cool hands instead.
“You don’t have to be here if you have duties to attend to, Herr Rottenführer,” the doctor said, trying to sound respectful. A physician to the marrow of his bones, he couldn’t bear to see the tormentor right next to the victim, it seemed. “I’ll keep her here till the evening and after I dress her wounds, I’ll bring her back to the barrack myself, if you like. I wouldn’t want to take up any of your precious time. I know how busy you all are.”
Despite the tone being coolly polite, the sting was there. Dahler circled the table so that he could stand right in front of me. I lifted my head from my folded hands, on which it was resting, to look at him. He parted his lips as if to ask something but then remembered the doctor and willed his face back into an unyielding mask.
“Give her more aspirin if she asks for it. Or, better, morphine if she’s in a lot of pain. Buy it from the Sonderkommando if you don’t have it,” he said by means of goodbye, quickly shoved a few dollars into the stupefied doctor’s pocket and walked out of the room hastily.
A good minute passed before the doctor spoke to me in my native language. “Are you in any sort of relationship with that man?”
“He’s my work detail’s supervisor,” I replied softly.
“Just that?”
“Just that.”
“What did he beat you for?”
I thought of a good reason to offer him, for much too long, I guess. He snorted softly. “For nothing, then. As always.”
I grinned in spite of myself. How nice it was, ordinary human interaction, despite the circumstances that brought me here; how positively refreshing and delightful! For a few moments, I could almost persuade myself that I was merely an ordinary girl visiting an ordinary doctor for some positively trivial reason. In my mind, we were back in Slovakia. He even spoke my language, the wonderful, kind-hearted doctor and just like that, the fantasy was complete.
“Do they often send you people with such injuries?” I asked him.
He was silent for a few moments. “You’re my first case.”
I turned my head to see his face, to see if he was joking. He finished dabbing at the last wound where the skin was broken and discarded an alcohol-soaked cotton ball into the metal container that stood next to me, along with the pincers. His eyes met mine; no, he was very much serious.
“Ordinarily, the only living patients that I have are either the SS men whom I am permitted to attend to, the Sonderkommando men, or…” He quickly caught himself before he said something that he was clearly strictly forbidden from mentioning to anyone. “But never mind that. Let me just apply these bandages now for some time and you should be as good as new by the evening. I would still strongly recommend sleeping on your stomach at least for a few nights. You’re from the Kanada, aren’t you? I thought so, judging by your clothes. Do you have two-person bunks in your barracks, like the Sonderkommando?” After I responded affirmatively
, he nodded in satisfaction. “Good. A lashing can be a death sentence to anyone from the regular camp, due to the infection and unsanitary conditions. But you should be just fine. Do you think your supervisor will allow you to come here tomorrow to check if everything is healing nicely?”
“I can’t say with all certainty but I think he will.”
“I think so too. He looked like a wet hen when he just brought you here. Whatever did you do to him to provoke such a reaction? Refused his SS advances?” He smirked cynically.
“No.” I looked away, ashamed for some reason.
“If I didn’t know the SS, I’d say he looked almost guilty after what he did.”
“He found me where I didn’t belong,” I finally offered by means of explanation.
“With a suitor?” This time his eyes wrinkled with mischief. “I can see how this could have upset him.”
“With my sister.” I didn’t owe him an explanation, but the words tumbled out of me before I knew it. “She was being led to the gas chamber. He saved her from it.”
His grin suddenly dropped. The doctor regarded me in stunned silence for some time.
“Please, don’t tell anyone,” I whispered, lowering my eyes.
“Of course, I won’t, child.” I felt his palm stroking my hair gently – a fatherly gesture. I wondered if his daughter perished here along with his wife. “Now, rest. Who knows when the chance will present itself again, just to rest, eh?”
I must have drifted to sleep after he’d covered me with a thin blanket and left me lying on the table. A man clearing his throat next to me woke me up. My head still foggy with sleep, I looked up and blinked a few times in an effort to clear my vision. The man was young, in his early or mid-twenties perhaps, with a dark stubble of closely-cropped hair under his inmate’s cap, warm brown eyes and the typical attire of the Sonderkommando – striped trousers, a civilian shirt under a decent jacket, with his number sewn onto it under the yellow star, and rubber boots.
“I’m sorry for waking you up.” He smiled at me gingerly. “That SS man who beat you told me to bring you this.” He extracted a clean shirt from under his jacket. “Can I have your old one? He told me that that one was ruined and that I would have to sew your old number and a star onto the new one.”
Without saying a word, I pulled the old shirt from under myself and handed it to him. He thanked me and sat, cross-legged like a Turk, right on the floor with both of my shirts on his lap.
After observing him for some time, the curiosity got the better of me. “How do you know that it was he who beat me?”
“I saw it,” he replied, without taking his eyes off his work. He was operating the needle quite professionally for a man, I had to give him that. “He’s always much too fast to apply that whip if you ask me. The veterans from your Kommando all know to make themselves scarce whenever he blows his lid.”
“He’s not too bad,” I said quietly.
“Not too bad?” he repeated, lifting his brows in disbelief and barked a laugh. “Compared to whom? Hitler?”
I grinned, in spite of myself. “Compared to Rottenführer Wolff. Or Hauptscharführer Moll.”
“Well, you’ve got a point there,” he agreed with another broad grin. “But it still doesn’t excuse him for what he did. Beating a woman, with a whip, like some animal…” He shook his head, casting a sidelong glance at the blanket covering my back.
“It’s all right. It doesn’t even hurt that much. The doctor dressed it and gave me pain pills.”
“He’s still a sadistic SS bastard and that’s all there is to it,” he concluded abruptly, with sudden harshness in his voice.
I didn’t argue.
When he spoke again, his tone was much softer. “My name is Andrej, by the way.”
“Helena.” I offered him my hand.
He reached out from the floor and shook it, smiling warmly.
“Your new shirt is almost ready. And if you need anything, our barracks are just around the corner. Tell anyone you’re looking for Andrej Novák, or just give them a note with whatever you need. I’ll try and get it for you.”
“That’s very generous of you, Andrej. Thank you.”
“We all need to help each other the best we can to survive, don’t we?” He bit off the thread, smoothed out the seams with his fingers and got up from the floor. “Here’s your shirt. It was a pleasure to meet you, Helena.”
“You, too, Andrej. Take care of yourself and thank you for your help.”
He winked at me before setting off.
Chapter 13
Germany, 1947
“That’s how I first met Herr Novák,” Helena Dahler finished in her soft voice.
The testimony was long and tiresome; giving it, she looked just about everywhere but the panel of judges before her. Dr. Hoffman suddenly recalled himself in college; he also could not bear looking at his professors when he had to present his thesis. He was much too afraid that he’d forget something if he did. The audience’s eyes had the oddest ability to destroy a person’s confidence in the most crucial of moments, whereas floorboards and walls were much safer in this respect. They never judged. They were just there, stable and unmoving and impartial and perhaps that was the reason why the father of modern psychiatry Freud suggested that his patients lay on the chaise lounge and observed the ceiling, instead of forcing them to look into the psychiatrist’s eyes.
The court recorder leaned back in his chair, taking a well-deserved respite as he flexed his fingers. Carter fidgeted in his seat for the first time. He must have just remembered that he hadn’t had a smoke since the beginning of the hearing and now looked as though he would give his life for a Camel. Dr. Hoffman, meanwhile, went on watching the couple for a while. He had to give Helena that, she was rather well-composed for an extermination camp survivor. Her voice didn’t betray itself with trembling even when recounting such an emotional situation as watching one’s sister’s column being led straight to the gas chamber. Neither did she falter when recounting her own beating.
Dahler’s face remained impassive almost the entire time that his wife spoke. Only a slight shadow passed over it when she was describing the whipping itself. He clearly did not enjoy being reminded of it and in front of the courtroom, even less so.
“My husband apologized to me after that incident countless times, of course…” Helena added as if in an afterthought, perhaps not wishing to upset her spouse.
Andrej Novák only snorted and rolled his eyes emphatically.
The Chairman looked at him over the rim of his glasses. “Herr Novák, did you know the circumstances of that incident? The fact that it concerned Frau Dahler’s sister?”
“No. Helena never explained the details to me back then, which leads me to believe that it was Herr Dahler who invented the whole story and coached his wife how to tell it convincingly in case anyone asked. I knew that her sister arrived in the camp but Helena never told me back then that it was Dahler, who saved her from the gas chamber.”
“You didn’t see the defendant emerge out of the bunker with Frau Dahler’s sister?”
“No. I was already inside the second bunker watching the order. I only saw him beat Helena and that’s all.”
The Chairman exchanged glances with Lieutenant Carter. Dr. Hoffman, meanwhile, observed Dahler closely. The young man remained enviously calm, not protesting any of the accusations that Novák was hurling at him. A silent admission of guilt? What else could it be, such intentional ignoring of Novák’s claims? Still, something just didn’t seem right to the psychiatrist.
“You can ask my sister who brought her out of that bunker,” Helena Dahler spoke quietly instead of her husband. “She came, at my request, from Palestine specifically, for this very purpose, to clarify any doubtful claims. My husband has included her on the list of witnesses for the defense and it was approved. We have submitted her affidavit but she came here in person in case you wish to question her properly.”
“I don’t see why we shoul
dn’t interview Frau Feldman – her name is still Frau Feldman, isn’t it?” After getting an affirmative nod from Helena, the Chairman went on to clarify. “We still have things to sort out with your testimony, Frau Dahler and with Herr Novák’s but if we don’t have enough time today, we’ll definitely hear Frau Feldman’s tomorrow.”
Helena Dahler nodded and was back to studying her white, narrow palms.
The prosecutor called up his witness, Andrej Novák, who was only too glad to take the stand. “Herr Novák, you also said that the defendant used that whip on you, isn’t that so?”
“Yes, he did. It happened not that long after that episode, in late November if I remember correctly. A part of our Sonderkommando was burning them by then, the corpses that the SS ordered us to dig out and cremate in the open pits. The most atrocious substance was seeping out of that soil in which they were buried and the SS didn’t want it to poison their water supply, or spread some sort of plague around the camp. They were afraid for themselves, of course, not for the inmates. I remember my comrades saying that Moll was rushing everyone with his whip, like a slave driver during that last month. They had to finish fast because the temperatures began plummeting at night and the ground was difficult to turn the next day. So, it must have been around that time because it was then that I was ordered to join it, that part of the Sonderkommando, that is.”
“Would you describe the circumstances to the court?”
The Slovak was quiet for some time, obviously gathering his thoughts. “Helena got very sick around that time. That is, at first it was a regular cold but as you can imagine, no one treated such things in the camp and so, it quickly took a turn for the worse. It went straight into her lungs. I had easy access to the Kanada warehouse due to my working with the Sonderkommando – prior to my reassignment, I was still a part of the transport Kommando. Every day we would deliver personal belongings left in the gas chambers’ anterooms, to the Kanada, so it wasn’t that difficult for me to smuggle some medicine for Helena. We’re both from Slovakia, you see. We had many things in common and it was nice to speak one’s native language among all that German barking that was required of us. Over a matter of a few weeks, we developed a friendship of sorts. We weren’t allowed to talk to each other but it was still possible to exchange a few words when the Kapos weren’t watching. One day, Herr Dahler caught us talking and apparently, it displeased him quite a lot since he considered Helena his property.” He shot Dahler a glare. “What incensed me the most about the entire affair was not the fact that he beat me for it. It was the fact that, with all the resources available to him, he didn’t lift a finger to help her when she was as sick as a dog and on top of that, prohibited me from ever approaching her again. He didn’t care one way or another if she died, as long as his pride was satisfied.”
Auschwitz Syndrome: a Holocaust novel based on a true story (Women and the Holocaust Book 3) Page 11