by Elie Wiesel
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never.
THE BARRACK we had been assigned to was very long. On the roof, a few bluish skylights. I thought: This is what the antecham- ber of hell must look like. So many crazed men, so much shout- ing, so much brutality.
Dozens of inmates were there to receive us, sticks in hand, striking anywhere, anyone, without reason. The orders came:
“Strip! Hurry up! Raus! Hold on only to your belt and your shoes…”
Our clothes were to be thrown on the floor at the back of the barrack. There was a pile there already. New suits, old ones, torn overcoats, rags. For us it meant true equality: nakedness. We trembled in the cold.
A few SS officers wandered through the room, looking for strong men. If vigor was that appreciated, perhaps one should try to appear sturdy? My father thought the opposite. Better not to draw attention. (We later found out that he had been right. Those who were selected that day were incorporated into the Sonder- Kommando, the Kommando working in the crematoria. Béla Katz, the son of an important merchant of my town, had arrived in Birkenau with the first transport, one week ahead of us. When he found out that we were there, he succeeded in slipping us a note. He told us that having been chosen because of his strength, he had been forced to place his own father's body into the furnace.)
The blows continued to rain on us:
“To the barber!”
Belt and shoes in hand, I let myself be dragged along to the barbers. Their clippers tore out our hair, shaved every hair on our bodies. My head was buzzing; the same thought surfacing over and over: not to be separated from my father.
Freed from the barbers' clutches, we began to wander about the crowd, finding friends, acquaintances. Every encounter filled us with joy—yes, joy: Thank God! You are still alive!
Some were crying. They used whatever strength they had left to cry. Why had they let themselves be brought here? Why didn't they die in their beds? Their words were interspersed with sobs.
Suddenly someone threw his arms around me in a hug: Yehiel, the Sigheter rebbe's brother. He was weeping bitterly. I thought he was crying with joy at still being alive.
“Don't cry, Yehiel,” I said. “Don't waste your tears…”
“Not cry? We're on the threshold of death. Soon, we shall be inside…Do you understand? Inside. How could I not cry?”
I watched darkness fade through the bluish skylights in the roof. I no longer was afraid. I was overcome by fatigue.
The absent no longer entered our thoughts. One spoke of them—who knows what happened to them?—but their fate was not on our minds. We were incapable of thinking. Our senses were numbed, everything was fading into a fog. We no longer clung to anything. The instincts of self-preservation, of self- defense, of pride, had all deserted us. In one terrifying moment of lucidity, I thought of us as damned souls wandering through the void, souls condemned to wander through space until the end of time, seeking redemption, seeking oblivion, without any hope of finding either.
AROUND FIVE O'CLOCK in the morning, we were expelled from the barrack. The Kapos were beating us again, but I no longer felt the pain. A glacial wind was enveloping us. We were naked, hold- ing our shoes and belts. An order:
“Run!” And we ran. After a few minutes of running, a new barrack.
A barrel of foul-smelling liquid stood by the door. Disinfection. Everybody soaked in it. Then came a hot shower. All very fast. As we left the showers, we were chased outside. And ordered to run some more. Another barrack: the storeroom. Very long tables. Mountains of prison garb. As we ran, they threw the clothes at us: pants, jackets, shirts…
In a few seconds, we had ceased to be men. Had the situation not been so tragic, we might have laughed. We looked pretty strange! Meir Katz, a colossus, wore a child's pants, and Stern, a skinny little fellow, was floundering in a huge jacket. We immedi- ately started to switch.
I glanced over at my father. How changed he looked! His eyes were veiled. I wanted to tell him something, but I didn't know what.
The night had passed completely. The morning star shone in the sky. I too had become a different person. The student of Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded—and devoured—by a black flame.
So many events had taken place in just a few hours that I had completely lost all notion of time. When had we left our homes? And the ghetto? And the train? Only a week ago? One night? One single night?
How long had we been standing in the freezing wind? One hour? A single hour? Sixty minutes?
Surely it was a dream.
NOT FAR FROM US, prisoners were at work. Some were digging holes, others were carrying sand. None as much as glanced at us. We were withered trees in the heart of the desert. Behind me, people were talking. I had no desire to listen to what they were saying, or to know who was speaking and what about. Nobody dared raise his voice, even though there was no guard around. We whispered. Perhaps because of the thick smoke that poisoned the air and stung the throat.
We were herded into yet another barrack, inside the Gypsy camp. We fell into ranks of five.
“And now, stop moving!”
There was no floor. A roof and four walls. Our feet sank into the mud.
Again, the waiting. I fell asleep standing up. I dreamed of a bed, of my mother's hand on my face. I woke: I was standing, my feet in the mud. Some people collapsed, sliding into the mud. Others shouted:
“Are you crazy? We were told to stand. Do you want to get us all in trouble?”
As if all the troubles in the world were not already upon us.
Little by little, we all sat down in the mud. But we had to get up whenever a Kapo came in to check if, by chance, somebody had a new pair of shoes. If so, we had to hand them over. No use protesting; the blows multiplied and, in the end, one still had to hand them over.
I had new shoes myself. But as they were covered with a thick coat of mud, they had not been noticed. I thanked God, in an im- provised prayer, for having created mud in His infinite and won- drous universe.
Suddenly, the silence became more oppressive. An SS officer had come in and, with him, the smell of the Angel of Death. We stared at his fleshy lips. He harangued us from the center of the barrack:
“You are in a concentration camp. In Auschwitz…
A pause. He was observing the effect his words had produced. His face remains in my memory to this day. A tall man, in his thir- ties, crime written all over his forehead and his gaze. He looked at us as one would a pack of leprous dogs clinging to life.
”Remember,“ he went on. ”Remember it always, let it be graven in your memories. You are in Auschwitz. And Auschwitz is not a convalescent home. It is a concentration camp. Here, you must work. If you don't you will go straight to the chimney. To the crematorium. Work or crematorium—the choice is yours.“
We had already lived through a lot that night. We thought that nothing could frighten us anymore. But his harsh words sent shiv- ers through us. The word ”chimney“ here was not an abstraction; it floated in the air, mingled with the smoke. It was, perhaps, the only word that had a real meaning in this place. He left the bar- rack. The Kapos arrived, shouting:
”All specialists—locksmiths, carpenters, electricians, watch- makers—one step forward!“
The rest of us were transferred to yet another barrack, this one of stone. We had permission to sit down. A Gypsy inmate was in charge.
<
br /> My father suddenly had a colic attack. He got up and asked politely, in German,”Excuse me…Could you tell me where the toilets are located?“
The Gypsy stared at him for a long time, from head to toe. As if he wished to ascertain that the person addressing him was actually a creature of flesh and bone, a human being with a body and a belly. Then, as if waking from a deep sleep, he slapped my fa- ther with such force that he fell down and then crawled back to his place on all fours.
I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal's flesh. Had I changed that much? So fast? Remorse began to gnaw at me. All I could think was: I shall never forgive them for this. My father must have guessed my thoughts, because he whispered in my ear:
”It doesn't hurt." His cheek still bore the red mark of the hand.
* * * * *
“EVERYBODY outside!”
A dozen or so Gypsies had come to join our guard. The clubs and whips were cracking around me. My feet were running on their own. I tried to protect myself from the blows by hiding be- hind others. It was spring. The sun was shining.
“Fall in, five by five!”
The prisoners I had glimpsed that morning were working nearby. No guard in sight, only the chimney's shadow…Lulled by the sunshine and my dreams, I felt someone pulling at my sleeve. It was my father: “Come on, son.”
We marched. Gates opened and closed. We continued to march between the barbed wire. At every step, white signs with black skulls looked down on us. The inscription: WARNING! DANGER OF DEATH. What irony. Was there here a single place where one was not in danger of death?
The Gypsies had stopped next to a barrack. They were replaced by SS men, who encircled us with machine guns and police dogs.
The march had lasted half an hour. Looking around me, I noticed that the barbed wire was behind us. We had left the camp.
It was a beautiful day in May. The fragrances of spring were in the air. The sun was setting.
But no sooner had we taken a few more steps than we saw the barbed wire of another camp. This one had an iron gate with the overhead inscription: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. Work makes you free.
Auschwitz.
* * * * *
FIRST IMPRESSION: better than Birkenau. Cement buildings with two stories rather than wooden barracks. Little gardens here and there. We were led toward one of those “blocks.” Seated on the ground by the entrance, we began to wait again. From time to time somebody was allowed to go in. These were the showers, a compulsory routine. Going from one camp to the other, several times a day, we had, each time, to go through them.
After the hot shower, we stood shivering in the darkness. Our clothes had been left behind; we had been promised other clothes.
Around midnight, we were told to run.
“Faster!” yelled our guards. “The faster you run, the faster you'll get to go to sleep.”
After a few minutes of racing madly, we came to a new block. The man in charge was waiting. He was a young Pole, who was smiling at us. He began to talk to us and, despite our weariness, we listened attentively.
“Comrades, you are now in the concentration camp Ausch- witz. Ahead of you lies a long road paved with suffering. Don't lose hope. You have already eluded the worst danger: the selec- tion. Therefore, muster your strength and keep your faith. We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life, a thousand times faith. By driving out despair, you will move away from death. Hell does not last forever…And now, here is a prayer, or rather a piece of advice: let there be camaraderie among you. We are all brothers and share the same fate. The same smoke hovers over all our heads. Help each other. That is the only way to sur- vive. And now, enough said, you are tired. Listen: you are in Block 17; I am responsible for keeping order here. Anyone with a complaint may come to see me. That is all. Go to sleep. Two peo- ple to a bunk. Good night.”
Those were the first human words.
* * * * *
NO SOONER HAD WE CLIMBED into our bunks than we fell into a deep sleep.
The next morning, the “veteran” inmates treated us without brutality. We went to wash. We were given new clothing. They brought us black coffee.
We left the block around ten o'clock so it could be cleaned. Outside, the sun warmed us. Our morale was much improved. A good night's sleep had done its work. Friends met, exchanged a few sentences. We spoke of everything without ever mentioning those who had disappeared. The prevailing opinion was that the war was about to end.
At about noon, we were brought some soup, one bowl of thick soup for each of us. I was terribly hungry, yet I refused to touch it. I was still the spoiled child of long ago. My father swallowed my ration.
We then had a short nap in the shade of the block. That SS of- ficer in the muddy barrack must have been lying: Auschwitz was, after all, a convalescent home…
In the afternoon, they made us line up. Three prisoners brought a table and some medical instruments. We were told to roll up our left sleeves and file past the table. The three “veteran” prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.
At dusk, a roll call. The work Kommandos had returned. The orchestra played military marches near the camp entrance. Tens of thousands of inmates stood in rows while the SS checked their numbers.
After the roll call, the prisoners from all the blocks dispersed, looking for friends, relatives, or neighbors among the arrivals of the latest convoy.
* * * * *
DAYS WENT BY. In the mornings: black coffee. At midday: soup. By the third day, I was eagerly eating any kind of soup…At six o'clock in the afternoon: roll call. Followed by bread with some- thing. At nine o'clock: bedtime.
We had already been in Auschwitz for eight days. It was after roll call. We stood waiting for the bell announcing its end. Sud- denly I noticed someone passing between the rows. I heard him ask:
“Who among you is Wiesel from Sighet?”
The person looking for us was a small fellow with spectacles in a wizened face. My father answered:
“That's me. Wiesel from Sighet.”
The fellow's eyes narrowed. He took a long look at my father.
“You don't know me?…You don't recognize me. I'm your relative, Stein. Already forgotten? Stein. Stein from Antwerp. Reizel's husband. Your wife was Reizel's aunt…She often wrote to us…and such letters!”
My father had not recognized him. He must have barely known him, always being up to his neck in communal affairs and not knowledgeable in family matters. He was always elsewhere, lost in thought. (Once, a cousin came to see us in Sighet. She had stayed at our house and eaten at our table for two weeks before my father noticed her presence for the first time.) No, he did not remember Stein. I recognized him right away. I had known Reizel, his wife, before she had left for Belgium.
He told us that he had been deported in 1942. He said, “I heard people say that a transport had arrived from your re- gion and I came to look for you. I thought you might have some news of Reizel and my two small boys who stayed in Antwerp…”
I knew nothing about them…Since 1940, my mother had not received a single letter from them. But I lied:
“Yes, my mother did hear from them. Reizel is fine. So are the children…”
He was weeping with joy. He would have liked to stay longer, to learn more details, to soak up the good news, but an SS was heading in our direction and he had to go, telling us that he would come back the next day.
The bell announced that we were dismissed. We went to fetch the evening meal: bread and margarine. I was terribly hungry and swallowed my ration on the spot. My father told me, “You mustn't eat all at once. Tomorrow is another day…”
But seeing that his advice had come too late, and that there was nothing left of my ration, he didn't even start his own.
“Me, I'm no
t hungry,” he said.
WE REMAINED IN AUSCHWITZ for three weeks. We had nothing to do. We slept a lot. In the afternoon and at night.
Our one goal was to avoid the transports, to stay here as long as possible. It wasn't difficult; it was enough never to sign up as a skilled worker. The unskilled were kept until the end.
At the start of the third week, our Blockälteste was removed; he was judged too humane. The new one was ferocious and his aides were veritable monsters. The good days were over. We began to wonder whether it wouldn't be better to let ourselves be chosen for the next transport.
Stein, our relative from Antwerp, continued to visit us and, from time to time, he would bring a half portion of bread:
“Here, this is for you, Eliezer.”
Every time he came, tears would roll down his icy cheeks. He would often say to my father:
“Take care of your son. He is very weak, very dehydrated. Take care of yourselves, you must avoid selection. Eat! Anything, anytime. Eat all you can. The weak don't last very long around here…”
And he himself was so thin, so withered, so weak…
“The only thing that keeps me alive,” he kept saying, “is to know that Reizel and the little ones are still alive. Were it not for them, I would give up.”
One evening, he came to see us, his face radiant.
“A transport just arrived from Antwerp. I shall go to see them tomorrow. Surely they will have news…”
He left.
We never saw him again. He had been given the news. The real news.
EVENINGS, AS WE LAY on our cots, we sometimes tried to sing a few Hasidic melodies. Akiba Drumer would break our hearts with his deep, grave voice.
Some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come. As for me, I had ceased to pray. I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice.