Now the SS was always on top of us, walking around, tapping the hands that didn’t work fast enough for their liking, with the tips of their horsewhips; shouting insults and dealing blows for a misplaced item or for money discovered in the pocket of a jacket that had already been thrown into the “disinfection” pile.
Rottenführer Dahler avoided me the entire time, much to my relief. Soon, however, he began inching closer again, trying his best to catch my eye, purposely walking nearby, giving directions to everyone around, in a voice that was suddenly almost pleasant, with the quality of a request in it, rather than an order. The theatrics were nearly amusing. I could almost believe him, had he not shown his true colors during that inspection day a month ago.
The more he was trying to get my attention, the more I ignored him. At last, he lost his patience. The Kapo delivered his order for me to report to his office, a smirk crossing her face. She was Reichsdeutsche, our Maria, blonde and evil like a witch and lacked whatever sympathy our block elder Irma was kind enough to show us. They had just recently begun appointing them, the German women with the black triangles of anti-socials – prostitutes, that is – as our Kapos and most of them took the greatest pleasure in humiliating us as much as possible with the new order of things. We had long grown used to such an unjust hierarchy, where a German prostitute was valued much higher than a Polish physician and where a green triangle of an Aryan criminal held more power than the red one of the political-prisoner, of the same race. We, the Jews, were at the bottom of the food chain. Our lives were not worth anything at all. We were disposable and they made sure to remind us of it daily, Maria sometimes hourly, if not with a blow than with a demeaning, ugly word, that’s for sure.
In front of Rottenführer Dahler’s door, I wiped my palms over my skirt before knocking. They were suddenly wet with sweat. After receiving his permission to enter, I stepped inside.
Dahler was sitting at his desk, smiling brightly, a typewriter in front of him. I regarded him with a stony expression.
“You wished to see me, Herr Rottenführer?”
“I did. Close the door and sit down, please.” He rose from his chair and even went to the pain of moving up a second one for me. I lowered into it, smoothing my skirt over my knees. Gray ringlets of smoke were rising from a cigarette left in an ashtray. I regarded it closely, thinking that I recognized the design on its crystal surface. It was commandeered from our work detail, no doubt.
“How’s the work been?” he inquired, with the same mild grin.
“Even with the second night-shift Kommando, we’re still behind schedule,” I replied honestly. Why ask me? He spent his days here. Certainly, he could see for himself that the trucks with new items arrived faster than we could sort out the old piles. “The transports arrive daily. We simply can’t cope—”
“Yes, yes, I know.” He waved me off impatiently. “They’re building a second camp – Birkenau – as of now, where the second Kanada is going to be. Don’t fret, after a few months, we’ll all be doing just fine.”
“If you didn’t gas all of those people, you would have more workers for the detail,” I mumbled under my breath before realizing that, perhaps, it was an utterly moronic thing to do, to push one’s luck with an SS man.
Indeed, a scowl replaced his previously bright expression.
“I don’t gas anyone,” he retorted, with ice in his voice.
“I meant you, the SS, in general, Herr Rottenführer. I apologize for the misunderstanding.”
He rubbed his forehead irritably. The conversation wasn’t going according to his plan, it seemed.
“I know that you’re overwhelmed with work there,” he began again, almost forcing himself to sound more conciliatory. They didn’t make it a habit of being friendly with us; it was an acquired skill, for any SS man, to be nice to a Jew and Dahler was, so far, a slow student. “That’s the reason why I called you here. I imagine you could use some respite from all that sorting business?” He slightly inclined his head to one side.
I merely looked at him, still unmoved and unsmiling.
“I want you to do my nails.”
I thought I misheard him for one instant. He had to repeat his request for a second time. He thought I didn’t understand his language. No! I simply couldn’t believe his audacity.
“Yes, my nails. Sit here with me and file my nails so that I can look at you for a few minutes.”
He broke into a beautiful, boyish smile again, seemingly delighted with his own proposition. With my face as hard as marble, I rose from my chair slowly.
“Absolutely not.”
His smile faltered but didn’t altogether drop. He didn’t seem to comprehend that a Jew had just refused him something. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said, absolutely not,” I repeated, trembling with my entire body. “Did you know that you beat that man from our detail so badly after Herr Kommandant’s inspection that Rottenführer Wolff had to put him out of his misery later that day with a mercy shot to the head? You’re both murderers and I’ll die before I touch those hands of yours. Don’t bring me into this room ever again. No manicures, no nothing. I don’t do manicures. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go back to my work detail.”
The legs of the chair scraped sharply on the floor. He was suddenly on his feet, furious.
“No, I don’t excuse you! Sit back into that chair right this instant! I haven’t dismissed you yet!”
Without turning around, I continued for the door.
“If you walk out of that door, I swear I’ll shoot you!” he bellowed.
I stopped. Morbid curiosity got the better of me. Slowly, I turned around. To be sure, he was holding a gun in his hand, aiming at me. In his eyes, I saw it all at once, a man’s wounded pride, the certainty of an Aryan man’s superiority, indignation, and fury… and fear that I wouldn’t obey. I walked up to him once again, oddly calm despite the fact that only his desk separated us and that his gun was still pointing straight at my chest. His hand was steady, the confident hand of a man who was used to pulling the trigger.
“I fell in love with you, you wrote to me some time ago, Herr Rottenführer. Only, this is not loving. Love is never forced, only earned. It’s given freely, not torn out of someone’s heart with threats and blows. You don’t know how to love. None of you do. You’re all heartless and I’ll prove it to you right this moment. I’m walking out because I can’t look at you another second. Do what your SS pride tells you to.”
With that, I turned on my heels and crossed the room, expecting a shot to ring out any moment now. With a trembling hand, I reached for the door, opened it, and walked out, unmolested. Only when I was back at my assigned place did agony find its way out, streaming from my eyes and falling onto newly delivered trench coats and leather jackets. The spring was raging outside and the new arrivals were dressed lightly.
In the evening, as Rottenführer Dahler was making his last round before dismissing us for the night, he stopped by me and spoke softly above my ear, “You wished to prove me wrong but it will be me who will prove you wrong in the end.”
I had difficulty falling asleep that night. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand what happened between us that day.
6
Helena
Rottenführer Weber, the Kanada accountant, emerged from his office – a rare occasion on its own – just to urge us to work faster. They were getting transports daily now; he was behind schedule with the Reichsbank and “all of those clothes were not going to sort themselves.” The Auschwitz Alps were growing and growing and now it wasn’t just clothes and shoes and valuables. It was also children’s dolls and porcelain dishes and prosthetic limbs. The members of the Sonderkommando brought them here from “the showers” anteroom and dumped them unceremoniously into a pile for us to sort out. Most of us preferred to bribe Maria just to stay out of such a morbid duty.
Some still whispered prayers here. Most, however, had long abandoned their religion. Someone said that
Auschwitz was such a terrible place that God himself decided not to go there. To be honest, I couldn’t agree more with that statement.
Wolff was making his lazy rounds, yawning. He must have spent his weekend in the nearest town’s brothel again. The gossip had it that he had a big interest in that department. The same gossip had it that the Kanada accountant, Weber, scorned the place, preferring the SS chess club, to it. Gossip also had it that out of all three of our supervisors, Dahler was the cruelest one once he blew his lid; the natural Jew-hater, the man with the horsewhip. I haven’t seen him since the day of our last argument. His office stood closed and empty. I begin entertaining the hope that someone had overheard our conversation, reported it and they’d shipped him off to the Eastern Front.
Wishful thinking, Helena.
There he was, waving off the Kapo, who had us frozen at attention and signing to us to get back to work, without uttering a word. He was oddly pale today; pale and stern and not in the mood for idle chatting, it appeared. He silently pointed at this pile and that and tapped his wristwatch at one of the women, implying that she wasn’t working fast enough. Instead of a whip, he held a Thermos in his other hand.
He caught me stealing a sidelong glance at him. I swiftly averted my gaze. He didn’t approach me right away, only when my natural turn came, after he’d finished his unhurried round. He began saying something but broke into a vicious coughing fit instead, which didn’t stop for a long time. In spite of myself, I made a move toward him. The wheezing noises in his chest were dreadful to listen to. I made a move to slide past him to fetch a doctor but he caught me by the wrist and shook his head negatively while still trying to get his breath. Wolff emerged from his office, undoubtedly summoned by such atrocious coughing and regarded his comrade with visible astonishment.
“Just what are you doing here, you numbskull? You’re supposed to be in bed in the sickbay!” He was already pulling on Dahler’s hand.
The Kanada Kommandoführer wrung his wrist free out of Wolff’s grip and motioned for his comrade to open his Thermos instead. My nostrils twitched at the divine smell of the chicken broth as he took a few careful sips from it.
“I’m fine,” he rasped, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ll walk it off – it’s better than in an infirmary.” His voice was hoarse and parts of his words were hardly audible.
“I’ve seen idiots in my life but you certainly take the main prize,” Wolff declared incredulously, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Stop berating me in front of my subordinates,” Dahler croaked with a grin. The circles under his eyes were as dark as charcoal. “You’re undermining my authority.”
“Does the doctor know you’re here?” Wolff continued his interrogation, utterly unimpressed with Dahler’s remark.
Dahler hesitated for a moment. “Yes.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“I got the chicken broth from the canteen.” Another coughing fit. Wolff stepped away and scrunched his face involuntarily. He was quite serious about his health and Dahler was certainly not someone with whom he wished to be associated at the moment. “It’ll right me in a jiffy.”
“Mhm. Get your fat tail back into the hospital before you make everyone sick.”
“I’m telling you I’m—”
“Are you going to get back on your own or would you prefer me reporting you? No one needs your plague here.”
“It’s fungal pneumonia, not typhoid. It’s not contagious.” Dahler tried to smile. His eyes, rimmed with red, had an unhealthy gleam to them and I could tell he was running a fever.
“I honestly couldn’t care less about your exact diagnosis. Leave.” Wolff pointed at the door.
Dahler shifted from one foot to another and threw a quick glance in my direction. Wolff followed his gaze, turned back to his comrade and arched his brow. Dahler tilted his head ever so slightly to one side. Some silent exchange was happening between the two. At last, Wolff heaved a massive sigh and started for his office.
“If you’re not gone in five minutes, I’ll drag you out of here myself,” he threw over his shoulder before shutting the door after himself.
Dahler’s chuckles quickly turned into coughing again. He sipped some more of his aromatic broth. I swallowed, in spite of myself, unable to tear my eyes off the Thermos. The broth was the real deal, I could tell; nothing like our miserable “soup.”
“How’s the work been?” he managed to ask, after all that.
“It’s been good. Busier than usual but it’s good for you.” I kept staring at the Thermos as though hypnotized. All of my thoughts had suddenly turned to my empty stomach. All else had ceased to exist. “More clothes for the people of Germany.”
He was about to say something but changed his mind at the last moment. Watching me closely, he put the Thermos onto my sorting table.
“We are happy to be contributing.” I had not the faintest idea why I was saying all of these things. All I knew was that the smell of chicken was emanating from the silver container even through the closed lid and I kept swallowing like a dog who’s been teased a juicy bone. We desperately hunted for the remnants of dignity still left in us in this place but when one was constantly hungry to such an extent that all other thoughts were consumed only by the desire to find something edible, to do something for a piece of something edible, to steal a morsel of something edible – reflexes transcended all that was left of human pride.
“You’re doing a great job,” Dahler commented slowly in his halting voice. I was so obsessed with that broth, I didn’t hear him at first when he added after a pause and in the softest of whispers, “I missed you, Helena.”
I looked up sharply, still confused and unsure whether he really just said it.
“Your hair looks very pretty today,” he spoke again, regarding me tenderly.
I caught myself touching the plait that I braided around my head this morning, embarrassed but touched to the marrow. Constantly harassed by the Kapos and guards, we so longed for a bit of comfort, for a single kind word that once it was spoken, it warmed us instantly and made the hell in which we lived a bit more bearable.
“Thank you, Herr Rottenführer.” I meant it this time.
“I came out to see you—”
There he was again, coughing even worse than before and struggling to draw in another breath. I reached out to him with my hand – a sheer instinct to help someone who was suffering – and yanked it back at once, remembering myself. Forbidding myself to think of the contents, I began unscrewing the lid of his Thermos.
“You’d better not talk anymore, Herr Rottenführer.” Why did I care if he got even sicker? Let him. Let him die; let them all die. Yet, I felt sympathy towards him which defied all laws of logic, simply because he had ceased to be the man with the whip for one day and had become someone sick, someone, who could barely stand due to the fever, someone who was much weaker than me even and solely because this balance of power had tipped, I was able to feel sorry for him. “You’ll make yourself even sicker than you are.”
A smile flourished on his deathly pale face. “So kind you are. So considerate.”
“Rottenführer Wolff is right. You should go back to the infirmary.”
His smile faltered. He regarded me for some time. “Are you afraid to catch it from me? I told you, it’s not contagious.”
“No, I’m not. I don’t want you to harm yourself even more, that’s all.”
He pondered something for a few moments. At last, he conceded. “Fine. One more day in the cot won’t hurt, I suppose.” He tried to smile through the tears that still stood in his inflamed eyes after his latest coughing fit. “Walk me back, will you?”
I followed him, stealing a glance in the Kapo’s direction. Strangely enough, Maria even favored me with a generous nod. Escorting the sickly SS officer to ensure that he made it safely back and didn’t collapse on his way there was certainly an honorable duty in her eyes.
Over the Kanada barracks, hung
a lukewarm, pale sun. The wind tossed the treetops indifferently. Rottenführer Dahler shivered against a particularly harsh gust and pulled the collar of his overcoat higher. I clasped my arms around myself, trying to prevent it from seeping under my sweater, thrown on top of my striped dress. For some time, we walked in silence. Just now I noticed that he limped slightly, favoring his right leg. He must have taken great care to conceal it when in perfect health but now, too preoccupied with his sickness, he forgot to put up the appearance of an immaculate Teutonic Knight and suddenly seemed so very human, so convincingly approachable and almost harmless.
We turned around the corner where an empty barrack stood with its door open – to ventilate the premises before the outdoor crews would come back, no doubt. Suddenly, he grabbed me by the elbow and pushed me inside, quickly closing the door after himself. At once, the illusion had shattered into sharp, silver shards. Instantly alarmed, I leaped away from him just to stumble into the brick wall behind my back.
The old Helena in me considered screaming at once. There was only one reason why the guards wished to be alone with young women in this place and I wouldn’t think twice to scratch his eyes out before he touched me.
But the new Helena knew better. If I did scream, he’d have all the reason to knock me out cold, do what he came for and shoot me afterward – for an attempted escape or some such. I’d seen such “attempted escape” victims before. I knew how the authorities conducted their affairs here.
I thought of turning away just so as not to have to see his face but then looked him square in the eyes instead, regretting those fleeting few moments during which I felt something remotely close to sympathy for him.
For some time, it was a looking game between us. He didn’t move and neither did I. Suddenly, he outstretched his hand, with the Thermos in it, toward me. I regarded it in stupefaction.
The Girl in the Striped Dress: A completely heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 page-turner, based on a true story Page 6