by Pierre Berg
Yes, I had already been in the camp for a whole month. The time had passed quickly, and nothing distinguished one day from the next. Morning roll call, work, work, work, back to camp, evening rations, sleep, wake, repeat. It was as if I had fallen into a well that had no bottom. And day in and day out it was the same food and never enough of it. At least in Drancy we got three meals, with plates that usually consisted of a piece of meat and a few vegetables.
I would still be hungry, but compared to the “Buna soup,” the food in Drancy was a king’s buffet.
Monowitz’s repetitive routine and my body’s lack of nutrients were erasing all my interests and desires. The only thing I cared about was my stomach’s incessant crying. It was the only thing any of us gave a shit about.
I stirred the contents of my rusty mess tin with my wooden spoon, hoping to find even a microbe of soggy, rotten beet. It was a hopeless struggle. The plant’s owner, the German chemical company I.G. Farben, provided our lunches, but the Häftlinge in the kitchen diverted most of the food to Monowitz’s thriving black market. I became aware of the black market after seeing a Kapo wearing the plaid flannel shirt I had gotten in Drancy. It’s not surprising that the Kanada Kommando—the “bellhops” who collected the belongings of the new arrivals—supplied most of these goods.
Food, clothing, shoes, blankets, cigarettes, jewelry, gold teeth—anything that had some value to someone could be found on this black market. The problem was that you had to have something to barter with. Only German and Polish Häftlinge could receive packages from loved ones on the outside, so many of them prospered on the black market. For the rest of us, only those good at “organizing”—camp slang for stealing—could enjoy an extra bowl of soup or wear a warm sweater.
I slurped up the final drops in my mess tin, licked my spoon clean, then put it back in my pocket. My shoes were soaked from the snow, so I held my feet up to the brazier. The coke’s bluish red flame radiated blistering heat. My shoes began to steam. I felt revitalizing warmth on my legs, stomach, and chest, but my back-side was still ice. I stood up and backed up to the brazier. Quickly the heat became unbearable and the smell of freshly ironed clothes filled the shelter.
“Pierre, passauf” (Pierre, watch out), came a voice from the other side of the brazier.
It was our Kapo, Hans, a green triangle who reminded me of the American movie star Spencer Tracy. Growing up, his movie Captains Courageous had been one of my favorites.
“If you burn the seat of your pants, the rubber hose of the Blokowy will burn your ass.”
Blokowy was Polish for “Blockälteste.” Most non-German Häftlinge addressed their barracks’ supervisor using this easier-to-pronounce word. When a Häftling broke any of the rules, it was the Blockälteste who doled out the punishment of his choice. If the infraction was severe enough, he would be the one reporting it to the SS. You were always better off with a red triangle Blockälteste than a green triangle, whose past incarceration in a German penitentiary usually made him a rabid dog waiting for the slightest excuse to pounce. From what I had seen and had been told by old-timers, red triangle Blockältesten, as well as Kapos, didn’t take advantage of their authority or relish exercising physical discipline.
A siren sounded outside. It was time to go back to raising factory buildings for “the fatherland.”
“Auf geht’s!” (Let’s go!)
Hans opened the door and our arctic tormentor blew in, making my nose tingle. “Los schneller!” (Faster!) We went out into the snow in single file, each of us walking in the tracks of the man in front of him. I quickly wrapped my hands with Fusslappen. There was an abundance of the rags in my Block.
Our job on this construction site was to drill holes in the brick walls so windows could be anchored. With my mallet and chisel in one hand, I climbed up a ladder to an opening in the wall. I brushed away the snow that had accumulated and put one leg over the ledge.
At least through the afternoon I would be more comfortable straddling the wall because I had “organized” an empty cement sack to sit on. Some Häftlinge stuffed sacks inside their clothing for insulation. I put mine under my ass because I wanted to avoid chafed thighs, since I already had enough patches of irritated skin.
On one side of me was a screen of snowflakes, on the other a black void that was the interior of the building. I hugged the wall with my thighs so that a gust couldn’t sweep me from my perch.
Someone took away the ladder. There was only one ladder for every five windows. If I had to piss, I would have to make yellow icicles over the ledge. I pounded out holes the best I could. When my legs became stiff from the cold, I started to bicycle in the air. The Häftling who had tattooed my number had given me one good piece of advice.
“If you want to survive, work only with your eyes.”
I stopped pedaling. Yes, I had to expend as little energy as possible to economize the precious few calories I was getting.
My mind wandered to Stella. Had she been lucky enough to be taken under the wing of a camp veteran? Was she getting advice that would help keep her from being sent to the crematoriums of Auschwitz’s second camp, Birkenau? The ovens and gas chambers were no secret to us in Monowitz. I had heard plenty of filtered-down accounts from members of the Transportation Kommando who delivered our corpses and near dead to Birkenau.
Stella could have been consumed in those flames weeks ago, but until I had proof I had to keep hoping. My survival depended on it.
A few days before, I bumped into Mordechai, the butcher from my hometown. He was a shuffling shell of his former self. Somehow he had gotten word that his wife and seven daughters had been exterminated that first night. In camp slang, he had become a Muselmann, the German for Muslim. Like many others, Mordechai had become so emotionally and physically broken down that, shrouded in his blanket, he looked like a gaunt pilgrim on the road to Mecca.
In Auschwitz, there was only one road and it led straight to the crematoriums. This was a path I was determined not to step onto, and I hoped my Stella had the same resolve. In truth, her will would have to be monumentally stronger than mine. In all likelihood, her father and yellow triangle mother were dead, and Stella was just as aware of that as Mordechai was about the rising smoke of his family.
Back at our Block that night, before das Essen (our meal), the Blockälteste announced that those Häftlinge not working at their skilled professions or trades were to report to the Schreibstube (Administration Building) in the morning. I had told the Häftling who filled out my green card that I was an electrician. It was a lie, but I knew enough of the basics that I figured I could con my way through. The prospect of not working ten, twelve hours in the brutal Siberian blast kept me awake most of the night. Only the Kommandos working outside returned to camp carrying corpses. The odds of my survival would definitely rise if I could pass muster as a craftsman.
A few mornings later I lined up in the Appelplatz (roll-call square) with the Elektriker Kommando. I marched with them to Buna’s main generator, which was housed in a tall red brick building with four metal smokestacks that looked like they belonged on an ocean liner. We entered a warm, brightly lit hall resonating from the hum of four monstrous turbines. The wooden soles of our shoes were like a stampede of jackhammers as we climbed a metal staircase to the tool room and workshop.
The Häftlinge went to their workstations. The Kapo turned to me.
“Folge mir” (Follow me), the green triangle ordered. He handed me a schematic from his desk. “What do you read?”
I nervously looked over the diagram. In my physics class I had learned the equations and symbols for volts, amps, watts, and ohms, so it was easy to point out the capacitors, resistors, switches, and outlets. For some of the more technical items on the print I spit out names with more bluff than knowledge. The Kapo smiled.
“Join that detail over there.”
I walked over to a Vorarbeiter and four Häftlinge who were dragging out their toolboxes. They were all German red or green tr
iangles.
“How do you bend conduit?” the stocky Bavarian Vorarbeiter asked.
These men weren’t in the business of wasting any time with formal introductions.“With a tube bender,” I blurted.
“If you don’t have one?”
I smiled; this had happened to me at home. “I look for anything with the right radius, I cap one end, fill the conduit with sand so it won’t collapse when I bend it, then cap the other end.”
“How do you push the wire through?”
The Vorarbeiter wasn’t going to nail me on this question, either.
“I push a snake through the conduit, attach the strands of wire to the snake, then pull it back.”
“From the box in the corner get me two transformers, one for two hundred and fifty volts to one hundred and twenty volts and another for eighteen volts.”
When I came back with the right transformers, the Vorarbeiter seemed satisfied that he could depend on me not to screw up.
As we prepared the wiring for a new building that morning, I was amazed by the jovial mood of my co-workers. On their faces were the first smiles I had seen since my arrival. It was a startling contrast to the gloom that hung over Kommando 136. Then, again, it’s hard to smile when your face is frozen. At lunch I discovered one reason these slave laborers seemed not to mind their work.
Their soup was a much thicker and tastier fare than anything I had eaten so far. They all laughed when I licked my bowl.
“Speckjäger, haben einen Nachschlag” (Bacon hunter, have a second helping), grinned the Kapo.
“May I really?”
“Have two; there’s plenty left.”
No wonder there wasn’t a sickly skeleton in the bunch. Relatively speaking, I was in paradise.
At the end of the day, the Kapo handed me a small industrial fuse the likes of which I had never seen before.
“Is it any good?” he asked.
I looked through the glass of the porcelain fuse.
“Sure,” I said confidently.
“Check it again. You see those little black specks? This fuse has a manufacturing defect. It blew the moment we screwed it in the socket. You’re not very observant. We would’ve wasted a day searching for an open line.”
That damn fuse sank me. The next day I was back shivering my nuts off with Kommando 136.
♦ ♦ ♦
It was early evening. The north wind had frozen everything that the pale winter sun had thawed, making our usual path back to camp a sheet of ice. By threes, we walked on one of the many tentacles of train track criss-crossing the Buna plant. Ice splinters falling from the electric wires overhead stung my face. The wind cut through my “pajamas”—camp slang for our striped uniforms—chilling my bones, which hardly had any meat left on them. As usual my stomach was throbbing with hunger, but it had been such an exceptionally exhausting day of fitting panels of cement and sea-weed up onto the skeletal frame of another warehouse building that all I wanted was my infested straw mattress. I hoped they wouldn’t make us take a shower when we returned to our Block. There was no way my feeble legs could carry my wet, naked body fast enough across the one hundred yards of frozen cinders that lay between the showers and our Block. It would be a sure way of catching pneumonia.
I heard bells, and turned to see two Polish peasants, bundled in warm furs and smoking pipes, passing by on a sleigh. They were probably on their way back from picking up the garbage at the civilian kitchen. The short longhaired horses pulling them trotted with heads down, noses steaming, and tails whipping in the wind. It reminded me of the illustrations in my mother’s copy of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. I looked at the Häftlinge ahead of me. No holiday picture here. The dragging gray line of misery was more akin to the painting of Napoleon’s retreat across the Berezina River. Our Kapo Hans strutted in his high polished boots with his new Piepel (“errand boy”) by his side. It had been no surprise that Hans had dumped his former Piepel, a deformed little beggar, when this fourteen-year-old Dutch kid with big green eyes arrived in the camp.
Hans held the boy by the arm as we took a shortcut along a cluster of butane tanks and twisting pipelines with safety valves that let off jets of steam that smelled like cider. He then put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and let it slip down his back, affectionately squeezing his waist. The Piepel stepped away, glancing at Hans with guileless eyes and a smile. What innocence, I thought. You don’t understand at all, do you, kid? Yes, Hans is fond of you, but not in the way you think. I’m sure you feel lucky that you don’t have to work like the rest of us, but soon enough you’ll learn the price.
Hans will take you to a secluded spot while we work. The Vorarbeiter will ensure that his Kapo isn’t interrupted.
Like a father, Hans will sit you tenderly on his lap. Panting with excitement, he’ll whisper in your ear all that he can do for you. His hands will press your body. Your few carelessly sewn buttons will pop off. While he holds you with one strong arm, he’ll wet your bottom with his saliva, and before you realize what’s happening, you’ll feel your intestines being pushed through your stomach. I would like to open your eyes, you beardless boy, but truly—what business is it of mine? Don’t I have enough troubles of my own?
Perhaps this will be the only way you will get out of here alive. I stumble, almost crashing to the frozen ground. I mind other people’s business, but I can barely stand on my own two feet, I scolded myself.
Of course, things turned out a little differently from what I had imagined. On the day of our shower, Hans joined us instead of taking a shower on Sunday morning with the other Kapos and Blockälstesters. He stood beside his Piepel, devouring him with his eyes.
The couple was given a wide berth. Hans didn’t even try to cover his excitement. He had brought along a blue-and-white checked towel, a luxury unknown to any ordinary Häftling, and handed it to the boy while the rest of us returned to the Block, wet and naked.
That night I was awakened by a low voice. I was sleeping on the second tier. Above me was a Russian snoring like a sawmill, and below me was the Piepel. I peeked down. Hans was crouching next to the bunk.
“Shh!” he ordered his Piepel.
The bunk creaked when Hans crawled in. I closed my eyes and tried not to care. The boy started sobbing softly. I thought, don’t worry, kid, it will stretch. All three tiers began to sway. Hans was doing him from the side. The SS really needed to switch the color of his triangle.
The Russian’s snoring became irregular as the bunks quaked and Hans panted. I looked at the bunk above me and hoped that the Russian wasn’t prone to seasickness. If he is, he’s going to vomit all over me.
The boy’s eyes were deadened from that morning on, and soon after he contracted pneumonia. Hans went on the hunt for a new Piepel and the fourteen-year-old died alone in the HKB.
Not long after, I found myself with a suitor.
My Kommando was doing odd jobs, laying bricks, hammering spikes into train track tie plates, and tightening track bolts. I was crouched on what would be the base for a railroad track switch, chiseling a gully in the cement for the rod that connected the switch handle to track that hadn’t yet been laid. It was lucky for me that the cement hadn’t completely cured.
A Kapo, whose Kommando was laying electrical cable in freshly dug trenches, had been staring at me for a while. I told myself that he was just suspicious, since I was so far from the other members of my Kommando. But didn’t he have enough “pajamas” of his own to watch over? Suddenly he was standing next to me. With chisel in hand, I got up on tingling legs.
“Boy, look at your shirt. It’s filthy,” he said.
How observant. I had worked and slept in it for over a month.
“I’ll give you a new one.” Give me? I knew it wasn’t my lucky day. What did he want?
“Let’s get out of the wind.”
The Kapo grabbed me by the arm and led me to a secluded area between two buildings. “Take that off.”
He indicated to the scrap of cement
bag I had wrapped around my left hand to prevent my skin from sticking to the steel chisel. I did as I was told. The Kapo held my hands.
“Young man, rub your hands before you get frostbite.”
Again, I did as I was told. A moment later he held my hands again.
“That’s better,” he said, and opened his coat, revealing an erection poking out of his unbuttoned fly.
I had seen this coming, but I was surprised that in this weather he could get his battery charged just by looking at me. He pulled me close and had me touch his erection. I had no choice if I wanted to walk back to that slab of concrete.
I stroked his stubby prick with a droopy foreskin while he moved his ass rhythmically. He was breathing heavily, and I could hear his heart dancing the conga. I hoped to get it over with before the Kapo decided he wanted to be satisfied in a different manner.
Finally his knees buckled, he grunted, and ejaculated.
With a grin and a kick he buried the evidence in the sandy soil, turned on his heels, and returned to his Kommando. There goes my shirt, I thought as I picked up my chisel. Well, I wasn’t really expecting one anyhow.
That asshole Hans. Being too old for his taste, Hans had pimped me. It was no accident that he put me on that slab of concrete. Maybe he got the shirt. Then again, it could have all just been shithouse luck.
I went back to work and made sure the job was finished before they lined us up for the march back to camp. I wasn’t going to make a second “date” easy for that Kapo. I didn’t see him the next day or the day after that. When I finally did spot him he seemed just as uninterested in me as I was in him, but it still took me weeks to stop looking over my shoulder for him while I worked. It was a pittance compared to the price Han’s fourteen-year-old paid.
♦ ♦ ♦
One of the nice things about my life in Drancy, other than Stella, was the fact that I could get cigarettes regularly. This was a big deal for an eighteen-year-old who had started smoking at age ten by making cigarettes with the tobacco from his father’s cigar butts.