by Pierre Berg
Grabbing the shirt, I went to Wilhelm’s quarters. I pushed back the curtain that hung in his doorway. He was in the midst of playing cards with the Kapos. I swallowed hard. This wasn’t the most opportune moment to disturb my Blockälteste.
“Was willst du, Speckjäger?” (What do you want, bacon hunter?)
“I have a present for you.”
“Show me!”
I unfolded the shirt.
“How much?” he demanded suspiciously. In Auschwitz everything had a price.
“I said it’s a present.”
I tossed the shirt onto the table and turned heels. A livid Moishe was standing by our bunk. It was an expensive backfire for him, and it got me clean off the hook.
An hour later, Wilhelm gave me half a loaf of bread.
“Hier, Muselmann, du brauchst mir nicht dankbar sein, du wäschst meine Hemden gut.” (Look Muslim, you don’t have to be grateful to me. You really wash my shirts well.)
Soon, the whole Block knew about the gift, and my companions labeled me an ass-kissing idiot. I couldn’t have given a shit what they said or thought. I had a full stomach for fifty-eight days and wouldn’t have to worry about the next “selection.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Christmas and the New Year passed with the Allies encircling Germany. Because of the constant bombing, the delivery of raw materials by rail was increasingly sporadic. Factory output plummeted.
The Kapos struggled to keep us busy with meaningless, but still physically draining tasks. Rumors circulated that the Soviets had launched a new offensive and that their arrival was imminent. At night we could see a reddish luminescence on the eastern horizon and hear the distant thunder of heavy guns, but the only source for reliable information had dried up. I had not seen a POW at Buna for a while. I wasn’t even sure if they were still in Auschwitz. At the time of the first snowfall, all the Soviet Häftlinge were marched out of the camps. We heard they had been moved into Germany. A few days later, the Polish Häftlinge followed. Every passing day we wondered if we were going to be evacuated, liberated, or exterminated. The SS had destroyed the gas chambers in November, but we all knew they had other means to quickly rid themselves of us.
After roll call one freezing morning, we assembled into our Kommandos as usual. But as the band launched into its first military march, news came that we weren’t going to Buna until the fog lifted. Surely it wasn’t the light morning fog that was keeping us from leaving, I thought. We had gone to the plant when it was much thicker. All morning we stamped around the Appelplatz, trying to keep warm. As the hours crawled by the most fantastic speculations took shape in our overheated imaginations.
“We’re going to be evacuated tonight.”
“The Soviets have Auschwitz encircled, and they’re going to shell this place until nothing stands.”
“The Boches are going to wipe us all out with flame throwers.”
“No, no, they signed an armistice.”
Toward afternoon, we were told to return to our Blocks. The next morning the assembly bell failed to ring. The sudden shock of change made me nervous. Twelve months of a strict, daily routine had created an odd sense of comfort—dare I even say, a sense of control—that had now been yanked out from under me. I walked aimlessly around the camp. The guard towers were still manned, but the Kapos were out of sight. They knew this idle time could spark one of the milling groups of Häftlinge into a vengeful mob.
I looked toward the east. The Soviets were closer. The sounds of battle were now tremendous hammer blows. I figured they would be here in two or three days, but would we? Would I get the chance to go freely through those gates? And if I did, should I search for Stella? She hadn’t entered my thoughts for some time. If she were alive, I thought, would she be capable of caring about me anymore? My heart had become callous, but still I held a thread of hope for us. Why couldn’t she?
Prisoners ran past me. Without knowing why, I followed them across the yard to a growing mob trying to break into the clothing warehouse. With an old post as a battering ram, a gang of Häftlinge smashed in the door. We all rushed in.
The warehouse was dark and thick with the smell of mothballs and disinfectant. I groped my way through a corridor created by massive piles of clothing in hopes of finding something to insulate myself from the January blizzards. Running my hands along the piles, I recognized the rough material of our striped “pajamas.”
Near the far end of the building, my hand fell upon a handle that seemed to belong to a suitcase. I yanked and then found myself buried under an avalanche of valises. Feeling as if I had been bashed by twenty Kapos, I struggled out from under the luggage and “organized” a suitcase that I could carry with ease.
Machine gun fire exploded from an adjacent guard tower. Bullets pierced the walls and shattered windows. I threw myself flat on my face as most of the others rushed toward the door in a screaming panic, trampling the dead and wounded. Light seeped through dangling shutters. When the shooting stopped, I jumped to my feet and ran to a window opposite the guard tower. I looked out. There was no one around. I threw the suitcase through the glass and jumped out after it.
Bullets whistled by my ears, slamming into the warehouse wall behind me. Terrified, I bent over as far as I could and rushed for the nearest shelter, the latrine. A strong shock nearly wrenched the suitcase from my grasp. I spun around, thinking someone was trying to steal my bounty, but there was no one there. I barreled into the latrine, slammed the door, and crouched breathless behind my brown leather suitcase.
When the machine guns fell silent again, I cracked open the door. The yard was deserted except for a few bodies. I closed the door. It was time to open my treasure chest. It looked new except for the hole on one side, which I could easily stick my thumb into.
There was a key tied to the handle, but the clasps weren’t locked.
Inside were cozy wool sweaters and cardigans. I layered them on me, making sure after each one that my “pajama” top still fit. These were the first civilian clothes I had put on since my arrival. There had been times that I wore the same “pajamas” for three months—clothes made hard and brittle from filth. The clean, soft tickle of angora against my skin was overwhelmingly seductive. Some of the sweaters had odd moth holes in them, but I couldn’t care less.
When I slipped on the fourth sweater, I was barely able to button my jacket.
There were three cardigans left and I planned to give them to Hubert, but I couldn’t walk out with them bundled under my arm.
My fellow Häftlinge would jump me for them and probably strip me of the ones that I was wearing. I had to hide them, and the latrine’s rafters were the perfect spot. When I began to fold the cardigans, a piece of metal dropped to the floor. A machine gun bullet. That’s what almost ripped the suitcase out of my hand and made the moth holes in the sweaters. Shit—how close did that bullet come to putting a moth hole in me?
I was unable to find Hubert. He wasn’t in his Block or anywhere else I thought he might be. I repeatedly called out his name as I roamed the yard. A few fellows were rushing toward the kitchen, and being an opportunistic scavenger, I followed them. With the plant idle, there was no steam for cooking, but there could be some cold leftover soup or some cabbages. To my shock, a cook was standing in the doorway handing out leftover loaves of bread, the morning bread having already been delivered to the Blocks. Holding that hefty loaf of dark bread in my hands, I realized that the rumors must be true. We were going to leave Auschwitz. The SS wouldn’t fill our bellies if they planned to kill us. Figuring that we would be leaving in the morning, the bread joined the sweaters on the rafter.
The assembly bell rang.
“Everybody in their Blocks!” The Stubendienste yelled through megaphones.
“Line up with your blankets,” the Blockälteste ordered.
We were going to “Pitchi Poi” tonight! I grabbed my blanket and the blanket of a bunkmate who hadn’t opened his eyes that morning. As we marched out of the barra
cks in single file, we received a ration of bread at the doorway.
“Line up by Blocks!” someone was yelling through a megaphone.
As 10,000 men flowed out of the Blocks, I ducked into the latrine to recover my loot. I rolled the sweaters and bread in my extra blanket, tied the bundle with the shoelaces from one of the bullet-riddled corpses, and looped it over my shoulder. Wrapping my blanket around me for the journey, I darted out of the latrine and fell into rank. I called out for Hubert again, but it was useless.
PART III
THE DEATH MARCH
CHAPTER 16
The first columns of Häftlinge began to move. The men of my Block stomped and shuffled about to keep warm as we waited our turn to be ushered out. With the receding sun behind them, the peaks of the Carpathians glowed like the wicks of smoldering candles as a thinly stretched nimbus lowered a crimson veil of snow onto them.
Everyone was grumbling. January was by no means the time to be taking an evening stroll. Finally, a guard in a thick field gray coat waved us forward. This time there were no musicians playing a martial tune as we walked in rows of five through the gate. The quiet was unsettling.
The SS led us back down the road that we had all traveled after unloading from the cattle cars. The Buna plant was to our right, its barbed-wire fence bordering the road. The plant itself was a looming silhouette against the winter twilight. No lights shone inside, no smoke spewed from its multiple chimneys. The Nazis had deserted it. Buna was a dying monster. How I hated and feared that beast when its heart furiously pumped methanol through its snarled network of veins. And now that it was innocuous, I should have felt happy—overjoyed—but I wasn’t. Hadn’t I dreamt of seeing it like this? Yes, but the slave had become overacquainted with his task-master. I knew what it expected from me and that I could endure its many tortures. What monster was I being herded to now along this icy path? Could I survive its demands, its torments, or would it be the one to finally devour me and spit out my ashes?
Rumors circulated that we were headed to the town of Gleiwitz.
No one knew exactly how far that was, but it became increasingly apparent that we would be walking all night. We slipped through the darkened town of Auschwitz, which was situated near the main camp. As I chewed over whether the SS had also emptied Auschwitz and Birkenau, I caught glimpses of town folk watching us through the cracks in their closed shutters. I imagined that the Poles were glad to see the Nazis leave, but were wracked with fear of what would come when the Soviets marched through their streets. For my fellow Häftlinge and I, the Red Army meant only one thing: freedom. But as a Muselmann’s fate would have it, we were being forced to flee from our liberators.
The snow was becoming deeper, filling my wooden shoes and turning my feet into icicles. I feared frostbite wouldn’t be far off. It would have been nice if my benefactor had packed a pair of galoshes with all those warm sweaters. I had no way to judge the distance we had already traveled, but I was pretty sure we had been on the move for about four hours. Deep bomb craters now bit off large chunks of the road, slowing our advance. The whole Polish countryside looked wounded and forsaken.
The wind-ravaged skeletons of trees were the only things marking the road as we started up a hill. Our ranks began to break as Muselmänner struggled to plow through snowdrifts. The gusts became more violent, causing my eyes to water and burn, and it seemed nearly impossible to get the frigid air into my heaving lungs. I wrapped my blanket tightly around me, wiping away the frozen snot under my nose.
The wind lifted the snow in eddies, covering the tracks of the men in front of me. I tripped over an unexpected obstacle—a man’s body covered by a thin blanket of snow. A few moments later I came upon another body, this one with an SS bullet in his neck.
Walking farther, I realized that the dead were forming a steady line along the side of the road. I kept my eyes on the footprints of the man in front of me. It was tempting to drop down next to the dead and drift into much-needed sleep, but I wasn’t going to heed that siren song. By no means was I going to become a mile marker.
At the crossroads on the hill’s summit, a metal sign read Gleiwitz, 55 km. The rumors were true. I stared at the sign in disbelief—thirty-five more miles? Our SS guards must surely be planning to enter that town alone. Toward the east a red aureole enveloped the horizon as the wind brought the rumble of cannons.
I looked down at the seemingly unending gray string of humanity weaving itself into the snow-shrouded valley. I was stunned by the sheer number of Häftlinge before me. I had no idea that so many Muselmänner had outlasted Auschwitz and Birkenau.
I was overcome with daggerlike stomach cramps, probably from the frozen cabbage I “organized” from the kitchen when I received my loaf of bread. I went to the side of the road and squatted among the dead bodies. Feasting crows screeched and scattered. I recognized familiar faces as the columns hobbled by me. Once I was finished, I tried to get up, but the cramps were still twisting my guts.
A growling German Shepherd sniffed at me, his stinking breath full in my face. Yapping, he circled around me, then sat down.
“Los weiter!” (Keep going!)
An SS pushed me with the butt of his gun. Not about to get shot in the head for taking a shit, I darted back into line, pulling up my pants as best I could.
They marched us until daybreak, then herded us into a bombed-out tile works that had a perimeter fence that was still in-tact. I wanted to search for Hubert, but being past exhaustion, all I did was collapse on a pile of bricks and pull my blanket up over my head. Fearing I would freeze to death, my sleep was fitful at best. A couple of hours later, the SS called for assembly. My legs were painfully stiff and heavy when I stood. How many more miles could they handle?
Back on the road, we moved like snails. Everyone was at the end of his strength, even the SS, who took turns riding in sleighs.
It was a gray day with bursts of snow flurries, but mercifully the cutting wind had ceased. Someone behind me was walking on my heels, and my right heel was already raw and bleeding and hurt like hell. I swung around ready to hit the blundering idiot. My fist dropped. It was the Vorarbeiter of Hubert’s Kommando.
“Entschuldigen sie, bitte” (Please excuse me), he wheezed.
That was a switch. I had never heard a “prominent” Häftlinge say “I’m sorry” before, but now they, too, were just striped pieces of meat in this cattle drive. I asked if he had seen Hubert.
“He must be a few rows back.”
I stepped to the side of the road and waited. Hubert saw me first. We fell into each other’s arms. “I was searching for you in the camp,” Hubert told me.
“So was I, so was I. I have a birthday present for you.”
“It’s not my birthday.”
“It is now.” I reached into my rolled blanket and tore off a piece of bread for him. The barking of a guard dog sent us back in line.
They pushed us all day without rest. The crack of rifles and pistols putting holes in the laggards had stopped turning heads. Did the SS actually think those crawling skeletons could find safe haven?
Throughout the afternoon, lines of Häftlinge from other camps flowed in from side roads and filled the gaps left by the dead. Once in a while, we had the good fortune of waiting at a grade crossing as a train went by. Almost in unison, everyone dropped into the snow as if felled by a volley of machine gun fire. When the track was clear, only the kicks and rifle butts of the SS would raise us again.
By evening each step I took was torture. I could see my blood seeping through the rags wrapped around my wooden shoes. The glands in my groin had become agonizingly swollen, which meant my feet were infected. My head was filled with thoughts of escaping, but in my condition I would only be serving myself up for target practice. I staggered on, leaning on Hubert, who would yank me to my feet every time I was ready to give up and drag me along.
I marveled at his stamina and how lucky I was. Without him I would have been a mile marker. Maybe he got
the strength from the loaf we shared through the day. If that was the case, why was I such a pitiful mess?
“Any Kommando in Buna would be better than this,” I coughed.
“Mon ami, hold on. I know there’s a warm Block waiting for us in Gleiwitz.”
His lies and strong back kept my bleeding feet moving forward.
Somewhere out on that road I slipped into delirium. It was as if my head were being held underwater. I heard Hubert’s voice, but couldn’t understand his words. I thought a blurred figure standing at the side of the road was my father. Why didn’t he say hello? I wanted to go back and ask him, but the white hot Mediterranean sand of Grimaldi Beach was scorching my feet. A flash of bright light jerked me back to reality. In front of me, like moths, columns of Häftlinge followed a searchlight’s beam into the Gleiwitz camp.
Hubert and I went to find a bunk, but all the Blocks were full to bursting. Seeing men still streaming into the camp, a dismayed Hubert led me to the wooden steps of one of them. “This is at least better than lying in the snow.”
Hubert folded his blanket for us to sit on, and we covered ourselves with mine. We huddled close to each other.
“Is there any of my birthday present left?”
I reached into the blanket wrapped over my shoulder. There was a mouthful for both of us, then I remembered the sweaters.
“This is definitely the best birthday present I’ve ever gotten,”
Hubert said as he pulled the third sweater over his head.
We awoke in each other’s arms just as dawn began to break.
The blanket covering us was frozen stiff. Laid out in front of us on the snow-covered ground were grotesquely contorted bodies. One frozen man was just about to take a bite of bread. There were crumbs on his tongue. These men had dragged themselves all the way from Auschwitz for nothing. Hubert and I knew we were lucky.