Scheisshaus Luck

by Pierre Berg

  Without the loaf of bread and the sweaters layered over our bodies we would have been part of that icy mortuary.

  For three days we mindlessly milled about Gleiwitz without anything to eat. The dead were everywhere, stacked in the snow like kindling, piled behind the Blocks like discarded rags or just left where they dropped. The SS made no attempt to remove any of them. For three nights Hubert and I slept on those steps, and the more our bellies cried, the colder it seemed until we could barely sleep at all. The only crumbs of hope came from the distant sounds of battle.

  On the fourth day, the Häftlinge who were squatting in a barn-like structure in the center of the camp were driven out into the snow by the guards. The guards then emptied the Blocks, lining us all in front of the entrance of the “barn.” The rumor circulated that we were going to leave as we filed into the building one by one.

  The SS were handing out bread rations at the door.

  Nearly a hundred Häftlinge had entered by the time it was my turn. Since the “barn” had no windows, I was momentarily blind when I stepped through the doorway with my bread. I held both hands out in front of me so I wouldn’t bump into anybody. Someone tore the bread out of my hands and ran. I tried to catch him, but I slammed into a wall of bodies. I yelled to Hubert, who was behind me, to guard his ration well.

  How could one of my fellow Häftling be that dirty? Easily answered, but how could I have been that careless? Stupidity like that could cost me my life. Thankfully, Hubert was willing to share and wouldn’t take no for an answer. When the SS couldn’t squeeze another Häftling into the “barn,” they marched us out. I eyed my fellow prisoners. Which one was the thief? There was no way to tell, so I put a jinx on the whole bunch.

  Our guards led us to a train parked on a solitary track next to the camp. I happily climbed into one of the open freight cars. My heels hadn’t recovered enough to endure another trek on foot. Hubert was right behind me. There were at least seventy men in our car. I pulled the door shut to keep any more from getting in. Four Kapos and their Piepels stretched out on the floor, taking up space for twenty. Hubert and I crouched down in one corner. I was thankful that I had enough room to sit comfortably and move my stiff limbs.

  The train sat idle for hours. The falling snow that settled on our caps and shoulders slowly melted, until the car seemed to be steaming. A few squadrons of German fighter planes flew over us.

  How close was the Red Army? I wondered. The frantic voices coming from the other cars made me think we were all asking the same question: Would this train become one of their targets?

  I heard trampling outside our car. The SS were bringing up another pack of “pajamas.” A Häftling climbed up and looked into our car. All he saw were the lounging Kapos. “Na, die liegen da wie ein Gott in Frankreich!” (They’re lying there like God in France!) he exclaimed in a shrill voice.

  From the accent, I could tell the bastard was Hungarian. His words flooded another forty men into our car. Now we all had to stand like asparagus in a can. The Kapos cursed and threw blows, but there was simply no more room. We should have lynched them as soon as they had spread out on the floor, but the whole lot of us could barely walk, let alone kick open someone’s skull.

  Toward evening a sharp jolt signaled that a locomotive had been attached to the train, and shortly thereafter we began to roll. The icy wind, choked with biting, black smoke, whistled in my ears, stung my eyes, and made me spit coal soot. Wrapped in our blankets, we looked like a shipment of veiled statues. We rode standing all night, but somehow I must have gone to sleep because the next thing I knew it was getting light. Some of the statues around me looked as if they had been placed on pedestals. I slowly grasped that they were standing on corpses. The Kapos were now sitting comfortably in a corner. Hubert whispered that they had made room by beating and strangling as many Muselmänner as they could get their hands on. This had put everyone on edge, and the tension was palpable. An accidental kick would start a rabid fight that would set off others like wildfire.

  Somewhere, two men were swearing at each other. I recognized the strident voice of the asshole who had created this whole stew. A Kapo did as well. He stood up and barreled his way to the Hungarian. He grabbed him by the throat and pounded him unmercifully.

  The Hungarian fell back onto other men, who flung their fists at him. He cried out, pleading for his life, but no one was listening.

  Pulling himself up, he straddled one of the walls of the car. The speed of the train seemed to frighten him more than the blows he had received. The Kapo charged and knocked him off, but somehow the Hungarian hung on by his fingertips. Wild-eyed, he struggled to climb back in. Hands and fists rebuffed him. He hung there one minute, two, then the Kapo lost patience and took off his boot.

  Bringing the heel down like a hammer, he crushed the man’s fingers. Screaming, the Hungarian fell. A burst from a submachine gun bid him a bon voyage.

  The second day in the car, Hubert came down with a fever and began coughing terribly. I made enough space for him to sit and to enable me to shield him from the train’s frigid draft. I fed him snow to quench his fevered thirst. “You have to hold on, Hubert. We’ll be in a warm Block soon.”

  “We’ll be going fishing again, won’t we?” Hubert coughed.

  On Thursdays, when the schools in France were closed, a few of us would pack a picnic lunch and pedal to the Pointe St. Hospice, a cape between Nice and Monaco. We were always able to catch enough fish for a hearty pot of bouillebaisse.

  “Hubert, do you remember the novices?”

  His eyes seemed to light up. Everyday at noon, the good sisters from the convent took the novices in their white dresses for a stroll on the path circling the cape. The trail passed over a grotto where we would sip beer and lie in wait. The elements had washed a crevasse in the pavement right over our heads. It forced the novices to take a wide step.

  “I only remember the novices who weren’t wearing panties,” Hubert murmured.

  “I only remember the one who straddled the gap as she admired the view. Boy, did I get sand in my eyes that day.”

  Hubert went into a coughing fit. I realized that conversation, even if it was about girls, wasn’t the best medicine for him, so I fed him more snow and let him doze.

  The screaming of the train’s brakes and the cars’ bumpers banging and shuddering jarred me from my snooze. It was a starless night. My senses were numb, but one thing was crystal clear: I was starving. Hubert was slumped over motionless. His raspy cough let me know he was still with me. I heard someone yelling from outside the train. Was it what I thought they were calling out: “Five-minute stop for lunch?”

  “Alle Leichen ausladen!” a boche repeatedly screamed.

  No, it was only my wishful thinking. The SS were ordering us to unload the dead bodies. After being in this car for three days, I thought, a little exercise would do me well.

  With the ever-present threat of Allied bombers, only dim blue electric lights illuminated the train station. From all the cars, bodies started raining onto the snowy platform. It looked as if the Muselmänner were erecting a bulwark of flesh for a last stand against the Nazi crusaders. In pairs, we dragged the bodies to the last car, which the SS had cleared out. There were still mounds of dead when that car was filled, so a second morgue car was started.

  On my fourth trip I came across a body I could handle alone. I took hold of the corpse by the trousers, but the cord used as his belt gave way and I fell on my ass with the pants in my hands. A couple of Häftlinge passing by with a corpse had a good chuckle at my Laurel and Hardy pratfall. Their laughter might have seemed somewhat perverse, but for many of us a sense of humor was the only thing that preserved what little sanity we had left. In Monowitz, I had witnessed a couple of Häftlinge laugh with the noose around their necks. That was true gallows humor. Laughter really pissed off the guards at Buna. Swinging their rifle butts, they would scream, “Lachen verboten! Lachen verboten!” as if they thought we were enjoying our ho
liday in hell.

  The body of a tall yellow triangle, barely older than I, landed at my feet. Taking hold of his ankles, I started to drag him across the platform when he began to move. He blinked his big dark eyes and breathed deeply. The snow must have revived him. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t utter a sound. He licked his lips. I knelt and put a handful of snow into his mouth. He tried a grateful smile, but it came out as a grimace. I brought him to his feet. I wasn’t about to put him in that morgue car.

  “This boy is still alive!” I yelled as I hoisted him into a car, a task I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish if he hadn’t been a Muselmann of the first order.

  After dragging another body to the morgue car, I found the kid lying on the platform again. He had the look of someone who had wakened from an unfathomable dream. I was flushed with anger, and before I knew it I was shouting into the car.

  “Was ist los mit euch Drecksäke? Der lebt doch noch!” (What’s the matter with you dirt bags? He’s still alive!)

  “Go screw yourself! He’s croaking!” someone barked back, a Kapo no doubt.

  I turned around to find that my fussing and fuming had attracted the attention of a young SS officer. The kid must have seen him, too, because he rose feebly, staggered, then fell on his face.

  “Was ist denn mit dem los?” (What’s the matter with him?), the officer asked me.

  “He’s still alive.”

  “I’ll show him where to go.”

  The SS unholstered his Luger.

  “Nein, nein,” the kid said and started crawling away on all fours.

  The Nazi smirked. He must have found the kid’s futile struggle quite amusing. Play possum, you fool, and he might not waste the bullet.

  The barrel of the gun was only inches from the back of his head when the boche pulled the trigger. The kid went limp and sank into the snow. Thin whiffs of smoke rose out of the hole in his skull.

  The officer holstered his gun and walked away. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t look twice. He didn’t even blink. Why should he?

  He was only exterminating vermin.

  There was a noble innocence to the boy’s struggle that trans-fixed me, reminding me of the stranded baby sparrow I had found when I was seven. It didn’t cry out or look frightened; it was just determined to fly back to its nest. I figured I would adopt it until it was truly ready to be airborne, when an alley cat pounced. At least that animal had a reason behind its act of violence, I thought, as I dragged the boy’s body to the second morgue car.

  What was it inside that boy, inside me, inside Hubert, and inside so many others on the train that made us still want to live?

  Were we clinging that tightly to the fairy tales society had sold us before it went insane? Is the instinct to live that Herculean? Or were we that overwhelmed by our fear of the unexplored void of death? I didn’t have the answer, but after witnessing men at their most foul, I was straining the limits of my creativity to find a good reason to keep moving forward. But as I glanced at the handful of Muselmänner around me dragging our dead and the ever present SS, I realized there was a good enough reason, an imperative one.

  With the Allies closing in, staying alive, keeping Hubert alive, was now a form of warfare on the boches. The more of us, the more of them who couldn’t aim a rifle at a Soviet, British, or American soldier. Also, surviving would ensure that we would have our day of vengeance. I was going to be the one to permanently wipe the smirk off that SS officer’s face, I dreamed, as I filled my cap with snow for Hubert.

  CHAPTER 17

  I found Hubert on the opposite side of the car, in the area where everyone was relieving himself. He was sitting in the filth and dampness.

  “Pierre, Pierre,” he cried. His trouser legs were soaked with blood from being stepped on, and his eyes were glassy and dull from his burning fever. I felt incredibly guilty. I had been gone for only a short while, but I should have anticipated this. I shouldn’t have left him. Hubert held out his hand to me. It was covered with blackish goo. “Chocolate,” Hubert murmured.

  The smell left no doubt what it really was. I took a ragged blanket, which wasn’t much cleaner than his hands, and wiped away his illusionary confection before he could eat it. I lifted him to his feet and jammed him against the wall.

  “You stole my chocolate,” Hubert whimpered.

  “I’m sorry.”

  There were tie-downs on the walls. I grabbed an ownerless blanket, pushed it through one of the rings, weaved it under Hubert’s armpits, and made a knot over his chest. With his blanket wrapped around his head and shoulders, he dozed off right away. I sat down. My legs were swollen and soft, and yellowish flesh was bulging over the tops of my wooden shoes. In another day, perhaps two, I wouldn’t be able to stand.

  Hubert awoke delirious, calling out my name over and over again. Nothing I did or said could quiet him. As the train raced down a hill, I shared a blanket with Antoine, a red triangle Frenchman who had been in one of my Kommandos.

  “Why don’t you throw him overboard and end his suffering?”

  I shook my head. “I couldn’t live with myself.”

  Again I tried to quiet Hubert. I didn’t want his whining to get on anyone’s nerves, especially those Kapos. How had my hallucinating friend only a few days before managed to drag me to Gleiwitz?

  Was his effort to keep me alive the reason he was sick now? Probably. I must not allow anyone else to die so I could see tomorrow. I could not be propped up by Hubert’s bones.

  Somehow I fell asleep against Antoine’s shoulder. He nudged me awake. It was dark and Hubert was still calling for me.

  “It’s okay,” I told Antoine, “he’ll quiet down.”

  “No, it’s not your friend. Look over there.” He pointed at a couple Häftlinge bent over a corpse. “We better stay awake.”

  I didn’t know what Antoine was talking about or what I was supposed to be looking at until I saw one of the Häftlinge lift out the corpse’s liver. The pair slinked off to an empty corner and killed their hunger. No one moved, no one reacted, no one seemed to care. So this is what we have been reduced to. They finally suc-ceeded in turning us into subhumans.

  Once more they made us unload the dead bodies. I asked Antoine to watch over Hubert, then I climbed out of the car, hoping to find something edible while knowing that at least I would return with a cap full of clean snow. The second morgue car was nearly full. It struck me that Hubert would fare better with the dead than with the living. At least we could lie down. I hobbled back to the car as fast as I could. Incoherent, Hubert couldn’t understand and Antoine seemed more repulsed by my plan than by those hyenas eating the liver. I freed Hubert from his sling, placed him on the blanket, and dragged him to the end of the train. I was lucky that he was keeping quiet. We couldn’t afford to draw any attention.

  “Don’t worry, my friend. This is going to be much more comfortable.”

  It took every once of strength I had to push him up into the car.

  Even with the corpses packed tightly, it was hard to get my footing and I fell a few times pulling Hubert to the center of the pile. I dropped breathless next to him, trying to ignore the hundreds of unblinking eyes staring at me. No one was yelling in German to get those two living corpses out of there, so I knew my scheme had worked. But my gush of pride was tempered by a new fear—if they uncoupled the two cars from the rest of the train, we would be as good as dead. Suddenly our car rocked forward and back. The train was coming alive. I patted Hubert’s still hand.

  “Cela va marcher, vieille noix.” (It will work out, old nut.) Once the train was out of the station, I gathered together as many jackets and trousers as I could and made a bed out of them. I hadn’t had such comfortable sleeping quarters since I was shipped out of France.

  The din of the train passing over a bridge snapped me awake. I broke out in a cold sweat, thinking we were being bombed. The burned-out carcasses of trains that I had seen lying on the side of the tracks were haunting me. The win
d whistled and howled over me as I stood up and looked around. The train was rushing down-hill at full throttle. The dead men’s garments flapped and waved, and their bluish flesh shone in the moonlight. All we needed, I thought, were a few spider webs and “the god with the moustache”

  at the throttle to make this phantom train complete.

  The next day we passed through some of the finest scenery in Europe as the train lugged along the foot of the Bohemian Mountains. Unfortunately, from where I sat I couldn’t savor their beauty.

  I was too tortured by my hunger and thirst. I thought of the two Häftlinge who had eaten the dead man’s liver. I was sure the same scenario was playing out in every car. No, it was better to die than to come to that. I pondered why it was the cannibals, the ones with no restraint, no scruples, who seemed to survive and prosper? I had no answer and figured I never would.

  The train began to slow. I looked out. The area ahead had been thoroughly bombed. Along the embankment were the smoldering remains of a freight train. Our train stopped, and the morgue came to rest below a bridge. A Czech railway worker looked down in horror. What an unimaginable sight a freight car full of corpses must have been to the uninitiated. I waved to him. From the look on his face he must have thought that I had risen from the dead.

  He opened his shoulder bag and tossed down a little package to me.

  I was about to pick it up when a shot rang out. The man sagged onto the railing, where he hung for a moment, then tumbled down into our car. Now I was the one staring in horror. Hubert awoke, calling out my name. Fearing that the SS would swarm into the car at any second, I threw myself on top of him.

  “Tais toi et ne bouges pas! Daida Lou Bodu!” (Keep shut and stay still! The goon is coming!), I hissed in Hubert’s ear as I put my hand over his mouth. Daida Lou Bodu is Nice slang that we used to warn classmates when the teacher was coming. I flattened myself on top of Hubert and took only short breaths. If the guards came they would be right on top of us because the dead civilian was only an arm’s length away.