Photo credit: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtsey of Yad Vashem (Public Domain)
Auschwitz’s Main Gate
Arbeit macht frei, ironically
means “Work makes you free”
Photo Credit: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Instytut Pamieci Narodowej (Public Domain)
Chapter Eleven:
Auschwitz, 1944
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
From Dante’s Inferno
In the remote foothills of the Carpathians, surrounded by marshland, lies the small Polish town of Oswiecim (Auschwitz). In 1940, twenty abandoned brick artillery barracks remained of an Austrian garrison formerly stationed there. The assets of the land included its isolation from view and its proximity to railroad tracks, making Auschwitz a perfect area to expand into the most enormous and notorious of the six extermination camps built in Poland between 1940 and 1942.25
Himmler, commander of Hitler’s SS, instructed Major Rudolf Hoess to take charge of the building project. “The Fuhrer has ordered that the Jewish question be solved once and for all,” Himmler told Hoess in ’41.26 Until Hitler’s Soviet invasion of 1941, there was no single plan for dealing with the Jews. 1941-42 marked a change in policy, one of total annihilation.
Toward that end, the Einsatzgruppen was formed. The specially trained SS killers were first activated when Hitler violated his pact and marched into the Soviet-occupied Poland in June 1941. Following the Wehrmacht through Eastern Europe, the Einsatzgruppen murdered a million and a half people. The group, composed of four units of 3000 SS members each, comprised the first large-scale, systematic murder phase of the Holocaust. As the war escalated on both fronts, the numbers liquidated by the Einsatzgruppen proved insufficient.27
On July 31, 1941, Goering, creator of the Gestapo and presumed successor to Hitler, passed a written order to Nazi official Heydrich to prepare a plan for “the final solution to the Jewish Question.” 28 At the Wannsee Conference outside Berlin on January 20, 1942, Heydrich, architect of the Holocaust, discussed the planned annihilation of all the Jews in occupied countries throughout Europe. The top fourteen ministry officials and SS generals attended. None objected to extermination, only arguing method. The meeting lasted a total of ninety minutes; only ninety minutes determined that eleven million Jews should be eradicated from the earth.29
The outcome of the Wannsee Conference was the expansion and/or construction of six extermination camps: Auschwitz, Majdanek, Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka. All were built in rural, heavily forested areas, all in already antisemitic Poland, and all near railroad tracks. Of the six extermination camps designed, only two, Majdanek and Auschwitz, were not exclusively death factories. These two camps also contracted slave labor, not only for SS-owned enterprises but for outside manufacturers and plants.
Auschwitz, the largest camp with about forty subcamps, consisted of a series of three enormous complexes on the main site. Like the other killing camps, Auschwitz’s main purpose was to incarcerate enemies of the Nazi regime and ultimately to kill targeted groups whose demise was seen as essential to the safety and security of the Reich.30
Birkenau held the largest prisoner population in Auschwitz at any one time (up to 100,000); it was divided into ten sections, each separated by electrically barbed wire fences, guarded by SS and their trained-to-kill dogs. Sections separated men, women, Roma families, and others. Four large crematoria buildings replaced earlier farmhouse death sites by summer of ’43. Each had three components: a disrobing area; the “shower” or gas chamber where Zyklon B, a cyanide-based pesticide was used to kill; and the crematorium ovens to burn the remains.31
Trains from every occupied European country transported Jews and other so-called enemies of the state to Auschwitz. Prisoners went through constant selections under the eyes of SS doctors, such as Josef Mengele, “the Angel of Death,” who also performed medical experiments on chosen internees. Selection to the left meant the crematorium; selection to the right meant slave labor, which the Germans looked upon as a slower form of destruction and synonymous with death.
The Sonderkommando, more often than not consisting of younger, stronger, newly-transported Jews, had the unenviable job of meeting the transports, guiding deportees to the showers without chaos, working the gas chambers, and hauling the deceased into the crematoria. They had to search corpses for valuables, even fillings from their teeth, to contribute to the Reich. Though Sonderkommandos had better sleeping quarters and more food, their life expectancy was no more than a few months. Often, they were killed after aktions to eliminate eye witnesses; many simply couldn’t handle the horror of their jobs.32
Heydrich once said,” The Jews will be conscripted for labor…and, undoubtedly, a large number of them will drop out through natural wastage.”33 Those spared were sent through processing in Birkenau. Before being sent out for slave labor, assigned detainees shaved others’ heads, issued uniforms and Dutch wooden shoes. Prisoners’ jobs included tattooing those selected for labor. Assigned workers pierced the left forearm with tattooed numbers that became one’s identity.34 Naturally, guards confiscated all personal possessions immediately and sent them to a building called “Canada” (symbol of wealth) for sorting and shipping to Germany.35
Anywhere from sixty to ninety percent of each transport went straight to the crematorium; the remaining were selected for labor.36 As Allies closed in on both fronts and the Germans began to anticipate losing the war, the exterminations went into high gear. About one-fourth of the Jews murdered during the Holocaust died between fall of ’39 and spring of ’42. The majority, three-fourths, were killed in the last eleven months of the war.37 Germans attempted to annihilate Jews right up until the end.
• • •
Arrival at Auschwitz
Three horror-stricken days and nights of dodging bombs in Pionki ended in a deadly silence. The Ukrainian soldiers put us into ranks. We climbed into cattle cars, wagons that normally would have room for twenty cows now crammed with seventy or more people. Pressed in suffocating nearness, we rolled down the tracks for two and a half days. The train randomly stopped, reversed, and moved on.
Bombs crashed down around us. When Allied bombers were overhead, the guards abandoned the cattle cars and sought safety. In the event that the Allies targeted the trains, only the Jews were jeopardized. We hoped that something would happen, that someone would come to free us. But it was a vain hope. Nothing happened to rescue us. Guards reloaded, and the train rambled on.
We finally arrived at the ill-famed camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, late at night. Everything horrible happened at night. We stepped out from our rolling cages, a miserable group of doomed shadows. The disembarking, lining up, and so forth took us well into the night.
Over the gate to the main camp were the words “Arbeit Macht Frei.” The expression of hope seemed to mock us. We certainly knew by now that work would not liberate us, only death or the Allies, whichever came first. Just inside the gate, a small orchestra of Jewish prisoners played, a juxtaposition of culture in a barbaric setting. If the intent was for the music to soothe our souls, the melody was wasted. Nothing could quell our fears.
Our guards, called the block seniors/elders and block kapos, appeared, prisoners themselves controlled by the SS. Only these prisoner guards received us at this point. They separated women from men. This separation became the first experience of what we learned was called “selection.” Those who were too old, too young, too sickly looking were pulled aside and told to go left. Those told to move to the right were generally younger and healthier. It did not take long to learn what selection to the left or to the right meant: death or labor, respectively.
During this separation, Elsie took a moment to say goodbye to me. She hugged me and said to me, “If it is God’s will that we survive this war, I will have you to thank for being such a comfort so many times. We will meet in Radom.”
She pressed my hand and gave me a little photo of herself. She was so much older than I that I wasn’t sure that Elsie would make it. My eyes filled with tears as I looked back at her once more and prayed for her survival.
Selection at Auschwitz-Birkenau, May, 1944
(one month before Rose arrived)
Reprint permission from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Yad Vashem.
Processing at Birkenau
Female kapos led us into the control room and instructed us to undress. The kapos took everything from us. Up until now, only things of real value had been taken. But in Auschwitz, the female guards, prisoners themselves, confiscated everything, even small photos, including Elsie’s. If a woman had long hair, it was cut off. If she complained, the cruel guards shaved her eyebrows too.
I still had a parcel with all of my family pictures. I hoped it would be somehow possible to keep these little treasures, but the kapo woman, seeing that I pressed this parcel lovingly to my heart, tore it away. I felt as if my heart were what she’d torn away. Even my boots, the last precious gift from my parents, were taken away. I was bereft over those boots; instead of them, I got Hollandaise (Dutch) wooden shoes. They nearly caused my death later on.
Once in this room, the guards performed the inspection in an incredibly short time though there were thousands of women. Then, they sent us to bathe. Terrified, we entered the shower. To our relief, only water dripped from the pipes, no gas. After showering, we got some clothes. Clothes—it was absurd what we got. Tall women got short dresses; short ones, long dresses. I myself got a long, long dress of French silk with short sleeves. Panties and bras were unknown. We only got a shirt.
In these strange, ridiculous garments, we were finally sent to the barracks. We had to sleep in rows of wooden bunks. Seven women were crammed into one bunk with only straw for a mattress. We could hardly find room. We had to huddle there in the strangest positions. We got some blankets. A block senior showed us our places and said we could go to bed. What a joke: Go to bed. But we were exhausted. We fell asleep.
Abruptly, I awoke. Everybody around me was sleeping. The whole barracks of the camp slept. I rose and went outside. I saw the big barracks of the SS just before me. On the other side, I saw the death barrack with a big “25” painted in white on it. We learned right away that this was the barrack women feared most of all. If you were told to go to Barrack 25, you were going to a holding room until being sent to the crematorium. Further on, I saw the labor camp, still empty. Work had not yet begun.
To the left, the high chimneys of the crematoria were visible. Smoke rose from them day and night; sometimes sparks were flying into the air. It was the smoke and the sparks from formerly living beings—men, women, and children, people who died there by poisoned gas and were burned. They were people who had lived, loved, hated, hoped, and planned—all that flew into the flames. They were people whose only sin had been to be born a Jew, people who had never hurt anybody, whose lives had been faultless and pure. All of them were devoured by the senseless hatred of an evil foe. The smoke seemed to me like an outcry to G-d, an accusation of all the poor, helpless souls.
Then I saw the endless barracks housing so many doomed people, people in distress, abandoned, hopeless. Around these somber huts, flowers had been planted—-neat, innocent flowers in carved wooden planters. The first morning dew had spun a glittering web around them. I began shuddering, awaking from my contemplations. I felt the fresh, cold morning air biting into my flesh. There was a stench in the air, the stench of burning human bodies. I turned and went back to my bunk. I had not yet reached it when the whistle that marked 6:00 am pierced the air.
Selection, the Daily Routine
The daily routine began with the early morning summons to roll call. Our block senior and kapo called us to line up. We were not allowed anything to eat. We had to just line up and remain there. For hours and hours, we had to stand and wait until all blocks were controlled and counted. If the counting kapos made a mistake, we had to stand even longer until the count was correct. As long as I was in Auschwitz, I shared in this daily lining up. How can I describe it?
I stood in roll call each morning, always hungry and scantily clad. Generally, the whistle to rise came at 6:00 am, but sometimes the kapos rounded us up as early as 4:30 or 5:00. It was still dark, and, despite the summer months, I remember always being cold.
We must have all looked like indistinguishable scarecrows with our shaved heads and emaciated bodies. There were no mirrors at Auschwitz; that was probably a blessing. My feet were constantly blistered from the wooden shoes. Injuries from labor caused cuts on my legs that became infected. The barracks were full of lice. We were constantly scratching, trying to pick them off our bodies. Typhus was our constant companion. I don’t think I could have borne looking at myself in a mirror.
Every day, we got weaker and weaker. Every day kapos examined us during roll call like commodities on the market, pieces of meat to either preserve for another day or immediately discard to the incinerator. There we were standing, exhausted, hungry, fearful, our minds taunted by different smells of food that came from the kitchen (or at least we thought we smelled food). The worst part was that our brains worked feverishly; wild fantasies arose in our heads. Fantasies of hope and remembrance appeared: Father bringing home strangers to share Sabbath dinner, running through the fields of wildflowers at Kozenice, and envisioning my parents at my wedding….
There were moments when the mind escaped our surroundings, but the moments dwindled as time went on. Talk, even thoughts, of abstractions like philosophy, religion, concepts like freedom, patriotism, altruism were reduced to more immediate and primal questions: Will I catch a piece of potato in my soup if I stand far enough back in line? Will that woman, who cannot swallow, exchange my coffee for her piece of bread? Can I find scraps of paper in the trash to cover my blistered feet? I can’t devour fantasy; the body cannot sustain itself with memory. The Nazis have successfully reduced us to robots, scavengers fighting over a small slab of margarine. We stayed in survival mode through endless hours of roll call, inspection, selection, labor. Food, water, sleep were our most consistent thoughts.
And so we stood and stood and stood for hours at a time. At some later point in the morning, Dr. Mengele strolled out with his monocle on and his baton in hand. Sometimes, other SS doctors were involved. One I remember because I met him again later at Bergen-Belsen, Dr. Fritz Klein.
Dr. Mengele did not look the part he played at Auschwitz as the “Angel of Death,” who sent unknown thousands to their deaths with the wave of a baton and singled out others for horrendous medical experiments to perfect the Aryan race.
In his early thirties by the time I got to the camp, Mengele still looked somewhat like an altar boy. He was relatively handsome, with dark eyes and dark hair. The slight gap between his front teeth gave him a boyish innocence when he smiled. And he did smile, and he often spoke in a kind, fatherly, gentle voice. He was known to be seen giving children candy to earn their trust. But, on closer examination, the smile became a smirk. We were not human beings in Mengele’s eyes: We were specimens to either toy with or to destroy as useless waste.
When Mengele arrived, the selection began. Those who died in the barracks overnight (or who were too sick to appear for roll call) were dragged outside and stacked up against the building. After all, they were part of the count, and the count had to be perfect.
Mengele walked the rows, never deigning to physically touch the “vermin Jew,” only using his baton to signal left or right. Those sent to the left, along with the dead or nearly dead, were thrown into enormous wagons on wheels like the ones that go down mine shafts to carry coal back. What was, at first, horrifying to observe, became just part of the daily routine at Auschwitz. We engaged in no emotional outbursts of grief or anger. What would be the use? We trudged on.
Whenever roll call ended, we were allowed breakfast, whic
h meant a single cup of watered-down, chicory coffee. Then, the usual 12-hour workday began. Having no specific work, guards assigned purely punitive work: hauling rocks to one place in particular and then hauling them back again. It was pointless. About 2:00 or so, we had a lunch break. This time, we lined up with our cups for a watery, potato-peel soup. The fortunate ones were those whose cup was filled from the bottom of the kettle. They might get lucky enough to actually get a piece of potato or turnip.
After the lunch break, it was back to work hauling rocks from one place to another in our ridiculous attire. When the work shift ended, once again we had to endure roll call until the count was finished. Whether dead or alive, the bodies had to add up. For supper, we got a small piece of what passed for bread and a slab of margarine. Then it was back to the barracks. Twice a week, the Germans allowed us to take showers, always welcomed as we fought disease as much as hunger.
This time, even Elsie, whom I was fortunate enough to still have as a barrack companion and friend, could not quell my depression. The backbreaking, useless labor, the constant shouting of orders, barking dogs, beaten prisoners, the stench of human flesh burning night and day, the sounds of trains with new food for the crematoria---it was all too much.
I sank into an abyss once again. I had horrible blisters from wearing those loathsome Dutch shoes. I became so angry that I threw them away. What a mistake! I still had to perform labor, march when commanded, and stand in roll call, regardless of weather. I ended up seeking scraps of paper to cover my feet. Later, I had to remove wooden shoes from a corpse to acquire another pair.
I was so despondent that at the next selection, I actually asked Dr. Mengele if he would send me to the left. I wanted to die. At least, I knew I would be reunited with my parents. I felt dead anyway. The gas would be a quick way to put me out of my misery. Mengele tapped me to go to the right. The SS doctor hadn’t looked at my ulcerated feet; he only looked at my face. After he tapped me, I raised my hand and asked, “Sir, couldn’t I go to the left?”
Letters to Rose Page 10