A Murder in Auschwitz (Sampler)

by JC Stephenson

  Auschwitz, 17th August 1943

  ALONG with Geller, Meyer stood in line with his tin plate and cup clutched tightly to his body. With the rest of the working party groups which had now returned to the main camp, he waited for the single meal of the day. But the doors to the mess hut remained stubbornly shut.

  There was very little noise from the several hundred men who stood waiting. There was no hum of conversation. No laughs from shared jokes.

  Meyer turned and looked down the line, which snaked back and around a guard hut and out of sight. At the corner of the hut, a kapo was talking to an inmate, too far for the sound to travel. It struck Meyer that it was like watching an old movie, like the ones he used to see with Klara; there was no sound and very little colour. Auschwitz had drained the colour from the people, the land, and the buildings. Only the distant trees outside the camp shone with colour and life. If he listened carefully enough, Meyer could hear faint birdsong from the distant trees. There was no birdsong in the camp though. No birds ever ventured near to this place of misery.

  He loved to watch their tiny black shapes flying in the blue sky. They were free to go where they pleased. There were no borders or fences or cages which could hold them. They gave him hope and reminded him of an earlier life.

  The eeriness of the silence which filled the camp was what disturbed Meyer the most. Strangely though, the silence wasn’t alone, it had a companion; the Whisper. There was the sound of the guards' work; orders given, their chatting, the sound of their boots. The buildings whispered too. Occasionally though, even the Whisper was suddenly disturbed. Doors slammed, window shutters battered against the walls in the wind. And the wind itself. Sometimes, even the slightest of breezes could be caught in your ear, adding a whistle to a cacophony of silence.

  But the inmates made very little sound. With so many people in one place, the noise of them just living should be deafening. But it was as if they were all dead, in a land of the dead. There was very little talk. Very little noise. Almost total silence. Except at night.

  That was when the screaming began, shattering the silence of the day.

  But now, waiting in line, something else shattered it. Meyer heard a laugh.

  Sitting on the ground, with his back leaning against a barrack hut, was a prisoner. He sat with his knees tucked up under his chin, his striped trousers halfway up his calves, revealing emaciated legs. Sores covered his skin, especially around his wrists and where his clogs bit at his ankles.

  He was smiling.

  It was difficult for Meyer to work out how old the man was. Deeply lined from a vacant smile on a face which held no fat, he could have been twenty years old or he could have been fifty. If the man had been standing, Meyer thought that he might be quite tall, perhaps one metre eighty, but he was folded against the hut wall in such a way that it was difficult to tell.

  What was this man doing there? Was there anything Meyer should do? He turned and looked at Anton Geller, the silent question in his eyes.

  Geller leaned close to Meyer.

  “He has become absent,” he said, in a low voice.

  “What?” questioned Meyer.

  “After a while, with not enough food, with the gruelling work and the fear, it becomes too much for some people. Any hope that they had leaves them and they become absent. Their mind switches off their fear but also switches off their understanding.”

  The man’s arms were hanging loose by his sides, and Meyer could see the tattoo of his prison number on his thin forearm. His tin cup lay nearby, although his bowl was missing, and he gazed into the middle distance with a smile so serene that Meyer almost envied him. He wondered what he was seeing. Maybe his family? Maybe his own childhood. Meyer wondered what memories your mind would give you to shield you from your daily terror.

  A guard from the other side of the mess queue spotted the absent man and, pushing past Meyer and Geller as if they were not even there, made his way over to him, the eyes of every prisoner in the line now on his back.

  He stood with his hands on his hips, looking down at the smiling inmate.

  “What are you smiling at, Jew?”

  The question broke whatever day-dream filled the man's eyes, and he looked up at the guard. His smile left him and his mouth now hung open.

  “Get up and back in line,” came the command from the guard.

  The lines from the man’s face had gone, and he looked like a child. His dark eyes stared uncomprehendingly at the soldier, and a thin line of saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth.

  “Last chance, Jew. Get up and get back in line,” repeated the guard, pointing at the queue of men.

  He didn’t understand. Meyer was not sure if the man understood German, or if he was Polish or Hungarian or Russian or French, but whatever language he spoke, even if he didn’t understand the guard's German language, he should have understood the meaning. But he didn’t.

  The guard made this meaning clearer when he unhitched his rifle from his shoulder. For a moment, he stood, holding the rifle with his right hand on the bolt action, looking at the prisoner, waiting for a response. But the man just sat, his face blank, not comprehending what was happening.

  The guard removed his cap and ran his right hand across his brow, wiping away a thin sheen of sweat which was building from the late afternoon sun. He replaced his cap, and his hand rested once more on the bolt action of the Mauser rifle.

  The absent man’s attention had drifted, and he was staring ahead once more, a smile beginning to form on his face.

  The guard pulled back on the bolt, loading a cartridge into the breach of the gun, then pushed it forward, locking it in place. The mechanical noise brought the absent man’s head around again to look up at the guard.

  Meyer watched as the guard lifted the rifle to sit against his shoulder, with his right eye looking down the sights of the gun, directly into the absent man’s gaze.

  For a moment, Meyer thought that the guard wouldn’t shoot him like that. He must be looking directly into the dark eyes of a lost child. He must see that there was nothing there to hate.

  The absent man smiled again, but this time he was smiling at the guard. It was a beautiful, kind smile. The smile a boy would have, unable to contain his love for a parent. Is that what he could see? Could he see his father? Or did he see the guard and smile purely because he recognised him?

  Meyer thought that the guard was going to lower his rifle. That he would walk away from this kind, helpless, lost soul. Who could kill a smiling child who showed such love? Surely he couldn’t pull the trigger; he would lower his rifle and help the man to his feet. That was all that he needed to do. Let someone else deal with the absent man and come back and guard the mess hut queue.

  And for a moment Meyer thought he wouldn’t shoot him. He thought he wouldn’t kill him like that.

  He noticed a sparkle in the absent man’s eye. Was that a tear?

  Then the gunshot filled the silence.