A Murder in Auschwitz (Sampler)

by JC Stephenson

  Auschwitz, 1st December 1943

  THE ground was hard with frost, and ice made the walk to the forest treacherously difficult. The snow muffled any sound from the men as they walked. The silence now had an accomplice.

  The previous week, when the prisoners' uniforms had been returned after being disinfected, as they were every six weeks or so, all the prisoners had also received warmer clothing, including, for some of the lucky ones, woollen jumpers to be worn under their striped prison jackets.

  Geller told Meyer that these would have been taken from 'Canada', the warehouse where all of the new arrivals' personal belongings were stored before being sorted and sent back to Germany. When Meyer had asked why it was called Canada, Geller had laughed and said that he had only found out when a Pole had explained that in Poland, Canada was considered a land of great riches, so it seemed appropriate to call this warehouse of riches after such an affluent place.

  Forest group D arrived at the clearing, which had expanded west. One of the men had suggested that they were clearing a route through the forest for another rail track for the camp. It had not been the cold which had sent a shiver down Meyer’s spine, but the thought of more victims arriving to be exterminated.

  The clearing was strangely beautiful in the snow, which hung from the branches of the pine trees and across the forest tracks. The guards took up their usual positions, and the prisoners started their work.

  The SS had also been issued with warmer clothing. The guards had new greatcoats, scarves, and gloves, and they now wore balaclavas under their helmets. Braziers had been supplied to keep them warm as they watched the prisoners.

  A day before the snow fell, Meyer and Geller were working next to an area where they were about to bring down another tree. Most of the wood had been cleared, and they were getting ready to move on to the next sector where the cut up remains of a once mighty pine tree lay when they heard 'alarm', the usual shout of warning, when a tree was about to fall, quickly followed by a further shout of warning.

  As the tree swayed through the branches of its neighbours, one of its own branches twisted and snapped away from the main trunk and fell directly on to one of the men carrying logs back down to the main track. He let out a cry as the heavy branch hit him, and trapped him in place. The two tree-cutters were already running across the broken ground to try and pull him free. It was obvious that he was lying where the tree was about to fall.

  What happened next happened so fast that it was only later, when Meyer re-ran it in his mind, that he got an idea of what had actually occurred. One of the tree-cutters had fallen as he ran, only to be crushed by the tree as it slid off its stump. The other made it to the man trapped by the branch and tried to pull him away from the falling trunk, but it was no use. Both men disappeared in a shower of pine needles and splintering wood.

  Meyer and Geller dropped the branches they were carrying and ran over to the fallen tree. Geller held back the branches as Meyer searched through the broken wood to look for the men, until he saw the stripes of prison uniform. The tree-cutter's legs were visible under a blanket of pine needles, but most of his body lay under the trunk.

  Meyer could not see the man who had been hit by the branch. Then he heard groaning from the other side of the tree trunk. Geller had heard it too, and Meyer watched in astonishment as Geller vaulted the tree trunk. Meyer followed after him.

  Two SS guards had run over to the fallen tree and unhitched their rifles from their shoulders. Meyer supposed that if there was going to be an attempted escape, then a moment of confusion such as this would be the best time.

  The man was being crushed by the tree trunk. His breath was being squeezed from him and pain was etched across his face. Geller looked at Meyer.

  “We can’t move it,” he said, panic in his voice. “The tree. It’s too heavy.”

  Meyer stared down at the crushed man’s face. Blood trickled from his nose and his mouth was open in a silent scream, his eyes pleading with him to stop the pain.

  Meyer pulled Geller to one side and looked over at the closest guard. He did not say anything and, thinking back, he was not sure how he communicated it with his face, but it was a rare moment of connection between guard and prisoner. The guard loaded a round into the rifle breach then pulled the weapon up to his shoulder. Meyer looked away until he heard the shot.

  Smoke and the smell of cordite filled the air. The guard lowered his rifle and waited as an officer made his way over.

  The officer wore a lighter-coloured greatcoat than the guards, and his black lapel patches carried the two silver squares denoting his rank of Oberscharfuhrer on one side, and the SS runes on the other.

  “You two, get this tree stripped and the trunk cut. And get these bodies out from under it,” came the barked orders. Meyer and Geller started the process, clearing the branches into a pile for someone to remove to the main track.

  The officer turned to the guard. “The men under the tree. What was their function?”

  “They were the tree-cutters, Herr Oberscharfuhrer,” he replied.

  “And what do these two do?” he asked, pointing at Meyer and Geller.

  “Wood clearance, sir,” replied the guard.

  The officer nodded and thought for a moment. “You two, once you have cleared this tree and put the bodies on the cart you can consider yourselves promoted. You are now tree-cutters.”

  Meyer cleared the snow from around the trunk of the next tree they would fell and knocked off the ice which had stuck to the bark on the tree's exposed side. Geller took a small hand-axe and made a notch in the trunk around thirty centimetres from the ground. Then he and Meyer hoisted the heavy two-man saw, so that the teeth of the blade sat within the notch.

  Slowly, they pushed the saw backwards and forwards until the dulled teeth of the saw began to dig deeply into the wood. Once they were both happy that the saw had found its track, they increased the speed.

  It took a considerable amount of time to saw through the trees. The saw blade was blunt and would often get stuck as the sap built up. This last was an unexpected bonus which Meyer and Geller had not expected. The sap was sweet, and they secretly began to collect it to pass around the others in Forest Group D. Meyer wondered if the previous owners of the saw had realised that the sap could be eaten and had kept it to themselves.

  In spite of the time it took to saw through the tree trunk, the work was much easier than the backbreaking collection of wood. Geller’s health improved and his tiredness returned to its normal level. He entirely attributed this to the consumption of the sap, but Meyer suspected that it was the change in the work they did. Yet it was still hard work. Even on the coldest of days, they had to remove their jackets to stop them becoming soaked with sweat, which would cool down quickly and suck their body heat into the ether. This could be followed by hypothermia or frostbite.

  Meyer and Geller were only a third of the way through the trunk when the cart, which carried water in the summer and bitter ersatz coffee in the winter, arrived. The prisoners always followed the same routine it it's arrival. They had to move into the clearing as two of the guards kept watch over them, while the other guards took their time at the cart.

  Meyer and Geller pulled their vests, woollen jumpers, and prison jackets back on to keep warm as they waited for their turn. Ziegler, who had been working nearby, joined them.

  “That was a good discovery of yours,” he whispered. “The sap.”

  Geller pointed at Meyer. “It was Manfred who discovered it; it is him you should thank.”

  The men stood in silence for a moment. Meyer looked into the darkness of the trees. The snow seemed to have removed the colour from them, leaving them like black cathedral towers, matching the black and grey men standing in their shadow.

  “Do you ever think about trying to make it away from here, into the forest?” asked Meyer quietly.

  Geller and Ziegler followed Meyer’s gaze towards t
he darkness of the trees.

  “If you did make it, without being shot that is, winter would not be the best time to attempt an escape,” replied Ziegler. “First of all, the snow cover on the ground, your tracks would be easier to follow. Even if you kept within the trees, the ground is frozen and footprints in the frost can be easy to see for days. Then, of course, if they used dogs to track you, your scent will hang in the air and stick to the undergrowth in this temperature. And then, if you managed to get away, you would freeze to death during the first night. No, if you were going to attempt such an escape, spring or summer would be the best times.”

  “Spring seems such a long time away,” said Geller, rubbing his hands together.

  “By then you might see Russian or British or American soldiers walking through the forest,” joked Meyer.

  Ziegler shook his head. “I don’t think that will be happening I am afraid, Meyer. Anyway, if it does, it won’t be British soldiers, it would be Russians, and they are just as bad as the Nazis.”

  “They would free us from the camp, wouldn’t they?” said Meyer.

  Ziegler wiped a running nose on his sleeve, then folded his arms against his body and stamped his feet to try to keep warm. “I wouldn’t bet on it. I fought against the Germans when they invaded Poland from the west, then I fought the Russians when they invaded from the east.

  “The Nazis and the communists were friends back then. They took it in turns to batter my country and then they met in the middle and shook hands with each other.”

  “That was in 1939. You only arrived here last spring. Where were you hiding until then?” asked Geller, surreptitiously handing Ziegler a chewy piece of sap.

  Ziegler quickly popped it into his mouth and began to explain his journey to Auschwitz. “Like I said, I was in the Polish Army, the 74th Infantry Regiment. I remember the night we got the call that the Germans had invaded. We spent ten days fighting them until we were to retreat to the southeast, to what they called the Romanian Bridgehead. That was where we could hold off the Wehrmacht until the French and the British sent supplies and reinforcements. But then the Soviets thought that they would also have a piece of Poland and we had to give up our defences and fight the Russians as well. It was difficult from the start but once the Russians invaded, all hope left us.

  “I got separated from my regiment and joined a group that two brothers had started, a resistance group that fought the Germans and the Russians. We developed strategies which made us look as if we were appearing out of nowhere. Then we'd make our attacks, and disappear. We earned a fearsome reputation, especially amongst the Russians, who were much more superstitious than the Germans.

  “They called us ‘Prizrak’. It is Russian for 'ghost'. Some of them thought that we were the ghosts of Polish soldiers from the past coming to take revenge.” Ziegler laughed out loud as he slapped his hands against his chest, keeping the blood flowing to his fingers.

  “Sometimes,” he continued, “we would leave one of them alive. If it had been a particularly silent attack, we would never speak during it and try to use only knives, we would leave one of them alive so that he could tell his comrades about the Prizrak.

  “We fought them in the woods and forests near the border of the Russian and German sectors, just north of Lvov. We could pass over that line easily to escape any attempt to capture us whereas the Russians would never cross over into German-held territory, and vice-versa.

  “There were not enough of us to fight like an army. We couldn’t take land, fight for a village or town and hold it against a counter attack. All we could do was cause fear. We hoped that if the Russians or Germans feared us, then they would stay in their barracks, do less patrols, stay off the streets. Especially at night, which might give the people a little bit more freedom, a little bit of hope every time we attacked.

  “We would make our attacks against the Russians for a few weeks, just long enough to cause fear in the local area but not long enough to provoke a full-scale search for us. Then we would move over to the German sector and make our attacks on them.

  “Of course, it couldn’t last forever. We were short of food, our clothes were ragged, and it was only a matter of time before we would end up either dead or captured.

  “I was taken prisoner by a Russian unit in February nineteen-forty-one and handed over to the Germans. The Russians didn’t realise I was a Prizrak or I am sure they would have shot me there and then. When the Germans discovered I was Jewish, they took me and several others to Warsaw and we were put in the ghetto there. It was their great Nazi plan at the time, ghettos. As well as the one in Warsaw, I know for a fact that there was one in Lodz, and I heard rumour of more in other Polish cities.

  “You would only have believed it if you saw it. They had built a wall all around a part of the city. Right the way around, so no-one and nothing could get in or out without them knowing. They then rounded up all the Jews in Warsaw and the surrounding areas and made them all live in this walled city within a city.

  “They took me to a gate in the wall and sent me inside. I had nothing to take in with me except the clothes I was standing in. Once I was inside, it was a different world. And for the first few minutes it seemed like time had been turned back. There were people walking in the streets, there were no enemy soldiers or checkpoints, no tanks or trucks, no hammer and sickle or swastika flags, and for the first time in a long time I didn’t think that at any given moment I would be shot. But then I began to notice what was wrong with what I could see. The people were thin, like the prisoners here. Their clothes were shabby, and the shop windows were all empty.

  “I wandered the streets until a Rabbi stopped me. He could see that I had just arrived and wanted to know if he could help me. I explained about being a soldier and having been in the resistance before being taken prisoner and brought there. He had heard of the Prizrak and personally thanked me for causing so much fear amongst the invaders. Then he took me to an apartment block not far from the gate where I had come in, where he introduced me to some families that shared a floor.

  “They gave me what little food they could spare and a corner of a room that I could call my own. The next morning, the Rabbi returned. He had a spare set of clothes for me and asked me to join him for a walk back to his apartment.

  “On the walk, he explained how the ghetto worked. He told me that there was an infrastructure in the ghetto; schools, soup kitchens, hospitals, and even libraries had been started. How it was run by a Jewish committee, but how there was very little food and no work for the people.

  “The biggest problem by far was the lack of food. He asked me to think about the way, as a member of the resistance, that we had collected food while hiding from the Germans and the Russians and to visit him in a day or two if I had any ideas.

  “On the way back to the apartment, I saw a boy, only about eight years of age, slipping out of a doorway from a building that was right up against the ghetto wall. Although he was trying to hide it, I could see that he had some bread inside his jacket. He took off down the street as if the devil himself was after him. So I took a look in through the doorway and you know what I found? A stairway down to a basement which had a

  boarded-up window leading to the other side.

  “It wasn’t long before we had gangs of youngsters bringing back food and raw materials that were needed inside the ghetto. We found other places along the perimeter where they could safely get in or out. It was the children of the ghetto that kept us alive.

  “Then, one day, the Rabbi came to see me again. This time he wanted to talk about organising armed resistance inside the ghetto. He was worried that one day the SS would come and try to take everyone away. If that day came, he wanted us to be able to fight. There were already some armed groups inside the ghetto, but they didn’t communicate or work with each other. Some were communists. Some were right-wing. Some were criminal. But if the SS had entered the ghetto at that t
ime, there would have been no coordinated resistance.

  “We managed to get guns smuggled in. We traded with those outside the ghetto walls and bought ammunition and weapons. The underground Home Army supplied us as well. Those of us who had been in the army trained those who hadn’t, and before long we had a reasonable sized militia. The problem was that it seemed like a hopeless cause. How could some armed civilians keep the Waffen SS at bay? If they decided to enter the ghetto, what would stop the members of our resistance from just putting down their weapons and melting away?

  “That was when we used the same sort of idea that we used for the Prizrak. That was where Ishmael came in. He was like a ghost with a secret band of followers. No-one knew what he looked like, or what his real name was. We heard stories of him crossing over into Warsaw from the ghetto and slitting the throats of German soldiers. There were rumours of Ishmael and his men manning the rooftops of the ghetto, moving fleetingly from building to building.

  “Various men were suspected of being Ishmael; normally tall, handsome types,” Ziegler laughed.

  “Some said they had seen him and his men in the moonlight. Some had met him, some were part of his inner circle.”

  Zeigler blew into his hands to keep them warm and looked down towards the cart, where the soldiers stood laughing and chatting. Steam rose above them like smoke.

  “Then, of course, the day arrived when the gates opened and the soldiers came to get us. It was Passover and they came to take us to the camps. But we were waiting for them. We had well-laid plans and defensive positions which we took up. We fought the might of the German Army and kept them at bay for over a month. Throughout that time, there were reports of Ishmael’s unit from all over the ghetto. Stories were told of him taking control of a German truck full of weapons and ammunition outside the ghetto, by attacking it from a sewer and driving it back inside. We heard that Ishmael and his unit had been attacking SS troops outside the perimeter, that they were in the sewers, that they were on the rooftops. They were everywhere.

  “But the Germans were too much for us. We ran out of ammunition, ran out of weapons, out of people. It ended in Muranowski Square. We were surrounded and it became a final stand. As we tried to hold them off, rumours reached us that Ishmael was among us. It gave the remaining fighters heart.

  “Then something extraordinary happened. In the midst of the fighting, two boys began to climb onto the roof of one of the buildings in the square to raise the flag of the Jewish resistance and the Polish national flag. The SS could see what was happening and pinned them down. Ishmael was seen leading his men in a final charge against the Waffen SS unit, sacrificing himself so that the two boys could escape.

  “The flags were still flying four days later, as I was taken away in the back of an SS truck. But do you want to know the strangest thing of all? Ishmael never existed except in the mind of the people. He was an invention of the Rabbi and myself. A ghost. Prizrak. But he was needed. He gave everyone hope. So much so that two boys climbed a roof in the middle of a battle and raised two flags to give the people strength.

  “The German truck was stolen and driven to the ghetto, but it wasn’t Ishmael, it was the ghetto resistance. It wasn’t Ishmael that patrolled the rooftops or used the sewers, it was the resistance.”

  Zeigler looked longingly at the cart. He could smell the hot coffee and the black bread that it held.

  “Then they brought me here to Auschwitz. I haven’t met anyone else that was in the ghetto. They must be somewhere, but they are not here.

  “I have thought about escaping from here, to try to get back into the safety of the forest and become a Prizrak again. Maybe in the spring,” said Ziegler.

  The guards had finished at the cart and shouted for the prisoners to be sent down.

  “I couldn’t leave here anyway,” said Meyer. “Even if I had the chance.”

  “Really? Why not?” asked Ziegler.

  “My wife and children are here somewhere. I couldn’t leave them.”

  Ziegler nodded and started down towards the cart.