But, I could only reminisce momentarily. The collective reaction of those around me, their verbal outcries and the general feeling of despair, influenced me physiologically. Their dread became my dread. Their fear became my fear. Spastic undulations of fear and dread took hold of my body. There is no shutting off your brain from registering such acts of extreme cruelty. Even today, recollections of that incident come creeping back into my dreams. Visions of the man, whose only crime was ingeniously implementing a way to keep warm, still haunt me.
Once the man was more bones than flesh, the guard who had initiated the incident indicated for the guards ranked below him to clean up the “mess” and we were directed to work like roll call had played out without so much as a hiccup. That’s just how it was in the camps. Each time a prisoner was sent to the punishment bunker or isolation area before being executed, we had to pretend everything was normal. If we attempted to empathize with the victims, we would divide our attention away from our own needs. Ignoring the vent from the gas chamber in the courtyard and the puffs of smoke from the crematorium, we continued our daily rituals.
Some prisoners got wind of a place maybe thirty to fifty kilometers away from camp where mass killings were taking place. They said prisoners from Mauthausen were being transported there and were being killed by lethal injection or gas. They identified the killing center as a place called “Hartheim Castle.” Why was a castle being used for violence?
I came to dread roll call even more than work.
CHAPTER 39
In the beginning of December in 1944, I experienced how horrible Mauthausen could be when my resilience was supremely tested. I awoke to the familiar sound of the bell just as I always did—since it was wintertime our day started about fifteen minutes later than the usual time—and went through the motions of my morning routine. When the men from my barracks gathered in our columns for roll call and the total numbers failed to match with the roster after repeated tallies, it was clear that two men were missing. Standing in nearly a foot of ice-glazed snow, our frozen fingers locked into a curled-claw position, we cautiously awaited our looming sentence. The guards scurried up to us and shouted, taking their anger out on those standing closest to them. Not allowed to move our feet, we slinked backwards from our waists in an effort to distance ourselves from attack. Bobbing and weaving like a boxer in the ring who’s avoiding a knockout power punch from his opponent, I looked on with disbelief as one of the guards approached the prisoner nearest to him—not a meter away from me—pressed the cold barrel of his Luger against the back of his neck, said “bang bang” into his ear, pulled the trigger, and then casually holstered his gun. Gunpowder lingered in the air as the prisoner fell to the ground and a splatter of red fluid garnished my face. I feared that the next bit of warm blood to be shed that day would be my own. We all felt that way. We wondered how many more of us would have to die in retaliation for the actions of those two missing men. Had the score been leveled or would one more of us, or quite possibly all of us, be executed?
After a thorough discussion between the guards, our lives were spared, at least for the moment. However, half of us were led to the punishment area for torturing and half of us were assigned to the punishment detail. I was directed into the punishment detail group along with two or three hundred other men.
As we were guided to the “Stairs of Death”—the same 186 steps we had descended daily for months—the lot of us trembled. Trepidation punctuated our movements. The unequivocal smell of flesh-rich smoke hung in the air so thickly that I could taste it in my mouth. The temperature was well below freezing and the wind was gusting relentlessly as we made our way to the bottom of the stairs. I could feel the follicles on my arms straining to hold in the roots of my frozen hairs. The guards made no effort to clear the steps of snow. Stairs that were normally slick because of the well-trodden rocks became deathtraps when covered in precipitation.
Winter coats and gloves were luxuries we didn’t possess. We had nothing to protect our bodies from the elements. Prisoners who were in the camp even a year prior to us were given such items, but as the war dragged on, the supply decreased and was never replenished. Therefore, hypothermia and frostbite constantly plagued us, particularly on that day.
Once we were all clustered at the base of the stairs, the wretchedness began. Without so much as a pause, we were mustered into lines five men wide. We peered up at the stairs, not able to see the last few because the hill was so steep, and wished them away. As happened so often during the war, things that were ordinarily used for one purpose—to make life easier—morphed into things that were used for another purpose—to make life harder. Stairs that usually acted as a bridge to help us conveniently get from one place to another became a treacherous avenue to challenge our bodies and our resolve. Throaty, grimacing German commands pelted our ears. In response, each of the men in the first several rows lifted a piece of granite, weighing 45 kilograms (about 100 pounds) or so, onto their shoulders and began running up the steps in unison. Immediately, the next few rows followed suit, chasing them. When my turn came, the weight of the rock, most definitely heavier than my body weight, nearly knocked me on my face. It was a pointless exercise; it was merely another sadistic, sick victimization. Slipping and struggling to find our footing was no easy task. Our bulky, burdensome clogs provided no traction and the thin, ragged clothing that hung loosely over our skeletal frames was a menace to our movements. Snow crept into our shoes and up into our legs, nipping away at our sockless toes and ankles. Within minutes, our emaciated appendages stiffened from the cold. The line moved forward until all of us were galumphing up the stairs. Our faces were only centimeters away from the serrated slabs of those in front of us.
Our first pass was not without incident. A man on the opposite side of the cliff a few steps above me lost his footing as his shoe became trapped in the snow, causing him to fumble and lose his grip on his rock as he steadied himself, resulting in it rolling off his back and down the hill. It gained momentum as it tumbled, knocking over and critically injuring the men standing in its wake. In its motion-filled state, the jagged chunk struck the men’s faces and chests, tearing away at their defenseless bodies, fracturing their skulls and breaking apart their ribs. Deafening cries of anguish filtered from their mouths, terrifying all of us. They had no way of avoiding the calamity. Had I not been standing at one end of the stairs and he at the other, I very well might have been killed by the impact. In retaliation, the kapos—dressed in heavy overcoats and quilted hats—counted out a faster pace to us, delighting in our agony. When all of us reached the top, we were immediately ordered back down the stairs. Stones in tow, we crouched forward in severe pain. The descent was perhaps even more dangerous than our trip upward. The compacted snow, melting in places from our pounding feet, had become a treacherous sheet of ice as it thawed and refroze.
Once we were all again gathered at the bottom of the hill, alive or otherwise, we were surprised to hear that we would have an opportunity to rest before repeating the madness. This change in treatment seemed to stem from the sudden disappearance of the kapos and all but one of the SS guards. The remaining guard, a fairly young lad with strawberry blonde hair, expressed remorse for our treatment. He examined the wounded and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, pressing it against a man’s gushing gash. Speaking kindly, he addressed us with compassion—a character trait I hadn’t before seen in Mauthausen—apologizing for the brutality that had been inflicted on us. While most men discounted his words as lies, I did not. That small glimmer of humanity spoke volumes to me; it reminded me that good can outshine evil.
Catching our breaths, our stones on the ground beside us, we massaged our pulled muscles as we begged our maker to spare us from another trip up the stairs. I dragged myself over to two men I was friendly with and the three of us commiserated with each other.
It must have been at least twenty minutes before the rest of the guards returned. Who knows where they were during that time. Fi
nding us spread out in the quarry, they went on a crazed rampage against us. The guard who had just been so kind to us suddenly discharged an entire magazine, targeting random prisoners, arbitrarily killing a handful of us. Then he coolly reloaded his rifle, emotionless, as he stepped over the lifeless prisoners, one of whom was clenching a bloody handkerchief. As it turned out, he was not so kind at all; when it came to being reprimanded or doing the reprimanding, he chose the latter. He was pushed into the group-think mentality; when he was alone he acted very differently than when he was part of an influential collective unit. Again, it was clear that no one could be trusted. Evil reigned supreme that day, just as it had on so many other days since the war had begun.
In response, we were herded back up the mountain with our hefty stones. The guards hurtled threats at us, telling us to run as fast as we could regardless of our starting place in line. They bet on who would make it up the stairs first, like we were sprinters in a track and field race and the cliff was our finish line. My will to live once again diminished as I dragged myself and my stone up the hill. I was tired and defeated. I damned the time I had spent as a child sitting in decorative, safe classrooms learning about arithmetic and reading. The time devoted to academics seemed like a waste; I wished I had spent that time learning survival skills. Biting my lip to draw attention away from my aching back, I felt as though my soul was removed from my body and I was watching myself striving to make it to the top. In that moment I was no longer in control of my feet; they were moving automatically like I was a marionette controlled by some external force. I felt myself giving up. I wanted to drop my stone and plummet downward. Feeling my hands letting go, I became fully aware of the weight of the cold, gold circle hanging around my neck, and I pressed on, thinking about my mother’s poetry from the ghetto. One poem in particular came to mind, and I recited it to myself over and over until I finally reached the top:
With certainty, death’s distinct call will one day of course come,
Toiling, tasking, and thinking lets me know I still exist,
Even when my senses powerfully persecute, inviting pain to persist,
Feeling, faltering, and fantasizing, though damaged, I have not yet gone numb.
My mother’s comforting words provided me with the motivation I needed to get through the rest of the day. Sometimes living for ourselves is not reason enough to drive us. Sometimes we become blasé about our own existence, treading water in an indifferent state where suspending the paddling movement of our hands and legs, the very actions that keep us afloat and therefore keep us alive, seems inviting. We might easily give in to death, since it seems to be calling out to us, if it were not for vivid flickers of our loved ones seeping into our minds. At these times we live for these other persons, recognizing the devastation they would incur by our passing. We imagine their heartache, sensing the magnitude of the sorrow of their mourning. In response, we begin to pull away from the stronghold of death, finding renewed purpose in our lives. For me, I carried on for my mother and for Mendel. I longed for a blissful reunion, one where the three of us would meet back in Warsaw after the war, never again to be separated.
A sudden, radiant burst of electrifying adrenaline ignited from my veins from a pent up reserve far within the bowels of my body. My heart began to pulsate rapidly and my palms began to perspire as a rush of vigor incentivized me forward. In that instant, I felt more alive than I had ever felt. Everything became strangely clear as I pressed onward with the now seemingly weightless stone. I no longer felt my shoes slipping to steady themselves on the ice or my face getting thrashed by the wind; I didn’t even feel the cold air that was filling my lungs. My mind protected my body from the pain, somehow masking it from me so that I could keep moving. How I made it without falling or being sent down to the bottom of the hill by a cascading boulder I don’t know, but I’m fairly certain my mother guided me.
Other men were not so lucky. The taxing punishment pushed people who were already on the brink of death to become overwhelmed with feelings of depression and insanity. We all watched as these prisoners, men who could no longer stand to live another second, jumped off the cliff at the top of the steps. It was tempting to join them. I avoided standing close to the overhang so that I wouldn’t give in to this morbid path of least resistance. Even so, the guards made the decision for some of us; they roared with glee as they indiscriminately pushed men off the cliff. A defiant prisoner spit in one of the guard’s faces, unable to tolerate the abusive behavior any longer. He was the next man thrown over the cliff.
I was horrified when I witnessed a guard approach a small group of men and order them to each push another prisoner off the cliff or, if they failed to do so, they would be shot. I didn’t let myself watch as the men made their split-second decisions. I heard a series of bullets being fired and when I turned back around I saw one man standing and five others heaped on the ground next to him with gaping wounds; one man was lying on the bottom of the quarry. All color had been bleached out of the remaining man’s face as he blankly stared at me, his hands tugging at his cap. He had sacrificed another man’s life to save his own. Would I have done the same? Or would I have been shot like the five men who couldn’t bring themselves to do it?
Walking back to camp that evening, we were several dozen men fewer than when we had started the day nine hours earlier. Our souls and our bodies were broken seemingly beyond repair. When we joined the other half of our barracks back at the assembly ground, we learned that they had been sprayed with icy water and had been left to stand outside all day. Dozens of men from this group also died and although some men hung onto life for a few more days, pneumonia ultimately settled into their already weakened immune systems and did them in. It seemed both forms of punishment were equally as devastating. In Mauthausen we did not undergo frequent large-scale selections in order to be sent to the gas chambers as we did in Auschwitz-Birkenau; a majority of us were exterminated simply by overexerting ourselves.
We were appalled to learn that the two men who had been missing that morning had been admitted to the hospital barracks the previous night. As it turns out, it had all been a miscommunication. The hospital staff failed to report the admittance of the men to our barracks leaders, and so we had all been penalized. A simple clerical error resulted in the death of nearly seventy-five of us. Misdirected resentment caused some of us, including me, to curse the two sick men.
Without a shred of strength left, I couldn’t even chew my bread or my sugar beets that night. Hiding my dinner in my pocket, I somehow managed to scale up my bunk and slide into a fetal position. I was so far gone in every meaning of the phrase that I didn’t notice that both of my bunkmates never arrived back to the barracks.
It sounds insensitive, but I was relieved that they didn’t return from our day of punishment. Having a bunk to myself allowed me to finally slacken my muscles and stretch out my limbs during the night, greatly reducing my pain. Since my barracks wasn’t insulated and the windows were drafty, the only drawback to losing my bunkmates was that I missed out on the supplemental body heat they had provided me. But, as was always the case in the camps, as soon as I got used to my new surroundings, a change was initiated.
CHAPTER 40
February of 1945 my number made its way onto yet another list a few days after hundreds of prisoners began pouring into Mauthausen. Arriving in droves from Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbruck, Bergen-Belsen, Gross-Rosen, and other camps because of the approaching Soviet Army, they more than doubled the size of the prisoner population. The largest group of inmates came from Auschwitz-Birkenau. As it was rapidly liquidated, the Germans “protected” their free labor force by evacuating prisoners ahead of the advancing Allied Forces and condensing them into centralized, established concentration camps within Europe. As soon as we saw the first groups of arrivals entering the camp, we knew that the Nazis’ plan was ridiculous; the men and women we encountered were largely “muselmanner.” A majority of the prisoners were scar
cely able to walk when they arrived, let alone work. These inmates were emaciated to the point where they looked like they had been to hell and back, and they probably had. Many of them had walked under heavy patrol for days or weeks on end in the cold and snow, trudging along without coats or other winter attire, shuffling along in wooden shoes or even without any shoes at all. Some of them had traveled in part in boxcars, but they looked no better off than those who had walked the entire way.
The saddest image I can recall about this whole ordeal, one that brought my own morality into question, was described to me by a fellow prisoner who was a messenger for the German soldiers. Because of a special patch adorning his arm, he was granted access to restricted parts of the complex as well as areas outside of the camp. One day he was instructed to carry a letter to a guard posted at the railway station about five kilometers from camp. Heading out of the front gate, the blustery wind stung his nose and lowered his core body temperature such that his movements became greatly restricted. He shielded his face with the envelope-wrapped letter as best he could and sank down to his mid calves in the snow with every step. When he finally arrived to the station, he noticed a string of cattle cars resting idle on the tracks, presumably containing human cargo. He found this odd because the transports were always unloaded in the typical fast-paced German style so that the arrivals could be sorted through and the trains could be sent away to pick up and transport other prisoners. Thick blankets of white covered the roofs of the cars and the tracks; it wasn’t hard to deduce that the transport had arrived before the most recent snow had fallen, which was three days prior. Feeling a necessary urge to find out if there were people inside, he tiptoed up to one of the cars, placing his ear up to its wooden side. He listened intently, eyes closed in an effort to funnel his hearing, until he heard deep-throated, hollow moans bellowing from the car. At one point, he swore that a woman groaned “save me” to him. Recoiling in repulsion, his curiosity had been satisfied. People were locked inside, freezing to death. He had no idea how many detainees were in the cars, but he only heard noises coming from a few individuals. He gulped, realizing that since the Nazis generally over stuffed the cars and only a couple of people were making noises, than most of those inside were already dead. Letter in hand, he stood there searching his conscience for the appropriate response. If he unlocked the cars the people might have a chance of escaping, but if he was being watched as he lifted open the hatch then the guards would kill him and continue to let the men and women trapped inside perish. In the end, he decided that protecting himself was a higher priority than trying to save those who were already so close to death. Besides, he rationed, there was nowhere for the trapped prisoners to hide if they were able to escape. Therefore, he turned a deaf ear to the groans and proceeded to fulfill his assignment. Once he handed over the letter, he waited for a written response and then walked past the occupied railroad cars and headed back to camp with a freshly inked letter in hand.
My Mother's Ring: A Holocaust Historical Novel Page 18