‘‘ Comment que c’est ici?’’ (How is it here?) the man next to me asked them.
‘‘Awful.’’
‘‘Worse than you can imagine.’’
The group scattered when the Prussian approached, waving his
‘‘translator.’’
We were led into a barracks that had the number 36 on the door. The empty, cavernous space smelled of freshly cut wood and varnish.
‘‘ Alles ausziehen!’’ a voice barked.
The few of us who understood German began to disrobe; the rest watched like bewildered monkeys, then slowly followed suit.
That’s when I grasped how difficult Auschwitz would be for those who didn’t understand the Nazis’ language. I took off my entire
‘‘Dandy of the Shithouse’’ wardrobe—coveralls, plaid flannel shirt, golf knickers, and ski pants. Chills and goose bumps raced over my naked body from the icy wind cutting through the barracks’ walls.
Men began moving to the opposite end of the barracks where prisoners armed with clippers were waiting. I carefully folded my clothes and felt the shoulder of my jacket. The ring that I had hidden in the padding before leaving Drancy was still there. A portly man came to retrieve his belt.
‘‘What are you going to do with that?’’ I asked.
‘‘Those are the orders. We’re to keep our belts and our shoes.’’
I then realized that I would never be wearing my warm winter clothes again. Incensed, I kicked them across the floor. How could I be that stupid to expect to keep them, I asked myself? My ring!
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Shit, I had to get my ring! I scooped up my jacket, tore open the lining, and closed my hand over my one and only true possession as prisoners began to gather up our clothes.
I fell into line for the barbers. We were all naked except for the belts around our middles and the shoes on our feet, which seemed to accentuate how vulnerable and powerless we were. Men stood or sat on stools depending on what part of their body was being sheared.
A big sign hung on the wall behind the barbers. Beneath a skull and crossbones was written Eine Laus Dein Tod (A Louse Means Your Death). It made me think of Nicole. I was sixteen, she was fourteen, and we had been necking on a street bench in full moonlight. I wish it had been a moonless night because while I was kissing her, a louse trekked beneath her bangs. It was the first time I saw one of those miniature gray scorpions. I was so shocked that I forgot to take my tongue out of her mouth.
I stepped up onto a stool and a moon-faced barber grabbed my genitals and started cutting my pubic hairs. He had a grip that could crack walnuts.
‘‘Hey, you don’t have to pull on my balls like that!’’
He looked at me with dull eyes and said, ‘‘ Nix compris’’ (I don’t understand French).
I yelled it in German. With his clippers, he pointed to his red triangle that had the letter ‘‘P’’ written inside it. ‘‘ Ich Pole, lieber Mann’’ (Dear man, I am a Pole), he informed me and kept on clipping.
I winced and gritted my teeth as the clippers pulled out more hair than they cut. I told myself that I would have to learn some Polish swear words fast. After he was through with my armpits, the Pole had me sit so he could assail my head. The hair on my head was less than a half-inch long. What good would it do to cut it any more? I pointed to my head and indicated the measly length with my thumb and forefinger. Grinning broadly, he shook his head and bent over so I could admire his closely shaved skull. I shrugged and submitted. On my arrival in Drancy, I had put up a fight when they PART II | AUSCHWITZ
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tried to cut my hair and I lost a tooth. It was obvious I would lose a lot more here.
The barber finished by slapping disinfectant powder on my body. I tapped him on the shoulder and signaled that I wanted a drink. He shook his head again. ‘‘ Nix Wasser’’ (No water).
I had to find water. My throat felt like ancient parchment, my glands were swollen, and a crushing headache made each pulse beat a hammer blow. There’s plenty of snow, I thought, on the steps outside, and it sure couldn’t be any colder out there than in here. I went to the door, but the damn thing was locked.
A number of my fellow ‘‘nudists’’ were grouped around a tall prisoner with gold-rimmed glasses. He had kind eyes and a vigorous voice with a strong Alsatian accent. On the right sleeve of his striped uniform he had an armband with the printed letters HKB.
Curious, I joined them. HKB, I learned, stood for Ha¨ftlingekranken-bau (inmates’ infirmary). He was in charge of it.
‘‘This is Monowitz, a branch of the Auschwitz camp. They will be putting most of you to work in the Buna plant, which I’m sure you noticed on your way here. Helping finish the construction, mostly. Soon you will receive a shower and your striped uniforms.
Tomorrow you will be given a medical examination, quarantined for a few days, then all of you will be housed in the same Block (barracks).’’ He began to walk away. ‘‘Oh, yes. Be sure to keep your shoes. You will need them to work in. If your feet go bad, you cannot work, and if you cannot work, you will be in a lot of trouble.’’
‘‘Water?’’ I interrupted.
‘‘Be patient. You will get some coffee soon. Do not drink any water. It’s not fit for human consumption. Believe me, it’ll make you sick.’’
It was heartening to see that there was someone who cared about our well-being. My overwhelming dread returned, though, when the Prussian entered the Block with an SS guard.
‘‘Everybody line up with your shoes in your hands,’’ the guard commanded in German.
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We lined up and he flung open the door to an adjoining shower room. As men filed in, the guard inspected their shoes, armpits, and mouths. How was I going to get my ring past this boche? Tucking it into my belt and flesh was too risky, and I didn’t have a tuft of hair left to conceal it in. There was only one solution and it was one I truly didn’t savor.
I stepped out of line unnoticed, then leaned my back against the frozen wall and tried to put the ring into my anus. I had never attempted anything like this before. Apprehensively I pushed it up.
My muscles, taut from nervousness and the cold, resisted. My legs started trembling as I tried to work it in like a corkscrew. Luckily no one was paying any attention to me. I wasn’t shoving my grand-father’s heirloom up my ass for sentimental reasons. No, the ring, two crisscrossed snakeheads with a ruby and diamond for their eyes, was currency and could help make my imprisonment more bearable. Finally it slipped in. The muscles tightened around it, and I felt the ring slide up into my colon. With a deep sigh I slowly shuffled back into line.
The SS guard looked me over and waved me in. I hung my shoes on a nail near the shower room door. Most of the others kept theirs on or in their hands, but I wasn’t about to be stuck walking around in soggy shoes. It was an odd-looking shower room. There were no showerheads hanging down from the ceiling, just a network of pipes with holes at regular intervals attached to the rafters.
Someone bolted shut the sheet-metal door. Bouncing off the walls, our speculating and bitching dissolved into the hum of a beehive. The heat of our tightly packed bodies quickly warmed the room. Arms, bellies, backs, buttocks, and tufts of bristly hair brushed up against me. Repulsed, I would step away from one only to be more tightly pressed against another. Why didn’t they turn on the water? What the hell were they waiting for?
‘‘Water, water!’’ I roared.
‘‘Water, water!’’ Others chanted until it was like thunderclaps in a cavern. I don’t know how long we shouted, but finally the pipes began to tremble and hiss. A few yellowish drops fell, then a deluge.
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To hell with the HKB man’s warning, I thought. With eyes closed I swallowed as much of the lukewarm water as I could. It had a rotten, metallic taste and smelled even worse. Oh, well, it’s better to get ill than to suffe
r any longer from this burning thirst.
Without warning, the water shot from pleasantly warm to scalding. Men howled. I clasped my hands over my head and tried to get to a wall, but I kept slamming into solid barriers of flesh. We were all hopping from one foot to the other as if performing some ridiculous native rain dance. I worried if I kept jumping about I would lose my ring. A dense vapor filled the room until I could no longer see.
As quickly as it had gone up, the water temperature plummeted.
The steam disappeared. The icy water had me gasping for a breath.
It was futile to try to dodge the cascade, so I stood there shivering with my arms wrapped around myself. Thankfully the torrent stopped, then the door opened and we flooded out.
I grabbed my shoes, which were now filled with water. So much for worrying about soggy footwear, I chided myself. As I went through the door, a prisoner tried to snatch my shoes.
‘‘ Loslassen!’’ (Let go!), the man ordered.
Thinking of the HKB man’s words, I hung on to them. The bastard raised his fist.
‘‘ Meine Schuhen, meine Schuhen!’’ (My shoes, my shoes!), I pleaded.
His kick sent me falling backwards. When I dragged my wet body off the floor, my shoes were lying in a growing pile. The same thing was happening to everyone. I was slowly learning that the instructions of the SS guards weren’t always followed and that there were prisoners in charge who made life more miserable than was even intended.
I lined up with the others. Since no towels were given out, we were all squeegeeing our shivering bodies with our hands. If they wanted us to work in their factory, why were they grinding us down?
The Prussian yelled, ‘‘Everybody take a striped uniform!’’
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Next to the entrance was a huge pile of bundled striped uniforms—shirt, coat, trousers, and a beret-styled cap. Prisoners pushed us toward the door. I blindly grabbed a bundle and had only enough time to put on the shirt, which was old and came down to my knees, before I was shoved outside. On the way down the steps I was thrown a pair of canvas shoes with wooden soles. I never dressed so quickly as I did getting those rags over my wet body.
The pants were short and so tight that I couldn’t button them, and my arms were lost in the sleeves of the coat. I put on the shoes. One was too small and I was swimming in the other. My days as the
‘‘Shithouse Dandy’’ were definitely over. Looking about, I found some comfort in the fact that I wasn’t the only one with an ill-fitting uniform.
‘‘ Los marsch!’’ commanded the Prussian, and two hundred and forty new Ha¨ftlinge (prisoners) followed him down a cinder path.
Though everyone seemed to be stumbling, not walking, I could barely keep up with the group. The damn shoes were burning my feet. Despite the frozen ground, there were men carrying their shoes to walk faster. Soon I was, too. The cinders cut my feet, but at least I wasn’t lagging behind.
A gray dawn was rising behind a range of snow-covered mountains. On one side of us was a long row of Blocks and on the other a barbed-wire fence. Hanging from it was a sign with skull and crossbones and a streak of lightning.
In front of one of the Blocks a band of Ha¨ftlinge were loading one of the dump trucks with living skeletons. Half naked, these devastated souls laid on a wooden pushcart waiting their turn to be tossed like trash onto the truck’s bed. They possessed a nightmarish serenity that I had never seen before. Their bodies looked as if life had literally been wrung out of them. They had the legs of storks and their pelvic bones protruded like those of a bankrupt coachman’s cab-horse. They stared at us with eyes so sunk into dark-rimmed sockets that I wondered what kept them from falling into their skulls. We marched past and not a word was spoken. They PART II | AUSCHWITZ
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weren’t being taken to any hospital—that I was sure of. You don’t treat a man like that if you want to nurse him back to health.
‘‘Worse than you can imagine.’’ It sure wasn’t an exaggeration.
What hardships would we have to endure, and for how long, until we were heaved onto the back of a truck? Had I been stripped of a future along with my warm clothes? Thankfully I was distracted from my dread when we were swallowed up by one of the Blocks.
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C H A P T E R 6
The barracks smelled newer than the one we left. We were massed in a large, open area in front of rows of three-tier bunks, which were braced at the rafters. Against the wall to my left was a group of hollowed-faced Ha¨ftlinge and a couple tables and some wooden chairs. When the last of us was inside, the Prussian left without a word. A little man in his thirties walked over from the wall and stepped onto a stool in front of the rows of bunks. On his striped uniform were a green triangle and a yellow triangle forming the Star of David. It was a relief to see a man standing in front of us who wasn’t reeking of savageness.
‘‘ Halt die Fresse! ’’ (Shut up!) he yelled in a high-pitched voice.
‘‘I have important information for you. My name is Herbert. I am the Blocka¨lteste (barracks supervisor). I am the law while you’re in quarantine. Do not forget it. I will give you a few minutes to swap your uniforms and shoes for something better fitting. This will be your only chance.’’
Somebody translated it into French so everyone understood that we were now human clothing racks. We eyed one another up and down, then the grabbing, swapping, pulling, and chasing began.
I dashed from one man to another, sometimes trailing a potential 55
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fit from one end of the Block to the other while they, too, hunted.
Somehow I managed to get a uniform that hung comfortably on my body. I even got my hands on a pair of shoes that were only a tad big before Herbert called off the hunt.
‘‘Everybody get a pair of Fusslappen’’ (foot rags), Herbert said, pointing to a tall stack of square rags in a corner. These were to be our socks. Snatching up a pair, I realized it was going to take some practice to fold the rags around my feet before they wouldn’t come apart in my shoes.
‘‘Now hear this!’’ he yelled. ‘‘It’s time to be processed and registered. You’re going to be given a serial number and a color triangle.
They will be sewn to your coat and pants, and you will have the numbers tattooed onto your left forearm.’’
An alarmed murmur shot through the room.
‘‘Don’t be sissies. It only hurts a little. Your women are being processed the same way,’’ Herbert added.
I could picture Stella whimpering and biting her upper lip while being tattooed, as she did when we started to make love.
The Ha¨ftlinge standing against the wall moved the tables and chairs behind Herbert; set stacks of green cards, pens, and inkstands on the tables; then sat behind them. Unlike others, I jumped quickly into one of the assembly lines. At the first table, a son of a Warsaw haberdasher sewed the number 172649 onto my jacket and pants. I sat down at the next table, where a German prisoner wrote my name and serial number on a card. From the corner of my eye I watched, alarmed, as the man next to me got tattooed. The bleeding numbers were taking up his whole forearm. The German processing me grabbed my left arm, dipped his pen into his white porcelain inkstand, and attacked my forearm with fast, little jabs. I clenched my teeth, but the physical pain was less than the realization that the numbers 172649 meant I was now officially the property of the Third Reich.
‘‘Will this ever come off?’’
He shook his head. ‘‘It’s permanent.’’
It took a few hours to complete our processing. I sat on a bunk PART II | AUSCHWITZ
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across from the Block’s heating pipe, which ran the length of the barracks. I stared at the steel pipe in a futile attempt to keep my mind off of my predicament.
Herbert climbed up on the stool again.
‘‘Those colored triangles next to your
numbers aren’t there for decoration. They signify why you are here, because we are all in this camp for a reason. Red triangles are political prisoners, anti-fascists, communists, socialists, what have you. Black is for lazy, drunken bums who were sabotaging ‘the fatherland.’ Purple means you’re here for your religious beliefs. Yellow is for Jews and Jews only, and green signifies German criminals. I am sure you’ve noticed that I have a yellow and a green triangle. Take a good look, because you probably won’t see another one like it in the camp.’’
The only colored triangles I saw around me were yellow and red; mine was red.
‘‘Oh, and I almost forgot,’’ Herbert smiled. ‘‘Pink signifies homosexual, so it would be wise not to bend over when you are next to a ‘pinkie’ in the shower.’’
There were a few half-hearted laughs. I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.
‘‘Soon you will be housed in another Block and assigned to a Kommando (work detail) depending on your aptitude and experience. Follow the orders of your Kapo (supervisor) and Vorarbeiter (foreman) or you will be punished. If you’re caught trying to escape you will be executed, and remember that nobody likes to stand in the cold while you are hanging. Stay in a perfect line when being counted and do not speak. Remove your cap in the presence of a German officer or guard or you will be punished. You will receive a meal in the morning and in the evening. You will also receive one at noon if you work in the factory. If you’re sick you may report to the HKB. Do not stay in there too long or you will be shipped to Birkenau and, trust me, that will be the end of you. If you get the crud or ringworm, you will stay at the Kra¨tzeblock, where they’ll have you sleep in blankets soaked in kerosene. Again, do not stay 58
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too long. Every day check the seams of your clothes for lice. They carry typhus. Crack the lice between your thumbnails.’’
Someone raised his hand. ‘‘May I ask a question?’’
Herbert wrinkled his forehead. ‘‘About what?’’
‘‘Are there any bedbugs?’’
Herbert managed a grin. ‘‘Oh, yes. And these little fellows are fast. Use a bar of soap to catch them on your mattress. Smash it down on them and they’ll be stuck to it. You’d better be quick with that soap, because the one you do not kill you’ll blow out your nose in the morning.’’
Scheisshaus Luck: Surviving the Unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora Page 6