Scheisshaus Luck: Surviving the Unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora

by Pierre Berg; Brian Brock

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  At dawn, after a sleepless night thanks to the bed bugs and the cramps in my stringy calves, I would walk around the camp looking in the moss for acorns that the squirrels had missed. A pocketful could last me the whole day. Many mornings the SS had no bread for us to eat because of the Allied bombings of their trains. They substituted boiled rotten potatoes, but those earth apples lasted only a few days. So there were many days I went to work with my stomach running on empty. One March morning I was hunting for acorns along the barbed-wire fence. The snow had melted and a 196

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  light breeze shook the branches of the oak and pine trees. Somewhere above me a nightingale was singing. In the valley, the morning light reflecting on the roofs and medieval towers of the town of Nordhausen created a storybook illustration. Stopping at the barred front gate, I couldn’t help but think of the commencement speech that the principal of my high school had given two long years ago.

  ‘‘Graduates, you are the elite of our youth and now all doors are open to you.’’

  Damn dirty liar.

  The reveille bell sounded and the nightingale shot out of the pines. I hurried back to my Block, where I found a table piled high with loaves of bread. To my disbelief, each of us got a whole loaf, which normally would have been rationed for six. Later I learned that the shipment was intended for a camp that had already been liberated by the Americans. I went to work with a lighter heart, wolfishly devouring half of my bread on the way down the trail.

  With a full belly I could see myself witnessing American tanks smashing through those gates and making my principal’s words come true.

  When I reached my workbench, I put the other half of the loaf in a drawer. An hour later I couldn’t resist temptation. I cut the bread into thin slices with a coping saw and made my dream of eating toast come true by putting the slices on my electric soldering iron. When they brought the coffee, it was already cold. Why not heat it the same way, I thought? I took the iron and dipped it into the liquid. The sudden cooling cracked the filament. A sickening feeling sank into my gut. Since I was the one responsible for my tools, the boche could accuse me of sabotage. What was I going to do? I took the iron apart in hope of repairing it. My Kapo, Kristian, came up and watched over my shoulder.

  ‘‘ Wenn det heute Abend nicht geht, kriegste fu¨nf und zwanzig, auf ’n Arsch.’’ (If that isn’t in working order by this evening, you’ll get twenty-five on your ass.)

  He knew as well as I that it would be impossible to repair the iron. I couldn’t let a day that had begun so well turn completely PART IV | DORA

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  sour. I came up with a scheme. The tool room clerk inspected our tools when we returned them, and he would immediately know that mine was broken, but he wouldn’t be able to if I returned it hot.

  I went to the tool room with a metal chit that had my workbench number stamped on it, and got an identical Lo¨teisen (soldering iron). Back at my workbench I used the good iron to heat up the broken one. A short while later, holding my breath, I turned in the broken soldering iron. Burning himself on it, the clerk swore and threw the chit at my head. I ducked and with a smile picked it off the floor.

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  Whenever I could I collected the discarded cigarette butts of the civilian plant workers for my own smoking pleasure. To ensure I didn’t burn my fingers trying to puff out the last slivers of tobacco, I made a sharp-looking cigarette holder from scrap electronic parts.

  A German technician took a fancy to it and bought it for a pack of cigarettes that I in turn swapped for a few bowls of soup. Soon I had a thriving business, and I even gained weight from the extra soup.

  One day I decided to make myself a good luck charm, a heart made out of Winidur. As I was working on it, a hand grabbed the heart and another my right ear. A Luftwaffe major, whom I had neglected to notice, led me toward the loft where Kristian had his desk. I didn’t dare stumble as the officer climbed the stairs two at a time or my ear would have been upstairs without me. Seeing the officer, Kristian jumped to attention with his cap at the seam of his trousers.

  The major threw the heart on his desk. Kristian stared at my primitive jewelry while I bowed my head in feigned contrition. His powerful punch sent me flying across the deck, and I thought my head was going to snap off my neck. I played possum, bracing myself for a barrage of kicks, but both Germans were satisfied with the results of the right cross. The major left to continue his inspection 198

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  and Kristian returned to his desk. ‘‘Back to work, you asshole!’’ he yelled.

  Rubbing my jaw and split lip, I slowly picked myself up and slinked down the stairs. Later, Kristian came to my bench and looked over my shoulder. ‘‘How’s your jaw? Nothing broken?’’

  ‘‘You have a hell of a fist,’’ I said.

  ‘‘That was for your stupidity. You’re lucky I held back. If it had been SS, I would’ve bruised my knuckles and sent you to your ancestors toothless.’’

  ‘‘Well, thanks.’’ I painfully smiled

  ‘‘No more cigarette holders, you idiot.’’

  ‘‘You knew?’’

  ‘‘I got smokes and you got some. No civilian would dare talk to you without asking me first. By the way, whose initials are on the heart?’’

  ‘‘My mother’s.’’

  ‘‘Here, go hide your bad luck charm.’’

  Kristian returned to his desk. I squeezed the heart between my hands. Even the slightest act of kindness seemed like a hallucina-tion. For a green triangle, Kristian was more decent than I could have hoped for, and I had my high school German teacher to thank for it. Mr. Claudel, who hailed from Alsace, demanded that we write our assignments using an old German alphabet. Everyone in the class despised him for it. Not only were the letters of this alphabet extremely hard to replicate, but it was fast becoming obsolete.

  Thankfully I had been an obedient student. Kristian, besides being very impressed, appreciated that a non-German made the effort to fill out reports using this elaborate alphabet. In any other circumstance it would have been comical how one could take advantage of a German’s nationalistic vanity.

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  One morning, my Kommando arrived at the plant to find a crate, almost seven feet high and sitting on a dolly, blocking the entrance to our shop.

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  ‘‘What the hell is this?’’ Kristian swore.

  He tried to push it aside, but it wouldn’t budge. It took five Ha¨ftlinge to finally move it out of the way. Kristian fetched an engineer, who looked over the invoice glued to the crate. The night shift had screwed up and it would be our job to deliver the crate to the right location. Kristian rounded up six French Ha¨ftlinge, then turned to me.

  ‘‘Since you speak both French and German, you’re in charge.’’

  Three Ha¨ftlinge manned the rope that was attached to the four-wheel dolly and the rest of us got on either side of the crate to keep it steady.

  ‘‘Don’t leave yet,’’ Kristian ordered. ‘‘You need an overseer, or whatever his title is, to accompany you.’’

  Our watchdog turned out to be a fifteen-year-old Hitler Youth, who was decked out in a brown shirt, swastika armband, and short pants, and who had an Italian carbine slung over his shoulder.

  Showering us with insults as we struggled with our load, he led us down the tunnel farther than I had ever gone before. We came to a locked gate guarded by a Landswehr, an elderly reservist. Germany was sure scraping the bottom of the barrel to keep its war machine sputtering along. The Hitler Youth swaggered up and ordered the old man to open the gate. The guard didn’t appreciate the kid’s cocky tone, but did as he was told.

  We entered a ballbearing factory that none of us Ha¨ftlinge knew existed. One of the dolly’s wheels jammed into the railroad track.

  With the kid swearing and kicking at us, we struggled to dislodge it. We attempted to lift t
he dolly, but it wouldn’t budge, and this sent the Hitler Youth into a rage. His tantrum attracted two young secretaries dressed in flowery print dresses. The pair stared aghast at the seven of us. Obviously they didn’t know such creatures existed on the other side of the gate. The Hitler Youth decided to show off for them, pounding us with the stock of his gun.

  ‘‘ Genug! So behandelt man nicht Hunde!’’ (Enough! You don’t treat dogs that way!) one of the girls screamed.

  The shithead turned his attention to the girls, which gave us a 200

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  momentary reprieve from his adolescent brutality. ‘‘Shut up, you whore! They’re the enemy!’’

  The girls fled with tears in their eyes. Reluctantly, the Hitler Youth allowed me to go search for something that would help free the dolly. When I returned with a length of pipe and a brick, the kid and a middle-aged civilian in a suit were screaming at each other. The secretaries watched from a distance.

  ‘‘I’m in charge here, you snotty brat!’’ The civilian barked as he pointed to the swastika button on his lapel. ‘‘I was a Party member before you were born.’’

  The kid flipped the bayonet out from under the barrel of his gun and pointed it at the man, who continued spewing insults. Neither one of them was willing to lose face. The other Ha¨ftlinge were cowering behind the crate. If this kept escalating, I was certain the brat would pull the trigger and mow us all down. I took a breath and stepped up to the screaming jackals.

  ‘‘Could you two move a little so we can free this?’’ I asked in German.

  Surprisingly they stepped to the side but didn’t stop arguing. If it hadn’t been for the gun, the whole thing would have been farcical.

  I slid the pipe under the dolly and used the brick as a fulcrum.

  ‘‘ Dèmarez tout le monde pousse quand je souslève, pour qu’ on puisse s’enaller’’ (Everybody push when I lift, so we can get out of here), I ordered my crew.

  But freeing the dolly had no affect on the German hotheads. I came up with an idea. I took off my cap and stood at attention.

  Using my best Berlin slang, I respectfully addressed the brainwashed little creep. ‘‘ Herr Wachtmeister, wo sollen wir die Kiste ab-laden?’’ (Sir watchmaster, where should we unload the box?) They stopped arguing and looked at me surprised. My Berlin dialect had hit them like a bucket of ice water. I’m sure they were asking themselves how this cockroach could be speaking their language. The civilian pointed to a corner. The kid lowered his gun and without a word followed us as we unloaded the crate.

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  The civilian called me over and pulled a half a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. ‘‘Thank you. Distribute those to your men.’’

  I slipped one to each of my crew and kept the rest for myself.

  After all, I was the big shot who had saved the day.

  The Hitler Youth kept quiet as he led us back to the shop. He and I reported to Kristian.

  ‘‘No problems?’’ Kristian asked.

  ‘‘Everything went smoothly,’’ I said.

  The brat nodded in agreement.

  Back at my bench, I thought about the stunned looks those two secretaries gave us. I wondered, as I did when I stared at the bullet hole in the railroad worker’s forehead, how much the civilian population really knew about the concentration camps. How were they going to feel when they found out the whole truth? They all knew that Jews had been rounded up, but what would they say when they learned how many cement bags their ashes had filled?

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  With the Allies rolling farther into Germany, not a day passed without an air raid. Nordhausen was constantly encircled in a red halo.

  The fire brigades were no match for the firestorms caused by the bombings. The civilian workers would come into the tunnel coated with black soot and dust, and you could see the demoralization in their eyes. I could also see it in the eyes of the SS and, as in Auschwitz when the Red Army was edging closer, our fate became my overriding fear. Soon there would be no place the Nazis could keep us. Were they planning to kill us all, eradicate the witnesses to what had to be the crime of the century, or would we wake up one morning to find that they had stole away in the night?

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  C H A P T E R 1 9

  One fine April morning we started out for work as usual, but we were halted half way down the hill. From the edge of the trail I could see a waiting train and the guards beginning to cram Ha¨ftlinge into the boxcars. I knew there was no way the Germans had any provisions or water for us on that train. Those boxcars were our coffins.

  I heard the roar of an airplane and turned to see a fighter with a white star on the side strafing the entrance of the tunnel. I could clearly see the American pilot as the plane zipped by. Our guards hit the ground. The American looped back, and in a steep dive dropped the bomb strapped to the belly of his plane. It exploded on the tracks between the entrance and the train. The Nazis stayed prone with their hands clasped over their head and their weapons lying next to them as the American plane circled above us like a hawk. I looked at the cowards and thought how easy it would be to overwhelm them if a few of us would just grab their guns.

  Two Ha¨ftlinge ran toward the camp, disappearing over a hill of bulldozed earth. I ran after them. This is the only chance I have to be left behind, I thought, zigzagging up the slope so I wouldn’t be an easy target if there was a guard who wasn’t cowering.

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  Back in the camp, I hid in an empty Block. The fighter could be scouting for an advancing column of American tanks. Was freedom only a few hours away? My wait lasted until the next morning, when I was awakened not by the sound of tanks crashing the camp gate but by dogs barking. The Nazis rousted us strays and marched us down the trail. Now at least I was prepared for the trip. Hidden in my blanket were three containers filled with water that I had scrounged during the night. Having slept alone in that Block, I was surprised to see that there were about a thousand of us filing into twenty cattle cars. Some of the men probably had come straight from their shift in the tunnel. With only forty of us in the car, at least I would be comfortable for the journey to the next ‘‘Pitchi Poi.’’

  Once the train started rolling it didn’t stop until the next morning, coming to a halt in the middle of pine trees and heath. Surprisingly, they let us out of the cars to walk about. There was smoldering brush on either side of us. I could see down the track the skeletal remains of a bridge. We had missed being on the primary target by a couple of hours. I picked up from the guards’

  conversations that they were waiting for orders as to where to deliver us. Squatting to relieve myself, I spotted some wild onions.

  They went down like fire into my empty belly. Luckily I found some young, tender dandelions to soothe the burning. The SS

  brewed coffee and ate by a campfire while we watched with dripping tongues. We’d had nothing to eat for the last forty-eight hours.

  The SS got their orders and we started off on foot. We soon reached a village of prosperous-looking dwellings. Everywhere we heard cattle, chickens, and pigs. A rooster crowed from its perch on the fence of a white farmhouse with a red tile roof as we went by. I couldn’t believe it. Even German farm animals were Nazis, teasing and torturing our ravenous stomachs. It had to be a Sunday, for people were coming out of the church. They were all big and fat, clean and well dressed. They turned their backs when we passed by or spat with disgust. Others let loose their dogs or chased us with PART IV | DORA

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  pitchforks when we tried to drink from their pumps. I guess ‘‘Love thy neighbor’’ must have been ripped out of their Bibles. They couldn’t give a damn how many cement bags the ashes of Ha¨ftlinge had filled.

  As night fell we followed a road that ascended the Harz Mountains. Multicolored explosions lit the western horizon, and little silvery birds passed in f
ront of the moon. Again we were fleeing before our liberators and marking our trail with corpses. I had to escape now if I was going to witness the Nazis’ demise. We reached a forested plateau, but with the dogs at our heels there was no chance to make a break. Then the road zigzagged downward and at each bend there was a culvert. From the road, all the culverts seemed to have plenty of mud that I could burrow myself into. I checked behind me. The SS and their dogs were at the end of our column.

  At the next bend I jumped into the culvert, but instead of landing in mud I kept falling. My shithouse luck had picked a pipe that was on an extremely steep incline. Pressing my knees and elbows against the slimy walls, I struggled to break my fall. It was hopeless.

  I couldn’t get a grip anywhere. I shot out the other end and landed flat on my back in a muddy ditch. I stood up scraped and dripping wet, only to find the head of the column coming around the bend.

  There was nothing to do but fall back in line.

  When we reached the valley below, they marched us across desolate grazing land to a waiting train sitting on a rusty track overgrown by weeds. I could tell that the march over the mountain had thinned our ranks considerably because we had even more room in the cars. They left the door to our car open, and sometimes there would be a guard sitting there and sometimes there wouldn’t. The SS at Auschwitz would never have such an inconsistent routine.

  Things were so desperate and chaotic for the Germans that they were probably wishing we would all jump out of the train and die.

  The effects of the Allied bombing raids were evident everywhere. Charred remains of buildings and military equipment dotted the landscape like so many funeral pyres. A perfect postcard to send to the Allied generals. Problem was, I didn’t have a camera or a 206

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  stamp and I was riding on a high-priority target for their bombers.

  There were bomb craters on both sides of the track. The train would roll for miles, then stop for hours as workmen fixed the mangled tracks ahead. When the rails were repaired they were still far from being sound.