Scheisshaus Luck: Surviving the Unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora

by Pierre Berg; Brian Brock

  That night I was awakened by the cackle of chickens. First, I thought that a fox or porcupine had entered the hen house, which was located on the side of the barn adjacent to the manor house.

  The noise abated, then I heard someone shoveling. I woke Michel and Jean, and the three of us climbed down to investigate. A lantern was lighting up the hen house. Inside, a Russian tank driver stood watch with a tommy gun strapped to his chest as a German civilian dug up a box. The German ordered us to leave and to forget what we saw. The Russian threw us cold stares, but never uttered a word.

  We climbed back into the loft and watched the pair walk off with a bulging gunnysack and a couple dead chickens.

  Naturally we went back to the hen house. The ground was littered with empty velvet jewelry boxes of all shapes and sizes. By the number of boxes I could tell those two had dug up a fortune. The store names on the cases left no doubt that they were all confiscated from Jewish jewelry stores during the Nazis’ occupation of Holland.

  In their haste, the two had dropped a few spoons made of bent gold coins and twisted gold wire.

  ‘‘Tomorrow we move,’’ I told my friends.

  ‘‘Why?’’ Michel asked.

  ‘‘When there’s no logic I get worried.’’

  ‘‘No logic to what?’’

  ‘‘I heard the civilian speak only German to the Russian.’’

  ‘‘So?’’ Michel said. ‘‘The Russian speaks German.’’

  ‘‘Why would that German lead a Russian tank driver armed with a gun to such loot in such an isolated location?’’

  My buddies were silent.

  ‘‘And why would the Russian split the jewels with a boche when he could easily keep it all for himself by pulling the trigger?’’

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  ‘‘Because we surprised them,’’ Jean guessed.

  ‘‘Doesn’t it seem strange that the German did all the talking?

  That it was he who told us to forget what we saw.’’

  ‘‘What are you getting at?’’ Jean demanded.

  ‘‘I think the Russian was a Nazi in disguise. He looked a lot like the SS officer in that photo on the dresser upstairs.’’

  ‘‘You’re crazy,’’ Jean laughed.

  ‘‘Fine, but tomorrow we might not fare as well if they return for the silverware,’’ I said, nodding toward the splayed trunk, ‘‘or some other buried loot.’’

  Jean and Michel agreed with me on that point.

  With my Nazi submachine gun in my lap I kept watch until morning, then we loaded a wheelbarrow with all the goodies we had ‘‘organized’’ from the house and headed for the lake. Michel and Jean had discovered a vacant cottage there during an attempt at fishing. It had been ransacked, but there were still mattresses on the three beds. We couldn’t ask for more and made it our home.

  While cleaning the cottage we found a couple of shotguns and a box of shells under one of the beds, and Jean and Michel made plans for a hunting trip in the nearby woods. I told them it was foolish to be trekking around with guns when there was a lake stocked with bass, perch, smelt, eels, crawfish, and northern pike.

  They complained that they didn’t have much to show for the hours that they had spent ‘‘dipping a line.’’

  ‘‘That’s because you guys don’t have any experience. You have to think like a fish to catch a fish.’’

  ‘‘Well, you do smell like one,’’ Jean shot back.

  I did know a thing or two about angling. Every day since kindergarten I had fished the Mediterranean before going off to school, and I ‘‘dipped a line’’ every summer morning during my family’s annual vacation in the Alps. When I fished in Lake Geneva, the hotel where we stayed would put fish on its menu because the cooks knew that I would bring them a gunnysack full. I gave Jean and Michel a crash course, and they returned that evening with enough bass and pike to feed us for a week.

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  We were in the town of Wustrow, which was more a village than a town. You needed a powerful magnifying glass to find Wustrow on any map. There were three hundred inhabitants, and a fair number of them were relatives who had escaped Berlin and other German cities the Allied bombers had targeted. Most of the homes were collected along the main road, which ran from Ravensbru¨ck to the city of Reinsberg. There were ten cottages on the lake; two or three seemed like permanent residences, and the rest were summer homes for well-to-do Berliners. Most of Wustrow’s residents made their living from the land, but because of the war most of the fields were untilled that spring. Only two men seemed to be making their livelihood from the lake. Not knowing who had been card-carrying Nazis, I kept my distance from most of the residents, and they made no effort to associate with a Ha¨ftling. I would see other ‘‘pajamas’’

  pass through Wustrow, but I think Jean, Michel, and I were the only ones bedding down there.

  Our cottage gave us a solitude and safety that the estate could never have provided. It was encircled by pine and oaks, which kept us out of view from the Soviets and assorted riffraff traveling the main road. The serenity of our new home was a stark contrast to 233

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  what I had become accustomed to since Drancy, and I realized that I would have to consciously teach myself how to relax. How to go about that was beyond me. What I did know, especially when my sciatic nerve made me limp, was that before I could truly relax I had to take care of some unfinished business that was eating at me.

  The day we were evacuated from Ravensbru¨ck we marched by a farmhouse that had a huge pile of potatoes near the cellar chute. A few of us dashed to ‘‘organize’’ some of the earth apples. A bulldog-faced farmer jumped off his porch and kicked me with his heavy boots. It felt as if he had cracked my tailbone. I fell and dropped my stash. Limping back into line, I heard an awful scream. The boche had plunged his pitchfork into the thigh of one of the other Ha¨ftlinge. So, as Michel and Jean plied their newfound fishing skills, I headed back toward Ravensbra¨ck to kill that farmer. Stuffed under my coat was a German hand grenade that I had found in the asparagus field.

  At a bend in the main road, I was met by a familiar stench, but being on a crusade I had no time to investigate. I passed a mill with a spectacular water wheel turning in a canal choked with plump smelts. I made a mental note to come back with a net. Passing the spot where we had taken the trail into the woods, I began to nervously fondle the bulge under my coat. My hand fell limp when I arrived at my destination. The farm was now a heap of ashes and blackened walls.

  ‘‘A direct hit?’’ I asked a neighbor.

  ‘‘No, the Red Army torched it. You see, Kurt lost his mind when some Russian soldiers backed up a truck and took his damn potatoes. The idiot charged them with his pitchfork. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The soldiers shot him, threw him into the house, then burned it down.’’ Heading back, I tossed my weapon into the woods. I had to admit I was relieved that the Soviets had done the dirty work.

  When I arrived again at the bend in the road, I followed my nose and discovered an arm sticking out of the ground with a swollen, blackened hand crawling with maggots. The markings on the PART VI | WUSTROW

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  green sleeve were that of an Italian uniform. It was peculiar that there would be Italian soldiers this deep into Germany. My attention was drawn to something under a nearby bush reflecting the setting sun. It was the chrome buckle of a knapsack stuffed with Austrian cigarettes. German money was worthless, but cigarettes were gold, and that knapsack would make the trip back home much easier. What a splendid day it turned out to be.

  We received news of ‘‘the god with the moustache’s’’ death and the end of the war days later, possibly even two weeks later. In Auschwitz, I had dreamt that the day he died would be a joyously drunken day, but it turned out to be anticlimatic. Possibly I had anticipated it too much. Maybe it was anticlimatic because there was no dancing in the streets. But what kind of
celebrations could I expect in the country of the defeated enemy? Maybe it was because I knew I still had a hell of a long way to go before I would be home.

  More than likely, it was because his death didn’t erase what I had endured and seen in the last eighteen months. The one thing that I did rejoice, and I quietly celebrated it every day, was the fact that my German submachine gun would prevent any boche from ever ordering me around again.

  The Soviets put up notices stating that no one—German or

  ‘‘displaced persons’’—could travel without a permit. These traveling papers could be acquired only at the Soviet provost marshal’s office in Reinsberg, which was about seven miles south of Wustrow.

  We woke up early and trudged down the empty main road. We came upon two Mongol soldiers with their heads shoved under the hood of their truck. Luckily they knew squat about engines, and Michel had spent time in a garage. Not that the problem, a slipped distributor cable, needed a mechanic. Grinning from ear to ear, the Mongols were more than happy to let us hitch a ride.

  Ten minutes later we were floundering in a motley throng of refugees and displaced people in Reinsberg’s marketplace. Reinsberg wasn’t much bigger than Wustrow, but they did have a bank and that was where the Soviets had set up their provost’s office.

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  waited our turn in line, I elbowed my way to the entrance where a Red Army guard was sleeping in a red velvet armchair.

  ‘‘ Drasvicshem, tovaritch’’ (Good day, comrade), I blurted in my broken Russian.

  The soldier, who had been snoring loudly, opened one eye.

  ‘‘ Trois Franzus, tovaritch,’’ I said, pointing to Michel and Jean.

  ‘‘ Franzus, tovaritch?’’ he repeated, unimpressed as he twisted the ends of his long handlebar mustache.

  I slipped a few of my Austrian cigarettes into his hand. His smile revealed a row of blackened teeth.

  ‘‘ Da, Franzus, tovaritch, da, da!’’

  Deaf to their complaints, the guard pushed away those at the head of the line and planted us. Back on his throne, he pulled out an old edition of Der Stu¨rmer from his jacket pocket. He tore off a square of the newspaper and rolled a cigarette with the tobacco from the ones I had given him. All the soldiers from the Russian countryside seemed to prefer the taste of newspaper to cigarette paper, since that’s what they rolled their makhorka in back home.

  Blissfully the guard breathed in the first puff, and slowly the corner of a swastika became smoke.

  An hour later a broad-shouldered female private ushered us inside. The bank was no more than a small office with a few chairs and a well-worn desk. Sitting behind it was a Russian noncommissioned officer who looked to be in his thirties. He asked in halting German where we intended to go. From our ‘‘pajamas’’ he knew where we had been. While the officer began to fill out our traveling permits, Michel stared out the window.

  ‘‘If I’m not back in five minutes, wait for me at the edge of town,’’ he whispered, then ducked out.

  Seeing that the officer was sympathetic to Ha¨ftlinge, I told him I had discovered that a ‘‘Nazi farmer’’ in Wustrow was hiding two draft horses and those beasts could make our return to France easier. The Russian smiled and wrote out a requisition on bank stationery.

  As he said he would be, Michel was waiting for us at the edge PART VI | WUSTROW

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  of town. He had a Russian helmet pulled down over his ears and a bicycle hidden in a bush.

  Jean pointed to the helmet. ‘‘How did you get that?’’

  ‘‘Simple. I saw a Russian park his bicycle in the courtyard behind the bank. He hung his helmet on the handlebars and went into a shithouse. When I got back there I could tell from the sighs he was heaving that he was going to be there for a while. Nobody blinked when I came riding out on his bicycle with this pot on my head.’’

  With that Red Army helmet bobbing on his head, Michel furiously pedaled back to Wustrow with me perched on the handlebars and Jean sitting on the small luggage rack over the rear wheel. We sure got some stares from the people on the road. Hey you German fools, get a good look at the three-clown Ha¨ftlinge circus riding by!

  The next day we all went to the Wustrow garrison, which was a small house on the southern edge of town. I showed a soldier the requisition. He acted like it was meaningless to him. I wasn’t sure if he was illiterate or couldn’t be bothered. I asked in broken Russian who was in charge. A sly smile flashed on his face, and he led me behind the house to a girl’s bicycle, which was lying on a gravel path that cut through a meadow. He pointed to a knoll and waved me on.

  I walked through thigh-high grass and almost stepped on the officer in charge. He was soaking the biscuit with a stunningly beautiful Slav girl in her early twenties, who had her skirt hiked up and blouse open. I turned my back to them and profusely apologized in German. I braced myself for a Russian tongue-lashing, but all the chagrined young officer did was turn his back to me, yank up his pants, and brush the grass off his uniform.

  Still on the ground half-naked, the girl laughed at our reactions, making me feel silly and immature. Holding out the requisition, I explained in German why I had come to the garrison. The girl jumped up, snatched the paper from me, and read it aloud. Her smooth pink cheeks mesmerized me. She had the most beautiful skin I had ever seen. It had been way too long since I had laid eyes 238

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  on such a fine creature. I asked myself how that lucky son-of-a-bitch had gotten his skin against hers. His officer stripes, of course.

  She gave me a smile.

  ‘‘Oh, don’t worry, he was all through. Your horses should come first, anyway.’’

  Either something had gotten lost in the translation or the officer in Reinsberg had expedited things the best way he knew how.

  The requisition read that the Wustrow garrison was to assist us in recovering ‘‘our stolen horses.’’ The girl ordered the reluctant lieutenant to confiscate the horses immediately. He nodded, and I wondered if he had accidentally put on her uniform. I thanked her profusely and again expressed my apologies.

  ‘‘I’ll catch up later. Anyway, he needed a breather,’’ she winked.

  The officer quickly rounded up a couple soldiers and Jean, Michel, and I led our military escort to the barn where the draft horses were being kept. The farmer’s protests fell on deaf ears. The officer had only one thing on his mind and it wasn’t his duties. I couldn’t blame him.

  Jean and Michel led a pair of well-kept Percherons to the country estate. We calmed the animals with a couple buckets of oats and a bale of hay. Since they were too fat to saddle, we needed to

  ‘‘organize’’ harnesses and a wagon. That wouldn’t be an easy task.

  The Soviets had confiscated nearly every vehicle in Wustrow. We had gotten the horses and our permits quicker than expected, so we were confident that we would jump this new hurdle and be on our way home in a couple days.

  ‘‘ Ou nous pouvons revivre, aimer, aimer’’ (Where we can live again and love), Michel laughed as he led the horses into the stalls.

  I was holding Stella the last time I heard that refrain. I walked into the courtyard with tears welling in my eyes. I had lost almost all faith of ever holding her again.

  One of us was always in the barn keeping guard over our new prized possessions. There were no secrets in such a small town, and once the farmer learned of the horses’ new home he made daily visits. He would brush their coats, hug their necks, and kiss them PART VI | WUSTROW

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  on the nose, all the while blubbering like a four-year-old. He tried to make us feel sorry for him. Without those draft horses he couldn’t work his fields, but we had no pity. One time he even offered me a smoked ham for their return. I shook my head, no.

  ‘‘Go break your back tilling your fields just as we broke our backs digging ditches for your glor
ious Fu¨hrer.’’

  It would be a long and arduous trip to the French border. At least four main Germany rivers—the Hafel, the Elbe, the Weser, and the Rhine—must be crossed. No one knew if there were any bridges still standing. The rubble-filled towns might not present opportunities for ‘‘organizing’’ provisions en route. So, in between scouring the countryside for anything with wheels, we canned a sheep and fruit preserves. We lived off a stray goat that I shot while leaning out the cottage’s back window. That was the last time I fired at anything in Germany, because the Soviets posted notices forbidding the carrying of weapons. Nevertheless, Jean and Michel went off with the shotguns for a morning rabbit hunt. When I pointed out that their activities might prove dangerous, Jean replied, ‘‘Those signs don’t apply to us. We’re on the Allied side.’’

  All morning I heard them sniping away in the woods. Around noon, a truck filled with soldiers rumbled up the road. Hearing the shotguns, the truck stopped. The soldiers seemed unsure of what to do. Coming out of the house, I could hear them talking. The truck turned down a trail and disappeared into the woods. When my two friends didn’t return that evening I was certain that they’d had a run-in with the soldiers.

  At daybreak I followed Michel’s and Jean’s tracks to the bank of a stream, where their footprints mingled with a multitude of heavy bootprints. I walked over to the garrison, hoping that they could tell me something. The guard standing near the front door didn’t question me when I walked inside the house. Wearing ‘‘pajamas’’

  was almost as good as having an authorized pass. To my surprise, the Soviet lieutenant’s stunning lovebird was sitting behind a desk in the front room. She had a white piece of cardboard pinned to her blouse with her name, Sonia and Dolmetscher, German for 240

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  ‘‘interpreter,’’ written across it. Her gorgeous smile turned to a frown when I told her why I had come.