The Dentist of Auschwitz

by Benjamin Jacobs

  In the meantime, the Allies were increasingly victorious. After the Soviets threw the Germans out of Russia, the British and American troops chased them out of North Africa. Our minds latched on to any news that would spell hope. We had survived this long, and we hoped that we were now living through the final darkness before the dawn. The news reports forecast a quick end to the war. But that hardly made a difference. The Germans still thought they were invincible and continued their cruelties against us. One day an inmate with a bullet wound was brought into camp on a stretcher. I watched as Max Schmidt, an Unterscharführer, bent over him and said, “Es ist vorbei” (He is gone). With this, he shot him twice in the head. He then ordered him taken to the corpse room. Another inmate told me later that when the prisoner had stepped out of line, a guard pulled the trigger that put a bullet into his chest. It may well have been true that there wasn’t much anyone could do for the wounded man, but at least Schmidt should have had him brought to the KB to see if a doctor could help him. This was the first time that I saw the usually mild-mannered Schmidt kill someone. It demonstrated to me how little a Jewish life meant to any of them. Max Schmidt was not the usual SS man. He just did not fit the Nazi mold. I thought that he could not take Hitler’s rubbish seriously. But evil can have many faces.

  Another day Dr. König took an impression to replace the bridge of an SS man. Then he asked me if I had enough dental gold to make a new one. That surprised me. How would I have dental gold? I wondered. I said no.

  “Don’t you take out the gold teeth from the dead inmates?” he asked. “If you are not doing that, plenty of gold is going to waste.”

  I looked at him in disbelief. “Oh! Herr Haupscharführer,” I answered, stunned.

  “Why don’t you?” he said to me, annoyed.

  “I didn’t know. No one had ordered me,” I said in my defense.

  “Be sure that from now on you remove all the gold before they are taken to the Stammlager.”

  I felt revulsion. I did not think that anyone could stoop that low. Killing people was horrible enough, but tearing out teeth of the dead moved me to disgust. I did not think that I could do it. But it was inevitable. I had no choice. “Jawohl, Herr Hauptscharführer,” I said, sickened and scared.

  As appalled as I was at having to do it, as repulsive as the thought was, I knew that since I was the only dentist in Fürstengrube, I had to do it. It was by far the hardest thing I had to do in any camp. I often asked myself what would have befallen me if I had not complied with this order. I have never stopped wrestling with that question. When I approached the corpse room for the first time I tried to rationalize that what I was about to do was meaningless to the dead. But it never was to me.

  Repugnance preceded each of my trips to the morgue. I never lost that feeling when I went to that small room—two and a half by three meters. When I opened the door, the smell of death greeted me. I shivered. Atrophied bodies lay in a mass on the cement floor. They were grotesquely misshapen, with surprise on their faces, as if they did not know why they had to die. I heard the voices of broken hearts and crushed souls. Some were still clothed. I tried to force myself to believe that they were only bodies and never were human. But as hard as I tried, and as much as I pretended not to care, I could not keep myself from trembling. So many emotions ran through me. I was sickened and unable to begin the task I had come to do. I walked out and went around the building several times. When I returned, I forced myself to approach a middle-aged man’s body. His half-open eyes stared up at me, as if to accuse me of the crime I was about to commit. As I tried to pry open his mouth, I felt his ice-cold skin. When I finally forced it open, his jawbones cracked, and that frightened me. Following each turn of the mouth opener was a screeching sound. I imagined this was his way of saying “Don’t!” to me. I felt as if the dead would rise up to stop me. Each piece of gold I extracted made me think how shocked they must be. Sometimes I had to pretend, in talking to myself, that what I was doing was normal. The tools I used for this grim task I kept in a red box. Why I painted the box red I didn’t know. Most inmates who saw me walking to the morgue with it knew what I was doing and didn’t consider it unusual. My father and my brother also knew what I was doing, though I never told them. Now I had enough gold for the SS men’s bridges and caps. What I didn’t use Dr. König took back with him to the main camp.

  Suddenly doctors were being sent to the front, and Dr. König told me that he was making his last visit to Fürstengrube. He ordered me to care for the SS men’s dental needs, an ironic request considering that Jewish dentists were not allowed to treat Germans outside the camps. The guards who came to me for treatment modified their behavior and often brought me bread, sausages, and cigarettes, while cautioning me not to tell anyone. Of course I did not ask them for anything. Nevertheless their offerings went a long way toward helping me, my father, my brother, and a number of other inmates.

  A few weeks after Dr. König left, another dentist came to oversee the dental station. Dr. Schatz was in his midforties, mild-mannered, friendly, and slightly hunched over. When I recited the camp’s required litany, he said that I need not say it for him. Nor did he object to my continuing to treat the guards. But one time he came in very upset. He threw his hat on the chair disgustedly and walked through the dental station, his hand clutched behind his back. “Do you know what they made me do?” he said, looking straight at me, disturbed.

  My place was not to reply, but since he looked at me and waited, I said, more out of politeness than curiosity, “What, Herr Hauptscharführer?”

  He held out the keys to his ambulance and said, “Go and look at the instrument panel. Then you will see what I mean.” His vehicle was parked just a couple of steps from the door. I took his keys and went outside. I opened the driver’s door and looked at the instrument panel, which had the usual levers: choke, lights, wipers, heater, and so on. Then I noticed a white lever below with the word Gas on it. Just below that was an inscription: “Achtung, nur im Betrieb gebrauchen” (Caution, use only when in motion). I knew then what it meant.

  A shock went through me. I closed my eyes and stepped back. The souls of my mother and my sister were there. Though I knew that these outrageous vehicles existed, seeing one that looked so innocent evoked a new and intolerable pain. It was evidence of the most inhuman and unusual of crimes. It inflicted new and deep wounds. I stood transfixed a while until I regained my composure. The shock of this incident may be at the heart of this book.

  I tried to conceal my outrage when I returned. I thought it would be best not to say that I understood what he meant. Although I thought his disgust was real, I could not allow myself to agree with him openly. “Herr Hauptscharführer, I don’t know what you meant,” I said.

  “Did you notice the sign under a handle that says ‘Gas: Use only when in motion’?”

  I said that I had but claimed I did not understand. I wanted him to tell me. “I saw that lever, Herr Hauptscharführer, but I thought it was a hand accelerator.”

  “Don’t you know what they are doing to you people?” And without waiting for an answer, he became specific. “By pulling this lever, we kill you people! With this lever the driver can divert the exhaust flow to the passenger section of the vehicle. The carbon monoxide then kills everyone in it. That is what we doctors are ordered to do.” I looked at his disturbed face. It showed anger and disgust as he poured out his pent-up emotions. He then proceeded to tell me that a lot of our people had already been victims in that very vehicle.

  At first I did not reply. I watched him shake his head in disgust. This encouraged me to tell him about the order of one of his predecessors: to pull the gold teeth from the dead inmates. I hoped he would tell me to stop. Instead of doing so, he replied, “You should see the gold and silver that Kanada gathers every day in Birkenau. There as many as ten inmates are pulling gold teeth from the dead at the gas chamber.”

  Hearing an SS doctor being that explicit about their crimes came as a great surprise t
o me. As he continued blasting the Führer, I still pretended to have no opinion about it, although I had lots of questions for him. What puzzled me was why a decent human being like he seemed to be would submit to the Nazis. “Dr. Schatz, was it right to see human beings trampled, just because they are different? Some, no doubt, were your friends and neighbors. Was it OK, Dr. Schatz, to see people disinherited, so that yours would benefit? Did you approve of all this while you were winning the war? You must have known that you were placing your trust in an unscrupulous man. Did you condone Hitler’s ideas at first? Did you not think that eventually there would be a price to pay?”

  Although his confessions were frank and he had renounced the Führer, he still bore the disgrace of being an SS man. I liked what he said and looked forward to his weekly stops. From that day on he acted as if we were equal. I often thought that people like Dr. Schatz would bring the Nazi regime to its knees. As we know now, that did not happen. Hitler was not defeated from within. In spite of what Hitler had done, the German people continued to approve of him even when he was not victorious.

  I was tempted to tell Dr. Schatz how SDG Hinze tortured me, but I knew he could not help. One day Schatz instructed me not to make dental appointments for him with the SS men. “I don’t want to see them,” he said as he left. From then on he came only occasionally to Fürstengrube.

  One day Hauptscharführer Moll came into the station and asked me when Schatz was expected back. I told him Schatz stopped by only occasionally and that I had been caring for the dental needs of the guards. I feared his reaction, but he surprised me by saying that he might visit me someday. “I may need you to look at my teeth.” He too didn’t object to being treated by a Jewish prisoner. In the next few days Moll passed by the dental station several times. He must have had second thoughts. One afternoon, though, I heard his boots behind me, and there he stood. An inmate in the chair jumped up and slid past him, out the door.

  “Herr Hauptscharführer, inmate 141129 reports obediently to your orders,” I said.

  “Will you take a look at my teeth, dentist? I think I have a cavity in one of them,” he replied.

  “Please sit in the chair, Herr Hauptscharführer,” I said, pointing to it.

  He unbuckled his belt, took off his hat, and laid both on the stool. The human skull and crossbones on his SS badge stared at me. Then, when I moved to the side where his glass eye was, he reached for his revolver and pointed it at my chest. “Don’t try anything stupid, dentist,” he said, half jokingly. My heart pounded. Knowing Moll’s unpredictable temper, I was very uncomfortable.

  “Herr Hauptscharführer,” I said as I brushed his pistol aside, “you don’t need to be concerned. The pistol is only in our way.” He smiled awkwardly and put it back in the holster. I saw considerable decay on the lingual side of his upper right molar. The cavity was not very deep, though. I removed the diseased dentine, then cleaned and closed up the space with a phosphate cement. By then his mood had changed, and he was relaxed. That day I discovered the other Otto Moll. Unfortunately, this one made rather rare appearances.

  “Dentist, I have heard that your father and brother are also here?” Moll asked.

  “Yes, Herr Hauptscharführer.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that? Where do they work?”

  “My father works at construction, with Kapo Hermann, and my brother is working in the coal mine,” I said. “Herr Hauptscharführer,” I added, “many fathers and sons are here. I didn’t know that this mattered.”

  Then he asked me how old my father was.

  “Forty-nine, Herr Hauptscharführer.”

  “Isn’t construction work too hard for your father? Wouldn’t he be better off doing something in the camp? Where would you like to see him working?”

  “Home, where we all belong,” was the reply that flashed instantly through my mind, but of course I didn’t say that to him. He surprised me to no end. I had not expected to hear this from the wicked Otto Moll. I looked him in the eye. Was this a genuine offer? It sounded like compensation for my service. I paused and thought about which job would be best for Papa. Then it occurred to me: barracks orderly. “My father would make a good Stubendienst, Herr Lagerführer,” I said enthusiastically.

  “Good. Then it’s settled. Tell Grimm to give your father a job as a Stubendienst. And your brother,” he said, “can work in the KB.” With that he buckled his belt, took his hat, and left.

  In the past two months I had often thought of finding a way to ease my father’s load. But here, asking for help had usually brought the opposite result. It was taken as an attempt to dodge work. I told Grimm about my conversation with Moll. Papa was assigned to Kapo Nathan Green’s block, where the three of us had first slept, and my brother went to work in the KB. Dr. Lubicz, who always needed more help in the KB, appreciated my brother’s work. Josek stayed there until we were evacuated from Fürstengrube in January 1945.

  By the end of 1943 more inmates were brought to Fürstengrube, from Holland, Belgium, Morocco, and Norway. Those who spoke, or at least understood, German or Yiddish were able to follow the Kapos’ orders in German. A Dutch boy, only fourteen years old, named Kopelmann, told me that he and his family were arrested because a Jewish spy was roaming the streets of Antwerp pointing Jews out to the Nazis. His family was told that they were being resettled in Poland. Because someone at their selection had liked his freckled face, he had been separated from his family and transferred to Fürstengrube. Whereas most of those who arrived with him soon became Mussulmen, Kopelmann did all right.

  Fürstengrube had a mélange of Jews. The French Jews didn’t like the Belgians, the Belgians didn’t like the Dutch, the Dutch didn’t like the Germans, and no one liked the Polish Jews. The Russians didn’t even count. And as for any cooperation between Jews and non-Jews who shared the same fate, that did not exist.

  The biggest priority to our oppressors in Fürstengrube was mining coal and delivering it to Buna, where it was used to make synthetic rubber. To increase production, they brought inmate specialists from our governing camp, Buna. And there were more SS men. One guard told me how he had been made a guard. He was in the army, but one day his army papers, he claimed, were replaced with those of a member of the Waffen SS. He was sent to our camp.

  A former POW, a Russian by the name of Boris, whom I got to know well, told me he planned to escape. I warned him against it, but he steadfastly maintained he would find a sure way out. One Sunday afternoon Boris, counting on the laxity of our guards during the ordered bed rest, climbed up the wall and jumped to the other side. Shortly thereafter the sirens rang, and in the yard lay Boris’s body on display.

  On Christmas night 1943, I awoke to blowing whistles. I looked out the window and saw inmates rushing out of the barracks and into the yard. In their midst was Lagerführer Moll, Unterscharführer Schmidt, Pfeiffer, Schwientny, all the Stubenältesters and the Kapos. A recent snowfall added light to the dark yard. First, all the block elders had their prisoners count off. Then they had them rush back to the blocks, just in time to drive them out again.

  I didn’t know what it meant. Suddenly I saw Moll burst into the camp and begin shooting. I heard three rounds of gunshots and a loud echo. I felt cramps within me, as if I had been hit. There was turmoil outside. When I looked out again, the inmates were rushing back to the barracks. Then I saw bodies and blood-spattered snow. One of the injured inmates was trying to get up, but he staggered and fell. Other wounded men were begging for help. The macabre scene resembled a dance of the dead.

  What I saw that night overshadowed all previous cruelties that I had seen. I could not bear looking out any longer. I was on the verge of breaking down. I covered my eyes, believing that my father or my brother might be out there. I felt a deep shame that my circumstances had separated me from those whose fate I shared. I learned later from Grimm that Moll had been drinking that night, and when he heard that one of our inmates had escaped, he was furious and became uncontrollable. He ordered all
inmates to the yard and released a salvo of machine-gun fire into the rows of prisoners. Had it not been for Unterscharführer Schmidt, who stopped him, the massacre would have been even greater, Grimm said. The escaped inmate who enraged Moll was Gabriel Ratkopf. For his act nineteen inmates were killed that night. They suffered and died alone, since Moll forbade any help. I knew one of the murdered, Max Glazer, who was shot in the stomach. Before the war he taught German at Prague University. This incident also prompted Otto Moll to demote Richard Grimm. He brought a new Kapo from the main camp, Otto Breiten, to became Fürstengrube’s new Lagerältester.