The Dentist of Auschwitz

by Benjamin Jacobs

  To increase the mine’s productivity further, I.G. Farben introduced bonus points, which could be redeemed at an I.G. Farben stand. Jewish workers, however, were limited to a maximum of four points, which got them very little. Nonetheless, the Kapos were pleased, since they got most bonuses and could use them to enjoy the company of the Nazi-coerced prostitutes in Birkenau.

  With a new transport of Jews from Austria came many talented actors from a well-known Vienna theater as well as the conductor of the Vienna State Opera, Harry Spitz, and Tauber, the nephew of a popular opera singer, Richard Tauber. This undoubtedly gave Moll the idea to create an orchestra in Fürstengrube, and beginning in February 1944 our inmates went to and returned from work to the sound of German marching music. Mr. Spitz’s past was shrouded in mystery. Some who knew him from Vienna claimed that he had once been married to Erna Sack, a famous German soprano. The story was that she had divorced him because of the Nazi racial laws. Staying married to a Jew would have ended her career. But Harry never spoke about it. Soon after they arrived, in an attempt to inject some light into an otherwise bleak existence, Spitz organized stage performances of Strauss, Lehár, and Kálmán operettas. The Germans liked that. A stage was constructed in the SS mess hall, and the first rows were reserved for the SS and I.G. Farben personnel. The Kapos followed, and behind them were seats for inmates. Even the sick attended. The Germans were fascinated by Tauber’s tenor, and he was exempted from working in the mines.

  One sunny day in February we saw the first Allied bomber fly over Fürstengrube. Two planes appeared, swooped down, and made a pass over us. We believed that they could distinguish who we were. We were ready to pay our price to see this nightmare end. We looked up to the sky, believing that they would drop their bombs on the camp on the next approach. To our regret they did not. We continued to be mired in our fate.

  Otto Moll came to the dental station and asked me if I could make jewelry. I told him that my skills fell short of jewelry making, but I thought that there surely must be a jeweler in camp. The following day, I found an inmate, Simche Laufer, who, I was told, was an extraordinarily good jeweler. Moll relieved him of his job, and he began to work in the dental laboratory. With the limited number of jewelry tools I had, Simche blended down the twenty-two-carat dental gold from dead inmates’ teeth into eighteen-carat jewelry gold. After hammering and chipping away at it, he created elegant pins, rings, brooches, and whatever else Moll ordered him to make. He also made Moll a pair of stunning gold cuff links. Simche’s reward was an extra soup ration per day.

  While the Nazis must have realized they would lose the war, Fürstengrube kept growing. A new barracks was finished. It was the end of February, and though the sun shone, it failed to warm us. The winds picked up the snow from the rooftops and blew it around into clouds. At night I could hear the wind whine and drive snow through the poorly joined wallboards.

  SDG Hinze still stopped most mornings to continue his cruel routine with me, which had become an obsession with him. I heard about an instance at the construction site, where a guard had thrown away a half-smoked cigarette to provoke an inmate to pick it up. Tempted and little suspecting the outcome, one of the inmates reached for it and was riddled with the guard’s bullets.

  The lack of mine safety resulted in many inmate injuries. One afternoon an inmate from Dortmund, Germany, named Erich Wiltzig came to the dental station. He had been struck by a lump of coal at work. I looked at his bruised face, and when he moved his jaw, I saw that he had a fracture of the mandibular bone. I spoke with Dr. Lubicz, and he placed Erich in sick bay for two weeks—the longest time permitted. It actually took three times that long for his jaw to heal. Later, after he went back to work, he was brought back to camp dead. He had been labeled a work shirker, and a guard had shot him in another staged incident.

  Winters posed greater threats to our survival, but the winter of 1944 was particularly cruel. The inmates returning from work were frozen stiff. Their coats looked like sheets of metal. For most of us, this was the third winter of captivity. It seemed that we were running out of the tenacity necessary to survive.

  One day Willy Engel told me that a number of people from the International Red Cross were expected to come on Sunday to inspect the conditions in Fürstengrube. That Sunday we received a real meal: boiled potatoes, vegetables, and a slice of pork meat. Shortly thereafter, a group of distinguished civilians accompanied by Moll and the newly upgraded Scharführer Schmidt came in. Among them was also the Obersturmbannführer and Kommandant of Auschwitz I, Rudolf Höss. First they went into Willy’s office. Next they came to my dental station. I heard Moll say this was a perfect example of the many kinds of health care they provided for us in Fürstengrube. I listened and wondered why not one of them asked me a thing. But what if they did? Could I tell them the truth? Dr. Lubicz said that the same thing had happened to him.

  We heard stories about Polish partisans operating nearby. Our Polish inmates had been contacted by them, we were told, but they never contacted the Jews.

  In May 1944 a new transport arrived. Among them were a few Norwegian Jews. One was the 1939 heavyweight boxing champ of Norway, named Boot.

  Hinze kept up his routine of terror on me every day. Nothing ever softened his attitude. With no end in sight, I asked Dr. Lubicz for advice. Lubicz, I saw, feared him as well. He told me to speak with Josef Hermann, who by then had Moll’s ear. But Hermann said that nothing could be done about the mistreatment of a Jewish inmate, and Hinze’s streak of arrogance and misuse continued.

  One day Blockkapos Maurice and Grimm and three Polish inmates were arrested while digging a tunnel from Maurice’s barracks out beyond the fence. They dug the tunnel at night and carried the soil out in blankets. We did not hear how the guards found out. It was rumored that Goldstein, the camp barber, who was to go with them, betrayed them. Some blamed it on Josef Hermann. Anyhow, after they were quizzed about who else was involved and from whom they got the tools, they were sent to the gallows for the attempt to escape and join the partisans. Maurice, an always happy, good-spirited Frenchman, shouted down from the gallows at the Gestapo henchman, “You will pay for that soon!” And then to us, “Good-bye, comrades. Farewell!” Jan, one of the Polish inmates, sang “Jeszcze Polska nie zqinela,” the Polish anthem.

  I knew that every morning I had to undergo Hinze’s ritual. I walked around like a caged animal until he came. Some days I felt like hiding when I saw him enter the camp. Then he came to the dental station and said to me, “You know what you have to do, dentist. You know the routine.” Then he proceeded with the torment. This went on for four incredible months. With no way out, I decided to speak to Otto Breiten.

  Breiten said that he would look in when Hinze was there. The next time Hinze came, Otto peeked in discreetly, looking at us through the window. He saw Hinze abusing me and also saw him using dental instruments to clean his fingernails. On the latter point he based his attack. Mistreating an inmate, Breiten thought, was an SS man’s privilege, but sabotage of German property was a crime. He told me that he would talk to Moll. “Of course,” he added, cautioning me, “You will have to tell all this to Moll, in Hinze’s presence.” I knew the risk, but I couldn’t go on like this any longer. Breiten was certain that the best place to talk to the Hauptscharführer would be in the kitchen, while he ate the lavish meal that Koch prepared for him every day.

  It was about twelve-thirty in the afternoon one day when Breiten came to me, urging me to hurry. “Moll is in the kitchen, and he is in a good mood. I told him everything about Hinze, and he wants to see you.”

  Willy Engel, who also knew about our plan, followed us, anxious about the outcome. “Lay it on him,” Willy encouraged me.

  As we came into the kitchen, Moll was having sauerbraten for dinner. Moll hardly looked in our direction, as if we weren’t there. It wasn’t long until Hinze arrived. He sensed something unusual, because in reporting to Moll he seemed uneasy. Moll continued eating as if he did not notice Hinze eith
er. Hinze stood, looking at me and at Breiten, weighing what was going on. Finally the Hauptscharführer, with his mouth still stuffed, said to me, chopping each word, “The Lagerältester tells me that the SDG, Unterscharführer Hinze, often interferes with your work. Is that true?”

  I knew what was to follow. I would have to complain to the Kommandant, to one SS man about another. But I knew that I could not back out. I had to go through with it. With butterflies in my stomach, I barely answered him, “Yes, Herr Hauptscharführer.”

  “Is it true that the Unterscharführer cleans his fingernails with your sterilized instruments?”

  “Yes, Herr Hauptscharführer,” I answered clearly and continued with the details.

  Moll listened intently to everything that I said. He was getting angry. Punishing inmates was his own privilege. Then he turned to Hinze and in a stern voice said, “Is it true what the dentist says? What do you have to say, Unterscharführer?”

  Hinze was dumbfounded and stood there silent. He did not seem to grasp the situation or believe what was actually happening. He, a Nazi officer, was being questioned about what he did to a Jewish prisoner? Finally he mumbled that he was not going to answer. That did not sit well with the authoritative Moll. “Ich sehe zu, daß Sie versetzt werden” (I’ll see to it that you are transferred), Moll said and dismissed us all.

  I still could not trust that Hinze’s tyranny had come to an end. “You won’t have to fear him much longer,” Breiten said. It was more surprising when Hinze came to see me a few hours later. Calmly he said good-bye to me as if we had once been friends. Had it not been for Lagerältester Otto Breiten’s courage and, of course, Moll’s inflated ego, I would have never been freed of Hinze’s misuse. This day was special, one I would not ever forget.

  Another time it was announced that German political inmates could volunteer for the German army. Not all were eligible, nor had all the eligible signed up. Otto Breiten did, and Josef Hermann became Fürstengrube’s new Lagerältester. Josef Hermann was the son of a Jewish architect. His given name was Hermann Josef, and he came from Ansbach, Bavaria. His mother had converted to Christianity. He was married to a Christian, he said. His father had designed the first low-income housing project in Germany; it was built outside Núremberg and called Gartenstadt. He came to Auschwitz as a Jew in 1942. When he was sick with typhus, he lay in the main camp’s KB, and a doctor friend reversed his first and last names to make him sound Gentile. He was sent with us to Fürstengrube after his recovery. That is how the Jew, Hermann Josef, became the non-Jew, Josef Hermann. As camp elder, his position was precarious. He feared that the Kapos who came with us might know his real name and eventually give him away.

  Nearly every week new Jews were delivered from such faraway places as Libya, Morocco, and Algeria. The Germans had arrested them in Vichy France. They were replacing the dwindling number of original inmates. Of the Jews from Dobra who had come with me here, only a few remained alive.

  One day Kurt Goldberg came into the dental station. With coal dust baked into his face and his striped jacket hanging on his skeletal body, he was a bare image of the Goldberg I remembered. He was despised by his fellow inmates, who could not forget what he had done at Gutenbrunn. He now showed sensitivity that I thought he never possessed. “I am not here as your patient,” he said. What he did in Gutenbrunn still haunted him, but he asked me for no pity. He just came in to unburden his soul. He regretted abandoning his Jewish heritage. Before he left me, he spoke in almost perfect Yiddish. Shunning those he once abused, he was completely resigned to the inevitable. In a sense, I thought, he didn’t want to prolong his life. “I know that I deserve what I am getting. I am not going to last here much longer.” I offered him some food, but he refused to take it. I had to persuade him to accept. This was the first time that I saw him at peace. He was completely resigned to death. A couple of days later I saw his shift returning. Someone was carried on a stretcher. I knew instantly that it was Goldberg. He was nearly unrecognizable. He was, at the end, a scant image of the man we had once feared.

  I saw Boot, the heavyweight boxing champion, in the infirmary with a badly infected leg wound. With his large body and thick muscles, he looked every bit the boxer. The Norwegians were a small group, only five in all at Fürstengrube. They were proud of their country and spoke well of the courageous Norwegians that staved off their deportation for so long. But Boot’s name ended up on a weekly selection list, and he was transferred to Birkenau. The irony of his life was that though he had been a winner in the ring, he could not win this bigger bout, and he died from undernourishment and overwork.

  Hauptscharführer Moll eventually left Fürstengrube, and Max Schmidt, who had been in officer training school for three months, returned with the rank of Hauptscharführer. He was now the Kommandant. We heard that Moll went to assist in liquidations at camps in the east. Schmidt often came to have his teeth cleaned. He was easy to speak with and, unlike Moll, predictable. At times he had functioned as Lagerführer when Moll was absent.

  One morning my brother slept beyond his usual time. When I shook him to wake him up, he pried his eyes open and then fell back to sleep. The next day he was well enough to open his eyes and drink water, but immediately thereafter he fell asleep again. By the third day, unsteady on his feet, he went back to work. I never learned which medication he took that made him so sick, or why he took it.

  Within two weeks of Hinze’s departure, a new SDG, Karol Baga, came to Fürstengrube. Baga was a Volksdeutscher and completely opposite from Hinze. He did not have Hinze’s abysmal vocabulary and or his malevolence. Baga himself had once worked nearby as a coal miner. It seemed that he felt more comfortable with pick and ax than with his duty as a medic. He showed no interest in what anyone was doing. When he came to the dental station, he remained only long enough for me to say, “All is OK here,” and then he left.

  Finally, early in June 1944 we heard that the Americans had landed in Europe. The BBC reported their successes. This was the one step we felt would surely bring Hitler and his evil empire to an end. In July the heat of change was bearing down on the Germans. The Allies were pushing through France. The Soviets were chasing the Nazi army back through Poland and into Germany. They must have known that the end was near. We were trembling with hope. But all the SS men at the camp seemed to believe that Germany was still unconquerable.

  Later in July we heard about an attempt to assassinate Hitler. It was unbelievable to hear that Hitler survived. We too thought then, as the Germans had, that he was indestructible. Dr. Lubicz expressed it best when he said, “If he is not defeated from within, this may still last a long time.” He added, “The leaders of the free world met with Hitler several times before 1939, only to bargain away land piece by piece for his false promises. They knew of the widespread persecution of Jews then and failed to do anything for us.”

  By the end of July Greek Jews from Salonika were delivered to Fürstengrube. None of them understood German, but they proved themselves to be tougher than any of us.

  One day, there were unusual lights in the sky, and columns of smoke drifted our way. We knew what the foul odor was. “The Nazis are gassing thousands of Hungarian Jews,” we heard. “The crematories can not dispose of all those bodies, so they’re being burned in pits in the forest.” Soon everyone in our camp knew the cause of the amber-red skies and the stench that flooded the camp. Hungary, too, was soon to be Judenfrei. I went to the morgue, and the dead bodies lay in bizarre positions. I had not been there in days, and some of the corpses were badly decomposed. They smelled so foul that I could not bear it. I decided to leave and not return. Should I be asked about it, I would say that I forgot. But no one asked, and that was the last that I saw of the morgue.

  The newest transport brought Jews from the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Among them was a dentist, Dr. Grosch. When he learned that Fürstengrube had a dental station, he came to see me. A few weeks before he had still been free in Prague with his wife and daughter, he
said. “We were first taken to Theresienstadt, where they still are, I hope.” He crossed two of his fingers. “And I was transported here.” Dr. Grosch had taught oral surgery in a dental school in Czechoslovakia. He also wrote two textbooks on the subject. I reckoned him to be fifty years of age. He was tall and slender, and his face, only slightly lined, displayed a lot of wisdom and also sadness. But most of all it expressed unusual intelligence. The prison jacket he wore seemed three sizes too small for him. The red triangle, yellow star, and number, along with a T for Tschechoslowakei, were at his collarbone.

  For me, the concentration camp was by now a way of life, but to Grosch, new to the situation, Fürstengrube seemed very frightening. I had compassion for him. When he asked if he could help me in the dental station, I decided to ask Hermann, the Lagerältester. Dr. Grosch was allowed to work with me. Fürstengrube now had its largest number of inmates, over fifteen hundred, with more than a hundred SS men.

  I now had gained a great deal of practical dental experience, perhaps enough for a full dental degree. I knew “It hurts!” in at least ten different languages. I had also learned to devise surrogate methods for helping my patients, and in spite of their novelty some cures really worked. Some of the cases I treated were rarely seen at normal times. I set mandibular fractures and cared for extreme gingiva diseases and periodontal and root infections. Because of the lack of proper medication, the newly arrived Dr. Grosch was often unsure of what to do. His professionalism meant a lot to me. He often talked about life in Prague. The welfare of his wife and daughter was his major concern. He was fond of me. Once, with a twinkle in his eye, he said, “After this is over, I want you to be my son-in-law.”