Inside, the first segregation took place by ordering all men to the right, all women to the left. Father looked back at us, Mother and me, and waved. This was the last time I saw him.
The place contained many barracks, and was surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence with lampposts and watchtowers. The inmates wore white- and grey-striped pyjama-like uniforms, and some were engaged in the task of processing the new arrivals. One group pushed our luggage out of sight.
The first processing barrack contained a row of wooden benches. We sat down to have our hair shaved off and our mouths and fingers searched for gold. Female soldiers did the shaving while a man collected jewellery in a large glass jar. Those with gold crowns on their teeth were ordered into a corner where another woman in uniform removed the gold with what looked like a pair of pliers. The screaming testified to the pain of this ‘waste not, want not’ practice.
Further shouted orders told us to undress, leave our clothes at the door and proceed in a single line to the next barrack. As we walked naked between two rows of armed soldiers, a man in a white coat ordered some to step to one side, to select and separate the frail and emaciated from those who still had some muscles.
Mother and I passed this selection for life or death. In the second barrack we were disinfected in an acrid-smelling shower room. The shower made some women exclaim ‘Thank God!’ and I learned that they had expected gas, not water, to issue from the pipes above. A viscous, pink fluid was painted on our shaven heads, armpits and pubes, and we were given uniforms.
The ‘old’ inmates worked in and around the processing barracks, packing our clothes, spectacles and shoes, and sweeping the cut hair into a heap. I still have a vivid recollection of a large heap of hair, a mixture of colours, textures, plaits, buns and ponytails tied with ribbons. It occasionally appears in a dream that has nothing to do with my war years. (This hair was later fumigated and used to fill furniture, pillows and mattresses and to make haircloth.)
As they worked they gave us valuable advice. Hardly moving their lips and with eyes averted they whispered that this was a section of Auschwitz called Birkenau. They pointed out a guard as a mad, trigger-happy one. ‘Keep away from your mother; they separate relatives,’ one said to me. Another told me, ‘You are in a swamp,’ which was a bit puzzling at the time. Bending down to the ground I asked in a whisper how I could get the photographs left in my confiscated clothes. He hissed back, ‘Idiot! No ghetto here! Bullets fly! Move away!’ This ventriloquism and its monosyllabic language was a useful skill I acquired and used.
We were told to form a queue to get numbered. We could now see those who had been selected from among our group before the shower. They were climbing into a couple of trucks through the back doors and were all very thin, crippled or old.
It was evening now, and there was a sudden heavy downpour of rain. Swearing, the guards marched the line of women into a nearby barrack, but I and several others were taken towards the trucks. There was a pile of wooden planks that we had to put on the now swampy ground in front of the trucks to prevent them getting bogged down. We were kicked and pushed into the mud by the soaked guards for not working fast enough. Empty trucks kept coming back for more cargo. Late that night we were put into a barrack and I was now separated from Mother.
At first, resistance seemed possible but doomed to failure. For individuals, such acts were suicidal, and mass reprisals usually followed. In my experience, if someone wanted to resist or defy there was group pressure to conform, for fear of collective punishment. Groups were guarded and treated in a way that precluded organised resistance to any action by the Germans. I believe the frequent changing, breaking up and reshuffling of people was done deliberately to prevent organised action. The resultant loss of friendships and trust one may have formed was an additional deprivation and kept morale low. Even the deliberate separation of family members (sisters, mothers and daughters) so strictly carried out must have been done for the same reason.
In the barracks, we slept on bunks, had to assemble each day at dawn and stand at attention to be counted. We were given a tin plate, a mug and spoon. A portion of soup, a piece of bread and some coffee-like fluid were our daily food ration. Toilets consisted of a row of buckets. The effect of the disinfectants soon wore off and we became infested with lice. The now-frequent autumn rain turned the marshy terrain of our section of the camp into a swamp, ankle-deep in many places.
More planks of wood had to be put over puddles on the road and, as trucks passed over them, I was overwhelmed by the fear that Mother might be inside. Then, in one of the reshuffles of inmates to keep the barracks full and make room for new arrivals, I was reunited with Mother. We did not speak, just held hands all night.
There were many naked parades to cull the frail and to select new workers for the various tasks around the camp. From a distance, Mother was able to see me at my tasks in our barracks. She was among those not selected for tasks, surely because she had fewer muscles on her skeleton than I—and that was because of the way that my parents had augmented my food rations in Litzmannstadt with some of theirs. This was a great source of guilt for me, and because she was not employed I was scared that on my return from work I might not find her there.
During naked parades the contrast one made with the next person in line could be decisive in being culled or not, or being selected for work. Comparatively better nourished, at my parents’ expense, I did not have to seek a contrast, but took care not to stand next to Mother, for whom I would have been an unfavourable contrast. This positioning for advantage was obviously always to someone else’s disadvantage.
Eight of us were ordered into a task-force known as the Tod Kommando, the death squad, and more came from other barracks. Each morning we walked to one of the nearby crematoria where carts full of piled-up bodies were pulled and pushed towards the ovens by male inmates. Many hundreds of bodies were taken from the gas chambers every day to this one, only one of several such furnaces.
We put each body on a long plank of wood and let it slide in through one of the semi-oval iron doors. Occasionally, we could feel a weak pulse in the arm or leg as we moved the bodies, but no other signs of life. We were kicked or beaten when seen to be slowing down, and worked seven long days each week. There were armed overseers in uniforms that suggested higher rank and they were obsessed with speed and efficiency. The carts were ordered into new positions so that unloading could be done from both sides at one time.
I clearly recall a large wire crate full of pairs of spectacles—unfolded, some with broken lenses—being taken to the collection area. I remember thinking that had they all been folded they would take up less space. The maniacal efficiency around me was imprinting itself on me. Years later, when able to reflect, I thought that a world-best-practice abattoir probably could not match the speed and efficiency of the slaughtering and processing of carcasses in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. This was one of the unique features of this Holocaust.
While hunger, pain and cold tormented my body, my mind was filled with hatred and fears. My fears were several: the rational fear of pain and humiliation, which led to strategies to avoid them; the panic of losing my parents; the anxiety about facing a slow and tortured death, which brought the wish for quick oblivion; the vague fear of possibly surviving—why me?—alone among so many dead. Here, loading bodies into the ovens, I experienced a new, catastrophic sort of fear at the thought that I might find the body of Mother or Father, or both. This fear brought on breathlessness and near paralysis.
It was such a great relief to find Mother still in the barrack on my return at night and to share the extra piece of bread I got for my work. Mother spent many hours each day looking across the barbed wire into the male section, trying to spot Father among the thousands of men.
The ovens were shut down periodically to remove the ashes that accumulated below. These ashes, with bits of charred bones, teeth and parts of dentures, were used to reclaim the swamp. We carried them in buc
kets to a selected area and used the bottom of the emptied bucket to push them into the mud. A new efficiency measure was introduced one day: tying two buckets together in a way that allowed us to carry four buckets each.
The reclaiming of the swamp was easier physically and emotionally than filling the ovens. Somehow it was not so dire and, irrationally, I was not paralysed by that same fear. Over the several weeks of my work in the crematoria I wished that these breaks in the swamp were more frequent and longer.
* * *
In 1973 I followed with great interest the superb TV series The Ascent of Man. It was presented by Professor Joseph Bronowski, whom I admired as a gifted teacher. Gradually I formed an image of the progress of humankind: many nations shuffling slowly on the road from barbarism towards civilisation by removing, step by step, brutal and cruel traditions and practices, and by changing selfish, uncaring attitudes. Some groups of people were ahead of others; some moved very slowly; and some occasionally did a U-turn and regressed, like Nazi Germany.
At the end of this series Joseph Bronowski is seen standing, then squatting, on the swamp of Birkenau in Auschwitz. He picks up some soil and says that the ashes of his relatives lie here.
Instantly I thought that, for all I knew, I may have been the one who put them into this swamp. I was surprised by the shock I felt, and the sharp and prolonged return of memory. It took me a long time to stop walking through the ashes again.
FRIEDA
The first cracks in the rigid routine of extermination in Auschwitz-Birkenau appeared towards the end of 1944. While large transports of newcomers continued to arrive at this obviously final destination, groups of inmates were now being sent out as well. The numbering and rollcalls were abandoned, and among the inmates there were rumours of Russian and Allied armies marching towards Germany.
One evening, on return from my work in the crematoria, I saw a group of women being marched out of our section of the camp. My barrack was empty so, assuming that Mother was in the group being herded out, I joined it when the guard got busy counting and yelling at those selected to leave. We were ordered onto a cattle train and there, to my relief, I found Mother. Another long, cross-country journey followed, with many dying on the way. We received a bucket of water per wagon, and a slice of bread for those who lined up at a stop in a middle of a field somewhere.
On arrival at this new camp there were showers, and our soiled uniforms were exchanged for a variety of civilian clothing. Each carried a number preceded by the letters ‘PV’ that was printed on the front and back, below shoulder level. Very small dresses were issued to tall people and large ones to petite figures. The overseers were helpless with laughter as we were made to march round and round in a circle.
‘Old’ inmates told us that this was Stutthof, a concentration camp in East Prussia on the coast of the Baltic Sea. The letters ‘PV’ stood for Politische Verbrecher, meaning political criminals. Inmates in other sections were German communists, Russian POWs, saboteurs, among others. In a distant section we could see a group of women with long, blonde hair. They looked healthy and dignified, in complete contrast to us. We learned they were Estonian freedom fighters. What were we doing here?
Next to us, in the male section, was a raised platform with gallows for public hangings. At the corner of each section was a tower with an armed guard. From dusk to dawn the barbed-wire fences carried a high-voltage current.
Stutthof differed from Birkenau in other aspects. It was smaller and surrounded by a forest, and our barracks had no bunks, only some straw on the floors. The filth was horrible. The occasional fumigation and hosing down of the barrack helped only briefly.
The latrine was an open hole in the ground outside with slippery edges, making its use fraught with the danger of falling in. The overseers were mostly female, pathologically sadistic and highly inventive in ways of punishing and humiliating us. Earlier arrivals to Stutthof called it ‘the bottom of hell’.
Apart from early morning rollcall and the removal of dead bodies piled outside the barrack, there was nothing to do all day officially. There was a group selected to go to work on nearby farms, some on a daily basis. Others stayed on the farms for a period. They were well fed there, and on return would smuggle in a few carrots or small pieces of other food.
I was not selected and was glad to stay with my mother, again at a safe distance. She was now very weary and emaciated.
It was in this nether world that I met and befriended the remarkable Frieda. I don’t know her surname—we all left those outside the prisons—but I still remember her number: PV 83356. (I was PV 84065.) She was sent to Stutthof some months earlier from Budapest, where till then Jews were allowed relative freedom. She was a university professor and I think that her subject was sociology—not something I could well comprehend then.
I think Frieda was in her fifties, her re-growing hair a silvery brown. She was a gentle, wise and knowledgeable lady. I spent most days with her and the nights with my mother at the other end of the barrack, because here too they were separating families. Mother’s friend and neighbour was a lady from Warsaw, still very beautiful, whose golden hair re-grew upwards on her shaven head so that it looked like a halo. Goldie was her name now. She was a physician, and a warm and caring person.
Frieda and I talked in German. Her intellect impressed me, and I grew very fond of her. We were an odd pair: she a mentor and a teacher to me, I a self-appointed bodyguard to her. Towards the end of the war I was becoming an accomplished prisoner, skilled in the tricks of the trade, with a variety of survival mechanisms and a sharpened sense of approaching danger. Frieda was a novice who didn’t—perhaps couldn’t—focus entirely on each moment. She made many comments that were global in nature and therefore a bit abstract for me, whose education comprised all of three years of primary school.
Frieda wondered how humanity would regard these events, whether this war would change the social order the way the French Revolution had; perhaps it would serve to eliminate barbarians and racism. Such concepts were rather too grand for me, and spoken in a language of which I had only a colloquial command. But whenever I looked puzzled, Frieda explained patiently. She wondered how Dante would have written his Inferno had he spent time in Stutthof. I asked who was Dante and what was his Inferno, and Frieda told me about this thirteenth-century Florentine poet at length.
With no work of any sort to be done, nor the energy to carry it out, there were endless empty hours between the daily count of prisoners at dawn and the distribution of ‘bread’, ‘soup’ and ‘coffee’ late in the day. Frieda and I talked while we performed the main activity of the day, which was delousing by a popular and effective method: clothes were folded and stacked into a narrow parcel, then pressure was applied from above. Within minutes most lice were in the top layer, where they could be massacred wholesale. It then remained to squash their eggs, which were usually found along the seams of garments and were also pressed, between one’s thumbnails. Hair that grew between successive head shaves also required delousing, and this was done—on a reciprocal basis—by your neighbour. The extra clothes one needed to wear during this operation were obtained by stripping them from the dead on the pile outside.
Occasionally we talked about a possible future. What on earth maintained this flicker of hope in us? A few months into the war, the phrase ‘If we survive’ started to precede thoughts and statements about the future. Hope had to be qualified. Inmates were making resolutions: ‘If I survive I’ll never ever be fussy about food, nor waste any.’ ‘If I survive I’ll value every free day and never complain about any trivial thing,’ and so on. My mother hoped that, if I survived, I would be normal in mind and body or, as she put it, sane and not maimed. I hoped desperately that my parents would survive. Goldie hoped that these hellish events would somehow create a better world—as if evil would burn itself out here. Frieda kept repeating that if we survived we should have to testify and bear witness for the rest of our lives.
For me, to enco
unter a great intellect is like standing before a magnificent mountain or panorama. Though it makes me feel small and insignificant, I would not want to miss such an enrichment of life. But I now think that behind the barbed wire a highly developed intellect hindered the chances of survival. For those with little education—the young or the dull—it was a short step back on the ladder of development to the primitive condition of self-preservation instincts, not distracted by reflections or despair. To reflect was to be off guard. The effects of malnutrition, constant harassment, fear and beating concentrated my wits on the immediate problems of survival.
One’s wits had to be concentrated on immediate survival: to watch and listen, to interpret sounds and silences in terms of approaching danger, the better to hide if possible. I was rather like a primitive creature living in the undergrowth of the jungle, surrounded by predators. From down there, given the practicalities of survival, one can see only the bit of the canvas that is in front of one’s face.
But from the height of a well-developed intellect it was difficult to regress that far. From that height the whole panorama of the Holocaust could be seen and contemplated: its horror could overwhelm.
On reflection, only much later did I realise how overwhelmed Frieda must have been by the ‘big picture’ she was able to view. At times I was exasperated by her lack of attention to the immediate; that in spite of my warnings of a particularly murderous guard on duty that day, or other approaching dangers, she focused on it only briefly. But she would go and give those warnings to Mother at the other end of the barrack. Frieda, Mother and Goldie often shared their thoughts.
Along with regression came the slow process of brutalisation: a dulling of compassion and sensibilities, where the need to find a pebble to suck to fill our stomachs with saliva to relieve the hunger pains became stronger than the will to listen to a distressed inmate; where watching another hanging no longer had a lasting effect; and where devising ways of torturing our torturers became a creative pastime.
The Testimony Page 4