Dr. 2 [Władysław Dering] announced that the patient needed to be taken for tests and for one of the new injections.
I marched over to Block 20 (old numbering system).
Upstairs, I was given a bed in one of the wards.
I was a new man. There were no lice here. That meant that I found about 40–50 of them in the new underwear I was given and in my blanket, but that didn’t count. I killed them and that was that.
They would not climb the bed legs from my neighbor. That, they had not yet learnt to do.
No matter even that they had put me in a bed backed up to a window which was always open and through which the wind blew, the flow of cold air turning the warmer air by the window into a slight mist.
I tried to keep my infected side as far away as possible from the cold.
The following day I was moved to the middle of the ward, I was given four blankets and an injection.
After ten days I had recovered to such an extent that I had to give up my bed to someone sicker than me.
I was again moved to Block 15 where I had been during the first days of my illness, but the lice had gone.
ABM
Dr. Władysław Dering (Pilecki’s comrade—code no. Captain Dr. 2)—Inmate No. 1723.
ABM
Maximilian Grabner, head of the camp Gestapo.
In the meantime the delousing, going block by block, had already reached Block 15.
How extraordinary. The same dreadful, louse-ridden ward, now fumigated and whitewashed, looked quite different.
This was the 1st of February, 1941.
I rested there for a whole month after my illness, helping Tadek [Tadeusz Burski] and Janek Hrebenda.
The fine pfleger, Krzysztof Hofman, would often look in on the ward. Sometimes he would even sleep there.
Heniek Florczyk, a mathematician from Warsaw, was also a patient there.
Tadek Burski (of 56, Raszyńska Street)24 was released from the camp owing to his sisters’ efforts.
I used him to send information to Warsaw.
Despite the change for the better in prison conditions, every day a couple of patients died on the ward.
There was nothing to treat people with and even the pills that Krzyś [Krzysztof Hofman] managed to wangle were just that—pills.
Sometimes people just did not want to live.
They did not want to fight and whoever gave up, very quickly died.
Here, as a convalescent patient, I managed to get into the camp with the help of some friendly nurses (they brought me clothes from Fredek 4 [Alfred Stössel]).
I would sometimes leave the ward unseen by the authorities.
I had more time to set up “fives.”
The camp was like a huge mill, turning living people into ashes.
We, the inmates, were finished off in two ways.
In parallel and independently more than one group worked to finish us off at work or by means of the camp’s conditions. Men who were there for serious reasons died alongside others who had been accused of nothing. In any event, outside issues had no influence on what went on here. However, another group independently examined individual cases in the political department. At times an inmate who had managed to “hang on,” survive at work, was coping and had even managed to secure some additional food, one day was killed.
His number was read out at morning roll call. He had to go to the principal schreibstube [office], whence he was usually led by an SS man to the political department and was frequently shot by Palitzsch on Block 13.
This was the result of ferreting around in the files by that other murderer—Grabner [Maximilian Grabner].
Palitzsch was paid “by the head” for shooting people.
There were often agreements between these two gentlemen.
One picked out the cases, the other did the shot in the head.
The money was shared and the business prospered.
Death, choosing our comrades at random, often struck our network, set up after much work and lengthy observation.
Thus the network kept breaking in different places, and constant repair work was needed.
The men already in the chain felt morally stronger, having a few friendly souls at their backs ready to help one another, and began with growing confidence to scramble slowly into better kommandos.
We were not to mention anything that any of us would have called “organizing” prior to Auschwitz and I banned the word.
Instead, we cheerfully grasped the new meaning of the word and “spread” it widely throughout the camp, until the concept found broader acceptance.
To a certain extent it was our lightning rod.
Here “organizing” meant “illicit scrounging.”
Someone would filch some pats of margarine, or a loaf of bread from the stores at night, and it was called “organizing margarine or bread.”
Someone else “organized” some boots for himself, another “organized” some tobacco.
The word “organize” now spread openly and was widely used. If the wrong person heard the word used unexpectedly or casually about our underground organization, it was understood in no other way but as referring to stealing or scrounging something.
In our work, the average “link” was not meant to know too much.
The lad knew the “skeleton,” a few personal “contacts,” and he knew who ran it.
As an organization we began to take over specific kommandos and increase our reach.
I decided to expand and take advantage of the possibilities offered by those German kapos who beat unwillingly (there were some), and I made contact with them through specific members.
In the initial phase of Auschwitz concentration camp’s existence, where the killing started the very day the first transport of Poles was brought on the 14th of June 1940, the organization involved in finishing off the inmates consisted of 30 Germans, or aspiring Germans, brought in from Oranienburg in May of ’40.
Although they were inmates too, they were chosen to be our tormentors.
They bore the first Auschwitz numbers: 1–30.
The first and last of these, in other words inmate no. 1 Bruno [Bronisław Brodniewitsch] and inmate no. 30 Leo [Leon Wietschorek] received Lagerältester armbands, a few others were given block chief binden [armbands] and the rest became kapos.
Amongst this crew of bandits working with coarse brutality or perfidy at murdering inmates, there were a few who beat unwillingly, more out of necessity so as not to fall out with the rest of this gang and the SS.
The inmates very quickly picked up on this.
As an organization we decided to take advantage of this.
Shortly also Otto (inmate no. 2 [Otto Küsel]) the Arbeitsdienst [work assignment leader]; Balke (inmate no. 3 [Artur Balke]) the oberkapo [senior kapo] in the carpenters’ shop; “Mateczka” (inmate no. 4 [Fritz Biessgen]), who was given the nickname “Mateczka” [“Mom”] for his attitude towards us in the kitchen; Bock (inmate no. 5 [Hans Bock]), “Tata” [“Daddy”] in the krankenbau [hospital]; Konrad (inmate no. 18 [Konrad Lang]); Jonny (inmate no. 19 [Jonny (sic) Lechenich]), began to help us, completely unaware of and not suspecting the existence of any kind of organization.
Specific members would approach them with supposedly personal matters or for a friend and they, whenever possible, would go out of their way to help us. Otto, by issuing specific kommando postings; Balke by getting a significant number of our people into the carpenters’ shop indoors; Mateczka by serving “seconds” (of soup from the kitchen) to especially exhausted members; Bock by smoothing the way in the hospital; Jonny, who as a kapo on the landwirtschaftskommando [farming kommando] initially did not prevent and later helped us get in touch with the outside world through contacts with our organization on the outside and working with 13 “Zofia” [Zofia Szczerbowska] (in Stare Stawy), he must inevitably have sensed that something was going on.
ABM
Oberkapo (Senior Kapo) Artur Balke—Inmate No. 3.
ABM
<
br /> “Mateczka” Fritz Biessgen—Inmate No. 4.
ABM
Konrad Lang—Inmate No. 18.
He did not betray us and from the moment that he received a bench beating from the camp authorities for supposedly “failing to notice” that inmates were being tossed additional food by the local population (loaves of bread)—the authorities never suspected anything more—he became a firm friend.
Thus was I putting together and “knitting,” having what for conditions at that time was an exceptional amount of time convalescing during February of ’41 in the hospital on Block 15 (old numbering system).
That lasted until the 7th of March.
Suddenly a couple of events coincided.
On the 6th of March, I was summoned to the erkennungsdienst [the records office] on Block 18 (old numbering system) where we had originally all had our pictures taken.
I was shown my own photograph and was asked whether I knew the inmates who had had their pictures taken immediately before and immediately after me. I said that I did not.
The SS man sneered, saying that it was highly suspicious that I did not recognize people I had arrived with.
He then looked at my picture closely and claimed that it bore little resemblance to me and that this too was very suspicious.
Indeed, I had tried as they were taking my picture to look unnatural and puff out my cheeks. I replied that I had a kidney complaint which led to puffiness.
That same 6th of March Sławek [Sławek Szpakowski] informed me that he was to be released from the camp the next day and would be going to Warsaw.
Always the optimist, he announced that he would wait for me in Warsaw.
He was released without going into quarantine; that’s how it was then.
He had been released thanks to the efforts of his wife and the intervention of the Swedish Consulate. At the same time that evening I learnt from Dr. 2 [Władysław Dering] that I was to be summoned the next day to the main schreibstube [office] and it was common knowledge how that usually turned out.
I did not know why and racked my brains trying to work out what they wanted.
I had no record.
It just crossed my mind that Westrych might have either intentionally or through carelessness “burnt” me by saying that I was in the camp under a false identity.
Westrych had in fact been released from the camp barely a fortnight before.
Perhaps before leaving he had “confessed” his secret.
In that case my fate was sealed.
Dr. 2 [Władysław Dering] was very worried about me and taught me how to fake an illness which was very common at the time in the krankenbau [hospital]—meningitis—which might spare me questioning.
He tried to find out what was going on from one of the SS (who had formerly been an NCO in the Polish Army)25 and asked that they not beat his friend (me), for I was sick.
Dr. 2 [Władysław Dering] was already slowly consolidating his position in the hospital, he was valued as a good doctor and had a few contacts among the SS, whom he sometimes advised.
The morning of the 7th of March, my number was called out at roll call with an instruction to go to the main schreibstube.
There were several of us.
They lined us up to one side.
The whole block gave us a look which said that we would not be coming back.
They were not far wrong.
When the gong sounded for arbeitskommando and everyone ran off to their work details, we were marched off to Block 9 (old numbering system).
In the corridor in front of the main schreibstube the numbers of all those brought over were called out and checked; there were about twenty of us from different blocks.
They stood me to one side by myself.
“What could be going on?” I wondered. “Why am I not with the others?”
They pointed at me and something was said to an SS man, which I did not hear.
“Here’s a fine one,” appeared to be their attitude.
However, things turned out somewhat better than I had imagined.
The others all marched off to the political department, and I was led to the erkennungsdienst [the records office]. “That’s better,” I thought.
On the way I began to understand the reason for this summons and became calmer with every step.
All the häftlings had to write letters to their families and only to the address that they had given upon their arrival.
Just after being brought to Auschwitz we had been interrogated at night.
We were all woken up. We were told to talk (it was on Block 17a), and asked with an odd smirk for an address to which notification would be sent in the event of an accident befalling us—as if death came here only as a result of accidents.
Every fortnight a letter was to be sent to that very address, so that just in case there would be access to an inmate’s family.
I gave my sister-in-law’s address in Warsaw, through which my family, about which the camp authorities must not learn, would be able to get news of me.
My sister-in-law [Eleonora Ostrowska] was given as one of my friends, I was pretending to be single and with no family apart from my mother.
I had written only once to the address provided, in November, saying where I was. I had written no more letters, so that in the future my “friend” would not be held responsible for any stunts I might pull here.
I thus wanted to sever all contact with people outside that would have been visible to the German authorities.
I was escorted by an SS man into a wooden hut where at one end (the furthest from the door) was the blockführerstube [SS guardroom] and at the other the postzensurstelle [mail censorship office].
Here, there were over a dozen SS men sitting at desks.
As I was brought in they all looked up and then continued censoring letters.
The SS man walking behind me reported my arrival.
Whereupon one of them called out to me: “Ah! Mein lieber Mann [Ah! My dear sir]... Why are you not writing letters?”
I replied: “I am.”
“So, you’re lying too! What do you mean you’re writing? We keep a record of all outgoing correspondence.”
“I do write, but my letters are returned. I can prove it.”
“Returned? And he has... proof??? Well I never... he has proof!”
Several SS men surrounded me, jeering.
“What sort of proof?”
“I have letters which I was writing regularly and which, I don’t know why, were returned to me.” I spoke as if I was upset that my letters were being unfairly returned.
“Where are these letters?”
“On Block 15.”
“Hans, take him over to the block to get these letters, but if he can’t find them...,” he turned to me, “Ich sehe Schwarz für dich! [You’ll be in for it!]”
I did indeed have such letters on the block.
Foreseeing just this kind of inquiry, I had been writing every fortnight the required letter beginning with the standard opening: “Ich bin gesund und es geht mir gut [I am fine and doing well]” without which, as the block chiefs announced, the letter would not get past the censor (even if an inmate was dying, if he wanted to write to his family again he had to include those two phrases). The family would no doubt realize from his handwriting how things really were and the state of his health.
Since by and large everyone wanted to write to their loved ones, perhaps some did it just for personal reasons or to ask for money, letters were generally written.
However, I had observed that the letters returned to inmates which had not passed the censor, or had annoyed the SS, had on the envelope a little green tick, or sometimes the words “zurück [returned]” on them.
I had obtained a couple of these envelopes with the characteristic markings from my comrades and using a similar pencil, supplied by Cavalry Captain 3 [Jerzy de Virion], I had made markings on my envelopes and not handed them in for collection on a “letter
-writing Sunday.”
I had carefully hidden these letters.
Heading off to the block with the SS man for these letters (7th March) at the gate I met Sławek who was being led out to freedom by an SS man.
In Room 7 in Block 15 (old numbering system) I gathered the letters. My comrades in the room seeing an SS man waiting for me and some letters were sure that this had to be a political matter and that they would never see me again.
I was now welcomed back to the postzensurstelle with interest.
Six or seven of my letters were handed over by my SS escort to the office manager and several SS men gathered round.
“So the letters do exist.”
I obviously must have made the green pencil marks quite well.
In any case, it would not have crossed their minds that an inmate was conscientiously writing letters and not sending them.
They began to study the contents. There was nothing there—they were pretty terse.
“Aha, this must mean that you were not writing to the address you provided!!”
I retorted that I assumed that the letters must have been returned by some kind of mistake, since I was writing to the address provided.
They checked. It must have been right.
“Aha... so who is this Mrs. E.O. you are writing to?”
“A friend.”
“A friend,” with a sneering laugh. “Why don’t you write to your mother? You indicated that you have a mother.”
(I had indeed indicated that, although my mother had been dead for two years. I had wanted to draw as little attention to myself as possible, to be a bird with few ties to the earth, I wanted to suggest that I had a loved one out there, but I did not want to give the address of living people.)
“Oh yes,” I replied “I have a mother, but she is abroad. Wilno is, after all, abroad, so I don’t know whether I can write there.”
The SS men slowly returned to their work.
Interest in my case began slowly to die down.
“Well then,” pronounced the office manager like Solomon “your letters keep being returned, because you’re not writing to your mother, although you’ve got one, and you’re writing to some friend. You must petition the Lagerkommandant [Camp Commandant] in writing to allow you to make a change of address and state that you want to write to Mrs. E.O. You must send your petition using official channels through your block chief.”
The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery Page 10