Half an hour later, at morning roll call, his name was read out together with a number of others.
He said goodbye to me warmly, asking me to tell his mother that he had died in good spirits.
A few hours later he was dead.
The division of labor was such that news regularly received by us from the outside world by means of an established route was disseminated in the camp by a cell composed of three of our members.
One of them, our unforgettable “Wernyhora”39 50 [Jan Mielcarek], would continually make optimistic predictions at every intersection surrounded by a crowd of inmates.
He was in great demand and much liked.
The organization grew.
During my time in the carving shop I brought a couple of friends into our ranks: 53 [Józef Chramiec] and 54 [Stefan Gaik], followed by 55 [Mieczysław Wagner], 56 [Zbigniew Różak], 57 [Edward Ciesielski], 58 [Andrzej Marduła].
After being personally recruited by me, each “five” would fan out amongst the prison body to various kommandos, through its own efforts building branches based on the profile of a new candidate.
Everything was built exclusively on mutual trust.
Tackling the issue of the leadership of each group connected to me, I decided to rely on specific leaders, junior and senior, in each case simply taking into account a given leader’s personal attributes.
There was no other way to handle it.
All “outside” suggestions had to be ignored completely.
It was irrelevant who had been what in the past, but it was very important to have in each leadership position a “real man,” who, if the time came, would lead people not by virtue of some title, since no one knew it; he had to be someone who had hitherto kept his mouth shut and, if the time came, would be able to inspire the others, and so had to be someone who was clearly brave and whom the lads would willingly follow.
Not only did he have to be brave, but he had to distinguish himself by his inner strength and tact.
This minor detail, when one was molding and selecting people, often brought in those who had positions of authority in the camp.
A room supervisor sworn in by us would then try to be helpful, serving “seconds” and keeping up the strength of our members needing nourishment whom we would send him, even keeping some of them in his room.
But if someone who came wanting to get on the right side of a room supervisor could not behave, did not have the tact or the strength of character to resist holding out his own bowl for “seconds” for himself, then our work came to naught.
It was another matter if the candidate, after a couple of conversations with the room supervisor, had the strength of character not to mention food, even if his guts were screaming; the room supervisor would raise the subject, then the food he got in coming there would not get in the way of setting up a network.
Unfortunately, there were a few who coming on organizational matters to a room supervisor who was a recent acquaintance would hold out their bowl for “seconds” for themselves.
In such cases, our work could not prosper.
The room supervisor would “sort out” such visitors with a bowl of soup and that would be the end of it.
The outbreak of the German–Bolshevik war [in June 1941], apart from filling us with joy at this long-expected news, for the time being brought few changes in the camp.
A few of the SS men left for the front. They were replaced by other, older men.
Only in August 1941 did this new war affect us, like everything else, with a terrible resonance.
The first Bolshevik prisoners, for the time being just officers, were brought in and after seven hundred of them were locked into one room on Block 13 (Block 11 in the new numbering system) and packed in so tightly that none of them could sit, the room was sealed (we did not yet have gas chambers).
That same evening a group of German soldiers led by an officer arrived.
The German team entered the room and, after donning gas masks, threw in a few gas canisters and observed the effects.
Our comrades working as pflegers [nurses] who the following day had to clear out the corpses said that it was a terrible sight.
The men had been so tightly packed that even in death they could not fall over and they hung, leaning against each other, their arms so intertwined that it was hard to separate the bodies.
They must have been Bolshevik senior ranks judging by the uniforms, from different formations, in which they were gassed.
This was the first effort there at gassing using Prussic acid.
The first person who came to tell me the news was 19 [Tadeusz Słowiaczek].
He was very distressed by this and his mind quickly jumped to the conclusion that such an attempt would lead to others, perhaps using inmates.
At the time this still seemed improbable.
Meanwhile, the camp was again deloused (the summer of ’41), after which all the carpenters were assigned to the same block: Block 3, on the ground floor.
We were given bunks, since almost the whole camp, block by block, was being issued bunks.
This was another opportunity for whippers-in and the SS men to have fun.
The bunks had to be made more neatly than at officer school and so there was more harassment, more beatings.
Then (in September) some of the carpenters (including me) were moved to Block 12 (new numbering system), and in October to Block 25 (new numbering system, formerly Block 17).
It was there, living that November on Block 25, that going out in the morning in front of the block before roll call and fidgeting a little from the biting wind cutting my face with alternating rain or freezing snow, I was struck by a sight which amazed me.
I saw, about 200 paces away on the other side of the double wire fence, columns of “hundreds” of completely naked people, arranged in the usual camp style in twenty “fives,” who were being urged on by German soldiers’ rifle butts.
I counted eight “hundreds,” but the head of the column was already jammed in the building’s doorway and several hundred might have already entered before my arrival.
The building they were entering was the crematorium.
These were Bolshevik prisoners of war.
As I later learnt, there were more than a thousand of them.
SM
In June 1941 more than 4.5 million German and other Axis troops invaded the Soviet Union—their former ally—along an 1,800-mile front.
SM
An estimated 3 million Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner by the rapidly advancing German forces.
Bundesarchiv Bild 192-360/Francisco Boix
Pilecki reports that the first Soviet POWs were brought to Auschwitz in August 1941.
ABM/Lidia Foryciarz
Block 11, where the first Soviet POWs were gassed during the testing of Zyklon B, which was used later in the mass extermination of the Jews.
Apparently people can be naive till the day they die.
I assumed at the time that they were issuing these prisoners of war underwear and clothes, but did not know why they were using for that purpose the crematorium and the precious work time in that factory, where our fellows, working three shifts and round the clock, could not keep up with burning the remains of our fellow inmates.
It turned out, however, that they had been taken there specifically to save time.
The doors were shut.
One or two canisters of gas were dropped in from above and then the twitching corpses were quickly thrown onto the heated grates.
They were burnt for the simple reason that accommodation had not been prepared at Auschwitz for the POWs sent there, and the orders had been to finish them off as quickly as possible.
A fence was hastily erected within the camp, which was squeezed, allocating nine blocks to Bolshevik prisoners of war.
The administrative offices of a death camp were also set up.
It was announced in the blocks that anyone who spoke Russian could get a
job as a room supervisor or even a kapo in the POW camp.
As an organization, our attitude was one of scorn towards this idea and towards those willing to offer their services in the murdering of prisoners of war, recognizing that the authorities were only too happy to have Poles do their dirty work for them.
The fence was quickly finished and the camp for the Bolsheviks was ready.
Over the internal gate in the fence between our camps a sign was hung with a large notice: “Kriegsgefangenenlager” [“Prisoner of War Camp”].
It later emerged that the German kapos and SS men quickly and efficiently murdered the Bolshevik POWs, as they had murdered us, since the 11,400 prisoners whom they brought in at the end of 1941 (I got the number from the main schreibstube [office]) were very quickly finished off over the course of a few winter months.
With the exception of a few dozen who accepted the hideous task of finishing off their own comrades and then Poles and other nationalities in the Birkenau camp, and with the exception of a few hundred who accepted a job as partisans and whom the German authorities put in uniform, trained and fed and who were to be used as partisans behind Bolshevik lines.
They lived in barracks near the little town of Oświęcim [Auschwitz].
The rest were finished off at work with an exceptional effort by means of beatings, hunger and freezing.
Sometimes in the evening or the morning they were kept for hours in front of the blocks in their underwear or naked.
This was accompanied by Germans laughing that people from Siberia were not afraid of the cold.
We could hear the screams of people freezing to death.
At this time in our camp things became a little more relaxed and there was a reduced emphasis on finishing us off, for all the rage and energy going into beatings and murdering was directed at the Bolshevik camp.
The rail which had been struck in the early days of the camp’s existence, giving off the sound of a “gong” (for all roll calls and parades), was replaced by a bell hung between posts by the kitchen.
The bell had been brought here from some church.
On it was the inscription: “Jesus, Mary, Joseph.”
After a time the bell cracked.
The inmates said that it had been unable to take the camp scenes.
Another one was brought. This too soon cracked.
Whereupon a third one was brought (the churches still had bells) and it was used carefully. It lasted until the end.
Thus a church bell sometimes aroused many emotions.
When at times we stood at evening roll call, the evening could have been beautiful were it not for the continual spirit of murder hovering over us.
The setting sun would illuminate the sky and clouds with beautiful colors and then the camp siren would start its terrifying wailing, warning all the sentries that they could not come down from the towers of the outer postenkette [security perimeter], since one or more inmates were missing.
It was an ominous warning to us that there would be a “death selection” of ten inmates, or at any rate a “punishment parade” at which the numbing frost would slip deep into us.
Or some other time, as we stood like a guard of honor for a victim who, his hands bound, was waiting by the gallows and was in a moment to hang in the noose... suddenly... then... in the general hush the calm, unruffled sound of a bell drifted in. It was tolling in some church.
How close it was to our hearts and in its proximity... and yet so distant and unobtainable... for there... in the outside world... people were ringing it.
They lived, prayed, sinned; but what did their sins count when compared to the offenses here?
From the summer (of ’41) a custom was introduced, supposedly to regulate admissions to the krankenbau [hospital] for inmates who were feeling so weak in the morning that they could not go to work, while everyone was running to their work columns to the sound of the morning bell signalling “arbeitskommando formieren”; then the weak, sick muselmänner would go to stand in a small group in the courtyard by the kitchen, where they were inspected by pflegers [nurses] and the Lagerkapo [discipline kapo], sometimes by the Lagerältester [Head Inmate], who assessed their strength by shoving them.
Some of them were sent to the hospital, some went to the schonungsblock [convalescence block], some of them, however, despite their exhaustion were packed off to “fives” in kommandos working in the fields and sent off at a brisk pace to a certain death at work.
Those in the schonungsblock and hospital usually did not last much longer.
When I moved to Block 25 (November of ’41) 40 I met and got to know better my future friend 59 [Henryk Bartosiewicz].
He was a brave and cheerful fellow.
I was setting up a new, fourth “five,” which not only 59 [Henryk Bartosiewcz], but also 60 [Stanisław Kazuba] and 61 [Konstanty Piekarski] joined.
At this time two senior officers, Colonel 62 [Jan Karcz] and Lieutenant Colonel 63 [Jerzy Zalewski], were brought to the camp along with some other fellows.
I suggested that Colonel 62 [Jan Karcz] join the organization and he agreed and started to work with us.
I had made the first exception, since, as I have already mentioned, I had hitherto avoided senior officers who were in the camp under their own names.
However, the organization was growing, and some of the fellows intimated that perhaps my reason for avoiding senior officers was excessive ambition—and an opportunity to settle this matter arose, for 59 [Henryk Bartosiewicz] had discovered Colonel 64 [Kazimierz Rawicz], who was there under a false name and pretending to be a civilian through and through, so I suggested that Colonel 64 [Kazimierz Rawicz] endorse our organization and that I would serve under him.
Colonel 64 [Kazimierz Rawicz] approved of the approach I had been using and we continued to work together.
At this time I brought in 65 [name unknown] and 66 [name unknown], and with the help of 59 [Henryk Bartosiewicz], 67 [Czesław Darkowski], and 68 [Mieczysław Januszewski] who shortly thereafter, on becoming an arbeitsdienst [work assignment leader], began to provide us with valuable assistance.
I eventually saw the day, of which at one time I had been able only to dream hopelessly, when we set up a political cell in our organization which comprised fellows who worked together very well, but who in the real world had been at each others’ throats in Parliament.
No. 69 [Roman Rybarski]—right wing; 70 [Stanisław Dubois]—left wing; 71 [Jan Mosdorf]—right wing; 72 [Konstanty Jagiełło]—left wing; 73 [Piotr Kownacki]—right wing; 74 [Kiliański]—left wing, 75 [Stefan Niebudek]—right wing and so on: a long list of former political party men.
So one had to show Poles daily a mountain of Polish corpses in order for them to reconcile and to decide that beyond their differences and the adversarial attitudes they had adopted towards one another in the real world, there was a greater reality: agreement and a joint front against a common enemy, of whom after all we had always had not a few.
Thus the opportunity for agreement and a common front always was and always had been there, in contrast to what we Poles had been doing in the real world: endless litigiousness and wrangling in Parliament.
From a number of friends of Colonel 64 [Kazimierz Rawicz], I swore in 76 [Bernard Świerczyna] and 77 [Zbigniew Ruszczyński], and then I brought in 78 [name unknown] and 79 [name unknown].
In November 1941 oberkapo Balke left the carpenters’ shop and was replaced by oberkapo Konrad, who was well disposed and polite towards the Polish carpenters.
He loved the art and carvings of the mountain wood-carvers.
He convinced the authorities to detach all the woodcarvers, with the addition of the eight best carpenters selected from among several hundred, who were specialists at making fine jewelry boxes, inlays and other marvels of woodcarving, and he moved this artistic élite from working at Industriehof I to a place near the town on the site of a large tannery with a factory chimney, surrounded by a wooden fence with four watchtowers.<
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A great number of specialist kommandos were located here: the tailors, the locksmiths, the painters, the blacksmiths, stables with a few horses, as well as the “aristocrats” of the specialist brotherhood—the well-placed tanners.
Amongst this artistic brotherhood was a group, a real woodcarving shop, since our kommando was for the most part composed of woodcarvers.
For instance, in this small group Professor Dunikowski worked, together with Janek Machnowski and his friend Fusek, who both kept an eye out for the professor; Wicek Gawron was also for a short time assigned there.
Every kommando had its kapo.
All this was under the iron hand of Oberkapo Erik [Erik Grönke]—a consummate bastard and his assistant, the crazy kapo Walter.
We—the woodcarving-cum-carpentry-cum-artistic kommando that the carpentry oberkapo Konrad had wanted— joined this collection of different trades.
But Konrad had not taken into account certain dark sides to moving to the lederfabrik [tannery].
This was Oberkapo Erik’s domain and he recognized no other oberkapos.
Two personality types clashed: Konrad—an honest lover of art, but naive and openly fond of Poles; and the devious, cunning and evil Erik—someone even the SS feared, for he had some shady arrangements with the Camp Commandant and he behaved in the tannery as if he were on his own property, running things and sometimes hosting the Commandant, with whom he had some business dealings in finished leather.
Needless to say, Konrad lost.
Our workshops were located in two rooms in the factory.
Beyond several walls, in the tannery proper, was a tank into which hot water was poured.
The tank was so large that one could even swim a few strokes in it.
Once, taking advantage of having friends in the tannery, I took a bath and felt as I had once felt as a free man.
It had been a long time since my skin had experienced a warm bath.
All this was done on the side.
Who would have imagined that a häftling in Auschwitz could take a hot bath?
Could one say that one had been for a swim? It was inconceivable.
The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery Page 13