One day, Konrad took a bath in the tank unbothered by the fact that he was doing so together with a häftling—a Pole.
For that matter, no one feared him, for he was never mean. But some bastard saw it and a first meldung [report] about Konrad was sent.
In December (1941) we were kommandiert [ordered to stay at work] in the evenings and we worked (not attending evening roll call) until 22:00 hours (10 p.m.).
We had a great deal of work producing custom-made toys for the children of some of our German “higher-ups.”
One evening, a kapo—one of Erik’s confidants—arrived together with an SS man and they convinced Konrad to go into town.
Konrad—an inmate yearning for the company of free people—agreed and, together with the escorting SS man, they set off for the town.
An hour later, just before our departure from the tannery for camp, Konrad appeared in our room, drunk.
Another kapo and SS man, different ones, came in right behind him. They were not the ones who had been in town with him.
They witnessed Konrad patting some of his favorite craftsmen on the head, saying that some should be kapos because they were excellent workers, and “appointing” a number of men “twenty” leaders and kapos.
That was enough: he was locked up in the bunker for a long time.
Thus did Erik rid himself of an oberkapo in his fiefdom.
Because the authorities now began to sort out individual inmates’ accommodations, trying to house them by kommando, I was moved from Block 12 together with a group of other inmates who worked at the lederfabrik [tannery], or as it was still officially called the bekleidungswerkstätte [clothing workshop], to Block 25 (as I have already mentioned).
The bunks with which the blocks were being equipped one by one were wooden and stacked one on top of the other on three levels.
They had not yet got around to installing bunks in Block 25.
We slept side by side, about 240 of us to a room, tightly packed, our feet “tucked in” in camp jargon, and on one side.
At night (just as a year before) people walked on each other’s heads, stomachs, aching feet when going to the lavatory and on their return found nowhere to sleep.
This is not the most pleasant memory, but since I am writing everything, then I shall mention it too.
Owing to some failure in camp organization, during the winter as early as December (of ’41) turnips were brought in on freight cars and stored in mounds, after being carried from a railroad siding about three kilometers from the camp.
The farm kommandos provided too few men, while other ones with zugangs being finished off in the fields were too weak, and so stronger people from the workshops were used, Sundays being set aside for the task.
I usually avoided this work, managing with Dr. 2’s [Władysław Dering’s] help to be summoned to the hospital for a fake X-ray, or a test or something or other.
However, one Sunday the sun was shining and the weather was fine.
I went off with the others.
Together with a friend, Zygmunt Kostecki, I carried the turnips in baskets, or wheelbarrows.
The kapos and SS men checked that the wheelbarrows were filled right up, which we were doing.
Then, in loading up the rest of the turnips which had been dumped there, we filled up only half of our wheelbarrows and, as it was time to return to barracks and the “hundreds” were beginning to form up, the unterkapo who was loading our wheelbarrows decided that it was too late to go somewhere else to fill up the wheelbarrows and told us to take what we had.
There was an SS man standing on the parade ground through which we were carrying the turnips who, spotting from some distance that our wheelbarrows were not full, ran over and beat me on the arms.
We stopped, he assaulted me with his club, shouting for some reason: “Du polnischer Offizier [you Polish officer]” and beating me about the head and face with the club he was holding.
It must be a nervous tic, but at moments like that (there have been a few) I pull a face which looks a bit like a smile, which enraged him and he hit me on the head with his club even harder.
This could not have gone on for long, but at such times a great many thoughts run through a man’s brain.
The thought “You can beat all you like, but you won’t...” came to me; it was a saying which had been around since some uprising or other... and now I really did smile.
I must have been stunned, for I did not feel any great pain.
The SS man stared and growled: “Du lächender Teufel [You laughing devil].”
I don’t know how things would have gone had it not been for the camp siren, which turned his mind to other things: someone had escaped.
My friends later told me that I’d been lucky.
My head and face were swollen for a fortnight.
I was beaten again, much later, in the tannery.
Fellows were smoking in the lavatory, for there was no smoking at work. Kapo Walter burst in like a tiger.
I had not been smoking, but was just leaving.
He dashed over: “Who’s been smoking?”
I said nothing and unwittingly had some sort of smile on my face.
“Was? Gefällt es dir nicht? [What? Don’t you like it?]”
(I have no idea what I was supposed to like or not like.)
Walter was a fiend and could knock down a man with a single blow.
I then received a great number of blows to the head and fell down several times. However, as 59 [Henryk Bartosiewicz] and 61 [Konstanty Piekarski] told me, I kept getting back on my feet in front of him with that smiling grimace of mine on my face.
Walter left me alone, for the Camp Commandant had arrived and Erik was absent.
Meanwhile, far away in the outside world in Warsaw, I was promoted.
For setting up the TAP [Tajna Armia Polska—The Secret Polish Army]; for integrating it into the KZN [Konfederacja Zbrojna Narodu—The Nation’s Armed Alliance];41 for ignoring my own ambition and, the moment I had seen General Sikorski’s authorization, working towards integrating all formations into the ZWZ [Związek Walki Zbrojnej—The Union for Armed Combat], which had been the first cause of my disagreement with 82 [Jan Włodarkiewicz] and, who knows, maybe the reason I had had to leave Warsaw.
And yet Janek W. [Włodarkiewicz] had recommended me and, according to “Bohdan” 85 [Zygmunt Bohdanowski], had stayed on the case and had told him that my promotion meant more to him than his own.
Colonel “Grot” [Stefan Rowecki]42 promoted a number of us from the KZN.
No. 82 [Jan Włodarkiewicz] and 85 [Zygmunt Bohdanowski] became lieutenant colonels.
Thus I had finally become a first lieutenant under my real name (in other words, I had reverted to 1935).
If all these issues from the outside world had not seemed trivial in this hell, then I might have felt bitter about them.
When it came to good jobs in Auschwitz, then after the pflegers [nurses]—not of people but of pigs, the so-called tierpflegers [animal or veterinary nurses]—and the musicians, who in addition to playing in the orchestra were usually room supervisors, a good job was that of barber.
Yad Vashem/ Otto Dov Kulka
A photo of three-tiered bunks in a barracks taken by the construction management of the SS (Waffen SS und Polizei Bauleitung) in 1941.
Yad Vashem/ Stanisław Mucha
Barrack room shortly after liberation by Soviet forces, 1945.
SM
A group of soldiers from the Polish Underground Home Army (Armia Krajowa, or AK).
Usually people tried to combine these two positions: shaving and room supervisor.
But even if a barber was not a supervisor, he did quite well for himself.
There were barbers who only shaved the SS men, but each block also had a number of barbers whose sole job was to shave the whole block every week.
It was a häftling’s responsibility to cut his hair and shave, but the barbers did it.
The
block chiefs and room supervisors were responsible for an unshaven inmate or hair that was too long.
The barbers had more than enough food from the block chief, the kapos and room supervisors living on that block.
One evening in December ’41, I was standing talking with Colonel 1 [Władysław Surmacki] and Dr. 2 [Władysław Dering] by Block 21 (new numbering system) when we beheld the sight of a group of naked people, visibly steaming, coming out of Block 26 (new numbering system).
There were about a hundred of them.
This was a transport of Poles who had been sent to be finished off quickly.
After taking long (about half-hour) hot showers—they had willingly washed in the hot water suspecting nothing— they were made to stand naked in the snow and frost and kept there.
We had to go to our blocks, while they froze.
They gave a muffled groan, or rather an animal wail.
They were kept out there for several hours.
When people were finished off like that or in other ways, or large numbers were shot together, the krankenbau [hospital] received a list with their numbers and, when submitting the list of deaths that day in the hospital to the main schreibstube [office], had to add 50 numbers daily to the list as having died from heart failure, TB, typhus or some other “natural” cause.
In this way 1941 drew to a close.
My second Christmas in Auschwitz came, together with another parcel from home—of clothes (there were no food parcels at that time).
On Block 25, where the block supervisor 80 [Alfred Włodarczyk] turned out to be sympathetic to our work, in room 7 where the supervisor was 59 [Henryk Bartosiewicz] we put up a Christmas tree with a Polish eagle hanging secretly on it.
The room was decorated really tastefully by 44 [Wincenty Gawron] and 45 [Stanisław Gutkiewicz], with a bit of help from me.
On Christmas Eve some of the representatives of our political cell said a few words.
Could Dubois have listened with pleasure in the outside world to Rybarski and then have warmly shaken his hand and vice versa?
How moving such a picture of agreement would have been in Poland, and how impossible.
And yet here in our room in Auschwitz both of them willingly spoke.
What a metamorphosis!
Through 81 [Alojz Pohl], a Volksdeutsche—a Silesian—who actually worked with us, I was informed that the [camp] political department was planning a new operation, which might seriously threaten me personally.
By now there were very few of us “old numbers.”
This was particularly obvious when money was being paid out.
Money, sent to us by our families, was paid out monthly in the amount of 30 marks, or 15 marks twice.
Larger sums remained in our accounts.
The monthly allowance was later raised to 40 marks.
The money could be spent in the camp canteen, where one could obtain everything that could harm us the most: cigarettes, saccharine, mustard, sometimes a (marinated) vinegar salad.
Everyone was required to line up by numbers to receive their allowance.
Sometimes everyone was ordered in, even those who had received no money, to sign their accounts.
It was then that one could easily count the numbers from the highest to the lowest and see in each “hundred” how many of us were still alive...
The gaps in the “hundreds” were enormous, especially in the transports from Warsaw.
Perhaps because the transports before us had taken the indoor jobs, while we had been finished off in the open air.
Perhaps because, as the Silesians said, people from Warsaw were not tough.
Perhaps because others were more “in” with the camp authorities.
Suffice it to say that some of the “hundreds” from Warsaw transports now had only two people.
There were six of us in our “hundred.”
There were “hundreds” with a comparatively large number living—eight—and there were those no longer represented by a single soul.
It was then that the political department hit on the idea of checking the personal details of everyone still living, starting with the lowest numbers which, given our reduced number, was not difficult.
Maybe someone was hiding under a false name (such as me).
In order to start such “birds,” the political department was sending letters to specific parishes asking for the details of specific inmates from their records.
To the parishes where the inmates had been born, or which they had provided during their interrogations.
In order to get an idea of how I stood, we need to go back to 1940, to Warsaw.
Our population in Warsaw had very willingly provided help to people in the underground movement, especially during its initial phases when people had not yet been terrified by dreadful descriptions of concentration camps, or of the Aleja Szucha.
Later, finding “safe houses” would be harder, but at first honest Polish families willingly provided their own work and accommodation for the underground movement.
In the initial phase I had several flats and sets of personal papers in all sorts of names and with different addresses.
At that time it was still possible to go out leaving one’s papers at home.
Therefore, I did not carry an identity card, and if I was stopped, I used the name associated with our currently “cleanest” accommodation and where I had one of my cards.
One of the flats out of which I was working belonged to Mrs. 83 [Helena Pawłowska].
One day, Mrs. 83 [Helena Pawłowska] told me that she had some identity papers made out in the real name of one of our officers, 84 [Tomasz Serafiński], who had left on resistance business in another sector before the papers had been finished.
Since there were work papers as well as an identity card, I agreed to Mrs. 83’s [Helena Pawłowska’s] suggestion to use these papers after changing the photograph.
When I set off for the round-up, I took that document with me, since the name was, as I rightly surmised, not yet “burnt.”
So I had with me the papers of a man (84 [Tomasz Serafiński]), who was living somewhere in the outside world.
However, the papers made no mention of his mother’s maiden name.
When we were interrogated that night at Auschwitz, just after being brought to the camp, I made up a mother’s name, since I had had to give one.
So now the situation was anything but clear.
When my number came up, as it would over the next few months, and the political department sent off an inquiry to the parish in the town of Z [Bochnia] for my (or rather Mr. 84’s [Tomasz Serafiński’s]) details from the register, the mother’s maiden name would not tally with the one I had given.
So they would summon me and ask me who I was—and that would be that.
By a fortunate coincidence, some fellows from a round-up, several hundred (as I have already mentioned), were “in quarantine” and were shortly to leave for Warsaw.
I send details of my situation to my sister-in-law, Mrs. E.O. [Eleonora Ostrowska] through released inmate 14 [Antoni Woźniak], indicating what maiden name I had given here.
A number of fellows are leaving, some of them members of our organization, and in addition to 14 [Antoni Woźniak], there is also 9 [Czesław Wąsowski].
Colonel 1 [Władysław Surmacki] is also headed for the “freedom” block, since he has been released from the camp owing to the efforts of a former college friend from Berlin, who now is a senior officer in the German Army.
I send a report through Colonel 1 [Władysław Surmacki] to Warsaw about our organization’s work here.
I also send a great deal of information through 86 [Aleksander Paliński], who has been in the camp for the sole reason that he has the same name as some colonel.
In order to paint a full picture of the camp at this time (obviously things I have seen myself, for I am in no position to describe everything one hears from fellows working in other kommandos), one
must include so-called “Seidler week.”
Every evening at roll call for a week in December (of ’41) we endured the régime of Seidler [Fritz Seidler], a real sadist who was standing in for the Lagerführer [Camp Head].
It was a week of especially unpleasant weather. The wind and the rain, together with freezing snow, seemed to slice through not only our clothes, but also our bodies. We were frozen right through. At night there was frost.
Seidler decided to take advantage of this to finish off the strength and the lives of as many häftlings as possible.
Daily, from the gong for evening roll call 15 minutes before 18:00 (6:00 p.m.), we stood fighting the frost in our cold clothes until 21:00 (9:00 p.m.), when we were released from punishment parade just before the bedtime gong.
We then quickly gulped down a cold dinner, which at that time we were given in the evening, and rushed through those 15 minutes to get everything done before bed.
These punishment parades lasted for a week, for supposedly every day that week someone was missing at roll call, which was pure invention on Seidler’s part.
For they ended when he ceased temporarily taking Palitzsch’s evening roll call.
Yet that week had cost us a great deal of energy and health, and many weaker fellows—their lives.
Death notices were sent to families through the main schreibstube [office] only on the political department’s clear instructions, for news of an inmate’s death getting out into the real world was not always convenient for the German police authorities, and also because investigation of some matter might still be continuing and others, held in some prison, could be threatened that they were holding inmate X, who was telling them the “whole truth.”
Thus ended 1941.
The year 1942 began, which, as far as Auschwitz was concerned, was the most dreadful; as far as our organization’s work in the camp—the most interesting and the one in which we achieved the most.
It so happens that, owing to a lack of time caused by my new decision,43 I must write almost in shorthand.
There was a sudden profound change in attitude towards Jews.
The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery Page 14