A first-rate Silesian Pole and my friend, 76 [Bernard Świerczyna], is working very effectively in his area, supplying us with clothing, uniforms, sheets and blankets from his storerooms.
Providing work for a number of our lads, including a friend from our time in Warsaw, First Lieutenant 117 [Eugeniusz Zaturski], and 39 [Pilecki’s nephew, Kazimierz Radwański].
No. 118 [name unknown] and Cavalry Sergeant 119 [Jan Miksa] join our organization.
One of our former Warsaw comrades, Dr. 120 [Zygmunt Zakrzewski], arrives in a transport from Kraków.
At this time a bomb factory was discovered near Kraków.
These people were brought in and quickly finished off.
Dr. 120 [Zygmunt Zakrzewski] somehow managed to survive and was sent off to another camp.
From time to time the camp authorities would try to infiltrate informers. A Volksdeutsche pretending to be a Pole, who had agreed to work with Grabner and wanted to discover if we were up to something, was “outed” by our fellows who came into contact with the SS, before or just after his arrival.
Such a gentleman received from us a few drops of artfully administered croton oil from the hospital, leading shortly to such stomach pains that he had to rush off to the krankenbau for some medicine.
People there had been warned of the bastard’s arrival (his number having been taken down) and he was again given a few drops of croton oil in some inoffensive medicine.
After a couple of days he was so weak that he went back to the krankenbau, where he was given a supposedly essential injection, which would have been harmless had it not been made with a rusty needle.
However, in two cases the matter had a little more spice to it.
In the first one, when such a gentleman was already in the krankenbau, he was given a chest X-ray which “showed” that he had well-developed TB (the X-ray was of someone else’s lungs).
The next day he was pointed out as tubercular to Klehr doing his rounds.
That was enough; he took down his number.
The gentleman knew nothing of this, but when he was led off to the “needle” he began to go wild, using Grabner’s name.
Klehr, on hearing the name, turned white, lost his temper, hit him in the face and quickly “finished him off” so that other malcontents could not throw Grabner’s name about.
The second incident was almost identical, with the difference that it involved a newcomer to the camp who, going to the needle, knew nothing and did not threaten anyone with Grabner. To his own surprise he was “finished off ” with the needle.
However, shortly thereafter there was a great fuss when Grabner, having not heard from them for some time and looking for them, established that they had already gone up in “a puff of smoke” through the chimney some time before and that furthermore they had been finished off by his own man—Klehr.
There was an inquiry in the hospital as to how these two had been taken care of so quickly.
Thereafter Klehr, before using the needle, had to send a list of his victims to Grabner who would check it carefully to ensure that none of his people was on it.
Thus Easter came around.
I continued to live in Room 7 on Block 25.
I compared the numbers in the room with those at Christmas (as one always did in Auschwitz) to see how many of the lads were no longer alive.
Typhus was taking a terrible toll on us. Everyone was sick and only a few of us older fellows were still hanging on.
Anyone going in for typhus rarely returned.
But “our” specially reared lice were doing their job and typhus hit the SS barracks and the epidemic grew.
The doctors were having difficulty dealing with the Siberian typhus, as were SS bodies. The SS men suffered serious losses. They were sent to hospital in Katowice, where they usually died.
In June, a transport left Auschwitz for Mauthausen.
Colonel 64 [Kazimierz Rawicz] was on it (although he could have avoided it) and he intended, as he told us, to escape en route (which did not happen).
Officer Cadet 15 [Witold Szymkowiak], Cavalry Sergeant 119 [Jan Miksa] and Second Lieutenant 67 [Czesław Darkowski] were also on it.
Before leaving, Colonel 64 [Kazimierz Rawicz] suggested to me that I should recommend Colonel 121 [Juliusz Gilewicz] to take his place, which I did.
Colonel 121 [Juliusz Gilewicz] agreed and joined us and we continued to work well.
Colonel47 122 [Teofil Dziama] also joined us.
It was at this time that Colonel 23 [Aleksander Stawarz] and former member of Parliament 70 [Stanisław Dubois] were shot.
After building the first two electric-fired crematoria in Birkenau, construction of two similar ones began.
Meanwhile the first ones were now working at capacity.
And the transports kept coming and coming.
Some were brought to us, to the camp where they were processed, each häftling receiving a number, which was now higher than 40,000, but the vast majority of the transports went straight to Birkenau in Rajsko where people, without being processed, were quickly turned into smoke and ash.
During this period about 1,000 people were burnt every day.
Who was going into the jaws of death and why?
They were Jews from France, Czechoslovakia, Holland and other European countries. They had travelled alone, without an escort until a dozen or so kilometers from Auschwitz, when the railroad cars were surrounded and finally shunted onto a siding at Birkenau in Rajsko.
Why had they been on these trains?
I was able to have several conversations with Jews from France and once with a rare transport from Poland. They were Jews from Białystok and Grodno.
From what they all said, it appeared that official advertisements in various towns and countries under German control assured them that only those Jews who went to work in the Third Reich would live, so they were going to work in the Third Reich. They were also encouraged by letters from Jews in Auschwitz, and doubtless other camps, that they were working in good conditions and were thriving.
They had been allowed to take whatever hand luggage they could carry.
So they had taken one or two suitcases in which they tried to take all their earthly possessions, selling real estate and other items and buying small valuable items, such as diamonds, gold, gold dollars and such like.
The freight trains carrying daily about a thousand people ended their journey on a siding in Rajsko.
The trains rolled up to a ramp and their contents were unloaded.
One wonders what the SS men were actually thinking. There were a great many women and children in the wagons. Sometimes the children were in cradles. They were all to end their lives here together.
They were being brought like a herd of animals—to the slaughter!
For the time being unaware of anything, the passengers followed orders and got out onto the ramp.
In order to avoid any unpleasant incidents they were treated relatively politely.
They were instructed to put their food onto one pile and all their belongings onto another. They were told that their belongings would be returned to them. The first anxiety arose amongst the passengers: would their belongings not disappear, would they find them again, would their suitcases not be switched and so on?
They were then split into groups. Men and boys over thirteen went to one group. Women and children (boys under thirteen) to another. Under the pretext of the need for a bath, they were also told to undress in their different groups, retaining some pretense of modesty.
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-68431-0005/o.Ang.
USHMM/Yad Vashem
Jewish men, women and children awaiting selection on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
USHMM/Yad Vashem
USHMM/Yad Vashem
To the left—selected to die.
NAC
USHMM/Yad Vashem
To the right—selected to live... for now.
USHMM/William and Dorothy McLaughlin
Zyklon B, the cyanide-based pesticide used by the Nazi Germans to kill between 1.1 million and 1.5 million people, mainly European Jews, in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Both groups also arranged their clothes in two great heaps, supposedly to be disinfected; now people were clearly anxious that their clothes and underwear might be switched.
Then, in hundreds, women and children separately from the men, they went off to huts which were supposedly showers, but were gas chambers. The outside windows were fakes and inside there was a wall.
After the tight-fitting doors were shut, mass murder was committed inside.
From a balcony arcade an SS man in a gas mask dropped gas in on top of the crowd beneath him.
Two types of gas were employed: in bottles which were broken, or in cakes which, after opening sealed canisters and being dropped in by an SS man wearing rubber gloves, turned into a gas which filled the gas chamber, quickly killing the people inside.
This lasted several minutes. They waited for about ten minutes. Then they ventilated: doors on the side away from the ramp were opened and Jewish kommandos carried out the still warm bodies on wheelbarrows and carts to the nearby crematoria where the corpses were quickly burnt.
Meanwhile, the next hundreds were heading for the gas chambers.
Later, technical improvements were introduced to this human slaughter, after which the process was even faster and more efficient.
Everything that these people had left behind: mountains of food, suitcases, clothes, underwear, were actually supposed to be burnt too, but only in theory.
In reality, the underwear and clothes were sent, after being disinfected, to the bekleidungskammer [clothing storeroom] and the shoes went to the tannery to be sorted into pairs.
The suitcases were taken to the tannery to be burnt.
But the SS men and kapos picked out the best for themselves from the piles in Birkenau and on the way to the tannery, saying that Auschwitz had become “Canada.”48
This term caught on and henceforth anything left over after the people had been gassed, was called “Canada.”
Thus there was an edible “Canada” from which various hitherto unavailable delicacies found their way into the camp: figs, dates, lemons, oranges, chocolate, Dutch cheeses, butter, sugar, cakes and so on.
In theory, it was forbidden to have products from “Canada,” let alone bring them into the camp.
There were constant checks at the gates.
Anyone caught with something from “Canada” went to the bunker and rarely returned.
However, the level of risk in life in Auschwitz differed from that in the outside world, and it was always so great that it was nothing to risk one’s life for some pleasing trifle.
A new state of mind, developed here, almost demanded a little pleasure—purchased at great risk.
So we continually tried to get hold of whatever food we could sneak out from nearby “Canada.”
Returning from work to the camp we went through the checks at the gate in a high state of tension.
There was another “Canada” for underwear, clothes and footwear.
It was not long before we saw kapos and SS men wearing the finest garments, often from the French capital. Silk shirts, similar pants, as well as expensive shoes.
USHMM/Yad Vashem
Inmates in the Aufräumungskommando (salvage kommando) sort through a mound of personal belongings confiscated from an arriving transport of Jews.
USHMM/ Yad Vashem
Jewish women who have been selected for death, watch as trucks loaded with their confiscated personal property drive past on the way to the “Canada” warehouses.
A truck full of confiscated possessions is unloaded at the “Canada” warehouses, as inmates in the Aufräumungskommando (salvage kommando) sort through the roof-high haul.
USHMM/Yad Vashem
“Canada” offers rich pickings for both the SS personnel as well as some privileged inmates of the Aufräumungskommando (salvage kommando).
In addition, they had soaps, the finest perfumes, razor blades, shaving brushes and ladies’ cosmetics.
It is difficult to establish everything that a well-heeled woman or man would have brought with them.
“Organizing” something from “Canada” was, with a few exceptions, an almost universal goal, and for some the main daily focus.
The SS men rooted around in the suitcases and wallets, looking for gold, money, diamonds.
Auschwitz soon became the source of a steady trickle of diamonds and gold.
Soon the German field police could be seen on the roads checking everyone and also stopping military vehicles.
When it came to going through belongings, the SS men and the kapos had nowhere near as much ingenuity as häftlings, who occasionally came across a diamond in the heel of a shoe, in the lining of a suitcase or a handbag, in toothpaste, in a tube of cream, shoe polish and in the most unlikely places.
They did this secretly and only when conditions were right for them to find items which had belonged to gassed people.
The SS men were also secretive amongst themselves about this, for the Camp Commandant himself would drive over to see Erik at the tannery, to which came truckloads of suitcases filled with expensive belongings that had already been sorted: watches, perfume, money and so on, and so he must have been turning a blind eye to the behavior of his SS subordinates, himself afraid of being turned in.
Those häftlings who had access to any of the “Canadas” quickly became a privileged class in the camp.
They traded in everything, but it would be wrong to suggest that the camp was in chaos and that the influence of gold led to some kind of more easygoing régime.
Despite the closer relations between us and the guards, death was still the main punishment and so trading was done in secret without any obvious outward signs.
The jasmine was in full bloom with a beautiful fragrance when a first-rate fellow, Senior Uhlan 123 [Stefan Stępień], was shot (rather murdered with a shot to the back of the head).
I can still see in my mind’s eye a brave man with a cheerful face.
Shortly afterwards, one of my dearest friends, a gallant officer of the 13th Uhlans, First Lieutenant 29 [Włodzimierz Makaliński], was shot in the same way.
He left me in his will information on the hiding places from 1939 of the colors of two Uhlan regiments: the 4th and the 13th.
I send another report to Warsaw through Officer Cadet 112 [Stanisław Jaster] who, with three of his friends, has carried out a superb escape from the camp.
Some time ago I saw the film 10 z Pawiaka [10 from the Pawiak Prison].
I venture to suggest that the escape of four inmates from Auschwitz in the finest car there, the Camp Commandant’s, dressed in SS uniforms, against the background of that hell, could make a truly fine subject for a film.
The hauptwache [main gate guard] presented arms.
Lagerführer Aumeier [Hans Aumeier], hastening on horse-back from Buna for evening roll call, met the car en route. He dutifully saluted, somewhat surprised that the driver was taking the car over a disused grade crossing.
The car quickly backed up and crossed the tracks at another spot.
He put it down to vodka and the driver’s weak head.
They kept their nerve and the escape succeeded.
The Lagerführer arrived back at Auschwitz in time for roll call, when everyone was already standing with their blocks in dressed ranks.
Now the fun really began!
He was informed that four inmates were missing from roll call and, worse still, that they had taken the Commandant’s car.
This took place in the blockführerstube [SS guardroom].
Aumeier went almost crazy, tearing out his hair. He was shouting that he had met them.
Then he threw his cap in despair on the ground and... suddenly burst out laughing.
There were no reprisals, no shootings and no long punishment parades.
&n
bsp; That policy dated from February of ’42.
The football matches which had been held on the parade ground in ’41, now, in ’42, were quite out of the question owing to the new construction.
The one sport in which teams of German kapos competed against the Poles was boxing.
Just as in football, despite the differences in food and work, the Poles always licked the Germans at boxing.
A boxing match was the one opportunity to punch a kapo in the face, which the Polish häftling did with the greatest satisfaction accompanied by the spectators’ general joyful cries.
We had several quite good boxers among us. From my work in the organization I knew only 21 [Tadeusz Pietrzykowski], who always won his bouts, giving some thug a pasting.
Inmates caught trying to escape were hanged publicly and ostentatiously.
This was an improvement though; they were not killed with a club or speared with a piece of wood.
Only after a time in the bunker was the victim hanged on a wheeled gallows near the kitchen during evening roll call, when all the inmates were drawn up on the parade ground.
Furthermore, he was hanged by those who in the next round would themselves be hanged by their successors.
This was done to increase the cruelty.
Once, during such a hanging, we were read an order in which the Camp Commandant solemnly informed the häftlings that an inmate could even be released for good behavior and effective work. Therefore, no foolish attempts to escape should be made, since that led, as we could see right now, to an ignominious death by hanging.
The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery Page 17