Henceforth the two TAP members worked and lived together.
Of the men I had once known in Warsaw from the TAP, the following passed through Auschwitz: 1 [Władysław Surmacki], 2 [Władysław Dering], 3 [Jerzy de Virion], 25 [Stefan Bielecki], 26 [Stanisław Maringe], 29 [Włodzimierz Makaliński], 34 [name unknown], 35 [Remigiusz Niewiarowski], 36 [Stanisław Arct], 37 [name unknown], 38 [Chmielewski], 41 [Stanisław Stawiszyński], 48 [Stanisław Ozimek], 49 [Jan Dangel], 85 [Zygmunt Bohdanowski], 108 [Stanisław Dobrowolski], 117 [Eugeniusz Zaturski], 120 [Zygmunt Zakrzewski], 124 [Tadeusz Chrościcki], 125 [Tadeusz Lucjan Chrościcki], 131 [name unknown], 156 [Stanisław Wierzbicki], 157 [Czesław Sikora] and 158 [Zygmunt Ważyński].
Since 129 [Leon Kukiełka] had been shot and 130 [name unknown] had died of typhus, it was impossible to continue the tunnel from Block 28. The tunnel was not discovered, but 5 [Roman Zagner] was arrested on another matter.
Later that autumn (of ’42) when block chiefs were roped in to pick potatoes, 4 [Alfred Stössel] also had a long walk to work in the potato fields. Lachmann, an SS man from the political department and unfamiliar with the case, came to get him on some matter, but when he found that 4 [Alfred Stössel] was not there, Lachmann turned around and went away.
The lads quickly put two and two together and rushed into the room which 4 [Alfred Stössel], as the block chief for Block 28, had to himself, and removed anything which might have made things difficult for him.
Someone must have spilt the beans...
Lachmann got only as far as the gate and, as if struck by something, turned back and made a thorough search of 4’s [Alfred Stössel’s] room, but by now he found nothing.
However, he waited and as soon as 4 [Alfred Stössel] returned from work that evening, Lachman “arrested” him, led him off to the bunker, and 4 [Alfred Stössel] never returned to Block 28.
He was interrogated on Block 11, in the bunkers and in the political department.
Although lately 4 [Alfred Stössel] had had an unfortunate obsession, to give him his due he stood up bravely to the torture and interrogation in the bunkers and said not a word, although he knew a great deal.
Things went no further.
He was fortunate to come down with typhus and was moved from the bunker to the typhus block.
One needs to experience for oneself how relative things are to understand that just as life beyond the wires represented freedom for inmates in the camp, so camp represented freedom for someone in the bunker.
To get out of the bunker then, even if one was sick and on the typhus block, was a substitute for the substitute of freedom.
But here too he had an SS man with him nearly all the time.
Lachmann was not giving up!
However, 4 [Alfred Stössel] was tough and had a strong will. One night, he stopped living.
My comrades whom I have mentioned and who had come in from Warsaw, 156 [Stanisław Wierzbicki], 157 [Czesław Sikora] and 158 [Zygmunt Ważyński], remarked that they had not expected to find the inmates’ physical condition and morale in Auschwitz to be so good.
They said that they had known nothing about the brutality here, the “wall of tears,” nor about the phenol or the gas chambers.
They themselves had not thought, and no one in Warsaw had seriously considered, that Auschwitz could represent an active asset; for the most part people felt that everyone there was a skeleton whom it was pointless and useless to rescue.
It was bitter listening to this while looking at the lads’ brave faces.
So, fine people were going to their deaths here and losing their lives so as not to implicate anyone outside, while far weaker people than us were casually calling us skeletons.
What perseverance would be needed to continue to die in order to protect our chums “enjoying themselves” in freedom?
Yes, all the methods of destruction in the camp hit all of us too hard, and now this opinion from the outside with its continual, ignorant silence.
The four battalions’ duties were divided up in such a way that each battalion was on duty for a week, which meant that it was responsible for immediate action in the event of an air raid or an arms drop.
It also was the recipient during its week of any items “organized” and supplied by 76 [Bernard Świerczyna], 77 [Zbigniew Ruszczyński], 90 [name unknown], 94 [name unknown] and 117 [Eugeniusz Zaturski], dividing food and clothing amongst the incomplete platoons.
Despite the prohibition (after all, what did a prohibition mean for häftlings?), and despite the death penalty, there was an enormous increase in the camp of dealing in gold and diamonds.
A kind of organization developed, since two inmates who wanted to barter—for instance sausage from the abattoir for gold—were already connected to each other, for if one of them was caught with the gold and then beaten in the bunker, he might well let slip who had given it to him and in exchange for what.
Arrests in the camp for having gold now became more frequent.
The SS men eagerly hunted down this new organization, for it provided them with a profit.
In any event, the gold “organization” was an excellent lightning rod for us.
Attempts to get on our trail usually were sidetracked and eventually led to the “gold organization” and then went quite cold, for the SS were so pleased with this new source of income that they did not want to exert themselves in another direction.
I have already written that we watched the zugangs carefully, for one never knew what some newly arrived fellow might do, but our older inmates also sprang some surprises.
For instance, through the carelessness of one of our comrades, the too well-informed 161 [Bolesław Kuczbara], a typical schizophrenic, one day painted two honorary “Orders of the Garter” for Colonel 121 [Juliusz Gilewicz] and 59 [Henryk Bartosiewicz] for their work in the independence movement.
He spared me, thanks to the latter’s intervention.
And with his “certificates” rolled into a tube he crossed the parade ground during lunch to show off his work in the hospital.
He could have been stopped by an SS man, or some kapo, interested in what he was carrying and he could have endangered his comrades, not to mention a wider group.
He showed it to Dr. 2 [Władysław Dering] saying about me that only I had my head screwed on, etc., etc., which is why he had not painted me a “certificate.”
Dr. 2 [Władysław Dering], with the help of Dr. 102 [Rudolf Diem], managed to wrest the “certificates” from him and destroy them.
However, 161 [Bolesław Kuczbara] was clever, and one dark evening I was summoned from Block 22 by comrade 61 [Konstanty Piekarski] who led me to an SS man. It turned out to be 161 [Bolesław Kuczbara] dressed in an SS uniform and greatcoat. He managed to use them shortly thereafter in an escape.
Christmas came—the third in Auschwitz.
I was living on Block 22, together with the whole bekleidungswerkstätte [clothing workshop] kommando.
How very different this Christmas was from the previous ones.
The inmates, as usual, received parcels from home for Christmas with sweaters, but the authorities had finally permitted, in addition to clothes parcels, the first food parcels to reach Auschwitz.
Thanks to “Canada,” there was no longer hunger in the camp.
The parcels also improved this state of affairs.
The news of major reverses for the German Army raised inmates’ morale and improved everyone’s state of mind dramatically.
This atmosphere was improved by news of an escape (30 Dec. ’42),53 organized by the arbeitsdiensts [work assignment leaders] Mietek and Otto, 161 [Bolesław Kuczbara] and a fourth partner.
The cheekily organized escape—made easier by the fact that arbeitsdiensts were able to move between the inner and outer security perimeters, and with the addition of 161’s [Bolesław Kuczbara’s] clever disguise as an SS man and involving an audacious departure in broad daylight on a horse-drawn cart outside the camp on a false
pass, which the supposed SS man showed to a sentry from a distance—had the additional spice for all the camp inmates in that, on the basis of a discovered letter from Otto, the Lagerältester [Head Inmate] Bruno “inmate No. 1” and the camp brute, was locked up in the bunker by the authorities on New Year’s Eve.
Bruno’s enemy Otto had written in the letter—intentionally left in a coat on the cart, abandoned together with the horses, about a dozen or so kilometers from the camp—that it was a great shame that they could not take Bruno with them as agreed, for they were out of time and had to hurry and that Bruno could keep their joint stash of gold!
Known for their quick thinking, the authorities locked up the swine Bruno in the bunker where he stayed for three months. His conditions there were better than those of any other inmate. He was in a cell, but the camp was deprived of this thug forever, for he did not return to his former position but took the same one in Birkenau.
Meanwhile, the camp went wild with joy over Christmas, eating the parcels from our families and telling the latest Bruno joke...
Boxing matches and cultural evenings were held in the blocks. Ad hoc groups from the orchestra went around from block to block.
Everyone was so happy owing to the general situation, that older inmates shook their heads saying: “Well, well... there once was a camp called ‘Auszwic’ (Auschwitz), but it’s gone... all that’s left is its last syllable... nothing but a ‘witz.’”54
Meanwhile, month by month the camp régime was becoming less harsh.
However, that in no way prevented us witnessing at that time some very painful scenes.
Returning from the tannery in our five “hundreds” just after New Year, I saw a small group of men and women standing in front of the crematorium (the old coal-fired one built right next to the camp). There were a dozen or so, young and old and of both sexes.
They were standing in front of the crematorium like a herd of cattle in front of an abattoir.
They knew why they were there...
Amongst them was a boy of about 10 who was looking for someone amongst our “hundreds” passing by... maybe a father... maybe a brother...
Approaching this group, one was afraid to meet the women’s and children’s eyes and see the contempt in them.
Here we were—strong, healthy men and five hundred of us, and there they were—soon to go to their deaths.
We were burning and seething inside, but no!—with some relief we saw as we passed that in their eyes was simply contempt—for death!
Going through the gate, we saw another little group up against the wall, their backs to the advancing columns and their hands raised.
Some would still endure interrogations before death, others would still go to the torments of Block 11 before the executioner Palitzsch did them the favor of a bullet in the back of the head and their bloody corpses were carried off in carts to the crematorium.
As we entered the gate the first little group of inmates was being herded into the crematorium.
Sometimes a bottle of gas was felt to be a waste for only a dozen or so people. They were stunned with rifle butts and pushed semi-conscious into the burning ovens.
From our block, Block 22, which was the closest to the crematorium, we sometimes heard, muffled by the walls, terrifying screams and the groans of people being tortured and quickly put to death.
Not everyone returning from work took our route.
Those who did not see the victims’ faces went another way and were never free of the thought: maybe a mother... maybe a wife... maybe a daughter...
But a camp inmate’s heart is hard. Half an hour later some were queuing to buy margarine or tobacco, ignoring the fact that they were standing next to a great heap of naked corpses piled one on top of the other, who had been “done in” that day with a phenol injection.
Sometimes someone stepped on an inert leg, already stiff and looked down: “Heavens, it’s Stasio...what can you do? It was his turn today, maybe it’ll be mine next week...”
And yet... the little boy’s eyes looking at us searchingly... bothered me long into the night...
However, the “high spirits” in camp brought on by the Christmas atmosphere did lead to another painful episode.
Block 27, the uniform and clothing storeroom, was the workplace for the bekleidungskammer [clothing storeroom] kommando, composed almost entirely of Poles.
This was a “good” kommando, in other words it was an indoor job, with the additional bonus that its members— selflessly providing their friends with clothing, uniforms, blankets, shoes—also had an opportunity from inmates, well placed as block chiefs or workers in the abattoir or food storerooms, to obtain the means to make their lives more bearable by exchanging goods for food products.
In other words, it was a good billet, and with the help of 76 [Bernard Świerczyna] we managed to get a number of our fellows in there.
The feeling of a general lightening of tension in the camp and the absence in the camp of Bruno, who was locked up, led to some people taking security precautions too lightly.
Our fellows in Block 27 held a joint Christmas gathering at which 76 [Bernard Świerczyna] read aloud his own poem on a patriotic theme: a woman from Silesia had two sons, one was in the German Army, the other was an inmate in Auschwitz. While the inmate was escaping, the other son, a guard there, unbeknowingly shot his brother.
The poem was well written. The atmosphere was pleasant.
Result: the authorities decided that the Poles on Block 27 were having it too easy and the political department concluded that the Poles on Block 27 were organized.
On the 6th of January (of ’43), SS men from the political department arrived at Block 27 during work. They formed up the whole kommando. They asked who was the colonel.
Colonel 24 [Karol Kumuniecki] initially refrained from replying. Whereupon Lachmann went up to him and pulled him out of the ranks (the whole business had already been planned by the political department).
Then they began to segregate people. They divided them into three groups. The Reichsdeutschen [German citizens] and Volksdeutschen formed one group, whom they left to continue working on the block. They divided all the remaining Poles into two groups, sending to the right a group of a dozen or so educated people, which included Colonel 24 [Karol Kumuniecki], Major 150 [Edward Gött-Getyński], Cavalry Captain 162 [Włodzimierz Koliński], Second Lieutenant 163 [Mieczysław Koliński] and lawyer 142 [name unknown]; and to the left those who in the eyes of the SS were less educated which included Major 85 [Zygmunt Bohdanowski] who was pretending to be a woodsman, Second Lieutenant 156 [Stanisław Wierzbicki] and a school pupil—my nephew 39 [Kazimierz Radwański].
They were kept on punishment parade for over a dozen hours in the frost.
Then the educated group was put in the bunker and the less educated were sent to the so-called Palitzsch kiesgrube.55
The first group was interrogated and tortured in the bunker, the object being to force them to admit that they were organized and to reveal what organization they represented.
The others, sent to be finished off at work in the frost, also appeared to be doomed. Yet a few of them managed to wangle themselves out of this kommando after a few months’ of back-breaking work.
A couple of friends, 117 [Eugeniusz Zaturski] and 156 [Stanisław Wierzbicki], managed to do this a little too quickly.
They had been working together in the bekleidungskammer [clothing storeroom]. They had been living together in Block 3 in a separate room—the storeroom. Both fortunately managed that day (6 Jan. ’43) not to be counted among the educated and thus avoided the bunker, and for the time being ended up in the Palitzsch kiesgrube.
Just after 156 [Stanisław Wierzbicki] had arrived from Warsaw a few months before, I had asked him how Warsaw was reacting to escapes from Auschwitz; he had replied that it was doing so in two ways: [Home Army] High Command was awarding the Virtuti Militari56 (perhaps he thought that this might thus encourage me to escape), w
hile the general public, unaware that the policy of collective responsibility had been abandoned, considered escapes egoistic...
Now, when he himself was in a bind, he began to encourage me to escape with him.
I was not planning to leave at that stage, but he, poor fellow, never got to try...
Both of them were just a little too quick to land on their feet—they fell ill, after which they found themselves another, easier job.
They were not experienced “camp hands.”
One day, when I thought that they were still in the hospital, I discovered that both of them had been shot (on 16 Feb. ’43).
Lachmann had found them in another kommando and asked how they had got there; by the end of the day they were no longer alive.
Shortly thereafter, in March, they shot the whole educated group, which had been tortured in the bunker on account of the organization which a kapo, who had witnessed the unfortunate “joint Christmas gathering,” had taken it into his head to imagine.
They had said nothing... GOOD MEN... these workmates of ours!
After the Poles had been thrown out of the bekleidungskammer [clothing storeroom] their places were taken by Ukrainians, who did not, however, suit the SS man running the kommando or the kapo as workers, and so some of the Poles began slowly to worm their way back in.
There was a break in supplies from this department.
However, other deliveries were working well. As Officer Cadet 90 [name unknown] calculated, just for Christmas alone (of ’42) over 700 kg of meat products were brought in from the abattoir through the gate, despite the constant searches.
By the late autumn of ’42, some unusual preparations were being made on Block 10.
All the inmates were removed, as well as some of the bunks. Wooden screens were installed on the windows outside, preventing anyone seeing in.
Some sort of equipment and apparatus was brought in.
Then some German professors started coming in the evening with students. Someone was brought in and work went on at night, then they either left in the morning or stayed for a few days.
The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery Page 21