The Barbed Crown

by Rick Jones

  “Are you sure about that?” Avraham asked him while grabbing the next body off the cart with Weiner, this time a woman. “About the guards not checking.”

  “The Germans are meticulous, granted. But if they have a single weakness, it’s their complacency regarding the dead. So their complacency becomes our benefit.”

  After they tossed the body of the nude woman onto the tray to the second furnace, Avraham once again slid it inside the mouth of the oven and closed the hatch, locking it. And since he had done this so many times before, he had become desensitized to it, his motions purely automatic.

  “You have the urns?” Weiner asked.

  Dror inclined his chin toward the stock of vessels against the brick wall, more than fifty. “All we need is twenty urns,” Dror said to him in whispers. “That’s enough gunpowder to level every crematorium here.”

  “And then?” asked Avraham.

  “Then we’ll need to devise a way to sabotage the pumps close to the armory,” Dror answered without hesitation. “If we can get a work detail on that side of the perimeter, say six guys with shivs, they can overtake the guards once the chimneys blow. The diversion will work. They can breach the armory, load the carts, and get back inside the camp with enough firearms to mount an assault and escape.”

  It all sounded impossible and too impractical to everyone who unloaded the carts, a plan developed by desperate means. But the bodies they hauled off the carts and to the floor were a constant reminder of their imminent fate. At least an attempt on the armory could provide a means for many to escape into the surrounding woods with submachine guns.

  “I know a man,” said Weiner, “who inspects the pumps weekly. I can have him sabotage the unit. Once done, then a work order will be created by the SS guards for repair. He’ll advise them to replace the entire system, which will need a team since the pumps are heavy.”

  “But can you trust him?” Dror asked him.

  “His entire family was sent-up-the-chimney with the exception of one son—about seventeen or eighteen—who works alongside him as a member of the inspection team. And the man I’m talking about, someone I know well, wants nothing more than to see his last son survive the camp… So yeah, I trust him.”

  The operation appeared to be coming together on all fronts, the plan a little more feasible than what it was a few moments ago, sounder. Hope was beginning to stoke the tiny ember into a raging fire within each of them, a burgeoning confidence for which they ended up showing their enthusiasm by speaking faster.

  “Excellent,” Dror said, offering a marginal—yet genuine—grin. “Sometimes things were just meant to be.”

  They lifted another body from the pushcart, this time a child, a girl of maybe seven or eight, and placed her gently on the floor.

  “The quota is out of control,” said Avraham, looking at the girl. “So this needs to happen fast. We blow the chimneys, we breach the armory, and then we blow a hole in the gate wide enough for a mass exodus. Many will migrate on paths of their own choosing. And many will be caught and killed, that’s for certain. But there will be those who will take to the woods heavily armed. So we band together as best we can under chaotic conditions to protect those who can’t protect themselves… And then we head east toward the Russians.”

  Dror nodded. “The time will have to be quick—say two to three weeks. Over that period of time we’ll make sure that everyone involved is on the same page. We’ll devise times of when and how to act the moment the charges go off. Everybody will have to be at a precise location, and will have to know where the gate will be compromised.”

  “We can also have a detail set charges close to the vehicles to take them out,” added Ephraim. “Maybe an urn or two, and two more at a location ready to detonate when the guards gather themselves enough to give chase. When the urns go off, maybe the explosives will knock out the entire team and their dogs—at least to give us more time to run.”

  Dror bit on his lower lip at this. Though solid in planning, it would also take an additional number of urns to complete the mission, at least four more to see this done properly. The question was: How much gunpowder could the women smuggle out of the munitions factory without drawing suspicion from their German overseers?

  “What you propose, Ephraim, is strong in preparation, for sure. The problem is, however, how to obtain said amounts of gunpowder necessary without drawing the guards’ attention. We have, after all, a need for a lot of gunpowder in so little time. Do we really want to risk bringing in more people to smuggle more product? If we do that, then that raises the chances for someone to compromise our position in order to gain favor with the guards, which in turn lowers our chances to see this through. I don’t like the odds.”

  “Weren’t you the one who said that there was a solution for everything?”

  “I did.”

  “Then we examine the priorities,” said Ephraim. “Instead of blowing all the chimneys, we blow maybe two or three and use the rest of the charges elsewhere, like at the motor-pool and the gates. Whether we take down two chimneys or three, it matters not if a diversion is created, right?”

  They lifted several more bodies from the cart and began to stack them along the floor, so that the cart could be free to load other bodies that lay in wait at the Red House.

  “Never forget the one problem, however,” Weiner whispered as he lowered a middle-aged man on top of a pyramidal-shaped mound of corpses. “Moshe Chapiro. If he suspects anything, anything at all, he’ll never leave your side, Dror. Chapiro will look to seek favor from the guards even if he compromises everything you have established… And he will win that favor, too.”

  “Don’t worry about Chapiro,” he said.

  “Don’t become complacent about him, either,” returned Weiner. “Just when you believe there’s no problem, well guess what? There’s a problem.”

  “We’ll be careful and plan for every contingency, believe me. We’ll even take into consideration Moshe Chapiro. But right now, let’s concentrate on who we bring into our circle and keep the wheels turning.”

  “Just don’t forget about Chapiro,” said Weiner. “He worries me.”

  “Don’t let him get to you.”

  “You there!” it was the kapo, who pointed his truncheon at them as he quickly made his way towards them. “Why are you so slow? Remove the bodies from the cart. And you two”—He pointed the club at Weiner and Avraham—“get back to the Red House. You’re slowing up the teams.”

  The kapo was right, the line of pushcarts was growing, the column extending all the way from the gas chambers.

  “Move it,” the kapo expressed with authority while raising his club.

  “Of course,” said Avraham. “We’re almost done here.”

  Minutes later, the cart was empty and Weiner and Avraham were on the move for more.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Lagerkommandant Rudolph Höss was sitting at his desk when he received a mandate directly from the Führerbunker. Apparently the Russians were pressing closer to Berlin with little resistance from German forces, the war all but lost. What little opposition that was provided by the Germans could draw the conflict out for another year. In the meantime, the optimum directive was to terminate 2,000 Jews or more on a daily basis, and not a single Jew less, since Auschwitz was the last remaining camp after the quiet closures of Treblinka and Sobibor after the recent uprisings. Immediately Höss understood the reason behind this mandate. Hitler’s Final Solution was a dirty little secret that was well hidden from the eyes of the global community. So measures had to be taken to assure that this secret disappeared all the way down to trace evidence, leaving nothing to chance once the international courts weighed in.

  Höss stared at the documents. Already the ovens were being employed to maximum capacity, he thought, and the pits within the fields were filling with bodies as fast as his soldiers could knock them down.

  Since being named the Lagerkommandant, never once did it ever occur to him that th
e Third Reich would ever fall since Germany had taken over countries without a single shot fired—places like Czechoslovakia and Austria. In his mind Germany was an uncontestable force with no military equal or might.

  Now, less than a decade into the campaign, Rudolph Höss was about to be targeted as a war criminal since he oversaw the liquidation of more than 3 million Jews under his command. What he now needed to do was to wash his hands entirely of the affair before he disappeared to some obscure part of the planet with his wife and children, most likely to South America. But before he could plan his flight from the international courts, Höss needed to see the Auschwitz he had created as the Lagerkommandant, as something he believed to be a sweeping measure of success when it came to following the blueprint of the Final Solution.

  So with his command staff, which included SS Sergeant Kaiser and several heavily armed SS guards, Höss made an impromptu inspection of the crematories. But it wasn’t the ovens he was there for, or to watch the labor forces at work. He was there to see what was beneath the crematories, which was a large and massive subterranean storeroom. Taking the stairs to the sublevel, Rudolph Höss—dressed in a leather long-coat, stylized military boots and uniform—entered the area along with several SS guards and Sergeant Kaiser. With a turn of a switch the area illuminated as strings of low-wattage light bulbs flared. With the room extending for more than a hundred meters from the base of the stairway, and for as far as the eye could see, tens of thousands of urns that had accumulated over time filled up nearly every centimeter of flooring, leaving little open space. They were a meter in height, about three feet, with every container filled to capacity.

  This was Rudolph Höss’s trophy room, filled with his achievement as the Lagerkommandant.

  “It’s all but written in stone,” Höss stated to Kaiser. “We might have a year before the final push by the Red Army and Allied forces. So we’ll need to move quickly.” He looked out at the large area of the sublevel and saw how it ran so deep that the light from some of the bulbs could not penetrate the shadows. To Höss it appeared like the darkness was pushing back the light as if the two elements were warring against each another.

  SS Sergeant Kaiser swept a hand to emphasis the immense size of the room. “You want us to clear all this?”

  “Every last one,” said Höss. “I don’t want anything left behind. Not even a single mote of ash. Is that clear, Herr Sergeant?”

  Kaiser nodded. “Yes, Herr Lagerkommandant.”

  “Pull as many as you can from details without causing much downtime to the camp,” Höss added. “I want as much manpower as possible to remove these objects, and then I want them disposed of in the fields. Use bulldozers to bury the containers.”

  “Yes, Herr Lagerkommandant.”

  By the time Höss returned to his quarters, he felt a certain hollowness as if the urns were a part of him in some macabre way, and that a large part of his makeup was being exorcised with their removals.

  Sitting at his desk, he traced his fingers gingerly around the edges of the picture frames that housed the photo of his wife and children. What had been a future so bright for them all would now be a future on the run.

  Then he eased into his seat and mulled over a particular thought. As soon as the urns had been removed and discarded, he would then oversee the final stages of ethnic cleansing. Within a year, at least by his projection, the Russians, Brits and the Americans would find nothing but a few standing posts that once marked the boundaries of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and rows of empty barracks.

  But plans rarely played out as they’re drawn up, whether on paper or in the mind’s eye.

  And Lagerkommandant Rudolph Höss always thought he could do no wrong. That everything moved and bent by the power of his will.

  In the end, Lagerkommandant Rudolph Höss would find out differently.

  He would discover that he could be wrong.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  When Frederic Becher visited the clothing factory and tapped on Ayana’s workstation to join him outside, he was carrying a carbine instead of a submachine gun. When they exited the rear door Ayana, though she looked Becher directly in the eyes, remained quiet.

  “How are you today, Ayana?”

  “Fine, Herr Frederic.”

  When she called him by his first name, he displayed satisfaction with a gratifying smile. “And the cheese? The olives? I hope you enjoyed them. They were my gift to you.”

  “Herr Frederic—”

  He cut her off by laying a finger against her lips. She did not back away. “I’ve something else for you,” he told her. Becher looked around to make sure that neither of them were under a watchful eye, even from a kapo, and when he saw that they weren’t, he reached inside his ammo satchel and produced another handkerchief that had been folded over. “For you,” he said. “Meats from the kapo dormitory. Salami.”

  When he peeled back the folds, Ayana’s stomach began to twist into a slick fist, the pain like a stab in the gut. The want and the need to eat something that appeared so delicious and so delightful, and with the smell of the meat wafting ever so slightly from the palm of Becher’s hand, she reached out and closed his fingers over the offering, which confused Frederic.

  “Thank you, Herr Frederic. But I can’t accept this.”

  He appeared wounded by her rejection. “Do you not like salami? I can bring you something else—”

  “That’s not it,” she intervened.

  “Did you not like the cheese and olives?”

  She shook her head and admitted: “I didn’t eat them.”

  “You didn’t…” Becher’s words trailed. He knew that she was hungry, if not starving. “I don’t understand.”

  When she smiled at him, it was genuine and perhaps the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Her perfect rows of teeth and the way the dimples in her cheeks became more pronounced, everything in his mind was that she was absolutely perfect.

  “The food, Herr Frederic, though appreciated, cannot be shared with those in the barrack.”

  “The food is for you, not for anyone else.”

  “I cannot eat in front of others, knowing that they starve and I don’t.”

  Becher understood. In fact, he appreciated her mettle and loyalty; to be a part of a core that stood or fell together… as well as to hunger together.

  “Are you sure, Ayana? I don’t want to see you go hungry. A tin every other day is not enough to keep you going. I can already see the effects of not eating.”

  She cupped both her hands over his. “You’re very nice, Herr Frederic. Why you do this for me… I still don’t know. Though I am curious.”

  Frederic Becher returned the bundle to his satchel, somewhat disheartened by her choice. “I’m… learning,” he told her, his voice having an unsteadiness to it. “What’s happening here shouldn’t be happening at all.”

  “Then you understand that I can take no other side than those I house with, until what’s happening here changes.” Then she rubbed Frederic’s hand with kindness, the act enthralling him to the point where he held her hands in an affectionate grip, his touch sensing flesh that was becoming hardened with callouses.

  “I worry about you,” he told her. “I wish there was more I could do.”

  “There isn’t.”

  “Someday, Ayana, this will all end, believe me.”

  “By that time, Herr Frederic, I’ll be dead.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  From Becher’s response, Ayana could tell that the thought of her dying had wounded him deeply, his face twisting with hurt. “I’m good with that, Herr Frederic. I’m at peace knowing that this is not the end. But the beginning of something new and wonderful.”

  “I wish I had the same faith and courage as you. But I don’t, Ayana. If I did, I would do more than just walk the premise of this camp.”

  Then Becher did something unusual here. He lifted her hands to his cheek and rubbed them against his skin, as if trying to take in her essence
by absorption. She did not pull away, didn’t feel the need to. Frederic Becher made her feel at ease. More so, he exhibited sentiments of genuine care for her welfare. And in a place like Auschwitz where the only love was for the love of evil, she gravitated towards this show of kindness, and to this particular brand of uniqueness. To her, Frederic Becher was a small beacon in a place consumed by darkness.

  “I must go, Herr Frederic. I’ve much work to do.” And this was true. Ayana had started on amending the hemlines by making them wider, as well as to create inner linings that were tube-like cargo spaces for the transport of gunpowder.

  “I’ll come by again,” he told her. “To make sure that you’re well.”

  She smiled. “Thank you, Herr Frederic.”

  “And the food?”

  “Please,” she said. “Not unless those who stand with me has the same opportunity.”

  Just as Becher released her hands, the photographer who processed Ayana during her Intake, the one with the badly healed scar, seemed to appear out of nowhere to express his need to photograph the camp as a means of meticulous record keeping, which the Germans were known for, since they archived everything for the Berlin principals.

  As Becher raised his carbine and smiled, Ayana raised her chin in defiance.

  After the picture had been taken—which would be one of his last now that the photographer’s position was becoming obsolete—the camp’s photojournalist continued on with his duties. Then as Becher turned to say one last thing to Ayana, she was gone, the door closing in her wake.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  It was night, and the only source of illumination was the occasional swing of the search lights as they panned across the grounds.

  Ayana was laying on her bunk that was covered with a few hairs of straw, the platform smelling from ingrained urine from those who came before her, those who had become too weak to raise a hand for help that would never come. As she lay there staring at the bottom of the bunk above her, her mind was in a wondrous fog with thoughts of Frederic Becher. So much so that nothing else around her seemed to exist, these thoughts providing her with a wonderful moment of escape. She could see his face, strong and angular, and the flash of his smile from ruler-straight teeth. His eyes were a startling blue, like sapphires, that often displayed tiny bursts of pinprick lights along the edges, like stars.