The washrooms were dank and draughty, the brick floors covered with a slippery layer of mud. The walls were covered with frescoes. Netanel wondered whether they were a sort of bad joke, or mockery, or just the work of some humorless SS functionary unable to perceive absurdities.
One of the frescoes portrayed a good prisoner, stripped to the waist, soaping his face and body; the legend underneath said:
So bist du rein
(Like this you are clean)
Another fresco showed a filthy Müsselman with a large Semitic nose and grimy uniform dipping just one finger in the washbasin. Underneath it said:
So geht’s du rein
(Like this you come to a bad end)
A bad end! Netanel thought. Not washing in this freezing water is a bad end; being beaten to death with a rubber truncheon is just camp discipline.
Mandelbaum was at the washbasin next to him. He stripped off his cap, shirt and jacket and placed them carefully between his knees so they would not be stolen, then went through the motions of making a lather with a tiny piece of dirty soap and cold water - an almost impossible task - as he washed his face, arms, and body.
Then he dried himself diligently with his jacket.
Netanel splashed a little water over his face as he watched him. Poor, simple Mandelbaum. What was the point? It just burned up the precious energy they would need later at the factory and, anyway, within half an hour at the work site they would both be as dirty as each other again.
“I saw you in the latrines,” Mandelbaum said later, as they crouched against the wall of the barracks with their bowl of coffee and their hunk of bread. “I noticed you have stopped washing properly.” There was a note of injury in Mandelbaum’s voice, as if Netanel had somehow let him down.
“What is the point? If you want pretend to yourself we are still members of the human race, that’s up to you.”
“I am surprised that you should take that attitude, Herr Rosenberg. You, of all people.”
“In another hour you will be as dirty as I am. The Orphan will see to that.”
“That is not the point.”
“What is?”
“Washing is an essential part of being a human being. It is not only a daily renewal of hygiene, it is a renewal of our dignity. If we let them take that away we have nothing left.”
“How can we have dignity, Mandelbaum? They shave our heads and make us piss in buckets and dress in striped uniforms like clowns. We forfeited our dignity the day we walked through those gates!”
Mandelbaum shook his head. “It is harder for you, Herr Rosenberg. You have always had respect. You’ve never had to fight for your dignity.”
“What are you saying, Mandelbaum?”
“They can treat us like animals, but if we choose not to behave like them, they still cannot win. Perhaps you think I am simple, but every day the act of washing helps me survive.”
Survive!
Remember Netya, you haven’t lost quite everything. There is Marie. Remember Marie!
“I would still rather save my energy,” Netanel said. But the next morning at reveille he ran to the latrines, stripped off his jacket and shirt, put it between his knees and tried to make a lather with a little piece of soap and cold water.
It was soon apparent to Netanel that some prisoners were in much better shape than others. There was a rigid hierarchy in the camp, and the ordinary Jewish inmates - the Häftlinge - were at the bottom of the pile.
The first distinction between the prisoners was the color of the triangle on their uniforms. There was pink for homosexuals, violet for Jehovah’s Witnesses, red for politicals, green for criminals, and two triangles of red and orange, forming a David Star, for the Jews. The masters of the camp, for most purposes, were not the SS guards but the green triangles - the criminals.
They were the Prominenz, the aristocracy. They got the best jobs; most of the kapos, the prison guards, were green triangles. Their position entitled them to extra rations of food and camp luxuries like tobacco and insect powder. There was even a brothel filled with Polish Häftlinge girls, called the Frauenblock, for their private use.
But not all the kapos were Reichsdeutsche criminals. Some were Jews, who through bribes and excessive demonstrations of brutality, had turned their back on their own to save themselves. The criminals were like the guard dogs, Netanel thought, they were born brutes and knew no other way. But for the Jewish kapos, he had nothing but contempt.
They administered each block with a Blockalteste, a block elder, and his assistants, the Stubenaltester. Most of these, also, were German or Polish prisoners; but even some of them were Jews who had turned on his own to try and save their own necks. The Blockalteste for Netanel’s barracks was a man named Mendelssohn. They said he was a Hassid from the Warsaw ghettoes.
He lived in a large room in the corner of the barracks, with the Orphan, the Stubenaltester and a handful of their friends. Netanel had seen inside the room only once, when the door had been inadvertently left half open. There were tables and chairs to sit on, and shelving for glasses and dishes. There were even ornaments, imitation flowers, and pictures cut from magazines on the walls alongside as proverbs praising order, discipline and hygiene.
But what made Netanel most envious were the beds; they had proper beds with pink silk quilts. It was hard to imagine the Orphan sleeping under in pink silk.
Suddenly Mendelssohn appeared in the doorway, and slammed the door in his face.
“This is like the whole world,” Dov said, when Netanel told him about it later. “The whole world packed into a few acres. The few Prominenz, the privileged, looking after themselves. They have a few lackeys to keep an eye on the rest of us, working for crusts, starving and struggling. The camp is like the outside, only without the pretence.”
They were sitting among the broken bricks in the factory, shaded from the relentless afternoon sun by a low wall. The watery soup had swelled their stomachs but could not revive the exhaustion in their limbs.
“You’re a communist, then,” Netanel replied.
“A Zionist. I wanted to go to Palestine before the war. The only way we Jews will ever redeem ourselves is through the land and through labor. But then the Germans invaded and I was trapped.”
“My father said Palestine was nothing but swamps and deserts.”
“Spoken like a good German.”
“Perhaps Palestine is just another dream. Jews are not a nation, we are a religion. Sometimes not even that.”
“Then why don’t you give up your country and your religion? Renounce it!” Dov smiled, knowingly. “You would have liked to, wouldn’t you? But the Germans won’t let you.”
“I am a German.”
Dov grinned again. “Then tell them to make you a kapo.”
“I would rather die first.”
“You probably will. How long do you think anyone survives in this place unless they learn how to work the system?” Dov leaned closer. “You know what these bastards do, Mendelssohn and the Orphan? They get fifty loaves of bread for our ration. They are supposed to cut each loaf into ten pieces. Instead they cut them into eleven. Simple. So at every meal they make five loaves. What they don’t eat themselves they trade for other things on the black market.”
“If you know all this why haven’t you tried to organize something for yourself?”
Dov shrugged, and his eyes were evasive. “I have.”
“What?”
Dov then pointed to a group of four kapos talking by the wooden hut that served as a site office. “See that one on the right, the big one with the long chin? That’s Lubanski. He’s in charge of the Kartoffelschalen Kommando, the Potato Peeling Command. I sold him my gold tooth and he has promised me a place with him. I start tomorrow. This is my last day working in this shitty heat, carrying all these bricks. It’s easy work, in the kitchens, and if you take a few potatoes for yourself, who’s going to know?”
“I don’t believe you.”
Dov opened h
is mouth and pointed to the dark and still bloody gap in his lower jaw where a tooth had been.
Netanel closed his eyes. Any minute the siren would sound again and they would have to face five more hours of relentless crushing labor in the hot sun. “I have nothing to give him,” he murmured.
“He’ll take anything. He’s a mercenary bastard.”
Netanel remembered the silver Star of David and he made his decision. There was no law that said he had to suffer with the rest of them. There was only one law here: survive one more day.
He lay on his bunk staring through the barracks room window. The Silver Star of David was hidden in his right fist; he could feel the points of the star in the flesh of his palm. He waited.
Lubanski emerged from the barracks opposite and make his way towards the Appelplatz with his familiar long-boned stride. Netanel sprang from the bed. The sudden movement did not attract much attention. Many of the inmates did the same thing when they were stricken with diarrhea and had to rush for the latrines.
He ran across the street: “Herr Lubanski!”
The kapo stopped and turned.
Netanel pulled off his cap. “May I speak with you?”
Lubanski put his hands on his hips. “What do you want, Häftling?”
“I understand you are in charge of the Potato Peeling Command. I would like a place on your kommando. I am willing to pay.” He held out his palm and showed him the silver Star of David.
Lubanski examined it. “The Potato Peeling Command,” he said. He closed his fist so that two points of the Star protruded between his knuckles. The blow was delivered without warning. Netanel felt a numbing shock to the side of his face and fell backwards.
Lubanski’s knees pinned his shoulders to the ground and the beating started.
He arched his back and tried to roll free but the kapo was too heavy. He heard someone shrieking from far away. He realized it was him.
It went on forever, stopped as suddenly as it had begun. He heard men shouting, was aware of others standing over him. This is it, Netanel thought. They are deciding how best to finish me off.
“Netanel?” a voice said softly.
He recognized that voice. It was Chaim, his cousin, Chaim, who was arrested by the Germans in Austria before the war. He was dead by now. That meant he was dead too. “Chaim? Has it stopped? Is it over?”
“Netanel, is it really you?”
He tried to open his eyes but he could not see.
“Thanks to God it is all over.”
“Potato Peeling Command!” he heard someone say.
“He’s a High Number, he didn’t know!” Chaim said.
“Chaim?”
“I would not have recognized you. It was your voice. When I heard your voice . . .” Chaim barked an order. Netanel felt himself being lifted up and carried back inside. Later he heard Mandelbaum’s voice whispering in his ear: “He really messed you up. Do you have much pain?”
Netanel could not answer him. He realized he was still alive. He was almost disappointed.
Mandelbaum helped him to the washroom, risked his own place in the soup line to wash the blood off his face. One of Netanel’s eyes was swollen shut and his mouth was split open in two places. The points of the Star of David had torn holes in his cheek and his eyelids and his lip.
As he staggered back to the barracks he saw Dov standing in the line, watching him.
“It was only meant to be a joke,” he said.
‘A joke?’
‘Anyway, what were you doing all the time I’ve been here, eating this watery piss for food and hefting bricks? Sleeping in a good bed, eating good German food! You’re a Jew, same as me. Why weren’t you here as well?”
Netanel turned away.
“Maybe this makes up for it,” Dov said.
They assembled in their ranks in the Appelplatz. The Orphan summoned prisoner 81305 from his place and marched him away to the western side of the square, near the wire. Chaim was waiting for him.
“Herrgottsacrament! Look what that bastard did to your face!”
Netanel stared. It was his cousin, and yet it was not. The last time he had seen him was just before he left for Austria with Aunt Esther and Michal. He was still in short trousers then.
Chaim. Well, that was who he said he was. These days he had the raw, seamed face of a boxer. There was absolutely nothing to connect him to the pimply face of the cousin he remembered.
“Is it really . . . you?” Netanel mumbled through his tom mouth.
“It seems we have both lived a hundred times in the last seven years, Netanel.” He stepped closer. “How long have you been here?”
“A week . . . maybe two . . . don’t . . . remember.”
“I can help you, Netanel! I know this place, how it works. I should do. Four years I have lived in this charnel house.”
“Aunt Esther?” Netanel said. “Michal?”
“Dead,” Chaim said, without explanation. “Potato Peeling Command! Did you really say that to Lubanski, of all people?”
Netanel said nothing. What was there to say? He was a High Number, a stupid Häftling, and he still had not learned.
“Lubanski used to be a professional boxer. If I hadn’t come along he would have killed you. He thought you were making fun of him!” Chaim looked over Netanel’s shoulder to the rows of filthy, shabby uniforms and their cropped and bowed owners. “Look at them. Those stupid Hassids, fucking gypsies, ignorant little shoemakers and tailors from the ghettoes. How did we get mixed up with this rabble?”
“We’re just . . . Jews, like the rest of them.”
“I can get you a job as a Stubenalteste in my block. Maybe I can even persuade someone to make you a kapo.”
Netanel shook his head. “Don’t want . . . your help.”
“Don’t be an idiot!”
“Rather die ...”
“What?” Chaim took a step towards him, his face twisted in disbelief. “Look at you! Covered in blood and vermin and filth, and you’ve only been here two weeks!” He tore open Netanel’s jacket. “I can see the bones of your ribs already. You’re like an anatomy lesson! You won’t even last a month at this rate!”
“Got . . . dignity.”
“Dignity?” Chaim laughed, incredulous.
“Won’t . . . betray my . . . people.”
Chaim dropped his voice. “When you were der Chef’s son you had dignity! Now you’re just a piece of filth in a striped uniform! Don’t you understand? This is a death camp. The only way out of here is through the chimney! When your strength is all used up they kill you! Is that what you want?”
“Won’t be ... a kapo.”
Chaim spat on him. “Damn you!” He hawked and spat again. “Damn you, you self-righteous bastard! Don’t presume to judge me!”
Netanel returned his stare but said nothing.
“I can save your life!”
“Maybe ... get me ... on the Potato Peeling . . . Command.’
“Get back to your place, prisoner 81305,” Chaim said.
Chapter 13
In early November it started to rain. It rained for ten days, turning the camp into a swamp. The smell of damp and mould overlaid the rank, sweet smell of the chimneys at Birkenau.
Their Arbeitskommando had been moved from the Farben factory to the shunting yards at Buna. Netanel found himself shivering at the bottom of a three-foot ditch, shoveling mud, his pajamas soaked in the freezing rain.
There was no color in anything; the rail yards and huts bled into a grey and waterlogged horizon. A goods train shunted past, and Netanel looked up, his eyes as dumb and uncomprehending as those of a small animal caught in a trap.
The white-painted legend passed in front of his eyes.
Deutsche Reichsbahn . . . Deutsche Reichsbahn . . . Deutsche Reichsbahn . . .
“Winter’s coming,” Dov said, beside him. The rain dripped steadily from the end of his long nose.
Winter, Netanel thought. I have been here nearly four months.
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“Nothing like a good Polish winter. Kills seven out of every ten men. They say if there was no winter, Hitler would have invented it.”
“I heard a good joke about Hitler,” Mandelbaum said.
Netanel still could not make up his mind if Mandelbaum was simple or wise, victim or survivor. Now he here was again, telling funny stories in a freezing ditch, as if he were in a Bierkeller in München.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Dov said.
“Hitler gets up in the morning, and he looks out of the window and he sees the sun come up over Poland. ‘Good morning, Mr. Sun,’ Hitler says.
“‘Good morning, Mr. Hitler,’ the sun says.
“Then, after lunch, Hitler walks out in the garden and he looks up in the sky and he sees the sun high over Germany and he says, ‘Good afternoon, Mr. Sun.’
“And the sun says, ‘Good afternoon, Mr. Hitler.’ “Then, that evening, Hitler looks out of his window and he sees the sun setting in the west, and he says, ‘Good night, Mr. Sun.’
“And the sun says, ‘Get fucked, I’m in England now.’” Netanel threw back his head and laughed.
Netanel felt something hit him between the shoulder blades, knocking the breath out of him. “What are you laughing at, Jew shit?” the Orphan shouted.
Netanel returned to his digging. “I just enjoy my work, Herr Kapo.”
Winter brought with it its blessing and its curse.
The Arbeitskommandos were allowed to work in the snow and the freezing rain, but they were not allowed to go out in the fog or in the dark, because it gave them opportunity to escape. So now working hours were shorter, just eight o’clock till four o’clock through the darkest months.
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