Yet those few hours were torture beyond Netanel’s experience. They were made to stand for hours in the bitter darkness of the Appelplatz at the beginning and end of every day, labor in the marshalling yards in the freezing cold and rain wearing just a cloth jacket and trousers. Every waking minute, from the moment they woke till they moment they got back to their barracks at night, Netanel would dance from foot to foot, slapping his arms against his sides, trying to keep warm.
He spent part of his precious bread ration in order to acquire gloves. He lost hours of sleep repairing them when the stitches broke.
As Dov had predicted, the winter soon reaped its grey harvest. Every morning the Stubenaltester dragged the dead from their bunks, stripped them, and piled them outside the barracks door, to be collected by the men of the Leichenkommando.
There were four of them. One stood by the pile of bodies, another by the truck, a third balanced on a small stool, the other positioned himself on the tray. They passed the dead from one to the other along their makeshift assembly line, hauling the skeletal corpses by their hair, or by their arms or by their legs. They were dead to horror. They didn’t care how the bones cracked when they hit the frozen boards of the lorry.
But then, what does it matter? Netanel thought. Broken bones cannot hurt them anymore, or the truncheons of the kapos or the dogs.
He was indifferent to the dead too. He no longer walked around the corpses he found outside the barracks, just stepped over them like everyone else. He paid them as little attention as he did the yellow long-tailed rats that now ran in and out of the barracks like domestic cats.
Netanel learned how to survive.
Death, he learned, began with the shoes. If the shoes fitted badly, or the feet were not sufficiently well protected, sores would form and in the sodden conditions they soon became infected. The infected area would swell, the rubbing would get worse and the wound would become larger and deeper. After that it went to gangrene.
You could tell the ones on their way out. They developed a strange, shambling gait as they tried to continue through the pain. Finally they would shuffle to the infirmary for treatment, but the SS knew there was no cure. Dicke Füsse - bad feet - was a death warrant. The victims rarely came back from the hospital. The German’s remedy for gangrenous toes was through the chimneys at Birkenau.
Netanel became obsessive about his feet. He washed and dried them every evening before sleeping, without fail. He collected even the smallest scrap of paper or cloth to wrap around them to protect them from the damp and the chafing of the wooden clogs.
Every day he saw out was a step closer to survival. He didn’t yet know how but he would make it out of here somehow.
For Marie.
When the day began, it appeared invincible.
The camp bell rang long before dawn. The night guard turned up the lights and walked along the line of bunks. “Get up.” He never had to speak above a whisper. They knew what would happen if they were late.
Netanel ran across the frozen ground to the latrines, washed himself like Mandelbaum did. Then he shoved his way to the best place in the queue for the coffee and the precious bread ration. He made sure his feet were clean and well protected in his wooden clogs, then hurried to the main square for Appel.
The kapos counted out the roll-call. Already his fingers were so stiff with cold he could not feel them. He shivered uncontrollably. The fight had not even begun and he knew he could not win, not today. Let them shoot you, Netya.
A few more minutes. I will count to a hundred and if I am still standing, then I will decide again.
No sunrise, just a leaching of shadows from the world. They were marched off through the gates while the camp band played “Rosamunda”.
I cannot do this. Not a whole day.
The rail yards waited, a battlefield of frozen concrete, iron and mud. Everything was grey and cold, the only colors the rainbow veils of petroleum on the frozen black puddles. A mist of vapor rose from pipes and boilers that had frozen overnight. In the distance, the church steeple at Auschwitz pushed through the mist.
They marched to the siding office, and the Orphan made a second roll-call and entrusted them to the civilian Meister. His name was Lentner, a taciturn Pole with a weeping egg-yellow moustache and grey eyes. He always averted his eyes, like a spectator at a fight where the loser stays on his feet too long and he cannot bear to watch the beating any longer .
Then the Orphan went off to sleep in the Meister’s hut, next to the hot stove.
I cannot do this, Netanel thought. There is no strength in my arms. I cannot fight it again today.
“Bohlen holen,” Lentner said, and pointed to a frozen pile of sleepers standing at the side of the tracks. Next to it was an enormous cast-iron cylinder on a goods wagon. They were to build a pathway with the sleepers so the cylinder could be rolled from the wagon to the sheds.
The sleepers were frozen to the ground and each one weighed as much as a healthy man. He and Mandelbaum bent to the first one and hoisted it on their shoulders. Ice slid down Netanel’s neck, and the iron plating bit into his shoulder bone. As he took the weight of it, he felt his knees buckle.
They staggered forward, the mud sucking at their shoes. Count the steps, Netanel thought.
Ten, eleven.
I cannot do this all day! Give it up now!
Twenty-one, twenty-two.
Let them shoot you! Escape through the chimney.
Thirty-five, thirty-six.
Bite your lip. Harder. Can’t feel anything.
Fifty-three, fifty-four.
Harder. Some blessed pain to override everything else.
Seventy, seventy- one.
Nearly there, just a few more steps.
Eighty-three, eighty-four . . .Eighty-eight steps.
You did it!
They dropped the sleeper.
Netanel stood, open-mouthed, his shoulder and arms throbbing in rhythm with his heart. For a few moments he could not see or hear. The cold rain beating on his face felt good.
I cannot do that again!
Mandelbaum swayed on his feet; his eyes were sunken and inflamed, like skinned plums. “That wasn’t ... so bad,” he said.
The Orphan appeared at the hut door. “Get working, Jew shit!”
They staggered back to the pile of sleepers. Netanel tried to calculate how many trips they would have to make. Fifty of us in the kommando. Two to a sleeper. Perhaps a hundred sleepers.
Four trips.
Perhaps I can survive this. Then I will decide again.
After the second journey he was deaf and blind to everything. He stood gasping, his arms limp at his sides. His legs were too heavy to move, his feet mortised to the ground.
I cannot do it again!
Netanel staggered back to the pile “I have to go to the latrine,” he told Meister Lentner.
Lentner shrugged and pointed to Levin. Levin was old and weak, the kommando’s “Scheissbegleiter” - toilet companion - charged with the task of accompanying prisoners to the latrine, and ensuring they did not try to escape. That there was anywhere to run to, that Levin could stop them if they did! Another bad German joke.
The visit to the latrine saved one trip. When he returned a lorry was splashing through the mud, loaded with the day’s ration. It must be close to mid-morning. The noonday break was in sight. For the first time the day was vulnerable. Perhaps if he could just get through to noon . . .
There were only the heavy sleepers left; those at the bottom had inches of ice frozen to their surface, with heavy iron plates still nailed to them.
“We’ll wait until they scream at us,” Netanel whispered to Mandelbaum. “Even if it costs a blow from the truncheon.”
Finally the Vorarbeiter, the Orphan’s assistant, was attracted by their dawdling. He bawled at them to get to work. They somehow hauled one of the sleepers on to their shoulders. The rain fell harder, stinging their faces . . .
. . . One, two . . .
&nb
sp; Soaked through, knees buckling, shaking with exhaustion and cold, they picked their way through the cloying mud.
Twice they fell to their knees.
Not as far this time, perhaps just twenty paces . . .
Almost there.
. . . eighteen, nineteen . . .
They were there!
He smelled hot soup. It was almost time for the ration. The day was no longer so fearsome an opponent. They had seen the worst. Half an hour more to hold on. I can manage that, Netanel thought. Then food, then rest. Then I’ll decide again.
The midday siren.
They trudged to the hut to receive their ration of soup from the Orphan. Despite their pleas, he would not stir the pot. He was saving the pieces of potatoes and parsnips at the bottom for himself.
But at least the liquid bloated their stomachs and warmed their insides and Netanel was grateful for that. He licked out his bowl and then he crouched round the stove inside the hut with the others. The warmth started to dry their clothes, and the vapor rose from them like a cloud, a dense fug that smelled like mushrooms.
Netanel listened to the sleet slap against the window and closed his eyes. He fell quickly into a black sleep.
He woke a few minutes before one o’clock. He heard the Orphan bawling at them; “Alles heraus!’'
He stepped back outside, gasped at the shock of the cold. Three more hours. Yes, he could do it. The day looked a little weaker now. He had it on the ropes. He could beat it, he could win.
The siren signaled the end of the day. The sleet and wind had begun to ease. Another joke, Netanel thought. Now the day’s work was over this additional torment was no longer required.
The Orphan arranged them zu dreine, in threes, for the march back to camp. He called out the rhythm as they marched.
“Links - links - links ...”
They still faced the long torture of the Appel, but after that there would be the bread ration and then they could rest. Netanel staggered, head down, but inside there was a growing sense of elation. He had won! This morning the odds had been too great, his opponent too strong. But he had beaten him, he had worn him down.
If he could win the same way again tomorrow, then he could do it the day after that. Survive. He would find a way to survive.
Chapter 14
The train rolled to a stop. The guards moved quickly, slamming back the doors on the wagons. “Heraus! Heraus! Mach schnell, SCHNELL!’
The crumpled knots of people spilled on to the platform, blinking in the glare of the white phosphor lights. Marie hugged her woolen coat tighter about her shoulders. Hermann had given it to her the last time she had seen him - how long ago? - at the police headquarters in München.
The guards shoved their way through the crowds, pushing the women and children to one side, bullying the people into lines. Children cried, women screamed for their husbands. A guard dog brought down one of the men while his handler watched.
A guard grabbed her by the arm and pushed her into line with the other women. She knew it was pointless to resist. This was one of the death camps she had heard about, she realized. They were going to kill her.
They had taken long enough about it.
The woman in front of her had an infant clutched to her right shoulder, a small boy and girl clinging to the hem of her coat. “Daniel, Rachel, hold on to me, you hear? Just hold me tight.”
Marie stumbled along with the others towards the waiting trucks. She wondered if this was where they had taken Netanel. Well, it didn’t matter now.
Someone stepped towards her.
“Come here,” the SS man said. “The major wishes to speak to you.’
One Sunday in every two was designated a rest day. It was a time for scavenging; bits of wire could be used to tie shoes, paper could be padded under the jacket as insulation, any rag was useful as a towel or as extra protection for the feet. But today it was too cold even for that and so they lay on their bunks and watched the rain fall plop, plop on the windowsill and silently gave thanks to whatever gods they still cherished that at least they did not have to work.
Mandelbaum reached into the straw under their bunk. He furtively handed his treasure to Netanel in his cupped hand. It was a photograph, creased and folded so many times that its subject was almost beyond recognition. “My boy in Palestine.”
Netanel glanced at it and passed it back. Mandelbaum clutched it to himself, like an icon. “You hid it all this time?” Netanel said.
“When we were in that changing-room. I knew those bastards were not going to give us our clothes back. When have you ever been able to trust a German?”
“That was clever, Mandelbaum.”
He allowed himself another look at the photograph before returning it to its hiding place. “Perhaps he won’t want to come back to Germany now. Not after what they’ve done to his mother and me.”
Come back? What Jew, in his right mind, would ever want to set foot inside Germany again? “He is better off where he is.”
“He was a fine boy, you should have seen him. Good at his studies, his rabbi had high hopes. But the last couple of years ... I don’t know what gets into children sometimes. When he said he wanted to go to Palestine I couldn’t believe it. These Zionists had addled his brain. I begged him to change his mind, but he wouldn’t listen.”
“It’s just as well, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps, Herr Rosenberg.”
“Perhaps?”
“Things will get back to normal one day soon. You’ll see.
He’s mad, Netanel thought. Or perhaps his delusion is just a way of staying sane. And what about you, Netya, what is your madness? The belief that you will see Marie again one day?
At least it has stopped me from becoming a Müsselman, like Dov over there.
“I wonder what my wife is doing right now?” Mandelbaum said.
Dov sat up, livid. “Your wife and your children are just soot in the Birkenau chimney, idiot!”
“Shut up, Dov,” Netanel said.
“They put them in the ovens the same night they arrived, Mandelbaum. Your family vanished in a puff of smoke.”
“Shut up!” Netanel said.
The big Pole shrugged and lay back on his bunk. “Idiots!”
Dov had undergone a change with the onset of winter. He no longer tried to organize for himself, had crossed the boundary from the saved to the drowned. At some imperceptible moment he had lost the will to struggle. He had developed a curious shuffle when he walked, his eyes downcast. What meat there had been on his bones had wasted off him. He stank. Everyone else avoided him.
He had expended his uses. He had become, in the camp argot, a Müsselman.
“When the people find out what is happening here, they will rise up,” Mandelbaum said. “You will see. They will rise up and things will get back to normal again.”
The freezing rain dropped plop, plop on the windowsill.
After the midday soup ration, they assembled in the drizzle for another roll call and then returned to their barracks. As soon as they were inside, the Blockaltester unexpectedly shouted, “Blocksperre!’ In the language of the camp, it meant the block was being closed. A deathly silence fell over the room. They all knew what it meant but only Dov dared say the word aloud for them.
“Selection!”
The doors were locked and Mendelssohn lined them up in pairs, while the Orphan ran up and down the corridors between the bunks with his rubber truncheon beating anyone who was too slow or too scared to get to his feet.
“Who’s ready for the chimney? How about you, Jew shit? Come and see the good doctor, he’ll fix your complaint!”
The Orphan marched them all across the Appelplatz to the bathhouse.
“All right, Jew shit, strip off!”
It was raining harder. They took off their clothes and waited, shivering, spidery arms wrapped around their chests.
“Inside! One at a time!”
Netanel was one of the first. Inside, the camp comman
dant and several SS officers sat at a table with one of the camp doctors. Netanel recognized him; it was Mengele. The doctor looked up and gave him a beatific smile. He was a handsome man, elegantly dressed, exuding calm. One of the officers recorded Netanel’s number.
“81305.”
With a slight movement of his head, Mengele nodded casually to the door on the left and Netanel went out.
Mendelssohn and the Orphan were waiting. “You’re lucky, Jew shit,” the Orphan whispered. “You get to come back with me to the railyards tomorrow.”
Others came through and he nodded at them, to let them know they had passed the selection. Mandelbaum came out, but not Dov. In ten minutes it was all over and they were marched back to the yard in front of the bathhouse and told to put their clothes back on.
As the Orphan escorted them to the barracks, Netanel felt in his top pocket. While he was being assessed for the ovens, someone had stolen his spoon.
As soon as the Orphan had gone, there was an outbreak of whispers. “Poor Dov,” Mandelbaum said.
“Where is Moshe? Did they select Moshe?”
“Has anyone seen Mendel?”
“What about Jan? He was no Müsselman! Surely they didn’t pick Jan!”
An old rabbi from Lublin fell on his knees and began to thank God in a loud voice for saving him from death. Netanel pushed the old man to the floor.
“Shut up! There’s no God listening to you! Do you think that was God sitting in judgment in there? It was the Germans!”
There was a shocked silence. Mandelbaum got up and pulled on his sleeve. “Come away, Herr Rosenberg. He’s a rabbi. Leave him.”
“He’s shit!” Netanel screamed. “He wants to thank God because some other poor bastard has been selected to die in his place!”
“Come away, Herr Rosenberg, please come away.”
Netanel threw himself on his bunk. The susurration of whispers began again.
He expected that they would not see Dov again, but a few minutes later those who had been selected were marched back into the barracks. The room fell silent.
Freedom (Jerusalem) Page 11