Mandelbaum groped in the straw mattress for the photograph. It was gone. “The rats have eaten my boy.”.
“You’ll be all right,” Netanel repeated, but it was hard even to look at Mandelbaum when he was naked. The varicose veins in his calves were bigger than the muscles in his arms. “You’ll be all right.”
It was a small comfort he heard repeated endlessly around him as men tried to reassure each other:
“They won’t choose you. You’re no Müsselman.”
“It won’t be your turn. You’re still healthy and strong.”
“They’re only picking out the sick ones. You’ll be okay.”
“I heard they’re not sending people to Birkenau anymore. They’re going back to Theresienstadt.”
“They’re not choosing German Jews, just Poles.”
“They won’t choose a High Number . . .”
“They don’t select Low Numbers anymore ...”
The door to the Tagesraum burst open and the Orphan rushed out. “All right, you bastards, strip! Schnell, schnell! Get in here with your cards, hurry up!”
They were all herded into the Tagesraum, clutching their cards. It was a cold night and the press of warm bodies was not unpleasant. Everyone held their cards above their heads so they would not get lost or crumpled. Like schoolchildren on an outing, Netanel thought.
There was a cracked mirror on the wall. In it Netanel saw a huddle of skeletons, their heads too large for their bodies, their faces distorted by starvation into grimaces of fear. He saw a tall man with a jagged pink scar down one side of his face, jostling for space. He looked familiar. Someone he had known in school perhaps, changed almost beyond recognition by time and injury.
... Me.
Oh great, sweet God, it’s me.
But it can’t be me! That man is a monster, ugly and misshapen, like all these other ghetto wretches. I don’t look like them!
The outer door of the Tagesraum was thrown open. Outside, the reflectors on the watchtower had turned the night white as phosphor. There were just three of them at this Selection: an SS major, Mendelssohn and the Orphan.
Netanel recognized the SS major instantly. It was Rolf Emmerich.
“I’m dead,” Netanel thought.
Rolf looked beautiful, a fallen angel in black. The artificial light framed his face with shadows, like a Vermeer portrait, lent him an ethereal perfection. His eyes glittered like sapphires, reflecting light without absorbing it, and his smile was beatific.
Mendelssohn was on his right, the Orphan on his left. Smaller than Rolf, dressed in prison garb, they appeared as minions from the underworld, emphasizing Rolf’s dark splendor.
The unterkapos hurried them through. “Heraus! Heraus! Mach schnell, schnell!’
The first man ran towards Rolf stiff-legged, buttocks so scrawny you could make out his thigh bones - and handed him his card. Rolf handed it to Mendelssohn. The man was herded shoved back into the barracks through another door. All over in a few seconds. His fate, whatever it was, had been decided.
Netanel watched carefully. One at a time they were pushed out of the door; Rolf took the card, handed it either it to Mendelssohn or the Orphan, then the next man was running towards him.
Who was life? Mendelssohn or the Orphan?
It took just a few seconds for each man to be judged. After all, Netanel thought, it did not matter if Rolf made a mistake. If a fit man was written down for the gas, or a sick man spared, it was of no consequence. All that was important was that a certain number should die in order to make room for new arrivals.
An old man shuffled forwards. He was limping, and Netanel could hear his breath sawing in his chest. Rolf grinned, and there was no mistaking what that smile meant. He handed the card to Mendelssohn.
So.
Mendelssohn was death.
The Orphan was life.
“Goodbye, Herr Rosenberg,” Mandelbaum whispered.
Mandelbaum was shoved forward. Rolf took his identity card and slapped it against the palm of his black-gloved hand, deliberating. He glanced over Mandelbaum’s shoulder, and seemed to hesitate. In that moment one of the unterkapos grabbed Netanel’s arm and shoved him forwards.
Rolf looked up and their eyes met. This is it, Netanel thought, will he send me to the gas or will he put me aside for some other, more exquisite, torment?
Chapter 20
Netanel ran forward and handed Rolf his card. Rolf glanced up at him, and for a moment their eyes met. There was no sign of recognition in his face. None at all.
But when he looks at the card he will know, Netanel thought. But Rolf did not look at the card, and in that moment Netanel knew what was going to happen. It was over in a moment.
There were two cards in his hands.
Two cards.
Of course, Mandelbaum! Rolf had been too slow to make his judgment on Mandelbaum, the unterkapo had been too quick ushering Netanel forward. There was nothing to be done. Rolf was already looking over Netanel’s shoulder at the next man. He overcame the aberration in the process by handing one card to his right, to Mendelssohn, the other to his left, to the Orphan.
Netanel glanced down. The Orphan, life, was holding Mandelbaum’s card.
For a moment he was about to protest. But what would he say? Wait, you have made a mistake? Would he scream for justice to Rolf Emmerich, son of a beer carter, major in the Schutzstaffeln? There were no mistakes in here. You lived or you died, and it did not matter to anyone else.
The unterkapos were already hustling him towards the barrack doors. He hardly felt the sting of the truncheons on his bare back and buttocks. His Organisierung, the desperate struggle for survival through the Polish winter, his Low Number, it all counted for nothing now. He might just as well have thrown himself on the wire that first night.
All because of Mandelbaum.
He wanted to weep with frustration. Why go through all that pain to have it end now?
And I wanted was to see Marie just once more.
Netanel sat on his bunk and did not bother to dress.
“They’re going to send you to a special camp,” Mandelbaum said.
“What?”
“They’re going to send you to a special camp. It’s not the gas, not this time. I heard Mendelssohn tell one of the others.”
Netanel looked up. He was smiling. He really believed it; he had had his reprieve and now he was crazy again. “You still believe what Mendelssohn says?”
“Why would he lie?”
“It makes his job easier. And because he enjoys it.”
“You’ll be all right. You’ll see. It’s not the gas this time.”
“Just fuck off and leave me alone, Mandelbaum.”
The ugly little shit. He is trying not to be happy because he is going to live and I am going to die. Well, why not? I would be happy too, if I were him. But I’m not, I’m marked for the gas. And I would like to tear him apart with my hands because it’s his fault.
“They are giving out the ration. You’ll get a double share. That’s something to look forward to, isn’t it?”
A double share, Netanel thought. I am a dead man so now they give me a double share. Something to look forward to? Mandelbaum is serious, he really thinks I should be grateful.
“It will be all right, Herr Rosenberg.”
He wanted to hit him to shut him up, but there was no strength left in him so instead he got dressed and took his bowl to the table at the end of the barrack and asked Mendelssohn for his extra ration.
When the bell rang the next morning, and the night guard passed along the bunks with his whispered “Wstvac”, Netanel did not move. Mandelbaum jumped off the bunk, dressed quickly and ran for the shower block. The unterkapos ignored Netanel. After all, he did not exist anymore.
He had the bunk to himself for the first time since he arrived at Auschwitz. He could stretch out on the scratchy straw without feeling the hard wooden edges of the cot biting into his bones. In his last moments in hell, he coul
d find small luxuries in those things which all his life had barely merited his attention.
His emotions see-sawed between elation and cold dread. In one moment he was light-headed with relief that the future was finally decided; the next he wanted to run in blind panic.
The barrack was silent, empty now except for the other sleepers, the waiters for death like himself. He felt like a ghost. The world was turning around him but he was no longer a part of it. He could observe but could not be seen.
Outside his former inmates shuffled off in the darkness for morning Appel. He watched the grey dawn light creep across the cement floor. This was it then.
They came mid-morning.
“Achtung!'
They leaped from their beds and the Orphan and his unterkapos harried them into lines. Mendelssohn sat at a folding table by the door. The men in the front of the line showed him the tattooed numbers on their arms, and he made a small tick beside the appropriate number on the typewritten sheet in front of him.
“Is it the gas, Herr Blockaltester?” he heard one man ask.
“No, no, you are going to another camp. You have my word on it. On the grave of my mother!”
Rot in hell, Mendelssohn! Netanel thought.
The Leichenauto was a large van, painted grey, with a metal chimney protruding from the roof. Because of fuel shortages most of the camp’s transport had been converted to run on wood as well as on gasolene. The SS driver sat in the front, staring straight ahead.
“Get in! Hurry!” an unterkapo shouted, pushing them into the back.
There was a bench running along each side of the van. Netanel sat down. Nobody spoke, no one looked up. The door slammed and left them in semi-darkness. He realized it had all been done without the aid of a single SS man. One German criminal and a few yellow Jews and our whole nation bows its head and is led off to extinction.
The Leichenauto juddered to life and they drove away. He glanced into the comer. No fire in the grate. They were using gasolene today.
Someone started to pray.
“Aren’t you all ashamed?” Netanel said.
No one answered him.
“No one will ever know about our sufferings. They lead us away by the nose, like cattle, and we did not fight back once. They are going to kill every Jew in the world and there is no one to resist them!”
Still, no one spoke.
“Someone has to survive! There has to be a revenge! There has to be a redemption for us . . .”
Silence.
They are dead already, he thought. They died at the Selection.
“How can you die this way? How can you ever rest in your graves, any of you?”
He stared at the chimney in the comer of the van. Perhaps I could fit in that, he thought. Well no. I couldn’t, Netanel Rosenberg could never fit his big body into such a space. But the man I saw in the mirror in the Tagesraum, he could fit.
“I swear I will have revenge for all of you,” he said.
He wondered later if any of them even saw what he did. He crouched down by the chimney and raised his arms above his head, and forced his head and shoulders into the flue.
He could not breathe. The choking soot was in his nose and mouth, but he fought down his panic. He kept pushing until he was standing in the grate. The tips of his fingers reached the edge of the chimney.
He would wait until they stopped, he decided. Then he would pull himself up.
Small breaths, he told himself. You won’t choke if you control your breathing and don’t gulp in too much soot. Not much room for your chest to expand, but enough.
He waited.
The van lurched to a stop. He heard the crunch of boots at the back door. Netanel curled his fingers around the lip of the chimney and pulled himself up. There was just enough room to bend his knees a little, so that his feet were out of sight …
No good, he couldn’t hold himself, his arms were too weak. Perhaps if he braced his knees and elbows against the sides . . .
He heard the SS guard shouting, “Heraus! Heraus! Los!”
He waited for the hammering of boots on the metal floor of the van, the triumphant shouts as they pulled on his legs and dragged him out of his hiding place.
Instead he heard the doors slam shut.
Now what?
Stupid, he thought. Stupid! What have you gained, except a few hours? You cannot open the doors from inside so how are you going to escape? And where can you run to? The whole of Auschwitz is a prison!
He eased himself out of the grate, and crawled into the comer.
He heard the SS guards screaming instructions to the rest of the Selection. The van’s engine shuddered back to life.
What now?
The Leichenauto rolled to a stop. Netanel heard the driver climb out of the cab, slam the door and walk away.
He’s taken the Leichenauto back to the garage, Netanel thought. I’m inside the SS compound! Desperately, he tried the door. Locked.
There was nothing to do now but wait.
He had cheated death. But only for another day.
Yawning, SS Corporal Dieter Overath threw open the doors of the Leichenauto, a bundle of loose faggots under his left arm. There was another gasolene shortage and they had received instructions to use the wood again. He hated using the wood. He got his uniform dirty on the chimney and the engine never had enough power. You had to light the fire and keep it stoked the whole time. With gasolene you just turned the key and cranked the handle and you were away.
He climbed into the back of the van and almost shit himself.
“Herrgottsacrament!” There was a Jew in there!
The man was naked and covered with soot. He was crouched down in the corner, black as a negro, the whites of his eyes staring from his head like two little moons. A ghost! A ghost from the chimneys come back to haunt him!
He dropped the wood.
Calm yourself, Dieter, he told himself. Anyone can see the Jew is alive; very much alive and very frightened. But what is he doing in the back of the Leichenauto?
“Who are you?” he hissed. “What are you doing in my van?”
The man just stared at him.
Soot. Herrgottsacrament, the chimney!
“You stupid little shit, what are you trying to do to me?”
The Jew said nothing.
What was he going to do? He could get his rifle from the cabin and shoot him. Then what would he tell the major? If Emmerich found out about this he would get transferred to the Eastern front, like the colonel’s clerk. The Jew had been marked off on the forms, he was supposed to be dead. He couldn’t take him back to Birkenau now, not without the appropriate paperwork. He would be reported. Of course, it wasn’t his fault, it was the idiot who designed these stupid vans, but Emmerich wouldn’t care about that.
He slammed the doors and locked them. What in the name of Holy God was he going to do?
The Leichenauto shuddered to a halt in a street just off the Appelplatz. Overath jumped out. He looked around quickly to satisfy himself that no one was watching then threw open the rear doors.
“Get out!” he hissed. “Quick, you little shit, get out!”
He jumped in, grabbed Netanel by the arm and threw him out of the van. Netanel landed on his back in the mud. Let someone else find him and figure it out, Overath thought.
“You Jew shit, why did you do this to me?” He slammed the doors shut and climbed back behind the wheel. He drove away, praying that Major Emmerich did not find out what had happened.
The barracks was empty.
Netanel went to the shower block and washed off the soot, then went back and sat naked on the edge of his bunk, waiting for the others to return. They were a poor family, and Mendelssohn and the Orphan were cruel parents, but they were all he had.
No one moved, no one spoke. They would not even look at him.
“Hello, Mandelbaum,” Netanel said.
Mandelbaum squatted on the far end of the bunk and ate his ration as if he were not ther
e.
“Mandelbaum? It’s me, Rosenberg.”
“Go away,” Mandelbaum whispered.
Netanel stood up and joined the queue for the ration. Immediately the customary pushing and jostling stopped. The line of men parted for him. As usual, Mendelssohn and the Orphan were distributing the soup and the bread. They saw him and whispered urgently to each other.
Netanel showed the Orphan his number.
“Next,” the Orphan said.
“But Herr Kapo - ”
“Next!”
I am a dead man, Netanel thought. You cannot see a dead man. You cannot talk to him, and you cannot give him his ration. They do not know how to deal with me any other way. If they acknowledge I am not dead, they might be blamed and they will be punished. So they have to pretend I am invisible.
There is only one thing I can do.
A dirty yellow dawn, flat grey fields beyond the wire. Chaim saw a naked and dirty figure stumble across the Appelplatz. He did not recognize him at first. He slapped the thong of his whip into his palm and strode across to intercept this interloper. Perhaps some Jew who had gone crazy. He would deal with him.
“Chaim.”
“Herrgottsacrament!” He stared at the scar, the one that crazy Lubanski had given him. “Netya?”
“Help me . . .”
“But where are your clothes? What happened to you?”
“Just help me. I’ll do anything. I’m going to get these bastards, all of them. Help me.”
Chaim smiled. “You want to be a kapo now, do you?”
“I’ll join the SS if I have to. Don’t let me die.”
Chaim smiled. He nodded towards Birkenau. An ugly brown smudge hung on the horizon over the forests. “They’ve started early. Anyone you know?”
Netanel shook his head. “Not anymore,” he said.
PART SEVEN
Freedom (Jerusalem) Page 15