Last Stop Auschwitz

by Eddy de Wind

  That was why they cleaned their windows industriously.

  Hans was still very content. The work was boring and spending the whole day on your feet was tiring, but it didn’t sap your strength. The soup in the Krankenbau was often a little better than in quarantine and it was mostly possible to get half a liter extra because a lot of the Polish Pfleger, who received enormous packages, didn’t eat the Lagersuppe at all.

  In general, roll call in the camp dragged on forever. Sometimes the men had to stand in the rain for two or more hours. The Krankenbau did its own count, however, which was always completed in a few minutes. Then, after roll call, you could go to sleep or walk or do something else as you wished. There were no foot inspections or similar harassments. Pfleger are presumed to be able to keep themselves clean enough.

  It was possible to live. And, most importantly for him, he was in touch with Friedel again. The evenings were growing shorter and in the twilight he could generally find someone who was willing to go with him as a lookout so that he could talk to her at the window for a few minutes.

  “Friedel, I don’t need any more food from you. I’m getting extra soup every day now.”

  “What good is that soup going to do you?”

  “Today I earned a ration of bread. I washed some underwear for a fat Pole.”

  Friedel ran a nervous hand over her centimeter-long hair. They were silent. Yelling came from the room behind Friedel. A little later: “The block clerk was on to us. But she didn’t see that it was me who was talking.”

  “How are things there?”

  “Oh, Hans, we don’t have to work. We get extra rations just like the people doing hard labor. That makes it doable, but…”

  “But what?” he insisted.

  “Oh, it’s all so sinister here. Now with those Greek girls again. What exactly it is, I don’t know. They’ve been burnt internally. There were fifteen of them. After the treatment they were in terrible pain. One has died.”

  “Are you sure they’re not going to do something like that to you too?”

  “Those experiments seem to be over. Last week there was someone called Professor Schumann, a fat Jerry, but I don’t see him anymore now. I think they’ve started on something else, something with injections down below.”

  “Won’t they take you for that, then?”

  “Maybe not. I’m a nurse now on the ward with all the Dutchwomen and they don’t tend to take the staff as quickly.”

  Then they had to stop again because that familiar high-pitched whistle was sounding through the camp.

  Every evening the Rapportführer entered the camp. He was a dangerous fellow, Oberscharführer Claussen. He always carried a riding crop. If you got close to him and only received a lash with the whip, you were getting off lightly. When he entered the camp, a shrill, high-pitched whistle from the Häftlinge sounded as a warning. Everyone who heard it passed it on, and no matter how much it annoyed Claussen, he never managed to catch any of the whistlers in the act.

  But he still vented his rage, taking it out on anyone he could pick fault with: if your hair was too long, if you hadn’t stood to attention rigidly enough, if you smiled, or if he simply didn’t like the look of you. Not an evening passed without at least one man getting a severe beating, and even that was a moderate state of affairs compared to places like Buna or Birkenau, the so-called Auschwitz II.

  This place, Auschwitz I, was the model camp. The blocks were brick and there were beds for everyone. This was where the big storehouses were, where a little extra for everyone could be filched now and then, and where the model hospital was. No, the conditions in Auschwitz I were not indicative of the Auschwitz complex in general. Not according to the fellow Hans spoke to that evening. He had arrived with Hans last month and had been sent to Buna in the group of 228 men. It was two hours by foot: an enormous industrial complex with building sites everywhere.

  Most of the lads had to lay cables; some of them were in the concrete Kommando. It wasn’t easy, lugging 165-pound bags of cement all day, and at the double. Hans should try to imagine how they felt in the evenings. They had to carry the bags a distance of more than a hundred yards, from the narrow-gauge railway to the concrete mixers, and every ten yards there was a Kapo or an SS man swinging his fists to keep the pace up. There was a fatality right away on the very first day.

  Did Hans remember Plaut, the registered nurse from Westerbork, a very capable fellow? They played the old trick on him. There were guards posted at the four corners of the grounds they were working on; you weren’t allowed to cross those lines. The SS man ordered Plaut to fetch a small box that was outside of those bounds. When Plaut hesitated, he hit him on the head with a shovel. He had no choice but to go and get the box, but as soon as he crossed the line between the guard posts, they shot him.

  “Don’t say a word to his wife. She’s here in Block 10. The next day it was old Jacobson, a forty-five-year-old—in camp terms, that’s ancient. He was jogging along in the hot, suffocating afternoon and collapsed under his 165 pounds. Anyone who tried to help him was driven away with blows with a stick. After half an hour they let someone look at him. He was dead.

  “We wanted to carry away the body, but that wasn’t allowed because he’d been counted when we’d turned out in the morning and the number had to be right in the evening as well. So we dragged the body with us to the evening roll call so it could be counted again. Now, after five weeks, twenty of our lads are already dead and that will go faster and faster because everyone is exhausted and we all have wounds.

  “Just yesterday, Joop van Dijk. Built like this, but lugging the bag of cement, he had to stop for a moment to catch his breath. The guard saw him, hit him with his rifle butt, then kicked him in the head when he was on the ground. Joop just lay there, unconscious. He must have landed badly because when we went to take him back with us in the evening he still hadn’t regained consciousness. There was blood coming out of his ear. Nobody could help him. First we had to line up for roll call. During roll call he came round a little, groaning and asking for water. He kept it up for about two hours. Then, finally, at the end of the roll call, they took him to hospital. This morning he was dead.”

  “How did you get here?” Hans asked.

  “Yesterday evening I reported to the hospital. I had a temperature and a sore throat. They said I had diphtheria and people with contagious diseases aren’t allowed to stay there. That’s why I’ve been brought here to the central hospital. I’m glad of it too. That infirmary in Buna is a terrible place. The beds are triple bunks, like here, but they put the worst cases on top, supposedly to give them more air. Last night there was a dysentery patient with severe diarrhea above me. He spent the whole night yelling for a bedpan. There was nobody to help him, of course, so he kept doing it in bed. Toward morning it started to leak through. I crawled over to one side as far as I could to avoid getting it all over me. When the Pfleger came and saw what had happened, he started hitting the fellow. Right in the face, at least five times. The Pfleger is fat. He dishes out the soup and serves himself from the bottom of the kettle. If someone dies—and that’s a couple of people every day—there’s bread left over. If someone gets moved to a different ward or hospital, they don’t send the bread on. That Pfleger in Buna is eating my ration of bread for tonight right now. Anyway, my throat’s too sore to swallow it.”

  “So you’re lucky to have diphtheria?”

  “I’m not so sure. I reckon everyone who ends up in Auschwitz hospital goes from here to the gas chamber.”

  No, Hans didn’t believe that. The Lagerarzt did come from time to time, but they didn’t take strong young men away with them.

  “Can you get a message to my wife?” the man asked.

  “Did you have children?”

  “No.”

  “Then she’ll be in Block 10, like all the women from our transport. It’s too dangerous in the daytime, but I can try tomorrow evening. What’s your name again?”

  “Have you for
gotten? Boekbinder, the Zionist leader.”

  Hans remembered now, and they talked about Zionism and subjects like that for a while; even if you’re up to your neck in filth, you don’t want to completely degenerate.

  Hans was no Zionist: “There is no special Jewish issue, just general social issues, general social contradictions that are taken out on Jews. If those problems were thrashed out once and for all, the Jewish question would automatically cease to exist.”

  “But the Jews who cling to their own religion and traditions will always remain a foreign element.”

  “Even if that’s the case, what does it matter? In Russia dozens of ethnic groups with their own cultures, small and large, live alongside each other without conflict.”

  But their hearts weren’t in the conversation and Hans was glad when the gong rang: nine o’clock, time to go to sleep.

  In admissions, the diphtheria patients’ bunks were next to those of the Reservepfleger. That was no cause of concern. After all, they were all going to end the same way. Unless the Allies suddenly appeared. Who would still be alive? Ah, it was all taking so long, too long for them, and there was that ball of clay again, the one that lodged in his thoughts and, like a golem, sometimes became a separate entity, holding long discourses on life and death. But Hans now knew the magic word that broke the golem’s spell: “Friedel.” Because she existed, the golem was silenced. Hans summoned up her image and the ball of clay shrank and became lifeless again.

  He grew calmer. Where there had been fear and doubt, he now felt a quiet longing, and with that he fell asleep.

  He had been in Block 28 for a fortnight when instructions came one afternoon: “All Reservepfleger fall in.”

  What was it this time? The Blockältester came into admissions with a well-dressed Häftling, a real prominent. The man was wearing a black jacket and a black beret. His striped trousers were of a woolly material. The full prominent style. They talked a little between themselves and the stranger said that he could use five of them.

  “Take six,” the Blockältester said. “Otherwise I’ll never get rid of them.”

  They picked out six of the lads, including four Dutchmen: Hans; the young psychologist Gerard van Wijk; Tony Haaksteen, who had a bachelor’s in medicine; and Van Lier, the junior doctor. They had to gather up their things and go with the man, who turned out to be the new Blockältester of Block 9. He was friendly and told them that he had already spent nine years in concentration camps. As a Communist he had been picked up in the first year of Hitler’s regime. He was now fifty.

  “Oh, camp life’s bearable once you’ve got a bit used to it. You know, ninety percent die in the first year, but if you get through that, you can manage the rest too. You get used to the food, you get clothes that are a little better and once you’re an Alter Häftling, the SS has a bit of respect for you.”

  “But don’t you want to get out again?” Hans asked.

  “Wanting it’s one thing. It’s not so much fun on the outside either. I’m a carpenter. Am I supposed to start all over again with a boss at my age? In the camp I’m my own boss.”

  “I thought the SS was the boss.”

  “Oh, they’re all little brats. I was already in Oranienburg4 when they were still in nappies. The camp isn’t a camp anymore. It’s a sanatorium. You’re Dutch, aren’t you? I’ve had dealings with Dutchmen before. That was, let me see, in 1941 in Buchenwald. Four hundred Dutch Jews. I was Blockältester in the quarantine block. They were with me for three months and had already got a bit used to it. I made sure they didn’t have to work too hard. After all, they were better lads than the Poles and their sort. Then the whole troop was suddenly sent to Mauthausen. I heard later that they ended up in a gravel pit. Carting gravel up the slope at double time the whole day long. The toughest ones stuck it out for five weeks.”

  He was right. Hans remembered the story from Amsterdam. In February Hendrik Koot, a member of the WA, was beaten to death in the Jewish quarter. In retaliation the Grüne Polizei rounded up four hundred young men off the streets. A couple of months later the first death notices came. The others didn’t last much longer.

  Meanwhile they had arrived at Block 9. They had to wait in the corridor for a while and were then shown into Room 1.

  Sitting on the other side of the table was a short, thickset man wearing a red triangle with a P on it. A Polish political prisoner, in other words. He had a round fat head and a hard mouth, but a gentle, somewhat distracted look in his eyes. Nervously he fidgeted with a pencil. He was sure to have been through a lot and might have been in the camp a long time too.

  The lads had to report to him one by one. As the acting Blockältester and senior doctor in the block, he would be allocating the jobs.

  First up was Tony Haaksteen. Was he a doctor? He tried to evade the question a little. Then the block doctor asked him how old he was. Twenty-two. The bystanders laughed and there were mumbled comments along the lines of blöde Holländer. Then it was the turn of Gerard van Wijk, who said that he had studied medicine and was now a psychologist. The block doctor didn’t entirely understand. So he was a psychiatrist? Gerard didn’t dare say no.

  “Go to Room 3 then. To your compatriot Polak—they couldn’t use him in Buna. That’s where the madmen are.”

  Hans felt like the ground had been cut from under his feet. After all, he had been a psychiatric intern for two years and was a lot closer to being a psychiatrist than Gerard, the theoretician. But trying to compete didn’t seem sensible. Maybe Gerard’s only chance was as a “psychiatrist.” Accordingly, Hans called himself an internist.

  “Fine,” the boss said. “Just stay here, in this room. This is the admissions doctor, Ochodsky. You can assist him a bit.” Van Lier didn’t get a hearing. The Blockältester from 28 had already told his new colleague at 9 that Van Lier had a foot wound. As a result he had to go to a hospital ward first until the wound had healed.

  Hans was delighted. Assisting the admissions doctor—that had to be a good job.

  He still hadn’t grasped anything about how things worked. Who practiced medicine in the Lager? The lads of eighteen and twenty who ruled the roost in outpatients and sold the medicine for cigarettes and margarine. Not to those who needed it, but to those who could afford it.

  Who was in charge of Block 9? Not the Blockältester and the Blockarzt, but the quartermaster and his cronies: Polish ruffians in cohorts with the odd Russian.

  Medical work? Dr. Ochodsky, who was good to the bone, had nothing to do himself. There were about ten admissions a day and Ochodsky told them which ward to go to. That was five minutes’ work; otherwise he spent the whole day on his bed. When the doorkeeper raised the alarm, he knew an SS man was approaching and quickly began examining someone. No, there wasn’t any medical work, but there was enough work. Still, Block 9 had another, inestimable advantage. After all, as sure as night follows day, 9 is always followed by 10!

  It was four thirty. “Get up! Gong!” the night watchman shouted as he turned on the light in the staff room. Almost all of them shot up. Yesterday Paul, the Blockältester, had ranted and raved so much at a couple of men who were still in bed five minutes after the gong that nobody was brave enough to turn over again today. Only Gerard stayed lying there for a moment.

  “Get up!” Hans urged him. “Do you want to have to drag kettles around for an extra week?”

  “Oh, Hans, I can’t. I slept so badly. There’s no straw left in my mattress and I’ve been coughing so much.”

  “It’s a bad cough, but not having any straw is your own fault. Yesterday there were five bales at Block 21.”

  Gerard really didn’t have much get-up-and-go when it came to things like that. He didn’t stick up for himself. But what could you expect from a lad like that? A respectable middle-class family, son of a civil servant. They hadn’t been wealthy, but they’d never had to struggle to get by either. How could someone like that stand up to all these Häftlinge? They were a nice bunch, the people you spent
your days with: black marketeers, pickpockets, and other antisocial elements. Any political Poles among them had been in the camp for years and were no longer exactly kindhearted.

  They experienced that again after they’d hurriedly got up and were standing in the corridor half dressed.

  “What kept you, you bloody scum, you pathetic Hollanders?” Kuczemba, the quartermaster, had a shove ready for both of them; that was your “good morning.” Then you had to trot off to the kitchen and pick out a big kettle of tea. If you came back with a small kettle, they’d curse you up and down or make you go back again, and if you came with a large kettle, half would end up getting thrown out—there was always more boiled ditchwater available than the patients wanted. They raced in four pairs to the kitchen block, where twenty men from other blocks were already waiting.

  In the kitchen, more racket. The Unterscharführer had just caught a Russian organizing some potatoes. Not satisfied with beating the Russian bloody, he had immediately dealt with a couple of cooks and the doorkeeper too. That was why they weren’t allowed to wait inside, but had to stay outside until the tea had been poured into the kettles.

  It was cold, snow was whirling through the courtyard and their feet were already wet. Soon they would be soaked to the skin. An undershirt and a linen coat didn’t offer much protection. They pressed back against the plastered wall, sheltering from the worst of the snow under the eaves. But the Unterscharführer was coming their way again.

  “What are you doing there, you filthy swine? Attention!” Gerard, who didn’t line up fast enough, got a nice little kick on the ankle. A little kick, but how was he supposed to carry his kettle now? As if that bothered anyone. And so Van Dam MD and the young psychologist Van Wijk stood there freezing on that wet, overcast November morning.