by Eddy de Wind
At first you did your very best to keep the bag in the middle of your back and not spill any, but each bag weighed over one hundred pounds, and once you were tired you had to put the bag on your shoulder and then it was liable to tilt. In no time they were covered with powder: clothes and faces green.
It was worst for your eyes, which stung and itched, and if you rubbed them with your dusty hands they started to burn. You were blinded and couldn’t go on, and had to put the bag down for a moment. But you couldn’t do that either, as the work had to be completed within the allocated time and that was the Rottenführer’s responsibility, so he had to hurry you along. If you then complained about the wretched powder that hurt your eyes so much and stung your skin, the Rottenführer smiled enigmatically. He knew more than he was letting on.
When they got back to their blocks in the evening, exhausted and with bloodshot eyes, they all felt awful. One was shivery, the other nauseous, they all had sore eyes, and some had come out in blisters. Hans felt ill; after roll call he went straight to bed. The next day he couldn’t get up. He was running a temperature and the skin on his shoulders, back, and everywhere the powder had reached was red and inflamed.
He was not the only one: four of the Pfleger had to stay in bed. Paul was quite reasonable. He sent others that day because the work had to go on.
The new workers asked the Rottenführer if they could get something made of rubber to put over their backs and shoulders, or goggles to protect their eyes. But the Rottenführer just shrugged. What did a few sick Häftlinge here or there matter? One of the Pfleger had tried to bring a rubber sheet from a treatment room. The SDG, the SS orderly who inspected the hospital every day, bumped into him with it, gave him a few whacks, and seized the sheet: “Sabotage!”
Sabotage if you tried to conserve your health, if you tried to protect yourself from poison. The milk they give workers in paint factories in Holland must be a mortal sin. Anyway, that evening a few more of us were sick.
Paul looked concerned.
The next day was the same. Now seven of Block 9’s thirty-five Pfleger were sick, just from the malaria powder. But the job was done.
Hans was not dissatisfied. The fever would pass, his body would excrete the poison, and the patches of eczema that had formed everywhere would flake off. Meanwhile the rest was doing him good. The only bad thing was not being in touch with Friedel. He had sent her a note saying he wasn’t well, but she hadn’t been able to get an answer back to him. The lads who took the food to Block 10 were too scared. A few had just been beaten and one they’d found notes on had been sent to the Strafkommando in Birkenau.
Then, on the fifth day: alarm! Paul came into the nurses’ room: “Los, everyone get dressed, Eile! The Lagerarzt is in Block 19. He could be here any minute!”
They didn’t know what was going on, but in the corridor Hans bumped into Grün. He looked very somber. “It’s been going well for too long. He hasn’t been for three weeks.”
In that moment the door opened. “Achtung!” shouted the doorkeeper.
Grün pulled Hans into the toilets with him. They heard the Lagerarzt going upstairs. Then a few of the sick Pfleger came into the toilets. Tony Haaksteen, the Scheissmeister, was about to start swearing at them, but Grün gestured for him to keep quiet.
“They’ve come here to hide, fathead.”
Grün couldn’t suppress his curiosity. He took Hans upstairs with him. They slipped into the ward and went to stand among the other Pfleger. Almost all of the beds were empty and the men were lined up in the central corridor. The SDG wrote down the numbers of those who were severely ill and couldn’t make it out of bed. When he was finished the inspection began.
It was disgusting, especially if you knew what it was about. The poor bags of bones, the worn-out, hollow-eyed skeletons, their bodies covered with wounds, standing stark naked in a long line, leaning on each other or holding on to beds. The Lagerarzt cast a quick glance at each of them and the SDG wrote down the numbers of everyone he pointed out—about half of them.
“What’s that for?” one of the unfortunates dared to ask the Lagerarzt.
“Halt’s Maul.”
But the SDG was a little more accommodating. “The weak are going to a different camp. They have a special hospital there.”
The Pfleger within earshot sneered at each other. “Special hospital, effective for all ailments.”
The Lagerarzt was finished and went downstairs. Hans felt a chill. Van Lier, the junior doctor, was in Room 3 with the madmen. He had been too cocky. Not only had he taken to bed with his inconsequential foot wounds, he’d also moved to a bunk among the madmen in Room 3 because two Dutchmen were working there, Van Wijk and Eli Polak, and he liked the company. If only they’d hidden him.
But after the Lagerarzt had left, Hans met Eli in the corridor. His face was stony. “Only three—Reich Germans—are allowed to stay. They wrote down all the other numbers.”
“Van Lier’s too?”
“Van Lier’s too, with the insane.”
They went to see Paul, the Blockältester, to ask if there was anything he could possibly do. Paul was a strange fellow. He wasn’t bad; he never hit anyone. He yelled and threatened, but never took it any further. But he’d been in the camp too long to know any pity. “Van Lier? He was asking for it. He should have put in an effort. Why hasn’t anything happened to either of you? You’ve worked here from the beginning and that’s why I put you with the Pfleger—but that waste of space…”
Of course, that wasn’t an argument. After all, the Lagerarzt had accepted Van Lier as a Pfleger too. If Paul had something against him, he could have chased him out of bed or even—as Blockältester he had the right—discharged him from hospital. He shouldn’t have let him walk into a trap like that. But after years in concentration camps even the best of people develop their own “sense of justice.” They develop their own ticks. Ein Vogel, they call it.
Van Lier stayed on the list and left with the others the next day. At eleven o’clock the trucks arrived with a stream of SS men, the like of which Hans hadn’t seen in the Krankenbau before. There was the Lagerführer with the two Rapportführer, the Lagerarzt with the SDG, the truck drivers and many others. They gesticulated wildly and were especially rough and currish. No, this definitely didn’t look like a transport to “a special hospital,” as the SDG had put it.
The Blockältester was given a list with the names and numbers of the victims. They had to line up as quickly as possible, were given trousers and sandals, and were then rushed onto the trucks.
The most seriously ill, who couldn’t walk, were carried down on stretchers by the Pfleger. If they didn’t go fast enough, the Pfleger got a kick and the SS took charge of the unfortunate patient, who was thrown into the back of the truck like a sack of flour.
These people weren’t heavy. A man who was by nature a sturdy, solid fellow of say, 175 pounds, would now only weigh 110 or 115, and the wretches with a normal build weighed 85 at the most.
It’s a law of nutrition that, even when wasting away, the heart, brain, and organs maintain their normal weight the longest. As a result, most of them were all too aware of what was happening to them. They still had such a strong will to live. Many of them were crying and complaining to the Pfleger. A sixteen-year-old youth kicked up an enormous fuss. Then an SS man came and hit him with his belt. The boy screamed even louder; the SS man hit him harder still. German pedagogy was not, however, helpful.
Have you ever seen a drunk man kicking a howling dog? The dog starts howling even louder, and though the man is drunk he feels that the howling is justified and an indictment of his brutality. The man is not capable of a conscious sense of remorse, but the dog’s complaints still arouse uncomfortable feelings in him, which he masks by increasingly brutal behavior. Harder kicks, louder howls, until in the end the man kicks the dog to death. Finally it is no longer able to denounce him.
In the same way, the SS man hit harder and harder and the boy scream
ed louder and louder. In the end he picked him up and threw him into the back of the truck like a ball. Then the boy was quiet. Hans stood in the downstairs corridor at the door to Room 1 and thought about it. No—you could never educate these “people” to genuine remorse, even if they were one day called to account. “A just punishment” would only engender greater hatred in them, and even if they pretended to be reformed, they would only conspire again as soon as they were set loose on humanity. For them, in the future, there could only be one possible punishment: death. That would be the only way to protect a new society.
Hans dug his nails into his flesh to restrain himself. Resistance, even a show of pity, would have been pointless suicide. During one of the previous “selections,” a Pfleger went to help one of the poor wretches. The SS supervisor did not approve of the whole process being delayed for a single bandage. The Pfleger objected. The Lagerarzt came up, wrote down the Pfleger’s number, and had him put on the truck with the others.
Then Van Lier came down the corridor. Slowly he approached Hans. Wearing a filthy undershirt and clacking sandals, with his head bowed over his tall skinny body and swinging his long arms, he was the image of misery. It was as if death, who he was about to meet, had already taken up residence inside of him. He wanted to speak to Hans.
But Hans was at his wit’s end and his courage failed him. He knew what Van Lier was going to ask, but he didn’t know how to answer. That was why he turned away. It was a flight, a cowardly flight. He slunk off behind the big brick stove, but couldn’t suppress his tormented curiosity and finally went back to the window.
They were ready now, the tailboards had been slammed shut, SS guards had climbed up onto the backs of the trucks, and the transport was about to drive off to Birkenau. Hans gripped the windowsill. He heard the Poles in their beds in loud discussion. He wanted to cry out, motivated by a vague feeling that someone would hear his cry and rush to help. But no sound made it past his lips. Silent tears welled up in his eyes. Then an arm wrapped around him. It was Zimmer, the fat Pole from Posen.
“Yes, son, they won’t be complaining anymore. Their song of woe is over.”
Hans shuddered; the man felt it.
“Come on, you have to be braver. You’re in a very different position. You’re fairly well off here in the room with us. You’re young and strong, and you know the head doctor likes you.”
“You’re right, Zimmer. But it’s not for me, it’s for those people going to slaughter so meekly.”
Zimmer smiled for a moment. “Thousands have gone that way already. Millions. Did you cry then? It’s only now it’s right in front of your nose that you’re so upset. But I don’t blame you. You’ve seen so little. When the Germans invaded our country, in 1939, they marched straight into the Jews’ houses. The men were driven into groups to be transported to labor camps, the women were raped. Rassenschande, a violation of their own race laws, but that didn’t bother them.
“I saw them take little children by the feet and smash their heads against trees or doorposts. That was in fashion at the time. Every year there seems to be a new fashion in the SS. In 1940 it was the fashion to literally tear children apart. In ’41 they’d take a tub of water and push the children’s faces into it. They’d drown the poor little devils in four inches of water. Lately they’ve calmed down a little. Now they kill the Jews with gas. The camps are sanatoriums compared to a couple of years ago, because they are killing people much more systematically now.”
“A lot must have happened in your region.”
“Don’t talk to me about it, son. We Poles, we know the Germans. Over and over again they’ve hacked away at us, always dividing our country and annexing the best parts of it. Posen (Poznan in Polish), Danzig (that we know as Gdansk), and Stettin. They’ve gobbled up the most beautiful parts of Poland again now. But it doesn’t matter where they set their borders. If they win the war, they’ll enslave all of Poland. But they’ll lose and when they do, justice will be ours.”
That was how he distracted Hans from the awful events that had taken place that morning.
Meanwhile there was a Kesselkommando. The task of delivering soup to Block 10 fell to the five hospital blocks on a weekly roster. This week it was Block 9’s turn and Hans was carrying a kettle together with Majzel, the quiet, gentle Belgian doctor whose wife was also in Block 10.
Most of the Pfleger were keen to get into Block 10. A lot of them had a girlfriend there, but even those who didn’t know anyone wanted to spend a few seconds in the presence of women. That was why it was a crazy race from the kitchen to Block 10, because the four pairs who arrived first with their soup were allowed to deliver it there; the others had to take it to the men in Block 9.
On top of that, Hans and Majzel always picked out a heavy kettle. They felt that what a lot of the men did was a betrayal: wanting to see the women, they chose a small kettle to make it easier to get there first, in the process disadvantaging those same women by taking them too little soup.
But none of that mattered because with a different goal in mind than just a girlfriend, they were capable of a greater effort. And when Majzel—who was ten years older than Hans—couldn’t keep up, they arranged the kettle on the poles so that Hans, who was strong and had tremendous endurance, was carrying most of the weight. That way they were generally first to arrive with their kettle.
Friedel was already waiting in the corridor.
The doorkeeper—the she-devil—had grown used to them and was a little less hostile.
Friedel smiled and put her hand on his chest. “Silly boy, exerting yourself like that. Your heart’s racing. That can’t be good for you.”
“Be glad it’s still beating.”
And immediately he felt the sharp pain of what he had seen that morning. He tried to conceal it, but she had already noticed. The women had seen all kinds of things from their windows too.
“How is it with the husbands of the girls here?”
“Miel Boekbinder is all right. Heini and Günther too, but a fellow called Geitenman is gone from Block 19.”
“My God, what am I going to tell her? She was pacing back and forth all morning completely beside herself. She was already so scared, because he’s been in such a poor state. But she refuses to face up to it. I’ve even got a packet of bread here that she’s given me for him.”
Hans thought it best to pretend everything was all right. Then, in a few days, they could tell her he was suddenly gone, transferred to another camp. No matter what, they mustn’t let her know he’d been taken with today’s selection.
“The poor girl, Samuel was at her this week too. She’s been in a lot of pain and bled terribly. Can you get your hands on some cotton wool or cellulose? I can’t possibly get enough here if they take as many samples as last week.”
Betty, Miel’s wife, came up. She had two packets with her, one for Miel and one for Heini Spittel, from his wife.
“There aren’t any letters in there, are there?” Hans asked. Getting caught with a packet of bread wasn’t too bad, especially if you could show that it was from a woman for her own husband. But letters were different.
“There’s a letter in my packet.”
“Get it out of there quickly, then. I’d rather hide it under my clothes.” Hans was starting to get nervous, because the doorkeeper had chased away almost all of the other men. He would have liked to discuss a few more things with Friedel, but arranging the packets always took a lot of time. Friedel could tell he was getting impatient. “Just leave them. You’re still their only chance of keeping in touch with their husbands.”
But before he could answer, the doorkeeper had spotted him, even though he’d hidden a little among the women.
“Have you gone mad?” she said, launching into her usual torrent of abuse. He wanted to spare himself the rest and gave Friedel a hasty kiss. But Friedel wouldn’t accept that. She grabbed hold of him to at least say a proper goodbye.
Suddenly a door opened somewhere. A big fat woman a
ppeared, one who looked like she’d come straight from a fish market, but without the clear, healthy complexion of a Dutch fisherwoman. Filthy, wispy tow-colored hair, a round pasty face that formed a vile contrast to her scarlet-painted lips. She was heavily pregnant and looked grotesque in her poorly fitting uniform. “Was ist hier los, ihr Dreckhuren?”
It was a farce: this Nazi slut cursing his Friedel and the other women, who had given him bread they themselves had gone without to take to their husbands, as dirty whores. But the stick she was holding so casually was less farcical. That was why Hans kept himself hidden behind the women and slipped past the Aufseherin with the packets under his coat. He didn’t breathe again until he was back in Block 9. That could have gone badly wrong.
In Block 9 the soup kettles had already been distributed to the various rooms and wards. In the small rooms downstairs—“small” meaning fifty patients per room—the sick men were allowed to stay in bed and the Pfleger took the soup around.
Janus, the Stubenältester, stood by the kettle to dish out the soup. One liter per person. Hans took the red tin bowls around. There were various patients who didn’t want the soup. They ate too much from their packages. That meant soup to spare and Hans was able to fill another bowl with two liters and take it upstairs to give one of his fellow Dutchmen a little extra.
Upstairs it was organized differently. There the patients queued up in long lines with a bowl in their hands to receive their scoop from the kettle. Only the severely ill were allowed to stay in bed; the room orderlies brought them their food. Their lordships, the Pfleger, were too lazy to keep the ward clean and take food to the patients. Instead they had delegated the work to a few patients who were not quite so ill. Everyone was happy to be chosen for a job like that because it got you an extra liter of soup a day and meant you wouldn’t be discharged from hospital and put in an outside Kommando. It was dangerous, of course. If the Lagerarzt came to pick out Mussulmen, the room orderlies had to hide in the attic or latrines.