The Brothers of Auschwitz

by Malka Adler

  We got ready to sleep.

  We divided the synagogue benches among the families and arranged blankets on them. The gendarmes told us to tell jokes all night, they wanted us to keep them amused so they’d stay awake. We took turns to make up jokes. If a Jew choked in the middle of a joke, there was already someone there to tell another joke.

  After two days in the synagogue they took us in trucks to Perechyn, a town near our village.

  The villagers accompanied us until we got on the trucks and I felt my heart break. I was born in that village, all my brothers were born there. Father and mother came to Tur’i Remety after their wedding. We had school-friends in that village, father had connections with the goys, none of the villagers moved, not one of them spoke up. Some waved goodbye, I didn’t respond. I wanted to shout, a good play this, huh? You’ve got a Jewish play as well as gifts to take home, I didn’t know then that they’d take homes and cowsheds.

  I looked at the sky and vowed, I, Sarah, will never ever return to this village.

  In Perechyn they put us on a train to Ungvár. They took us to a brick factory belonging to someone called Moskowitz. It was a huge quarry, like a pit dug in the ground. Trains came, trains went, bringing more and more Jews. There were thousands of Jews there, men and women, children, grandmothers and grandfathers, all with yellow patches on their coats and bundles on their backs. We crowded together in the quarry because of the rain. We had no roof to hide under. We walked in mud, sat in mud, slept on boards and blankets in the mud. It was cold and stinking of peoples’ excrement. They gave us one meal a day and this is how they began to close our minds. We received only potato soup cooked by Jewish women volunteers. I also volunteered to cook. People stood for hours in line for food, and there was shouting and pushing, a lot of nerves, in the end everyone was left hungry.

  One morning I went to peel potatoes. I saw a grandfather with a white beard fill a plate with mud and eat it with a teaspoon. The woman standing next to him shouted, grandfather, grandfather, spit out the mud, spit it out. He laughed and the mud dribbled out of the sides of his mouth and reached his beard. He wiped his mouth with his hand and wiped it on his coat. The woman began to weep. Two men caught the grandfather by the arms. They lay him down on a board and covered him with a blanket. It was no use, he stuck a thin hand out of the blanket, took a handful of mud and put it in his mouth. In the morning they took him, wrapped in a blanket, to the truck.

  The Hungarian gendarmes looked for money and jewelry.

  They’d drag Jews to one of the corners of the quarry, mainly those they knew were rich. There, in the corner, they’d beat them with a stick, shouting, where is the gold, where is the money. Sometimes they’d stand an entire family in a row, and give just the father a beating with electric shocks, the screams of the children made us all jump. Afterwards we got used to it. The women were in another corner, near a blanket they stretched on a rope. The gendarmes or goy women would search the vagina of Jewish women for gold and jewelry, one woman didn’t stop bleeding after they stuck their hands into her body. I saw them putting a large bowl between her legs, it took her three hours to die.

  We were left without father.

  The gendarmes took the men right at the beginning. They loaded them onto train cars that stood permanently on tracks at the edge of the quarry. They said the men were communists and a danger to the government. I stole from the soup I cooked at lunch and brought it at night to father’s car.

  One day I got a high fever and a cough. I was shivering and couldn’t get warm in the wet blankets. I heard a bearded religious man near me say: If on one day we have a wedding in the quarry, a funeral and a circumcision, the Hungarians will release the Jews. Two days after I heard him, it happened. A rabbi married a young couple in the quarry. The same rabbi performed a circumcision on a baby eight days old and there was also a funeral, like every day, but we weren’t released.

  Just before we left Ungvár, my fever dropped and father returned. They told us we’d be taken to labor camps in the east. We were glad to leave the stinking mud. One man, with a large body and long arms, didn’t stop calling aloud, what are you so happy about, Jews, weep, weep, the soldiers are sending you to die like fleas, weep, weep, your turn has come and time has run out. People began to shout at him, shut up, idiot, you’re frightening the children. The man shouted louder, children, weep, mother, weep, you too father, grandmother, why are you silent, nu, start weeping. A Hungarian soldier dragged the man behind the train. There was a shot and the children calmed down.

  In the car it was dark and crowded. Any child that wasn’t picked up and held, stopped breathing. Children screamed, babies cried, people called out to God and I stuck fast to a crack I found in the door and peeped through it. A passenger train went by on a nearby track. The passengers were sitting in chairs. The passengers looked at us, I saw them cross themselves.

  We didn’t know where we were going. We didn’t know if it would take hours, or days. We had a little bread we’d hidden in bundles before the journey. We’d got the bread from peddlers, we gave them utensils from home. In the car were two buckets, one was full of water, the other was empty, to relieve ourselves. The water in the bucket was gone within less than an hour. It was suffocating. People were begging for water. Small children wept and died. One woman thrust her finger into the mouth of a child who didn’t stop crying. The child sucked and wept. Sucked harder, finally fell asleep. A drop of blood created a thin red thread on his chin.

  We had to relieve ourselves in the small bucket in front of everyone. I held it in until I could no longer. I pulled down my underwear, opened my legs, stood over the bucket and held my dress away from my body. The bucket was almost full. I tried hard not to dirty myself with other people’s excrement. I felt as if my stomach was rising, I wanted to vomit. I tore off a piece of my dress to clean myself. Women who were menstruating ripped strips off sheets and put them in their underwear. After a few hours the stinking bucket began to overflow. The stink was appalling. A tall man with a mustache volunteered to pour out the bucket through a tall, narrow opening near the roof. There was barbed wire over the opening. He stood on a suitcase and tried to pour out the bucket without touching the barbed wire. The wind outside flung the dirt back in his face. Small, black mud-like pieces stuck to his mustache. He didn’t let go of the bucket until he’d managed to empty it completely. Afterwards he took out a handkerchief and cleaned his face. I pressed hard on my mouth, breathed deeply, and asked God to help me hold it in.

  Two days in the car and a young man of twenty from my village died beside me. He died quietly. He was ill in Ungvár. His mother insisted on taking him on the journey. We rolled him into a corner and covered him with a blanket. His mother sat beside him, took off her kerchief and tore out her hair.

  We reached Auschwitz at night.

  The door opened with a blow, soldiers yelled, everyone out, quickly, everyone out. I could barely get down. Everything hurt: My back, legs, neck.

  A projector-like light hurt my eyes. After the line of light came darkness, as if the entire world ended at Auschwitz. I heard instructions over the loudspeaker. I saw black uniforms and green uniforms, and boots, and a belt with a revolver, and many hard hats. Some had rifles on their shoulders. Almost all of them held a stick in their hands, like the stick used by old people. Beside the soldiers stood large dogs. On the side stood people in pajamas and striped hats. In the air was the sweet smell of burned meat. Like a barbecue feast for a hundred thousand people.

  The soldiers waved their sticks, shouting quickly, quickly. Leave your possessions on the train. People in the car were blinded and tried to advance, but their legs had forgotten how to walk. They fell and got up and held onto one another’s coats and pushed forward, like a confused river current. My heart was pounding, pounding, the woman pressing against my shoulder shouted, I’m losing my little girl, Tibor, the girl, where is the girl. She was a tall young woman, maybe twenty-three, with a white, pretty face, and long h
air black as coal. Her hair fell on her shoulders like heavy ropes wet with perspiration. She wore a coat down to the floor that clung to her waist. The man beside her tried to catch hold of the little girl, and was pushed back. The woman threw herself forward and managed to catch the hand of the little one, maybe three years old. With her other hand she pressed a bundle with a baby to her breast. And then I saw a stream of people push the mother back and the little one disappearing. The woman called, Mariska, Mariska, where are you, God, they’ll trample her underfoot. The woman got a blow from a rifle butt on her back but didn’t notice. She stretched her neck high, her eyes almost bursting from their cavities, screaming, Mariskaaaa, Mariska disappeared.

  I saw the Germans were separating men and women. I heard the Germans shouting to young mothers to give their babies to grandmothers and old people. But the old people couldn’t take anything. Exhausted, they sat down on the platform. Some of them tied a towel round their chins because their beards had been cut off and they were ashamed.

  A soldier with a rifle stood near Mariska’s mother. The baby in the mother’s arms was whimpering. Its voice was like a chick about to die. I saw the soldier wanted something. He was the mother’s height. They looked the same age. The soldier said loudly, give your baby to an old woman. The woman didn’t move. The soldier yelled, give your baby to an old woman fast and go with the young women. The woman held the baby more tightly to her chest, judging by the movement of her head she was refusing. Her face was full of sorrow. The soldier approached the mother, almost touching her and, then, holding the rifle butt between his legs, he held out his arms for the mother’s baby. He screamed, give it to me, stupid Jewess. give it to me. Their heads were almost touching. The loudspeaker called, men apart, women apart, quickly, quickly. The mother looked straight at him, whispered, no, no. She had a strong chin. The soldier dropped his arms, took half a step back, opened his mouth, closed it, made a small gesture with his head, as if to say, as you wish, and walked off. Mother and baby were pushed in the direction of the old people. Two other little girls, one seven, the other maybe five, were holding hands, without a mother. They wore white fur hats over their ears like Purim costumes. The older one had a bag on her shoulder and an embroidered coat, the little one had an embroidered coat without a bag. Three other boys were pushed toward the old people. One wore a woolen hat and coat with a cup tied to a coat button. Two others wore coats with shiny buttons as if they were before Bar Mitzvah. Everyone wore a yellow patch on their coats. Mother and I stood next to each other.

  And then the Germans separated me and Mama. I know they took my mother straight to the crematorium. They thought she was a grandmother. My mother was young, forty-two. She had black hair. A smooth face, my mother was a strong woman. She was used to hard work. Nonetheless, they took her from me as if she was a grandmother who had to die at once. I saw her walking away with the grandmothers in the direction of the crematorium, maybe a five-minute walk from the ramp, in a place where there stood a Red Cross ambulance. Her back was straight, her head to the front. Her arms swung at her sides. She walked as if the end of that world was waiting for her there.

  The Germans were looking for professionals.

  I said I was a seamstress. I knew how to use a sewing machine, I helped Mama mend clothes. They took me in a line with other young women. Some wore scarves, some a hat gathered or knotted in the middle on top, or two protrusions on the sides. Some of the women wore dotted or checked dresses and a coat with a fur or woolen collar, some wore a jacket and a coat. Some held bundles, or a cup, or a bottle or a bag, some wore shoes and rolled up stockings, some with socks to their knees. Some women wore lipstick, most didn’t, and all had serious faces.

  In the meantime, morning came. I saw a tall chimney, even two, and brown-colored barracks. Rows and rows of barracks with narrow windows at the top; and then I heard cheerful music and I saw a photographer. The photographer, a uniformed soldier with a hat, photographed us from the front, from the side, from the top, even from the roof of a train car. The women beside me looked gravely at him. One woman with a pretty face arranged her hair, bringing a cute curl to her forehead, straightened her dress and stood ready for a photograph. I realized that death at Auschwitz was like a wedding. There’s an orchestra, a photographer, people, but at Auschwitz there was no food.

  We were taken into a large hall and I no longer saw my family. There were rows and rows of long benches. There were women in striped dresses and black aprons. They wore polished boots. Their hair was short and tidy, and their bellies were swollen. I heard a language something like German-Slovak. There were several soldiers there. They looked drunk and happy. We were ordered to strip, quickly. We didn’t move. The soldiers attacked us, we were slapped, cursed, cow, fool, filthy Jewess, strip, quickly. We stripped. We arranged our clothing in a pile on a bench. I made a sign on the wall, and hid my body with my arms. One of them didn’t want to remove her panties and bra. A soldier with a scratch on his cheek approached and grabbed her breast. He had a pen knife in his pocket. He stuck it under her bra and ripped it. The woman fell to the floor and began to shriek. The soldier screamed, strip. Some of the women nearby began to cry, Tzili, Tzili, Tzili, one of them bent down and pulled down her panties. They were bloody. In the meantime, they shouted at us, run, quickly, quickly. We got to the barbers. They shaved our heads with razors, they cut long hair first with huge scissors, like the ones used for sheep. The barbers didn’t stop their work for an instant, they were perspiring, their hands hurried. Some girls left the barbers with cuts on their heads. Then they disinfected us. Soldiers held large cans of spray and sprayed us with a burning disinfectant. On our shaved heads they smeared a stinging substance. I felt as if my head was on fire. From there they hurried us to the shower. A flow of boiling water blistered our skin. And then they gave us a short-sleeved gray garment of rough material, a pointed collar, three buttons and a rope belt, and I felt naked. They returned the shoes we’d brought from home, they smelled of chlorine, and then they took us to the barracks. The orchestra switched to cheerful songs. The photographer, without a rifle, photographed as usual, the loudspeaker shouted something, the sweet smell grew stronger. I asked one of the women in the apron and boots, what about our clothes. She wrinkled her nose, laughed aloud and said, what do you need clothes for, fool, soon you’ll get to the chimney, and she pointed with her stick in the direction of the smoke. There was cruelty in her teeth. I felt faint.

  I whispered Mamaleh, and fell over the legs of the woman in front of me. My garment pulled up. The woman behind me stepped on my belly and jumped aside. I shouted with pain, pulling the dress down. A large woman grabbed my arms and stood me on my feet. She didn’t let go of my hand, afterwards we went hand in hand like two sisters. We were taken to Bloc A, barracks 20, Camp Birkenau.

  We entered the barracks. It was dark brown and built with rough logs. There were no windows like the ones at home. There were just narrow openings near the ceiling. On the wall of the barracks were steel rings.

  A senior prisoner with breasts to her waist and thin legs said, the steel rings are for tying horses, it’s a horse stable, I asked, how many horses, she said, fifty-two German horses, five hundred, six hundred, seven hundred Jewish women can get in here, depending on the season. I felt alone at the long stove in the middle of the bloc. I asked, do they heat in winter? The prisoner said, of course not, do you see any horses here? Along the walls were wooden bunks, three stories, without mattresses. On each bunk was a thin blanket.

  Edit Elifant, a beautiful, blond Slovakian with high cheek bones and broad shoulders was our Kapo. The Germans put her in charge of the entire bloc. She held a stick with long, delicate fingers. I knew Edit came from a piano playing family with at least three servants. She wore a striped dress and a black apron made of lining fabric. On her sleeve was a red ribbon embroidered in white, and she had a blue number on her arm, like a tattoo.

  Edit Elifant had several aides who knew German, they were beautiful
or particularly tall. Each aide was responsible for a number of beds. Above her were the Germans. She had her own room in the front of the bloc. One day I peeped into her room. There were curtains, an embroidered cloth on the table, and colorful cushions, and a lamp decorated in gold, it was like the room of rich people.

  Edit Elifant gave the order for us to stand next to the cubicles, and then she divided us into groups of five. She stood with her stick on the stone stove in the middle of the bloc and said loudly in Hungarian, here you obey orders and if you don’t obey orders, you’ll get it, why did you come?

  One of the girls said cautiously, what could we have done, thrown ourselves under the train?

  Edit Elifant sighed and said, better under the train, the only exit from this camp is through the chimney. She had the soft voice of a mother and I fell onto the stove. I managed to grab the bricks and hold on and then hurriedly pressed my knees and pushed myself back. The girls standing beside me pulled my dress, and stood me in place. Later, we fell onto the bunks and were asleep in a moment.

  Several Kapos from neighboring blocs passed through our bloc looking for relatives. They also wore a striped dress and black apron. One Kapo found her cousin, a gentle girl with long lashes and transparent skin like glass. She lay on the bunk next to mine. The Kapo brought us blankets and whispered, in Camp Birkenau they take women from the ramp to the gas. From the gas they take the dead to cremation in the oven. That’s why there’s a smell of burned meat. Afterwards they scatter the ashes to the wind, and we don’t know each other outside the bloc, is that clear?

  I began to tremble. I hugged my body, I felt small, weak and trembling. The Kapo had broad face and a huge chest and she had confidence. However, I didn’t believe her and was glad when she went, but I couldn’t stop trembling. Edit Elifant looked at me and said, you can change places and you can choose five girls who want to sleep together. I joined up with four girls from Ungvár. I didn’t know them before but we had common acquaintances. And then she showed us how to fold blankets. At noon prisoners came with a large pot and poured soup into red tin bowls. The soup smelled bad and we didn’t eat. Edit Elifant shouted, why aren’t you eating?