Purposely shoving the red-faced man with his shoulder, Edek stalked off, Wiesław following closely on his heels. Mala saw Edek’s friend’s shoulders quivering with chuckles. She, too, found the situation almost comical. Outside, the orgy of death was unraveling, but the newly arrived inmate was more bothered by the word “bloody” than by the growing pile of corpses.
The madam, who had also gone to investigate, sailed past the new arrival and slapped him in passing, with wonderful nonchalance about her.
“Bloody idiot.”
The Sauna mob joined in at once. In mere moments, everyone was shouting all sorts of curses in their native languages. They, too, had taken the man’s remark as a personal insult; most of them had been beaten and verbally abused by the SS nightly and daily for a few years now. An outsider, who hadn’t felt his skin splitting under the guard’s lash, who hadn’t felt his ribs cracking under the Kapo’s boot, who hadn’t pissed blood for a good couple of weeks after a block elder’s beating, had no moral right to preach ethics to them. The ranks were closing around him, the cacophony of abuse rising to a deafening level. Auschwitz was an animal kingdom with animal laws. There was no place for pleasantries here. The man was about to learn it on his own skin and, oddly enough, Mala felt not an ounce of sympathy toward him.
“Bloody idiot!” she shouted, her voice joining the chorus of others, not due to the contagious influence of the mob mentality but because she, too, felt it to be a personal insult. Had he lived here at least a few days, had he personally witnessed the degradation, the depravity, the savage cruelty of the SS, he would think twice before opening his mouth and chastising them for using the language he didn’t quite approve of. They, the survivors, had all the right to be coarse. Only those with a toughened skin survived. The tender moralists had all long perished in the industrial furnaces.
Mala caught Edek’s eyes on her. He averted them self-consciously at the sight of her threadbare semblance of a towel and looked away altogether when she approached him. Wiesław, too, was suddenly very interested in his boots.
“It’s all right. You can look at me. I’m not naked. And even if I was…” Mala gave an indifferent shrug. Being naked in Auschwitz in front of hundreds of people was nothing new. The SS and their practice of mass selections, during which they made both men and women race in a circle absolutely nude, and the communal showers they took in the presence of the SS personnel, had long reduced what was left of their modesty to nothing.
Still, Edek looked thoroughly embarrassed. “I’m sorry you had to hear that. We’ve been working outside the camp for the past few days, and I had no way of letting you know. We came to ask about you, pass a note to you maybe… I didn’t know you were here… Else I would have never—”
Mala raised her palm, stopping him. “You did absolutely nothing wrong. He is a bloody idiot who had no right to say anything about your choice of words.”
Edek glanced up, surprised.
“Bloody. Idiot,” Mala repeated, grinning darkly. “Sodding crap-bag. Brainless hog.” With some malicious relish, she proceeded to produce the most elaborate curses in their native Polish that would make any sailor in Edek’s former maritime academy blush. “And yes, I used to kiss my mother with this mouth and she approved of it greatly.”
Both friends were now regarding her with newfound admiration.
She was smiling at them, fearless and proud, but her chin was quivering in spite of herself. This was why she would never be able to write a word to her old boyfriend. This was why no one, outside these walls, would ever understand how a young woman could produce such “gutter language.” She lived in a gutter, and all that defiance and fearlessness was a product of her brutal surroundings. It seeped from her wounds like pus; it contaminated everything it had come in contact with, poisoned it all and made her crave revenge with the ravenous appetite of a vulture.
Even if she came out of here, how would she be able to stand before her former boyfriend, hold his hand and smile at him when such darkness coursed through her veins? It was best to forget his name, just like she had almost forgotten his face. It was best to do what she knew how to do best—steal, bribe, cheat the authorities, and organize escapes.
Stasia was right; in the eyes of the world, many things were unethical and immoral. But when the world itself turned unethical and immoral, perhaps such criminals as herself and Stasia, such outlaws as Edek and Wiesław and Rita and Kostek were heroes instead.
“Come to the Schreibstube next Sunday,” she told Edek. “I’ll have the gold for your escape.”
Nineteen
“A uniform? Are you mad?” Edek’s former Kommandoführer Lubusch stared at him in disbelief.
To be sure, it was a gamble coming here, back to his old work detail; it was an even bigger gamble to seek out the SS man and for Edek to openly lay his cards before him, but he had no choice.
Lubusch had all reason to drag him outside and shoot him in front of the others just for suggesting such an outrageous thing—Edek wouldn’t blame him one bit. He had imagined all sorts of scenarios while walking here. And yet, he hoped against all logic, that his German namesake would come through, would show once again that his conscience was above his Führer’s hateful politics.
There was a long, tense pause. Edek could hear himself breathing; could see, just out of the corner of his eye, his heart beating wildly under the blue cloth of his uniform overalls. On the opposite wall, the clock was ticking, measuring the seconds until Lubusch’s ultimate refusal. Yet after an entire minute had expired, the SS officer still hadn’t thrown him out. When Lubusch was lighting his cigarette, Edek noticed that his Kommandoführer’s fingers were trembling almost imperceptibly.
“Do you know what they will do to me if they find out I helped you?” he asked Edek at length. “I have already served my term in the penal camp for my big mouth and protecting you lot before the authorities. Before releasing me back to my service in Auschwitz, they warned me that the second time they wouldn’t be so lenient and it would be the Eastern front for me.”
Feeling the heat growing in his cheeks, Edek averted his gaze, almost sorry to have asked. He was aware of Lubusch’s imprisonment in the SS penalty unit in Stutthof-Matzkau, a concentration camp some 30 kilometers east of Danzig. He knew how much there was at stake for Lubusch. He had no right to ask his superior to risk his neck for him, but he simply had no one else to turn to. In the abode of the damned called Auschwitz, Lubusch was the only one with a heart.
“Is there a label attached to the inside of the uniform with your name?” Edek probed carefully. Despite seeing plenty of SS uniforms up close and even more boots as they were administering a beating to him for one “crime” or another, he didn’t know the answer to his question.
“Whatever does that have to do with anything?” Lubusch huffed, annoyed, and released two strings of smoke from his nostrils. “Taking it off wouldn’t take a minute. That’s not what the trouble is. The trouble is when they capture you, and it’s only a matter of time before they will, and they shall give you such an interrogation that Kapo Vasek with his whip and the Strafblock will feel like a ride in an amusement park compared to what the Political Department is capable of. Surely, you’ll tell them who supplied you with such a disguise.”
Edek held his gaze. “I didn’t tell who broke the machine, did I?”
Lubusch made no reply. He didn’t even look at Edek, choosing to stare at the picture on the corner of his desk instead. But for Edek, this meant hope. He’d seen that photo before—it was the wedding picture, of Lubusch in his dress uniform and his Polish bride. In it, they weren’t looking at the camera but at each other, their gazes full of infinite tenderness.
“Herr Unterscharführer, I’ll die under torture, but I won’t betray you; you have my word,” he whispered once again, his mouth dry with nerves. “I’m used to pain. I can withstand anything. You saw it with your own two eyes. They can break every single bone in my body, but I shall take your secret to my
grave. Herr Unterscharführer, I beg you—”
“Oh, shut it already!” Lubusch pushed his chair back and walked over to the window just to avoid Edek’s pleading eyes. He proceeded to speak in the same manner, with his back turned toward the inmate. “You’re in a good detail. You shall survive it. The war will be over soon. Germany will lose; it’s only a matter of time. The Soviets keep beating us something savage; the African campaign is lost; the Allied troops are taking over Italy…” Suddenly, he turned to face Edek. “Could you not wait a few more months? A year, at the most? Why risk it all now, when you have the chance to come out of here alive?”
Edek took his time to respond. It was important to choose the right words. Carefully, he licked his lips and began to speak.
“Herr Unterscharführer, you’re an SS man.”
A shadow of distaste passed over Lubusch’s face. It was obvious he didn’t like being reminded of it.
“It is in no way my intention to offend you,” Edek rushed to explain. “I’m only saying it because you must have had an ideological training of sorts.” When Lubusch didn’t protest, Edek continued, “Whether you agreed with it or not, you did hear what your commanders were saying to you. I suspect they were saying the same thing your colleagues are saying to us openly, that we’re the vermin that needs to be exterminated, that we’re the parasitic leeches on the German nation’s body, that we’re the enemies of the state.”
Lubusch had nothing to say against that either; only took deep pulls on his cigarette, staring at his boots with eyes full of inner torment.
“I don’t know what instructions they gave you concerning our particular camp,” Edek proceeded. “I used to be in the military—well, a maritime academy, but I suspect it’s all the same in its essence—and my guess is that they most likely didn’t discuss the possibility of the Soviets approaching the camp, in order to avoid sowing panic among the troops. Both you and I know that what the camp administration is doing here goes against all laws of humanity and your SS commanders would go to great lengths to ensure that not a word of what is happening in Auschwitz will leave its walls. Isn’t that the reason for such security measures? I mean, would Himmler or Hitler truly care for one or two escaped inmates? Not a big loss of workforce if you think of it. No; the reason for all these guard towers and electrified barbed wire several layers deep and the endlessly roaming searchlights is to ensure that we won’t escape to tell our stories. That’s what frightens them the most, the fact that the world shall learn of all the atrocities, all the systematic slaughter.”
Lubusch’s face was growing paler and paler. Now, his hand, with the cigarette in it, was visibly shaking. Only his eyes didn’t move; glassy and full of horror, they stared into the void, as though just now it had dawned on him that he, himself, was a willing cog in this machine of mass extermination. The thought of it mortified him, and it was Edek’s suspicion that it wasn’t due to the consequences he could possibly face. It was his own conscience that he would have to deal with for the rest of his life.
“They will never let the Soviets liberate us or any other camp inmates, Herr Unterscharführer,” Edek spoke gently after a pause. “You know it. I know it. They’ll dig more ditches, like they did in 1942, and either shoot us and burn us all there as they did back then, or gas us and shove us into the ovens. Either way, we won’t be leaving this place alive. That’s why I can’t wait one more year, Herr Unterscharführer. I want to see my father once again. I want to fall asleep in my own bed and wake up with the sun, by myself, instead of being roused by a block elder’s club and that demented gong blaring full volume all over the camp. I want to take a girl I like to the dances and buy flowers for her and kiss her in front of everyone without fear of being shot. I want to die fighting for my life, together with partisans, but not like this; not like obedient sheep led to slaughter.” He grimaced in spite of himself. “You’re a man yourself. You must understand…”
Lubusch nodded gravely. Of course, he understood.
“Do you have a plan of any sort, at least?” Lubusch asked after another intolerably long pause.
“Yes.” Edek nodded readily. “A place to stay, the route to take, the money—it’s all organized. We’ve planned it all out very carefully.”
“So, there’s ‘we’ then?” Before Edek could answer, Lubusch waved his hand before his face. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. And just how do you plan to walk through the gates?”
“I have an Ausweis. A real one, from the camp office. Stamp and all that business.”
Lubusch looked at him with a mixture of surprise and respect and, for the first time, a small grin was reflected on his face. “I see you have worked it all out already.”
Edek smiled tentatively too. “Jawohl, Herr Unterscharführer. Only the uniform is missing.”
To that, Lubusch shook his head. Edek held his breath, sensing how close he was to persuading the guard.
“It’s January,” Lubusch reflected, calculating something in his mind. “They shall be outfitting us all with new uniforms within the next couple of months. You can have my old one after they issue a new one to me. You can risk waiting till March, can’t you?”
“Of course, Herr Unterscharführer.” Edek breathed out in relief. The date wasn’t all that important; it was the uniform that mattered the most. “Someone told me that running through snow is quite a bad idea.”
“That someone has more sense than you do. I strongly suggest you listen to him in the future.”
“Her.” Edek’s voice was a mere whisper. He lowered his eyes, feeling the heat rising in his cheeks.
“That girl you were talking about?” Lubusch’s smile was much bigger now.
Edek nodded.
“Is that why you said ‘we’ before?”
“You told me not to tell you.”
“Good. Don’t tell me then. And make sure you take good care of her.” Once again, Lubusch’s gaze returned back to the photo on his desk. “And now, get out of here. As it is, you have spent too much time here. People will start saying we’re in love.”
Grateful for the timely jest, Edek rose to his feet and paused in stunned amazement at the sight of Lubusch’s outstretched hand. Not quite sure that this was truly happening, he grasped it carefully and nearly choked with emotion when Lubusch clapped him warmly on the shoulder.
“Come see me in March. I shall have it by then.”
“Thank you, Herr Unterscharführer. You have not the faintest idea what you’ve just done.”
“Signed my own death sentence, but oh well.” He gave a careless shrug. “At least I won’t die a bastard, and at least my wife shall remember me with a few good words.”
Twenty
“Mala, you can’t keep doing this to yourself!”
The feeling was gradually returning to Mala’s frozen-stiff limbs thanks to Zippy’s vigorous rubbing.
“First, you jump into death ditches; now, you’re walking through camp half-naked in the middle of winter because you gave away all your clothes?”
“The Kanada girls will supply me with new ones,” Mala countered, her blue lips barely moving. “Those sickbay women don’t have connections like I do.”
“Those women have no conscience!” Zippy snapped, reaching for the small tin of bear fat she kept under her bed. After scooping some nasty-smelling stuff from the half-empty container, she began lathering Mala’s chest and back with it. “Stripping you bare in such a manner, in the middle of winter! Do they wish for you to land in the sickbay as well, with pneumonia?”
Mala made no reply, only grinned faintly as her eyelids grew heavy with sleep. She closed her eyes as the warmth spread through her skin and tuned out the rest of Zippy’s chastising, which, she suspected, her friend knew fell on deaf ears at any rate.
The truth was, Mala never planned on these things. She had never planned on jumping into death ditches as Zippy had called it, just like she had never planned on parting with her coat when she had set off for the sic
kbay to carry out her duties there, matching recovered women to different work details. It was a new coat, a much warmer one than the coat she had already given as a bribe to the doctor who’d promised to look after the Frenchman, her new substitute Papa, she’d saved. But the Slovak girl broke into such gut-churning cries when Mala had announced to her that she would have to work on a farm, sobbing and pointing at her striped dress, the only thing she owned, and pleading with Mala, claiming that she would certainly die out there in such threadbare attire that Mala had no choice. The farm detail was considered to be a good unit, albeit being an outside one; food could be had there if one knew how to pinch it right from under the Kapos’ noses and the work wasn’t too backbreaking, but the girl refused to see reason. And so Mala tore the camel-wool coat off herself, gave it to her in helpless frustration and told the girl to get out.
Mala’s teeth were already chattering as she left the somewhat heated sickbay and headed toward the camp office, paperwork in hand, when a woman intercepted her, clung to her sleeve and asked Mala in broken German if a vest of some sort could be found somewhere for her mother, who was sick and wouldn’t survive another night in an unheated barrack. Silently, Mala had handed her the papers to hold, took her own sweater off and gave it to the stunned woman.
With her warm woolen stockings she had parted voluntarily, when an elderly inmate who resembled her grandmother shuffled across her path on stiff, blue, bare legs stuffed into wooden clogs, slipping in the snow with a resigned look about her.
The Girl Who Escaped from Auschwitz: A totally gripping and absolutely heartbreaking World War 2 page-turner, based on a true story Page 16