Hössler’s words were still playing on Mala’s mind when a woman signaled for her to come over. Behind her, two girls of about twelve stood wearing matching velvet dresses and shiny, polished shoes. It stunned Mala how many families here looked as though they were dressed for some special occasion. She could only guess what lies their local leaders had told them about their destination.
“Is that gentleman on the podium a medical doctor?” the woman asked.
Mala traced her gaze to the small platform on which Dr. Mengele stood, picture-perfect and immaculately dressed as always. To the new arrivals, he appeared thoroughly reassuring with his handsome face, polite manner of address, welcoming smile and the insignia of the medical staff on his shoulder boards. Behind the kind Herr Doktor’s deceiving façade, they failed to see the predator’s nature; didn’t recognize the maniacal gleam of the mad scientist in his dark, impenetrable eyes; didn’t find anything distressing about his interest in anything that came in identical pairs, pregnant, or physically deformed. They weren’t humans to him, but objects, something to be tested, prodded, measured, experimented and, eventually, cut open to see precisely how the experiment went. Painfully aware of what those experiments entailed, for it was her who shipped preserved body parts and eyes swimming in different solutions to Dr. Mengele’s superiors in Berlin, Mala grew cold each time someone mentioned his name, let alone when Herr Doktor himself made an appearance in the camp administration office. It was from his unhealthy interest that Mala’s physician friend Stasia saved many pregnant women by performing abortions on them, for the alternative in Dr. Mengele’s hands was much too shudder-inducing and invariably lethal.
“Why?” Mala replied to the woman. She knew that the order was to nod and smile and generally lull them into temporary peace, but with the best will in the world, she couldn’t force herself to.
“He was just saying something about twins. My girls are twins. Is that good?”
Mala thought of Mengele’s barracks full of such twins on whom he experimented like on guinea pigs, purposely injecting them with all sorts of deadly serums or viruses and then cutting them open to compare the differences between the infected and healthy twin. She stepped closer to the woman.
“Take off your cardigan and put it on one of your daughters,” she began to whisper in the woman’s ear. “Separate them, so that they stand in different parts of the column. Tell one of them to unbraid her hair and when your girls approach him—separately, you hear me? It is of utmost importance—tell them to reply ‘fifteen’ when he asks how old they are.”
When Mala pulled back, she saw that all the blood had drained from the woman’s face. It took her a few moments to compose herself, a few moments during which Mala feared the lady would start shouting and accuse her of being a vile criminal spreading dirty rumors, but in the end, she collected herself and began to remove her cardigan with unsteady hands.
“Here, take it,” she whispered, passing it to her daughter.
Mala stepped away, breathing a sigh of relief.
For the next few days, she proceeded to do the very same thing. Using her position as an interpreter, she approached one person after another, whispering softly into their ears, “Tell him you’re forty-five, if he asks your age… Tell them your son is sixteen… Drop that instrument case, tell them you’re a carpenter, not a flautist…”
A highly risky enterprise, but so far, she’d been successful: nearly all of the people she’d managed to warn in this manner were sent by Mengele to the column, which led to the Sauna and not to the gas chamber, thus saving them from imminent death. The rest of that never-ending stream of humanity were very correctly escorted by the SS along the ramp toward the grove where two other “Saunas” stood, their chimneys belching clouds of a sickly-sweet, nauseating smell. The rest were led along the Lagerstraße and into the peaceful Birkenau woods, in which two other “Saunas” were concealed. In front of those two, the Sonderkommando had even planted some flowerbeds on Hössler’s orders, according to Kostek’s latest report.
“Those poor devils have not the faintest clue where they’re going,” he said, shaking his head in disgust while Mala was transferring a few folding knives from her pocket into his. It was another dangerous enterprise, rummaging in the discarded luggage right on the ramp while the SS were distracted with their new charges, but Mala risked it all the same. “Look at them. Lying on the grass, newspapers atop their heads, without a care in the world—a veritable beach.” He spat on the ground.
Due to the backlog, crowds of new arrivals had to wait for their turn outside the crematoriums. Blissfully oblivious to the fate awaiting them within the walls of these constructions, they positioned themselves in front of the doors, atop the dewy grass, and waited apathetically for the water promised by the SS. Elderly relatives hid in the shadows provided by prams; the young children ran around them in circles, their innocent laughter sending chills down the spines of the Sonderkommando men returning from the inferno raging just behind the tall protective screens, a mere twenty or so meters from the crematoriums’ backyards. Sweat running down their faces, they observed the children tragically, knowing all too well that within the next hour, it would be those very children’s bodies they would be throwing into Moll’s hellish pits.
“Hössler promised them iced tea and coffee after their shower,” Mala replied hollowly.
There was no one to warn in this crowd, their fates had been sealed; there was simply no place to run anywhere from here. The crematoriums had been surrounded by an outer cordon of electrified barbed wire and guard towers. The only reason why she came here in the first place was to pass her contraband as quickly as possible before the Kanada Kommando got their hands on it. The underground had their people in the sorting detail, but it was anyone’s guess if they could get to the possible weapons concealed among the possessions before some crook who’d later sell them to the SS or civilians working in the camp for a bottle of spirits and a smoked sausage.
“Moshe Liar.” Kostek shook his head.
Mala didn’t argue. That, Hössler certainly was.
“We even give them cotton towels and individual pieces of soap now,” Kostek continued.
“No one gets suspicious?” Mala regarded the smoking chimney doubtfully. Its infernal orange glow obscured the sky itself, turning it ashen-gray. All around them, the ghastly snowflakes gently floated in the middle of June; the snowflakes that didn’t melt when they touched one’s skin. Only smeared and left an oily film of terror and death, impossible to wash off.
“Very few. The SS take them quietly outside and fire at them with their air pistols, so that no one hears the shot. Then, they drop the body behind the crematorium. We have a small gang working there since our ovens can’t manage the amount. Moll has set up quite a production line behind Crematorium V. Twenty pits, forty or fifty meters long, two meters deep, about eight meters wide, where he burns the bodies that don’t fit into the four crematoriums.”
He was still saying something, and Mala was already calculating the numbers. Crematoriums II and III had five ovens in each, each with three chambers. That’s ten ovens, thirty chambers. On each gurney, four bodies fit at the same time. Crematoriums IV and V had two ovens each, with four incineration chambers in each one. Twenty pits, two meters deep, fifty meters long… Mala felt lightheaded.
“How many people…” she swallowed with difficulty before continuing, “how many people have you cremated so far?”
Kostek screwed up his face, calculating the approximate numbers.
“About two hundred thousand now,” he announced in the tone of a banker stating the latest stock market report. “They say we’re to expect three hundred thousand more in June.”
“That’ll make half a million people,” Mala whispered, wiping her forehead with her palm where a film of sweat had broken. “Half a million people in two months.”
“It’s Auschwitz.” Kostek spread his arm in a terrifyingly ghoulish gesture.
Mala looked into his eyes and saw that they were completely dead. One would never recover from something of that sort. He seemed like he knew it as well.
Thirty-One
June 1944
The SS “celebrated” D-Day by gassing the next three full transports without holding any selections. They were rabid this time, punishing the Jews for the Allied landings in Normandy, for the war that could no longer be won; clubbing people on the ramp, smashing children’s skulls on the sides of the cattle cars, drunk on schnapps and their hatred. There were not enough Kapos to mind the order. Edek’s fitters’ Kommando had been transferred from their work on the road construction in women’s camp to the ramp as temporary enforcers.
White-hot June sun was also without mercy, singeing through the uniforms of camp veterans and burning to painful blisters the freshly shaved heads of the new arrivals. In the quivering waves of rising heat, the uncertain shapes of the Hungarian Jews disembarking from the trains had a specter-like quality to them, disappearing into the boiling air before anyone could remember their names, dissolved into ashes just as a new transport was pulling up to a ramp that was never left empty these days to spill a new load of humanity to be slaughtered by Moll’s henchmen.
Edek tried to stay close to Mala at all times, only wielding his stick at the unfortunates who were near when the SS happened to be watching. He cursed a lot at the top of his lungs and swung the club ferociously but not once did he hit anyone.
“Soon,” he would mouth to Mala whenever their eyes met.
“Soon,” she invariably mouthed back.
They had already agreed on the day—only a couple of weeks from now—and spent countless clandestine meetings discussing the details. The best place to hide an SS uniform so that Edek could change into it, unseen—the potato storage bunker, a solitary, unguarded building in Auschwitz; the best place to conceal Mala’s disguise—the toilet of the guardhouse, which provided not only the perfect place to hide fitter’s overalls for Mala to change into, but a place to store a sink that she would use to conceal herself. The accomplices who would aid the couple—Jerzy who would help escort Mala to Edek, and Jurek, who would help Edek with his uniform.
But all that would come later. Now, Mala discreetly asked for the new arrivals’ documents and shoved them under her clothes, committing the names to her memory. Those now-useless papers would be burned in the Kanada at any rate, but if she smuggled them out of the camp, she would have proof of their fates. It was too late for the Hungarians, but at least they could tell the rest of the world what was happening right under their noses and perhaps save a few lives with their action.
When Mala was sent to Moll’s ghastly detail, Edek invented an excuse to accompany her as though he was afraid to even let her out of his sight in the midst of that orgy of death.
Behind the tall screens, concealing the nightmarish sight from the Hungarians’ eyes, lay the ninth circle of hell, with Moll presiding. In twenty deep pits, hundreds and hundreds of bodies were burning simultaneously, their flesh popping and sizzling as the Sonderkommando men prodded them with long iron sticks, their faces grim and running with sweat—or tears; Mala couldn’t quite tell in the waves of rising heat that distorted their features.
Attired in a white summer uniform, an Iron Cross gleaming on his chest—his newest decoration for “excellent service” from his demented Führer, no doubt—Moll was explaining his invention to a small delegation of officers Mala had never seen before.
“To incinerate as many bodies as possible at once, we have invented a special system that uses human fat as fuel.” With a look of a lecturer about him, he pointed his swagger stick at the nearest pit. “Inside, there is a wide strip that runs down the middle from one end to the other. Following my precise directions, the Sonderkommando dug a drain channel that slopes to either side from the center and thus catches the fat that burning bodies produce in two collecting pens that I ordered them to place at either end of the channel. In this manner, it is possible to burn virtually countless numbers of bodies without using any outside source of fuel.” The pride from his diabolical invention was visible on his freckled face. Only his glass eye remained dead, just as soulless as the man to whom it belonged.
The invited officers nodded with knowing looks. “We could organize a similar operation in our camp.”
“Oh, most certainly. I shall give you the precise instructions later.”
Moll noticed Mala, who stood in the waves of infernal heat with her fists tightly clenched, pale and trembling with inhuman hatred for them all.
“Ah, Mally, old girl. You’re still alive? Don’t fret; I’ll save you a warm spot after we’re done with these Hungarian shits.” He motioned his head in the direction of the nearest pit with a terrible smile on his face. “If you ask really nicely, maybe I’ll shoot you first before throwing you in there.”
Mala realized that he too hadn’t forgotten that occasion with Hössler nor his transfer, but her face betrayed nothing. “Obersturmführer Hössler is holding up a new transport on the ramp. All crematoriums are already at full capacity and he was asking if you can take another thousand people. That is, if he should start processing them,” she said, keeping her voice as flat as possible.
“Of course, I can. The more, the merrier, eh?” At the sound of his laughter, both Mala and Edek shivered with dread. “Tell Hössler he doesn’t even have to gas them first; we’ll just throw them here as is.” The gaze of his only good eye stopped on Edek. “And what do you want, Bolshevist pig?”
“I’m Polish.”
“Same shit. Did Hössler send you as well?”
“No. Hans, the Kanada Kapo, was asking if he should send more dentists for the golden crowns or if you have enough?”
“We have enough. Tell him we’ll send all the golden crowns later, together with the ash gold.”
“Ash gold?” Edek scowled uncomprehendingly.
“After we’re done pulverizing these stiffs, we sift through the ashes to see if those sly apes were hiding something in their asses. You’ll be surprised how much we find at the end of the day.”
From the direction of the crematorium, two Sonderkommando inmates were already pushing a cart stacked with freshly gassed corpses.
“Make it snappy, you filthy pigs!” Moll bellowed. “You’re not on a blasted stroll in a park! Shall I help you find your legs?”
Unable to remain in the middle of that raging hell any longer, Edek grasped Mala’s wrist and pulled her away—away from the flames consuming human flesh with truly mortifying speed, away from the SS who observed it with self-satisfaction, away from the fate they would undoubtedly share if they didn’t go through with their plan. Just then did it dawn on him what precisely was at stake.
“I’m not dying in one of those pits,” Mala spoke, her voice thick with ash and, oddly, steely determination.
“No,” Edek agreed, narrowing his eyes at the horizon. “Neither of us will. I’ll see to it. I swear.”
Later, in Mala’s room, Edek handed Kostek Lubusch’s gun. From the shadows, the sightless eyes of the dead watched them closely, mutely asking for vengeance in the deafening stillness. After what they had witnessed that day, after what they had to take part in—unwillingly, but still—there was no turning back, no negotiations with the enemy, no hope for the humanity of the SS beasts. Their only option was to fight; till the last breath, till the last drop of blood, till the last ounce of courage.
“You’re not taking it with you?” Kostek regarded the weapon in his hand in disbelief.
“No one will check an Unterscharführer’s holster to see if he has a gun in it.” Edek gave an absent shrug. “And you’ll need it more than I will.”
Somber, ominous silence filled the room after those last words of his. The Family Camp was the first to die; now, it was the Hungarians. No one had illusions as to whose turn it would be next. The Sonderkommando, so that they wouldn’t spill their secrets to the approaching Soviet army.
Kostek sh
oved the gun into the waistband of his trousers, concealed it under his shirt and clasped Edek’s hand firmly.
“Take at least a few of those SS swine with you,” Edek said, his voice thick with emotion.
Kostek nodded. He swore that he would.
Inside the crematoriums, the Sonderkommando on the night shift were still burning the remaining bodies. Inside the storage depot, the fitters’ Kommando were holding a celebration. It was a grim date—four years exactly since their transport had pulled up to the infamous Auschwitz ramp. In any other circumstances, it would have never occurred to them to celebrate in the midst of that Dante’s inferno. Just outside the doors, the chimneys were belching foul-smelling smoke, and yet, they laid the tables with cloths and organized a whole bucket of schnapps for the occasion.
Four years. For four intolerably long years, the Nazis had tried to slaughter them in different manners—by starving them, beating them, harassing them, exposing them to extreme cold and heat, refusing them medical help and sanitary conditions, but they were still here, still alive and very much breathing, and such an act of ultimate rebellion was worth celebrating.
The Girl Who Escaped from Auschwitz: A totally gripping and absolutely heartbreaking World War 2 page-turner, based on a true story Page 26