Asher clenched his aching hands and was about to agree, but before he got a word out the room started filling up. Women and girls entered, the men and boys waiting outside. Clearly, these people represented the next batch of Jews, like livestock being delivered to a farm.
Perhaps now Asher would find out what had happened to the rest of his family.
Another guard started talking to the new arrivals. “All of you, be quiet and listen. You are going to have a shower to rid you of any lice, but first, while the boys and men wait outside, the women and girls must have their hair removed just in case the lice have laid eggs. It’s nothing more than that.”
Before Asher had time to consider what was going on, a girl had been placed in front of him. She started crying. Asher placed an arm around her and squeezed her shoulder gently. He told her it would be all right, that he would be gentle and not hurt her, and that getting rid of the lice would be for the best. His own hastily arranged words echoed in his head as he then whispered into her ear, asking her to keep still.
He started cutting.
Chapter 21
Treblinka, Poland, 1943
Cutting hair didn’t seem such hard work compared with chopping wood, but after a few hours Asher’s back ached so much it brought tears to his eyes, and his fingers had an arthritic quality to them, the joints stiff and swollen.
But together the men had worked their way through the entire crowd, and by the end the scene before them looked like a nightmare. This was a room full of hundreds of women and girls with hair so closely cropped they were as good as bald. Asher had never seen a bald woman before, and judging by the looks of fear and disgust on their faces, the women were also unaccustomed to the feeling.
The Totenjuden were then ordered back to their barracks. More orders were given as Asher walked toward the exit, this time to the girls and women.
“Clothes off!” was the command. “Now!”
Some of the older women questioned this.
“Do as you’re told,” the guard replied, giving her an assured look. “Your clothes will be disinfected and returned to you after your delousing shower.”
One woman was brave enough to continue arguing. A guard stepped up to her.
But by then Asher was outside the building, and his mind was adjusting to a new scene of distaste. Indeed, every Totenjude stopped for a second, startled to be confronted by the boys and men, all naked, all shivering and huddled together, their clothes in a pile against the wall.
Asher glanced back to see the shaven-headed women and girls undressing too, many cowering from yet more embarrassment.
As Asher was marched away, his thoughts turned again to the rest of his family. Was this what had happened to them? And to Rina only the day before? All of them would have been uncomfortable, to say the least, undressing in front of strangers. An image of his mama, cold and naked, nothing more than rough stubble covering her head, flashed into his mind. He stopped walking at the thought, only starting again when the men behind shoved him in the back and forced him onward.
In the cabin, Asher collapsed onto his bed. Physical relaxation was easy; the thought that he was in the bowels of some hell on earth prevented his mind relaxing. Nevertheless, he closed his eyes and tried to make the pulsing sensation in his fingers go away. It didn’t take long for the exhaustion to conquer his unpleasant thoughts, and he slept.
He was woken by a distant throbbing sound—deep and regular, like nothing he had ever heard before. Well, actually, no. It was like the engine of a truck or a tractor, only louder and deeper in tone. But Asher had been woken from a dream—a dream of being on the tractor in Dyovsta once again, driving up and down the fields with his papa and his best friend, Mykhail. Perhaps that was why the noise reminded him of an engine.
As he was rousing himself, a group of guards entered, yelling orders. Asher’s back ached, and he took a little longer than the others to get up. They were marched back to the same building as the day before, and told to gather up all the clothing and shoes and take them to another one.
There, Asher took a few seconds to look around. The edges of the room were piled to head height with clothes. There were pants, jackets, shirts, and dresses—clothes of all sizes. Underwear and footwear too. It was effectively a warehouse or a huge clothing store, with some clothes neatly stacked and some in messy heaps, yet to be sorted. If the clothing they’d moved today belonged to hundreds, there must have been the clothes of many thousands in here already.
A few more trips back and forth were undertaken to move all the clothing, and Asher didn’t want to believe what he was thinking.
Perhaps it was better to just do as he was told, and not to think.
But Asher couldn’t shake off that unpleasant feeling—the one he didn’t want to give in to. Were these people really going to get their clothes back? Surely if they’d all been shot, he would have heard gunshots. But there was nothing—nothing except that maddening throbbing sound.
He felt weak, and had to sit down on one of the smaller piles of clothing.
His darkest thoughts had caught up with his conscious mind and a revelation was occurring, an admission of what he should really have known all along. The thousands of people who had been through the camp—no, hundreds of thousands—were nowhere to be seen or heard.
Now Asher knew. Not the details, not exactly how, but he knew.
As he leaned to his right his hand fell upon something soft. He picked it up.
It was a baby bonnet, knitted from blue wool, with yellow flowers sewn into the edges. He looked down and saw a matching blanket, not much bigger than a handkerchief. It had a Star of David sewn into it.
A guard was shouting, but Asher ignored him and threw the baby bonnet back down as though it were possessed. He suddenly felt very ill and eased himself forward, resting on his knees.
Within a few seconds, a pair of shiny black boots appeared in front of him. He didn’t look up.
“I told you to leave,” the guard said. “Now.”
Asher’s legs wouldn’t move. He continued to stare at the ground. The guard spoke again, this time in Ukrainian. At this, Asher looked up.
“So now you understand?” the man said.
“You’re Ukrainian? So am I. From—”
“Shut up. I don’t care. You get up or you get killed. Three seconds.”
“You would kill a fellow—?”
“Three!”
The muzzle of a rifle appeared, an inch from Asher’s forehead.
“Two!”
By its smell, it had been used recently. Asher stood.
Asher saw it coming, but could do nothing to avoid it. A thump to the head and his world turned upside down. For a second he felt still and settled, his head resting on the ground. Then the blows started on his back. He screamed and curled up into a ball, but the blows continued. One caught his shoulder blade and he felt his skin split. He glanced up, only to meet the butt of the rifle swinging toward him, hitting him full in the face. It was like a hit of ammonia, waking him up all over again, an electric shock to his brain.
“Do as you’re told next time!”
Asher coughed and spat out blood.
“You have one second to stand!”
Somehow Asher stood. It probably took more than a second. Perhaps the guard was feeling generous.
There was no respite, not even a moment to wipe the blood from his face or check the wound on the side of his head. He had to follow the others out of the building.
Now that rhythmic throbbing noise was louder—so loud he could feel the thumping vibration making its way through his feet and up into his head.
And just when he thought he could take no more, the noise stopped.
He strained to listen—to be sure he could no longer hear it. But there was no time for that. They were taken along another path, enclosed in yet more of that barbed wire. Along the way he heard one of the guards say something in German. The other guards laughed.
“What did he say?” Asher
heard one Totenjude whisper to another.
“They call this the Himmelstrasse,” was the reply.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s German for ‘the way to heaven.’ It’s a joke.”
Asher stumbled at the thought, but recovered.
At the end of the path they came to a large building—half buried, so it seemed. It had a familiar look to it, just like some of the other buildings. It had three sets of large doors, outside which other Totenjuden were waiting. There was an unpleasant atmosphere—one of silent acceptance. Asher thought of all those people who had stripped naked. He started feeling queasy again.
The men were led to one of the sets of doors, outside of which were piles of excrement. Asher glanced across and saw the same mess outside each door. Normally the stench would have been unbearable, but it could hardly have made this place smell worse.
A guard gave one of the Totenjuden a broom, and he swept the mess away from the door. Asher turned to another and showed him a puzzled frown.
“It’s the women,” the man muttered. “They process the men first, and leave the women and children waiting outside, so they know what’s going to happen to them.”
“Process?” Asher said. “What do you mean by ‘process’?”
Before the man could answer, the doors were opened and clouds of sooty smoke flew out. What Asher saw answered his question.
He blacked out for a second, and staggered as he tried to remain on his feet. It took a few moments for him to regain his composure, to force himself to believe what was in front of his eyes—what was spilling out of the room—and to accept it, for the sake of his life.
Some of his fellow workers—slaves, to be correct—turned and retched. Others looked away for a few seconds, composing themselves, then started work.
The room was a sea of dead, naked bodies—so many they were spilling out of the doorway. Some of the corpses had their hands over their mouths; others were frozen as they might have been when they had gasped their final, deadly breaths. Some had even tried to climb above the others to reach fresher air. All had faces stricken with pain and desperation.
And Asher recognized the oily, sooty smell that hung around the room. He knew it well from his days working with tractors back in Ukraine.
He knew what had killed these people: the exhaust fumes from an engine.
A guard stood next to him, rifle in hand. The guard said something and pointed into the room of corpses. Asher nodded to him and held a hand up; he couldn’t speak. The guard must have sensed Asher’s shock. After all, it couldn’t have been uncommon. He turned away and told someone else what to do.
Slowly, and grimacing with disgust, Asher joined in with the rest. They were each given a leather strap and shown how to attach the belt around the ankles of a body and drag it out of the building.
At one point, Asher turned to walk away, unable to even look at what he was doing.
A guard forced him back. “Do it,” he said, quietly but firmly. “You’ll get used to the sight, I guarantee it.”
Asher didn’t want to get used to it, but his mind was too much of a cauldron of disgust and fear to do anything but obey. He gulped, and slowly reached down for the legs of one woman, her eyes still open.
“Stop a moment,” a man said. He bent down to the woman’s head. A pair of pliers hung on a hook from his little finger, and he used both hands to open the woman’s mouth and peer inside. “You can take this one,” he said. “No gold here.”
Asher tried to compose himself. But it was useless. Had his mama and papa had their mouths searched in this same fashion earlier? His sisters too? Had their lifeless, naked forms been dragged along, bound by leather straps, like carcasses in an abattoir? The woman at Asher’s feet was someone’s wife, someone’s mama.
He tried to dismiss the thought, but it wouldn’t let go of his mind. And he couldn’t carry on.
A few words from a guard made no difference.
The barrel of a rifle brought him to his senses.
Yes, it was likely that this woman had once been proud of her looks, been keen to bring her children up well, and had worked hard to keep her house clean.
Those times had passed. He told himself over and over again that this was now merely a corpse. The woman was gone.
He tied one end of the leather strap around the body’s ankles and tugged, leaning back. After dragging it a couple of yards he stopped, leaned down to shut its eyes, and then continued dragging it backward, digging his heels into the earth. The corpse had very little weight to it, but Asher had very little strength.
He dragged the body around the side of the building, just following the rest of them. And there were many, because there were other doors to the same building, each with their own set of Totenjuden, each with their own sets of families and forgotten lives.
All that consideration of lives snuffed out was dismissed in an instant when Asher rounded the corner, because what he saw there made him fall to his knees.
There were two structures of some sort, one to his left and one to his right. They were long runs of metal bars, like wide railroad tracks, except there were about a dozen bars rather than two, a hundred or so feet long and held up off the earth by metal supports. Each set of bars had burning wood underneath and a mass of bodies on top.
Yes. Bodies. Human cadavers being roasted like cheap meat.
The smell—the same smell the men had experienced before but magnified a hundredfold—made a few of them collapse and retch. But at that moment, disgust and shame were vying for Asher’s feelings.
Bodies. Thousands upon thousands of them.
For a second, Asher’s thoughts were disturbed by cracking sounds. The sound of bones cooking or merely chunks of wood splitting in the heat? Did it matter?
He’d been so foolish, denying his instincts, relying on convenient excuses. Of course he’d heard no gunshots; perhaps the Nazi authorities considered that a waste of bullets.
The bodies must have been stacked five or ten deep on the pyres to his right; it was hard to tell among the tangled knots of limbs and torsos, all in various stages of incineration.
And how long had this been going on? Perhaps hundreds of thousands of them had been through this “process.”
The other pyre, to his left, wasn’t stacked so high, and held a mixture of assorted limbs, carbonized flesh, and ash.
One of the guards beckoned the Totenjuden toward the emptier pyre. But they didn’t move. One of them let go of his belt and started running—running and screaming at the top of his voice. Two guards chased. Two shots rang out.
The orders to approach the pyre were repeated.
The men looked at each other, then to the ground.
What else could Asher do?
The men dragged their corpses toward the pyre, Asher included.
After a few paces the guard then told them to halt, to stay exactly where they were. And the rumble of an engine gave precious relief, drowning out the noise of the cracking bones and bursting skin.
A huge vehicle appeared beyond the pyres. It was something Asher had never seen before: an earth-moving device like a tractor but much bigger. And it wasn’t moving earth; its cargo was bodies—more bodies, which it proceeded to drop onto the pyre in front of them.
“Okay,” the guard said once the earth-mover had left. “Onto here with the rest.”
The men didn’t move. The guard looked at them, then back at the pyre. Then he sat down and held his belly. He turned and beckoned over two more guards who were stationed by the security fence. As they approached, he vomited on the ground between his boots. Words were exchanged, and he walked off uneasily.
“What did they say?” one of the Totenjuden asked.
“He’s had enough,” another said. “Even some of the guards can’t take it.”
They carried on, all playing their parts, collecting more bodies and dragging them to the pyres, or collecting the odd body—or body part—that had fallen off it.
Asher now knew why they’d been chopping such large quantities of wood.
After all the dead bodies had been slung onto the burning racks, they were ordered back to the cabin. There were few words, none of them from Asher’s lips; his head was spinning with images of hell on earth, and his fellow workers were clearly feeling the same. They were offered potato soup with raw rice, but few had the inclination to eat.
Asher curled up on his bunk and closed his eyes, but struggled to sleep, his mind a mess of images of limbs and lifeless faces—hundreds of bodies disposed of like offal.
Now he knew what had happened to Rina, and probably the rest of his family too. Yes, he had begun to accept the unacceptable.
His mind turned to the good old days of his papa strolling around the farm back in Dyovsta, joking about the tractor—saying how it was such a new-fangled thing and would never replace horses. He thought of his papa in Warsaw, weary from loading bricks, his face noticeably aged from the never-ending physical work.
That was when Asher sat up in the bunk, startled.
“Bricks,” he whispered. He wiped the cold sweat of fear from his face and repeated the word.
Now he knew why the buildings in this wretched place looked familiar. It wasn’t so much the buildings, more the bricks they were constructed from. Asher’s own hands had held these bricks, fresh from the kiln, still warm. Still warm, like the bodies he’d just dragged to their unholy cremation. Yes. The bricks had been made in Warsaw and loaded onto the trucks by him and his papa.
Was there no cruelty too far?
This place—this place that God had clearly turned a blind eye to—was the “important construction project to the east” that had urgently needed all those bricks.
Asher tried to sleep, part of him hoping never to wake up.
But Asher did wake up, disturbed by a persistent creaking noise, and in the half-light he saw something moving back and forth in time with the sound. No, it was swinging left and right. It was swinging on the end of a leather belt hung from a high wooden beam. Clearly it wasn’t only German soldiers who’d had enough.
The body went on the pyre with the rest.
Beyond the Shadow of Night Page 20