Cimmerian: A Novel of the Holocaust (12 page)

And it was hate that made this inhumanity bearable, hate that gnawed at his essence, slowly destroying whatever he had been, leaving this shell in its place.

But in this world he had clung to his belief in Eva, or perhaps more candidly, to his illusion of her. She had been the one hope in his black existence. That, he realized, was why he had found her survival so difficult to accept. When he had believed her dead, even though she had betrayed him, he still had his dream. When he discovered her as a whore the dream had died and nothing remained in its place.

Peter had hoped that alone with him she would break down and confess her shame. Then he would have known it was an act with the others. He would have forgiven her and alone with him she would be herself and he would comfort her.

When that had not happened he had turned on her, he had used then beaten her. All to get a response. Something.

But this was not the one he had sought. Perhaps, from his reaction, it was the one he had feared. “So it was all a lie,” he said quietly.

Eva taunted him with her look. She was wild-eyed. “I am a Jew, what else could it be? Do you think for a moment I could have wanted you? Whenever we touched I thought of the babies you murdered! When I told you how special you were I heard the shrieks and howls from the shower. And when you took me in this room I loathed you and all Germans for the swine you are! You, all of you, will pay for what you have done here! God will not allow this to pass without vengeance! You, your Fuhrer, all of you are scum, not fit to be called human!”

Peter struck her, then beat her senseless. He kicked her repeatedly as he had so many in the KZ, in the Himmel Weg or at the Judenrampe. He went downstairs and told Zelda Eva had insulted the Fuhrer. He drank Schnapps as the guards dragged her away.

CHAPTER NINE

In
Peter’s nightmares that night the sun rose but it was a black orb that hung in a flat, ebony sky. The KZ was shrouded in shadows, the buildings dark shapes he could scarcely perceive. They went about their duties in hulking greatcoats, their faces shrunken beneath in their helmets like skulls. The prisoners shuffled in the blackness and the acrid, sweet smoke from the burning corpses filled his nostrils. He was emptied inside, hollow and devoid of all emotion.

When he awoke shortly before dawn the KZ was frighteningly like his nightmare and he had trouble differentiating between this reality and the valley of his nightmares. The sun rose reassuringly but did not pierce the gathered mist and smoke until midmorning. The familiar rumble of the Russian guns was steady and ominously close.

Sending Eva to the shower had lanced Peter of any emotion and strangely quelled his fear. As fiercely as his hate had burned, just as completely was it gone. There was no longer any hope, but he did not despair at that. He thought perhaps this was what it was like to fear an incurable disease then to learn, at last, it was true.

Before lunch Wolff ordered him to report to Administration. SS-Haupsturmfuhrer Heidel, looking wasted and haggard, informed him he had a visitor. It was Uncle Hans. Peter smiled for the first time in months as he saluted him.

“Peter, my boy. Look at you.” Hans was no longer the bon vivant. He had lost weight. His uniform was dusty and that of the Waffen SS. He led Peter out and went to the officers' mess. They took a table in the empty room and drank ersatz coffee. Except for the inmate cooks no one else was there. “There isn't much time, Peter. I’m on my way to the Front.”

“The Front?”

“Yes. I diverted to see you, but I have only a little time. Have you heard from your family recently?”

Peter shook his head. “There has been no mail in two weeks.”

“Your Haupsturmfuhrer Heidel tells me there have been a number of recent desertions. I am pleased to see you at your post. Those who deserted before now have been fools.”

“They told us all of them were caught and hung.”

“I would say that is true. But the situation is deteriorating by the hour. Look for your chance.”

“Uncle?”

“I said for you to use your head. It is a different game now.”

Peter thought about that for several long moments. He was exhausted, and in the warmth of the mess struggled to remain awake.

“What have they done to you?” Hans asked softly. “Look at you. Nineteen years old and looking fifty. I cannot tell you the times I have wished I could have done better for you. As the war has dragged on longer than I ever imagined, as that madman in Berlin has brought all Germany down around him, I have imagined what this place was doing to you. And now I see I have been right. No man who is worth anything can do this duty. You especially have no place here. Your father was right. I should have seen it. You are too gentle for this dungeon.”

“It no longer matters.”

“But it does!” Hans said fiercely. “It must! You and your mother are all that mean anything to me now. You are all the family I have and you
must
survive this. No matter how often they spout it, the Nazis are not pulling night down on Germany. We have lost other wars. They’re being destroyed, that is true, but despite all the death and bombings there will still be a Germany. In only a few weeks, perhaps in days, this will all come to an end. It will be spring. Children will laugh. The young will fall in love. The old will die quietly in bed. This nightmare will end and bright days will follow. You will have a life after this. That is the reason why you have endured this place. Remember this: You only did your duty. Others decided. You just followed orders.”

He refilled their cups.

“Why are you going to the Front?”

Hans laughed bitterly. “It is better this way. I am joining a Waffen SS unit not far from here. They will make a stand. I will stand with them -- and die.”

“No, uncle!”

“There will be trials when this is done. I was in on it from the beginning. I helped plan these camps. The shower. That fiction was my contribution to this abortion. One of the Lagerfuhrers mentioned it to me in jest during an inspection. I wrote it up and promoted the idea. There are orders that bear my signature, plans that originated in my office. If I am captured by the Russians I will be shot on the spot. The others will put me on trial and stretch my neck. This way I die a German soldier in defense of the Fatherland, one of millions to do so. Perhaps it is a discredit to those who served honorably, but at this late date it is the best I can manage.”

“I don't understand.”

“There's no time to explain it all. What we believed in was betrayed, but there is no way back for me now. Once the war was lost I was doomed. That is just one reason why you must live. Your mother is the other. She needs you, now more than ever.” Peter shook his head slowly as if to say it was no use. “Listen to me. Get a grip on yourself. I know what you have been through. It is hell. I see all the signs on you. You are wasting away, and if this continued would go mad or kill yourself soon enough. But this will not go on. It is, at long last, over. The Russians will be here in a day or two. This,” Hans gestured with his hand, “is all finished. It has been a long night but the dawn is coming.”

“It is too late.”

“It is never too late when you are nineteen! A few weeks rest and you will be good as new. You must survive, you must! Or what was all this for? What purpose has it served? You and your mother are the only two people left who will think well of me, who knew me as I really was. It is all I have. Your mother needs you, Peter, as never before. You are all she has left.”

The message in Hans's voice had been there all along but Peter had been too exhausted and distracted to hear it. “My father?”

“He is dead, Peter. I am sorry to tell you. I saw your mother a few days ago before Hanover fell to the British. She is safe.”

“How?”

“Like all the Volksstrum he stood at his post waiting for a chance to surrender. In his case his rifle was empty. He was killed in a barrage by the bridge he guarded. I’m so terribly sorry.”

Peter was stunned. He reached inside but found his grief buried too deeply to feel.

“So you see, you must live. Your mother has no one now. If you will not live for yourself or for me, then do it for her. Don't leave her to face the aftermath alone. You are her only child. I am her only brother. You are all she will have left. You must see that?”

Peter nodded. They sat quietly for a few minutes.

“You must desert, Peter. You see that too, don’t you? If the Russians find you here they will kill you. The SS patrols have broken down in this Sector. Even they are deserting now. It was too early before.”

“That is what Max said.”

“Who is this Max?”

Peter told him.

Hans nodded his head with approval. “He sounds like a survivor. I would listen to him. If he has a good-sounding scheme go with him. If not, dress in civilian clothing and join the refugees fleeing west. Don’t stop until you reach the Americans or English. In your condition you will look the part. I almost forgot. Cut off your tattoo or burn it. Do that as soon as you can so the healing will start. Are you listening to me?” Peter nodded. Hans glanced at his watch. “I am out of time.”

Peter went with him to his car parked on the Lagerstrasse near the arch. The smoke was thick as they tried to burn all the dead from the KZ inmate killing. “This is a terrible place. Smell that. My God! Ugly and awful. I should have done better for you.” He took him in his arms. “Do as I say, Peter,” he whispered. “For my sake. For your mother's sake if not your own.”

After Peter watched the car disappear down the dirt road he was told to report to the line. Blocks D and F had been taken to the shower but refused to enter.

There had now been no trains for two days. The Kommandant had given orders to continue exterminating the KZ until another trainload arrived. Delousing the KZ he called it. It was part of the ongoing effort to kill the witnesses. But it was too little, far too late. They had killed many of the old-timers in this last month, and Peter had changed the SonderKommando once since he had begun supervising it, but the officers had resisted wholesale clearing of the inmate Blocks.

Their intent would have been too obvious. Jews were cowards and these scum in the KZ were the most cowardly of all, but they clung to this miserable life because if they had no hope of living, they had the hope of living through this day. And that was how so many lasted so long.

If they started in systematically on the Blocks, they made it clear that no one would live even through this day. And when they take that pathetic, futile hope away even cowards will rise. There had been rumors of inmate revolts in other KZs. The more the guards feared it, the more ruthless they had become.

When Peter arrived to help force the two hundred-odd scarecrows from Blocks D and F into the shower he saw a gruesome sight. Bodies were stretched in regular intervals from those Blocks to the shower. A thin line of guards pressed the mass towards the doorway. There were Alsatians everywhere. He had never seen so many. As he took his place most of them were busy tearing into someone. Pistol shots rang out regularity.

They could have just opened fire but some would have bolted and spread terror. Also, if word spread they were just gunning Blocks down en masse, panic would lead to revolt. The idea was to get the prisoners into order, into the habit of obedience, until, sixty at a time, they obediently died. They had slaughtered entire ghettos, whole races this way, and could not believe it would fail them now.

Two loads entered the shower and were emptied. Peter’s shift there would start soon. The prisoners were more easily handled now. Order had been restored.

But it did not matter that they had proven they could exterminate the KZ Block by Block. At this rate it would take a week or more to do the job. A week too much time. Herr Kommandant Hoffmann had waited too long.

And what difference would it make? The KZ, devoid of all life, was mute testament to their sacrilege. The fires, no matter how brightly they burned, never consumed all the bones. Behind the KZ, as an expedient, lay a vast mountain of scarcely concealed bones and skulls. It would have taken a year to grind them into dust.

And what of the records the Kommandant maintained and sent to Berlin with such relish? What of the records that had won him favor, the promise of promotion? He could destroy those they kept at the KZ but not those in Berlin. There in the SS vaults, immune to bombs, were his precise figures of dead, of gold taken from fillings, kilos of hair, vast numbers of slaughtered, each report bearing his precise and conspicuous signature.

This murder of prisoners was senseless, as pointless as all the killing they had done and so, to the guards, equally justified.

Wolff sent guards to gather another Block as a few of them guarded this final group. They were a tragic lot. Only days from freedom, they knew now, being herded to their death. Several of the guards taunted them with it. “Hear the guns, swine? Too late, too late for the likes of you!” Derisive laughter.

Wolff sent Peter to the shower door. He was his best man, he had told him more than once. There was a bottleneck to clear. The idiots had allowed the prisoners to cram too tightly outside against the door. This was a technique the material stumbled on to keep the door from being opened. Once they huddled against it like frightened sheep they had to be pulled away one at a time. No amount of beating, no threats, not even the dogs could get them away from each other. They felt they had safety in numbers.

The manner for clearing the door was to have one man pull one naked inmate while two guards beside him beat the arms of his companions back. Once he was pried free others forced him back to the queue and the guards turned on the next. When this had happened to him, Peter had always ordered those responsible for the door into the shower with the next batch. Their replacements were more cautious.

Peter took charge of the trustees and soon had things in order. One of the naked women pulled free was Eva. He had thought she must be dead by now but was mistaken. How she had survived the eighteen hours since he had given her up to Zelda as a traitor of the Reich, he could not imagine. But she had.

Wolff was shouting orders. The queue had not moved. The kapos and trustees pulled the door open and began dragging people in. There was a lot of screaming now.

“All of you!” Peter shouted. “Get to it!” He grabbed an old man, the KZ barber who had cut his hair once. Well, his bad luck to be in his Block when the order came down. He tossed him through the doorway to the kapo who was supervising a tight pack.

Next he seized a woman with flaccid breasts and deep, hollow cheeks. She no longer cared and went numbly. He pulled Eva from the line. She recognized him but said nothing. Her nostrils flared as if she was angry or very frightened. He wanted to ask her what it felt like to at last face death after escaping it so miraculously before. It did not matter. Nothing mattered any longer.

Peter shoved her in. She fought to stay out. He pushed and she grabbed his forearm. He struck her with his fist on her chest. She lunged back but by instinct clung to his arm. A trustee took her around the waist and pulled. Still she hung on him. He struck her in the face, smashing her nose. He hit her again as hard as he could and felt teeth give way. A third time in the face and the trustee had her. They finished loading in a few minutes.

The door was clear this time and there were a few minutes respite. He thought about Eva, but quickly pushed it from him. His eyes were burning. From the smoke he told himself. The shrieking started inside as the gas hit and soon rose to a crescendo. Eva. There was pounding on the door. Nearby a dog took an old man for no reason except his handler had carelessly allowed him too close.

The kapos and guards laughed as the dog tore him apart. Hell would have dogs, Peter thought. Wasn’t hell guarded by dogs? He had read that somewhere.