Cimmerian: A Novel of the Holocaust (4 page)

It was quite cold but Peter wore his new issue greatcoat and was not uncomfortable. He reminded himself to wear another pair of socks for night duty the next time.

There were two routines daily that required the presence of every guard and officer. These were the counts. Herr Kommandant Hoffmann was a fanatic on the subject. The morning count must agree with the evening count from the previous day, and that day's evening count must agree with the morning's.

The count was of bodies, not of people. So at each count the Block prisoners stood in rows together with the dead for that day or the passing night laid neatly in front. Once the dead were duly recorded their names were struck from the rolls and the replacement added. The Blockaltester, Block Senior, declared those who were einsatzfahige, fit for work. Those he did not declare were hung on the spot.

The count alone took over an hour if everything had gone well, and it never did. Each Blockaltester counted his own Block. The SS guard assigned that Block recounted. The sums were totaled and names checked. Not all of the men, both inmate and guard, were the most intelligent, and the count took place in the midst of constant beatings and shouting. The numbers never matched initially. There were recounts upon recounts. Often the guards stood with the prisoners well into the night, guards shouting, the officers tramping back and forth, the Alsatians, always the snarling, vicious dogs, lists being compared, the exhausted prisoners, men and women, swaying on their feet in their wooden clogs knowing that certain death faced them if they fell. Even those who did remain upright but did not stand to proper attention or answered slowly -- or God forbid -- failed to answer at all were beaten to death on the spot. Always at each count a dozen prisoners were killed like this.

And when the count was done, those deemed the most troublesome were hanged. Only when the numbers matched and that last corpse hung limp, only then did the prisoners eat their main meal for the day, cold by now, consisting of a bit of bread baked with near equal parts sawdust and grain and a thin cabbage soup. Breakfast was a cold tea, lunch a cup of water said to be soup.

For dinner each Block received but a single kettle of soup. The Blockaltester with his arbeitschliensts of Russian POWs, who were brutal thugs with no love of Jews, distributed the food, one ladle per inmate, a scrap of bread. If the inmate was not favored the soup was dipped from the watery portion of the kettle. Those in favor drew more substance. Every feeding at every Block occurred in the midst of shouting from the unfortunate raging pathetically for a fair share. If the shouting got out of hand the arbeitscliensts fell on the closest at hand.

The last to eat was the Blockaltester and his minions. By shorting the prisoners he saw to it his own ate as well as possible. And his most favored was permitted the privilege of licking the kettle clean.

Some of the confusion over the count was genuine. Often it was just so much SS harassment. Prisoners were not permitted time to think or plan. That only led to trouble.

That first morning Peter felt as exhausted as the prisoners looked. He had had no sleep for two days. The count lasted over an hour. Morning counts though were faster than evening since there was work to be done.

That morning he counted thirty-two bodies of those who had died during the night, mostly mussulmans, human scarecrows who had surrendered at last to death. When an inmate succumbed to exhaustion the living denied them food, which they kept for themselves.

As the winter progressed the bodies in the morning grew. The prisoners in their striped pajama uniforms, denied enough blankets, with no heat, died in droves from malnutrition, typhus, dysentery, a loss of hope. Some mornings Peter counted over a hundred bodies before the hangings began. But it did not matter. New workers replaced the dead with each train. The new workers were stronger and able to work harder.

After witnessing his first count Peter had breakfast but nearly nodded off over his bowl. Karl skipped the meal and looked ghastly. Peter had seen him retching outside earlier. He had four hours to sleep before his next duty. He was nearly stripped and ready for bed when he spotted Karl at the window.

“Get some sleep, Karl. You will feel better.” Peter’s apprehension was just as great after his first day, but he wanted to help if he could. They were in this together.

Karl did not say anything. He stared at the KZ through the fences perhaps ten meters from them.

“You will get used to it,” Peter said. “You will see.”

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Over the next few days Peter quickly settled into a routine. At night he kept the drunken Kraas company and watched the KZ from the tower. He slept a few hours after the morning count since he quickly learned there was never enough sleep. He spent the afternoon walking the KZ with a guard named Max, an SS-Rottenführer, which he claimed was the highest rank to which any soldier should ever aspire.

Max was from Nuremberg, he said, and was not that bad a sort. He was thick-necked with the look of a thug but unlike most of the others he was just doing his job, not taking pleasure in his work. He had served the Kaiser during the Great War, and often said the KZ was no worse than the trenches.

That said a great deal to Peter, who had learned of the trenches from his father. The inside of the KZ, though orderly and neat, had an awful stench. The prisoners were never allowed enough time to bathe and many did not bother. Water to the camp was irregular. Most prisoners, besides being dirty, were in a constant state of thirst even in winter.

An awful odor came from the Blocks. The honey buckets were inadequate, especially with the rampant dysentery, and overflowed nightly. Prisoners were permitted only a moment twice each day, in the morning and just before curfew, to excrete. A trustee manned the inmate latrines and continuously beat anyone who went to them since he was responsible for keeping them clean. Frequently prisoners soiled their clothing during the day. Often the guards, for no other reason than maliciousness, refused to let the prisoners empty the honey buckets, adding to the stench that reeked from the Block doorways. “Let them rot in their own shit,” was the common expression.

The ScheissKommando emptied the honey buckets and the overflowing inmate latrines which, despite the trustee, were still used. It was composed of women who, for no reason Peter could ever determine, were struck by any guard and kapo who crossed their path as they pulled the heavy metal cart through the KZ. The women, though young, were permanently hunched over from the pulling, and the vicious beatings they received daily.

And of course there were the burning bodies. The smell from the fires was both acrid and nauseatingly sweet. In the frequent calm days the ashes from the bodies drifted over the KZ and settled into everything. Mixed with it was the smell of the vented gas. Peter never became accustomed to the odors.

Later that first week Max took him to the goldsmith's hut. This sat by itself, though nothing was far from anything inside the fences. The interior of the hut surprised Peter. It was warm and clean. Two dental technicians and six goldsmiths, a total of six men and two women, were washed and did not stink. Because of the value of their service they were permitted better rations, warmer clothes, weekly baths and a wood stove.

Buckets of freshly pulled teeth were delivered from the bodies that were prepared for burning. The hut smelled of the hydrochloric acid in which the teeth were soaked to separate the metal. The gold was melted down and prepared into ingots for shipment.

Much of the operation of the hut was clandestine and many of the guards profited from it. It was important to the SS. Hence its place of privilege.

At the door Peter stamped his feet to clear the mud. Max was joking with a clever Jew, an old man, across the room who ran the place. Max had made it clear this conversation was not for him.

The others worked diligently at their benches except the youngest. She was a girl of sixteen or so, with black hair, longer than most prisoners were permitted, and soft brown eyes. She was very slender in her oversized camp garb.

It was her liquid eyes that drew Peter to her. And she was staring at him. Prisoners never met their eyes and dared never stare. He had seen them killed for much less. She was very beautiful and he thought she must be valuable to be here and not in a brothel.

Someone hissed a warning and she turned to her bench. Later, Max told him her name was Eva.

CHAPTER THREE

SS-Obersturmfuhrer Wolff
was the officer feared by every guard. Short for an SS officer, with coarse brown hair and pale blue eyes, he roamed the KZ day and night. One never knew when he would appear. He took great delight in suddenly appearing where he wasn’t expected. He carried a riding crop and Mauser pistol. When he found an infraction, he shot the violator on the spot except on those occasions when he desired some sport, as it was called. He was a cunning sadist.

Wolff was a fanatic and that counted for more than a few centimeters in height. When he was not sneaking he stood near the corner of a building, his pale eyes taking in every detail before him, especially the conduct of the guards. He watched them all with equal intensity so Peter soon got over his watching him.

It was said Wolff was graduated from the university and had joined the SS straight out. He was a favorite of the Kommandant, though he had not as yet risen in rank, and Peter believed him to be an ambitious man.

Peter's uncle had been correct about the camp in many respects. It was prisoners who did the work. They labored in the quarry, dragged the bodies, ran the crematorium and bagged the ashes after sifting them carefully for concealed gems and gold. It was kapos and their vorarbetters who handled most of the discipline. A large number of these wore green triangle patches indicating they were professional German criminals -- rapists, murderers -- taken from prisons. They were allowed fitted inmate garb and high boots, and carried wooden clubs.

Others were from the defeated Polish army of 1939 and still wore the tattered remnants of their uniforms. They hated Jews, whom they blamed for the disastrous war and their plight, even more than the SS. Kapos mimicked the SS and Peter quickly realized the prisoners feared them more than they did the German guards.

Many of the kapos were Jews as well, Jewish guards with clubs. The SS gave them life and death power over their own. It was a perverse joke as well as a means to discipline. The kapos lived in a special barracks inside the KZ, ate well, and had use of any inmate, female or male, they desired. Each Kommando was led by a kapo who was responsible for its daily work. Other kapos had special duties. There were roaming kapos whose primary duty was order and supervision inside the KZ, and one, the Lageralteste, a German, was camp warden, the inmate equivalent of Kommandant.

A special unit, the SonderKommando, was composed entirely of Jews. These men supervised the showers, went in after the gassing, dragged the bodies out, searched for valuables then extracted the gold-filled teeth. The HimmelKommando hauled the bodies to the fires and saw to the cremation.

Each SonderKommando lasted just three to four months. One day when they were inside the showers the doors were shut on them and they were gassed. The new SonderKommando's first job was to clear their bodies.

Every inmate Block was headed by the Blockaltester who turned everyone out for work and made most individual work assignments. These assignments meant the difference between a quick death on some Kommandos or slow starvation with a chance for a longer life on others. He turned in rule violators, who were gassed, shot, hung or beaten to death at once.

Kapos and Blockaltesters were the inmates the SS guards dealt with directly. The rest were a faceless, filthy, cowardly mass.

There was, Peter decided, some truth to Jews being the father of all lies and a subhuman race. How else to account for the way they behaved in camp? The prisoners preyed on each other in a most disgusting and perverted way. They stole from one another, "organizing" they called it. The trustees of all kinds did not hesitate to beat, torture and kill, often for absolutely no reason except that the SS permitted it.

The conditions were terrible, it was true, but Peter could see no reason for the manner in which prisoners turned on each other as they did. The kapos sucking up to the guards were a disgusting sight. They were nearly all Jews, though from different countries, and all in the same boat, it seemed to him. With no effort, the SS had a large and reliable network of spies and turncoats. It seemed everyone wanted to deal with them. All prisoners were liars as well as thieves. Those were the facts that Max made clear to Peter his first days, and time proved him correct. To hear an inmate tell it, he was either not a Jew at all, or at worst, a mischling, a second-degree Jew. Everyone had been falsely imprisoned. It was just as well, Peter thought, the guards spoke so rarely to the prisoners.

But Peter's uncle had omitted crucial details. He supposed his uncle could find no way to talk about the corruption, since surely he knew of it. Peter had to learn it on his own, not that it was difficult.

There was greed and corruption everywhere. The clerking was done by trustees. If one labored on the Steinbruch Kommando and was headed for a quick death, if he had the price, the assignment was switched. Or the Blockaltester, if one knew his day for the shower was coming, might assign his name to one of the morning dead -- for a price. There was constant bartering for favorable jobs and more food.

Though prisoners could have no belongings, the SS guards still found jewelry, gems and currency regularly. It was smuggled in by the guards or stolen from the arrivals' belongings and bartered throughout the inmate population. Valuables bought the extra food needed to survive, extra blankets, whatever was needed. When Max and Peter found a valuable, Max beat the inmate senseless, then pocketed the item with a knowing wink to Peter.

Usually all an inmate had to sell was his or her body. Most prisoners inside more than a few weeks who did not have a position of favor and the food to go with it lost all interest in sex. But the new arrivals who were not gassed and those with positions of power still wanted women or boys. Like sleep, sex was the only escape from the camp. Homosexual favors were bartered for; the women readily gave themselves. Though there were prettier women in the brothel, some of the SS guards preferred the female prisoners. A few were maintained as harlots for a specific guard and not required to work. They languished in the Block available for the few moments each day they were used. Often, after the train load was sorted out, the arrivals stood nude in queue for hours waiting their turn to die. Guards could, and did, take women with them down by the bridge only fifty meters or so from the shower for what was laughingly called 'interrogation." Nothing was said, though the practice was not common when officers were about. When the guard was finished the woman was placed at the head of the line.

Mein Ehre heist Treue
, Loyalty is my Honor, the oath of the SS had been utterly forsaken by the guards. Max pocketing trinkets was nothing. Once or twice a week he bartered with Sol, the old goldsmith. One night when Max was drunk he told Peter he sent the gold home and his sister kept it for him until after the war. This was nothing.

Peter learned you could purchase your freedom, or have it purchased for you. This could only be done through the Kommandant, or out of Berlin. A number of prisoners, those generally with the red triangle badge of the political prisoner, were kept alive while their families bought their freedom. Peter concluded some of them were imprisoned for this very purpose, but only occasionally did any actually leave. He did not know what happened to them after that. Most often those kept alive this way by their families were sent to the shower anyway once their freedom was ostensibly bought.

Greed and lies were the basis of the camps. Work did not free an inmate as the sign over their gate proclaimed; resettlement was gassing. The speeches in the Disrobing Block, lies; assurances, all lies. And their oath? A lie.

Peter heard Herr Kommandant Hoffmann and a certain SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Heidel took a cut from the gold and a portion of the fertilizer sales. This was very dangerous, but corruption ran to the top of the SS. "Why not?" Peter thought. His father always said the Nazis were like this. He saw that it was true. If it happened here with the elite, the SS, how bad was it in the Party?

Everything, everyone, was for sale in the KZ. It was a loathsome place and Peter had no respect for anyone there, guard or inmate. They were all despicable and deserving of the contempt he felt and so carefully concealed.

He detached himself from the realities to the extent it was possible. He rationalized his own situation and placed himself above everyone else. He had only enlisted in the SS to save his life, and with the encouragement and approval of his family. Even his father, a pacifist and anti-Nazi, had supported him. So had his mother, a good Party member. How could this be wrong if they supported him in it?

He did not permit himself to take money. He stayed true to his oath even though the others did not. It was not that he believed in it, but rather that by staying true to the SS as an ideal he was absolved of what he did. The fault, the guilt, was that of the SS and not himself. He was not accountable because of his obedience. He never disobeyed an order or failed to follow the rules. If an inmate had a beating coming, Peter gave it to him. He knew it was his due, so did Peter. He shouted at them, and in his political meetings spouted the Party slogans with enthusiasm. He gave his utter obedience to the SS. He did not shirk his duty, and in his mind this absolved him of responsibility.

You were either a victim or an executioner. The prisoners understood that. This place swallowed a weakling, even if he wore the uniform of the SS.

From time to time someone resisted. Peter shot them as duty required. They were fools. If he had not shot them Max or someone else would have. They could not resist the SS and not expect to be shot. How was this any different from the partisans he had shot, or the villages he had burned? How, he reasoned, was this so different from the bombing of Hamburg where children had been burned alive?

It differed only in that he was at close quarters with the person he shot or beat. That made it difficult for him but no different for the inmate. If Peter steeled himself, he believed, and did not think about it, he would get over it. Every inmate was going to die. Left or right. The wave of the crop. Three months until death from starvation or disease. To kill someone earlier was a blessing.

Death had already been decided by others. He could change nothing. What difference did it make if it happened by a bullet from him now or in a few months, or in moments in the shower? There was no difference, and he reminded myself of that every hour of every day.

Peter suppressed his feelings of pity and charity. There was, he knew, no place for them in this war, no place in this camp. Max was right. They were only signs of weakness, luxuries a man could afford only in peacetime.

Regardless of each day’s duty, one reality never altered. The pressure was constant. The trains kept coming, and with increasing frequency. It got so Peter hated the arrivals as they spilled from the cattle cars. Not as people but for the work they caused, what he had to do. He never had enough sleep and was constantly exhausted. He had little appetite and his weight stripped away as if he were one of the prisoners.

Peter was afraid of most of his fellow guards, who were simpletons and brutes. He went along with them and, except for SS-Obersturmfuhrer Wolff, they paid him no special attention.

By the time the first snow fell Peter had become accustomed to his fellow guards. Their relish of intimidation, their joy in beating, their avarice, were normal and, given the circumstances of the KZ, understandable.

He had no friends, not even Max, who spoke to him more openly each week, but Peter remained as distant from him as from everyone at the KZ. There were guards, the majority of them, who relished the power given them. It was like a drug they made no attempt to resist. Daily they beat prisoners to death, raped the young boys or new women. There were guards who shot for no reason, who tortured solely for pleasure.

Peter took no pleasure from inflicting terror or pain. That was important to him and one of the distinctions that made him different from the rest.

Always there was the taunting and swearing. And always, always, the pleasure taken from power and from inflicting pain. There were guards who preferred this to drink, to sex. They craved it, they needed it, they fed on it.

The acts of sadism Peter witnessed daily were indescribable in their baseness. Most of the guards would have been disappointed when they raped a young Polish or Jewish arrival if she had not whimpered and begged. That was part of the pleasure. They enjoyed the killing, and for those who did not go to the brothel, Peter thought their sexual gratification came from inflicting death.

One kapo, a Czechoslovakian, each day seized a man in his Kommando when he least expected it and without provocation. He threw the hapless inmate to the ground and pounced on him. As he strangled the man to death he pumped away at him as if he were with a woman and as the inmate died the kapo’s frenzy heightened until he reached an orgasm. Other kapos watched, nodded in approval and perhaps envy.

Once or twice a day the Lageralteste seized an inmate and drowned him in the fountain at the gate to the KZ. When he was finished he looked at the lifeless body and repeated over and over as if a chant: “You must die so I can live.”

An SS guard, one of the Ukrainians, who were always the most debased and ruthless, regularly watched new arrivals undress in the women’s room. A few moments later, before the gassing, the sexes were co-mingled. As the Ukrainian watched the women strip he openly masturbated. Though often encouraged to simply rape anyone he wanted, the guard always refused, preferring this pleasure to the real thing,

Peter had never been with a woman and so avoided the brothel. The very idea of a whore anywhere, and especially here, offended him as unwholesome and unclean.

He also never drank, as he was unaccustomed to much liquor and was afraid that if he became drunk his real feelings would come spewing out. He was teased for his temperance but it was Karl who bore the brunt of the guards’ venom and was a source of constant taunts. He drew the dirtiest details and was called soft, or worse, by the guards. He looked awful. Never very fleshy, he wasted away until his uniform hung on him. He was withdrawn and seemed a zombie much of the time.