Cimmerian: A Novel of the Holocaust (6 page)

In the last queue men begged to work, for a chance to live. Women begged as well, for themselves, for their children. They offered themselves. Sometimes it even worked, but not often. And then they just landed in the brothel.

It was very difficult at first for Peter not to think about what he was doing. But fatigue, lack of sleep and the repetition of the tasks made it easier. He did not think of them as people. Just material to move along, a faceless mob.

Every few weeks a train arrived with all arrivals dead. They had been in transit too long or had been forgotten on a siding. Everyone cursed the work of emptying these corpse trains.

It was hardest when a guard killed a baby. That would bother him for a few minutes. One guard especially enjoyed bashing the heads of infants against the metal parts of the cars. When he worked the queue he always tossed a few babies to the ravenous dogs as well. They always had to shoot the mother after that. These were the hardest sights to put out of his mind.

By Christmas Peter was having nightmares. He was not the only one. One of the Ukrainians cried out in his sleep every night. Others did from time to time, but he did every night. Also, the guards complained of all kinds of ailments that Peter thought were not justified by the rigors of their work. The soldiers on the Front had no similar problems with far more justification. He was not the only one loosing weight. This was especially true as the trains increased in frequency. There were many complaints about stomach problems. Though in fairness, the appetite of most seemed unaffected.

And headaches. Terrible headaches.

And rashes. Many of the guards developed skin rashes that no ointment or salve could cure.

As the winter set in it became worse. Now, when Peter could sleep, he was afraid to.

At least once a month officers from the Totenkopfverbande Berlin arrived. In the days before their arrival there was a frenzy of activity to put the KZ in order and the guards got almost no sleep. The Kommandant was everywhere shouting orders, pointing at this or that. All the officers, but especially Wolff, became maniacs. Prisoners were shot or sent to the shower for the most trivial offenses. The guards devoted extra effort to their appearance, seeing that even well-worn boots shone with a luster. Everything was to be perfect.

It was always a relief when the inspection was finished. If it had gone well, and during that winter they rarely did, they received special rations and light duty for a few days. If the inspection went especially poorly they all suffered and passed that suffering on to the prisoners who, after all, were the ones responsible.

Peter found it was difficult to avoid the majority of the guards. At one time or another he worked or ate with all of them. He was, frankly, afraid of most of them though he took great care for that fear not to show. He worked very hard at maintaining a good front, at being one of the comrades. He was not accepted wholly as he wished since he did not share in the indiscriminate murder of prisoners. His beatings and killings were always for a purpose or part of the general action. And he did not get drunk, as all of them did, or go to the brothel to join in their parties.

These things kept him apart and made him suspect. Once Karl was gone, the guard’s taunts were directed more at him and he was forced to join in their activities to survive.

Karl came to his end in the week between Christmas and New Year's. It was bitterly cold. German forces on the Western Front had launched a counteroffensive that, they were told, would roll the Americans and British back into the sea. Wolff and others of his ilk were filled with patriotic ardor.

Karl was permanently assigned to the shower. This was a duty he found the most repugnant of all and so it was given to him. He was responsible for the SonderKommando that filled the shower, dragged the bodies out, pulled the teeth, and shaved the hair.

On this day everything had gone wrong. Steiner pulled Peter from his usual place and put him with Karl. He had been working, he said, without sleep for two days because three trains had arrived back to back. The material was freezing standing along the Himmel Weg in sub-zero weather. Many of them had collapsed on the spot and died where they lay. The lines, total strangers many of them, jammed against each other to save what warmth they could. When they exited the Disrobing Block heat rose off their skin in steam and their teeth chattered. Later, they took on a ghostly hue as the cold seeped through them.

At the shower door the queue at last rioted. The trustees had to fill the shower by beating and pushing the freezing people in. Karl had a ghastly look to him. He was nearly as skinny as the KZ prisoners by then. His eyes were sunken in his skull beneath his helmet.

At times Karl would go into a frenzy and beat and club everyone he could reach. At other times he lapsed into a trance and did nothing until Wolff goaded him into action. Peter was frightened for Karl but had troubles of his own just being this close to him.

Peter was exhausted. His hands, even though he wore gloves, were blistered and bloody from the beatings. His gun seemed constantly empty. His voice was hoarse from shouting. His right arm was numb and he could by then scarcely raise it.

The door jammed and the SonderKommando screamed and killed indiscriminately to goad the material into order. Karl suddenly shouted at Wolff. Though Peter was nearly beside him he could not understand his words. Perhaps he was incoherent; he was clearly out of his mind.

There was so much screaming Peter could not hear Wolff speak, but there was no missing the horror that transpired. Wolff let him rant for a minute with a sneer on his lip. Then he shouted orders. The stunned trustees hesitated only a second then pounced on Karl and stripped him of his uniform. Naked, they tossed him into the shower with this load. He died with the others, no doubt screaming incoherently as he did.

Peter was numb for a week afterward. It wasn’t just Karl. He had seen something like this coming for some time. He was sorry he had been there to witness it, but grateful Wolff had not turned on him as well. He was having serious doubts himself about what they were doing.

Could there truly be so many enemies of the Reich? It seemed impossible. These mass killings had gone on for years. Surely, Peter thought, most of the Jews in Europe were dead by now. They were also killing Poles as well. They were Slovaks and were subhuman, he was told. But they were also Catholic, as Peter was. At the Judenrampe, along the lines, inside the shower, daily he heard Ave Maria as he had recited it a thousand times before.

Could this be right?

God With Us
the buckle on their uniform said. Could He truly be? Peter’s growing affection for Eva only increased his doubts.

When he was with her he could sense her compassion. She was a gentle soul in this hell. Though he was her oppressor and the murderer of her friends and family, she treated him with tenderness. Away from her Peter thought about Eva whenever his circumstances permitted. His fantasies were about her.

She made a lovely Madonna of gold in secret and gave it to him before Christmas to send to his mother. It was exquisite. He nearly cried when he realized what she had slipped into his hand.

Eva was a Reichsdeutscher, a Catholic, not a Jew: could she be staatsfeindlich? What crime had this seventeen-year-old girl committed?

The conduct of the guards added to his doubts. Their incessant brutality, their corruption was in his eyes no better than the corruption, brutality and atheism of the resident prisoners. At least the prisoners were the victims of this terrible place. Wasn't it the guards who drove from them every vestige of decency, even in most cases their belief in God? What excuse was there for his strutting, laughing, arrogant comrades? They were the elite.

It was apparent to Peter that the state of the war and the needs of the Reich required some such camps. But did they have to be so brutal? And was wholesale slaughter of families required for some greater good?

Peter reminded himself of the atrocities the Germans were facing each day. In Russia no prisoners were taken. He had often come upon bodies of German soldiers, stripped of their weapons, clearly shot after surrender. The bombers were destroying the major cities of Germany. The allies knew they were killing helpless civilians, yet they did it nevertheless.

How different were the deaths of those civilians from the people the guards killed here? These at least were selected and judged as enemies. The American and British bombers killed indiscriminately.

Peter returned to these thoughts often each day, and for a time they persuaded him, as had his uncle’s admonition that others, not himself, were responsible. But the horror of each day, of what he saw and did, what haunted him in his sleep, was inescapable.

There was no turning back, and this reality kept him going despite his doubts. He had seen what happened to Karl. His death had spared no one. No matter what Peter did he knew it would change nothing. The people he killed only died an hour or two before their ordained death anyway. He had no alternative now, and every day reminded himself of that. Had he reported to the Wehrmacht as originally ordered he would have been dead by now. Of that he was certain.

Peter went to see Eva as often as he could persuade Max, though he knew it was foolish to take such risks. They spoke only in hushed voices. A few sentences, two or three times a week, was usually all. Max teased him less, cautioned him more.

“Get that look from your eye, boy. Wolff will eat you up. She’s a Jewess! A whore! Don’t get starry-eyed over the likes of her.”

But it was hard for him. When he looked into her eyes he saw only kindness. When they were not together he dreamed that he would find peace with her, a solace from this perdition.

There was no doubting the debilitating influence of this existence on him, and he was as desperate for escape as any prisoner -- with just as little hope. Their mail was censored and even had he wanted he could not write home about this. There was nowhere to turn.

Peter was very frightened of becoming like the other guards, without pity, without love. He told himself they had always been this way, but knew it was not true in every case. In the two and a half months he had been at the KZ he had seen the men become even more brutal. Partly it was the effect of what they did. Partly it was the depressing war news. Nothing was going right.

As a youngster he had been taught to be a decent and kind person. His father, in addition to being a pacifist, was also a man of non-violence. This had not been easy during the chaotic years following the Great War, but the habitual street violence had only reinforced his convictions. Even Peter’s years in the Hitler Youth had been tempered by the influence of his parents, especially of his father. He was raised to be a good Christian as well as a devout Catholic.

So even as he witnessed and did terrible things, Peter struggled to resolved the conflicts within him, to hold aside his kindness and charity so that he would not become utterly the kind of man with whom he stood guard.

Then on New Year's Eve day he shot a family. When it was over and he was forced to consider what he had done, he could scarcely believe it. It had all happened too fast and his reactions had been so violent, so unthinking.

Towards noon an overloaded train arrived and the guards ran to their places. He was still in shock over Karl’s death and was considering writing his parents. He could not tell them the truth but he thought even lies would be better than the bureaucratic response they would officially receive. They had come to their graduation and he had met them briefly.

There was still a queue of naked gypsies snaking into the shower from last night's train when this one arrived. It was numbingly cold and the mist hung over the KZ like a disgusting blanket. The air was acrid, choking with the smoke from the gypsies they were burning.

News from the Front that day was ambiguous. But they all knew that the Ardennes offensive had failed. The war could not last long now.

There was a great deal of grumbling from the exhausted men as they manned their posts at the Judenrampe. Peter was dead on his feet and angry at this trainload of material even before they opened the first door. He saw its length with a sinking heart. They would be at it well into the night.

It was another difficult one. There were a half dozen shootings within the first minute and each time the nexus of cars disgorged onto the ramp there were more shootings. These people just would not learn!

A family, Polacks from the looks of them, had managed to stay together as the guards were nearing the halfway point. The father held a child, a girl Peter believed, about three years old, in his arms. The mother held an infant. There was another child, a boy about six, clinging to his mother, who had miraculously not been trampled in transit. He knew the mother and children were for the shower, the father looked hearty enough for work. With the war news as it was, Peter remembered thinking, he might even survive.

Max, who usually worked with him and was quick to do the dirtiest chores, was beating an old couple senseless. He had grabbed their parcel for a quick search and the woman had tried to hold it back an instant. Nearby a guard had sicced a dog onto a twelve-year-old girl who would not stop crying.

Peter pushed the father to one queue and gave him a taste of the truncheon across his back when he hesitated. That was standard. The man’s wife cried out. Peter hit her across the face, striking at her mouth. He had heard all the cries of anguish he could bear for one day. He pulled at the boy clinging to her leg thinking to send him with his father. That often placated parents for a time, to split the children between them.

The damn boy wouldn’t budge! Peter shouted at him to go with his father. The boy was distraught, what with Max nearly bashing the old couple to pulp and the ravenous Alsatian not five feet away tearing the girl into pieces. It was a mess.

Peter hit the boy -- one, two, three times -- to tear him from his mother, who started wailing for her husband, or perhaps it was only in anguish. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the father coming over to him. It was just too much.