Cimmerian: A Novel of the Holocaust (9 page)

There was more of the same for over an hour, but in the end Peter was allowed to live. There was one statement in the middle of his lecture that tore him apart.

“... all those involved have been eliminated...”

Eva dead. Dead. She was dead before he came to this office.

She was dead.

CHAPTER SIX

Peter
did not escape his act of stupidity unscathed. He was placed under the personal supervision of Wolff, who informed him that from this day on every dirty job was his.

It made no difference. Peter knew that Herr Kommandant Hoffmann had spoken the truth. They had used him. Eva most of all. His flush of devotion to her as quickly vanished and was replaced by a deadened spirit. Eva had been his only hope, his feelings for her the only bright light in this black existence. Now it was gone.

For several days he was numbed by the shock. He suffered more from the loss of the hope Eva had given him than from her actual death.

But as the numbing faded it was replaced by anger made all the more intense by his own betrayal at Eva’s hands. When he passed the goldsmith's hut, now occupied by new arrivals, he felt satisfaction. And as he worked at the ugly jobs given him his anger towards the prisoners rose in fury. He had tried. He had done more than enough. Now he just wanted to live.

For several days Peter supervised the HimmelKommando with Schlage at both the old crematorium and the new improvised ones. The smoke that hung like a perpetual mist over the KZ was hot and acrid at its source. The heat from the fires was intense even in winter and in the dead of night. By now the fires were never extinguished. The smell of burnt and roasting flesh was constantly in his nostrils. The ashes and smoke impregnated his clothing and though he showered each day it made no difference; the stench of death was embedded in him.

The prisoners who worked the grisly detail at the crematoriums were among the most pathetic in the KZ. They lost all hope, all belief in everything, most of all their God. They used rags to protect their hands and to cover their faces as they stoked the flames. They worked very close to the fires in the trenches and men fell into the pit. There was no thought of rescue. The burning fat from the bodies covered them almost at once. Their screams of anguish were as bloodcurdling as those Peter had heard from the shower.

But by then such bloodcurdling cries meant nothing, as did pleas for mercy or a demonstration of compassion. He thought of nothing beyond his duty, and the only emotion he permitted was the anger he experienced when a stupid or awkward inmate stood in its way.

Over the flames of the burning bodies Peter could scarcely hear the death cries from the shower. Yet, depending on the wind or the intensity of the fire or the terror of those in the shower, he heard the cries throughout the long days. The howls of despair were like the howling of the wind in a forgotten, forlorn place, like the cries and whispers of the damned.

Wolff relieved Peter of this duty once he perceived it had no effect on him. He was then assigned to the entrance of the shower where Karl had met his death. He now saw that sixty men, women and children died every thirty to forty minutes regardless of the difficulties. While the kapo and the SonderKommando did the physical work, Peter saw to the execution.

The problems at the fire had been solved by constantly using the proper method. Some care in mixing the fleshier bodies with the thin was necessary to produce enough fat to keep the fires stoked. But these had been minor details compared to his job at the mouth of the gas chamber, for that was what it was.

Here Peter dealt with living people quite capable of unpredictable reactions. Here the usual method of execution was reversed.

When a criminal was hanged or gassed a number of guards took him to his place of execution. There he was restrained then done away with. Always he was heavily outnumbered and even if he wished to resist it was hopeless.

It was the same with firing squads even in the worst of circumstances. At the place of shooting there are always at least as many executioners as there are those to die.

This situation was quite different. There were fewer than fifteen trustees loading the chamber, loading it with sixty people at a time with many hundreds in line. Though they were shielded by the walls and distracted by the dogs and their own nudity, those close to the chamber knew or guessed what was occurring.

To accomplish their task required discipline and order. His second day kapo 672 leading the SonderKommando had been unable to force a sixtieth body into the chamber. It was clearly a failing on his part for having improperly selected the earlier occupants. Try as they might they could not shut the door with sixty people inside. Peter saw he was prepared to keep trying for as long as it took because he could not very well empty the room and do it again. But Peter had a schedule to keep and they were about to fall behind. He did not want to think what would happen to him if he failed in his duty this time.

Peter ordered him to pull the largest person from the doorway. This made it possible to close the heavy door on fifty-nine. The kapo, who had been derelict, a Russian POW, looked at him and said in a thick accent: “Sixty this time, sixty-one next.” He grinned looking for reassurance.

Peter shot him in the face. “Sixty every time,” he said for the others to hear.

There were no more problems after that. The fourteen remaining trustees of the SonderKommando worked as well as the fifteen had and they were never short in the count again. Wolff enjoyed watching his solution and Peter saw him relating it to the Kommandant and SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Glauss with much pleasure.

His mother's letters now arrived with even greater irregularity. He did not know if it was because she was writing less often or because of the deteriorating war conditions. His father was assigned to guard a bridge on the Weser River. Three nights a week, she wrote, he could be home. The other times duty required that he be at his post. She expressed the usual concerns of a mother for her only child away in the service during war, and gave the expected optimistic exclamations of a Party member writing a letter destined for several pairs of eyes.

Peter in turn, wrote infrequently. He continued to exist on a few hours sleep a day and at least every few days was required to work through the night with no sleep at all for two days. His health declined and his state of perpetual exhaustion was acute. When he wrote his letters were cursory and, of course, all lies. He wrote of a mythical KZ with mythical prisoners and mythical guards. How could he do otherwise?

Since Peter's coming here his father had not written once. When Peter had been in the Wehrmacht he had written weekly. He did not know if his failure to write reflected the circumstances of his own duty or his feelings towards his son. He missed the contact but was relieved at not having to write him. He did not want to face the emotions and memories such an exchange of letters would require. Perhaps, he reasoned, that was the true reason his father did not write.

During his second week with the SonderKommando Wolff relieved him and told him to follow him. Beside the shower were sturdy wooden stairs he had never taken that led to the second story of the Delousing Block, as the shower was officially called. This was where the gas crystals of Zyklon-B were kept and where the disinfecting operator, the executioner, did his duty.

“Sturmann Steiner has stomach cramps and must see the medic,” Wolff explained. “You will take his place.” This was the same Steiner placed in charge of the group with which Peter had arrived. Steiner briefly explained the procedure. It was simple enough. The apparatus was basic and looked as if a handyman had constructed it. He then left to see the KZ medic.

There was a plain wooden chair with bent arms in the approximate center of the room. There was a one-way window in the floor immediately in front of the chair with a view into the shower. Beside the chair was the apparatus into which the can of crystals was placed and from there the crystals were exposed to the air and released into the shower. Peter had expected something elaborate but it was a simple low box of dark metal with a slide lever.

Peter supposed experimentation had established the necessary amount of Zyklon-B required. He knew when the Kommandant had first ordered the increase to sixty often some survived but that rarely occurred now. There were also blowers to operate that purged the gas after the kill. Still, the kapos of the SonderKommando wore gas masks when they cleared the chamber because gas was often trapped by the bodies.

In a corner were two dozen cans. Printed on the side of the cans was: “Zyklon B poison gas. Cyanogen compound. Danger! Poison! Tesch and Stabenov, International GMBH. For pest control. To be opened by trained personnel only.”

Wolff said nothing as Peter took his place in the chair and watched the room fill. He could hear the muffled voices and shouting through the floor. He knew it would take another ten minutes or so to fill up. The bodies he could see through his window were crammed together as he knew they would be from having supervised the procedure. He watched the children being passed along and finally heard the door clang shut. A bell sounded to let him know he should release the crystals by puncturing the can. The apparatus was already loaded so all he had to do was pull the lever beside the chair.

The gas was released from the ceiling of the shower where he exposed the crystals, but being heavier than air it fell down over the crammed bodies and made its way to the floor. There could have been little doubt about what was in store for those inside the shower. The fiction of the shower was only poorly maintained by this stage of the war. Yet the fiction was there. People were told this was to be a shower, they disrobed, they were convincingly told to recall numbers for retrieving valuables, and the gas chamber certainly looked like a shower, even to the carved-stone soap in the dishes.

Finally, people, these people especially, clung to hope to the end. Peter supposed they could not grasp the enormity of the task their Fuhrer had given the guards and underestimated their commitment to perform it. Or perhaps they could not believe the Germans could kill so many millions of innocents in such a calculated manner. Whatever the reasons, that first moment following the release of the gas was one of both realization and panic. This time was no different. It began, as always, with coughing.

But there was no air to breathe, nowhere to go, really virtually no room to move. Yet move they did. Some collapsed at once, as the gas hit them and worked its way around the bodies, to the floor. People pulled away from the flow of the gas, creating a thinly packed area in the center.

Those struck threw their hands to their eyes for the gas burned, then succumbed. Once the gas struck death followed in only seconds and with very few convulsions.

After a few minutes or so the gas began to climb from the floor in a nearly coherent layer. Peter could see its progress by the reaction of the dying.

The still-living avoided the center as they pressed towards both of the doors. The bodies piled up and the living, especially the strongest of the living, climbed towards the ceiling to escape the gas. Men abandoned their wives and children, climbed even over living bodies to reach the top of the heap. The children that had started piled on the heads of the adults were quickly pulled down and trampled as they were driven into the gas. There were shouts and screams, cursings, calls for help and pity and mercy, but there was none of that in the chamber. There was only the maniacal pursuit for another foot in elevation, a few more breaths of air and damn the price for everyone else.

The noise reached a crescendo perhaps three to five minutes after the release of the gas, and at its peak was quite deafening at this range, even through the heavy floor. The voices were mostly screams but there were also the prayers. Some were the foreign sound of the Jews, more than once he heard a Rabbi lead his followers in the Kaddish as they entered the chamber, only for panic to end it when the gas struck, but this day the prayers were those of the Catholic Poles they killed, in the Latin of his church he knew so well.

After seven or eight minutes the volume dropped considerably as the death toll mounted. By ten minutes it was down to a murmur then very quickly disappeared altogether. The last ten minutes before he switched on the blowers were dead silent.

Peter had manned the second floor for two hours when the Kommandant joined them. Peter had heard he came here several times each week, and on occasion when he patrolled the KZ with Max had seen him mount the stairs. He and Wolff exchanged greetings.

“Any problems?” he asked.

“None, Herr Kommandant. Quite routine.”

Peter stood at attention. Wolff saluted and left them alone. The Kommandant took the chair where he had a clear view of the SonderKommando clearing the shower below. The strain showed across his face, in the tremor of his hand and bearing of his body.

“At ease, Oberschutze.” He watched the work proceeding below. It took twenty minutes or so to clear the chamber. Shortly the back door clanged shut and a buzzer sounded. The first naked arrivals ran in to escape the trustees' truncheons.

“If I had it to do over I would make the rear door larger to facilitate the exit. If there were time we could at least add another door,” the Kommandant said quietly. Then in almost whisper: “...if there were time.”

Throughout the emptying and during the loading there was no change in his manner. His eyes were fixed firmly on the window, the cigarette in his fingers shaking slightly, a tic below an eye, and he slumped as if he were a very old man.

The Kommandant was waiting.

Peter busied myself loading the next can of crystals as Steiner had shown him and tried not to disturb him. At last the bell sounded and Peter pulled the lever. There was an immediate change in his demeanor. He leaned forward for a better view, quite taken with the sight. The cries coming through the floor might have been music from their quartet or his record player.

As the voices reached a crescendo his eyes danced with excitement. He was speaking softly to himself and Peter was embarrassed to hear his words, as if he were eavesdropping on a conversation. “Yes,” he said, “Yes. Do not struggle. It will be over soon. Do not struggle.” On and on, like a chant.

As the cries diminished the Kommandant visibly relaxed as if the tension was draining from him. He slumped back in the chair with his legs sprawled beside the window still watching the spectacle, now much less animated. After a while he spoke in the silence. “It is very restful here. This is the reason for the camp. This is the reason for our being. For us there is no other existence.”