Clifford's Blues (36 page)

Werner and Bader, who now seem to be on speaking terms, probably because of whatever's happening in the East, have heard that Laufen and Tittmoning have been designated
ILAG
s, internment lagers, or camps for enemy and neutral civilians. They told me they think I will be transferred to one of them. My heart jumped! But … wouldn't Dieter Lange know how things work better than they do? Maybe, they said, but in case things did change, they wanted me to know that the
SS
is systematically killing the Russian prisoners. Well, everyone knows that. The Russians are mostly assigned to the quarry so they can die one way or the other. But they are so tough, many of them have made little hearts out of quarry stone, and they wear these around their necks to show the
SS
their hearts are just as hard. The prisoners call these guys
Steinerne Herzen
. The Germans know. Last fall, the
SS
lined up 6,000 at Herbertshausen and killed them all. The Reds in the Herbertshausen
Sonderkommando
who were allowed to live after the burials reported the shootings. Werner and Bader said they had no documents for this, but the graves could easily be found. Why do they tell me this? So that, if I did get transferred, I could pass along the word somehow. Would I do it? I said yes and hurried back to the canteen where it was at least warmer than outside.

Wednesday, March 25, 1942

Two weeks ago, there was the sound of trucks grinding through the streets of the compound. It had just turned dark and it was close to dinner time. I had left the camp early to work at home, and I was ready to serve dinner when the trucks came. There was a pounding on the door and someone calling for Dieter Lange. Up and down the street there was shouting. Dieter Lange does not like to be disturbed at dinner, but he jumped up and ran to the door. “What? What's going on?” Whispering. “Oh! Oh!” Dieter Lange said out loud, which made Anna run to the door, too. More whispering.

I waited in the kitchen. I could see the headlights of the trucks, which were lining up one behind the other in the street, their engines running, the steam from their exhausts floating up the sky.

“Get dressed warm, Cleef,” Dieter Lange said when they came back. Anna was right up under him. “They need you people out here to help with the evening meal in camp.”

I asked what was the matter. He and Anna exchanged a look and he shrugged and said a lot of people were sick.

“From what?” I asked.

“They don't know, but they don't think it's serious,” Dieter Lange said. He was now at the closet pulling out gloves and a thick scarf. Anna was chewing on her bottom lip. I knew it had to be something bad over in camp, like another epidemic. I never once thought they were going to take all the servants out and shoot us. The officers and their wives had gotten too used to us for that.

Anna jumped to the bread box and began slicing bread and hurriedly placed some bologna in between. “Boots,” she said to Dieter Lange, “he will need boots. And an old sweater, Dieter. It is very cold and still much snow.”

I went downstairs to dress, putting on two pairs of underwear, socks, and a lumber jacket I wore when I worked outside. I put my prison jacket over it. Beneath my cap I put on a hood I'd made from Anna's old stockings. Then I returned upstairs and put on the boots. I shoved the sandwiches in my pockets and pulled on the gloves. “Try not to go near the prisoners in the blocks,” Anna said. Dieter Lange said nothing. But I knew if there was an epidemic over there, he would quickly find a trip again to take him away from here. I looked out the front-room window and saw the calfactors standing like statues in the road in front of the houses where they worked.

“Go. They'll pick you up,” Dieter Lange said. Anna pulled her sweater tight around her and it seemed just then she was getting heavier.

I went out. There were lights on in all the houses along the street. Guards were shouting, the engines rattling and humming. “Get in the trucks. All prisoners, get in the trucks. Hurry, hurry!” The voice came over a loudspeaker. The guards, their long coats bouncing around their legs, pushed the servants into the first trucks and sent them off, and the next group and the next, until I was pushed in myself, out of the wind, which was steady and sharp, and bit through everything. “Hurry, hurry! You miserable, soft-life shitters, hurry up!” The trucks vibrated, creaked, and rumbled through the snow and ridges of ice. I noticed Captain Winkelmann standing at the front of the line of trucks. He seemed to be in charge of this business.

Guards at the back blew on their hands and lit cigarettes. “What's going on?” someone whispered. “Typhoid,” someone else whispered. “Not again,” another said. “Yes,” still another said. “I work for one of the camp doctors. It's typhoid all right.” So the talk went as the truck crunched over piles of frozen slush, skidded this way and that, and got up enough speed to rush through the
Jourhaus
gate, where the guards waved us across the roll-call yard, made bright as day by the floodlights. There the trucks slid to a stop, and we were bullied out of them and into formation. Men not dressed as warmly as I was began to shiver and softly stamp their feet. The guards shouted for silence and, with their leashed dogs bounding and snarling, herded us into two groups. I was resenting all the shouting, pushing, and cursing, the goddamn dogs, but I knew it was a luxury to get mad; the general population went through this several times a day. Who were we to get uppity when we all knew that a prisoner who let anger show got the crap beat out of him—and that was the mildest punishment!

Then we were trotting in formation up the steps into the kitchen in the
Wirtschaftsgebaude
. It was deliciously warm inside and smelled of food. We looked at each other and smiled. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all. The prisoners who were wearing
Holtzpantinen
, wooden shoes, slipped, regained their feet, balanced themselves carefully, and continued to skate along the tile floors that were fast becoming wet and dangerous. Soon we were lined up before the long row of sparkling stainless-steel food containers hooked above ovens. Each container had a number, and they were huge! I wondered how many men it took to carry one. My group was broken down into three smaller ones, and mine was sent to stand before the container marked “29.” Twenty-nine! That was way at the end of the camp, the last block on the east side, if this was for Block 29! There were twelve of us, and I could now see that we would use long wooden handles to carry the container. These were six inches square and rounded at the places where they had to be held. Our eyes flashed and flickered from one face to the next. Six of us on each side, but could we lift, let alone carry, that huge, hot kettle of food?

“Bereit … heben …! Heben!!”
Down along the ovens men were grabbing hold, fear and panic already plain on their faces. We, too, grabbed the handles at the command to lift, and tried to force the container up and away. It didn't move. In shock, we glanced at each other once again. I was sweating from fear and too many clothes. Up the line, out of the corners of our eyes, we saw the
SS
start down, beating, punching, kicking, and suddenly men who only a moment before couldn't lift their containers freed them from their places above the ovens, and began staggering toward the doors. As the guards approached, we got our vat off its hooks and began sliding, skating, stumbling toward the doors being held open by the guards. They popped us with their clubs as team after team scampered out and steam leaped from the containers into the night sky. There were only two steps to climb down, but they might have been twenty feet apart as we maneuvered down, wheezing, whining, and panting. Behind us, as we gained the ground, we heard a cry, more cries, of anger, despair, and fear, then shouts followed by the bang of metal on the concrete steps, and soup came washing down under our feet, but we hadn't stopped. The dropped container banged once or twice more and then its sound was lost among the curses and screams of men, and the barking of dogs.

Before us we saw, and behind us we heard, these curious beasts shuffling and clomping and moaning, all the legs and the bright metal containers reflecting the lights of the 'Platz where we were slide-skating toward the 'Strasse, a guard at each end of the pole. We struggled to hold the container high enough to keep it from bouncing on the ice and snow. It seemed to take an hour to cross the roll-call square. My legs trembled. Someone behind me was crying (I was the second man on the left pole) and someone else kept saying, with each step or slide, “Oh, oh, oh.” The men at the front and rear positions were easy targets for the guards. It helped not to look up, to just somehow in the dark feel the steps of the man in front of you and match your own to his, to find your own music to struggle to. So unless we caught one of the blows, we only heard them land, followed by the muffled reactions of the prisoners. “Ow!” “Oh!”

There seemed to be three teams in front of us, judging from the
SS
shouts and curses and the reactions to them, but most of the teams were behind us. Our efforts, the dying heat from the containers, and our fear brought the sweat to our bodies like sheets of warm water. Our clothes would freeze on us. I called my legs back from going off on a solo. We couldn't stop to wipe away the sweat. I tried not to feel or think. I felt the weight biting down in the side of my neck, then my shoulder. I felt we'd gone another hour, but when I glanced up, I saw we were just passing the canteen! The first building after the square! My heart flew away and my stomach fell to my knees. I'd never make it. By the time we got between Blocks 1 and 2 I'd be dead.

“Stop!” one of the guards in front called. “Set it down. Change sides! Hurry! Hurry! Useless pieces of shit. You! Move, nigger!” In a frenzy we scuttled around, lifted the container and struggled off again. I felt a little better. We were gaining on the team carrying the container for Block 30, one section of which had become another
Revier
. I looked around and saw that the “30” team was letting their container slide along on the snow, and as much as the guards were beating them, they still couldn't get it up. We shuffled and skated past them.

Behind us, panting and groaning and singing, we heard a group of Jews. I wondered how many men were on their poles. Surely they had come from their block, 15, because if they didn't get their own food, no one else would get it for them. The guards wouldn't let that happen.

There is no mistaking the sound of a club against a human skull, and the “30” team in back of us was getting more than its share of clubbings. Fear and pain, fear
of
pain, will make a man do almost anything. It wasn't long before we heard the “30” team right behind us, and the “15” team not far behind them. We switched again between Blocks 3 and 4, and in the dim lights of the block entrances, I saw tears, sweat, and snot on the faces of the men in my team. My heart was pounding in my ears; it felt like it would tear loose. We lurched forward again and somehow we seemed to have found each other's rhythm; I could feel the coming together, like a bunch of musicians. The crunch and wheezing of the teams behind us seemed to be falling away. Then we were changing at the Punishment Company block, 7, and starting up again. On the next change, between 11 and 12, I looked behind. Some teams had reached their blocks; others continued down the middle of the 'Strasse.

The crematorium smell shifted to our direction, and that may have goaded us on, for the next time the guards said to change, we just kept going, fueled by the momentum of our pace and by the fact that we were midway to 29. I wondered about the men who did this twice a day. Now there were breathless whispers among the team. “C'mon, pick it up. Faster. Aren't you as tough as the guys who live here? What are you,
Kaminfutter
, chimney fodder? Show a little courage. Don't be a Señorita. C'mon, put your back into it, we're more than halfway there.” We were sounding like horses that had been at the plough too long. We encouraged, coughed, panted, prayed, talked to ourselves. But our container was now bumping and scraping the ground, and each time it did, in fright, we forced it back up and struggled on. We strained to see the block numbers. We switched between Blocks 23 and 24 in the section called Moscow and Warsaw.

The north watchtower loomed tall and white before us. Was the guard pretending, fixing us in his sights, pulling the trigger? There was then the point at which we knew we were going to make it, being so close to the tower. I could feel a surge of power along the pole as we leaned toward 29, moving to our right. Block 25 crept backward, then 27, and we were at 29, where the block leaders were waiting and the prisoners who were able, weakly waved their enamel bowls and beat them with spoons. We struggled up the steps, through the doors and into the building, which stank of shit and vomit. We set down the container and fell to the floor beside it.

We had done it!

About 400 of us hauled food for three days and then, because the
SS
feared we might contaminate the families we worked for, we were carefully examined and sent home. Gangs of new prisoners from other camps and Russia replaced us.

Saturday, April 18, 1942

New and bigger signs have gone up in the latrines:

Nacht dem Abort, von dem essen

Hande waschen, nicht vergessen
.

After the latrine, before eating,

Wash your hands, do not forget.

The prisoners hardly have time to do anything—wash, shit, or eat. Work, yes; everything else is
Schnell! Avanti! Rasch! Ein biss rascher als sonst! Wenga! Wenga!
Hurry, hurry, faster, a little bit faster.… So shit gets in the water and everyone gets sick.

The Langes were glad when I was finished carrying food. I noticed they didn't get too close to me for a while, which was fine with me. The canteen stayed closed, so I did things around the house.