Scheisshaus Luck (16 page)

The second night after Mario’s death I was awakened by the sound of gunfire and guards shouting. The barbed wire glowed red with the reflection of huge flames. One of the
Blocks
was on fire. I anxiously called to the
Ha¨ftlinge
outside my window, asking if they knew what
Block
was burning. They shook their heads, no. I flopped down beside Pressburger. With my shithouse luck it’s probably my
Block
that’s burning, I thought, and my only possession is melting into oblivion. The fire burned through the night because the camp’s poorly equipped fire squad could protect only the adjoining
Blocks
.

The next day I got the confirmation. Sixty
Blocks
in the camp, and it was mine that was charred. Fate is so perverted. How many times had I laid in my bunk with a growling stomach, dreaming about the loaf of bread and cauldron of soup I would buy with my 106

SCHEISSHAUS LUCK

ring? How many mornings, standing in the freezing rain, had I schemed how I would buy myself the position of
Vorarbeiter
in a
Kommando
working inside the factory? How many ruses had I con-cocted? How many risks had I taken during searches? And there was that beating I took after I recovered my ring. It had all been for nothing. My only insurance against becoming a
Muselmann
was gone.

♦ ♦ ♦

Every time I had to take a piss I would pass by a section of bunks being tended by an orderly who seemed to be highly competent and compassionate when treating patients. He could have passed for the twin of that Nazi officer on the train from Nice who had the cans of milk, except that the orderly wore a yellow triangle. The day after the fire he came and sat on the edge of my bunk.

‘‘
Mein Name ist Paul. Kannst du Deutsch sprechen
?’’ (My name is Paul. Do you speak German?)

‘‘
Je parle le franc¸ais
.’’ (I speak French.) He frowned. ‘‘
Mon Franc¸ais nest pas très bon
’’ (My French isn’t very good), he told me.

‘‘That’s okay, I was only kidding,’’ I told him in German.

His face brightened. ‘‘Did you know any German Jews in France? Two cousins of mine emigrated there in ’33. I haven’t heard from them since the war started.’’

‘‘Only German Jews I met were a few elderly couples while I was in a camp in Paris.’’

‘‘I’m sure those couples didn’t make it past the first day here.

My parents didn’t.’’

‘‘I’m sorry. Why didn’t you leave Germany with your cousins?’’

‘‘My father was a decorated veteran. He thought that the Nazis wouldn’t touch him, and I was in my fourth year of medical school.’’

I asked a question that I had been eager to ask a German Jew for some time.

‘‘Why do you think Hitler hates you people?’’

PART II | AUSCHWITZ

107

‘‘I don’t know, but he sure needed us—blaming us for losing the war and causing the depression. He would’ve been a nobody without us. He got rich off us, too.’’

‘‘What do you mean?’’

‘‘The gangsters confiscated everything we owned. Affluent Jews were jailed, and when they managed to secure a visa to another country, the Nazis turned them loose and legally took everything they had.’’

‘‘Legally?’’

‘‘Oh, yes. Hitler imposed a penalty for fleeing Germany, a
Re-ichsfluchtsteuer,
which was only a lawful way for him to steal everything a man owned.’’

‘‘There were many wealthy Jews?’’

He shrugged. ‘‘Wealthy, I don’t know. Understand that many were forced to start their own businesses or be self-employed because the German guilds and unions didn’t accept us.’’

I told him that I never knew that. ‘‘I always heard that Jews didn’t want to get their hands dirty.’’

He laughed at my ignorance and bid me good luck. My heart grew heavy, realizing how horrible it must have been for Stella and Hubert to grow up stigmatized and then witness that intolerance turn into ovens.

On a rainy Tuesday night the assembly bell rang as the
Kommandos
returned from the plant. I pitied my fellow
Ha¨ftlinge
for having to stand out there, soaked and shivering, after toiling for twelve hours. A gaggle of bitching SS passed by. I went to the window. The wind carried the echoes of the
Lagerfu¨hrer
’s pronounce-ment. They were hanging another man for trying to escape. The execution was over quickly; the
boches
were in a hurry to get back to their warm quarters.

I slipped back into the bunk. For the first time, Pressburger was sleeping soundly. I mulled over why the SS hadn’t postponed the hanging. Was the man’s demise that urgent? Were the
boches
that rigid with their protocol? Of course, they were. They probably kept records of every man, woman, and child they slaughtered. Maybe 108

SCHEISSHAUS LUCK

they didn’t want to wait one day because then the condemned man would have enjoyed the double ration of bread and spoonful of jam we received every Wednesday morning. For a doomed
Ha¨ftling
that jam would be a royal delicacy, but as the White Queen told Alice,

‘‘The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but never jam today.’’

The Nazi jam, like their margarine, was made from coal. I didn’t believe it when I was first told, figuring it was a dirty trick to sucker me into giving my portion to an ‘‘old timer.’’ Then I overheard some
Ha¨ftlinge
mention that they worked in the factory labs that used coal to make synthetic food products and other materials used in the camp. There wasn’t any nutritional value whatsoever in the ersatz jam, but it did help quiet the hunger pangs for a while.

I awoke as a searchlight beam skimmed across the icy windowpane, making it sparkle like crystal. The footsteps outside told me the sentries were being relieved. I had to relieve myself, so I ran for the pail. My bare feet stuck to the cold, oiled floor. I passed the
Ha¨ftling
who was on night watch. He was asleep in a chair, snuggly wrapped in a blanket. Nice to see that one of us was momentarily having it better than the Nazis outside.

When I got back under the covers, Pressburger’s feet were on my side of the bunk. Irritated, I pushed them away. His legs were rigid and cold. He was dead. Pressburger was gone.

Having slept next to a man while he gasped his final breaths gave me the creeps. My instinct was to run, but since there was nowhere to go I just laid there and got goose bumps. It’s a depress-ing revelation how easy and unceremoniously life can vanish. I couldn’t help thinking that if life had any value at all, then Pressburger’s death wouldn’t seem so completely meaningless. I thought about waking the night watchman, but he would have to wake the
Stubendienst,
who would have to wake a couple of the orderlies. I felt foolish that Pressburger had that much sway over me. Why rouse the whole
Block
for one corpse? It could wait till morning.

I took Pressburger’s blanket, and was about to shove his body out so I could have the whole bed to myself, when a better idea PART II | AUSCHWITZ

109

popped into my head. In a few hours Janec would arrive with the morning rations, and if he saw that Pressburger was dead he would keep his share. Why should he get it instead of me? The big Pole didn’t need the bread and jam; he got packages from home. I was the one who had taken care of Pressburger, made things easier for him in his last hours. I deserved his ration.

I dragged Pressburger to the other side of the bunk, away from the light of the corridor. The body had stiffened, and it took all my strength to move the limbs into the semblance of a normal sleeping position. I turned his face toward me. The features were contorted into a horrible scowl. I pushed on his jaw, but his mouth wouldn’t close. His eyes were rolled back and his eyelids kept sliding up every time I tried to close them. I pulled the blanket so that only the top of his head showed. I went to the spot where Janec would stand while distributing the food and inspected my stage setting. It seemed perfect.

As I tried to go back to sleep, I considered what Pressburger would have done if he had known that he was going to die so forsaken. Would he have confided in me about his life, his dreams, his failures, his loves? Would he have prayed to God or cursed him for such a foul-smelling fate? Here was another man whose family, if he had one and if they were still alive, would never know where and how he died. This man suffered, laughed, thought of the future. . . .

No, I had to stop. I wasn’t strong enough. There were too many dying for me to grieve for any of them. And was Pressburger the one to be pitied? His suffering was over, but what was still in store for me? What would I have to go through till my forsaken death?

The camp’s reveille brought me to consciousness with a jolt. I kept my back turned to my bunkmate and dozed back off. A little while later the
Kommandos
marched out as the camp’s band played

‘‘Beer Barrel Polka.’’ Every morning the band, which was made up of some of Europe’s finest musicians and composers, played mo-ronic German marching songs as we left for the plant. In my first couple of months, goose-stepping past those SS guards I wondered whether the music was for their entertainment or whether they 110

SCHEISSHAUS LUCK

were seriously trying to rouse us to give our all to the Reich. What I figured now is that they decorated this human slaughterhouse with the trappings of normal society so they wouldn’t see the butcher in the mirror. The only music playing in the HKB was the symphonic coughing and spitting of awakening
Muselma¨nner
.

I heard baskets scraping along the floor. The orderlies were beginning to distribute the rations. My heart began to beat faster. I slipped my foot under Pressburger’s body and made it move up and down to the rhythm of my own breathing. He sure seemed alive. I looked over to Janec, who was chatting away with one of the Polish patients. What are you doing? Why the morning chat? Don’t keep me waiting, Janec, my leg is cramping! Finally he came over and gave me my food.

‘‘Sleep well?’’

‘‘Oh, yes.’’

‘‘Why did you change places?’’

‘‘He was falling out of bed,’’ I said, making a gesture toward the corpse.

‘‘Hey, Pressburger,’’ Janec patted him on the shoulder.

I raised the body up a little, like somebody who was stirring, then let it fall back.

‘‘Oh, let Pressburger alone,’’ I said. ‘‘He didn’t get any sleep last night.’’

The coughing fit of a patient on the next tier distracted Janec.

He took a second ration out of the basket and handed it to me.

‘‘Promise me that you’ll give it to him.’’

‘‘You know that I look after him,’’ I said.

Janec nodded and continued on his rounds.

After I had eaten my fill, I feared what the Pole would do when he discovered my trick, but Janec was in good humor. He had a voucher to soak his biscuit at the camp’s bordello that he had obtained with the contents of a package sent by his family. That’s how he had landed the privileged post of orderly—by paying for it.

Many German and Polish
Ha¨ftlinge
were able to buy a hell of a lot of favors with the packages they received. I smiled at the irony of PART II | AUSCHWITZ

111

the peasant woman who toiled and denied herself so she could send food to her imprisoned husband, which gave him the opportunity to be unfaithful to her.

After Janec left that afternoon I alerted the orderlies that Pressburger was dead. Unceremoniously, they dragged his body out to a nearby shed. The following morning a
Ha¨ftling
threw his body onto the bed of a truck loaded down with the camp’s dead, and by that evening the only testimony to Pressburger’s existence was smoke and ashes.

This page intentionally left blank

C H A P T E R 1 1

I walked out of the HKB two days after Pressburger’s death by no means the picture of health, but feeling damn good for a
Ha¨ftling
. I might even have put on a couple of pounds. Since no one in the HKB remembered that my
Block
had gone up in flames, and the
Kommandos
had already marched off to the plant, I wound up wandering aimlessly about the camp’s grounds. Except for the Maintenance
Kommando
, Monowitz was empty. It felt strange to be alone in the camp, but it felt stranger not to have some menial task to perform. I expected at any moment a
Kapo
or
Vorarbeiter
to rush up, eager to beat me into the ground since an idle
Ha¨ftling
was a sin to

‘‘the god with a moustache.’’

I considered how long it would take me to locate Hubert. He had never gotten word to me of his new
Block
number or
Kommando,
and I had stopped pestering Janec after the Pole brought up the possibility that my schoolmate was dead. Yes, it was a definite possibility, but one that I wasn’t about to entertain. As far as I was concerned Hubert was sleeping in one of the
Blocks,
and it was in my best interest to find out which one as quickly as possible.