“They'll kill us all,” he whispers.
“Maybe they only want to scare us.”
“If so, they're succeeding quite well.”
They kill another guy just because he is talking. After discovering thirst on the train, I discover fear. I won't pretend I've never been afraid, but it was always a feeling I could control. All I had to do was raise my fists and fight. The fear that overwhelms me as we are coming near the camp's gate is of a different kind. It is new to meâdreadful, ghastly. For the first time in my life, I feel unable to fight back. I am ready to accept my fate.
A sentence is written in cast iron above the gate: “
Arbeit macht frei
(Work makes you free).” We stop before walking in. An SS points toward the maxim: “If one of you is too tired to work, let him come forward.”
We understand that our life is not worth much in this strange place, which we used to call Pitchipoï before we knew its real name was Auschwitz. Anyone who comes forward will be clubbed to death.
The SS smiles.
“All volunteering for work, I see.⦔
The SS stay outside the gate. We enter the camp, where we see some brick houses and rows of barracks similar to the ones in Pithiviers. Men carrying clubs take charge of us. They drive us into the first barrack and order us to remove our clothes. A prisoner shaves a wide stripe on top of our head with a barber's clippers. Two other ones shave all the hair on our bodies. Their clippers are blunt, they hurry, so they tear off great patches of skin under our arms and between our legs. Then someone tattoos a number on our left forearm. I cease to be Moshe or Maurice Wisniak and become 48950:
Achtundvierzigtausend neunhundertfünfzig
.
The tattoo guy is the first one who speaks to me (in Yiddish).
“Have you got gold or diamonds?”
“Of course not.”
“A pity. It could have lengthened your life. You have three weeks left, more or less. If you're still alive after three
weeks, then perhaps you'll last a few more. Especially if you find a quiet job, like me. Where do you come from?”
“France.”
“Are you French?”
“No, Polish.”
“Did they catch many Jews in France?”
“Thousands. Tell me, where are we?”
“You haven't figured it out yet? We're in hell!”
“I mean, where is Auschwitz? In Germany?”
“This side of the camp is called Birkenau. We're somewhere south of Cracow. Actually, Auschwitz and Birkenau are German names for Ozwiecim and Brzezinka,
b
a town and village of ours.”
“So we're in Poland? I was pretty sure I would never see the country of my birth again.⦔
“You were born in Poland. You'll die in Poland.”
The shaved stripe on our skull makes it easy to recognize us in case we try to escape. This is rather unlikely, but still, to be on the safe side, they paint two large letters with white paint on the back of our jackets: KZ, which stand for
Konzentrationslager
. They give us a kind of gray cap, but otherwise we keep our regular clothes. Because of the heat in the car, I have taken off my winter coat. It's gone forever now, along with my backpack. I'm wearing the jacket that Albert made for me. I hope Rachel and Ãlie are safe in Montauban with
him. I think about my other brother, Jacques, who left three weeks before me. If it is true that few prisoners survive for more than three weeks, then I'll have to accept the idea that my elder brother is already dead.
The men with the clubs order us to stand outside in rows of five. They shout exactly like SS. We walk across the camp, when suddenly, I seeâIs this possible? Walking corpses! Two corpses are carrying a third oneâ¦. I have always considered myself a tough guy. I didn't shake when the SS murdered comrades on the platform. I used to see blue cadavers on the bridge across the Vistula, while I was gliding from stove to stove. But walking corpses? They move slowly, as if they were climbing a mountain, as if they wanted to save whatever strength they retain. All of a sudden, in the middle of July, I feel so cold I begin to shiver. I try not to look at their emaciated faces, their bulging eyes, the grin that uncovers their teeth.
Our guides are grinning, too.
“In one month, you'll be like them, shitbags. If you're lucky enough to be alive in one month!”
They take us to the eighth barrack. We don't call it a barrack but a
block
. The men with clubs are
kapos
.
c
Among the prisoners, there are Jews from Poland who understand the German language, but also Jews from France and Holland who don't, as well as ordinary Poles or Russian war prisoners
who aren't even Jewish. If they want to stay alive, they'd better learn German pretty fast. Everybody knows at least kapo, block, and also
Lager
(the camp),
Häftling
(a prisoner),
Mütze
(the cap), and, of course,
Drecksack
(shitbag),
Dreckfresser
(shit eater),
Scheissjude
(shitty Jew),
Schweinehund
(pig dog), and
Hirenzine
(son of a bitch, a Yiddish insult that even the Germans use).
In Pithiviers, they crammed a hundred of us in barracks that were built for fifty. In Auschwitz, our whole train enters block eight. Close to a thousand men! The guy in charge of the block or
Blockältester
d
(block senior) is a non-Jewish Pole named Marek. He starts counting us, with the help of a dozen assistants. At the same time, his deputy, the
Stubendienst
(room servant), a Jewish Pole, begins a speech in Yiddish.
“My name is Laybich. Listen to me, you Hirenzine. I'd rather kill you all than break one of my nails. You think you're wise guys, right? While I was stuck in Poland, you lived like princes in France. You drank champagne, you spent your money on French whores. Well, that's over, my friends. The strongest of you will live three weeks. In one month, you'll all be dead and other Hirenzine will come and replace you. We're all going to die, but I'll be the last to kick in.”
He goes on and on with his speech, half-rambling, half-spitting the vilest abuse. A well-dressed and rather stiff
Frenchman, an army officer perhaps, tries to ask a question, searching awkwardly for the right Yiddish words.
“I can't answer you now,” Laybich says. “I'll take care of you later.”
When his speech is over, he adds:
“You have eyes to see and ears to hear and a mouth full of shit that you'd better keep closed. You there, you interrupted me. Maybe you think this is some kind of a meeting. You'll see.⦔
As the block senior hasn't finished counting us yet, the deputy walks in our midst and asks whether any of us has already killed, taken part in a burglary or armed robbery, spent time in jail.
“Come on, Hirenzine, don't be shy. Come and speak in the hollow of my ear!”
Several men approach him. We understand he is recruiting assistants for himself and for his boss. After a while, the block senior and his men have counted us all. The block senior doesn't speak Yiddish, only bad German.
“You too many. We plus you, one thousand and five. Not there room enough in block. One thousand only. You, you and also you and you, too old. Too much suffer here. I save you suffering. And you, talk too much.”
He designates four prisoners, as well as the French officer. Right in front of us, his assistants beat them to death with their clubs, then line up the corpses outside the block.
The assistants bring in hundreds of rusty chamber pots
full of a brown liquid that they call “coffee.” Where did they find all these chamber pots? Five men to a pot, they say. Brod, three comrades, and I, we try to control our thirst and take turns drinking quietly. In other groups, there are conflicts and shouting. Laybich writes down the numbers of the noisiest drinkers.
“I like quiet,” he says. “Those who disturb the peace will be lined up tomorrow morning in front of the block, like these five.”
We hope he is joking, but nobody feels like laughing.
Toward the end of the day, several thousand prisoners come back from outside the camp, where they work in groups called
Kommandos
. We recognize comrades who left Pithivers one or two weeks before us. They give us some advice.
“You've just arrived, but you must understand all the laws of the camp before tomorrow. He who understands in twenty-four hours is twice more likely to survive than he who needs forty-eight hours.”
“Beware the
Bindenträgern
(men with armbands). They belong to the staff. Their assignment is written on the band: blockältester, stubendienst, kapo. They're former German or Polish criminals, Jewish thieves, or prisoners who choose to become killers to escape death for a while. We call them barons.
e
Try not to offend them if you want to stay alive.”
“Keep your shoes on at night. If you take them off, you're dead. Either someone steals them, or your feet swell and you can't put them on again. Then you must use the camp's wooden clogs. After two or three days, your feet are so bruised that you can't walk anymore. You limp behind the others when going to work, so the kapo gets rid of you.”
A guy I knew before the war says something I don't understand: “You're lucky. They could have gassed you.”
I spend my first night in the camp. Two tiers of six-foot-wide planks run along the wall. We sleep with our feet toward the wall and our heads near the central passage, lying on our side, stacked like forks in a cutlery drawer. I am glad to lie down for the first time since we left Pithiviers. I'd be able to sleep much better if I took off my heavy boots, but that's impossible. “If you take off your boots, you're dead.” Now and then, all the stacked bodies turn over together to change sides, without waking up.
Just after I close my eyes, I hear beatings, screams, and the deputy shouting.
“
Aufstehen! Aufstehen!
(Get up!) Up with you, Hirenzine! Out! Faster, faster!”
The morning has come already.⦠I jump down from my bunk and run outside. I receive only one small blow on the way. A French Jew, who slept on the same plank as me, receives a shower of blows while he's putting on his shoes.
His face is covered with blood. He has delicate hands and the look of an intellectual worker. I think about my older brother.â¦
Whereas five bodies were lined up in front of the block last night, we now discover thirty, set in groups of five, naked, with tattooed arms sticking out so the number is easy to read. Laybich the deputy delivers a short eulogy for them.
“I gave them coffee, but they weren't satisfied. Let this be a lesson to you, my friends!”
“What did he say?” the French Jew asks me in a whisper. “I don't understand Yiddish, you know. Can you translate?”
“Shut up, or we'll end up the same way!”
It is four
A.M.
or so. We stand up in rows of five until eight. Marek and Laybich call our numbers, count us again and again. Marek the block senior orders:
“
Mützen ab! Mützen auf!
” (Caps off! Caps on!)
This Marek probably dreamed of leading an orchestra when he was a kid. He wants our thousand caps to slap our thousand thighs together.
Mützen ab! Mützen auf!
Ten times. A hundred times. One hour. Two hours. We improve our act pretty fast when Marek kills five of us whose rhythm was slightly off.
At eight, an SS inspects us and counts the dead. After he's gone, we drink our morning “coffee,” then go look for a kommando. There is a kind of work pickup in the middle of the camp. The old-timers warn us.
“During the first few days, you won't be able to find a
kommando outside the camp. The kapos prefer to pick up men they already know. Don't worry and just wait. So many die that you'll get a job soon.”
In the meantime, we work inside the camp. I find work in the undertakers' kommando. We carry away the bodies lined up in front of the blocks. I'm a strong and healthy newcomer. I don't look like the living skeletons who frightened me so much yesterday. The kapo decides I can carry a corpse all by myself. I hold his legs over my shoulder, like suspenders. He hangs down my back. His head bumps on my calves at every step. His hands drag on the ground. It seems to me he is heavier than a living man.
We carry the bodies to the
Totenkammer
(the chamber of the dead), where a kommando of dentists under the supervision of an SS pulls out gold teeth. If someone doesn't unload his corpse head first, mouth opened, the SS has him killed right away. This produces a new corpse, whom nobody had to carryâhe walked to the Totenkammer on his own two feet. The SS is always angry because bodies come in with their gold teeth missing. Some prisoners sell theirs for a piece of bread. What's more, the block senior and the kapos will look inside your mouth, hoping to see something shiny down there. Some pull out your gold teeth without killing you, others kill you first. I'm lucky! I was always too poor to buy gold teeth.
I'll go crazy if I have to keep carrying corpses. I'm ready to try the worst outside kommandosâthe ones the
old-timers tell us to avoid because their kapos are ferocious killers. On the third day, I try a digging kommando. We're removing small hillocks in order to flatten a field where they intend to build a factory or something. The old-timers were rightâthe kapo and his assistants the
Vorarbeiter
(foremen) are murderers. They kill fifteen prisoners out of two hundred. They order us to bring back the bodies, so I end up with two legs on my shoulders and a head bumping against my calves, like yesterday.
I change to another kommando. I work in a swamp, which we have to fill up with stones and garbage. Something very unusual happens here. Just as a kapo is going to beat a tall newcomer with his club, the guy grabs the club and hits the kapo. This is a terrible scandal, because the kapo is a German criminal. Nobody is supposed to pull one hair off a German's head! All the kapos and foremen come at once to their colleague's rescue, but the tall prisoner is fighting like a devil. He is a young, strong athlete, used to fighting and winning.