CHAPTER 15

The Operating Room

I was carried into the operating room and my bloody jacket, pants, and boots were removed. I was placed on an operating table, and someone put a mask on my face and administered ether. When I awoke, I found myself in a bed with the taste of anaesthetic in my mouth. My head was bandaged, and I was groggy and weak. I was surprised that I was still alive after the traumatic experience of the previous day. Looking at my surroundings, I saw patients who were sickly and skeletal. Instinct told me that I needed to leave this place as soon as possible. Although I was dizzy and weak, I managed to get out of bed on my own. I was determined to walk around the ward by holding on to the bed frames. Eventually, I had to lie back down to gain strength.

A photo of Dr. Tadeusz Orzeszko, taken on his incarceration at Auschwitz I, July 29, 1943.

There were two doctors in charge of this ward: Dr. Jakob Gordon, a Polish Jew, and a French Jew named Dr. Samuel Steinberg. At mid-morning, the chief surgeon, a Polish political prisoner named Dr. Tadeusz Orzeszko, came into the room to check on the patients who were recovering from operations. When it was my turn to be examined, Dr. Gordon removed the paper bandages and the chief surgeon inspected the wound on the back of my head. Satisfied, Dr. Orzeszko instructed Dr. Gordon to put on new bandages.

To my surprise, I found my boots placed carefully under my bed. But I wore a straggly surgical gown and had no other clothes. When I asked Dr. Gordon if he could get me some coverings, he obliged by giving me a pair of white cotton pants and a white shirt. These were the clothes worn by the doctors under their white coats. I felt clean and presentable for the first time in months. The daily rations were the same, but I was given a watery Cream of Wheat–type cereal, which was reserved for hospital patients. When this cereal got cold, it became rubbery and I could hardly swallow it.

All patients still in the ward after three days were deemed unfit for work and taken to the gas chambers. On the morning of my third day in the ward, the SS sergeant in charge of barrack 21 arrived with stretcher-bearers and began to collect the tags of the patients to be removed. As each patient was laid on the stretcher, his identity card was placed beside him. When my turn came, I feared I was in great danger. The stretcher-bearers carried us down the stairs to the main hallway; from there, we were to be taken out the door and loaded onto waiting trucks.

The chief surgeon, Dr. Orzeszko, was standing in the main hallway when we appeared. He was a tall, well-muscled man, with short blond hair and steel-blue eyes. He had an aura of calm confidence about him. When he saw me, he stopped the stretcher-bearers, helped me get up, and took my identification tag. He then led me to the prep room of the surgery, where he gave me a lab coat and told me that I would now do the cleaning and other duties required for the efficient running of the operating theatre.

Prior to my recruitment, this job was filled by a young Polish medical student who was serving a one-year sentence as a political prisoner. He was due to be released in about three days, and I would be his replacement. The student trained me during his remaining days on the job, and I keenly observed him and learned the importance of running the unit smoothly and efficiently. There was a long list of things to do. I had confidence in my cleaning abilities because of my apprentice work with the furrier, but it was intimidating to see medical instruments and other equipment that I had no idea how to use. I was determined to succeed, however, and I knew my life depended on my performance.

The prep room had two sinks with hot and cold water where the surgeons washed before surgery. There was a huge autoclave for sterilizing sheets, gowns, masks, gloves, and other items, and a sterilizer for instruments with several trays and a timer that had to be set. I had to learn these and many other duties. The shelves in the credenzas were neatly laid out with instruments such as clamps, scalpels, hammers, saws, chisels, scissors of all shapes and sizes, syringes, and needles. There were two worktables to prepare items and compounds before surgeries. The storage cabinets were filled with supplies such as paper bandages, cotton balls, gypsum for casts, cleaning supplies, disinfectants, brooms and mops, buckets, and other odds and ends. The surgery itself had a basic operating table with an overhead light, several portable floodlights, and a credenza in which Novocain and ether were stored. We did not have blood plasma or intravenous therapy.

At first, I was not comfortable watching the surgeons perform,particularly when I saw them make the opening incision. But I quickly became used to the sight of blood and the gore of the operating room. When the surgeons finished their job, they came out through the swinging door into the prep room and removed their gowns and gloves. Two orderlies would arrive, put the patient on a gurney, and take him to the upstairs ward. It was my job to immediately mop the floor and clean and disinfect the operating table. I had to be quick about it. Within thirty minutes, another patient would be laid out on the table and made ready for his operation. I had all the responsibility for the efficient upkeep of these two rooms so that the doctors could continue to perform their tasks.

Every night, patients awaiting surgery the next day had to receive enemas. My duty was to administer the enema and help the patients evacuate their bowels. I did not like this task in the beginning, but it became routine and necessary. If the patient didn’t have an enema, he could soil the operating table and the post-surgery cleanup would be twice as difficult.

Day after day, new patients arrived at barrack 21. They were skeletal, weak, and sickly, and near the end of their struggles. They also knew that unless they could walk out of that ward on their own two feet, their next stop was the gas chamber. So every patient faced a bleak dilemma. Many had severe hernias, phlegmon (flesh-eating disease), broken limbs, burst appendices, or severe injuries from bullets that tore the flesh and destroyed bones. Watching them stoically accept their fate inside the twisted logic of the concentration camp made me realize how brave they were.

The surgeons at barrack 21 did their very best under impossible conditions. The surgery ward was, in many respects, a ruse to show how “well” the Nazis looked after their inmates. These patients were destined for annihilation, because in most cases they were beyond help. But the surgeons still took their job seriously and did the best they could for their patients. The doctors were themselves prisoners, and they had to dance to the tune of the SS officers in charge of the camp. My job, in the scheme of things, was simply to make sure that the operating room was shiny and clean at all times.

My workday started at 7 a.m. and usually lasted for twelve hours. My system was strict and precise. I started my day by sprinkling talcum powder on the floor of the prep room and the surgery, and then standing on two rags and using my feet in a polishing motion until the linoleum shone. I picked up the freshly washed linens, gowns, and masks from the laundry barracks and packed them neatly into three perforated drums. Next, I loaded the drums into the autoclave, closed and bolted the lid, and turned on the high-pressure steam so that the linens were sterilized. Finally, I prepared the instruments for that day’s operations. When the surgeons arrived at 10 a.m., I had the water boiled for their tea and I took a fifteen-minute break before the first operation began. The patients were lined up on a bench in the hallway, and I called their numbers in the order that was given to me. While the surgeons were washing up, I helped the patient onto the table and covered him with a sheet, and then I went to the prep room to help the surgeons tie their gowns and masks and to hold the latex gloves so they could put their hands into them. Patients who were being operated on from the waist down were given a spinal needle with Novocain by the doctors. Sometimes I had to administer ether to those who were being operated on above the waist, and I instructed them to count backwards from thirty to one as the ether took effect. My final task was to bring the instruments to the operating table and lay them out before the assistant surgeon.

After the last operation of the day, the surgeons left and I was charged with putting the rooms in order again for the next day. I realized quite early on that I had to have an efficient system so that no time would be wasted and the work would flow easily. At the end of the day, my job involved gathering all the bloody sheets, gowns, towels, and masks and delivering them to the laundry barracks next door for cleaning. This laundry was open twenty-four hours a day, disinfecting clothing for thousands of inmates. I got to know the Kapo in charge, and one day I dared to ask him for a clean jacket and pants. He took me to a pile of clothes and let me pick garments that fit me better than what I had on. I also managed to get clean material for dusting and cleaning the operating theatre and prep room, and some material to wrap around my feet for socks. He was an important contact. I was not in the upper strata of the camp hierarchy, but working in the hospital did give me some small privileges. In the camp, we used the word organizuj to mean ways to improve our lot or survive the debilitating hunger. If you found an extra resource that could be bartered for shoes, food, or clothing, it could make the difference between life and death.

My next task after the laundry was to sweep and mop the operating room floors—and the walls, if necessary. Then I had to wash all the instruments, especially the clamps, which had to be brushed carefully to eliminate any tissue on them; the scissors, syringes, scalpels, and needles I kept separately to avoid cuts to my fingers. When they were clean, I laid them out to dry; all the moisture had to be removed before they were placed into the credenzas in an organized fashion. The scalpels also had to be sharpened on a fine stone and made ready for use.

When the prep room and operating room were clean and ready for the next day, I put out the lights and went upstairs to my bunk in a room I shared with the doctors and the orderlies. I was dead tired at the end of every day, but it always took me a while to fall asleep. I realized how lucky I was to be working in barrack 21 in spite of my devastating head injury, which had actually turned out to be my lucky break.