WHEN SALOMON ANKER came home from the camp, people wouldn’t let him pass. They crowded around him in a circle. Salomon leaned against the wall and told them what went on behind the barbed wire. He was often invited to people’s homes; he sat in the kitchen or the sitting room surrounded by faces open with curiosity, drank milk diluted with water and told his stories again. Just like a merchant returning from distant parts.
At the beginning people listened, full of horror and shame that a man was able to endure so much. Later with profound understanding and knowledge. It was enough to say: “Hermann Goeth1,” and there was no need to add: “camp commander at Kamienna3,” because people knew from the papers about what he’d done and his death by hanging. Until one day they stopped listening altogether. They buried their dead and returned to their spinning-wheels. Once again, life turned out to be stronger than memory. Photos in stripes were no longer valued. On the bank of the thundering elements stood Salomon—a useless old Jew kept by his daughter Fryda.
Fryda patched up worn out shirts and turned ragged collars. It was thanks to those collars that I met Salomon. I choose one of his stories. It’s the story about Ró
a. It isn’t typical or even the most horrifying. I can’t explain why I chose it above the others.
“She had hair like gold. And generally, she was gorgeous. She didn’t look Jewish at all. She had Aryan papers, but she was caught by some accident. I don’t know whether she knew Edek Mendelewicz before that. Maybe they met in the camp.
At first both of them got light work, cutting wood in the forest. You could tell the ones who worked in the forest from the ones in the workshops right away. The ones from the forest looked better, and it’s not true that the fleas bit them more. Fleas are equitable, they bite everybody the same. Everyone envied the forest workers.
Every couple of weeks the Germans performed a selection. They picked out the ones in the worst shape from the workshops and transported them to Kr
gielna. That was a place in the forest enclosed by a fence made of mats and paper. On three sides there were signs reading: “Das Betreten dieses Platzes ist unter Todesstrafe untersagt2.” You heard shots coming from there.
It seemed for the time being that neither Róa nor Mendelewicz would ever go there. Until once at roll-call von Hecht was doing the review. We all know what that meant: he was selecting people for Werk C, where the worst work was with grenades, picric acid, and TNT. Hecht had his eye on Róa from the start and so he picked her, not Mendelewicz who was big and strong.
Werk C was deep into the forest and separated from the rest. The workers there had a separate barracks.
Three weeks later Róa came to see Mendelewicz. It’s hard even to say it was Róa. This was an emaciated creature in a paper cape tied up with wire. She was yellow, like all the picric workers, and her hair was red—not ruddy, but red as poppies. Her nails were broken and her arms were covered with sores. And all that wasn’t even so bad—the worst was the smell. A terrible acridity came off her. It was winter so she sat down by the stove. Within a minute it had become unbearable. The bitter smell, so bitter, the whole air smelled foul. We made a sign to Mendelewicz to get her out of there. Somebody gave her a few potato peelings for on the way.
“You, Mendelewicz,” said the Stubeältester when he came back—“don’t bring your canary in here anymore. She’s not fit for human company. Picrics live on their own. That’s the law.”
Voices went up to say that even the bread turned bitter after Róa had been there, it would have to be thrown out.
Mendelewicz didn’t say anything, didn’t defend her. Three weeks later (we were free every three weeks) he went to see her himself. He came back very quickly. He vomited all night.
That was already near the end, but even so the Germans were making various improvements. There was no shooting at Krgielna anymore, and on the camp road there was now a kind of transport: a small car with four SS officers, a truck with 30 guards, sitting as if cut from cardboard, and bringing up the rear, the strangest vehicle. It looked like a circus or gypsy wagon, only much bigger, with a car’s bonnet stuck to the front. There was a tiny barred window high up and a chimney on the roof, or really just a big pipe like the one off a cast-iron stove. You heard cries coming from that wagon. The whole transport went to Krgielna. At night a huge red-blue flame flared up there.
You can’t really say that Mendelewicz helped Róa. He split every ration he got in two and hid it in a bag. But he didn’t go to her himself, he sent someone else. It always cost him something but he could afford it. Because he was stronger than the others he made extra money doing various jobs.
When Róa fell ill with typhus no one wanted to go to her. Typhus was more terrifying than Goeth, von Hecht and all the guards put together. Then I said I’d go. I felt sorry for Róa, and I also needed that bread that Mendelewicz paid for carrying her food. I was sick with hunger and I’d already sold everything I had, down to my last tooth.
She was lying in the hospital barracks on a bare plank-bed, covered with paper. They didn’t give picric workers blankets because they stained them yellow. She hadn’t been to work in two weeks and she still smelled that way. She had a high fever but she was conscious.
Tell me, Salomon, you’re such a good man—will I get rid of this hair, and will my skin be white again, when we are liberated?
I got angry. She looked half dead and she was worried about things like that. I left her the bread and a kind word. Before I’d closed the hospital barracks door the woman lying next to her had stolen the bread.
When one of the sick died they threw the body in a container between the barracks and the latrine. That’s where they threw Róa. Every couple of days the bodies were loaded on a car. That was an extra job. Whoever wanted to could do it and you got a crust of bread for it. Mendelewicz made extra money that way.
After Róa died we thought he wouldn’t do that work anymore. But he did. Maybe he wanted to see her for the last time, or put her on the car himself. I don’t know. I only know he didn’t have to share with anyone the bread crust he got for it and for the first time he ate it all.