I ran into Eva the day after the selection. I was very surprised that she would want to come to the zugangen block, where grief reigned among those of us who were still alive. Since she was a clerk in the neighboring block, she belonged to the elite of the camp. That is why the chain of hands opened before her during the selection. Thanks to her position, she was allowed to move freely in the vicinity of the bath house.
I looked at that sweet, likable young face, which to me appeared to be almost not of this earth. Auschwitz predisposed you to mystical comparisons. To me she was an angel who had snatched me from a terrible death. I just stood there speechless, listening to what she was telling me about herself. She had been brought to Auschwitz in 1942 in a transport of Jews from Radom. She was sixteen years old at the time. Her parents, who had come with her, were sent to the gas immediately. She was left alone on the block of the zugangen. Her parents had been teachers of German in the local gimnasium, and as a result she spoke German fluently. The blokowa, who took notice of her, recommended her to the secretariat as a läufer. A läufer was not a simple courier. The area of the camp extended for several kilometers, and the camp was divided into many areas separated by gates. All of the administrative reports and orders were carried from the main administrative office to the blocks by the lauferki. Usually they were young, beautiful girls, uniformly dressed in sports outfits with white collars, and with the word “lauferka” on the sleeve. As carriers of both good and bad news, they were able to move through the camp freely and were treated respectfully. The camp underground tried to enlist these girls in the organization because they were an excellent source of information on what the Germans were planning to do in the camp. The lauferki could also serve as a communications link among various groups in the organization without being noticed. Thanks to the lauferki it was possible to shelter comrades who were ailing because one of the läufefs duties was to lead prisoners to their assigned komandos.
At first Eva knew nothing about the existence of a resistance movement in the camp, so, like Mercury, she carried the messages of the gods to the blokowe. She had it made. She lived in a separate room and had plenty of food. In an instant she had been elevated to a place among the camp elite.
One July day, as she was performing her usual chores, carrying a report to the camp Gestapo, she saw a friend from Radom; he was badly beaten and covered with blood. He was surprised to see her but quickly lowered his eyes, not letting on that he knew her. But in that instant when their eyes met, she recognized his look of contempt. He despised her for having sold herself to the Germans. The Gestapo was torturing the young man, trying to force him to inform on his comrades in the resistance. Every morning when she came to the Gestapo she saw the young boy, and every day she saw the contempt in his look and the pain in his body.
“I wanted to help him,” Eva told me, “but I didn’t know how. I started looking for people who could give me advice. I knew nothing about the resistance, but I had already made the acquaintance of many important women, and I decided to talk to them. First of all, I wanted them to tell me whether I should give up my job as a läufer. The contempt in the young man’s look gave me no peace. As it turned out, the resistance was also trying to make contact with me. I kept my job as a läufer, carrying messages for my friends. A few weeks after I had started carrying messages for the resistance, my friend was shot. We couldn’t help him. I kept my job as a läufer for a whole year, but finally I got fed up with it. I felt that if I were to stay among the Germans any longer I would wind up doing something foolish. Now I am just a clerk on the block. The blokowa is a Jew from Slovakia, a coarse woman. But I still have some clout among the sztubowe because of my previous job. That’s why I was able to lead you around the bath house. The morning of the selection Sonia sent me a message to meet her at the gate, because she had something very important to tell me. During selection the gates dividing one field from another are closed. Sonia is on field ‘B’ and we are on field ‘A.’ I met Sonia at the gate and she told me to find you and keep you from going to the selection. I succeeded, and I am very pleased that I did.”
For me Eva has always remained a being not of this world. Even after the war, when she found me and came to Lublin to see me, I could not free myself of that first impression. I always envisioned her as she looked that day when she led me through the narrow path to the back of the bath house.
Three days after the selection the oberkapo, Bubi, came into our block. That was the first time I saw her. All of the women in Auschwitz were afraid of her. She wore men’s clothing: pants and a sweater. Her hair was cut short. She had a deep voice and quick, nervous movements. Next to her number she wore a black triangle, which indicated that she was a criminal prisoner. Bubi was oberkapo of field “A,” and she ruled with an iron fist. Early in the morning she came to pick her victims whose names had been written down on a list. With her came the blokowa of Block 25, known as the block of death. The women condemned to the gas were interned there until there were enough of them so that it would “pay” to run the gas. This blokowa of the death block was called the “Beautiful Cyla.” She was about eighteen years old, the youngest of the Slovak Jews, and looked like an angel. But every prisoner feared her.
We all crouched in our bunks, frightened, helpless in the face of the mass murder that was to take place before our very eyes. No one cried out, nobody wept. When they entered our block a deathly silence descended over all: Bubi in her high boots, whip in hand; Cyla, the blokowa; and all the sztubowe. The gate that led into the block was locked. A table at which the clerk and the blokowa sat was set in the middle of the block. Bubi and Cyla stood off to the side. “Achtung,” barked the blokowa. We jumped out of our bunks and stood at attention. Bubi surveyed the entire block with a slow eye. She looked everyone over carefully.
“Now,” said the blokowa in German, “you will form a line and pull up your left sleeve so that your number shows. Slowly, one by one, you will walk around the table and show your number.”
Without a word of protest we lined up and moved in the direction of the table. Today, as I think of it all, I understand the questions sometimes put to me: “Why did the Jews go so quietly? Why did they let themselves be taken to the gas chambers without protest?” There were about five hundred women on the block whose numbers appeared on the death list. Why didn’t they pounce on Bubi, Cyla, the blokowa, and the rest of the attendants to send their tormentors to death before they themselves died? What did they have to lose? In Auschwitz I was witness to many such quiet expeditions to the gas chambers. At the time I always asked those painful questions of myself: Why are they silent? Why don’t they cry out? We had already discussed this in Auschwitz, and for those of us who went through that Hell, the affair was completely clear. When the Jews marched off to the gas after they had arrived at Auschwitz, they simply did not know where they were going, and when we told them they did not believe us.
In the summer of 1944, when massive transports of Jews arrived from all over Europe, they went straight to the gas chambers. The resistance delegated a comrade to the komando working on the ramp who took packages from the arriving Jews. A young, energetic Austrian was assigned to work there; he was to tell the unsuspecting victims where they were headed. They absolutely refused to believe him. Some of them went to the SS men who were stationed at the unloading of the wagons and asked: “Is it true that we are going to the showers to be gassed?”
That is how it was with new arrivals who still felt like human beings with human rights. Those who had already gone through a few weeks of school in beatings, hunger, maltreatment, and the loss of feeling and humanity were incapable of resisting. A wild beast, before pouncing on his victim, will roar so piercingly that the victim will become paralyzed with fright and will be incapable of running away. The victim just crouches and waits for the end. That is how it was with the five hundred women on the death list. After a few weeks on the block of the zugangen, the daily round of abuse, tattered clothes, of being treated as if we were rags, not women, then the selections—all of that was the roar that robbed us of any human reaction to the injustice of death. We stood in line, hunched over, waiting for the beast to tear us apart.
The impetus for every human act is survival. No matter how miniscule it may be, in the mind of every human being this faint hope grows into a command: Try, and perhaps you will succeed. In the camp, when your number was already inscribed in the book of death and there was no longer the slightest possibility of survival, the will was paralyzed.
Bubi called out the numbers that appeared before her, and the clerk checked to make sure the number was not on the list. Those whose numbers were on the list were ordered to stand on the side near Cyla. A young woman, not very tall, tried to hide among the bunks. She hid like a hare running from the hounds. The sztubowe pounced on her. Bubi measured out a few blows to her head, and from that point on everything proceeded in perfect order.
Madam Hela did not give up the idea of persuading the judges who sat at the table that her number had gotten onto the list by mistake, that she was young, healthy, and beautiful. When she got close to the table she quickly undressed and stood naked in front of Bubi. She kneeled in front of her and begged for mercy. I turned to stone. I felt that something terrible was going to happen. Bubi did not hit her. She just looked at her for a long time without saying anything. Finally, she told her to stand aside. She would not even let her get dressed.
Order was interrupted just once more. A young girl whose mother was assigned to the gas did not want to be separated from her. She wanted to die with her mother. They tore her from her mother by force.
When the congregation was complete, Cyla lined the women up in ranks of five. Then Bubi put the naked, beautiful Hela at the head of the column. They walked out into the frost and the snow with Hela in the lead.
Just think of it. So many women were sent to their deaths without the help of one SS man. The Germans managed to do their dirty work with the hands of the prisoners.