I had been in the infirmary for three days. The day after “the chosen” were taken off to the death block, the schreiberka came to see me. She told me to get ready, that she would take me to the infirmary, and that I would be admitted as a hospital patient. “I am not sick,” I protested. I was terribly afraid of the hospital. During the selection I had seen what was done to the sick and the weak in Auschwitz.
“I am not asking you whether you want to or not,” she answered. “I have an order from Orli, the lagerälteste of the area. So don’t talk, just get ready.”
When Masha was here she mentioned to me that Orli was a German Communist. Since Hitler had come to power in 1933 she had been in concentration camps. Now, in Auschwitz, she was administrator of the whole area. She had a great deal of power and could use it to help comrades. If Orli told them to bring me, nothing bad would happen to me. Maybe this was the help from my friends that I had been waiting for.
Right after breakfast, which I now received regularly, I went to the clinic along with the sick women who had been chosen by the sztubowe from among those who had been groaning with pain. The area was adjacent to field “A.” All we had to do to get there was to go through the gate. The area was no different from the rest of the camp: the same barracks and the same barren surroundings without a single tree. Nothing but barracks and dirt and trampled snow. The first barracks on the corner was the infirmary. Many women who had been brought from the other blocks were already waiting here. In the area there were blocks and infirmaries, both Aryan and Jewish. I was taken to a Jewish infirmary. We waited outside, frozen and hunched over with the cold. Although they were terribly frightened, these women had decided to report sick. They could barely stand on their feet. Many of them were suffering from dysentery. It was a common camp sickness. The body could not hold a crumb of food and grew progressively weaker. These women were horribly emaciated, with green faces, giving off rank odors. Some of the women had excruciatingly painful sores on their breasts, but they did not want to stay in the hospital and only asked to have the sores dressed. They were afraid of the selections that took place frequently on the Jewish blocks.
After we had waited for a few minutes, the clerk took us into the infirmary. Along the walls were closets stocked with bandages. There was a large table on which the sick were examined and where wounds were dressed. A smaller table stood in the middle of the room. On it was a file of registration cards. Behind the table sat a young girl who was apparently a clerk. We stood in line. The entering patients went up to the clerk and gave her their names and numbers. The clerk searched for the name in the box that was in front of her. If she did not find it, she made out a sick card. With this card you went to the table where the doctors and nurses were at work.
I stood in line next to women who could hardly stand on their feet. I received a card and went to the doctor, though I did not know what to tell her. The doctor was small, young, and unusually beautiful. She was a Czech Jew. Before I could get close to her, she nodded in my direction to calm me down. As I waited my turn in this cold, terrible, brutal world, my heart was singing a happy song about brotherhood and friendship.
Marusia—that was the nurse’s name—was also Czech. When she saw my card, she gave me a warm look, and a sunny smile lit up her face. “Nazdar” (“Good luck”), she whispered softly. She shoved me aside and told me to wait patiently.
Marusia dressed the oozing, pussy sores skillfully. She lanced abscesses that formed under the arms. Everything took place in silence, without anaesthesia and without groans. The only arguments that took place occurred when it was recommended that a patient go to the hospital. The old prisoners, who knew what it meant, did not want to go to the hospital. The new ones asked to stay in the area “because they were too sick to work.” These women had to be advised that it was a mistake to remain here, and when that did not help, they had to be chased with a shout. After everyone had been examined at the infirmary, about twenty of the most seriously ill were directed to different hospital blocks. The schreiberka lined them up in pairs. Then she took the sick cards on which the diagnoses were recorded, as well as the block numbers to which the patients were assigned. I was the only one left in the infirmary.
Now both of them greeted me—Marusia, the nurse, and Mancy, the doctor. “We are Czech Communists. We know all about you. You will work with us in the infirmary as a clerk. Unfortunately, there is no vacancy right now, so we are admitting you as a patient on the hospital block. You will only sleep on the block. Early in the morning, before roll call, you will come here to us and will work with us.” Marusia spoke very fast and with a smile. It was obvious that she was trying to convince herself that the matter was well taken care of, and that everything would come out well. Mancy was quiet. “You know, a lot of our friends work in this area and on the blocks. Masha probably will come soon, and she will explain everything.”
The area was seeded with members of the anti-Fascist organizations. Many of the blokowe, schreiberki, doctors, and nurses were our friends. This had been accomplished by Orli, director of the whole area. She had a decisive voice in the appointment of functionaries and had to make appointments within reason. She could not remove those who had squeezed into the area via other channels. In this area, the functionaries were safer than they were anywhere else in the camp.
Officially, I was supposed to be sick. According to my sick card I belonged in the hospital, but in actuality I was supposed to work in the infirmary. Mancy tried to ease my anxieties by telling me that there are many functionaries on the block who, like me, were posing as patients. They felt safe because, on the block, selections were made only during the daytime hours, and at that time the functionaries were not among the sick.
Up to this point, there were five women working in the infirmary: two clerks, one nurse, one doctor, and one cleaning lady. I was designated as a third clerk. The important thing was that I should be someplace. Soon after I got there I met the girls I would be working with. Both of them were Slovak Jews. They were very religious and constantly had prayer books in their hands. Rachel, the older one, was the director of the Jewish Orthodox Slovak organization. Here in the camp she was able to create a strong group whose members carried out all of the religious commandments. The second clerk, Ada, was very young, and she obeyed her elder’s orders scrupulously.
As soon as I got to know them, their fanaticism irritated me. Despite the reality that surrounded them, they continued to believe in the glory of the Chosen People. Here in Auschwitz, in the face of the unavenged murder of the whole Jewish people, in the light of the bestiality toward the elderly, women, and children, they continued to believe in God’s special affection for the Jews. It was difficult for me to understand how they could maintain this belief in the face of the facts. Nevertheless, believe they did and remained faithful to their God.
The cleaning chores were handled by a Slovak girl named Magda. When I met her in February 1944, she was eighteen years old, but she had been in Auschwitz since 1941. She had the face of a madonna, with beautiful light hair and turquoise eyes. The camp degraded most women, but somehow it ennobled her. She was wonderful—very brave and also a happy girl. Later she became my camp daughter. Together we lived through many good and bad moments in Auschwitz, and for a short time in Ravens-brück.
The reception of the sick lasted until lunch time. After lunch Magda started working. She started by washing the tiles. Actually, this was a job that everybody participated in. While doing this, we joked around, sang, told stories in Czech, Slovak, and Polish—languages that all of us understood. At first I did not participate in the jokes and singing. I had not yet adjusted to the terror in the camp. The suffering and dying of those others whom I ran into at every step still did not just roll off my back. I had not yet cast off the thin skin of the zugang. This came later. Unless you sloughed off that skin you could not survive in Auschwitz.
We ate our lunch in a small room in the infirmary. The room was furnished with triple-decker beds, a few chairs, and a closet. Across from the door hung a mirror. For the first time since coming to Auschwitz, I had an opportunity to look at myself. I looked terrible. I did not resemble myself. I was sure that there was somebody else standing behind me and that the mirror was reflecting her face.
In the evening I went to the hospital ward where my sick card was located. I had to sleep there. It was after supper, and the block was very quiet, which bothered me. On both sides of the room there were triple-decker beds, and on every bed there were two sick women. My bed was at the end of the block. It was also a triple-decker. Two decks were taken by nachtwache. I took the third. Not far from my bed was a big stove that extended for the whole block. Two young Jewish girls from Poland had kindled a fire in the oven that first night and were cooking dinner in a pot. Through the whole block you could smell the aroma of potato soup and fried onions. They did not pay much attention to the sick. They opened the oven door and lazily warmed themselves.
Suddenly, with fright, I saw a few huge rats coming close to the stove. They had yellow fur and long tails. I let out a terrible shriek. The rats were unimpressed. They behaved like domestic cats. “You’ll get used to it,” said one of the girls. That night I dreamed that yellow rats were chewing on my throat.