For some people, Auschwitz was an ordinary term, but now the word had taken on a completely new set of meanings. An unusually interesting psychological study might result if someone could demonstrate the way in which meanings passed beyond the accepted boundaries of conventional significance. Why a psychological study? Because the new set of meanings provided the best evidence of the devastation that Auschwitz created in the psyche of every human being. No one was able to resist totally the criminal, amoral logic of everyday life in the concentration camp. To some extent all of us were drawn into a bizarre transformation of reality. We knew what those innocent words meant, such words as “gas,” “selection,” but we uttered them, nevertheless, as though there was nothing hidden behind them.
Take the word “organize.” Usually it is associated with such positive values as political, social, and cultural order and well-being. When we say of someone that he is a good organizer we usually mean that he is a constructive leader who brings sanity and tranquility to the whole community. In Auschwitz, however, “to organize” meant to improve your own situation, very often at someone else’s expense by taking advantage of that person’s ignorance or inexperience. “To organize” meant to procure for yourself, by any means, better clothing, lodging, or food. The person who knew how “to organize” slept under a silk comforter, wore silk underwear, and had not only enough bread and soup but even meat. How did she do it? I thought about it after I saw how she had prospered. When I first met her she was in tattered rags. Now she wore warm boots and an elegant sweater. She had a full belly and a smile on her face. When I asked the other prisoners about her I kept getting the same answer: “Apparently she knows how to organize.” I managed to observe the workings of this kind of “organizing” in the young lady from Cracow named Fela.
In January 1944 we were both inmates in the new arrivals block. Eighteen years old at the time, she had been sent to Auschwitz when she was caught smuggling food into the ghetto for her family. She was a tall, slim girl with very light blond hair. She was not a beauty, but she had a quality that was impossible to describe. Something forced you to look at her. She was alone, without family or friends, but in spite of that, she did not give the impression of being helpless. She looked around attentively as though looking for some way to put her past experience to use. She did not cry, and she was not dismayed by the things that were taking place around her. She analyzed the situation carefully as if she were calculating how to establish herself most comfortably. An aura of self-assurance radiated from her whole being. This self-assurance allowed her to move freely without cramping her style in any way.
Fela did not talk to anyone. She was always alone. That girl interested me very much. I tried to get closer to her but she would not even stop for me. It was only after one of the selections, when she saw that I had protectors, that she reconsidered, deciding, apparently, that my acquaintance could be useful. One evening she came to talk to me.
“Taking everything into account,” she said, “is it really that bad for everybody in Auschwitz? Blokowe, wardens, and many other people who are hangers-on are living very well. They will certainly live through Auschwitz. I am trying to figure out how to get myself into that group. I have to think of something to avoid being a victim who is always hungry and who is always being beaten by everybody. I have to find a way out, and I’m sure I will.”
The girl amazed me. She spoke about the weak, persecuted, and hungry women with such contempt. Such a lack of all scruples in a girl barely eighteen years old was something unusual.
“I have to organize something. I have to see to it,” she ended.
That was the first time I heard the term “to organize” in the new Auschwitz sense. After that talk I did not see Fela for a long time. We had been working in different areas, but one evening we met by chance. I had almost forgotten about her when I met her that evening on the hospital block. She was carrying a sack full of bread. Our chance encounter took her aback a little, but only for one short moment.
“What are you doing here” I yelled angrily. “Is this what your ‘organizing’ looks like? Is it part of your ‘organizing’ to steal bread from the sick? Get out of here quickly, before I call the head of the block!”
But Fela did not run away. She stood there, waiting for my anger to disappear.
“Now I will tell you where I got the bread,” she said after a minute. “It is a long and not so simple story. ‘You steal the bread,’ you said. I didn’t steal it, I earned it.”
There was a pause, but I did not question her. I waited for further explanation.
“There was a woman from my komando lying on this block. One evening I came to see her and brought her a cup of potato soup cooked with one measly potato. You should have seen how she ate it, and how the other women who were lying next to her begged me to cook some soup for them. The next day, after the evening assembly, I went to the back of the kitchen with my portion of bread, which I had not eaten. I was looking for the woman who was working at the potatoes, in the hope that she would trade some potatoes for my bread. I found the woman, who gave me seven potatoes and a small onion for one portion of bread. I went into the block, and in a big tin can that I had brought with me from work, I cooked a potato soup with the seven potatoes. I fried the onion in my portion of margarine and put it into the soup. The soup smelled good. It was hot and fresh. I went to the hospital and sold the soup to the sick. I got a portion of bread for a cup of soup. They couldn’t eat that dry bread, and the rats wound up taking it right from under their pillows. That very first evening I took in five portions of bread. You yourself must admit that I didn’t steal the bread but earned it. The next time I earned four portions, and today I got fourteen portions of bread for the soup.”
I stood there facing her, not knowing what to say to her or how to act toward her. It was certainly an ugly way of “earning” bread, taking it from unfortunate, very sick women, tearing the very last bite out of their mouths. But that is what they wanted. They preferred this cup of watery soup smelling of home to the portion of stale bread. To throw Fela out of the hospital would be to deprive the women of the soup for which they had been waiting all day. Nobody else would “organize” the soup.
“Ask the sick,” she said, as though reading my mind. “Ask them whether they want the soup or not. See what they say.”
I already knew for certain that I was not going to tell the head of the block and that Fela would continue to sell her soup to the sick.
“What are you doing with the bread?” I looked at the sack full of bread. “Don’t tell me that you’re going to eat fourteen portions of bread all by yourself.”
“I don’t eat it all. I exchange some of it for cigarettes. There is somebody I meet at work who gives me cigarettes for bread. You know, for cigarettes you can buy anything in the camp: clothes, good food, even good work. I have to give some cigarettes to the blokowa and, what is more important, some to the sztubowe so they won’t interfere. But there are still enough left for me. I can get good food and good clothes. I can even bring something for you. I am collecting cigarettes now because I want to get good work. I have something particular in mind.”
Fela left. That night I pondered our encounter and the moral problems that Fela had set before me. How could I evaluate her behavior? In Auschwitz she would have earned an A +. But what grade would Fela have earned if her behavior were viewed within a larger perspective?
A few weeks went by. It was lunch time when, from the main road, there came the sound of a German song pounded out to the rhythm of bootsteps. I went out in front of the infirmary. It was the marching of the komando who worked in the effektenkammer, commonly known as kanada. In kanada things brought to Auschwitz by Jews from all over Europe were sorted out. All of them thought that they were going to work, that they would work and live. People took all of their best things with them. The Germans allowed them to take only one valise and one knapsack. People packed gold and jewelry, furs and their best clothes. Now, the girls from the effektenkammer worked at unpacking the valises, sorting and shipping the goods to Germany. Only the young and pretty girls were chosen for this komando. They wore red kerchiefs on their heads and belts that were made especially to each girl’s measurements. They had it good. A fortune passed through their hands. No wonder they lived in comfort.
They paraded to lunch in fours to the accompaniment of a marching song. I looked at them from afar and thought that, if I were to see their picture in a newspaper, I would have had a hard time believing that they were prisoners in the death camp of Auschwitz. Those singing prisoners were part of the system of the death factory. Suddenly, one of the marching girls caught my eye. It was Fela. She noticed me from afar. She tore the red kerchief from her head and waved happily to me. This was the good work she was dreaming about when she had collected the bread for the cups of hot soup that reminded the dying women of the taste of home. With that bread, which she had then exchanged for cigarettes, Fela got the job in kanada. Now she no longer carried soup to the hospital block. She was too busy with other higher-paying transactions.
A few more weeks went by. One evening Fela came to the infirmary. She walked in very quietly, without her usual self-assurance. Was it possible that she was not working in kanada? She had brought me a present, a beautiful nightgown. I knew that she wanted to tell me something, but she did not know where to start. We were quiet for a long time.
“Don’t you work in kanada anymore?” I threw the first line from the shore.
She was still working there, but terrible things were happening. Even for her they were terrible.
“Imagine. I unpack a valise, and I find a dead girl in it. She must have been about two years old when she died. I was terribly disturbed. The girls told me that they often find dead children in the valises. The mothers hid the children in the hope that once they got them into the camp they and the children would remain together. Later, the valises were taken from them and brought to us, but by that time the children were no longer alive. I can’t forget about it. I can’t help thinking that all those beautiful clothes belonged to people who are no longer living. The girls say that this feeling will pass, that I will get used to things and forget about it. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to stand it there. It’s worse than the business with the soup,” she said at the end.
A few weeks went by again. Fall had arrived. A cold rain was falling outside. The mud was so thick and clinging that it was difficult to walk between the blocks. That evening, in addition to the regular staff, we had a visitor, Rwieta, a good friend of Maru-sia’s, who worked in the leichenkomando. She was waiting for the car that was to pick up the dead bodies that were heaped in a huge pile. Suddenly we heard the roar of the car, and Rwieta jumped up from her seat in order to get to the pile of corpses. The entire komando was supposed to help load the car. Rwieta did not have a chance to leave the infirmary. The door opened with a crash, and in staggered a peculiar figure covered with soot and wrapped in a blanket. Behind her appeared an SS man. “The driver of the dead,” Rwieta whispered.
“Do something with her,” he said. “She will tell you everything.”
He came in. The peculiar figure tumbled to the floor. It was Fela. Except for the blanket she had nothing on. She was naked and covered with ashes. Mancy and Marusia revived her. Later, we washed her up, dressed her, and fed her. Then Fela started her unusual story.
“Two weeks ago I fell sick with pneumonia. I was in the hospital and was recovering. The day before I was supposed to go back to kanada to work, Mengele wrote down my number for the gas. I found myself on the death ward. Yesterday the car came to take us to the crematorium. I didn’t want to die. I was looking for a way out. All of a sudden, I saw something like a chimney jutting out of one side of the car, and I got into it. ‘Maybe they won’t see me,’ I thought. Later, I figured out that the car ran not only on gasoline but also on wood.
“The car went to the crematorium. The women were chased into the gas chambers. I remained in the chimney unnoticed. The empty car returned to the garage. I was in the garage alone. Covered with soot and without any clothes, I got out of the car. That’s how I spent the night. I didn’t know what I would say when the SS man returned. In the morning he came and was terribly frightened when he saw me. He probably believed in devils and thought that I was a creature not of this earth. After I told him the whole story, he brought me a blanket and food and told me to sit there till evening, when he would be going for the dead. Then he would take me back to the women’s camp.”
The next day we did not report the death of a woman who had died that day, and Fela took her place on the register of the area.
She left Auschwitz with the next transport. I do not know whether she “organized” further. I never saw her again.