The summer of 1944 was the worst of times. The death factory in Auschwitz was working at a frantic pace. Day and night trainloads of people were unloaded on the ramps. Most of them went directly to the gas chambers.
The infirmary was located near the ramp, and though we were not allowed to leave the block, we managed, through the crack of the open gate, to see what was going on. On one occasion a freight train with a long line of locked cars arrived at the ramp. The SS men and the prisoners who made up the sonderkomando were already waiting at the track. The train stopped and the doors opened with a loud roar. A horde of weary, exhausted souls carrying valises, rucksacks, and an assortment of packages spilled out onto the tracks. Now the sonderkomando sprang into action. They threw themselves on the valises, rucksacks, and packages, tearing them out of the tightly clenched fists of the new arrivals and tossing them to the side. Some people tried to protect their possessions. They explained to the SS men that the things in the valises were necessities. How would they be able to live without them? One SS man listened to their protestations, standing there with his legs spread wide. Then he uttered a shout and cracked his whip, thus reminding the new arrivals of their situation. Their complexions turned gray. They hunched their shoulders and obediently took their places in the death line.
Women and children also got off the train. Often the little girls would be holding dolls in their arms, while the little boys in short pants were jumping and running after a ball. The children did not seem to be as tired as the adults. They looked around curiously, satisfied at finally having left the dark wagons. The mothers and children were put in one line that passed slowly in review before the searching eyes of Mengele.
When I looked at those women and children brought here from such great distances for this torturous death, I always reminded myself of a colony in the Kingdom in Pustyni i Puszczy (The Desert and the Wilderness) by Henryk Sienkiewicz. When two warring African tribes were engaged in a life and death struggle, the women and children were placed in a sheltered colony where they were completely safe and none of the combatants was permitted to enter. The women and children of both tribes were beyond the hate of the opposing tribes. Here in Auschwitz the German thugs murdered women and children first. The imagination can conceive no penance that would atone for the bestial crimes that the Fascists perpetrated on innocent individuals. What might the Fascists answer if Humanity should ask: “Why did you throw living Jewish children from Hungary into the flames? Why, on a single October night, did you send all the gypsies to the ovens? Why did you condemn the Polish children from Zamosc to freeze to death?”