Barrack 26
We arrived in front of the enclosure to which we had been assigned. The glaring lamps on the barbed wire which encircled the camp indicated that the wires were charged with high-tension current.
The great padlock, which secured the gates, was opened. We shuffled inside. When the last deportees had crossed the threshold the squeaking barrier was closed.
All our past lives remained on the other side of that portal. Hereafter, we would be no more than slaves, always hungry and cold, at the mercy of the guards, and without hope. Tears were in every eye as we followed our guide to our new home, “Barrack 26.”
Because both Birkenau and Auschwitz are infamous names and a blot on the history of mankind, it is necessary to explain how they differed. The railroad separated one from the other. When the selectors told off the deportees on the station platform “Right!” or “Left!” they were sending them to either Birkenau or Auschwitz. Auschwitz was a slave camp. Hard as life was at Auschwitz, it was better than Birkenau. For the latter was definitely an extermination camp, and as such was never mentioned in the reports. It was part of the colossal guilt of the German rulers and was rarely referred to, nor was its existence ever admitted until the troops of the liberating Allies exposed the secret to the world.
At Auschwitz many war factories were in operation, such as the D.A.W. (Deutsches-Aufrustungswerk), Siemens, and Krupp. All were devoted to the production of armaments. The prisoners detailed to work there were highly privileged. But even those who did not work productively were more fortunate than the prisoners in Birkenau. The latter were merely awaiting their turn to be gassed and cremated. The unpleasant jobs of handling the soon-to-be corpses, and later the ashes, were relegated to groups called “kommandos.” The sole task of the Birkenau personnel was to camouflage the real reason for the camp: extermination. When the internees in Auschwitz, or in other camps in the area, were no longer judged useful, they were dispatched to Birkenau to die in the ovens. It was as simple and cold-blooded as that.
These details I discovered little by little as the weeks went by. During the first days in the camp we still believed that we would be put to work. For did we not see signs proclaiming Arbeit macht frei (Work is freedom)? It was more of the German bear-baiting of their helpless victims. Always they toyed with us, as a cat does with a mouse it surely will kill.
“Barrack 26” was a vast hangar of rough boards which had been thrown together as a stable. On the door a metal plaque gave the number of horses the building would shelter. “Mangy animals are to be separated immediately,” it read. How fortunate the horses had been! Nobody ever bothered to take any precautions on behalf of the human beings who were kept there.
The interior was divided into two parts by a large brick stove which was about four feet high. On either side of the stove stood three tiers of bunks.
To be more exact, here stood wooden cages which we called “koias.” In each cage, which measured twelve by five feet, seventeen to twenty persons huddled together. There was little comfort to be had in these “bunks.”
When we first arrived, the koias had nothing but bare boards. Upon these we slept when we could. A month later our masters issued blankets. For each koia two miserably filthy, odorous blankets; that is, one blanket for every ten persons.
Not all of the occupants were able to sleep at the same time, for there was an acute shortage of space. Some had to spend the entire night squatting in awkward positions. Inside a koia, the slightest movement was an extremely complicated matter which required the participation, or at least the cooperation, of all the others who lay there.
To make matters worse, the roof of the barrack was in deplorable repair. When it rained, the water leaked in and the internees on the top tiers were literally inundated. But those on the ground level were hardly better off. The ground was cemented only about the stove. There was no floor except the beaten earth, dirty and wet, which the lightest rainfall turned into a sea of mud. Besides, at the lowest level the air was absolutely suffocating.
The filth in the barrack surpassed imagination. Our principal duty was to see to its cleanliness. Any infringement of the hygienic rules was subject to severe sanctions. Yet how ridiculous to expect cleanliness in barrack huts which sheltered from 1,400 to 1,500 women, when we had no broom, no mop, no pail, not even a dust rag. We met the last problem. We decided that one woman, whose dress was particularly long, should have it cut off at the bottom. With this rag we made a feeble mop. It was about time, for the filth on the ground was contaminating the wretched air we breathed.
It was more difficult to solve the problem of dishes. The second day we received about twenty bowls—twenty bowls for 1,500 persons! Each bowl held about one and a half quarts. They also gave us a pail, and a boiler with a capacity of five quarts.
The internee who was chosen to be barrack chief, or “blocova,” immediately commandeered the boiler as a chamber pot. Her cronies quickly snatched the other bowls for the same use. What could the rest of us do? It seemed as though the Germans constantly sought to pit us against each other, to make us competitive, spiteful and hateful.
In the morning, we had to be content with rinsing the bowls as well as we could before we put in our minute rations of beet sugar or margarine. The first days our stomachs rose up at the thought of using what were actually chamber pots at night. But hunger drives, and we were so starved that we were ready to eat any food. That it had to be handled in such bowls could not be helped. During the night, many of us used the bowls secretly. We were allowed to go to the latrines only twice each day. How could we help it? No matter how great our need, if we went out in the middle of the night we risked being caught by the S.S., who had orders to shoot first and ask questions later.