First Impressions
Not until two days after we were established in the koias did we receive our first morning meal—nothing except a cup of insipid, brownish liquid, presumptuously called “coffee.” Sometimes we were given tea. To tell the truth, there was no ascertainable difference between the two beverages. They were not sweetened, yet they were our whole meal, without even a crumb, to say nothing of a crust of bread.
At noon we had soup. It was difficult to say what ingredients went into that concoction. Under normal conditions, it would have been absolutely inedible. The odor was sickening. Often we could eat our portions only by holding our noses. But it was necessary to eat, and somehow we overcame our disgust. Each woman swallowed her share of the contents of the bowl in one long draught—of course, we had no spoons—like children swallowing a bitter medicine.
What went into the soup was undoubtedly varied according to the season. But the flavor never changed. This did not make it any less a “surprise” soup. From it we fished buttons, tufts of hair, rags, tin cans, keys, and even mice. One fine day somebody retrieved a tiny metal sewing kit, containing thread and an assortment of needles!
In the evening we received our daily bread, a ration of six and one-half ounces. The bread was black bread with an extremely high proportion of sawdust. This was painfully irritating to our gums, which had already been made sensitive by malnutrition. The total absence of toothbrushes and toothpaste, to say nothing of the communal use of dishes, would have made any treatment useless.
Aside from the daily bread ration in the evening we received a tiny bit of beet sugar jam or a spoonful of margarine. As an exceptional favor, we sometimes had a razor-thin slice of round sausage of very doubtful origin.
Both soup and coffee were fetched in tremendous fifty-quart kettles which, contents and all, must have weighed over 150 pounds. These had to be carried by two inmates. For two women to carry such a weight through rain, snow, or ice, and often in the mud, was indeed a most difficult task. Occasionally, the carriers spilled the boiling liquid on themselves and caused serious burns. Such work would have been hard for men, and these women had had no training for manual labor and were in poor physical condition. But the German administrators enjoyed such paradoxes. They frequently placed the illiterates in the office jobs and reserved the backbreaking work for the intellectuals.
Once the kettle arrived, the soup or the coffee was distributed by the “Stubendienst,” who was in charge of the service within the block. For these posts the blocova chose the largest and most brutal internees, especially those who knew how to wield a club. The Stubendiensts, dreaded dignitaries of the barrack, always had an opportunity to indulge themselves by trying out their clubs on the backs of their fellow inmates whose “conduct was not above reproach.” For, seeing the kettle, some women were never able to control themselves, and fell upon the food like animals in a death struggle.
From the kettle, the liquid was poured into the twenty bowls of each barrack. Each bowl was in turn divided among the occupants of a koia. The question of who should be first caused many fights. Finally a system was established. The one given first place took the bowl under the glaring eyes of her nineteen koia neighbors. Jealously they counted every mouthful and watched the slightest movement of her Adam’s apple. When she had swallowed her share of mouthfuls, the second-in-turn tore the bowl from her hands and ravenously drank her portion of the evil-smelling liquid.
What a painful sight! For no one succeeded in stifling her hunger. There was only one thing that discouraged me more: to see a fine, intelligent woman bend over a puddle of water and drink greedily to quench her thirst. She could not have been ignorant of the danger of drinking such impure liquid. But many of the deportees had already fallen so low that they were deaf to all entreaties. Death itself could come only as a deliverance.
* * *
Whenever I recall the first days at the camp, I still grow hot and cold with nameless terror. It was a terror that rose for no particular reason, but one that was constantly nourished by strange occurrences whose meaning I sought in vain. At night the glow of the flames from the chimneys of the mysterious “bakery” showed through the crevices in the walls. The shrieks of the sick or the wounded, crowded together in trucks bound for some unknown destination, grated on our nerves and made us even more miserable. Sometimes we heard revolver shots, for the S.S. guards used their guns freely. Above these noises came orders barked in overbearing voices. Nothing would let us forget our slavery. Could such conditions really exist in Europe in the twentieth century?
Our hearts went out to those we had been separated from. The camp administrators understood our longings. Two days after we arrived we were given postcards with permission to inform those we had left behind that we “were in good health.” We were forced to make only one slight error. Instead of indicating that the cards were sent from Birkenau, we were to date them from Waldsee. That aroused my suspicions at once and I renounced my privilege to write.
However, most of my companions used the occasion to communicate with the outside world. Some even received replies four or five weeks later. Only in August did I understand why the German authorities had encouraged this correspondence. A new train had arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and many deportees confided that the good news they had received from the camp while they were still at home had reassured them and made them neglect certain precautions that might have spared them deportation. Others stated that the cards our internees had addressed to them had given away their whereabouts to the German authorities!
So the trickery of the postcards had had a triple effect. It had deceived the families of the internees, often candidates for deportation themselves; it revealed the whereabouts of persons the Gestapo were seeking; and, thanks to the fake geographical indication, it had misled public opinion in the homeland of the internees and in foreign countries in general.
In the meantime, those who “were in good health” were penned in the “koias.” The boards were nailed together clumsily and were easily wrenched apart by an excessive pressure or weight. When the third tier collapsed, it carried the second along, and crushed about sixty women. Each accident caused many wounds and fractures. We could not take care of the injured, for we had no plaster to make casts for the broken limbs. Sometimes we had eight or ten such mishaps in a single night.
When the koias were filled to the breaking point, incidents among the internees were all too frequent. During the day, the bedlam which reigned in the barrack made us hate each other. The most peaceful souls were occasionally seized with a desire to strangle their neighbors. At night the exasperation reached its height under the effects of the physical closeness. One internee, while climbing into her third tier koia, accidentally jostled an occupant of the second; a dreadful quarrel followed. Another knocked over a shoe in which a crust of bread had been hidden; a violent argument resulted, including accusations of thievery.
During the night, in the midst of the crying and groaning, the inmates were constantly shouting:
“Take your feet out of my mouth!”
“Imbecile, you nearly put my eyes out!”
“Let go, you’re strangling me!”
“Let me through, I beg of you … I have diarrhea. I must go out.” To which the Stubendienst replied, “You are insane. Go out of the barrack during the night? You’ll be shot. Don’t even think about it.”
On one of the first nights, the blocova assembled us to witness the unseemly conduct of a deportee who was suffering from diarrhea. She had formerly been in the best society in her city. Trembling like a child caught in a naughty act, she excused herself beseechingly: “Pardon me, please. I’m terribly ashamed, but I couldn’t help myself!”
Often S.S. patrols entered the barracks in the middle of the night. They never missed a chance to punish those who were responsible for “disorder,” including those whose koias had fallen down. As for those who could not keep themselves from falling, the Germans made them use their bare hands to clean away the traces of their own blood.
* * *
When I learned that our barrack chief, a Polish woman named Irka, had been in the camp for four years, I felt reassured. The only worry this big, rude woman had was that no one should miss the roll call; the rest of her authority she delegated to assistants whom she had chosen from the most brutal inmates. But no matter, the fact that Irka had been here four years showed that it was possible to exist at Birkenau. I hoped that we would not have to wait four years to leave this inferno.
However, when I hinted at these thoughts to Irka, she made short work of my illusions.
“You think they are going to let you live?” she jeered. “You are burying your head in the sand. All of you will be killed, except for a few rare cases, who will have, perhaps, a few months. Do you have a family?”
I told her the circumstances under which I had taken my parents and my children with me, and how we had been separated from one another when we arrived at the camp.
She shrugged her shoulders with an air of indifference, and told me coldly:
“Well, I can assure you that neither your mother, your father, nor your children are in this world any more. They were liquidated and burned the same day you arrived. I lost my family the same way; and that’s the case with all the old inmates here.”
I listened, petrified.
“No, no, that’s impossible,” I mumbled. This timid protest made the block chief beside herself with impatience.
“Since you don’t believe me, look for yourself!” she cried, and dragged me to the door with an hysterical gesture. “You see those flames? That’s the crematory oven. It would go bad with you if you let on that you knew. Call it by the name we use: the bakery. Every time a new train arrives, the ovens fall behind in their work and the dead have to wait a day or two before they are burned. Perhaps it is your family that is being burned this moment!”
When she saw that I could not utter a single word in my desperation, a profound sadness came into her voice.
“First they burn those they cannot use: the children and the old people. All those whom they put on the left side of the station are sent directly to the crematory.”
I stood there as though dead. I did not cry. I was almost inert, lifeless. “Right after the arrival! When they put them aside? My Lord! I put my little boy on the left side. With my stupid love, I told the truth that he was not yet twelve years old. I wanted to spare him from the forced labor, and with this I killed him!”
I do not remember anything about the rest of that day. I lay at the bottom of my koia in a complete coma. Towards midnight someone came and shook me a long time. I opened my eyes; it was the wife of a doctor who had traveled in the same cattle car with us.
“Our husbands must not be far away,” she whispered. “This evening I caught sight of Dr X.”
How impatiently I waited for the morning! I had decided that come what may, I must see my husband. I must tell him what I had learned. Perhaps he could assure me that it was only a malicious lie.
Disobeying orders and running the risk of being caught by the S.S., I crept from the koia at dawn. At the entrance to the barrack, I spied a group of inmates in convict uniforms. As I approached I realized that they were inspectors. Brazenly, for by now I had no fear, I dared to ask them to help me. They refused to give any information. To be caught giving any direction would mean a sentence of twenty-five lashes.
I would not leave them. I pleaded. I begged. At last I succeeded in persuading them to pass the word for Dr X. When he appeared he informed me that my husband was not far away. That gave me courage again. I must see him. He must know what I know. Like one obsessed, I continued to prowl and to inquire about him. Three times I was struck by German guards, for I was in a section of the camp where I should not have been; but blows did not matter, I must find him. Finally—how long it took—I located him!
Though I had lost my sensitivity after the first experiences in the camp, I still was painfully shocked when I saw my husband again. He who had always been so fastidious and correct in his grooming—Dr Miklos Lengyel, head of a sanatorium, surgeon, splendid human being—was dirty, ragged, and emaciated. His head was shaven, and he was clad in the uniform of a criminal. He, too, stared at me with unbelieving eyes. In my tattered dress, in which I was half exposed, in my striped drawers, and with my clipped head, I must have shocked him even more badly than he did me. Certainly I did not look like the woman who had been his wife and companion in happier days.
We stood there silent, choking on our emotions. Then, in a voice that was hollow with discouragement, he spoke:
“This is where it has led us.”
He did not express himself precisely, but I understood. Twenty years of intense effort, of toil and faith in the future, to end here, a slave of the Third Reich!
We stood near the barbed wire, and dared not linger. Any moment the guards might discover us.
As briefly as I could, I told him what the blocova had told me about the deaths of our two sons and of my parents. I spoke without expression in a tone that rang strangely in my own ears. While these words were pouring from my lips the face of my younger son, Thomas, swam before me; once he had declared that nothing bad could happen to him as long as his father and mother were with him.
I said: “I cannot believe that human beings, even Germans, would be capable of killing little children. Can you believe it? If it is true, then there is no longer any reason for living. I don’t have to suffer. I have my poison. I can end it all now.”
An empty silence followed my story. He did not utter a word. His haggard features did not betray any emotion. I could guess what torments he had undergone.
“I shall not tell you that you must live on in spite of everything,” he finally murmured. “Yet perhaps you should wait.”
He had understood the depths of my despair. After another pause he added hoarsely:
“Do you want to give me half of your poison? They found mine.”
I was stooping to take the capsule from the lining of my boot, when he changed his mind.
“No, I don’t want it. You may need it all! For me it may be easier to find another way than it will be for you, a woman.”
At that moment two German guards sighted us. Savagely they pounced, and lashed us with their whips. We were chased back, each one to his own block. We did not have the time to say good-bye.
“It’s all up for them,” he cried, as the guards dragged him away. “We will see each other again soon! Courage!”
The next day the men were removed from the camp.
* * *
When I returned to my barrack, I met a companion who had also been on our train. His sixteen-year-old son was beside him.
“Have you seen my Thomas?” I begged, hoping against hope.
“Yes, I saw him at the station,” the man replied. “When he was separated from his grandmother, he was sent with two other children to the other side of the tracks, over there.”
He pointed to the right in the direction of the “bakery.”
“At Block Two,” the youth offered, “there is a bureau where the internees are registered and tattooed. Go there quickly! Tell them your son is twelve. Perhaps you can get him readmitted to the camp.” I hurried toward Block 2.
“Where are you running like that?” asked a German inmate. He was in a convict’s uniform with a green triangle on his chest. The green triangle indicated German origin. These were the common-law murderers who often held important posts in the camp.
“I am going to try to have my son transferred to a work battalion,” I told him.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know, but yesterday he was taken to the other side of the tracks.”
“Then don’t think about it any more,” he advised, with a gesture of resignation.
“I have to find him.”
I was not crying, but I felt my eyes filling with tears.
“It’s foolish,” he said. “There’s no use trying to find anyone here.”
“I want to find my son!” I repeated obstinately.
“You would do better to worry about your own troubles,” he urged. “You are still young, you can still save your own skin. If you show that you can be reasonable, you may yet receive what you need to eat and clothe yourself. That’s really all that counts.”
A woman in an S.S. uniform ran up. She carried a whip with leather thongs and iron wires. I recognized Hasse, one of the feared camp commanders.
The German criminal extended a protecting hand over me.
“Don’t hit her,” he said. “She’s a ‘greenhorn.’ She is looking for her son. They took him to the other side of the tracks yesterday.”
The criminal winked at her and the commander seemed to be appeased. He was an attractive physical specimen, while she was a fat, ugly creature. She forgot me and gazed at the criminal intently. Hunger and lust burned in that glance. One understood these things in the camp.
He was wearing comparatively clean convict garb and, most unusual, his head was not shaved. But then, he was not a political prisoner; he was a homicidal criminal.
The woman laughed and drew closer to him. I ran, for this time I had been spared a beating. My handsome male protector had obtained mercy for me from a female S.S. It was a topsy-turvy world which the Germans had created.