Chapter 5

The boxcar stank with the combined smells of manure, human excrement, vomit, urine, and the sweat of the eighty-four men packed into it. By dint of his greater energy and strength, Grossman had managed a spot on the floor near the door, so that he could press his nose against the crack and get an occasional breath of the hot September air, although more often it was a choking blast of smoke from the engine ahead. How the others managed to survive in the depths of the car he neither knew nor cared; he had long felt that any concentration camp inmate truly dedicated to survival would survive; only the weak, he was convinced, actually perished.

He swayed with the jostling of the car, scarcely aware of the pressure of knees on his back, slightly lightheaded from hunger and the heat, and thought back on the moment he had first seen his new face in a mirror. Schlossberg had unwrapped the bandages carefully and then stood back, unable to hide his pleasure in his work. The shaven-headed man in the striped prisoner’s pajama uniform that stared back at Grossman from the glass looked fearful, as if dreading the sight, and then slowly relaxed. It seemed unbelievable that he was looking at himself; Schlossberg had produced a miracle! True, he had always been fond of his old face; it had pleased women and that was important, still, his present face was not ugly except in the sense that all Jews were ugly. Schlossberg had given him a rather interesting nose, nothing at all like the huge hooked nose so characteristic of the cartoon Jew in the national press. And it was amazing the difference created by the changed eyebrow alignment, and the small insertion in his cheeks. And the scar was truly a work of genius, covering as it did most of the tiny stitches along the jaw. The only worry was his penis; he had heard that circumcision greatly reduced the pleasures of sex. He could only hope this was merely a rumor.

He shoved his head closer to the crack of the door, trying to get more air, scratching automatically at the bed sores he had developed in Ward Forty-six, and calculated they should be nearly halfway to the Natzweiler camp by now. And that was another brilliant part of his plan, the selection of Natzweiler. To begin with, it was neither a labor camp nor an extermination camp; it was a detention camp where a good deal of experimental work went on under Professor Hirt; and with his papers he was assured a safe and soft job as an orderly. For in addition to the strong letter in his folder signed with the authority of none other than the late Colonel Helmut von Schraeder, Dr. Schlossberg had spoken to Hirt on the phone, hinting at monetary reward from the prisoner Grossman, once the unpleasantness of the war was concluded.

But equally important with his treatment at the hands of Natzweiler personnel was the fact that he calculated the Allies should liberate Natzweiler in a month at the most, if not in mere weeks. And there he would be, with his new identity, an object of pity to the Allied troops, and with almost assured co-operation for a rapid visit to Switzerland and his money there. One thing was sure; now that Hitler had escaped the assassination plot, the war would go on for a long, long time. But Natzweiler—and Benjamin Grossman—would be out of it in short order.

There was a sudden jolt as the train began slowing down; then it crept awhile, its engine heaving, and finally braked to a stop. There was a rattle as the door was being opened, but after being released for a mere several inches, a bar was jammed behind it, limiting its aperture. But at least air could flow in a bit, and those inside who had been silent began to revive.

“Where are we?”

Grossman tried to get his bearings. “Frankfurt, I think.”

A head pressed into the welcome air above him.

“Yes, it’s Frankfurt. I used to live in Keisterbach; it’s a suburb. We’re in the freight yard.” The man tried to twist his head to see better. “They’re unhooking the engine.”

“What! Why, for God’s sake!”

“We’ll worry about that later,” another voice said, a deep voice, and with it a large, knotted hand gripped Ben’s shoulder tightly, dragging him away from the opening with small effort. “Here! Let someone else get some air.”

The man who had spoken, rather than taking the place he had cleared, pushed a small boy into the opening, holding him firmly by the arm to prevent his collapsing. In the shaft of early-morning daylight that slotted into the car, growing in intensity, Ben took one look at the face of the man who had pulled him from the door, and decided against objecting. This one, definitely, was a survivor! How had a man like this ever permitted the door crack to be usurped the night before when they had left Weimar? He looked at the pale face of the boy, breathing deeply, and then up to the face above him.

“Your son?”

“No. Does it make any difference?”

“Of course not.”

“That’s right,” the man said flatly. The boy seemed to be reviving; the man dragged Grossman back by the shoulder a few more inches to give the boy room to sit on the floor next to the opening. As he bent over the boy his face came close to Ben’s. It was a battered face, like that of a boxer, with fine hairline cracks and scars throughout. The sharp gray eyes studied the scar along Ben’s jaw, then moved to look Ben in the eye.

“Ward Forty-six?”

For a second a chill ran through Ben Grossman; then he realized the tone had been sympathetic, and he knew he had been foolish to fear this man.

“Yes,” he said simply. “Were you?”

There was a raucous laugh from someone in the rear.

“Brodsky? If Max Brodsky had been in Ward Forty-six, in two weeks he would have called it a health spa and charged admission!”

“That’s the reason they transferred him,” another voice said at Ben’s side. “One more month in Buchenwald and Brodsky would have owned the camp. He was getting ready to charge the SS rent when they shipped him out.”

Ben looked at the speaker. He was a small man with extraordinarily large luminous eyes that seemed to take up a major portion of his thin expressive face. His oversized pajama uniform hung on his emaciated frame in a manner almost humorous, like the garb of a clown or a stage comic. Little spikes of hair jutted from the top of his small head; he was smiling as he spoke, showing gaps where teeth had rotted out, making his clown-like appearance more evident.

“Wolf, shut up,” Brodsky said without rancor. He checked the boy carefully and then looked down at Ben Grossman. Ward Forty-six, eh? He felt a sudden kinship with this blue-eyed, scarred man. In Ward Forty-six Brodsky had lost his best friend in the camp, and he somehow felt the man beside him might possibly have been sent him as a replacement. “Are you all right? Do you want to get back to the door?”

“No, I’m all right.”

Brodsky nodded and raised his deep voice. “Let’s have someone here from the rear!” His hand rested on Grossman’s shoulder; somehow there was something companionable about the slight pressure. “All right! Let him through!”

There was a rough shifting of bodies and an old man was thrust to the front. Brodsky pulled the boy slightly to one side, still allowing him breathing space, and tucked the old man’s head near the opening. The old man gasped in thankful relief and nestled on the floor, sniffing the fresh air like a dog at a rat hole. There was a restless shifting of bodies. Someone said querulously, “How much longer are we going to be kept here?”

As if in answer to his question, there was the sound of boots crunching on cinders and two SS officers appeared in the slot of light. Brodsky held up his hand for silence but few could see him. He raised his voice in a bellow.

“Shut up! Shut up!” And when his roar was met by startled silence he added more quietly, “Let’s hear what they’re saying.”

The two officers on the track made no attempt to lower their voices, nor did they even glance at the column of anxious eyes staring at them from the narrow slit.

“… evacuated,” one was saying.

“What!”

“Natzweiler, I said. Evacuated.”

“I heard what you said! When?”

“Two days ago.” The speaker sounded bitter. “You’d think they would know these things before they send out a string of cars, wouldn’t you? You would think at least they might check. Good God! Nancy was cleared out a week ago, they knew that, didn’t they?” He stared at the line of boxcars as if they represented a personal affront to him and the papers in his hand. “Cars from six camps, some of them three days on the road, over eight hundred men, and what do we do with them?”

Inside the boxcar voices were breaking out in the darkness.

“What’s going on? Who are you listening to? What are they saying? Anything about where we’re going? Tell them to open the door more, we need air in here for God’s sake—!”

They were answered by a variety of languages from those near the slot.

“Shut up! Keep quiet!” Ears replaced eyes at the slot to catch the words more clearly.

“… good question. What do we do with this lot? Shoot them?”

“Without orders? I can imagine the result.” The officer sounded disgusted.

The second officer shrugged. “Why not send them back where they came from?”

“Six camps in six different places? Still, that’s what we ought to do.” The bitterness had returned to the officer’s voice. “Serve them right for not checking before they ship them out. They’re the ones at fault, but they’d be sure to manage to blame us.” There was a rustling of paper as the man consulted a list. “Here. We’ll shift them to Celle. To the Bergen-Belsen camp. I’ll get in touch with them and say those were the orders. They won’t know the difference, things are so fouled up these days.” The two men started to walk back down the track.

Grossman peered up at the shadowy figure of Brodsky between him and the door. “What was it? What did they say?”

Brodsky raised his voice so everyone in the car could hear.

“Two SS, apparently discussing where we’re going. It seems we were headed for a place called Natzweiler, but Natzweiler was evacuated a few days ago. I guess the Allies are getting too close for our friends’ comfort.” There was a weak attempt at a cheer from someone, instantly put down by the man’s neighbors.

Grossman felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach. This was certainly no part of his precious scheme! Why hadn’t he considered the possibility that the camp might be evacuated before he reached there? Still, it didn’t neccessarily mean that all was lost—

“What else did they say?”

“Something about a camp called Bergen-Belsen, near Celle.” Brodsky raised his voice. “Who knows anything about a camp called Bergen-Belsen?”

No one answered. Crouched in his little niche, Grossman felt himself getting physically ill. Bergen-Belsen! A Krankenlager—a sick camp! A camp where they send people to die. No gas chambers and the ovens are a joke. They bury their dead in huge pits and why not? There are no gas burns on them, no gunshot wounds, except for those the guards shoot for entertainment. The vast majority die of natural causes, like typhus or dysentery or starvation. Nothing for the SS to be ashamed of should the Allies uncover the pits. Bergen-Belsen! A hellhole of the worst sort, and I’ve sentenced myself to that! Idiot! Imbecile! Fool! Better the Strasbourg Group. Better even the chances of a war-crimes trial! Better anything than Belsenlager!

There was a sudden jar as a new engine was coupled onto the string of cars. There was a harsh rasp as the bar that had been allowing the slot to furnish at least a little air was suddenly withdrawn. The door slammed shut; then there was the sound of a spike being hammered into the hasp, locking them in. The cars began to move, gradually picking up speed until once more they were bumping and jostling about, and the stifling heat began to build up, together with the overpowering stench. Men began to faint, taking others down with them; those above took advantage of the additional room to sit on the fallen, crushing them with their weight. Grossman sensed rather than saw the large body of Max Brodsky braced against the side of the car, forming a shelter for him, the boy, and the old man against the pressure of the others in the car. He heard Brodsky’s voice.

“We’ve come through other camps, we’ll come through this one, too.” There was grim promise in the deep voice. “Next year in Jerusalem …”

More likely next year in hell, Grossman thought. He closed his eyes and listened to the clack of the wheels over the rail joints. Bergen, they said. Ber-gen, Bel-sen, ber-gen, bel-sen, bergen, belsen, bergen belsen, bergen belsen, bergenbelsen, bergenbelsen, bergenbelsen bergenbelsenbergenbelsenbergenbelsen …

God!

They arrived in Celle in midafternoon. There was a hammering on the door, the same deafening clangor they had heard before, a muffled cry of Zuruckbehalten! Zuruckbehalten! from outside. The door was quickly run back. Those inside near the door fought to keep their balance, gulping the sweet air, staring blindly outside, made sightless by the sudden light, fighting the pressure from behind. The old man, dead many hours, tilted forward slowly into the door opening and toppled to the tracks. The chatter of a machine gun responded instantly, making the scrawny body jerk in almost life-like imitation. The guard who had fired the gun swept the muzzle upward, fanning it across the opening threateningly. An officer walked quickly down the line, calling out:

“Heraus kommen! Heratts kommen! Langsam! Slowly! Get down! Fall in line!”

They climbed down stiffly, those who were still alive, and lined up in ragged formation alongside the track, looking down the line and seeing other men climb down from similar cars. The last ones to reach the door of their particular car were ordered to go back and drag the dead bodies to the opening, where other prisoners were assigned to handle them. The bodies were directed to be taken across several tracks and piled up beside a fence that separated the freight yard from the town of Celle. From Grossman’s car eighteen bodies were taken in addition to the old man; the boy, he saw, was among them. In the night someone had pushed the youngster to the rear to try for air at the small crack. Through the mesh of the fence several women and children stared at them expressionlessly; they might have been watching the unloading of a cattle car, or a circus.

The guards were walking up and down the line, their machine pistols at the ready, herding the men into files of two. Grossman was pushed up against Brodsky; he looked at him, seeing the man for the first time in proper light. Brodsky was tall, several inches taller than he was, and unlike most of the other prisoners he stood erect and did not stoop. His battered face was thinner than it had first appeared, and although Grossman guessed that the man was no more than thirty years old, the stubble of his beard was streaked with gray. His clothes hung on his shoulders as from a coat hanger, and the huge fists, when seen relaxed and hanging at his side, were large in size but that was all; they looked like bags of bones dangling from his wrists. But it was the eyes, now staring at the boy’s body being added to the pile by the fence, that were most impressive. They were gray, set deep in the sunken squarish skull, seldom blinking, steady on whatever they were studying. At the moment they were filled with sadness.

A young lieutenant appeared at the door of the guard’s van at the end of the train. He leaned over a short railing, raising a bullhorn to his mouth. His voice cracked as he began to speak, but firmed as he went along.

“You will be marched to the camp! Any outbreak will be instantly punished! You will march four abreast! Stragglers will be shot! Is it understood!” He made it a statement, not a question. “You will be marched to the camp! Any outbreak will be instantly punished! You will march four—”

His voice was suddenly drowned out in the deep baying of an air-raid siren, repeated over and over again in almost hysterical shrieks, as if the person operating it knew the warning was late and was trying to make up for its tardiness in volume. The prisoners stared at each other in alarm, and then cringed as the first bombs were dropped a mile or so away. The trackage there lifted itself in the air as if in slow motion, hesitated a moment, and then crumpled to earth, torn and twisted. The planes were approaching rapidly, low-flying fighters rigged with a few sticks of bombs each, coming in under the radar screen, taking the town by surprise. Their wings waggled as they dove, releasing the bombs. The guards swung their machine guns up and around, firing as rapidly as they could, and then ran for cover as the planes passed over with a deafening roar. The men in line wavered and then broke in panic, scattering, seeking the protection of the boxcars, some rolling frantically under them, others trying to scramble back inside. The guards in equal panic raked the running men with machine-gun fire, and then dove for protection themselves, clutching their guns to their chests, flinching at each explosion as the planes banked to return for a second strike. The air was filled with the cruummmpppp! cruummmpppp! cruummmppp! of the explosions. Boxcars lurched and then disintegrated, boards flying through the air, steel tortured, ripped; trucks were twisted from the tracks, upended, wheels spinning. A car with fuel went up with a loud whooosh, searing the men under it to coals. Bodies were tossed through the air. They looked like dolls thrown about by a spiteful child.

At the first explosion Grossman felt himself being propelled, half-pushed, half-dragged toward the far fence and the pile of corpses there. Brodsky was bent over, urging him on; a closer explosion half-threw the two men onto the pile. They rolled over the dead, wedging themselves between the bodies and the fence, half-stunned, looking at the continuing scene of destruction in horrored disbelief. Grossman found himself swept with fury, screaming curses. Didn’t the airmen see the striped pajama uniforms? Didn’t they know who they were bombing? Or didn’t they care? Schlossberg was right; the Allies would bomb even their own if there were a few Germans there!

As suddenly as it had started the bombing ended and the planes were merely small specks in the afternoon sky. Behind them they left the twisted rails, the tortured earth, the burning cars, and the endless dead in every posture of ultimate surrender. The young officer appeared from beneath the guard’s van, which miraculously had not been hit. He brushed off his knees and raised his bullhorn. Those guards not killed also appeared, their machine guns once more at the ready, their fingers trembling on the triggers. Despite the officer’s attempted look of control, his voice was tinged with hysteria, amplified by the bullhorn.

“In line! In line! The first one who attempts to take advantage will be shot! Instantly! In line! In line! Schnell! Schnell! Schnell! Schnell!”

The survivors slowly brought themselves together, climbing over the shattered corpses, avoiding in dazed fashion the burning planks of the boxcars scattered about the yard, coming to stand dully beside the ripped track. Grossman looked about, shuddering. There were only about a hundred left of what had seemed to be almost a thousand when they had climbed down from the cars only moments before; the rest were lying where they had fallen, in every imaginable grotesque violation of bodily dignity. The officer walked nervously down the ragged line of men and then walked back to the head of the line. The guards stood well back, their guns trained on the line.

The bullhorn came up.

“March!”

It was evening and a pale listless moon was visible in the darkening sky when they arrived, trembling with fatigue. Camp One of the Bergen-Belsen complex looked like most of the other camps: wired-off compounds, each with its large compliment of wooden shacks scattered between pine trees, the ground flat and muddy, the watchtowers shoddy but well armed, the latrines represented by the open ditches back from the wire in each area. The marching men came into the compound under the plain sign “Bergen Lager” and came to a halt, catching their breath. Fourteen men had died on the march either from exhaustion or from being shot when pleading for a moment’s rest.

Across the road from where the men stood, behind a separate wired-in area, a naked woman came from her shack, squatted obscenely over a ditch, relieved herself, wiped herself with her fingers, and then wiped her fingers in the mud, and walked back inside, making no attempt to cover herself. Grossman shuddered. He had never thought the day would come when he would have absolutely no sexual feeling at sight of a naked woman; but then, he told himself, these aren’t women. These are animals and so they behave like animals.

The officer who had accompanied them from Celle, the young lieutenant, came from the command barrack with an SS major. The two stood talking, the major looking irritated by their discussion.

“We have no papers on them,” the lieutenant said apologetically. “Everything was lost in the bombing.”

The major shrugged, trying to sound philosophic about it.

“We’ll sort them out in the morning,” he said, although he felt more prisoners were an imposition on him. “In the meantime we’ll put a few in each of the first thirty barracks in Area Three in Camp One. Those are the barracks with the highest mortality; there’s plenty of room.”

He called over an adjutant, spoke to him authoritatively for a few moments, and then disappeared into the command barrack, where he had been interrupted in the midst of an important card game. The adjutant barked orders; guards led the file of prisoners away, stopping at each barracks to shove three or four men inside.

In the gloom of the windowless room, Grossman could make out the curious eyes of the inmates lying on their tiered bunks, staring at the newcomers. Like cats in the dark, he thought, or rats—and suddenly received a vicious jab in the ribs. He turned in anger to face a Kapo, a prisoner who kept other prisoners in line and earned special privileges for doing so. A whip was curled threateningly in the Kapo’s hand, the butt held ready for another jab. The Kapo was smiling coldly, his small eyes alive with delight that this prisoner apparently was one who could be provoked into asking for the business end of the lash, or even to being sent out to be shot.

“Climb, you Jew bastard! Up, you Jew turd! What do you want? An elevator to your suite? Top tier, Jew pig! Up! Up!”

Another vicious jab with the whip butt and Grossman felt a blinding fury sweep him. This was too much! To be pushed and insulted by another prisoner, a brute from some eastern country, a Russian, or a Pole, or a Lithuanian, to touch him like this? Him? There was a sudden painful grip of Brodsky’s fingers biting through the thin uniform sleeve on one side. On the other, little Wolf was hissing at him through clenched teeth.

“Climb, dummy! Is this your first camp?”

Brodsky’s grip tightened, almost paralyzing him with agony, bringing him back to his senses. He climbed, and Wolf and Brodsky followed. Below they left a disappointed Kapo.

At one time there had been straw mats on the hard planks; now there were only a few wisps of moldy straw, covered with a fine film of delousing powder. The previous inmate had vomited in his place and had not bothered, or had been too weak, to clean it up; it had hardened into a scaly lump that Grossman could feel as he lay down. He tried to roll as far from it as he could, but a sudden shove from the inmate on that side told him in the darkness that space was limited and not to be lightly infringed upon.

The total unfairness of it struck him. What was he doing here along with these stinking animals, lying on hardened vomit, faint with hunger, shaking from weariness? He was still a Junker, still an SS officer! This was ridiculous! In the morning he would go to the camp command and explain the situation. Schlossberg would back up his story, if it needed any backing up.

That was it! He would go to the command barrack in the morning, and there he would tell the whole story. If the guard or the Kapo wanted to know the reason for the visit to the command post, he would say there was a troublemaker in the barrack. That always got attention. And when he finally faced the proper authority he would tell his story. They might laugh behind his back, but they would never laugh to his face. Not to a colonel of the SS! And whether they laughed or not, the horrible nightmare would be over. He would take his chances of eventually getting to Switzerland without the Strasbourg Group if he had to. He’d even take his chances of being picked up and tried as a war criminal. He would take any chance! But he could no longer tolerate the monstrous life a concentration camp dealt out. Life in a camp was meant for animals, not for him. First thing in the morning …

It was a comforting thought, one that made him a trifle less wretched on the hard bed and eventually allowed him to drift off into a restless sleep.

He woke in the dark, just as the first strands of dawn were beginning to break through the air vents above the top tier, and he knew at once that the night before he had merely been deluding himself. Idiot! Go to the command post barrack and say he was an SS officer who had changed his identity? Who would believe a story as outlandish as that? And even if Schlossberg were so foolish as to back up the story, all that would happen would be they would both be in trouble. And if they believed him—an SS officer who avoided his duty by changing his appearance? And to that of a Jew? Let us not even think of the penalty for that!

Or—suddenly—far worse thought!

Suppose they really did pay enough attention to his story to check back? And they then discovered he had gone to Schlossberg right after it was known there had been an attempt on Hitler’s life? A quick trip to the strangling post, wire cutting through his fingers as he tried to interpose them, but to no avail. A horrible death! No. He had doomed himself. There was no escape.

He rolled over to find Max Brodsky studying him with those deepset gray eyes. On the other side of Brodsky, Wolf snored peacefully. Max smiled at him.

“What’s your name?”

My God, Grossman thought, hadn’t he told the large man his name? In all those seeming weeks they had known each other, in all those seeming months since yesterday?

“Grossman,” he said quietly. “Benjamin Grossman.”

“From where?”

“Buchenwald.” He suddenly understood. “Oh. Hamburg, originally. Hohelft, to be exact.”

The deep voice was sympathetic. “Did you have anyone there—?”

He meant the bombing, of course, that had leveled Hamburg.

“An aunt. The others—” He had been about to say his father had died at Dachau and his mother at Ravensbrook, but he bit back the words. Why invent something he might not remember? Silence would give as good an answer. Actually, it was stupid to have mentioned his aunt, though it was true. How many Jewish women could still have been alive in Hamburg at the time of the bombing in August of 1943? He would have to be careful. “We called her aunt,” he added quickly. “She wasn’t a Jew.”

Brodsky nodded. “I suppose in a way I was lucky—”

“Lucky?”

“If you want to call it luck. My people all died peacefully before the war.”

“Where are you from?” To his surprise, Grossman found himself honestly curious.

“Originally? Lublin. A suburb of Lublin, actually. Maidanek. Do you know it?” A chill ran through Grossman but Brodsky did not notice. “I suppose not. It’s a small place. I wonder what it’s like now?”

“You didn’t see it?”

“No. I went to Palestine before the war, to a kibbutz. Then, later, I joined the Mossad. It’s an illegal group to bring Jews to Palestine. I was just back in Poland—in Kielce, actually, on my way to Lublin—when I was picked up. He shrugged and smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ve been in the camps for five years. We’ll survive.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Look at him.”

“Who’s he?”

“His name is Wolf, Morris Wolf. He’s from outside of Munich. He’s been in the camps since 1936—eight years—and he’s still alive. We’ll survive, don’t worry.”

“I wonder …”

“Don’t wonder.” It almost sounded like an order. “We have to survive.”

“Why?” His very asking was an indication of his misery.

“Because Palestine needs us, for one thing—”

“Palestine?”

Brodsky looked at him in the growing light. “Palestine! Someday we’ll have our own nation there, our own country, and you and me and Wolf and all the rest have a lot of work to make that dream come true.”

Palestine! Grossman thought. You, possibly, but certainly not me! If either one of us survives this hellhole, that is. He became aware that Brodsky was speaking again.

“And there’s another reason we have to survive.”

“Why?”

“To make sure people never forget,” Brodsky said flatly, and started to climb down as the shrill camp whistle blew to rouse them for the day.