Chapter 6

An Esthonian named Soli Yaganzys was the Kapo—the prisoner overseer—of Barracks Thirty-eight in Area Three of Camp One at Bergen-Belsen. The Germans had saved him from a terrible death at the hands of the Russians, for whom he had helped betray Esthonia. He might still have been working for them had he not been caught also working for the Germans.

With the Nazis in the early days of his tenure there, Yaganzys had done quite well, until his habit of killing the women he raped forced his employers to recommend a concentration camp for a correctional interlude. Dachau saw him as a prisoner, as did Sachsenhausen, but by the time he had experienced Gross-Rosen and Ohrdruf he had graduated to becoming a Kapo. And as a Kapo he was too valuable to be released.

Yaganzys hated Jews as much if not more than the SS. No one ever did know exactly why, unless it was because his ability to handle Jews in his early days as a Kapo—in the days when there were still more than a handful of Jews alive in the camps—had earned him his continued existence as a prisoner himself. But of all the Jews Yaganzys had encountered in all the camps he had frequented, he hated Morris Wolf the most. Wolf, Yaganzys learned, had been in the camps since 1936, and for a Jew to survive more than a year at the most struck Yaganzys as being criminal. Yet Wolf had survived almost eight years and continued to survive, and every day the little Jew lived was a personal affront to Soli Yaganzys.

The amazing thing about Morris Wolf was that he did not appear to be a survivor. He had never been particularly strong even before his experience in the camps; yet Morris Wolf continued to survive. True, he had wasted almost to a skeleton, but he continued to survive. Yaganzys made sure the worst tasks were assigned to Wolf, as well as those best calculated to sap the little strength the small man had; yet Wolf continued to survive. He survived because he had learned early in his camp experience that in order to survive one had to accept, and Wolf accepted. Or, rather, Wolf had always accepted, but even acceptance has its limits.

In November, when they had been in Barracks Thirty-eight under the control of Yaganzys approximately two months, Wolf revolted. He pretended not to hear an order from Yaganzys. He knew his refusal was suicidal, but after eight years Morris Wolf had decided he had been wasting his time in surviving. Death, after all, could scarcely be worse than survival under Yaganzys. And so he refused an order by pretending not to hear it.

It was, of course, the excuse the Kapo needed and he did not hesitate to use it. Making sure everyone in the barracks was paying close attention, he dragged Wolf from his bunk and stood him in the middle of the room. His whip was curled in his hand. The other prisoners stood back, watching fearfully. Yaganzys smiled at Wolf.

“Jew turd! I told you to bring the soup tonight. If you had done it when I first told you to, you would have had help. Now you will do it alone.” He looked around. “You will eat when this Jew shit brings your soup, not before.” He looked back at Wolf, his hand stroking the leather of the curled strap sensuously. “You will do it now!”

Wolf looked back at him, looked through him, did not hear or see him.

“Possibly this will help you to pay attention,” Yaganzys said, and stepped back, allowing the whip to uncurl itself on the floor behind him like an obedient snake. Then, with all his force and with the skill that had come from much practice, he brought the lash over his head and sent it flying at Wolf. The knout wrapped itself around Wolf’s head; blood spurted as the lash curled across the cheek, cutting the flesh to the bone, crushing the nose, the final tip of the strap flicking out one of Wolf’s eyes as one might flip a seed from a grape. Yaganzys made a practice motion with his thick wrist; the whip obediently unwrapped itself. Wolf still stood, the blood pouring from his face, his cheek flapping down, the blood choking him as it ran past his rigid lips into his throat; but he did not fall. Yaganzys brought the whip back for a second strike, determined to kill the little Jew, now and once and for all. And then Brodsky was upon him, tearing the whip from his hand, wrapping the thin rawhide about Yaganzys’ throat, pulling it taut with all his strength.

The prisoners stood and stared. Yaganzys bellowed and brought his hands up to free himself. Brodsky panted in his effort to maintain his grip, to strangle this monster, but Soli Yaganzys was far stronger. And then Ben Grossman came to Brodsky’s aid, fed by his hatred for the Kapo; and then the other prisoners came in a pack and that was the end of Soli Yaganzys. In moments he lay stretched on the floor, his tongue protruding blackly from his mouth, the whip strap buried deep in his throat like the coils of an attacking snake, his dead eyes staring up at them in profound surprise.

The prisoners fell back, appalled by the action they had taken, staring wildly at Grossman and Brodsky, their eyes demanding the two get them out of the terrible dilemma in which the two had thrust them. In the excitement they had forgotten Wolf, but he still stood, his one eye staring down at the corpse of his enemy. Then he fell.

There was a man named Pincus in the barrack, a Jew from Posnan who had been a pharmacist in life before the war. He knelt beside Wolf, tearing off his shirt, pushing the torn cheek into an approximation of its proper position and wrapping it as tightly and as best he could with the shirt. He looked up.

“He has to go to the hospital,” Brodsky said briefly, taking command. “Tell them he fell from his bunk. His head hit the water bucket.” He looked down at the corpse on the floor as Pincus and another man lifted the unconscious Wolf and carried him out. “Under the floor boards with this one.”

Under the floor boards was the locker room of the inmates. It was here they hid things they stole and often lost sleep worrying that the things would be re-stolen. It was here that prisoners fortunate enough to have friends were hidden when it was known their next assignment was the gas chamber. It was here dead rats killed during the night were flung by those too lazy to carry them outside. They lifted the floor boards and dug a grave for Yaganzys, scattering the dirt made excess by his bulk as far as they could fling it under the floor; and they buried his whip beside him.

That night, after midnight, Brodsky was wakened by a sound. Someone had lifted the floor boards again, and in the darkness he could see a ring of bodies around the opening. And then came the other sounds and he knew they had regretted their wastefulness and had dug Yaganzys up again and were sharing his flesh. He shuddered and put his head down again, hoping at least they would bury the remains and put the floor boards properly back in place.

The following day they were told their Kapo had apparently escaped, which did not seem to bother the officials of the camp. A new man was assigned who was little different than Yaganzys.

At Bergen-Belsen the sick died quickly; those who were well enough to do a day’s work at the Herman Goering Werke factory in Braunsweig, or to work in Celle, died more slowly. To Benjamin Grossman the camp was all the hell he had known it would be. Each day seemed to bring him closer and closer to the end of his endurance.

He lay on his straw mat as winter came, clutching his thin blanket to him, and tried not to think of the next day. But the routine of each squalid ghastly day had burned itself into his mind too deeply not to repeat itself endlessly in his thoughts. Up at six. A half-hour to straighten the mat, fold the blanket, help carry those who died in the night outside. The burial Sonderkommandos would take them to the pits later. Then time to relieve himself at the ditch, shivering uncontrollably as he crouched with the others. Clean oneself as best one could, using snow rather than stand in line at the one faucet. Dry oneself on a jacket sleeve. Then eat a breakfast of one slice of bread and a half-pint of so-called coffee. Then march off to roll call. If the guards were in a playful mood, push-ups in the freezing mud and filth. Then the dash to the labor-assignment area to be crammed with others into the trucks. And off to the steel mill in Braunsweig for a hard day’s work.

The mill, at least, was warm, but not the freezing cold of the roll-call area at night. Standing for hours, bumping one foot against the other to keep the circulation going while the names were droned out. And more hours if someone had been so inconsiderate as to die somewhere without advising the authorities. It was almost beyond endurance! Maintaining life on one slice of bread and another cup of thin soup at night. Fortunately, Max Brodsky, with his wits and experience, sometimes managed to scrounge extra rations. He did sewing work for some of the SS guards, or fashioned souvenirs for them from odds and ends in exchange for food. Brodsky always shared with his friends, but principally with Ben. Otherwise he would never have made it.

On those nights when he could pry his mind from the horror of his daily existence, Ben Grossman would feel his ribs, knowing they were getting more prominent. He would run his finger along the curve of his nose, sure it was becoming more and more hooked as the flesh fell away from the bone. He thought of all the food he had wasted in his life. Juicy steaks and rare, half-eaten. Bread broken and even buttered before being abandoned. Thick puddings left untouched, salads overlooked, rich desserts barely tasted. Cigarettes no longer interested him; he wondered at his previous addiction. Anything that could not be chewed, savored, and swallowed was beyond the range of his imagination. He seldom thought of women, or if he did he pictured them only as serving wenches, bringing piles of steaming potatoes to the table, flushed with gravy, or fragrant schnitzels with glistening eggs on top. At times like this he was certain he would not live long. A person could starve just so long and then he had to die. It made no difference how determined a person was to survive. It was ridiculous to suppose otherwise.

Spring came suddenly to Celle and the Belsenlager. The snow simply disappeared one day, swept away by the chill rain that came to take its place. The camp was a mire; the rain came in sheets, flooding the ditches, floating the winter’s collection of excrement in odorous layers deposited throughout the camp. Men walked barefoot, tucking their thin sandals into their blouses, catching the rain water in cans for drinking; and often coughing their lungs away as they lay in their soaked clothes in their tiers at night. The bread turned moldy; the morning coffee and the nightly soup tasted of the dirty water from which they were brewed.

Rumors flooded the camp, tinged with enough truth to be devastatingly frightening: the Allies had suffered a major defeat the November past at a place called the Bulge and were withdrawing from France as quickly as possible without suffering a total rout; the Russians had been stalled along the Vistula and outside the gates of Warsaw, and now that winter had finally passed, the Panzer divisions were regrouped and prepared to drive the Asiatic hordes to Stalingrad again and beyond. It was a period when Max Brodsky, a bean pole of a man now, needed all his faith not to lose hope. For Ben Grossman it was the depths of despair.

He looked little more than a skeleton now. Even his small ears, once so neatly laid against his head, now seemed to stand away from his tiny skull, almost useless appendages, since he seldom heard or paid attention to what was said to him. He no longer walked erect, but stooped like an old man, and his teeth hurt when he bit into his morning slice of bread, so that he would mouth it, soaking it in saliva, and painfully swallow the mush that resulted. For weeks he had been without a labor assignment. He was totally useless at the mill. His hands shook constantly, and at times he would pause in his shuffle through the accumulated filth of the yard and stop to talk to the corpses laid out awaiting the burial detail. He would mumble to them of his precious plan and how it would have worked had he not been cursed somewhere in life; and then he would listen for an answer from his lifeless audience.

One day Max Brodsky was reassigned from the labor pool, this time to a small factory in Celle that manufactured kitchenware—pots and pans—from unused shell casings. He worked there a week, sawing the bases off the shells and feeding them into presses, before he suddenly realized the opportunity that had presented itself to him. In earlier days Max Brodsky would have seen that opportunity at once.

He had guessed early on that the factory was probably owned in large part by the top SS in the camp, if not by most of the SS there on shares, but it was only after a week that he realized how illegal the use of needed shell casings must be. For several days he pondered his information, wondering exactly how best to take advantage of it; then, knowing no other means and also aware of the risk he was taking, he approached a guard for whom he had done sewing.

“I work in Celle,” he began.

The guard regarded him with a thoughtful frown. “I know.”

“Where I work, in Celle, we make pots and pans …”

“I know.”

“From shell casings …”

“So?”

“From new shell casings. Not used.”

“So?” The guard’s frown became dangerous. “What are you getting at?”

Max Brodsky knew he had to take the chance.

“There must be someone in this camp,” he said quickly, before he lost his nerve, “some officer, some official, who doesn’t know about this. Someone in authority, who knows shell casings are needed for the war—” He saw the look in the guard’s eye and added quickly, “When the war is over, there will be inquiries, responsibility for the killing of prisoners, or for torture …”

The guard considered him for a long, long time, and then tried to smile.

“Has anyone tried to murder you, Brodsky? You look healthy enough to me. Have I ever tortured you? Or tried to kill you? All I ever did was to give you a few tins of food from time to time. And—like an idiot—get you reassigned to Celle. Was that bad?”

“No.”

“Then, what do you want?”

Victory! “I want to be assigned to the Labor-Assignment Office,” Max said quickly. “Is that so much?”

The guard shook his head almost admiringly.

“Brodsky, how have you lived so long? Although,” he added, “knowing you, that’s a stupid question. You’re the living proof that what the Fuehrer said of you Jews was the truth. You’d have the teeth from a chicken!”

“Well?”

“I’ll have to go through channels …”

Five days later Max Brodsky received his new assignment, and the very following day Benjamin Grossman, scarcely aware of what was happening to him or where Brodsky was taking him, was put to the task of stirring the soup in one of the cookhouses in Camp One. It was no great position, and the prisoner-cook, out of pity, often had to interrupt his work and come to put his hand over the skinny fingers of his helper and move the large ladle through the thin mixture, but the cookhouse was warm and protected against the rain, and when one had the strength one could also dip into the soup and taste it. There were even the vegetable tops and the bones, after everything seemingly had been boiled out of them, to stow in one’s blouse and secretly chew when unobserved. Or even to share, once one began to gain one’s strength.

Ben’s hands stopped shaking, although he seemed to have been bent into a permanent stoop. His ears even seemed to be approaching his head again, although he would have been the first to acknowledge this as a physiological impossibility; but his teeth remained loose and painful for a long time, and he had to have Max’s help to crawl into his bunk at night. But he was once again beginning to believe in eventual survival, which Max felt was a hopeful sign.

It was a short-lived triumph.

A new batch of prisoners arrived one day from a camp called Neuengamme, and of those assigned to Max and Ben’s barrack was a certain Anatole Yashinko, a musselman—the lowest of the low in the camps—who bragged loudly in poor German of how he had outsmarted the delousing squad.

“That dreck is not for me,” said Yeshinko, his voice throbbing with admiration for his own brilliance. “For the others, maybe, but not for Anatole Yashinko. That stinking powder? Who knows what the bastards may put into it? And if I’m going to scratch, at least I want to know what I’m scratching for. Not because some idiot pours that stinking powder on me!”

“So sleep outside!”

Willing and eager hands opened the door while other hands shoved the man out into the rain and held the door against his return. For a while he pounded as softly as he could, not wishing to cry out and make any disturbance that would bring the guards and their wrath upon him; then at last the pounding ceased and eventually the inmates of Barrack Thirty-eight returned to their tiers. Moments later there was the sudden chatter of a machine gun, and in the morning the brilliant Anatole Yashinko was found within the forbidden perimeter near the wire, where he had wandered in the dark. Two prisoners were assigned to take the body to the burial pit; they held him carefully by the sleeves, dragging him all the way, shoving him into the pit with their feet, and then wiping their fingers furiously in the mud to clean them.

After a week, however, everyone had forgotten the unfortunate Russian and his distaste for delousing. When, in fact, ten days after Yashinko had died, Ben Grossman, working over a pot of thin soup, suddenly felt a chill and the beginnings of a headache, he assumed it was probably the fumes from the miserable concoction he was preparing, and only hoped he would not be up all night with loose bowels. But when, only minutes later, the chill disappeared to be replaced by a sudden flush of unbearable heat and the beginnings of dizziness, he had a cold premonition that Anatole Yashinko had left his mark. He was sure he had typhus.

The prisoner-cook excused him and he went back to his wooden tier, once again freezing, and tried to draw a bit of warmth from his blanket, only to throw it off and try to get some respite from the heat the next moment. After that he hung his head over the edge of the tier and vomited up the little he had in his stomach, and then tried to bring up all the imaginary foods he had stuffed himself with in his dreams for so long, but a slight trickle of bile was all he could produce. He lay back and laughed. It was really comical when one thought about it. He had died once from typhus in Ward Forty-six and been cremated; now it appeared he was about to die again, again from typhus, only this time they would bury him in one of the large pits. He wondered if he were ever to be reincarnated and come back a third time, so to speak, if he would again die of typhus. That would really be funny; the ultimate joke. Eight long months he had been at Bergen-Belsen, and now he was about to die. Why hadn’t he died at once, before the humiliations, the pains, the suffering? Obviously because it wouldn’t have been as funny as it was now.

He was still laughing when Max and the others came in from evening roll call and found him.

The wards in the prisoners’ hospital were attended to by a few German doctors as well as by prisoners who had had some medical experience in their prior lives. Ben Grossman was assigned a cot whose previous occupant had starved to death; he lay on the filthy sheets and stared at the ceiling, too weary of life even to think. And woke from a fevered sleep to find Max Brodsky sitting next to him, holding a cup out to him. He brought it to his lips and tasted it. It was soup, good, rich, thick delicious soup. He drank it eagerly and immediately gagged; his trembling hands tried to hold the cup steady as he vomited into it, but much of the hot vomit splashed onto the bed. Max dumped the cup into the pail at the foot of the cot and frowned at his own stupidity.

“It’s too rich. You must take a sip, just a sip, next time.”

He took a dirty sheet from the adjoining bed and began to wipe up the mess. Ben stared at him, his eyes bright with fever.

“What … are you doing … here?” His throat felt as if a hot hand were pressing on it, making each word a painful rasp, but he felt he had to know. He dropped his voice automatically to the standard camp whisper although the other three beds in the small ward were empty. “And the … the soup …?”

Brodsky shrugged elaborately. “I help make the assignments, so for a few days I’ll be a hospital orderly. The doctors don’t argue, any help they can get, they’re happy to take.”

“But … the … soup …?”

“It’s from the SS stores. Mendelsohn from our barracks is the new storekeeper there. I got him the assignment yesterday. Wait—I’ll get some more.”

“A waste …” Grossman wet his lips and tried not to think of the lovely taste of the soup for those precious few seconds he had been able to keep it down, before it had come up. “A … waste. I’ll never … leave here.…”

“Why not?” Brodsky said cheerfully. “I’ll admit it isn’t Mount Scopus Hospital, but you’ll still get well.” He tried to smile encouragingly. “You have to. We need you in Palestine.”

Brodsky and his Palestine again. Every day more and more about Zionism and Palestine! But it made no difference anymore. Nothing made any difference anymore. He wasn’t going to Palestine; he wasn’t even going to Switzerland. He was going to the burial pits, to lay on the dead and have more dead lie on him in turn. Stacks and stacks of dead and he would be somewhere in the middle.… He closed his eyes and let the dizziness sweep him.

“Here—”

He felt another cup pressed to his lips, the same delicious aroma in his nostrils, and then the cup was withdrawn after only a sip, but this time he couldn’t even swallow. The soup dribbled from the corner of his mouth. He lay there and began to cry.

“Maybe later,” Max said with an encouragement he did not feel and then paused. From outside the hospital there was the sound of a distant cry, a swelling sound of many voices, a frightening sound. Max frowned. He put the cup on the floor and went to the window, staring down. Ben’s anxious tear-filled eyes followed him.

“What …? What …?”

“I don’t know. I don’t see anyone.” Suddenly Max’s eyes widened in disbelief. “I wonder! No …!”

A military car was approaching the hospital through the mud from the direction of Camp Two, driving slowly past the lake. In the front seat a soldier in an unfamiliar uniform was bellowing something unintelligible through a bullhorn. The car disappeared around the far side of the hospital, circled the building, and started back toward Camp Two. As it came to their side of the building the clipped words in schoolboy German were suddenly clearly heard, echoing on the air, fading and strengthening as the soldier turned his head.

“Be calm. Be calm. You are liberated. We are the British Army. You are all very ill and infectious. Quarantine will be necessary. Be calm. Be calm. You are liberated. We are the British Army. You are all very ill and infectious. Quarantine will be necessary. Be calm. Be calm. You are—”

The voice echo died in the distance as the car passed the lake and disappeared once again into Camp Two. Max Brodsky turned from the window, tears streaming uncontrollably down his seamed cheeks, a stunned look of hope, of disbelief, of joy begging to believe, sweeping across his young-old worn battered face.

“Did you hear? Did you hear?”

“What …?”

“We’re free. It’s the British Army! They’re here. We’re free.” He stared about the room as if he could see through the walls to the fields and roads and endless spaces that surrounded the camp, and then back to the bed where his friend lay. “It’s over, Ben. We’re free. We did it.” He suddenly really realized the truth. He raised his eyes. “We’re free! We did it! We did it! Oh, God, thank you, we’re free!”

Benjamin Grossman felt his heart contract. He closed his eyes, feeling the tears start again under the lids. Then the trembling began. No! He would not go to the pits! He would live! There would be proper medicine, proper care.

He would survive!

But then, that had been the object of his plan all along, hadn’t it?