Scheisshaus Luck (10 page)

Herbert was standing at the
Block
’s threshold. I climbed the steps as if mounting the hangman’s scaffold.

‘‘So it was you!’’

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SCHEISSHAUS LUCK

As he spoke I wanted to jump back, giving some excuse for having gone up there, but all I could do was stare at my feet. Herbert took my silence for an admission and his fist sent me rolling down the steps. He pounced on me, grabbed me by the neck, and with strength surprising for one that small, dragged me into the
Block
. I hardly had time to realize what was happening when a rubber hose came down on my ass. I gritted my teeth to keep from crying out. Each blow straightened me up. It felt like an electric shock shooting through my body.

‘‘Bend over!’’ Herbert screamed.

I jerked up again. A blow over the head knocked me un-conscious.

I awoke on the cold floor, unsure what had happened to me. I had dreamt that I was sitting on a hot stove, but the searing sensation had followed me into consciousness. How could that be? Hit with a blinding torrent of pain, I remembered. I rolled onto my belly, but that did nothing to alleviate the agony. Hot tears rolled down my face as I bit into the sleeve of my jacket.

Certainly I hadn’t deserved such a punishment. I had never beaten my dog when he did his ‘‘doodoo’’ in my room. What gave these men the right to thrash us? They weren’t SS. Wasn’t it enough to be imprisoned, to have lost one’s freedom? Weren’t we all comrades in misfortune who should be aiding, not trying to kill each other? I passed my hand over my jacket. The ring was still there in the seam. At least it hadn’t been all for nothing, I consoled myself as I crawled to my bunk and slipped into a pain-induced stupor.

‘‘Why did you confess?’’

The man from the HKB* was standing over me.

* The name of the Man from the HKB is Siegfried Halbreich, a Polish Jew who was incarcer-ated at Sachsenhausen and Grossrossen before being shipped to Auschwitz.
Before-During-After
(Schor Press) is Mr. Halbreich’s autobiography chronicling his Holocaust survival. Mr.

Halbreich has lived across the street from me in Beverly Hills, California, for the past thirty years.

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61

‘‘Why did you confess?’’

I shrugged. ‘‘Somebody had to or we would’ve been there till doomsday.’’

‘‘You foolish kid.’’

He shook his head and smeared a soothing ointment on my ass, which had swollen up like two balloons. He must have repeated my words to Herbert, because from that moment on he treated me kindly, giving me double rations and making a hero of me. Unfortunately those perks lasted only a week, at which point we were all transferred out of the quarantine
Block
and assigned to
Kommando
136.

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C H A P T E R 7

I sat with twenty other
Ha¨ftlinge
of
Kommando
136 around an oil-drum brazier inside a shelter of discarded planks and sheet metal somewhere on the Buna plant grounds. It was our lunch break. No one spoke while we ate. The sound of twenty-one famished men slurping up the brownish water the Germans had the audacity to call soup nearly drowned out the snowstorm howling outside. For the last four weeks the weather had been increasingly cruel.

Yes, I had already been in the camp for a whole month. The time had passed quickly, and nothing distinguished one day from the next. Morning roll call, work, work, work, back to camp, evening rations, sleep, wake, repeat. It was as if I had fallen into a well that had no bottom. And day in and day out it was the same food and never enough of it. At least in Drancy we got three meals, with plates that usually consisted of a piece of meat and a few vegetables.

I would still be hungry, but compared to the ‘‘Buna soup,’’ the food in Drancy was a king’s buffet.

Monowitz’s repetitive routine and my body’s lack of nutrients were erasing all my interests and desires. The only thing I cared about was my stomach’s incessant crying. It was the only thing any of us gave a shit about.

63

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SCHEISSHAUS LUCK

I stirred the contents of my rusty mess tin with my wooden spoon, hoping to find even a microbe of soggy, rotten beet. It was a hopeless struggle. The plant’s owner, the German chemical company I.G. Farben, provided our lunches, but the
Ha¨ftlinge
in the kitchen diverted most of the food to Monowitz’s thriving black market. I became aware of the black market after seeing a
Kapo
wearing the plaid flannel shirt I had gotten in Drancy. It’s not surprising that
the Kanada Kommando
—the ‘‘bellhops’’ who collected the belongings of the new arrivals—supplied most of these goods.

Food, clothing, shoes, blankets, cigarettes, jewelry, gold teeth—

anything that had some value to someone could be found on this black market. The problem was that you had to have something to barter with. Only German and Polish
Ha¨ftlinge
could receive packages from loved ones on the outside, so many of them prospered on the black market. For the rest of us, only those good at ‘‘organizing’’—camp slang for stealing—could enjoy an extra bowl of soup or wear a warm sweater.

I slurped up the final drops in my mess tin, licked my spoon clean, then put it back in my pocket. My shoes were soaked from the snow, so I held my feet up to the brazier. The coke’s bluish red flame radiated blistering heat. My shoes began to steam. I felt revitalizing warmth on my legs, stomach, and chest, but my back-side was still ice. I stood up and backed up to the brazier. Quickly the heat became unbearable and the smell of freshly ironed clothes filled the shelter.

‘‘
Pierre, passauf
’’ (Pierre, watch out), came a voice from the other side of the brazier.

It was our
Kapo
, Hans, a green triangle who reminded me of the American movie star Spencer Tracy. Growing up, his movie
Captains Courageous
had been one of my favorites.

‘‘If you burn the seat of your pants, the rubber hose of the
Blokowy
will burn your ass.’’

Blokowy
was Polish for ‘‘
Blocka¨lteste
.’’ Most non-German
Ha¨ftlinge
addressed their barracks’ supervisor using this easier-to-pronounce word. When a
Ha¨ftling
broke any of the rules, it was the PART II | AUSCHWITZ

65

Blocka¨lteste
who doled out the punishment of his choice. If the infraction was severe enough, he would be the one reporting it to the SS. You were always better off with a red triangle
Blocka¨lteste
than a green triangle, whose past incarceration in a German penitentiary usually made him a rabid dog waiting for the slightest excuse to pounce. From what I had seen and had been told by old-timers, red triangle
Blocka¨ltesten
, as well as
Kapos
, didn’t take advantage of their authority or relish exercising physical discipline.

A siren sounded outside. It was time to go back to raising factory buildings for ‘‘the fatherland.’’

‘‘
Auf geht’s
!’’ (Let’s go!)

Hans opened the door and our arctic tormentor blew in, making my nose tingle. ‘‘
Los schneller
!’’ (Faster!) We went out into the snow in single file, each of us walking in the tracks of the man in front of him. I quickly wrapped my hands with
Fusslappen
. There was an abundance of the rags in my
Block
.

Our job on this construction site was to drill holes in the brick walls so windows could be anchored. With my mallet and chisel in one hand, I climbed up a ladder to an opening in the wall. I brushed away the snow that had accumulated and put one leg over the ledge.

At least through the afternoon I would be more comfortable straddling the wall because I had ‘‘organized’’ an empty cement sack to sit on. Some
Ha¨ftlinge
stuffed sacks inside their clothing for insula-tion. I put mine under my ass because I wanted to avoid chafed thighs, since I already had enough patches of irritated skin.

On one side of me was a screen of snowflakes, on the other a black void that was the interior of the building. I hugged the wall with my thighs so that a gust couldn’t sweep me from my perch.

Someone took away the ladder. There was only one ladder for every five windows. If I had to piss, I would have to make yellow icicles over the ledge. I pounded out holes the best I could. When my legs became stiff from the cold, I started to bicycle in the air. The
Ha¨ftling
who had tattooed my number had given me one good piece of advice.

‘‘If you want to survive, work only with your eyes.’’

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SCHEISSHAUS LUCK

I stopped pedaling. Yes, I had to expend as little energy as possible to economize the precious few calories I was getting.

My mind wandered to Stella. Had she been lucky enough to be taken under the wing of a camp veteran? Was she getting advice that would help keep her from being sent to the crematoriums of Auschwitz’s second camp, Birkenau? The ovens and gas chambers were no secret to us in Monowitz. I had heard plenty of filtered-down accounts from members of the Transportation
Kommando
who delivered our corpses and near dead to Birkenau.

Stella could have been consumed in those flames weeks ago, but until I had proof I had to keep hoping. My survival depended on it.

A few days before, I bumped into Mordechai, the butcher from my hometown. He was a shuffling shell of his former self. Somehow he had gotten word that his wife and seven daughters had been exterminated that first night. In camp slang, he had become a
Muselmann
, the German for Muslim. Like many others, Mordechai had become so emotionally and physically broken down that, shrouded in his blanket, he looked like a gaunt pilgrim on the road to Mecca.

In Auschwitz, there was only one road and it led straight to the crematoriums. This was a path I was determined not to step onto, and I hoped my Stella had the same resolve. In truth, her will would have to be monumentally stronger than mine. In all likelihood, her father and yellow triangle mother were dead, and Stella was just as aware of that as Mordechai was about the rising smoke of his family.

Back at our
Block
that night, before
das Essen
(our meal), the
Blocka¨lteste
announced that those
Ha¨ftlinge
not working at their skilled professions or trades were to report to the
Schreibstube
(Administration Building) in the morning. I had told the
Ha¨ftling
who filled out my green card that I was an electrician. It was a lie, but I knew enough of the basics that I figured I could con my way through. The prospect of not working ten, twelve hours in the brutal Siberian blast kept me awake most of the night. Only the
Kommandos
working outside returned to camp carrying corpses. The odds of my survival would definitely rise if I could pass muster as a craftsman.

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67

A few mornings later I lined up in the Appelplatz (roll-call square) with the
Elektriker Kommando
. I marched with them to Buna’s main generator, which was housed in a tall red brick building with four metal smokestacks that looked like they belonged on an ocean liner. We entered a warm, brightly lit hall resonating from the hum of four monstrous turbines. The wooden soles of our shoes were like a stampede of jackhammers as we climbed a metal staircase to the tool room and workshop.

The
Ha¨ftlinge
went to their workstations. The
Kapo
turned to me.

‘‘
Folge mir
’’ (Follow me), the green triangle ordered. He handed me a schematic from his desk. ‘‘What do you read?’’

I nervously looked over the diagram. In my physics class I had learned the equations and symbols for volts, amps, watts, and ohms, so it was easy to point out the capacitors, resistors, switches, and outlets. For some of the more technical items on the print I spit out names with more bluff than knowledge. The
Kapo
smiled.

‘‘Join that detail over there.’’

I walked over to a
Vorarbeiter
and four
Ha¨ftlinge
who were dragging out their toolboxes. They were all German red or green triangles.

‘‘How do you bend conduit?’’ the stocky Bavarian
Vorarbeiter
asked.

These men weren’t in the business of wasting any time with formal introductions.‘‘With a tube bender,’’ I blurted.

‘‘If you don’t have one?’’

I smiled; this had happened to me at home. ‘‘I look for anything with the right radius, I cap one end, fill the conduit with sand so it won’t collapse when I bend it, then cap the other end.’’

‘‘How do you push the wire through?’’

The
Vorarbeiter
wasn’t going to nail me on this question, either.

‘‘I push a snake through the conduit, attach the strands of wire to the snake, then pull it back.’’