The Dentist Of Auschwitz (14 page)

I had few tools or medications: three extraction forceps, a couple of scalpels, some explorers and excavators, a chisel, two scalers, a dozen pulp-canal reamers. Some of my drills were useless without a drilling machine. I left them all in the infirmary. The inmates most frequently complained about painful and bleeding gums. Without proper equipment for sterilization, I had to disinfect my instruments over an alcohol flame.

At the next roll call Goldberg announced that a dentist would be available for the inmates in the infirmary every day after work and on weekends. By now I had experience extracting teeth. Gutenbrunn held nearly double the inmates that Steineck had had, and some days I extracted as many as half a dozen teeth. Once when Goldberg came into the first aid room with the Kommandant, he proudly pointed at me, as if I had been his discovery, and said, “Herr Lagerführer, we now have a dentist. He is one of those who came from Steineck. He has instruments. He comes here after his regular work on the Baustelle.” That idea appealed to the Nazi.

On Sunday afternoon, when it was quiet in the stable, I heard Reb Moishe pounding his chest in prayer. “He is perfect and dealeth truly with the pure in heart. And all believe that his work is perfect.” In the pits of existence, he still believed deeply in the Divine. I could hear the church bells ringing outside. Birds flew in formation in and out of our “fortress” with ease. I wished that I could share their freedom.

Like clockwork, as soon as the kitchen window opened, inmates formed lines stretching hundreds of meters into the yard. Rachmiel, wearing a chef’s hat with an apron draping over his bulging belly, looked on as we stood there craving his foul-tasting soup, which in a normal world would have been scorned by dogs. But to us a bite of bread and a spoonful of soup had immeasurable value. To understand what hunger can do to the mind, one has to go hungry for a long time. Hunger gnaws at the insides like a worm. The desire to eat something is so great that one is ready to do anything. Rumors that inmates ate grass to stay alive in Gutenbrunn are true. Retaining a vestige of pride in the face of such hunger was very difficult. This was especially true for my friend, David Kot, who had been pampered with cookies and milk at home. Once a rugged fellow, he was losing strength and looked thinner every day.

The latest letter from home was most disturbing. We could no longer deceive ourselves but had to expect the worst. “Except for a few older men and some still protected by the Judenrat, most have been deported from the ghetto. The outlook for our survival here much longer is bleak. We know that our lives will soon end,” Pola wrote. She corroborated the news from recently arrived inmates: “All the ghettos in Warthegau will soon be empty…. while the people are told that they’re being resettled, they are killed in the newest, most barbaric way, by the exhaust of the very vehicle they’re transported in.”

One morning as we were about to leave for work, Herdecke came to the camp and asked Goldberg for additional workers. At the same time he asked for someone who could do office work. Goldberg must have remembered that I had said that I worked in an office in Steineck, because he ordered me to report to Herdecke. My string of good luck was continuing.

Not every German at the camps was an unscrupulous, virulent anti-Semite. Although Herdecke was a member of the Nazi party, he did not totally believe in their racial policies. While I worked for him, on more than one occasion I heard him voicing displeasure with Hitler’s senseless war. He never mistreated any of us, and he ordered the Germans under him to do likewise. That was a quality that wasn’t often found among Nazis in camp.

Herdecke’s field office, where he put me to work, was a tiny hut with barely enough room for a drafting table, desk, chair, and file cabinet. When he was there the hut was crowded, but that only happened when he came to brew coffee for himself with an electric immersion heater that he called a
Tauchsieder
. My work consisted mostly of making hand reproductions of technical blueprints and collecting construction data from the foremen.

One day as I stirred my soup in camp, fishing hopelessly for bits of potato, a sudden turmoil erupted. I saw an inmate being dragged by a guard. He was yelling and begging to be let go. Apparently the inmate had been helping to unload a truck and was caught stuffing potatoes in his pockets. This “crime” had been punished before with a heavy beating by our policemen, but this time a sentry hauled the inmate to the guardhouse and did not release him. We did not see him for the rest of the day. Though I no longer recall his name, I did know him. Given the opportunity, many of us would have done as he did, so we were anxious to learn what his fate would be.

Two days later, when we returned from work, we were marched to the gallows. Our hearts were heavy. We knew something was wrong. Could it be that they were going to hang a man for stealing a few potatoes? Soon our fears were confirmed. Surrounded by three black-uniformed Gestapo men, the inmate was marched with his hands tied behind his back to the gallows, where a sign was placed on his chest heralding his crime. His jacket hung loosely, as if he had shrunk in those two days. He was pale, his eyes bulging. “What have they done to him?” we whispered. Then one of the Gestapo ordered him to stand on a chair below a dangling noose. Next they tied up his legs and slung the noose over his neck. The Gestapo man read his sentence aloud: “For the act of sabotage, Reichsführer Himmler sentences you to death by hanging on the gallows.” A green-uniformed Waffen SS man jerked the chair from under the inmate’s feet. His body dropped, and his feet swung back and forth. Then his neck snapped, pitching his head to one side. We looked at each other with astonishment. This was a new low for us. Outrage welled up in my throat. I thought the fate of all of us was hanging on those ropes. I felt like yelling “Murderers!” The ground seemed to shake under my feet. It was as if I were a witness to a medieval horror. There was a strange silence. Then Dr. Seidel examined the inmate and pronounced him dead. Two first aid people removed his body and laid it at the side of the building.

I saw firsthand the hanged man. On his neck were deep rope burns. An enlarged blue tongue hung out of his mouth. Urine and feces fouled his dead body. I asked God if he was ever hungry. Later, as we stood in line for our evening ration, I had a fleeting thought: How can we go on as if nothing has happened?

Penalties for petty crimes stiffened. Almost anything that wasn’t explicitly allowed became a crime. Sometimes simple allegations of a planned escape were sufficient to cause a hanging. The victim was often blamed for being caught. We now risked execution at every turn, but prisoners continued taking risks, for the alternative was starvation. In time we witnessed more such horrors, and Thursday became a regular execution day in Gutenbrunn. When more than eight hangings were scheduled for a day, there was a double shift at the gallows. On one day eleven prisoners, not all from Gutenbrunn, were executed. After they were declared dead, we removed them. On one occasion, as if by a miracle, suddenly one man began breathing. For a moment I thought they would let him live. But when one of the Gestapo noticed his chest moving up and down, he walked over and shot him point-blank in the head. This was hard to shake off. Someone protested, muttering, “The Geneva Convention forbids double punishment.” But who could stop them?

Another ugly incident would puzzle me for many years to come. On one Sunday afternoon, as I walked in the yard, two Gestapo came through the kitchen door into the camp and ordered a policeman to drive a hook into a door frame. Then, in extraordinary secrecy, they executed a pretty young girl who had come with them in their car. Afterward, they put her body into the trunk and left. Since on Sundays the Kommandant and many guards did not come to the camp, few people ever knew what had happened.

The price paid in human life in Gutenbrunn wasn’t only on the gallows. Here, as in Steineck, more inmates died from malnutrition and from exhaustion. Those who lay in the infirmary talked to one another. They could no longer contain their misery. “We gave in to slavery, and we labor for them to see an end to this, but if it goes on much longer, none of us will survive,” one said. “Why did we allow them to bring us here?”

“What was our alternative? If we hadn’t come in peace, they would have taken us with violence, and we still would have ended up where we are,” said another.

“Why does the world remain so indifferent to this? Don’t they know what is happening?” the first said.

“They probably don’t,” said the other.

“They must know,” the first insisted. “They just don’t care.”

“Red Cross people know what is going on.” I was called away and heard only fragments of their continuing discussion. They said they feared that because the Germans rendered us worthless parasites, the rest of the world didn’t see us any differently. They spoke as if a sense of abandonment had taken hold of them, as if they thought that the world had given up on us.

Among the newest group of Jews to arrive was a journalist from Leipzig named Richard Grimm. I met him on the tracks. He told me that he deplored the Goldberg reception. He was a clever, courageous, and physically imposing man with broad shoulders. Like Goldberg, he spoke fluent German. Unfamiliar with camp strategy, he was cautious. He worked hard, probing and asking questions. After he learned the camp rules, he went on the offensive against Goldberg. With a recent change in Kommandants, Grimm saw an opportunity to undermine Goldberg’s authority. That gave Goldberg much to worry about.

The clever and courageous Leipziger journalist quickly attracted the new Kommandant’s attention. More mature than Goldberg, with superior intelligence, Grimm was appointed to a newly created position as camp administrator. No one knew exactly what his responsibilities were, but his post made him an insider. Since it brought him into constant contact with the SS Kommandant, he developed a power base and often challenged Goldberg’s authority. There was bickering and posturing as the two vied for the favor of the SS. Goldberg complained about Grimm, and Grimm openly criticized Goldberg. It became clear that only one of them could be the top Jewish inmate in the camp. The Kommandant preferred Grimm’s bright, decisive approach to Goldberg’s impetuous brashness, and Grimm became the camp’s Lagerältester. Richard Grimm was now the main player, and although Kurt Goldberg still hung on as head of the police, at long last his rule was over.

In October 1942 the weather turned foul. The clothes we had worn all these long months turned to rags, and our shoes had long ago fallen apart. Some tied string around the fragments of their shoes. How much we wanted to delay winter’s coming! At work the prisoners did everything to stay warm; they flung their arms about and stamped their feet to warm their freezing limbs. Some even traded their soup for newspapers or empty cement bags to tie around their bodies. Herdecke now spent more time in the hut keeping warm and drinking coffee. I noticed loads of wood scraps lying around, and a plan developed. I knew that for Herdecke to agree, my argument would have to be based on an increase in productivity. Each time I was ready to bring up my proposal, he left.

One day I stopped him before he could leave the hut. “Mr. Herdecke, our people are losing much of their strength just keeping warm. I think if we give them a chance to warm up at intervals, they will be more productive. I wonder if you could allow them a break at midmorning. We have enough wood scraps to keep a fire going, and we could even brew coffee, as we did in Steineck.”

He raised his eyes from his blueprints and looked at me with a distant gaze. A few moments passed, and when I thought he would say no, he agreed. I could see that I had stirred his humanity. “Yes,” he said, “but where do you want to build the fire?” I told him about Stasia’s field kitchen, and he agreed to the idea and offered to bring us some ersatz coffee. A few days later I called on my father to gather wood, start a fire, and brew the coffee. It could not have come at a better time, for Papa was beginning to take on the look of a Mussulman. He set up a kiln of bricks, and within a couple of days the half hour coffee break was a reality. This simple work break may have saved many lives that winter. Thereafter, everyone called Papa the Coffee Man.

It was refreshing to encounter a decent Nazi like Herdecke.

Good will is mighty contagious. He set an example for his foremen, and they too became more reasonable. Herdecke was condemning his Führer in front of me more often now. He told me he had joined the party to hold on to his engineering career. But he felt that the Führer was leading his people to disaster. Regardless of what he thought, I couldn’t afford to discuss that subject.

My father also began to bake potatoes for inmates who managed to steal them. In return, he could keep a share for himself. Relieved from hard work and with a bit more sustenance, Papa slowly regained his rosy cheeks. Thanks to Grimm’s influence on the Kommandant, our medical barracks was enlarged, allowing us to keep more of the sick inmates in bed. Papa and I also moved into a new barracks, which was built to house new arrivals. I stopped working for Herdecke so that I could remain in the infirmary full time.

It was a long trip on foot for Zosia to visit me, yet she came at least once a month to bring some food, supply me with medication, and deliver letters from Pola and Mama. One Saturday she handed me two of their letters. I thought this was very unusual, since the letters were postmarked only two days apart. When I returned to the barracks, Papa opened one, and I the other. The first letter told of the ongoing deportations. The second, however, was even more disturbing. My brother, Josek, had been arrested and deported, and Mama and Pola didn’t know his whereabouts. Even his exemption, issued to him by a captain in the German army, wasn’t of any merit. It was a severe blow to Mother. “No matter what,” wrote Pola, “I am not leaving Mama.” Papa looked at me, and with a deep sigh he intoned, “God asks us not to question his will.” His voice began to quiver with enormous pain. We both knew that Pola and Mama were now in true danger. In my mind I was at home with them. I went to the infirmary, my heart in a vise.