The Fighter Page 11

  The camp has a new commander. Even though I try not to go anywhere near the SS, I think I know them, after a year and a half. They don’t really look like human beings, more like bad guys in a puppet show. Well, this new commander, Herr Remmele, amazes me. He gives new meaning to the word vicious. He lives with his wife and his daughter in a small house that looks over the camp. He comes out on the balcony, holding the hand of his six-year-old daughter, a blond angel dressed in a white frock. He shows the camp to her: here are the blocks, there is the infirmary, and that’s the kitchen….

  “Look at these Jews! See how slow and clumsy they are. This is just plain laziness. I’ll show you that they can move much faster….”

  He draws his gun from his holster and starts shooting at the prisoners. His drunken laughter is nearly as noisy as his gun. I run for cover, like everybody else. So I can’t see if the blond child enjoys the game as much as her father does.

  Herr Remmele is a boxing fan. He asks the SS to set up a fight. The SS ask the kapos. One of the kapos volunteers. He is a gigantic Pole, a former boxer whom we call Double-Nose because his nose is broken in a way that makes it look like he has two of them. Other kapos recommend me. My reputation as a boxer has followed me since the day I refused to kill a Muselman in Auschwitz. I also broke two teeth of a deputy a while back, I can’t remember when exactly. I don’t remember his name, either.

  Thus, on a Sunday, while I’m talking with Brod, a kapo calls me out.

  “You, Jew, do you know the kapo Double-Nose? He wants to fight against you. The camp’s commander bought boxing gloves.”

  “Double-Nose is three times my size and my weight. In boxing, there are weight categories. A flyweight can’t fight a heavyweight.”

  “So you’re scared? That doesn’t surprise me. Boxing is a sport for men, not for Jews.”

  “Okay, I’ll think about it….”

  “Yeah, why don’t you think about it! For thinking, you’re the best, but for fighting you’re the worst cowards.”

  He shrugs and walks away. Brod smiles.

  “I hope you’ll accept, just to show these shitty Poles that Jews can fight.”

  “That won’t be so easy. The man is a former boxer. In a real fight, if one of the boxers weighs five pounds more than the other, it is already a huge advantage. Here we’re talking about a hundred pounds more. He’s going to turn me into ground meat.”

  “He may have boxed, but I bet he was lousy. Otherwise, nobody would have broken his nose. I’ve seen you fight. You’re quick, you can dodge his blows.”

  “Maybe, but if he lands just one, I’m dead.”

  “You’ve got to try. You risk your life every day, so it doesn’t make much difference. Do you know the story of the Jew who is the caliph of Baghdad’s buffoon?”

  “No.”

  “The caliph condemns him to death because one of his jokes offended him. As he remembers with some fondness the many times the Jew made him laugh, he allows him to choose his way of dying. ‘O great caliph,’ the Jew says, ‘your humble servant chooses to die of old age!’”

  Brod talks to the comrades. They all say I should fight. Those who traffic with the miners promise to bring me the most precious foods: eggs and onions, even if it means risking their own lives. The soup and the pieces of sausage I receive in the kitchen barely keep starvation away. I need more food if I want to build strong muscles. Onions are even more useful than eggs, because they contain good vitamins. I’ve worked in the mine for eighteen months. The gangway I was digging with the old miner and his partner has reached the coal vein. Now I work at extracting the coal with Vitek, a Polish miner. The vein is two feet high. I crawl, I move on my hands and knees. I spend so much time kneeling that my knee joints are inflamed and quite sore. The prisoners suffer from all kinds of aches due to the lack of vitamins: abscesses, boils, carbuncles, pustules. If I do not eat some onions, I won’t be able to move when I face Double-Nose.

  I tell the kapos I accept Double-Nose’s challenge.

  “But you should promise not to retaliate and punish me if I win.”

  “Why would we punish you? It will be a fair fight. The stronger one will win.”

  They’re so confident their guy is going to beat me that they’re ready to promise anything.

  Now I must train. The cooks let me jump rope with a length of string. I shadowbox or I ask Brod to be my sparring partner. My reflexes are still there. Boxing is like swimming or bike riding—something you never forget. First of all, I have to improve my breathing so I can fight long enough to wear out my opponent. I wish I could run when we bring the soup to the digging kommando. This would be good training. Of course, I can’t just decide to run in front of the SS who’s watching us. I must wait for him to bring it up.

  “Hey, you, the boxer. Aren’t you training?”

  He lets me hop on the path instead of walking. I am careful not to go too fast. If I catch up with his horse cart, he might not be able to resist the temptation of shooting me just for fun. “The Jew tried to escape….”

  The kapos choose a Sunday in February. It is too cold outside, so they set up the ring inside a block. Everybody says “ring,” but it consists of four stools in the middle of the block. The whole camp is crammed inside the block, I think. Some prisoners are sitting on the beds; most are standing in the central aisle. The kapos sit around the ring. Fat and rosy, they tower over a flock of skeletons. It looks like they have absorbed all of our body fat. They shout, they joke, they laugh loudly.

  I sit on one of the stools. Brod, who acts as my trainer, tries to encourage me.

  “You’re going to win for sure. All the comrades support you. Don’t forget, you’re fighting for them!”

  Six or seven years have passed since the last time I stepped into a ring. I recognize a forgotten feeling: a knot that tied my entrails before a fight. Except this time, the knot ties every fiber of my body. I don’t fight for some tin medal, but for my very life. What’s more, I defend the honor of my comrades and of my people.

  Double-Nose sits down in the opposite corner. He wears black satin boxing shorts and sneakers. I’ve removed my striped jacket. With my pajama pants and my winter boots, my small size, and my meager body, I feel utterly ridiculous. I look like Charlie Chaplin trying his hand at boxing.

  I hear a kind of hubbub behind me. The crowd parts suddenly. The camp’s commander and his assistants have come to see the show. At least he hasn’t brought his daughter.

  We’re just waiting for the referee. Here he comes. He enters the ring, turns toward me, and grins in an exaggerated fashion so as to show me his teeth. Two are missing from his lower jaw. He is the deputy I knocked down! I remember his name now: Mandelbrot. He calls us into the ring and introduces us.

  “On my left, Herr Korzeniowicz. On my right, Herr Wisniak. The fight will last three rounds of three minutes each.”

  The kapos and the SS laugh when Mandelbrot introduces me. The comrades are not laughing.

  Mandelbrot bangs on a tin cup with a spoon to start the fight. Without waiting, Double-Nose rushes at me and tries to hit me with both hands. My fear vanishes instantly. Brod was right: this guy really can’t box. He seems to throw punches at random. His steps are as heavy as a bear’s. He shouts like a lumberman wielding an ax. I may not jump around as lightly as I did ten years ago, but I move faster than he does. I dodge his punches by twisting my body, by moving my head back, by bending down to slide under his guard, by stepping aside. My relieved supporters begin to laugh at him. I’m not worried anymore. Double-Nose becomes angry. He puts all his energy into a punch that misses. He loses his balance and falls forward. Even the kapos and SS can’t help laughing. He stands up slowly, muttering and swearing, then puts up his guard again.

  The first round is over. I look at Double-Nose on his stool. His breathing is labored. He looks like someone who is learning to swim and just swallowed some water.

  “He’s done for,” Brod says. “He won’t last until the end of the se
cond round. But you, Wisniak, you should be careful. Keep your distance.”

  The referee bangs on his tin cup. I stand up. Double-Nose jumps at me like a tiger. His strength is back. He isn’t breathing like a drowning man anymore. He hits lower, so I can’t slide under his guard. His trainer gave him some advice, obviously. He’s still so slow that I can run circles around him. My comrades’ laughs make me so confident that I laugh, too. I think that I’m keeping my distance, but I forget that my opponent has longer arms than me. He succeeds in hitting me on my side, near the liver. I wasn’t tightening my abdominal muscles enough. Or maybe he caught me with a low hook. A sharp pain cuts across my stomach. I feel I’m falling to the ground. I think about death, my familiar companion in Auschwitz. A stranger saved my life when I had lost my will to live. Brod kept me from running to the fence. I’ve seen thousands of corpses. If I don’t get up, I’ll become one of them. Get up, Maurice! Gather the shards of your will and stand up. You’ve got to. While I’m talking myself into controlling the pain, I discover that I’m actually standing up. My body responded to the Auschwitz reflex and stood up without consulting me. My legs wobble; I start to swing as if I had drunk too much. Instead of finishing me off with a flip of his finger, Double-Nose gapes at me without moving. He can’t believe I survived such a blow. I don’t need more than a few seconds to collect my thoughts and step back.

  After ages, Mandelbrot bangs the end of the second round. I wonder how he counts the three minutes without a watch. I think he waited for at least six minutes, leaving Double-Nose plenty of time to crush me.

  Brod gives my poor body a vigorous rub.

  “He got you good. Does it hurt?”

  “I’m okay….”

  “Breathe deep. The massage will pep you up. You can make it. I’m sure you were hit even harder when you boxed in Paris.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be more careful.”

  “Double-Nose is exhausted. Now’s the time to attack. Give him your all. This is the last round of your life, Wisniak! Look at the kapos and the SS. They’re as white as bedsheets, because they know they’ve lost. We’re counting on you….”

  At the bang of the spoon, Double-Nose rushes once more, but he doesn’t know where he’s going. He raises his arms in front of himself like a blind man. He wants to catch me so that I can’t escape him again. He’s pathetic. His arms drop down. He’s so weak he can’t keep his guard up anymore. I begin to throw hard punches to his body, then to his face. I put more power into them. Jabs, hooks, uppercuts. What’s obvious is that he’s used to being hit. He resists, he stays up, he tries to hold on to me to avoid falling. I push him away. He slides down gently and sits on the ground.

  The referee doesn’t know whether I’m allowed to knock out a kapo. He counts to ten as slowly as if he didn’t remember the numbers. He could count all the way to a hundred—Double-Nose won’t stand up.

  The comrades shriek wildly. Whereas the kapos keep silent, wondering how to react, the SS applaud me and shout: “Bravo!” The kapos, following their masters’ example, applaud shyly. I’m amazed when Double-Nose, standing up eventually, pulls me into his arms and pats my back in a friendly manner.

  Chapter 26

  We pass the camp gate in the middle of the afternoon

  During the year 1944, I work in the coal vein with Vitek. This man is different from the other Poles—he doesn’t hate Jews. The mine’s director wants us to extract twenty tons of coal every day. To reach this monstrous goal, we must become a strong team and avoid quarreling. If we don’t learn to coordinate our moves, the conveyor belt that takes the coal away can snatch us and carry us to disaster. Vitek and I become real friends.

  “I’ve worked with several prisoners,” he says. “They each held on a month or two before vanishing. I believe they’re all dead. You’ve been here six months and you’re still alive. How do you explain it?”

  “At night, after the mine, I work in the kitchen, where I can eat a little more than the other guys.”

  “I can’t believe it! You work here on your knees for eight hours, then you’ve got enough strength left to begin another job!”

  “All the prisoners must find something if they want to survive. In the camp, rest doesn’t exist. The Germans think there are too many Jews. Every other week, they select the exhausted ones and send them to the gas chamber in Auschwitz.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard about that. Other prisoners told me the same thing.”

  In June, the camp secretary informs us that the Americans have landed in France, on the Normandy coast. On the other side of Europe, the Russians are reaching the Polish border. For the first time since I arrived in the camp two years ago, a feeling that resembles a glimmer of hope lights my heart. The Germans will be vanquished soon, no doubt. If only we could manage to survive until their defeat!

  They send the most ferocious SS to the Eastern Front, which gets closer every day. To the German prisoners who wear the green triangle of common criminals—that is, the main kapos and block seniors—they offer freedom if they agree to enroll in the army. The remaining barons, Poles or Jews, treat us with a courtesy that increases every day. They look like wolves wearing a lambskin. A kapo who is probably preparing to escape forces me to give him my winter boots, which I had been able to keep all along. Now I wear canvas shoes with wooden soles.

  Toward the end of the year, we stop going into the mine. The Russians have taken Warsaw. When the wind blows from the east, we hear a vague rumbling—the song of their cannons. What will happen to us? The pessimists think the Germans will kill everybody before leaving. The optimists expect the Red Army to free us before the end of the week.

  In January 1945, we learn that we’ll neither be gassed nor liberated by the Russians, but “evacuated.” One morning, they give us each a blanket and a piece of bread. Every prisoner is also entitled to a dried sausage. The barons keep all the sausages, as if to stay in character until the bitter end. Standing in rows of five, we wait for hours in the cold. Brod and Gelber are with me.

  Two SS go to the infirmary. “We advise you to come with the others,” they tell the patients. (I know this because Finkelstein, a comrade from my block who broke his leg when the conveyor belt caught him, told me about it after the war.)

  Ever since we’ve been hearing the rumble of the Russian cannons, the SS and the barons seem to hesitate before committing their usual crimes. Still, Finkelstein and our other bedridden comrades distrust these murderers. The two SS seem to imply that staying would be a bad idea. “Is it a good old death threat?” Finkelstein wonders. He tries to stand up but can’t. He doesn’t have a choice: he must stay on his straw mat. “I’ve been very lucky so far,” he thinks. “If the SS hadn’t grown soft suddenly, they would have cured my broken leg in the gas chamber….” (He stayed ten days in the infirmary; then the Germans vanished and the Russians freed him. In the meantime, all the evacuated invalids died.)

  We pass the camp gate in the middle of the afternoon. Daylight is already receding. We walk on a narrow road, toward an unknown destination. The barons have loaded their possessions and food supplies on long sleighs. As horses are scarce, ten prisoners pull each sleigh.

  The narrow road merges into a larger one. A pitiful gray procession crawls along it. Thousands of men and women try to resist the frozen wind. I recognize the tired shuffle of the Auschwitz prisoners. We stop and wait several hours. I guess we’re supposed to walk behind them. They seem to slow down. The barons and the healthier prisoners marched in front. What we see now, under the bleak winter twilight, is the desperate parade of the sick and Muselmen.

  One hour or so after the last Auschwitz Muselman creeps away, they order us to move. We hear gunshots far ahead in front of us. Brod and Gelber rejoice.

  “The Polish underground fighters are attacking the SS. We’ll soon be free.”

  “Or it might be the advance troops of the Red Army!”

  These two poor guys are dreaming.

  “Do you really think th
at the underground fighters or the Russian soldiers would shoot at SS in the dark? This would end up killing the prisoners. Besides, the SS would shoot back and we would hear machine guns.”

  “So what do you make of it?”

  “Do you think the SS…?”

  “Of course. Listen to the shots: one at a time. They shoot the sick and the Muselmen whenever they stop walking.”

  “We should see bodies on the road.”

  “They push them to the sides. If there was any light, we would see them.”

  After a while, we also hear shots behind us. Brod wants to know for sure, so he begins to slow down. One hour later, he catches up with us.

  “As soon as a guy lags behind, they put a bullet into his head. Remmele, the commander, and other SS take care of it. They ride motorbikes with sidecars. They find the stragglers with their headlights.”

  Russian war prisoners attack the Jews to steal their bread. Me, I ate my piece right away to be safe. The Jews resist; a fight begins in the dark. One of the motorbikes comes by. The SS shoot in the direction of the fight: three Russians killed and seven Jews.

  Old German reservists, some of them more than sixty years old, guard our convoy—one soldier every thirty feet, under the supervision of the SS on their bikes. They walk, like us. At first, they carry heavy backpacks. Then they find it more convenient to use prisoners as mules. So here I am, bent under a huge bag, sinking to my knees into the snow. The white powder sticks under my wooden soles. I slip, I stumble, I’m finding it harder and harder to walk. I feel my legs getting weaker. If I don’t discover a way out of this mess, I’ll drift to the back of the line and the SS will kill me. I step on something…. A backpack! Of course: I’ll just throw my bag away. I’ve wrapped my head and shoulders in my blanket against the cold, so I can hope the old reservist who gave me the bag doesn’t recognize me. He saw me briefly under the glare of his flashlight. All the prisoners look alike, with their striped pajamas and shaven heads. I must take this risk to survive. I explain my plan to Brod.