The Fighter Page 12

  “Just walk behind me and empty the bag…. When it’s flat, we’ll remove it more easily and just let it slide to the ground.”

  “All right.”

  I hear a muffled but joyful scream:

  “Look at this, Wisniak!”

  He shows me two whole sausages, two hard-boiled eggs, and a loaf of bread! We share this bounty with Gelber and several other comrades. After less than a minute, not a single bread crumb is left to incriminate us.

  They order us to sit in a circle in the middle of a field. So far, it has been very dark because we were walking in a forest of firs or pines. Now our tormentors can see us clearly, as the snow reflects the moonlight. The motorized SS start shouting and shooting at us.

  “Is this what you call a circle, you pigs?”

  “Hurry up!”

  “See, you can move faster!”

  I think our number has been halved since we left the camp. I am so tired that I fall asleep instantly, sitting on my folded blanket.

  Gunfire wakes us up at dawn.

  “Up, up, you shitheads! By fives!” the SS holler.

  Many comrades, frozen stiff, fail to stand up. The SS and the barons slept in a farmhouse at the edge of the field. Forty or fifty prisoners hid in the farm’s attic to escape from the cold. The SS shoot into the straw to dislodge them. A dozen or so get out alive.

  The old reservists tell the SS that their bags full of food have vanished. The SS decide to search us before setting off. When they find a lump of sugar or a piece of bread in a comrade’s pocket, they tell him to stand to the side with the prisoners who are too tired to walk.

  “Trucks will come and pick you up,” they promise.

  We never see any of them again, so we think the SS killed them. One third of the survivors disappear this way. We march all day. We pass through several villages. We see Poles watching us, hidden behind half-closed shutters. Brod is still looking for the underground fighters.

  “I don’t understand why they don’t attack now. It is daytime.”

  “They’re glad the SS are taking us away. You remember Krzisztof, the kitchen kapo? One day, we had a talk about escaping from the camp. He told me the Jews were better off staying inside: ‘If you go out, the Polish underground fighters will bump you off. They want to create a new Poland without any Jews.’”

  As the night is falling again, we reach the city of Wodzislaw. We have walked twenty-five miles or so. A train of platform cars is waiting for us in the station. New SS guards, needing to warm up, welcome us with whips and clubs. I stay on my feet and climb up on a platform. Many comrades fall repeatedly and receive harsh blows. A familiar voice calls me. I recognize Gelber, although his face is puffed and bloody.

  “They really beat you up, Wisniak!”

  “Me? No. I don’t think they did….”

  “You’re all black.”

  “Oh. Yesterday I threw away a reservist’s bag. I didn’t want him to recognize me, so I rubbed mud all over my face.”

  The train runs and puffs through the night. A thick layer of snow covers us and protects us from the cold. At dawn, we halt in a station called Buchenwald. The SS wake us up with the butts of their rifles. Some comrades refuse to wake up. The snow wasn’t thick enough for them: they’re as hard as stone statues.

  Chapter 27

  When I say hi to these Germans, they don’t answer

  The camp of Buchenwald is located in Germany, four hundred miles west of Auschwitz. A surprise awaits our barons: they lose their privileges. While we’re standing on line for our first soup, one of them tries to overtake us. A Buchenwald deputy stops him:

  “What do you want?”

  “I am German.”

  “So what?”

  “I am German and they’re Jews.”

  “Here, you’re nothing.”

  The deputy gives him a couple of sharp slaps, then sends him to the end of the line. Here, everybody receives the same allotment of soup. Later on, a Buchenwald prisoner tells us what happened in this camp.

  “There was a kind of civil war. Political prisoners, mostly communists from Germany and other countries, have supplanted the German criminals who held the power positions at first. The SS went along with the change because the politicals could organize the camp better than the criminals. The Germans want their slaves to be as productive as possible.”

  What a pity: we can’t stay in this paradise. It seems we’re needed in another camp. After a very short night, they order us lined up by fives. I try to hide under a bed at the end of the block, but they find me and I hit the road with my comrades. The Buchenwald prisoners told us that the American army entered Germany. The great Reich that was supposed to last one thousand years is seeing its last days. This doesn’t stop the SS from shooting the laggards as they did on the road from Auschwitz. We walk thirty miles toward the south, which means hundreds of comrades die on the road.

  We enter the camp of Ohrdruf at dinnertime. They lead us to an annex of the camp called Krähwinkel. We miss Buchenwald. Here, the barons are criminals. They serve a watery soup in dirty cans that remind us of the Auschwitz chamber pots.

  They tell us we’ll be digging galleries in the mountain with German workers. I hope we’ll be able to work together as well as we did with the Polish miners.

  I sleep in a concrete blockhouse, for some reason the only Jew in the middle of one hundred Russian war prisoners. They push me to a corner, far from the single window, so that I have a hard time breathing.

  “You shouldn’t complain,” they say. “Your friends are sleeping outside in the mud.”

  I only spend a few hours in this concrete box anyway. We leave before dawn; we travel by train for several hours to reach our work site. They carry us in tipcarts similar to the mine’s “tubs.” Triangular buckets are not a comfortable way to travel, especially when you put fifteen men in them. We’re squeezed so tight that each of us can stand on only one foot. Some comrades scream with pain when cramps contract the ghostly muscles that stick to their legs.

  We dig an underground factory. The Nazis want to make new flying bombs there. I carry a giant drill on my shoulder, with a six-foot bit, which two German workers push into the rock. After a few seconds, I am covered with dust. Stone chips hit my face all the time. The German workers wear helmets and goggles. As for me, standing in front of them like a human shield, I have no protection. These workers insult me when I stop to wipe off the dust. When they pause for lunch, they eat and drink as if I didn’t exist. I work for eight hours without ingesting anything but the dust that parches my throat. Although the Polish miners were anti-Semitic, they reacted like human beings. As we worked together, they decided eventually that I was a man like them. They gave me water and even food. In the morning, when I say hi to these Germans, they don’t answer. They treat me like a dog. Or rather, like what I am: a slave. They’re no different from the SS.

  At the end of the second week, a stone chip flies into my right eye. They forbid me to stop.

  “Go on working, shitbag. Close your eye!”

  So what? Do you think you’ll win the war with your flying bombs? I’m lucky that the workday is soon over. As I’m leaving, one of the two workers tells me to go to the infirmary and show someone my eye. It is the first time they say something to me that is not an insult. It means they need me. I guess the Jews who preceded me were too weak to carry the machine for eight hours. If they lose me, they’ll have to carry it themselves.

  I know the doctor: Gamkhi, a Greek Jew who comes from Jawischowitz like me.

  “The cornea is barely nicked, but you must be careful. If an infection sets in, you may lose your eye. All I can do is dress the wound.”

  He dresses the wound in the camp’s usual manner, with a small square of toilet paper.

  “I wish I could stay here for a few days. You could watch my eye and I would rest. I have to carry a very heavy machine, but I am not eating enough. I’m getting weaker. If only I could sleep a little….”

&n
bsp; “Look, this block is full of badly hurt men, many dying. If an SS doctor finds out I am keeping you here so you can rest, we’ll both be in trouble. They watch me because I am a newcomer. Maybe I can take you in next week.”

  “What kills all these guys?”

  “Exhaustion. They’ve reached the end of the line, you know….”

  I go back to work. Every evening, I show my eye to Gamkhi. He changes my dressing, which turns black because of the rock powder.

  I run into Brod.

  “Where have you been, Wisniak? I haven’t seen you for a long time.”

  “I live in the blockhouse with the Russians. Also, I spend lots of time in the infirmary. I’ve hurt my eye.”

  “Stone chip? The war is nearly over, but these bastards will torture us to the bitter end.”

  “If we survive to the bitter end.”

  “You’re right. Too many comrades weaken and die in this camp. Listen: I’ve thought of a plan. I’ve told Gelber and four others about it. We’ll need another seven or eight. We climb together into a tipcart and remove the hooks that hold the bucket straight. You remove the front hook, I remove the back one.”

  “The bucket will flip and we’ll fall!”

  “That’s my plan. If the accident happens right when we leave the station, before we reach our regular speed, we’ll be hurt just enough to go to the infirmary.”

  “Pretty clever….”

  Brod’s plan succeeds perfectly. We suffer from light bruises, but our boils and abscesses burst so that we are covered with blood. The SS run toward us with their whips, but they can’t stand the sight of blood.

  “Go to the infirmary, you stinking Jews,” they shout. “Quick!”

  Gamkhi, whom I’ve informed about our plan, shows us a wooden board in a corner of the block. We clean our wounds. This means that we wash for the first time since we left Jawischowitz. Then we lie down on the wooden board, pressed close together. I sleep for forty-eight hours straight—waking only for soup. After four days, my comrades go back to work. Gamkhi keeps me because of my eye.

  “The wound doesn’t really justify it. I’ll give you a job. I need an orderly.”

  Close to three years after my arrival in Auschwitz, while I expect that I’ll soon leave the hell of the camps forever, I’m back to the same task I was given on my first day: I carry corpses. A man is sitting on his straw mat, on the upper berth. Suddenly, without a word, he tumbles to the ground. He’s dead. I go pick him up.

  “Our block senior sends us to the infirmary when we’re kaput,” his neighbor says. “Ten of us came here this morning to see the doctor. Three are dead already and he hasn’t even examined us.”

  I carry thirty bodies every day. The Russian war prisoners have stolen all the blankets. They tear them into pieces to make shoes. The sick men use the straw mats as sleeping bags against the cold. When they die, I must pull them out of a straw cocoon soiled with their piss and shit. Often, I need to break their bony fingers, which hold the cloth with a desperate grip. It is not true that I’ll soon leave the hell of the camps forever. I’ll never leave. I’ll be a Häftling, a camp prisoner, for the rest of my life. I’ve become numb. Otherwise, my job in the infirmary would make me crazy.

  One week after us, other comrades hoping to rest in the infirmary provoke a tipcar accident. The SS were willing to believe it once, but not twice. They send their dogs to check whether the accident victims are really unable to stand up. The poor guys come to the infirmary on stretchers. Torn flaps of skin and flesh hang from their thighs like wallpaper coming loose. Four of them die within the first hour.

  I turn to Gamkhi.

  “I thought I had seen everything!”

  “Yeah. I don’t know how many times I’ve had the same thought….”

  One of the wounded describes the dogs’ rush.

  “They attacked as if they wanted to eat us alive. The SS found it hilarious. I could see both the fangs of the dogs and the teeth of the SS. They were laughing like kids.”

  Gamkhi dresses the wounds with toilet paper.

  It seems that the SS, feeling death closing in on them, want to bring along as many people as possible. Two or three bodies hang from every tree in the camp. Hanging is the usual punishment for trying to escape. Russian war prisoners, hearing that the Red Army has entered Germany, can’t resist the temptation.

  Chapter 28

  What do they want? Tell me, Wisniak….

  Around April 4 or 5, some two months after we arrived in Ohrdruf-Krähwinkel, they evacuate us again.n

  We return to Buchenwald. Thirty miles on foot, without eating or drinking. This is the very heart of Germany. We’re very close to the city of Weimar, where the great poets Goethe and Schiller lived. When we pass through a village, the people insult us and spit at us. I remember a village we crossed soon after leaving Jawischowitz. The Poles watched us in silence. Some of them looked at us with a kind of compassion or pity.

  We have been fed so little that we find it hard to walk. What’s more, the SS seem to be in some kind of a hurry. We hear more gunshots coming from the rear than before. My knees and my hip joints hurt terribly. I must summon my willpower to keep from screaming with pain and lying down on the road. I mutter under my breath: “You’ve held on for so long, Moshe. It would be silly to give up now. Come on, one more step. And another one….”

  As soon as we pass Buchenwald’s gate, I collapse on the ground. I see my comrades fight for a barrel of soup. It falls over. They lap up the soup mixed with mud, like animals.

  Comrades carry me to a block and sit me down in a corner. I fall asleep right then and there. The next day, I hear rumors that the SS want to evacuate the camp. I can’t walk. This time, I’ll die.

  Two days later, I can bend my knees. I can stand up. The Buchenwald men are dreamers.

  “The Americans will free us any day now,” they say. “We’ve decided to wait for them. We’ll refuse to be evacuated.”

  The Jawischowitz comrades and I are too weak to oppose the SS. On the afternoon of April 10, they order evacuation.o

  “Line up by five, you shitbags!”

  We walk for hours. When my legs won’t carry me anymore, I’ll stop…. To my relief, we come to a railway station, where a train is waiting for us. Brod is there, as weak as me but still alive. We climb up on a flatcar.

  “What do they want? Tell me, Wisniak…. The Americans and the Russians have captured most of Germany already. Do they want us to work still more?”

  “They don’t give a damn about the Americans and the Russians. They’ve always believed their real enemies were the Jews. Look at the SS on that passenger car’s roof…. They’reaiming their machine guns at us. Ready to shoot at the dying and the dead.”

  …

  After a few hours, fifteen comrades or so are dead already. Others call out to the SS.

  “Hey, we have some dead.”

  “Good. You’re here to die.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Shut up, you stinking Jews, otherwise we’ll shoot.”

  The next day, old reservists replace the SS. They give us bread—a quarter pound each. They only know the number of men at the beginning of the journey, so we also eat the bread of the dead. This is not enough, though, since we get nothing to eat or drink for days afterward. The train moves slowly, stopping often. Like my comrades, I spend my waking hours crushing the lice who’ve been feasting on my flesh since we arrived in Krähwinkel.

  We halt in a station. I notice something strange: the Germans don’t insult us anymore. They don’t laugh at us. We read fear on their faces. Children wearing uniforms are waiting on the platforms. We ask our old reservists for water. We’re amazed—they obey us!

  The train starts again. Fifteen minutes later, low-flying airplanes come and shoot at it. Our old German guards jump down and hide under the cars. The Russian war prisoners—and some forty Jews strong enough to step off the train—scatter on both sides of the track. As soon as the planes v
anish, the old soldiers emerge.

  The lone SS commander is furious.

  “You’re not real Germans, you’re cowards! Shitbags! You’ve let the prisoners go. Run and catch them at once. Pull a stunt like this again, I’ll have you shot!”

  In the middle of this mayhem, Brod and I don’t move a finger. We’re much too weak to climb down and run. We watched the air raid like it was a scene in a film that had nothing to do with us. The airplanes’ guns killed only three comrades in our car. The Jews who ran into the fields and the Russians were not as lucky—half of them are dead.

  The track is broken. We must all climb down after all. The SS commander asks the old reservists to sort us by nationality. There are French, Polish, Russian, and Czech war prisoners. And the Jews. We know what he wants to do—kill the Jews. Brod and I, as well as all the other Jews who came from France, try to go with the Frenchmen. We know when to seize an opportunity. That’s why we’ve survived until now. The Frenchmen push us away.

  “You’re not really French. You’re Jewish!”

  What can we do? I decide to become Polish again. I should have guessed it: the Poles are more brutal than the French.

  “Scram, you shitty Yid! Go with the other Yids!”

  So I end up with the Jews after all. If the Germans shoot us, I’ll die right away. If we have to walk, I’ll die of exhaustion later.

  Religious Jews begin to say their prayers. One of their faces seems familiar. Where have I seen this guy? Hey, this is Gelber! He mumbles while reading a prayer book. I can’t believe it…. I saw him as naked as a worm every day when we took a shower after the mine. If he had owned a book, I would have known it. I realize that this is the first book I have seen in three years. How did Gelber (if this religious Jew is indeed Gelber) find a prayer book? I look at this question from every angle, but my weary mind can’t find an answer.