The Fighter Read online

  “Say, Brod, you look good! While everybody was hungry, you were gaining weight.”

  “Come on, Wisniak, you’re not that thin yourself!”

  “My wife sent me food. I did get fatter when I stopped boxing. I went from a hundred and eight pounds to a hundred and eighty-five! I tried to keep in shape, though. I exercised on weekends.”

  “I remember. You were always swimming and playing volleyball. How’s Rachel?”

  “Last time I saw her, she was fine. We have a son, Élie. He’s three years old. What about your children?”

  “I have one more.”

  “Four?”

  “I like large families. I have eight brothers and sisters. My last one, actually, I’ve hardly even seen her. This jacket you’re wearing is nice. Did your brother cut it?”

  “Of course, Albert did it.”

  “He’s a fine craftsman. When he started working by himself, I lost my best worker. Did he marry?”

  “He married just before the war. He has a daughter.”

  “You know what? Maybe they’re going to take us back to Paris and free us for Bastille Day, on July 14. We’ll be able to dance with our wives!”

  “I don’t think the Germans will let the French celebrate Bastille Day. My brother told me France isn’t even a republic anymore. If I’d known, I would have gone to America.”

  “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have registered as a Jew. They can’t control everybody. Do you know the story of the two Jews taking a walk in Moscow?”

  “No.”

  “This was in the times of the czar. One of the Jews only has a residence permit. Suddenly, a cop comes at them. ‘Start running,’ says the permitless one to the other. ‘The cop will run after you, but you don’t have to worry, since you have a permit. In the meantime, I’ll escape.’ The Jew begins to run. The cop runs after him and catches him after a while. ‘Well, well, you bum, you don’t have a permit?’ The Jew is out of breath. He shows his permit: ‘Pardon me… Your honor… I do have a permit…’ The cop stares at him. ‘But then, why did you run away?’ ‘My doctor told me this was good for my health.’ The cop is panting, too. ‘Didn’t you see I was running after you?’ ‘Of course I did. I thought your doctor had given you the same advice!’”

  In the Pithiviers station, a long freight train is waiting for us. Brod shows me a tiny latticed window above the cars’ door.

  “These are cattle cars.”

  “You mean these cars usually carry cattle to the slaughterhouse? This isn’t a good omen.”

  The guards deliver us to German soldiers. They cram eighty men into every car. I’ve often taken the Paris subway at rush hour. There were so many passengers that I could hardly breathe. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I would step out at a station and wait for the next train. Every time it happened, I swore I’d be more careful in the future and avoid rush hour. Well, I haven’t been careful enough. I’m standing in a train car at rush hour, except I can’t step out. The train rolls on during the day and until the end of the night, then it stops. Brod lifts me up so I can look through the grilled opening.

  “We’re in a station. I can’t see the name of the city, but the people are speaking German. The bastards!”

  “What is it?”

  “They’re laughing at me. Wait, one of the soldiers is coming in this direction. Does anyone speak German well here?”

  Most of us know Yiddish, which is very close to German, but one of us, an Austrian Jew, also speaks real German. He asks the soldier whether we could empty the bucket that serves as a toilet bowl for eighty men and have a little water. We’ve had nothing to drink for twenty-four hours. The heat of eighty feverish bodies adds several degrees to the summer temperature. The soldier, after asking an officer’s permission, lets the Austrian Jew out. Four comrades have bottles in their bags. The Austrian guy finds a tap and fills up the bottles. Four quarts of water for eighty thirsty throats. One sip each.

  The train starts again. Hours follow hours. Hotter and hotter. No food since yesterday. One sip to drink. Some men moan, lose their minds, and shriek like beasts. How long will I be able to hold on before I start to shriek, too? The train slows down. Stops again. Where are the soldiers? From all the cars we hear shouts in French, Yiddish, German.

  “We’re thirsty!”

  “Men are sick!”

  “Bucket overflowing!”

  Men wearing black uniforms walk alongside the train. They’re SS, special police. It seems they have replaced the soldiers.

  “Stop this racket, you Jewish pigs, otherwise we’ll shoot.”

  To show they mean business, they do shoot with a machine gun inside one of the cars. Nobody shouts anymore. A dreadful silence falls on the train like a slab of lead. Pithiviers was no fun, but we’re beginning to understand that we’ll soon remember it as paradise lost. We’re heading toward unspeakable horrors.

  When I was a child, hunger was my faithful companion. I never knew thirst, however. I’m discovering this cruel sensation now. I can’t think about anything else. My throat is as raspy as sandpaper. My tongue is twisting inside my mouth, looking for a few drops of spittle. My lips are burning. The others groan, rave, scream: “I don’t want to die!” We muffle their screams with shirts, lest the SS shoot into our car at the next stop. Some faint but stay upright, held up by the closeness of their neighbors. Others slide to the floor, unconscious or maybe dead. Is this how they had imagined their death? From thirst and exhaustion in a cattle car… ?

  The bucket overflowed long ago. A frightful, nauseating stink permeates the car. When we stop in a station, the SS shout, “You stinking Jews! You’re just shit!”

  We move in turn near the opening to breathe some fresh air. I see Brod in the distance. He smiles at me. He’s still alive.

  My thoughts seem to slow down. At times, I fall asleep standing up. When my mind clears somewhat, I tell myself that this trip has to end sooner or later. I’ll leave this car, dead or alive.

  Chapter 10

  Did you see the name on the signs? Auschwitz

  Toward the end of the third night, as the sliver of sky we see through the grated slit turns gray, the train stops and we hear shouting:

  “Aussteigen! Los! Los! (Get out! Come on! Come on!)”

  We’re there.

  The SS open the car’s door. They order us to leave our bags inside.

  “We’ll bring them to you later.”

  We know it’s not true. We’re a thousand guys in the train and our bags aren’t even marked. How would we find them? During this trip, exhaustion froze our thoughts, but we knew one thing: we were traveling toward death. Our material goods lost any value. So I’ll never see my faithful backpack again. What do I care about pajamas and a toothbrush? If only I can hold on to my life.…

  After three days in the gloom of the cattle car, the morning light dazzles me. The train has stopped along a kind of low platform. I can’t see it too well. My legs are stiff. In spite of all this, I jump down, I hurry, I run. The SS are hitting us with long rubbery clubs to get us moving. Ouch! This hurts like hell. While I’m rubbing my shoulder, I notice there is a steel ball at the end of the club. Some comrades fall down, knocked senseless.

  This station is in the middle of nowhere. SS guards armed with rifles, holding German shepherds on leashes, stand every five feet on the platform. Suddenly, one of these SS starts shouting. The German language may not sound as musical as Yiddish; it is nevertheless quite beautiful in the poems by Goethe or Schiller. The SS seem to use another language, a shouted or barked one. What does he say? We try to see what’s happening. Something’s wrong with a comrade in the next car. Although he left his suitcase behind, he kept a small parcel under his arm. Three SS knock him down with the butt of their rifles.

  “We told you to leave everything behind!”

  They break his skull with the rifles. One of the guards jumps aside deftly, like a boxer, to avoid dirtying his shiny black boots with blood and brains.

  We
were talking in low voices: “Did you see the name on the signs? Auschwitz.”

  “It’s a German name. Do you think we’re in Germany?”

  The death of our comrade makes us fall silent. I don’t feel thirst, hunger, exhaustion anymore. Although I haven’t slept for three nights, I am wide awake.

  I try to remember whether I have ever seen a cold-blooded murder like this one. The carters in our courtyard. Knives, gunshots. Mazik’s stray bullets. “Don’t go near the window,” my mother said. I’m surrounded by killers and I can’t hide.

  An SS officer makes an announcement.

  “There are trucks over there for those of you who are tired or ill. The other ones must walk to the camp.”

  I don’t like these trucks. They let us die of thirst in the train, they shot at random inside a car with their machine guns, they just killed one of us for no valid reason. This sudden kindness toward tired and sick Jews doesn’t sound right to me. Since they kill Jews so easily, I bet these trucks won’t drive them to a nice rest home.

  We walk in rows of five toward the camp. The SS kill one comrade with their rifle butts because he’s dragging his feet and stumbling, another because he vomits. Brod walks next to me.

  “They’ll kill us all,” he whispers.

  “Maybe they only want to scare us.”

  “If so, they’re succeeding quite well.”

  They kill another guy just because he is talking. After discovering thirst on the train, I discover fear. I won’t pretend I’ve never been afraid, but it was always a feeling I could control. All I had to do was raise my fists and fight. The fear that overwhelms me as we are coming near the camp’s gate is of a different kind. It is new to me—dreadful, ghastly. For the first time in my life, I feel unable to fight back. I am ready to accept my fate.

  A sentence is written in cast iron above the gate: “Arbeit macht frei (Work makes you free).” We stop before walking in. An SS points toward the maxim: “If one of you is too tired to work, let him come forward.”

  We understand that our life is not worth much in this strange place, which we used to call Pitchipoï before we knew its real name was Auschwitz. Anyone who comes forward will be clubbed to death.

  The SS smiles.

  “All volunteering for work, I see.…”

  The SS stay outside the gate. We enter the camp, where we see some brick houses and rows of barracks similar to the ones in Pithiviers. Men carrying clubs take charge of us. They drive us into the first barrack and order us to remove our clothes. A prisoner shaves a wide stripe on top of our head with a barber’s clippers. Two other ones shave all the hair on our bodies. Their clippers are blunt, they hurry, so they tear off great patches of skin under our arms and between our legs. Then someone tattoos a number on our left forearm. I cease to be Moshe or Maurice Wisniak and become 48950: Achtundvierzigtausend neunhundertfünfzig.

  The tattoo guy is the first one who speaks to me (in Yiddish).

  “Have you got gold or diamonds?”

  “Of course not.”

  “A pity. It could have lengthened your life. You have three weeks left, more or less. If you’re still alive after three weeks, then perhaps you’ll last a few more. Especially if you find a quiet job, like me. Where do you come from?”

  “France.”

  “Are you French?”

  “No, Polish.”

  “Did they catch many Jews in France?”

  “Thousands. Tell me, where are we?”

  “You haven’t figured it out yet? We’re in hell!”

  “I mean, where is Auschwitz? In Germany?”

  “This side of the camp is called Birkenau. We’re somewhere south of Cracow. Actually, Auschwitz and Birkenau are German names for Ozwiecim and Brzezinka,b a town and village of ours.”

  “So we’re in Poland? I was pretty sure I would never see the country of my birth again.…”

  “You were born in Poland. You’ll die in Poland.”

  The shaved stripe on our skull makes it easy to recognize us in case we try to escape. This is rather unlikely, but still, to be on the safe side, they paint two large letters with white paint on the back of our jackets: KZ, which stand for Konzentrationslager. They give us a kind of gray cap, but otherwise we keep our regular clothes. Because of the heat in the car, I have taken off my winter coat. It’s gone forever now, along with my backpack. I’m wearing the jacket that Albert made for me. I hope Rachel and Élie are safe in Montauban with him. I think about my other brother, Jacques, who left three weeks before me. If it is true that few prisoners survive for more than three weeks, then I’ll have to accept the idea that my elder brother is already dead.

  The men with the clubs order us to stand outside in rows of five. They shout exactly like SS. We walk across the camp, when suddenly, I see—Is this possible? Walking corpses! Two corpses are carrying a third one…. I have always considered myself a tough guy. I didn’t shake when the SS murdered comrades on the platform. I used to see blue cadavers on the bridge across the Vistula, while I was gliding from stove to stove. But walking corpses? They move slowly, as if they were climbing a mountain, as if they wanted to save whatever strength they retain. All of a sudden, in the middle of July, I feel so cold I begin to shiver. I try not to look at their emaciated faces, their bulging eyes, the grin that uncovers their teeth.

  Our guides are grinning, too.

  “In one month, you’ll be like them, shitbags. If you’re lucky enough to be alive in one month!”

  They take us to the eighth barrack. We don’t call it a barrack but a block. The men with clubs are kapos.c Among the prisoners, there are Jews from Poland who understand the German language, but also Jews from France and Holland who don’t, as well as ordinary Poles or Russian war prisoners who aren’t even Jewish. If they want to stay alive, they’d better learn German pretty fast. Everybody knows at least kapo, block, and also Lager (the camp), Häftling (a prisoner), Mütze(the cap), and, of course, Drecksack (shitbag), Dreckfresser (shit eater), Scheissjude (shitty Jew), Schweinehund (pig dog), and Hirenzine (son of a bitch, a Yiddish insult that even the Germans use).

  In Pithiviers, they crammed a hundred of us in barracks that were built for fifty. In Auschwitz, our whole train enters block eight. Close to a thousand men! The guy in charge of the block or Blockältesterd (block senior) is a non-Jewish Pole named Marek. He starts counting us, with the help of a dozen assistants. At the same time, his deputy, the Stubendienst (room servant), a Jewish Pole, begins a speech in Yiddish.

  “My name is Laybich. Listen to me, you Hirenzine. I’d rather kill you all than break one of my nails. You think you’re wise guys, right? While I was stuck in Poland, you lived like princes in France. You drank champagne, you spent your money on French whores. Well, that’s over, my friends. The strongest of you will live three weeks. In one month, you’ll all be dead and other Hirenzine will come and replace you. We’re all going to die, but I’ll be the last to kick in.”

  He goes on and on with his speech, half-rambling, half-spitting the vilest abuse. A well-dressed and rather stiff Frenchman, an army officer perhaps, tries to ask a question, searching awkwardly for the right Yiddish words.

  “I can’t answer you now,” Laybich says. “I’ll take care of you later.”

  When his speech is over, he adds:

  “You have eyes to see and ears to hear and a mouth full of shit that you’d better keep closed. You there, you interrupted me. Maybe you think this is some kind of a meeting. You’ll see.…”

  As the block senior hasn’t finished counting us yet, the deputy walks in our midst and asks whether any of us has already killed, taken part in a burglary or armed robbery, spent time in jail.

  “Come on, Hirenzine, don’t be shy. Come and speak in the hollow of my ear!”

  Several men approach him. We understand he is recruiting assistants for himself and for his boss. After a while, the block senior and his men have counted us all. The block senior doesn’t speak Yiddish, only bad German.


  “You too many. We plus you, one thousand and five. Not there room enough in block. One thousand only. You, you and also you and you, too old. Too much suffer here. I save you suffering. And you, talk too much.”

  He designates four prisoners, as well as the French officer. Right in front of us, his assistants beat them to death with their clubs, then line up the corpses outside the block.

  The assistants bring in hundreds of rusty chamber pots full of a brown liquid that they call “coffee.” Where did they find all these chamber pots? Five men to a pot, they say. Brod, three comrades, and I, we try to control our thirst and take turns drinking quietly. In other groups, there are conflicts and shouting. Laybich writes down the numbers of the noisiest drinkers.

  “I like quiet,” he says. “Those who disturb the peace will be lined up tomorrow morning in front of the block, like these five.”

  We hope he is joking, but nobody feels like laughing.

  Toward the end of the day, several thousand prisoners come back from outside the camp, where they work in groups called Kommandos. We recognize comrades who left Pithivers one or two weeks before us. They give us some advice.

  “You’ve just arrived, but you must understand all the laws of the camp before tomorrow. He who understands in twenty-four hours is twice more likely to survive than he who needs forty-eight hours.”

  “Beware the Bindenträgern (men with armbands). They belong to the staff. Their assignment is written on the band: blockältester, stubendienst, kapo. They’re former German or Polish criminals, Jewish thieves, or prisoners who choose to become killers to escape death for a while. We call them barons.e Try not to offend them if you want to stay alive.”

  “Keep your shoes on at night. If you take them off, you’re dead. Either someone steals them, or your feet swell and you can’t put them on again. Then you must use the camp’s wooden clogs. After two or three days, your feet are so bruised that you can’t walk anymore. You limp behind the others when going to work, so the kapo gets rid of you.”