The Fighter Read online

  Suddenly, a voice shouts in German behind me: “You Schweinkopf! Stinking Frenchman! What are you doing here?”

  Then the voice whispers in French: “Don’t move. Someone is coming for you.”

  I don’t understand what’s happening. When I turn around, there is no one behind me. All I see is a kapo walking away in the distance.

  Who is this stranger who saves my life? In Paris, I knew several German Communists who had fled their country. Is he one of them? The camp is not ruled by reason but by madness; maybe my savior mistook me for someone else. In any case, he is a powerful man, a chief kapo or maybe even the Lagerältester, boss of all the block seniors. Two Polish kapos ask me to follow them.

  They grumble, unaware that I understand their language: “Why does he want to save this Jew? It makes no sense.”

  “Stinks worse than a dog’s ass!”

  More than a month after my arrival in Auschwitz, I take my first shower. They throw away my jacket, a memento of my brother Albert, as well as all my other clothes, or rather, rags. I receive new clothes. My mysterious patron has sent me to the Kleidenkammer (clothes chamber) kommando, where privileged prisoners sort the clothes left on the trains. No wonder they gave me new clothes! We unstitch the yellow stars, look for hidden diamonds in the linings, then stack the pants, shirts, and jackets in packs of ten. The great German Reich will distribute these clothes to its poorest citizens in the name of Winterhilfswerk (winter help).

  What’s amazing is that we drink as much “coffee” as we want and eat solid food. My new comrades give me some advice.

  “You should exchange your food for some charcoal. It will cure your diarrhea.”

  Every evening, we undress before we leave. The kapos check that we’re not hiding jewels or gemstones. A kommando before us couldn’t resist temptation. They were wiped out entirely.

  Back in the block, Brod makes fun of my new jacket.

  “You shouldn’t have taken it. They fooled you! Either shorten the sleeves, or lengthen your arms.…”

  “The old one, my brother had cut it.”

  “I know. You told me a million times. Hey, do you know the story of the Jew who goes to the tailor’s?”

  “Even if I know it, I never remember stories.”

  “He brings a piece of fabric and asks the tailor whether there is enough for a suit. The tailor looks at the piece, looks at the Jew.… ‘You need more cloth,’ he says. The Jew doesn’t give up and goes to another tailor. ‘Do I have enough cloth for a suit?’ The tailor measures the piece, looks at the Jew.… ‘Fine. I’ll measure you. The suit will be ready on Monday.’ When the Jew comes for his suit, he is amazed because the tailor’s son, a five-year-old tot, wears a suit made of the same fabric. ‘You succeeded in cutting a suit for me and one for your son. How come your colleague across the street told me I didn’t have enough cloth?’ ‘Oh, the fellow across the street? He has two sons!’”

  At first, we unstitch and stack men’s shirts and jackets. Then we see silk blouses, skirts, dresses, scarves with Paris labels. They’ve started deporting our women. One day, we pull children’s clothes out of a suitcase. Short pants, a vest knitted with love, tiny socks, a woolen cap for winter. Our faces darken. Every one of us thinks about his children, his little brothers and sisters, the future of the Jewish people.

  They’ve already caught many women and children in Slovakia or somewhere. The parents who travel with small children bring chamber pots. That’s where our coffee pots come from.

  Having heard that some big shot is looking out for me, Laybich removes my number from his list. He treats me like a friend.

  “You know, Wisniak, now that you wear such beautiful clothes, you can’t sleep on a board with six lousy shitbags. Come here.”

  I can hardly believe my own ears. He calls me Wisniak instead of Hirenzine! He shows me a straw mattress, which I’ll share with just one comrade. I sleep like a log. After a few days, I am a new man. The diarrhea is gone. I eat and get back some of my strength.

  I come out of my daze. Until now, hopelessness, hunger, and primarily thirst have gripped my mind day and night. My thoughts never traveled beyond the barbed wire. Being able to drink as much as I want revives me. By and by, I begin to wonder and worry about what’s going on outside the camp. Trainloads of Jews are arriving from Paris and bring news.

  “Are they arresting women and children in France, now?”

  “When did you leave?”

  “The train left Pithiviers on July 17.”

  “So you haven’t heard of the Vél d’Hivg roundup?”

  “Well, no.”

  “It happened the day before you left. They arrested everybody.”

  “But why women and children? They pretended they wanted to put the Jews to work.”

  “They had to, because they couldn’t fill up their trains. In the beginning, they took only Polish Jews, men aged sixteen to forty.”

  “Yes. That’s the way it was when they arrested me.”

  “Later they arrested younger and older guys, and also French Jews.”

  “This I know, too. There were French Jews on my train.”

  “It wasn’t enough, so on July 16 they tried to catch as many people as they could. Men they deported right away, and also single women. Mothers and children they kept in the Vél d’Hiv, then in the Pithiviers camp. Do you know what? The bloody French went above and beyond the requests of the Germans, who had never asked for children.”

  “It didn’t break the Germans’ hearts, I’m sure.”

  “Of course. But they did need Berlin’s approval to send the children east. This meant filling out forms. That takes time. On the other hand, they couldn’t let the trains leave France half-empty. They deported the mothers first.”

  “Without the children?”

  “They kept them in Pithiviers, with a few mothers. And when Berlin said okay, they deported them. There were some in my train. These poor kids.… It was a pitiful sight.”

  “You were arrested after the roundup?”

  “I had escaped to the Free Zone, but they caught me there.”

  “They arrest the Jews in the Free Zone?”

  “They arrest them everywhere, except in America. Tell me, I want to know something. When we arrived in the Auschwitz railway station, the healthy men walked to the camp. Trucks carried away the children, the mothers, and the old people. I’ve heard that the Germans kill them with poison gas. Do you know anything about that?”

  “What’s for sure is that they vanish. There are single women in a separate camp, but nobody ever saw an old person or a mother with a child.”

  He says the Vél d’Hiv roundup was for foreign Jews only. This means my Rachel and my little Élie, who are both French, may have escaped. I have little hope when I think of Carole and Rose, the wife and daughter of my brother Jacques. Now that I’m stronger physically and mentally, I try to understand the logic of the camp. I talk to people, I ask questions everywhere I go. During my investigation, I meet a comrade who knew Jacques. I’m sure my brother is dead. He confirms it.

  “After just twelve days, he was already a Muselman. He asked me what day it was. I told him. It was his daughter’s birthday. He climbed onto the roof of an unfinished building and threw himself down headfirst.”

  If he had survived, I would have found a job for him in the clothes kommando. This wouldn’t have helped much. He would have died of grief on discovering they were deporting women and children.

  One of my comrades found two dresses belonging to his own wife in a bundle of clothes, then a little suit he cut himself for his son. He ran toward the fence so the watchtower guard would shoot him.

  I work in the clothes kommando for some time. How long? In Auschwitz, we have neither clocks nor calendars. We’re too tired to count the days.

  Fall has come…. Or is it already winter? The summer heat is just a vague memory. It rains, it snows sometimes, it freezes at night. The prisoners who do not own good shoes catch frostbite t
hat condemns them to death. The call at dawn, which lasts hours in temperatures around twenty, is a terrible torture.

  One morning, we walk across the camp under a cutting sleet. If we didn’t feel like tired robots, unable to raise our heads up or express any feeling, we would sigh with pleasure upon entering the Kleidenkammer. The room isn’t heated, but its roof does protect us from the rain. Something is wrong, though. Our group isn’t moving forward. I come out of my apathy and look up past the comrade in front of me. Hey, what does this mean? There are some guys already sitting at our table! Where are they from? Their skulls are shaved entirely. They are wearing heavy clothes that look like Russian uniforms. I see our kapo talking to their kapo. He turns toward us.

  “These gals will replace you, shitbags!”

  I take a better look at these beings with shaved heads. Women? Well, it is possible. They’re awfully thin, like us. Those who have the runs don’t exactly smell like roses. Their gray faces convey nothing. I have forgotten what women look like, but these creatures don’t help much. The Germans always want to organize things better. They think that the women, with their natural skills, will be more efficient than us at unstitching the yellow stars and folding the shirts.

  The marvelous German organization isn’t that perfect. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be standing here with nothing to do. They find a job for us: we carry the heavy pots full of coffee or soup. We know that we can’t talk to the women if we want to stay alive. They do not look at us. They keep their mouths shut. Nevertheless, we hear a very low whisper: “We come from Bratislava, in Slovakia.…”

  On the following days, I am back with a digging kommando again. The fine health I had gained in the clothing chamber runs out by and by. Laybich kicks me off my straw mattress. Back to nights with six comrades on a board. Back to hunger, thirst, fear.

  I dream I’m sitting by my window in Praga, looking at the market. The peasant has spread some leeks carefully on the ground. I take a better look. The leeks are bodies, lined up in bunches of five.

  Chapter 14

  Little Rosenberg wants to show he’s the best

  It looks like our masters—SS and kapos—want to get rid of us to make room for the new guys. On Sunday, our “day off” without any kommando work, they keep us busy by stepping up sport sessions. I used to belong to a sport club. I practiced several sports for pleasure. In Auschwitz, “sport” is just another word for death. They force us to run naked in mud and snow, then they throw freezing water at us.

  “At last you’ll be clean, you shitbags!”

  They club whoever doesn’t run fast enough. We don’t look like athletes on a track field, but rather like a flock of freshly shorn sheep running away from a pack of nasty dogs. In fact, the SS do threaten us with their German shepherds, Nazi brutes like their masters. They growl, bark, and show their fangs to keep us in line.

  Our tormentors run us to exhaustion; then we stand for hours while they count us. After such “sport,” we can hardly sleep, either because we’re coughing or because our neighbors are. On Monday morning, twice as many bodies as usual lie in front of the block. Before the end of the week, half of the block’s inmates have become Muselmen and vanished. Some are killed by the kommando kapos because they are too weak to work, others are sent to block seven, where no one ever comes out alive.

  Newcomers step off the train and replace our dead comrades. In the middle of a group arriving from France, I recognize little Rosenberg, who nearly broke my jaw when he came to the club as a kid four years ago. I stopped boxing soon afterward, but I heard he progressed so fast that Karl, our trainer, wanted to turn him into the champion of Paris or even of France. He is still very small—two inches shorter than me, I’d say.

  “Hello, Rosenberg. Do you remember me?”

  “Wisniak, my first opponent! How could I forget you? I heard they organize boxing matches, here. We could try to see if you can still dodge my punches.”

  “I’m not in such good shape. I’d be a lousy opponent. You just arrived. You’re fit as a fiddle.”

  “You bet! I’ve never stopped training. I fought in the Free Zone. I had to change my name, because Jews are not allowed to box. Somebody denounced me. I don’t even know who it was.”

  I notice that his number has six digits. I am an old-timer and he is a just rookie, like that day in the club. I give him the usual advice: “Keep your shoes on at night,” and so forth.

  After four or five months, I am what we call an “old number.” I belong to the “forty-eight-thousand” group, that is to say, the camp’s aristocracy. There are not so many of us anymore. The comrade who told me about my brother’s death belongs to the “forty-two-thousands,” who arrived in June 1942. Some of the “twenty-eight-thousands” are still alive. Theirs was the first French train, which came from Compiègne in March 1942.h

  Sometimes, we enjoy a quiet Sunday. If no new train is expected, they don’t need to inflict sport sessions on us. We sit and try to get rid of some of the lice that swarm on our clothes. One lazy Sunday, a watchtower SS notices the squat shape and the big muscles of little Rosenberg.

  “You, Jew! Yes, you, shorty! I’m sure you’re a good fighter. Look at the guy sitting over there. Go ahead and fight, you two.”

  He points to a frail Muselman who’s at least a head taller than Rosenberg. A terrible memory floats to the surface of my mind. They wanted me to hit a tall Muselman, too.… That was long ago. I have seen several such fights since. Usually, the comrade who knows how to fight hits hard enough to knock the other guy down, but not to kill him, so everybody is satisfied.

  The tall fellow turns toward the watchtower guard.

  “You want him to kill me. Just because you’re bored up there.”

  “Come on, how could he kill you? You’re taller and stronger. You’ll win, I’m sure.”

  Little Rosenberg wants to show that he’s the best, that he could have become the champion of France. Who says Jews can’t fight? He rushes and starts hitting the tall Muselman on the body and the head with both fists. He’s just as fast as he was on the day he came to the club, but he has worked hard since then and has acquired sharp and deadly technical skills. All his punches reach their target.

  While the prisoners watch this murder in bitter silence, the kapos and foremen shout and applaud: “Yay, shorty! Hit the stinking shitbag! Mash him up!”

  After a few minutes, the tall Muselman falls down. We hear a loud rattle coming from his throat, so we know he isn’t dead yet. The kapos send him to block seven.

  Little Rosenberg raises his arms and laughs, as if he had knocked out the world champ. The kapos and foremen pat him on the back and compliment him, as if to say, “Good job! You passed your exam with flying colors. Welcome to our side!”

  He is a poor twenty-year-old kid. He doesn’t understand what’s at stake. We feel sorry for him. Yeah, but now we can’t trust him anymore. A few days later, he becomes an assistant deputy, Laybich’s helper and a patent killer.

  Chapter 15

  I’ll tell the kapo you studied electricity

  If I stay in the digging kommando, I’ll soon be too weak to escape death. Now that I’ve regained my will to live, I know how to proceed if I want to hold on until tomorrow, until next week. Health and willpower aren’t enough. I have to look around, be on the alert, foresee what may happen. For instance, our masters hit us with their clubs from morning to night. I have to guess when blows are about to rain down, then try to run and dodge. I’m lucky. Boxing made me tough. I can take more punishment than my comrades. Even if I don’t weaken as fast as they do, a day will come when I can’t run anymore and I’ll end up in block seven.

  I forgot the most important thing: health, willpower, and alertness are useless if you don’t have luck, lots of luck.

  One morning, as I’m preparing to leave with my digging kommando, I hear a familiar voice.

  “Hey, aren’t you Wisniak?”

  “Prager! I’m not sure I would have recognized you if you
hadn’t called me. You’re wearing an armband! Foreman!”

  “I am an electrical engineer. Remember?”

  “I remember we used to swim together in the Marne. I thought you were a doctor.”

  “I do electricity work here.”

  “Listen, can I join your kommando?”

  “Sneak into the line, quick. I’ll tell the kapo you’ve studied electricity.”

  When we left France, we thought the Germans were taking us to a work camp. The sentence Arbeit macht frei, over the gate, seemed to confirm our assumption. We soon discovered it was just a big joke. They don’t really want the Jews to be productive, otherwise why would they kill us as soon as we become good at a certain task? In most kommandos, actually, we have jobs that don’t require much skill: moving stones, digging holes. The real workers are the kapos and foremen who produce corpses. While I decided to follow the electricians on a whim, I soon find out that this is my lucky break. In this kommando, the word work means exactly the same thing as in the real world that exists outside this hell. Prager is a real foreman, who doesn’t kill anyone. The kapo, a German political prisoner, tries to keep his men alive because he needs their knowledge. What worries me at first is exactly how little I know about electricity. Sure, I installed it in our apartment in Paris, but it’s not the same thing as being a trained electrician. Actually, the trained electricians in the kommando need strong assistants to carry huge rolls of barbed wire and heavy tools. We are building a fence for a new camp where they’ll keep Gypsy families.

  Since our work helps the Germans, the kapo and Prager think we shouldn’t be overzealous. We screw in china insulators, then unscrew them and screw them in again. The SS who oversees us from his watchtower doesn’t notice anything. His only goal is to kill Jews.

  Prager warns me.

  “When he sees a new guy, he throws a cigarette beyond the barbed wire. ‘For you, if you can pick it up!’ he shouts. The comrade reaches across with his hand, bends down, slips his head between two wires. Then the SS puts a bullet into his skull. ‘He attempted to escape!’ he shouts. ‘He attempted to escape!’ He laughs at his clever trick. Do you see what’s funny?”