Inside the Gas Chambers

by Shlomo Venezia

  How did you find your brother and your cousins?

  Once I’d been given my clothes, I heard someone calling, “Shlomo? Where are you?” It was my brother calling me; I recognized his voice, but I couldn’t see him. In fact, he was right next to me, but neither of us could recognize the other. We had no hair, and we were wearing ill-fitting clothes. It was a really sad moment, perhaps one of the saddest. To see the state we’d been reduced to…. But I didn’t cry. Even when I found out about my mother…. The tap of my tears was blocked and I no longer cried, in spite of the sadness and the pain….

  When, eventually, the Germans made us leave the Sauna, they took us to a barrack opposite. It was completely empty; there was neither bed nor anything else on the ground. They put all of us in there until the following day, since at that time of night it was forbidden to move around in the camp. We stayed there, unable to sleep or stretch out; just like animals. Several of the religious boys started praying in a corner. They hadn’t been able to keep their books, of course, but they knew the prayers by heart. The next morning, at nine o’clock, German guards came to take us to sector BIIa, the quarantine area in the men’s camp.6

  They pointed to a barrack, more or less in the middle of the quarantine sector, and told us to go in. The Blockältester,7 a non-Jewish Pole who turned out to be particularly violent, was waiting for us. He ordered us to get into groups of five for each “bunk.” I got together with my brother, my two cousins, and a friend from Salonika. At around eleven thirty the soup was distributed. This was the first time we’d received anything to eat since the Red Cross parcels. But in order to get the soup, one had to have a mess tin, and that wretched man hadn’t bothered to tell us where to find one. What could we do? Anyone without a mess tin didn’t get any soup and was roughly turned away. Nobody was bothered by the fact that we hadn’t eaten for several days. They handed out a slice of black bread with a little margarine (sometimes, instead of margarine, they’d give us a bit of what they called Blutwurst, a sort of sausage). I swallowed it all down in a single gulp, without even bothering to chew it, I was so hungry.

  The next morning, they gave us some tea. Well, I’m not sure whether that filthy black water could be called water, tea, an infusion of linden leaves, or I don’t know what, but at least it was hot. Anyway, as we still didn’t have any mess tins, we didn’t get any that time. Eventually someone showed me a place behind the quarantine block where I could find some mess tins. They were in such a state! Dirty, rusty, scattered all over the ground. But this didn’t matter – the only thing that counted was that we could feed ourselves the minimum to survive until the following day. We needed to find some means of always keeping the mess tin on us; we made a hole in the wood to hook it onto our belts with a piece of string, any way we could. It was essential to keep these mess tins on us, since otherwise we risked having them stolen.

  What did you do during the day?

  Nothing particular. Prisoners had the right to move around within the quarantine sector. We could even talk with the other prisoners, not like in the Sonderkommando, where it was strictly forbidden to talk to anybody at all. The prisoners in quarantine did practically no work. In principle, you could talk to whomever you wanted. Except that the language barrier and the absence of any desire to go and recount our sufferings to people who were going through the same things as we were made us turn in on ourselves and take refuge in silence.

  How did the roll call go?

  It took place every day, morning and evening. They woke us up very early in the morning for roll call. Everyone out, with lots of shouts and beatings to get us outside as quickly as possible. The last were routinely punished and given an additional beating. But, inevitably, some had to be last, since we couldn’t all of us get out at the same time. So everyone rushed to be the first out so as to avoid a thrashing. Roll call could last several hours, during which time we had to stand upright and motionless. After that, as we were still in quarantine and not in the labor kommandos, we were given the task of weeding, doing a bit of cleaning up – but nothing special. We could see the prisoners in the other sectors of the camp setting off to work.

  What were the barracks in the quarantine area like?

  The barracks had two entrances: one in front, the main entrance, and the other in the rear. When we went in, there were two little bedrooms on the right and the left, then the “bunks.” In the middle was the stove, but it wasn’t much use to us – I never saw it lit in the three weeks we spent in quarantine. And even if it had been lit, we didn’t have any fuel to put into it to keep it working. The Blockältester had his own system for keeping warm, and was really not interested in knowing whether we were cold.

  And the “bunks”?

  I don’t know if they can really be called “bunks”…. We were put on three levels, with at least five people on each “bunk.” Personally, I never had too many problems in keeping my place while we were in quarantine.

  To begin with, we didn’t know which were the best places. I soon realized that the places on top were too close to the windows. And the windows at Birkenau were often broken, which meant that, in winter, an icy wind blew in. But the bunks at the bottom weren’t ideal, either. A lot of rather unpleasant things fell onto your head when the prisoners couldn’t get up to go to the latrines. When there was a quarrel over who got which place, the kapo would barge in and sort out the problem, lashing out left, right, and center.

  The one in charge of my barrack was a real shit. He was Polish. As far as I’m concerned, apart from the Sonderkommando, in which all the prisoners, or almost all, were Jewish (including the kapo), I never saw any Jewish kapos, neither in Auschwitz nor in the other camps I was in subsequently. It’s possible there were some, but I myself only ever saw Germans, Poles, and even Frenchmen – but none of them was Jewish.

  The kapo generally coordinated the labor teams. Sometimes, the Blockältester was also called the kapo. If he wasn’t able to hurry the work along, he hit out, and if he didn’t hit out often enough or hard enough, the Germans killed that kapo and chose another one. But some kapos enjoyed the privilege of being personally able to kill prisoners in their charge. The SS often chose German criminals, who all at once took themselves for the masters of the world. They should have been locked away in a cell but, instead of that, they were in a position of power over us. So the Germans didn’t need guards everywhere. They could rely on those violent men to maintain discipline in the camp. If they weren’t violent, they risked losing their privileges, and that’s why all of us were frightened of them.

  Do you remember any names?

  No, unfortunately I’ve forgotten, since I didn’t pay any attention to their names. If I’d known that one day I’d emerge from that hell, I’d have made a note of all the names, the dates, and the details. But while we were there, we didn’t even know what day it was.

  The Kapo I had in quarantine was in fact the Blockältester. He was a particularly brutal man. He had his room at the entrance to the barrack. Opposite, another little room served either as a lumber room, or as a bedroom for the Pipel. The Pipel was a young boy, generally about twelve years old, whom the Blockältester always kept near to him. He was the Blockältester’s jack-of-all-trades and had to obey all his orders and fulfill all his wishes. He polished his shoes, cleaned the barrack, made his bed, and also had to satisfy his unwholesome desires when the kapo demanded. The youngster knew that if he were dismissed he’d be heading for certain death, so he had no choice but to obey. In exchange, he had a little more to eat than the others. The Blockältester just needed to give a bit less to one prisoner so he could give more to those whom he favored.

  I almost got onto the wrong side of him, on one occasion. It had to do with those “golden eggs” of ours. It hadn’t been easy to get hold of them again after the Zentralsauna – in quarantine, the latrine barracks were just a long wooden bench with holes in it. It would have been impossible to fish anything out of there. So I needed to find a place that
was safe from prying eyes. We’d take turns going to the toilet, while the others stood guard. One day, the kapo summoned me and demanded that I give him my gold coins, “die goldene Geld,” as he called it. I pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about. But he insisted: “Fünf goldene Geld!” “Five gold coins!” If he knew the exact number of coins, someone must have told him; he hadn’t made it up by himself. I even found out later who had betrayed us. Meanwhile, the kapo told me that I had twenty-four hours to bring him the coins. I went to see my brother and my cousins, and I told them what had happened. Their opinion was that I should hand them over, as they thought it was pointless to risk getting killed as well as losing the money. So I went to see him, but I claimed I had only three of the five left. He replied, very angrily, “Nein! Fünf!” My life was in his hands, I had no choice – so I went to get the two last coins, in exchange for which he did in fact promise me a double ration of soup and bread for a week. He got what he wanted and, indeed, on the first two days, he did give me a double ration. But on the third day….

  With that money, he’d managed to get his hands on some sausage and vodka. He organized a little party for himself, and got really drunk. One evening, while all of us were in bed, he started yelling, “Auf die Tür!”; he wanted someone to open the door to his room. He chose someone at random, gave the victim a few kicks without any reason, and ordered him to go to the door and open it. The poor boy went without knowing what to expect. But just as the youngster put his hand onto the door handle, he got a big electric shock. The Blockältester started to laugh, since it was his favorite hobby to make us suffer, especially when he was drunk. He chose another prisoner so as to play the practical joke once again. The poor man knew what to expect, but had no choice, and got up. He grasped the door handle and opened the door quite normally, without anything happening. The Pole grew angry when he saw that his joke had stopped working. He ordered the prisoner to open the door again. He opened it, shut it; still nothing happened. The Blockältester took a minute or two to realize that the wooden clogs the prisoner was wearing insulated him from the earth. So he ordered the man to take off his clogs and open the door again. This time, when the man touched the handle, he in turn got an electric shock, to the great amusement of our tormentor. While he was getting ready to choose a new victim, the door to the barrack opened and in stormed an SS man, furious. The time for lights out in the barrack had already passed and he’d come to see why the rule wasn’t being obeyed. He immediately started yelling. The Blockältester tried to explain by saying it was his birthday. He invited the German to share the feast that my gold coins had paid for. The German went up, opened the door, and duly got an electric shock. He was enraged, and started beating the Blockältester. How dare he play a practical trick on a German! He gave him a real thrashing. The next day this Blockältester had vanished, and we never saw him again. The downside of it all for me was that I’d missed out on the several remaining days of double ration he owed me. That’s how the story of the “golden eggs” ended.

  There was another experience that left its mark on me while I was in quarantine. This happened just a few days after our arrival. A kapo came to see us and told us that, if we were willing to do some extra work, he’d give us a double ration of soup. We all wanted to go, since hunger was stronger than anything. I found myself among the ten people chosen to do the job. But neither my brother nor my cousins were in the group. The kapo made us take a cart like the ones used to transport hay. But instead of horses, we were the ones who had to pull the cart. We dragged it to a barrack at the far end of the quarantine sector. It was called the Leichenkeller: the room of the corpses. When we opened the door, a terrible smell grabbed us by the throat; it was the stench of rotting bodies.

  I’d never been past this barrack before, and this was how I found out that it was used to store the bodies of detainees who had died in quarantine. A small group of prisoners came into the barracks every morning to remove the bodies of prisoners who had died during the night. They were placed in this barrack before being taken to the Crematorium to be burned. The corpses sometimes stayed there, rotting, for two to three weeks. Those at the back were already in an advanced state of decomposition because of the heat.

  If I’d known that our “extra” work was going to consist of bringing these bodies out and taking them to the Crematorium, I’d rather have died of hunger. But by the time I realized, it was already too late. There must have been a hundred or a hundred and twenty bodies in the room. We had to make three journeys there and back to carry them on the cart.

  When we arrived in front of the gate of Crematorium III, the kapo had to ring for the men in the Sonderkommando to fetch the cart full of corpses. Other than they, none of the prisoners could enter the Crematorium and come out alive. So they emptied the cart themselves before giving it back to us.

  Were you able to see anything? The inner court? The building?

  No, that day I didn’t see anything of the Crematorium. They hardly opened the gate. All we could see was the man opening the gate and taking the cart, with three other prisoners from inside. I’d heard that those who worked in the Crematorium were sometimes able to get extra spoons or other things that would be of use in the camp. So the second time I went there, I discreetly asked the man who’d opened the gate whether he might have a spoon he could give me. “Nicht jetzt, später!” “Not now, later!” And the third time I went, he did indeed give me two spoons. I gave one to my brother, but we shared them with my cousins. They were very useful for scraping the bottom of the mess tin and not wasting a single vital calorie of the food we were given. Eating with a spoon gave the impression we had more to eat.

  Luckily, we didn’t have to do that terrible job again. The next day, when it was time for soup, the kapo served us a double ration, as promised.

  What did you know about the place where the corpses were taken?

  I knew it was the Crematorium. I already knew at the time what that meant. While we were in quarantine, we constantly saw the smoke emerging from the chimney, and it was impossible to escape from the acrid smell of burnt flesh that drifted through the whole camp. I soon knew that it was the place where the bodies were burned, but it was only when I actually worked in the Crematorium that I realized it was also the place where people were gassed en masse when they arrived.

  How were you selected for the Sonderkommando?

  We spent three weeks in quarantine. Then, one day, we saw some German officers arriving. We didn’t often see Germans in the quarantine sector; in general, it was the kapos who maintained order. These officers stopped in front of our barrack and ordered the kapo to get us to line up, as if for roll call. Each of us had to say what kind of job he was able to do. Even if we didn’t have a trade or profession, everyone knew that he had to lie. When my turn came, I said I was a hairdresser. Leon Cohen, a Greek friend who always stayed close to us, said that he was a dentist, even though he’d actually worked at a bank. He thought they’d put him in a dental surgery to do some cleaning and polishing, and that way at least he’d stay nice and warm. I thought that I’d join the prisoners working in the Zentralsauna. I saw that the work wasn’t too difficult and one was warm there. But in fact things didn’t work out at all the way we’d expected. The Germans chose eighty people, including myself, my brother, and my cousins.

  The next day, at around nine o’clock, we lined up and set off to sector BIId (Lager d).8 This was the men’s sector in Birkenau. The first impression I had when I entered Lager d was intensely unpleasant. Our group first went through the SS barrack, which was situated at the entrance to every sector to keep note of who entered and left the camp. After the barrack, on the right, I immediately spotted the pool filled with water. Then my eyes rose to the gallows that had been erected at one corner of the pool. This vision had a profound effect on me; I said to myself, “What a fine welcome they’re giving us!”

  Lager d consisted of two rows of barracks. The first two buildings, bigger than the
others, were used as the kitchens. In the middle of all those huts was that of the Sonderkommando.9 When I went in, I saw a prisoner, by himself, who seemed to be waiting for us. I don’t know why he came over to me, but anyway, he asked me affably, “Retst Yiddish?” “Do you speak Yiddish?” I’d never heard Yiddish in Greece, but since I’d been in the camp, I’d had to adapt, and thanks to the little bit of German that I’d learned by trading on the black market with the soldiers, I managed to speak “yiddish, yaddish, yoddish.” We finally managed to understand each other! He asked me where I was from, and if I were hungry. After the prison in Athens, the eleven-day journey, and the three weeks in quarantine, I’d been tightening my belt now for a month and a half, so much that I could hardly breathe. Of course I was hungry! I’d always been familiar with hunger, but this was now an obsession, an illness. So he went to get me some food and came back with a big hunk of white bread and some jam. There was enough bread for me to share it with my brother and my cousins. For us, it was like eating caviar; an unimaginable luxury in this hell. He asked me if I knew what the job would involve. I replied that I didn’t much care. As far as I was concerned, the main thing was being able to eat and so survive. He told me that wouldn’t be a problem – there’d be enough to eat. I was a little puzzled by this: how could it be possible in such a place for there to be “enough” to eat? He explained that, in addition to the food we received in the normal course of affairs, there would be other things. But he didn’t tell me what, or how. Then he asked me if I knew the name of the Kommando to which we had been assigned. Since I didn’t have the slightest idea, he told me we were in the “Sonderkommando.”