Inside the Gas Chambers

by Shlomo Venezia

  “What does ‘Sonderkommando’ mean?”

  “Special detachment.”

  “Special? Why?”

  “Because you have to work in the Crematorium … where the people are burned.”

  As far as I was concerned, one job was the same as any other; I’d already got used to camp life. But at no time did he tell me that the corpses to be burned were those of people who were still alive when they entered the Crematorium….

  He also told me that all the people in the Sonderkommando were regularly “selected” and “transferred” to another place. This happened about every three months. For the time being, I didn’t realize that the words “selection” and “transfer” were euphemisms that actually meant “elimination.” But it didn’t take me long to realize that we had been incorporated into the Sonderkommando to replace former prisoners who had been “selected” and killed.10

  This man was named Avraham Dragon. Actually, it was only when I saw him again sixty years later, in Israel, that I found out what his name was. I told him this story, with the vague hope that he might be the person who had given me such a humane reception, and whom I had never seen since. He smiled at me; he was moved, and said that he had never forgotten the famished young Greek who had landed in the Sonderkommando.

  1 The archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum indicate that, after the selection, out of the two thousand five hundred Jews deported at the same time as Shlomo, three hundred and twenty men entered the camp with identity numbers going from 182440 to 182759, and three hundred and twenty-eight women, given numbers from 76856 to 77183. All the others were immediately sent to their deaths in the gas chambers.

  2 Upon arrival almost all of the Jews selected for forced labor were sent to Birkenau. Some were occasionally sent straight to the camp at Auschwitz I or to the camp called Monowitz, which was Auschwitz III. It is likely that Shlomo Venezia’s group was initially chosen to work in Auschwitz I, but after just a few hours, the labor service in the camp decided to transfer them to Birkenau.

  3 In Auschwitz-Birkenau, the term “crematorium” (Krematorium in German) designates a structure including the room where the prisoners undressed, the gas chamber(s), and the crematorium ovens. There were four of these structures in Birkenau, in addition to the first crematorium situated at Auschwitz I. Crematoria II and III were built facing each other, as were Crematoria IV and V. They were brought into service between spring and summer of 1943. See the historical notes for more information, pp. 172–81.

  4 The main road running across the camp (see the plan in the central section).

  5 All the prisoners entering the camp had to go through disinfection and registration procedures. Until the end of 1943, these took place in two buildings situated inside sector BIa (for the women) and BIb (for the men) of Birkenau. From December 1943 onwards, the new building of the Zentralsauna was the main place for disinfecting and registering prisoners, both men and women.

  6 The men’s quarantine camp (Quarantänelager für Männer) was the only sector of the camp made up of a single row of huts. The Nazis set up the “quarantine” for all the prisoners brought into the camp so as to avoid introducing infectious diseases. If such epidemics were reported, the SS doctors solved the problem by sending all the prisoners from the contaminated hut to the gas chambers.

  7 Literally, the “oldest in the block.” This term was generally employed to designate the man responsible for keeping order inside the huts. The term Kapo generally refers to the person in charge of a labor Kommando.

  8 See historical note, p. 176.

  9 The Sonderkommando barrack was block II of the men’s camp (BIId). With hut 13 (that of the Strafkompanie, the punishment company), from which it was separated by the latrine hut, the Sonderkommando barrack was isolated from the rest.

  10 On February 20, 1944, two hundred members of the Sonderkommando were sent to the camp of Lublin-Majdanek to be eliminated.

  3

  SONDERKOMMANDO: INITIATION

  The barrack of the Sonderkommando was similar to all the others, apart from the fact that it was surrounded by barbed-wire fences and a brick wall that isolated us from the other barracks in the men’s camp. We couldn’t communicate with the other prisoners. But we didn’t stay there for long. After about a week we were transferred into the dormitory right inside the Crematorium. It was only towards the end, when the crematoria were dismantled, that the Sonderkommando men came back to sleep in the barrack in the men’s camp.

  On the first day, they sent us to the Crematorium, but we stayed in the courtyard, without going into the building. At that time, we called it Crematorium I, since we were unaware of the existence of the first crematorium, in Auschwitz I.1 There were three steps leading inside the building but, instead of going in, the kapo took us all round it. One of the Sonderkommando men came to tell us what to do: remove the weeds and tidy up the ground a bit. What we did wasn’t particularly useful, but I suppose that the Germans wanted to keep us busy before making us work in the Crematorium. The next day, we came back to do the same thing.

  My natural curiosity impelled me to go up to the building to try to see through the window what was going on inside. We had been strictly forbidden to do so, but, step by step, I edged up to the window. When I got close enough to catch a glimpse, I was left completely paralyzed by what I saw. Bodies heaped up, thrown on top of one another, were just lying there. These were the corpses of people who were still young. I came back to my companions and told them what I’d seen. They in turn slipped over to see, without the kapo noticing. They came back ashen-faced, disbelieving. We didn’t dare think about what might have happened. It was only later that I realized that the corpses were the “leftovers” from an earlier convoy. There hadn’t been time to burn them before the new convoy arrived, and these bodies were piled there to leave room in the gas chamber.

  At around two in the afternoon the kapo made us go down into the undressing room. The floor was strewn with clothes of every sort. We’d been ordered to use the jackets and shirts to roll the clothes up into little bundles. Then we had to take the bundles and pile them up outside, in front of the stairs. I imagine a truck then came to pick up the packets to take them to the barracks in the Kanada.2

  At around five the kapo again ordered us to assemble. We obviously assumed that, at this time in the evening, “assembly” meant we’d finished that laborious day’s work. But unfortunately this wasn’t the case. We came back out of the Crematorium, but instead of turning right to go back to the barracks, they made us turn left, through the little forest of birches. I’d never seen this kind of tree in Greece, but in Birkenau they were the only trees one saw surrounding the camp. As we walked along the path, all we could hear was the wind whistling through the silvery leaves. All of a sudden, murmurs started to reach us from behind. To begin with, the noise was very faint and faraway. We came to a little house called, as I later learned, Bunker 2, or “the white house.” Just then, the murmuring of human voices became more intense.

  “Bunker 2. Previous farm building transformed into gas chamber,” David Olère, 1945. Wash and China ink on paper. Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel

  Can you describe Bunker 2 as you saw it?

  It was a small farm with a thatched roof. We were ordered to stand opposite one side of the little house, near the road that ran in front of it. From where we were, we could see nothing, neither on the left nor the right. Dusk was falling; the murmurs had become the distinct sound of people coming towards us. I was curious, as usual, and went across to try to see what was happening. I saw entire families waiting in front of the cottage: young men, women, and children. There must have been two or three hundred of them altogether. I don’t know where they’d come from, but I suppose they’d been deported from a Polish ghetto. Later on, when I realized the way the extermination system worked, I deduced that these people had been sent to Bunker 2 because the other crematoria were full. This was also why they needed a bigger labor force to do this dir
ty work.

  Did people get undressed in front of the door or in a barrack?

  People were forced to get undressed where they were, in front of the door. The children were crying. You could feel the fear and dread; people were really helpless and terrified. The Germans probably had told them they’d be taking a shower and then they’d been given something to eat. Even if they’d realized what was really going to happen, there wasn’t much they could do; the Germans would have executed on the spot anyone who’d made the least attempt to escape. They’d lost all respect for the human person, but they knew that if they left families together they would avoid having to deal with any acts of desperation.

  Finally the people were forced to enter the little house. The door was closed. Once everyone was inside, a little truck, with the Red Cross sign on its sides, drove up. A rather tall German got out. He went over to a small opening high up on one of the walls of the little house. He had to climb onto a stool to reach it. He took a can, opened it, and threw the contents in through the little opening. Then he closed the opening and left. The shouts and crying had not stopped, and they redoubled in intensity after a few minutes. This lasted for ten or twelve minutes, then silence.

  Meanwhile, we’d been ordered to go around to the back of the house. When we arrived, I noticed a strange gleam coming from that direction. As I went over, I realized that the light was that of a fire burning in the ditches some twenty yards away.

  Do you remember what you thought when you saw all that?

  It’s difficult to imagine now, but we didn’t think of anything – we couldn’t exchange a single word. Not because it was forbidden, but because we were terror-struck. We had turned into robots, obeying orders while trying not to think, so we could survive for a few hours longer. Birkenau was a real hell; nobody can understand or grasp the logic of that camp. That’s why I want to tell the story, tell it for as long as I live, but relying only on my memories, on what I am certain that I saw, and nothing else.

  So the Germans sent us to the other side of the house, where the ditches were. They ordered us to bring the bodies out of the gas chamber and place them in front of the ditches. I didn’t go into the gas chamber myself; I stayed outside, going back and forth between the Bunker and the ditches. Other men from the Sonderkommando, more experienced than we were, had the job of laying the bodies out in the ditches in such a way that the fire wouldn’t go out. If the bodies were packed in too densely, the air couldn’t get through and there was a risk that the fire would go out or fade in intensity. That would have made the kapos and the Germans overseeing us furious. The ditches sloped down, so that, as they burned, the bodies discharged a flow of human fat down the ditch to a corner where a sort of basin had been formed to collect it. When it looked as if the fire might go out, the men had to take some of that liquid fat from the basin, and throw it onto the fire to revive the flames. I saw this only in the ditches of Bunker 2.

  After two hours of this particularly taxing and distressing work, we heard the roar of a motorbike. The old hands murmured with terror: “Malahamoves!” That’s when we made the macabre acquaintance of the “Angel of Death.” That was the Yiddish name given by the prisoners to the dreaded SS man named Moll.3 A single glance from him made you tremble. It didn’t take long for us to discover his cruelty and the sadistic pleasure with which he mistreated us. No sooner had he put his foot onto the ground than he started to shout like an enraged beast, “Arbeit!” “Get working, pigs – Schweine – Jews!” Everyone started working harder when he arrived. When he realized that it was taking two of us to carry a dead body, he lost his temper and started yelling, “Nein! Nur eine Person für einen Toten!” “Only one person for one dead person!” It was difficult enough for two people to carry a corpse on the muddy ground into which our feet kept sinking. But do it alone! I don’t know how I managed; I felt exhausted.

  At a given moment, I saw one of the men holding a corpse come to a halt. He stood still. He must have been a few years older than I, barely twenty-five or so. Everyone walking past him, between the Bunker and the ditches, urged him to get moving before Moll noticed him. But he didn’t reply, and went on standing there, gazing into the infinite distance. When Moll saw him, he went up to him, yelling, “Du verfluchter Jude!” “You cursed Jew! Why aren’t you working, you Jewish dog? Get a move on!” And he started lashing him with his whip. But the man just stood there, motionless, as if nothing could affect him anymore; he didn’t even attempt to ward off the blows. In my opinion, he’d completely lost his wits; his mind was no longer of this world. He no longer seemed to feel either pain or fear. The German, furious at the offense committed and the lack of any reaction to his blows, pulled a pistol from his belt. We just continued coming and going. We saw him take aim and fire from a distance of a few yards. But, as if the bullet hadn’t hit him, the man continued to stand there, motionless. How was it he hadn’t dropped dead after that fatal shot? We didn’t know what to think. The German, increasingly agitated, fired a second shot from the same pistol. But still no reaction; the bullets, the noise, the fear – nothing seemed to affect him. We thought it must be a miracle, but a miracle that could not last forever. I happened to be next to Moll when I saw him putting away his pistol and taking out another, bigger-caliber one. He fired a shot and the poor man fell dead. I had the misfortune to be near the body just then. I was returning from the ditch, empty-handed, to fetch another corpse. Moll motioned me towards him. “Du! Komm her!” “Come here!” He ordered me and another prisoner to carry the body to the ditches. We’d gone barely a few yards when he started yelling, as if he’d just thought of something. “Halt!!! Ausziehen!” He said the clothes belonged to the Third Reich and couldn’t be burned with the dead man; they could be used for other prisoners. He ordered us to undress him. To undress a dead body that was still warm, a man whom we knew…. But of course, I had no choice if I was to avoid the same fate as this poor man. We didn’t know what to think; we were outside the world, already in hell. When his body was thrown in the ditch, we saw the burning embers leaping up – it was like when you throw a piece of wood onto a fire in the grate, the flames suddenly roar up as if to devour the body more effectively. Until that point I’d more or less forbidden myself to think about everything that was happening; we had to do what we were ordered to do, like robots, without thinking. But on seeing the body burning I thought the dead were perhaps luckier than the living; they were no longer forced to endure this hell on earth, to see the cruelty of men.

  Work went on like this until the following morning. We worked practically without stopping for twenty-four hours before they would give us permission to go back to our barracks. But in spite of my intense exhaustion, I didn’t manage to get to sleep. The images just kept on haunting me, and the idea of returning to that place made me edgy. In the afternoon, a kapo came to tell us that the men who’d worked at Bunker 2 the night before didn’t need to go back that night. Small consolation….

  The respite didn’t last. The very next day, we had to set off to work again. I was sent to Crematorium III with a little group of about fifteen people. As I’d said that I was a hairdresser, the Oberkapo who’d met us when we arrived at the Crematorium placed in my hands a pair of very long scissors, like the ones used by tailors to cut fabric. Then they directed us towards the room in which we were supposed to be working. The old hands very succinctly explained to us what we needed to do.

  The contact with the dead was immediate. The deportees of a previous convoy had just been gassed and the men in the Sonderkommando were already busy taking the corpses out of the gas chamber. They were laid out in a kind of atrium, before being taken up to the Crematorium ovens. This was where I had to cut off the hair of the dead bodies. There were three or four of us doing this job. Then two “dentists” came along to extract the victims’ gold teeth, which they kept in a special little container that nobody could go near. One of them was my friend Leon Cohen, who’d claimed he was a dentist. They gave him a dentist
’s forceps and a little mirror to see inside the mouth. I remember that, when he realized what it was he was supposed to do, he almost fainted. To begin with, when he worked on the first corpses, he went quite quickly, he opened their mouths and removed the gold teeth. But as he continued, it all became more difficult, since the corpses had had time to stiffen, and he had to force their jaws open.

  “After the gassing,” David Olère, 1946. Wash and China ink on paper. Ghetto Fighters Museum, Galilee, Israel

  What did you see of the gas chamber when you arrived?

  I wasn’t one of those who had to take the corpses out of the gas chamber, but later on I frequently had to do it. Those given this task started by pulling the corpses out with their hands, but in a few minutes their hands were dirty and slippery. In order to avoid touching the bodies directly, they tried using a bit of cloth, but, of course, the cloth in turn became dirty and damp after a few moments. So people had to make do. Some tried to drag the bodies along with a belt, but this actually made the work even harder, since they had to keep tying and untying the belt. Finally, the simplest thing was to use a walking stick under the nape of the neck to pull the bodies along. You can see it very clearly in one of David Olère’s drawings.4 There was no shortage of walking sticks, because of all the elderly people who were put to death. At least this meant we didn’t have to drag the corpses with our hands. And this was hugely important for us. Not because it was a matter of corpses, though that was bad enough…. It was because their death had been anything but gentle. It was a foul, filthy death. A forced death, difficult and experienced differently by each of them.