Voices from the Holocaust

by Jon E. Lewis

  At the beginning of 1943, the political section of Auschwitz received 500,000 discharge certificates. We thought, with ill-concealed joy, that at least a few of us would be liberated. But the forms were simply filled out with the names of those gassed and filed away in the archives ...

  Cautious estimate of the number of Jews gassed in Birkenau between April 1942 and April 1944, by country of origin

  Poland (transported by truck)

  ca.

  300,000

  Poland (transported by train)

  ca.

  600,000

  Holland

  ca.

  100,000

  Greece

  ca.

  45,000

  France

  ca.

  150,000

  Belgium

  ca.

  50,000

  Germany

  ca.

  60,000

  Yugoslavia, Italy, and Norway

  ca.

  50,000

  Lithuania

  ca.

  50,000

  Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria

  ca.

  30,000

  Slovakia

  ca.

  30,000

  Various camps for foreign Jews in Poland

  ca.

  300,000

  Total

  ca.

  1,765,000

  Train Journey to Auschwitz, May 1944

  ELIE WIESEL

  Wiesel was born in 1928 in Sighet, in Transylvania, a territory later transferred to Hungary. Between 14 May and 8 July 1944, 437,402 Hungarian Jews, among them Wiesel and his family, were deported to Auschwitz in forty-eight trains – the largest mass deportation of the Holocaust. Although by 1944 the Reich was being daily pushed back by the Soviets – and the first labour camps liberated – the Nazis did not slacken the pace of their slaughter.

  Wiesel himself survived to become a Nobel Prize-winning writer. This is an extract from his memoir, Night:

  Lying down was out of the question, and we were only able to sit by deciding to take turns. There was very little air. The lucky ones who happened to be near a window could see the blossoming countryside roll by.

  After two days of travelling, we began to be tortured by thirst. Then the heat became unbearable.

  Free from all social constraint, the young people gave way openly to instinct, taking advantage of the darkness to copulate in our midst, without caring about anyone else, as though they were alone in the world. The rest pretended not to notice anything.

  We still had a few provisions left. But we never ate enough to satisfy our hunger. To save was our rule; to save up for tomorrow. Tomorrow might be worse.

  The train stopped at Kaschau, a little town on the Czechoslovak frontier. We realized then that we were not going to stay in Hungary. Our eyes were opened, but too late.

  The door of the car slid open. A German officer, accompanied by a Hungarian lieutenant-interpreter, came up and introduced himself.

  ‘From this moment, you come under the authority of the German Army. Those of you who still have gold, silver, or watches in your possession must give them up now. Anyone who is later found to have kept anything will be shot on the spot. Secondly, anyone who feels ill may go to the hospital car. That’s all.’

  The Hungarian lieutenant went among us with a basket and collected the last possessions from those who no longer wished to taste the bitterness of terror.

  ‘There are eighty of you in the wagon,’ added the German officer. ‘If anyone is missing, you’ll all be shot, like dogs ...’

  They disappeared. The doors were closed. We were caught in a trap, right up to our necks. The doors were nailed up; the way back was finally cut off. The world was a cattle wagon hermetically sealed.

  We had a woman with us named Madame Schächter. She was about fifty; her ten-year-old son was with her, crouched in a corner. Her husband and two eldest sons had been deported with the first transport by mistake. The separation had completely broken her.

  I knew her well. A quiet woman with tense, burning eyes, she had often been to our house. Her husband, who was a pious man, spent his days and nights in study, and it was she who worked to support the family.

  Madame Schächter had gone out of her mind. On the first day of the journey she had already begun to moan and to keep asking why she had been separated from her family. As time went on, her cries grew hysterical.

  On the third night, while we slept, some of us sitting one against the other and some standing, a piercing cry split the silence:

  ‘Fire! I can see a fire! I can see a fire!’

  There was a moment’s panic. Who was it who had cried out? It was Madame Schächter. Standing in the middle of the wagon, in the pale light from the windows, she looked like a withered tree in a cornfield. She pointed her arm toward the window, screaming:

  ‘Look! Look at it! Fire! A terrible fire! Mercy! Oh, that fire!’

  Some of the men pressed up against the bars. There was nothing there; only the darkness.

  The shock of this terrible awakening stayed with us for a long time. We still trembled from it. With every groan of the wheels on the rail, we felt that an abyss was about to open beneath our bodies. Powerless to still our own anguish, we tried to console ourselves:

  ‘She’s mad, poor soul …’

  Someone had put a damp cloth on her brow, to calm her, but still her screams went on:

  ‘Fire! Fire!’

  Her little boy was crying, hanging on to her skirt, trying to take hold of her hands. ‘It’s all right, Mummy! There’s nothing there … Sit down ...’ This shook me even more than his mother’s screams had done.

  Some women tried to calm her. ‘You’ll find your husband and your sons again … in a few days .’

  She continued to scream, breathless, her voice broken by sobs. ‘Jews, listen to me! I can see a fire! There are huge flames! It is a furnace!’

  It was as though she were possessed by an evil spirit which spoke from the depths of her being.

  We tried to explain it away, more to calm ourselves and to recover our own breath than to comfort her. ‘She must be very thirsty, poor thing! That’s why she keeps talking about a fire devouring her.’

  But it was in vain. Our terror was about to burst the sides of the train. Our nerves were at breaking point. Our flesh was creeping. It was as though madness were taking possession of us all. We could stand it no longer. Some of the young men forced her to sit down, tied her up, and put a gag in her mouth.

  Silence again. The little boy sat down by his mother, crying. I had begun to breathe normally again. We could hear the wheels churning out that monotonous rhythm of a train travelling through the night. We could begin to doze, to rest, to dream ...

  An hour or two went by like this. Then another scream took our breath away. The woman had broken loose from her bonds and was crying out more loudly than ever:

  ‘Look at the fire! Flames, flames everywhere …’

  Once more the young men tied her up and gagged her. They even struck her. People encouraged them:

  ‘Make her be quiet! She’s mad! Shut her up! She’s not the only one. She can keep her mouth shut ...’

  They struck her several times on the head – blows that might have killed her. Her little boy clung to her; he did not cry out; he did not say a word. He was not even weeping now.

  An endless night. Towards dawn, Madame Schächter calmed down. Crouched in her corner, her bewildered gaze scouring the emptiness, she could no longer see us.

  She stayed like that all through the day, dumb, absent, isolated among us. As soon as night fell, she began to scream: ‘There’s a fire over there!’ She would point at a spot in space, always the same one. They were tired of hitting her. The heat, the thirst, the pestilential stench, the suffocating lack of air – these were as nothing compared with these screams which tore us to shreds. A few days more and we should all have started to scream too.

  But
we had reached a station. Those who were next to the windows told us its name:

  ‘Auschwitz.’

  The Jews of Hungary would see, even in the context of the Holocaust, the best and worst of humanity. Thousands were saved by the efforts of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and the Swiss Consul, Charles Lutz, who issued passports and put Budapest buildings under diplomatic protection. On the other hand, after the forced resignation of the Regent, Admiral Horthy, Hungary’s Jews were left in the hands of Adolf Eichmann and the native fascist groups, the Arrow Cross and the Nyilas. Jews not deported to the extermination camps died in casual acts of terror, or on marches westward to become forced labourers on behalf of the Reich.

  Arrival at Auschwitz, 1944

  HUGO GRYN

  I got out, and that was the point where my whole life was saved. There were these peculiar-looking people in striped uniforms. I made the assumption that they were inhabitants of the local lunatic asylum. They were moving up and down, their job was to clear the trains, but one of them, as he passed me, he’s muttering in Yiddish, ‘You’re eighteen and you’ve got a trade, you’re eighteen and you’ve got a trade.’ And my father says to me, ‘If they ask you anything, you’re nineteen and you are a Tischler und Zimmermann – a joiner and carpenter. Gabriel, my brother, was eleven – extraordinarily lovely, a very, very bright boy; we came to the head of the line, they ask how old I am, I say nineteen.

  ‘Betreibst Du in Handwerk?’ ‘Are you skilled in a trade.?’

  ‘Ja, Tischler und Zimmermann.’ ‘Yes, a joiner and carpenter.’

  They don’t even ask my brother and he is sent one way with my grandfather and grandmother, and my father and I another, my mother in roughly the same direction. My mother is not going to let my brother go without her, and the last I saw of her was her being pulled back roughly and sent in our direction, although the men and women were separated there.

  Later, in the barracks, I asked what happened about family reunions – you know: when are we going to meet the women and the others? How does it work? This man, who had been there some time, said, ‘You’ll never see them again.’

  I said, ‘Why not?’

  He says, ‘Well, by now they’re dead.’

  ‘What do you mean, “they’re dead”? Look, I’m so scared, don’t make bad jokes.’ Will you believe it, I didn’t believe it, I didn’t believe what was happening there for at least twenty-four hours.

  The Angel of Death: Dr Mengele on the Ramp at Auschwitz, 1944

  ZDENKA EHRLICH

  SS physician Dr Josef Mengele supervised the initial selection of new arrivals as they detrained on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Those he sent to the left, between 20–30 per cent, had their lives spared, at least for a while. Those sent to the right entered the queue for the gas-chamber.

  Zdenka Ehrlich was a young Czech deportee.

  When we all jumped out of the wagons we were put into a long, long column and told to march forward. It was not a station, no platforms, just these barracks, the barbed wire, nowhere else to go – it really was the end of the line. On the right were these creatures in rags, and naked women, I thought: What are they doing here? I will never be like them. Then I saw some men on the other side in striped gear. And in between, all you tried to do was avoid the guards, the sticks and the dogs. So you kept inside the column and marched. You were carried like a flood, it must have been for a mile. Then, three men in uniform; the uniforms were spotless, the boots were gleaming like mirrors. I’ll never forget the impression of the man in the middle, Dr Mengele, I just glanced at him; he was very good-looking. Not a menacing face at all, rather … not benevolent, but not menacing. I remember his boots were so shiny, he was absolutely immaculate. He had white gloves on, not exactly like a traffic policeman, but a sign of distinction and importance. He lifted his hand as he looked at everybody who marched past him and just made a very slow gesture, a very light gesture, and said ‘right, left, left, left, right, left, right ...’

  They put us in a huge room to count – five, five, five. Straight afterwards a woman with a whip chased us into the next room. There were mountains, but mountains of rags. Clothing that you had never seen, not even in theatrical wardrobes – Fellini would be pleased to have the imagination to put together the things that we saw. Behind each mountain of these rags was a guard, a woman guard, always with a whip. We had to run in front of it, she grabbed something and threw it at you. The next pile were shoes, men’s, women’s, everything together. A pair was grabbed and flung at you. So what I finished up with was the most extraordinary outfit you can imagine: I got an olive green ball gown of light material with pearls on it and an irregular hemline – it was like something from a Chekhov or Dostoyevsky play – and a short coat which had probably belonged to a ten-year-old girl, and shoes which saved my life.

  Mengele also committed horrific experiments on Auschwitz inmates, including live vivisection. His ‘speciality’ was operations on twins.

  Punishment ... and Kindness, Auschwitz, May 1944

  GIULIANA TEDESCHI

  Fascist Italy had been largely uninterested in anti-Semitism and not until 1938 did Mussolini, by now under the spell of Hitler, implement the ‘Manifesto of Race’ and Jews in Italy begin to suffer persecution. Even so, Fascist Italy resisted deportations, leaving Goebbels to complain to his diary:

  The Italians are extremely lax in the treatment of the Jews. They protect the Italian Jews both in Tunis and in occupied France and will not permit their being drafted for work or compelled to wear the Star of David ... Everywhere, even among our allies, the Jews have friends to help them.

  It was only with the fall of Mussolini and the German takeover of Northern Italy that Italian Jews were rounded up and sent to the camps. Tedeschi, a young Jewish woman from Turin, was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in April 1944.

  Shoved violently out of the block, I fell to my knees on the bare earth. Thinner than ever, in the white nightshirt that left arms and neck exposed, my curly hair cut short, I looked like an adolescent. Around me was the vastness of the night: I buried myself in it, I took refuge in it. The starry sky was close; it was a friend. So cold and so foreign by day when it was almost always covered by big stormclouds, tonight that Polish sky had something mysterious and familiar about it, something of the sky of my home country far away. With joy I recognized the Great Bear, as if it were an old family friend, then the polestar, Venus with its three stars in line, all the same.

  At that hour of the night the camp looked sinister, with its interminable rows of dark silent blocks, the barbed-wire boundary fence lit by powerful lamps all around, and the ghostly white path of the searchlight ruthlessly coming on and off as it hunted down your humiliated individuality in the general misery. Inside the huts, huddled bodies vainly sought some rest after the daily toils, some respite from desperation. Everybody’s sleep was disturbed, populated by ghosts; among the frequent cries and groans, the word ‘mama’ could be heard coming like some distressed plea from the lips of the young sleepers.

  In a silence and darkness deprived of the relaxation that night should bring, the stars seemed to belong to a different world, where our infinite misery was unknown. And in the abandon of the sleeping camp you saw that misery more clearly and sharply than during the gigantic struggle for existence that went on in the light of day.

  I had violent pains in one wrist and down one side where the bloccova’s club had beat me just a few minutes ago to remind me not to break the Lagerruhe, the strict silence that must be kept after eight in the evening. There would have been no point in trying to explain that I hadn’t slept for three nights, that I was literally suffocating, crammed and crushed between eight other prisoners, that a Belgian was stealing my place, that ...

  The ground was hard, and clods and pebbles pressed into my flesh. I clutched my arms to my breasts and shivered in that May night, frosty as an Italian night in February. Never before had I had such a strong feeling of being a grain of sand lost in the
infinity of the universe. I was seized by dismay and desperation. In front of me the block windows reflected the light of a fire, and the same red flame flickered across a hundred other windows. The whole camp seemed to be on fire. That flame ... I tried to find some way not to see it but couldn’t. High up, over the chimney of the crematorium, commanding the scene, it had reddened a corner of the sky. It burned night and day.

  I heard the confused sounds of people who had got off the train and were heading, unawares, to the doors of the mysterious building. I didn’t dare turn around, that glow paralyzed me, and in my state of spiritual prostration an overwhelming desperation took hold of me. Something appalling had happened before my eyes, something which so far I had sought at all costs to avoid and which tormented me far more than the pain in my wrist and knees. I had been shaken to the core, my human dignity had been violated, violated by an abject being who knew nothing of me or the world. I threw myself face-down on the ground and wept and suffered terribly at the thought that I had a husband and children. I wanted to be alone, to be the only one who need think about my destiny.

  From a lookout post came the sound of an accordion accompanied by a grating male voice: the guard Posten, who watched over all this misery in the constant presence of that flame, had found a way to pass the time and relieve the boredom of his watch.

  Two delicate hands laid a smock on my shoulders, and a voice I didn’t know muttered something. I recognized her in the glow from the flame: a Frenchwoman, quite old, who worked in the Schuhkommando, one of those dull creatures, without life or intelligence, who in normal circumstances barely manage to get by, and who in the camps seemed mad and moronic.

  I threw my arms around the neck of this companion in punishment, while to console me she whispered: ‘Ça va finir, mon petit, ça va finir; bientôt!’