Scheisshaus Luck: Surviving the Unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora

by Pierre Berg; Brian Brock

  A few men laughed.

  ‘‘It’s not funny; they bite. All right, keep clean and good luck.’’

  Herbert hopped off the stool and went into his private quarters, pulling the curtain closed behind him. His Stubendienste (barracks foremen) lined us up and doled out our mess kits, a spoon, and a new white-enamel bowl. We then received our first meal: a piece of brown bread, a small square of margarine, and a ladle of a warm, dark water they called coffee. Was that all? We hadn’t eaten for over forty-eight hours. Were the Nazis experiencing a food shortage? At least that would explain the condition of those skeletons on the truck.

  Everyone filtered through the four rows of bunks to stake out a place to eat and sleep. I went back to that bottom bunk and gobbled up my meal without tasting it. The man sitting next to me picked at his bread. He was distressed that the Stubendienst who had given him his mess kit snickered when he asked how he could find out where his family was. Silently I climbed up to the top bunk and stretched out on the burlap-covered mattress. I pulled the blanket over me. The mattress’s straw stuffing crackled as I tried to make myself comfortable. In spite of myself, I pondered where Stella was and what she was doing, and what would happen if I never saw her again. Thankfully, sleep spared me from torturing myself for long.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I awoke in the middle of the night with gut-wrenching cramps. I should have listened to the man from the HKB. That shower water PART II | AUSCHWITZ

  59

  was hellishly potent. The Ha¨ftling on watch had fallen asleep, so I easily ducked outside unnoticed. There was an outhouse close by, but there was only one way of relieving myself and retrieving my ring. The cramps tore at my belly, and I barely had enough time to take down my pants. Lucky for me, the searchlight didn’t sweep where I squatted. Once I was finished I found a twig and after a little digging I had my ring.

  The next morning, Herbert had us line up outside. At his side was his interpreter, Max. A severe beating hadn’t deterred him. I respected his persistence, but questioned whether it would ultimately pay off. Herbert stared at us with his piercing blue eyes as if to read our minds.

  ‘‘ Wer hat hinter den Block geschissen?’’(Somebody crapped behind the Block. Who was it?)

  While Max translated, Herbert’s fury drained the color from his face. We all stood in silence. I hadn’t breathed a word to anyone about the cramps or my ring, which was now hidden in the shoulder of my jacket.

  ‘‘Am I to believe that this shit fell from heaven?’’ Herbert’s voice trembled. ‘‘Stand at attention!’’

  We did as he ordered.

  ‘‘You’ll stand here until whoever did it gives himself up!’’ Herbert stormed back into the Block.

  I couldn’t believe he was making an issue of this. If I had known, I would have buried my mess. Damn it! Shortly afterwards, our soup was delivered and Herbert had them leave the steaming cauldrons in front of the Block’s door. I was in a panic. I was hungry and freezing, and I knew the men standing around me were, too. What should I do? I wanted to come forward because of the suffering I was causing, but I was frightened of what was in store for me if I confessed. As time crept by, guilt devoured me. No, I couldn’t stand silent any longer. I took a deep breath and stepped out of line.

  Herbert was standing at the Block’s threshold. I climbed the steps as if mounting the hangman’s scaffold.

  ‘‘So it was you!’’

  60

  SCHEISSHAUS LUCK

  As he spoke I wanted to jump back, giving some excuse for having gone up there, but all I could do was stare at my feet. Herbert took my silence for an admission and his fist sent me rolling down the steps. He pounced on me, grabbed me by the neck, and with strength surprising for one that small, dragged me into the Block. I hardly had time to realize what was happening when a rubber hose came down on my ass. I gritted my teeth to keep from crying out. Each blow straightened me up. It felt like an electric shock shooting through my body.

  ‘‘Bend over!’’ Herbert screamed.

  I jerked up again. A blow over the head knocked me un-conscious.

  I awoke on the cold floor, unsure what had happened to me. I had dreamt that I was sitting on a hot stove, but the searing sensation had followed me into consciousness. How could that be? Hit with a blinding torrent of pain, I remembered. I rolled onto my belly, but that did nothing to alleviate the agony. Hot tears rolled down my face as I bit into the sleeve of my jacket.

  Certainly I hadn’t deserved such a punishment. I had never beaten my dog when he did his ‘‘doodoo’’ in my room. What gave these men the right to thrash us? They weren’t SS. Wasn’t it enough to be imprisoned, to have lost one’s freedom? Weren’t we all comrades in misfortune who should be aiding, not trying to kill each other? I passed my hand over my jacket. The ring was still there in the seam. At least it hadn’t been all for nothing, I consoled myself as I crawled to my bunk and slipped into a pain-induced stupor.

  ‘‘Why did you confess?’’

  The man from the HKB* was standing over me.

  * The name of the Man from the HKB is Siegfried Halbreich, a Polish Jew who was incarcer-ated at Sachsenhausen and Grossrossen before being shipped to Auschwitz. Before-During-After (Schor Press) is Mr. Halbreich’s autobiography chronicling his Holocaust survival. Mr.

  Halbreich has lived across the street from me in Beverly Hills, California, for the past thirty years.

  PART II | AUSCHWITZ

  61

  ‘‘Why did you confess?’’

  I shrugged. ‘‘Somebody had to or we would’ve been there till doomsday.’’

  ‘‘You foolish kid.’’

  He shook his head and smeared a soothing ointment on my ass, which had swollen up like two balloons. He must have repeated my words to Herbert, because from that moment on he treated me kindly, giving me double rations and making a hero of me. Unfortunately those perks lasted only a week, at which point we were all transferred out of the quarantine Block and assigned to Kommando 136.

  This page intentionally left blank

  C H A P T E R 7

  I sat with twenty other Ha¨ftlinge of Kommando 136 around an oil-drum brazier inside a shelter of discarded planks and sheet metal somewhere on the Buna plant grounds. It was our lunch break. No one spoke while we ate. The sound of twenty-one famished men slurping up the brownish water the Germans had the audacity to call soup nearly drowned out the snowstorm howling outside. For the last four weeks the weather had been increasingly cruel.

  Yes, I had already been in the camp for a whole month. The time had passed quickly, and nothing distinguished one day from the next. Morning roll call, work, work, work, back to camp, evening rations, sleep, wake, repeat. It was as if I had fallen into a well that had no bottom. And day in and day out it was the same food and never enough of it. At least in Drancy we got three meals, with plates that usually consisted of a piece of meat and a few vegetables.

  I would still be hungry, but compared to the ‘‘Buna soup,’’ the food in Drancy was a king’s buffet.

  Monowitz’s repetitive routine and my body’s lack of nutrients were erasing all my interests and desires. The only thing I cared about was my stomach’s incessant crying. It was the only thing any of us gave a shit about.

  63

  64

  SCHEISSHAUS LUCK

  I stirred the contents of my rusty mess tin with my wooden spoon, hoping to find even a microbe of soggy, rotten beet. It was a hopeless struggle. The plant’s owner, the German chemical company I.G. Farben, provided our lunches, but the Ha¨ftlinge in the kitchen diverted most of the food to Monowitz’s thriving black market. I became aware of the black market after seeing a Kapo wearing the plaid flannel shirt I had gotten in Drancy. It’s not surprising that the Kanada Kommando—the ‘‘bellhops’’ who collected the belongings of the new arrivals—supplied most of these goods.

  Food, clothing, shoes, blankets, cigarettes, jewelry, gold teeth—

  anything th
at had some value to someone could be found on this black market. The problem was that you had to have something to barter with. Only German and Polish Ha¨ftlinge could receive packages from loved ones on the outside, so many of them prospered on the black market. For the rest of us, only those good at ‘‘organizing’’—camp slang for stealing—could enjoy an extra bowl of soup or wear a warm sweater.

  I slurped up the final drops in my mess tin, licked my spoon clean, then put it back in my pocket. My shoes were soaked from the snow, so I held my feet up to the brazier. The coke’s bluish red flame radiated blistering heat. My shoes began to steam. I felt revitalizing warmth on my legs, stomach, and chest, but my back-side was still ice. I stood up and backed up to the brazier. Quickly the heat became unbearable and the smell of freshly ironed clothes filled the shelter.

  ‘‘ Pierre, passauf’’ (Pierre, watch out), came a voice from the other side of the brazier.

  It was our Kapo, Hans, a green triangle who reminded me of the American movie star Spencer Tracy. Growing up, his movie Captains Courageous had been one of my favorites.

  ‘‘If you burn the seat of your pants, the rubber hose of the Blokowy will burn your ass.’’

  Blokowy was Polish for ‘‘ Blocka¨lteste.’’ Most non-German Ha¨ftlinge addressed their barracks’ supervisor using this easier-to-pronounce word. When a Ha¨ftling broke any of the rules, it was the PART II | AUSCHWITZ

  65

  Blocka¨lteste who doled out the punishment of his choice. If the infraction was severe enough, he would be the one reporting it to the SS. You were always better off with a red triangle Blocka¨lteste than a green triangle, whose past incarceration in a German penitentiary usually made him a rabid dog waiting for the slightest excuse to pounce. From what I had seen and had been told by old-timers, red triangle Blocka¨ltesten, as well as Kapos, didn’t take advantage of their authority or relish exercising physical discipline.

  A siren sounded outside. It was time to go back to raising factory buildings for ‘‘the fatherland.’’

  ‘‘ Auf geht’s!’’ (Let’s go!)

  Hans opened the door and our arctic tormentor blew in, making my nose tingle. ‘‘ Los schneller!’’ (Faster!) We went out into the snow in single file, each of us walking in the tracks of the man in front of him. I quickly wrapped my hands with Fusslappen. There was an abundance of the rags in my Block.

  Our job on this construction site was to drill holes in the brick walls so windows could be anchored. With my mallet and chisel in one hand, I climbed up a ladder to an opening in the wall. I brushed away the snow that had accumulated and put one leg over the ledge.

  At least through the afternoon I would be more comfortable straddling the wall because I had ‘‘organized’’ an empty cement sack to sit on. Some Ha¨ftlinge stuffed sacks inside their clothing for insula-tion. I put mine under my ass because I wanted to avoid chafed thighs, since I already had enough patches of irritated skin.

  On one side of me was a screen of snowflakes, on the other a black void that was the interior of the building. I hugged the wall with my thighs so that a gust couldn’t sweep me from my perch.

  Someone took away the ladder. There was only one ladder for every five windows. If I had to piss, I would have to make yellow icicles over the ledge. I pounded out holes the best I could. When my legs became stiff from the cold, I started to bicycle in the air. The Ha¨ftling who had tattooed my number had given me one good piece of advice.

  ‘‘If you want to survive, work only with your eyes.’’

  66

  SCHEISSHAUS LUCK

  I stopped pedaling. Yes, I had to expend as little energy as possible to economize the precious few calories I was getting.

  My mind wandered to Stella. Had she been lucky enough to be taken under the wing of a camp veteran? Was she getting advice that would help keep her from being sent to the crematoriums of Auschwitz’s second camp, Birkenau? The ovens and gas chambers were no secret to us in Monowitz. I had heard plenty of filtered-down accounts from members of the Transportation Kommando who delivered our corpses and near dead to Birkenau.

  Stella could have been consumed in those flames weeks ago, but until I had proof I had to keep hoping. My survival depended on it.

  A few days before, I bumped into Mordechai, the butcher from my hometown. He was a shuffling shell of his former self. Somehow he had gotten word that his wife and seven daughters had been exterminated that first night. In camp slang, he had become a Muselmann, the German for Muslim. Like many others, Mordechai had become so emotionally and physically broken down that, shrouded in his blanket, he looked like a gaunt pilgrim on the road to Mecca.

  In Auschwitz, there was only one road and it led straight to the crematoriums. This was a path I was determined not to step onto, and I hoped my Stella had the same resolve. In truth, her will would have to be monumentally stronger than mine. In all likelihood, her father and yellow triangle mother were dead, and Stella was just as aware of that as Mordechai was about the rising smoke of his family.

  Back at our Block that night, before das Essen (our meal), the Blocka¨lteste announced that those Ha¨ftlinge not working at their skilled professions or trades were to report to the Schreibstube (Administration Building) in the morning. I had told the Ha¨ftling who filled out my green card that I was an electrician. It was a lie, but I knew enough of the basics that I figured I could con my way through. The prospect of not working ten, twelve hours in the brutal Siberian blast kept me awake most of the night. Only the Kommandos working outside returned to camp carrying corpses. The odds of my survival would definitely rise if I could pass muster as a craftsman.

  PART II | AUSCHWITZ

  67

  A few mornings later I lined up in the Appelplatz (roll-call square) with the Elektriker Kommando. I marched with them to Buna’s main generator, which was housed in a tall red brick building with four metal smokestacks that looked like they belonged on an ocean liner. We entered a warm, brightly lit hall resonating from the hum of four monstrous turbines. The wooden soles of our shoes were like a stampede of jackhammers as we climbed a metal staircase to the tool room and workshop.

  The Ha¨ftlinge went to their workstations. The Kapo turned to me.

  ‘‘ Folge mir’’ (Follow me), the green triangle ordered. He handed me a schematic from his desk. ‘‘What do you read?’’

  I nervously looked over the diagram. In my physics class I had learned the equations and symbols for volts, amps, watts, and ohms, so it was easy to point out the capacitors, resistors, switches, and outlets. For some of the more technical items on the print I spit out names with more bluff than knowledge. The Kapo smiled.

  ‘‘Join that detail over there.’’

  I walked over to a Vorarbeiter and four Ha¨ftlinge who were dragging out their toolboxes. They were all German red or green triangles.

  ‘‘How do you bend conduit?’’ the stocky Bavarian Vorarbeiter asked.

  These men weren’t in the business of wasting any time with formal introductions.‘‘With a tube bender,’’ I blurted.

  ‘‘If you don’t have one?’’

  I smiled; this had happened to me at home. ‘‘I look for anything with the right radius, I cap one end, fill the conduit with sand so it won’t collapse when I bend it, then cap the other end.’’

  ‘‘How do you push the wire through?’’

  The Vorarbeiter wasn’t going to nail me on this question, either.

  ‘‘I push a snake through the conduit, attach the strands of wire to the snake, then pull it back.’’

  ‘‘From the box in the corner get me two transformers, one for 68

  SCHEISSHAUS LUCK

  two hundred and fifty volts to one hundred and twenty volts and another for eighteen volts.’’

  When I came back with the right transformers, the Vorarbeiter seemed satisfied that he could depend on me not to screw up.

  As we prepared the wiring for a new building that morning, I was amazed by the
jovial mood of my co-workers. On their faces were the first smiles I had seen since my arrival. It was a startling contrast to the gloom that hung over Kommando 136. Then, again, it’s hard to smile when your face is frozen. At lunch I discovered one reason these slave laborers seemed not to mind their work.

  Their soup was a much thicker and tastier fare than anything I had eaten so far. They all laughed when I licked my bowl.

  ‘‘ Speckja¨ger, haben einen Nachschlag’’ (Bacon hunter, have a second helping), grinned the Kapo.

  ‘‘May I really?’’

  ‘‘Have two; there’s plenty left.’’

  No wonder there wasn’t a sickly skeleton in the bunch. Relatively speaking, I was in paradise.

  At the end of the day, the Kapo handed me a small industrial fuse the likes of which I had never seen before.

  ‘‘Is it any good?’’ he asked.

  I looked through the glass of the porcelain fuse.

  ‘‘Sure,’’ I said confidently.

  ‘‘Check it again. You see those little black specks? This fuse has a manufacturing defect. It blew the moment we screwed it in the socket. You’re not very observant. We would’ve wasted a day searching for an open line.’’

  That damn fuse sank me. The next day I was back shivering my nuts off with Kommando 136.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  It was early evening. The north wind had frozen everything that the pale winter sun had thawed, making our usual path back to PART II | AUSCHWITZ

  69

  camp a sheet of ice. By threes, we walked on one of the many tenta-cles of train track criss-crossing the Buna plant. Ice splinters falling from the electric wires overhead stung my face. The wind cut through my ‘‘pajamas’’—camp slang for our striped uniforms—

  chilling my bones, which hardly had any meat left on them. As usual my stomach was throbbing with hunger, but it had been such an exceptionally exhausting day of fitting panels of cement and sea-weed up onto the skeletal frame of another warehouse building that all I wanted was my infested straw mattress. I hoped they wouldn’t make us take a shower when we returned to our Block. There was no way my feeble legs could carry my wet, naked body fast enough across the one hundred yards of frozen cinders that lay between the showers and our Block. It would be a sure way of catching pneumonia.