Again he was a worker. The pursuing murderers ignored him and chased the last Jews into the chambers and he was crying and tears were rolling down his cheeks and he admitted finally his wife Effin was in that crowd and he knew he had heard her call his name three times and, horror of all horrors in the world, he had pretended not to hear her and instead made his escape into the mound of clothes. She was just then in the gas chamber, hair shorn from scalp, fallen into the arms of strangers, sucking down the carbon monoxide gas.
Tears, the tears, long and burning down his face, turning and weeping into his shoulder so his sobs wouldn't be noticed, feeling like even God above had turned his back and knowing the angels that day had seen things of which, later, they would not speak.
And so the last of his insides died before the first of his outsides died. That was how it was, he discovered. He had died but he hadn't. He knew death but yet he walked around. There was a word for such a man, but he couldn't think what it was.
After a day of it, he discovered he rather enjoyed being a dead man. It wasn't nearly so terrifying, as his eyes looked down in the ditches, his arms spreading sand across the pale bodies with the clenched hands in extremis, the disarticulated limbs and hands and feet hacked off with shovels as the bodies resisted the sand, the infants with the arched backs, frozen in their effort to find the warm arms of their mothers.
Dead, it wasn't so bad, and he decided he would die then and there. He inhaled and held his breath. Then he decided he would not die, he would live and he would make his wife Effin glad he lived. He would never take another wife—he wouldn't do that disservice to her. But he would live. And it would be a life of freedom, for he had nothing left to lose except the most recent breath that still hollowed in his lungs. And soon even that was displaced and in that brief instant, between in-and-out, he was free. He drew a shallow breath and closed his eyes, practicing for the outside death that was always close by, waiting to catch his eye.
Then he freed the breath from his burning lungs and it sprang forth as white pigeons as he was suddenly dizzy and hallucinating. He needed food. He needed to take deep breaths and slow his heart.
At six o'clock the bugle called him to the line with the other workers and they passed by the open kitchen window and received their soup.
Then to the ground, eyes closing before he felt the permafrost bite into his back.
A way out.
Better to try than to die.
Chapter Two
Lodzi Ashstein was born in Chochewoya, a small town which in Yiddish would be called a shtetl.
The Jewish community of eight hundred people consisted of poor and very poor people. But in Lodzi’s house they never went without. So, Lodzi thought they were very well off. Of the three or four families who were considered rich, Lodzi counted his among those.
Lodzi's father was a timber merchant from Berlin. He also dealt in coal and building materials. He was a very strict man and demanded of Lodzi he memorize huge portions of the Torah and recite for him every night. He made no small issue of the fact he wanted Lodzi to grow up to be a rabbi and encouraged him in all ways to pursue such a course. Lodzi, for his part, was as equally strong-willed as his father, and he resisted his father's vision for him. Instead, he wished to be a lawyer and speak the law inside the courtrooms.
"What of the law?" his father challenged him. "What do you know of it?"
"Father," said Lodzi, "there is Jewish law and there is man's law. At heart, they are one and the same. The one will make me wise beyond all men. The other will make me wealthy beyond all men. I choose wealth as wise cannot buy bread. How is that for wise already?"
His father scoffed but gave Lodzi free rein. While he was strongly opinionated about his son, he was anything but a martinet and would help Lodzi achieve his goals.
Their synagogue was built with an outer wall and inner compound. It was made of wood harvested from the surrounding hills, pine and beech. In addition, as a precaution, it had metal grilles over the windows. The grilles were so beautiful the Jewish community decided to put them on the inside, not the outside. One of their people was a glazier and he undertook to glaze the windows when they were smashed by catapults from outside. This was Lodzi's first inkling not all the world loved the Jews. The older he grew, the more he became convinced the study of law, if nothing else, would give him the tools to defend himself and his family against a world seeming to have no use for Jews. A world, in fact, bent on tormenting—even destroying—them. He learned young what it meant to be a Jew. But the learning had only just begun.
To the children, the synagogue was beautiful. It was like a musical instrument inside: Lodzi felt as if he sat inside a violin and prayed. It was built so that the bimah (raised platform for the reading desk) was in the center, and the ark was slightly elevated and was attended by the kohanim (Hebrew priests). The rabbi sat on the right side with the elders close to him. Lodzi’s father was on the Rabbinic Council and the Town Council, so he sat close to the rabbi. Lodzi had to sit next to his father and grandfather and not fidget because he was in that prominent position. Sitting there facing the gallery, he had a very good view of his mother and the ladies up on top; they all had lovely veils and looked like angels huddled against the ceiling. To dress up and veil themselves was thought to be a lovely thing, and everybody attended Shabbat service. Lodzi used to love sitting inside the synagogue and watching the ladies and looking at the windows and the lovely bimah of carved wood. To him it provided a sense of security, a sense of well-being. He heard the wonderful singing and thought: perhaps next year his own voice would be in tune and maybe he could participate.
People who didn't have baths or hot water used to go to the ritual baths, which were warmed on Thursday and Friday mornings–one session for women, one session for men. The bath was attended by the same man who read the Torah on Saturday. When Lodzi went with his father and grandfather to the ritual bath—called the mikvah—the shamus (attendant) was given a coin before entering. Then they undressed and were scrubbed by him and some of the men were beaten with pine branches and the shamus earned extra. Then, after being washed again over the head, they were allowed to go downstairs and submerge themselves in the ritual bath. This had to be kept clean so no one was allowed to go down without either washing himself, or being washed by the shamus. Everyone who went down submerged three times in the steaming water and came out. And after this some people poured cold water over themselves and then sang songs. Because of the metal drum, which held the water for the ritual bath down below, like a well, the acoustics were wonderful. And they would sing and tell jokes. Lodzi was then removed to the front, and he was so sorry that he couldn't participate, hearing these ditties and dirty jokes. All he heard were muffled sounds of laughter and sounds coming through the walls. And there he waited for them to come out and they'd walk home bundled up. The significance was to cleanse himself before Shabbat so at least once a week everyone was clean.
On Friday, one took the cholent to the baker. This was the big pot which was closed like a pressure cooker with the lid wrapped up with various rags. And in that would be potatoes, barley, beans and meat—usually brisket that was considered the best. It was all sealed up and on the pot the instructions were given whether it should be put in the middle, right-hand side, left-hand side of the oven—every woman knew which was the hot part. The youngest children used to take the Sabbath food. During the winter Lodzi's sled was adapted with guards on the side so he could pull the pot to the baker. This had to be collected on Saturday when everybody came from Shabbat. It was a heavy meal, so heavy that after eating everyone had to find a corner to snooze for a couple of hours. But they thought it delicious and because the winters were so cold that sort of meal was wonderful.
All told, however idyllic it may sound, life in Lodzi's early years was very hard. The diet was really one main meal a day. But it didn't do people any harm—to be slim and having bones showing was fine. The air was fresh, there was no pollution and th
e life in a little place like Chochewoya was wonderful: there were forests, there was the lake and after the heavy Shabbat meal and the little snooze—because they were not allowed to do anything else on the Sabbath—they went for a walk to the lake and came back again to town and home.
In his mid-teens, Lodzi took to reading his father’s newspaper. On Friday, after the meal, he would read many of the interesting articles in Yiddish. Lodzi loved reading about the world and wondered at the place called Germany, the place where Jews were said to be hated and hunted.
Lodzi’s father moved the family to Warsaw. It was business that required him there. Lodzi was eighteen and still wanted to study law. Plus there was a young woman, so he found Warsaw very pleasant.
He was nineteen years old when the SS stormed the family home and put him on the train to Treblinka. He had been married two weeks. The marriage had never been consummated. He would never see any member of his family again. Where or how they were taken, he had no idea, though he asked everyone he saw on the train, no one knew them or knew anything about them.
Lodzi arrived in Treblinka alone and frightened to death and expecting to die any moment. Everyone had heard the rumors and now it was coming true.
Then the Germans opened the doors to the cattle cars and told the Jews they would all shower and clean up. The journey would then continue, they assured them.
As they made their way to the showers, Lodzi found himself pulled aside and ordered to assist in the sorting of the discarded clothes. It was special work, he was told, and he would be rewarded for his effort.
So he moved apart from the other Jews and followed instructions. Trousers in this pile, shirts in that, shoes with laces tied together, over there.
His overseer was a squat, gnome-like man with warts along his jaw. Lodzi had only sorted two shirts when the man cracked his whip across Lodzi’s shoulders.
The young man was stunned.
Then it began.
Chapter Three
Soon after his arrival, Lodzi Ashstein learned the name of his tormentor. SS captain Janich Heiss was from Czestochowa, a city in south Poland, though he had been born in Munich. They had found him to be a loathsome creature, evil incarnate, who loved to torture the sick and the lame and the children in plain view of those selected for the labor camp of Treblinka, which was Camp 1. He swore it made for better workers and ordered the men under him to behave likewise. Lodzi overheard this as they were going through the latest mountain of clothing, searching for watches, rings, bank notes, coins, and other items of value.
The guards came by and told them what kind of gift they desired for their mistresses and it was up to the workers to produce such a garment. Usually they were given just until the end of the guard's shift. Should they fail, a beating always followed, usually a harsh one about the head, which increased the chances of a facial wound and a direct line to the extermination chamber. So every worker helped every other worker who had been selected to produce specific items of jewelry, clothing, or accessories such as purses and wallets.
Evening wear especially was in high demand. The Nazi guards entertained their Polish mistresses every night and always returned to the camp the next day sexually sated and seeking hangover relief. In their pain and guilt they levied harsh punishments on the workers and many of Lodzi's acquaintances and friends from his village were shot in the head where they stood if they angered a guard. Lodzi would then be forced to drag his comrade by the feet down to the ditches and deposit the corpse there. All the while jokes and insults were hurled that he might be next to die, should he take longer than three minutes, down and back. Thus the race to the ditches resembled a child's wheelbarrow race where legs are held aloft by the runner and the "wheels" provided by the hands of the wheelbarrow. Except in Lodzi's race there were no wheels, just the legs, each snugged into an armpit, and then pulled along like a dray horse at the plow.
Work was interrupted that morning by the arrival of yet another train. The boxcar doors shuddered apart, the passengers, flinching and squinting in the daylight, stepped down onto the platform, and Lodzi with his fellows immediately fell to screaming at the new Jews to undress and run for the chambers. Just to show they meant business, Hauptsturmführer Heiss pulled his Luger, held it to the head of a young boy and blew his brains against the boxcar with a single shot. "By all that's holy, undress now!" Heiss cried. Just then, clothes flew through the air as the realization electrified the new people they had truly arrived in hell. They had had their suspicions, now validated. No one wanted to die on the wrong end of a Luger; all determined to take their chances at the other end of the path. Maybe, just maybe, there would be an opportunity, a chance to survive beyond the next thirty minutes. Five and six at a time the nude Jews sprinted from the platform onto the sandy path and bounced and jostled among themselves to make a quick trip to the building that housed the showers. Some fell along the way and they were paid no mind, the follow-ons stepping over and, in some cases, directly on, the fallen. Old women were the worst at making the run, and many of them died from heart failure, terror, or whatever else killed off the infirm, as Lodzi watched out the corner of his eye.
Then he was jerked violently aside and told to bring his shears to the barber room. A dozen of his fellow barbers accompanied him on the dash for the barracks to retrieve shears and appear where they were told.
In the tool shed where the shears were kept under lock and key, Lodzi was surprised to find Avil Vernich, the man who slept beside him at night and snuggled against him for warmth. Lodzi had to blink twice to understand Vernich was in fact holding a hot tin of coffee, steam curling out its lip. The startled man had evidently been on a break when the order to retrieve the shears had been issued. He made no effort to hide the drink. He avoided the eyes of his fellow Jews. But instantly, Lodzi knew. The man was a collaborator. While he pretended in the barracks to be one with the other Jews, the man was actually cooperating with the Nazis in their never-ending efforts to root out the troublemakers among the workers and send them to a quick death. With a jolt, Lodzi realized he could not say anything around Vernich ever again. With that knowledge fresh in his mind, he retrieved his shears and ran to the gas chamber.
Five minutes later, the nude women from the town of Ostrowice were pushed into the barber room, taking seats on the long benches directly beneath the waiting barbers.
"What is happening?" sobbed a young girl of sixteen. "Please," she grabbed Lodzi's sleeve and searched his face, "please, for the love of God, tell me what happens next!"
He immediately felt the lash across his shoulders and looked up at the ceiling. He couldn't afford to comfort her, but slowed his shearing in order to provide her with ten extra breaths before the gas. Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.
Another middle-aged woman couldn't stop crying and she was shaking so hard his shears bloodied the top of her head. The Nazi's laughed, lashing her across the breasts and etching long angry streaks of red where her babies had suckled. She didn't seem to feel a thing of it, and she continued weeping and attempting to brush aside the shears, which caused Lodzi also to cut her hands several times. Tears came to his eyes and he wished her to know he was sorry for cutting her, sorry he couldn't give comfort, but by now he knew better. Comfort was impossible and there was nothing he could do or say anyway to slow the inexorable slide toward the ditches. She was as good as dead and he knew it, she just hadn't caught up with the reality yet.
Then another woman came and another, followed by a hundred more.
An hour later they were done, and a lesser guard reported to Hauptsturmführer Heiss the showers were stuffed to overflowing with weeping and screaming women and Heiss gave the order to the lackey to start the engine. Immediately the room next door began filling with carbon monoxide gas as the guards passed around a pack of French cigarettes that had miraculously appeared in the camp. As they smoked and laughed they made Lodzi and his friends sing a song. "A happy song!" they demanded, “Nothing Jewish and sad!"
So the Jews sang Christmas carols, of all things, and the Nazis relaxed into the songs and a new spirit settled over the room, short term as it would be.
Then came the men, running past the barber room, hands raised against the whips and rifle butts as they ran, chanting Sh'ma Yisrael, Sh'ma Yisrael (Hear, O Israel).
Another hour and the trainload was done. All told, another three thousand mortals had left the earth, their remains neatly stacked like logs along the trenches that Hauptsturmführer Heiss was now having Lodzi and his fellows cover over with sand. Some of the victims were still breathing, albeit shallowly, and the Germans, in the only mercies Lodzi ever saw during his stay at the camp, told the workers to hit the breathers in the head with the shovels to put them out of their misery. Lodzi did as he was told and went to bed that night with the knowledge he had killed no less than thirty Jews himself. Mostly they had been children and infants, as the gas seemed to have the least effect on those in the most robust health.
Kaddish for the dead was said in one corner of the barracks, and Lodzi flew into a rage at the participants.
"Why do you pray!" he screamed at the group. "You are thanking your God for what? What did he do for you today?"
"It is our duty," said Shemel Lieberman, "go to sleep and leave us be."
"God is dead!" cried Lodzi. "The Lord has no use for any of us! Let's gather around and keep each other warm rather than waste our warm breath on the empty air. Come here and lie down to sleep! There are gaps!"
Unspeakable Prayers: WW II to Present Day (Thaddeus Murfee Series of Legal Thrillers) Page 2
