Soldiers appear from one of the barracks, each leading a tightly bound prisoner on a leash. The prisoner is led up to the gallows, their neck is placed in the noose, their hands tied behind their back, and their bare feet are inspected to be securely bound. The soldiers accompanying the condemned then march down to the base of the platform and stand at attention in front of it.
An officer, the same one that welcomed us earlier, rides on horseback in front of the group and reads out the sentence. Fortunately I am German and understand what is being said. The condemned number fourteen: nine men and five women. They are sentenced to hang until they die. The reason for this verdict is that, while they were on duty outside the camp, they captured a wild pig, killed and ate it.
I am absently wondering if the lesson to all of us is that we are not supposed to eat without permission, or is it perhaps that they failed to share the feast with the camp commandant?
At the nod from the officer, who turns towards the condemned, each soldier pulls a lever and the body drops through the platform. The bodies fidget momentarily and then cease, lifeless.
If I ever wondered about the population of the camp, I don’t think that these hapless collection were Jews. They didn’t look German. But Jews wouldn’t kill and eat a pig. This much even I know. But then again...?
Soon after we are commanded to disperse and are herded back to the barracks. Our entertainment for the evening is complete.
I am back on the wooden slat with a wedge of bread, a cup of coffee and a metal bowl of broth. I am starving, so I eat with relish. I dream of Oma’s schnauzer and the delectable meals that it used to be served, that in this instance would qualify as a sumptuous repast.
This is the first chance I have had to reflect on all that’s happened over the past few days; that’s all it has been. Time-wise it was short, but emotionally it’s been years of growth cultivated in a boxcar. I discovered my physical and emotional endurance deprived of food, water, space and hygiene, the presence of which I had hitherto taken for granted. Confronted with the barbaric and senseless murder of the two boys, my age or younger, I developed the innate ability to compartmentalise the incident and store it somewhere inside the insanity that is within all of us. The difference is that those killings were executed with icy indifference in the cold light of day. They could have been insects for all he cared. Pawns to make a point.
But insanity can also act as a cocoon to protect us from the normal horrors that surround us. If we are mad, we don’t react. Only people possessed of normal faculties react to the conditions to which we are subjected; to witnessing the hanging of fourteen human beings for trying to relieve their grinding hunger by killing and eating a pig raw.
So I am now mad Helga. I think of the executions as the evening performance. I finish my meal and lie back. I am full, but I feel sick. I dare not think about the chewy stuff that was in the broth.
I try to fall asleep thinking about what it is that I will be doing every day for as long as I am imprisoned. Despite my pallet mate dismissing me with contempt because I am not Jewish, I am determined to elicit some information from her. This time I tap her on the shoulder.
She turns to me with a surly look. “What do you want?”
I attempt to put as much warmth into my voice as I can muster. “What happens here every day?”
“Don’t worry, you will find out.” With that she turns her back to me.
Roll call.
My first duty is with a group of other German women to sort out the clothing and luggage of those entering the showers. We march over to the gate and walk along the fence till we come to a huge hall. Outside are stationed several hulking men with wooden carts. They are waiting. The two large doors to the hall are open. We are told to wait by the fence opposite the men, leaving a clear path to the hall.
My rational thought is that our task is to match up the discarded clothing with the people that emerge from the shower. Alternatively, they are to be issued camp overalls and we are to load their clothing onto the barrows to be burned. Hence the billowing smokestack. I am sort of envious; I, and others in my bunk, were never given the opportunity to shower after being cooped up for three days in the boxcar, despite the filth that we were subjected to.
Aside from one other person the other women in the group are seasoned ‘sorters’. But we dare not dialogue with them.
Minutes later a train arrives and the procession of the hordes begins: showers, barracks, hard labour. The queue that was directed to proceed straight through arrives at our location. They are commanded to discard their clothing, personal belongings and luggage. I watch them impassively, wondering what selection criterion is used to determine who goes where. I can only come up with one: they all appear either too frail or too old or too young to work. The odd mother with children is also escorted through with polite assurances from the German soldiers who stand at the doors to the hall: “No, the water is not too cold; your children will be fine” - that type of thing.
The hall fills up in a matter of minutes. The queue is empty. The few remaining stragglers are crammed into the hall by the hulking men who are minding the wooden carts. The doors are forced shut and a wooden beam is thrust across to seal them. I wonder at the efficiency of it. How did they know to cram just about the right number of people into the shower hall? The obsession with numbers again.
We wait. I am also wondering why, if the people emerging from the showers are to have their clothing returned to them, we were never instructed to mark them or their belongings. I come to the conclusion that they are never to be reunited with their clothing or belongings - they are to be issued with camp outfits. Hence the wooden carts are to ferry the mounds beside us to be burned. One lingering thought: these people are not selected for hard labour or menial tasks, such as I, so what do they do? I can’t imagine that they are just allowed to lounge about all day and consume the splendid food. Remember the slogan on the gate, Arbeit Macht Frei; what work will these people be performing to make them free?
I soon find out the answers to all of my questions.
Instead of the sound of people happily bathing with soap and warm water, washing the filth and grime of their train journey from their bodies, ear-shattering screams emerge from the hall. The solid wooden doors are pounded on and tested by people frantically trying to get out, as if from the flames of a fire; they bulge, but ultimately withstand the pressure and remain sealed. Gradually the screaming subsides to a few whimpers and then the silence of the grave.
We wait.
The German soldiers, who greeted the now-dead arrivals with warm reassurances, smile contentedly at a job well done and nod to the hulking men with the wooden carts. They roll the carts up to the doors, remove the beam, unlock the wooden doors and step back for the gas to clear. At a nod from one of the soldiers they begin the task of removing the hundreds of bodies inside. I dare not look. Once again I recede into the safety of madness that I have discovered within myself. There is no place other than that to compartmentalise this horror.
Simultaneously we are given the order to sort through the clothing and retrieve any valuables: gold, silver, money, jewellery. Naturally, should we find something of value and steal it we will be shot. That last superfluous injunction was for our benefit, the new recruits. I would have guessed it anyway.
I lean by the mound next to me. Prayer books, a silver wine goblet, money, photographs, a gold ring, a diamond bracelet, a pearl necklace; in essence, the precious mementos of a life. At first I sort slowly, hesitantly, treating each item as though it were a person. Letting the spirit imbued in the object infuse with my feelings to give it some meaning. Trying to imagine the person that used to wear or treasure this object. But looking to my right, I notice that the experienced sorters are working mechanically at a fast rate. If I am to survive this duty I’d best bury my thoughts and feelings in the madness locker. I attack the mounds with renewed vigour. Soon I am pulling out all the valuables with such efficiency that I rival my
two nearest companions. A German soldier leans in and rewards me for my effort with a pat on the back.
I do this all day. By nightfall, either no more trains are due, or we are relieved to return to our barrack while another shift is assigned to take over. As I am walking back I look to the right and notice the billowing smokestack. Corpses and clothing reduced to ashes.
I am drained, emotionally and physically. I understand the moral contempt of the inscription above the gate, Arbeit Macht Frei, that greeted me when I arrived. Work Makes Freedom. Here it means that if you work, you are free to live.
A sumptuous meal awaits me. It is my first for the day. I finish it ravenously and then lie back to sleep. Tomorrow I need to recover more valuables, and faster. There will be the same number of trains. I don’t even think about the people that were asphyxiated to death in the hall.
I sense a tap on my shoulder. My friendly pallet mate. I don’t bother rising, I merely half-open my eyes and lean my head in her direction.
“You understand now what we do?”
The question does not elicit an answer from me, merely a shrug of my shoulders.
Roll call.
I have been on sorting duty for nearly a month. I have excelled at this. The Blockälteste pulls me out of the queue as we are headed for another day of sorting. I am being transferred from Barrack C to Barrack H. I will be assigned to sewing uniforms.
I should be relieved. But I don’t function this efficiently, normally. I live in a constant state of insanity when I am awake and at work. So I am disappointed. I ask if there was anything wrong with my performance.
The Blockälteste gives me a strange look. “You are a very good worker. That’s why you have been assigned to work in better conditions. You will have your own bunk and better food.”
That sways me. Better living conditions appeal to my normal side. Otherwise my insane side would be demanding to continue sorting. I have been getting so good at it that I could do a train in under an hour. You learn a skill, you become proficient at it, you don’t want to give it up. Plus, I don’t like change.
I don’t need to collect anything from the pallet that I sleep on including a small burlap sack that I used to store half of my evening bread ration; it became my breakfast. With the promise of better rations, I leave it behind for a new arrival. I am not that sentimentally attached to this barrack. There’s no one to bid farewell to.
The first thing I notice when I enter Barrack H is that it is physically just as grim inside as Barrack C. But instead of pallets, there are bunks with mattresses and blankets. The mood here is also not that sombre. The labour is probably as hard and long; the meals just as sparse - albeit better quality - and the conditions as unforgiving. Any infraction that is deemed serious can lead to instant death. The discretion is at the hands of those that rule by whim.
I am assigned to a lady from Minsk. Her name is Hannah. No German, and I don’t know any language she speaks. I don’t even know where Minsk is located.
Roll call.
We are still required to muster in quadrants. I stand with a different group from my previous sorters’ barracks, with Hannah and other ladies assigned to less soul-destroying duties. Thirty men and women are arrayed in front of us. No gallows. This group conspired to escape by digging a tunnel under one of the fences and a number of them made it all the way to the woods beyond. These thirty are the ones who were caught entering the tunnel. If they are not to be hanged or gassed to death, I can’t imagine what punishment awaits them, other than that it will result in their deaths. That is a certainty.
The camp commandant has finished reading the sentence and is now elaborating the verdict. They are to be shot. Hanging is too slow for this many and gassing is too invisible. They need to make a spectacle of them to send a message. I think that by now we all get the message, but many of us figure that we will die here anyway, so the risk of escaping and getting caught rivals the certainty of staying and dying slowly.
A group of riflemen emerge from the barracks and line up in front of the group, who are not even tied to a post. At a nod from the commandant, shots ring out, breaking the morning stillness, and thirty bodies crumple to the ground. The smokestack, which hasn’t ceased billowing for as long as I have been here, will soon be emitting the remnants of these thirty.
We are dispersed and I follow Hannah to the sewing workshop. No one says anything about the morning message.
Utilising abundant hand gestures, Hannah communicates the skill to me and I pick it up quickly. I start with sewing buttons on soldiers’ uniforms for the first week, and by the second week I am assigned to sew hems, stitch collars, finish shirts and trousers, and even embroider ribbons for officers. If nothing else, if I survive this madness and am physically able, I will have learnt a trade. There - I have discovered a smidgen of optimism in this jungle of mass murder and mayhem.
Evening is less arduous when we return from our gruelling day of labour. We are not emotionally wrung out from fortifying ourselves in the face of the daily horrors of sorting, but physically we are crushed. We can barely manage to feed ourselves, despite the fact that the sustenance is better and the ration larger.
Months pass, and now with the onset of winter again, the harsh weather takes its toll on the ones that become sick or are physically debilitated. Corpses are wheeled out in the morning. The decision is simple; if you miss roll call, you must be dead. Alternatively, if you are alive and didn’t make it to roll call, you will be clubbed to death. So the numbers deplete but are quickly replenished by eager new hands.
At times as I work mechanically I spare a thought for the Lipschutzes, who never made it past day one. I also wonder at how I ended up in their house in Ruth’s stead. I struggle with that memory, but snippets surface from time to time. I have some recollection of Ruth, their daughter, appearing at my aunt’s house and being sequestered in the attic. But memories like that in the circumstances under which I exist cannot be relied upon. So I dismiss them as nonsense. But nonetheless, the images nag at me to make sense of them, clues to how and why I ended up here with her name.
It is a mystery. As is my life in Munich that vanished with my past as if I never had one, an ordinary life that became less so with the early death of both my parents. Being taken in by Oma and then one day finding myself in the home of Aunt Magda. Did those circumstances somehow contribute to my ending up here? If so, why with the Lipschutzes? That’s the part that doesn’t make sense.
It is nigh impossible to think rationally when I am constantly exhausted, mentally drained and shivering night and day.
Hannah died last night. The part of me that can still retain some semblance of normalcy feels pain at her loss. I witnessed her gradual deterioration but there was nothing that I could do to alleviate it. You carry your own load here. If you straggle the Kapos cull you from the herd, club you to death and add you to the smokestack. So to forestall that fate Hannah remained strong for as long as she could, but in the end she succumbed to influenza, added to her physical and mental strain, and passed in the night. I stole a glance at roll call, watching as her body was wheeled to the crematorium to be incinerated. Another year here and it could be me.
The pain I carry for Hannah makes me angry. I have steeled myself against displaying any emotion that might make me stand out, until now. The people that I witnessed suffocating in the hall, and whose clothes were still warm from their bodies, were strangers after all. It was a horror to hear and needed to be instantly stored in the madness locker. The hangings, shootings, clubbings; they too were terrifying to watch, but still happened to strangers.
In Hannah I made a friend here. She taught me basic phrases in her native Russian and I was able to teach her enough German that she could comprehend the sentences and verdicts of the camp commandant. I thought of asking the Blockälteste for medicine, or at the very least to let Hannah rest. But I was afraid that that would call attention to her illness and weakness and she would be put to death instantly. Ins
tead I left her half my broth every evening and, without the Kapos noticing, I relieved her of some of her sewing pile.
Despite it all she succumbed and now I am friendless. Yet her sister, who witnessed my care for Hannah, befriends me. When night comes, we talk about her.
“Your sister saved my life.” Communicated in a combination of hand gestures and simple sounds and words.
Surprisingly, her sister, Sarah, speaks almost fluent German. “I was studying music in Vienna when the Gestapo arrested me. I learnt enough German to be able to follow the lectures.”
“I am sorry about your sister.”
“She was very fond of you, even though you are not Jewish.”
I think about that for a second. I have no clear answer to that; it’s all wound up in my father’s cause of death.
“I don’t think it matters much around here.”
“I agree. I meant that as a compliment.”
In the morning I am showering before roll call. Not that they mind our hygiene for our own sake, but they want us clean if we are to sew Wehrmacht uniforms. I was the last one in the shower stall and am just getting out when I slip on a bar of soap that someone carelessly left on the floor. I knock myself unconscious against the sharp edge of the wall separating the showers from the sleeping quarters. My last thought before my consciousness evaporates is that I will become a tendril of smoke this morning.
My vision is hazy. I am lying down. There are two people hovering above me. Doctors, nurses, I am not sure, but when they see my eyes open they smile. Were all my experiences horrific nightmares? Pleasant thought, but no such luck.
The man leans down and explains, “You suffered a mild concussion; you will be able to return to your barrack tomorrow and continue working.”
Some concession. I shut my eyes again and think back to the train and the man who confronted the officer: You are too valuable to us. His life was spared. I am German, an efficient and reliable worker; they need me. As long as I don’t become sick like Hannah I will be kept alive to work - grist to the mill. The insidious slogan is reinforced once again. Whoever came up with it was inflicted with an evil sense of humour.
THE MADNESS LOCKER Page 20
