A flashlight caught his hair and it surrounded him like a halo. He sang his lament and, when he finished, the guards clapped. They hooted and stamped their feet. Many of the prisoners in Barrack 14 had tears running down their cheeks and someone at the back broke down entirely.
Guth stayed in the shadows. The orange asterisk of his cigarette burned and faded.
When quiet returned to the barrack he dropped his cigarette onto the floor and twisted it beneath his boot.
“You see?” he said, lurching back into the light. “We don’t treat you so badly in Lubizec. Where else could you enjoy a Passover? Hmm?”
He pointed at the eggshells on the floor. “This is a family meal, yes?” He blinked a few times as if trying to focus. He twirled his wedding ring and was on the verge of tears. “I haven’t seen my wife and kids for … six months. Six lousy months.” He puckered his lips and let out an extravagant whistle. “I keep telling them to return, but they stay in Berlin. Fucking Berlin.”
He unbuttoned his trench coat and fished around for something. He stumbled and almost tripped over but he pulled out his wallet. He held it up like a prize and passed a photo to Schemise.
“My wife and kids.”
The new guard held it to the light. “Very nice, sir. Very nice indeed. A good-looking family.”
It is worth pausing here and mentioning that when Chaim Zischer was asked about this incident for a television documentary, he sparkled with rage. He leaned into the reporter’s microphone as his face flushed with anger. He almost spat out the words.
“Should I feel sorry for this man, this murderer, this killer of cities? No, I tell you. My family was dead, my son was dead, my wife was dead, my parents were dead, my brothers were dead, and he’s telling us how much he misses his family? Oh, please. There is a big difference between missing your family and having your family gone missing. I have no sympathy for Guth. Did he care about my family? No. No, he did not. He put them in an ashfield.”
Zischer then mentions that during the mock Seder he thought about the biblical exodus out of Egypt and he realized that Guth was a modern-day Pharaoh. The man stood before his slaves, dripping with gold and arrogance, and he walked around as if he were immortal, as if the universe had no power over him. Zischer thought about the ten plagues that freed his people from Egypt and he imagined each of them coming to Lubizec: the water changing to blood, the infestations of frogs, and lice, and flies, livestock dying off, horrible boils appearing on the master race, hail smashing into buildings, locusts devouring every green leaf as far as the eye could see, the three days of total darkness, and then, finally, death to every first-born son.
So where was God now? Where were the plagues to save his people? They didn’t need to be large plagues. God could change the chemistry of gunpowder so that bullets could no longer be fired, or he could break railroad ties, or he could bring tornadoes swirling down from the heavens to destroy the gas chambers. Anything would do. God didn’t need to send frogs or locusts. He could just stop the killing. That’s all he needed to do.
And as he looked at the Seder before him, Chaim Zischer decided that when his time came to stand before the Lord and explain his life, he would turn the tables on the Almighty. Instead of explaining his life, he would demand that God explain his decisions, and that he would pass judgment on what God had done in 1942. Where were you when my wife and son were destroyed? Where were you when hate ruled the world?
“Beautiful, sir,” Schemise said again. He returned the photo with a click of his heels and a little bow. The noise startled Guth and he looked around as if realizing where he was. His face soured and he pointed to a few prisoners.
“Shoot him. Shoot him. And … him.” He turned on his heel and pushed outside. Snow came swirling in as he trudged into the darkness. The wind howled.
Schemise motioned for the condemned prisoners to come outside while Niemann and Birdie pushed their way to the door. They removed the wine bottle and dragged the light with them. Darkness swallowed the building. No one spoke. No one moved.
There was the sound of a padlock clicking into place and then boots squeaking away on fresh snow. A minute later a pistol cracked into the night three times and the wind picked up. The loose clapboard on the roof began to slap again. It sounded like a machine gun opening up.
All of the prisoners climbed back into their bunks except for the men involved in the mock Seder—they continued to sit on the floor. Chaim Zischer and Dov Damiel were surprised they hadn’t been shot and they realized that, in a way, death had indeed passed them over. But for how long?
The six prisoners whispered among themselves.
“Did you hear what Guth said? We’ll be dead by April.”
“We need to escape.”
“Yes, but how?”
“We could dig a tunnel.”
“Don’t be stupid. The ground’s frozen.”
There was a pause.
“Even if we escaped, where would we go?”
“Warsaw. We could go to Warsaw.”
“Or Kraków.”
Another pause.
“We’d have to liquidate the guards.”
“And Guth. I’d shoot him personally.”
“I’ve got you now, Birdie.”
A searchlight passed over the window and a shaft of white knifed in, momentarily blinding them. Purple dots and squiggly things floated in Zischer’s field of vision and then, just as quickly as it happened, inky blackness was poured back onto the barracks.
Zischer let his eyes adjust. The murk took on new forms and he saw things come into focus. Everything seemed clear.
Someone whispered, “I have an idea.”
17
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE ROSE GARDEN
We know that some ninety thousand people died in Lubizec during December 1942 and that roughly the same number perished in January 1943. Towns like Slodowa, Barnow, Belz, and Pawlów vanished from the face of the earth. Synagogues stood empty as whole villages were drained of families. The number of human beings funneling into the camp forced the gas chambers to work almost nonstop during the day and the Roasts were in constant use at night. Two new pits were dug and the heat was so intense it melted huge areas of snow. An oily fountainhead of burnt flesh and boiling marrow blotted out the stars.
To make matters worse, the sun set at 4:15 in the afternoon and this meant the searchlights clicked on as the transports continued to roll in. Snow floated through massive cones of light and everyone jumped out of the cattle cars, frozen and eager for warmth. Thousands were marched off to their deaths with the promise that heat—glorious heat—waited for them up ahead. The guards said there were heavy coats, hats, scarves, and boots for the first people inside the showers.
“Quickly,” they yelled while gripping their whips. “It’s all waiting up ahead for you.”
Chalk numbers were no longer scrawled onto the side of the wagons because no one bothered to count how many people were stuffed inside anymore. The train manifest from the station of departure was now considered “good enough” for such bookkeeping purposes. There was no need to count the prisoners when they arrived into Lubizec because, as everyone now knew, once the train was set into motion it was virtually impossible to escape. If x number of Jews departed from such-and-such a place, it was all but guaranteed the same number of Jews would roll into Lubizec. Whether they were alive or dead hardly mattered to the Nazis. The body count wouldn’t have changed and that was the main thing.
Guth spent more time in his office trying to figure out how to solve new problems like clearing snow off the rails and what to do with the ash now that the farmers could no longer use it for their fields.*
He had a pile of applewood stacked beside his potbelly stove and he kept it well stoked. Sometimes he twirled his wedding ring as he looked out his office window. Frost clung to the edges. A framed picture of his family was on the desk and he grew tense whenever he heard about more air raids over Berlin. It was during this period of fre
nzied slaughter that his relationship with Jasmine, which had been icy for many months, was finally beginning to thaw. She mentions in her unpublished diary that she “had decided to forgive Hans for all his little deceptions” and that perhaps she was being “too hard on him since he’s under so much beastly pressure.”
This “beastly pressure” of course involved the murder of thousands of innocent people, but Jasmine still didn’t see any fundamental problem with her husband’s job. She mentions in her diary how much she wanted her family back together again, and she also mentions that Guth began to worry that he wasn’t around for his children. He missed being a father. And so, at the end of February 1943, the Guth family talked seriously about living under the same roof again. Phone calls were made. Telegrams were sent. Large presents were mailed via Reichspost.
Inside Lubizec, however, the world was all snow and midnight. Chaim Zischer and Dov Damiel found themselves in a blur of arriving trains, naked bodies, and death. They had no stove in their barracks, and as they shivered in the dark, they tried not to think about their lost families because this only resulted in crippling depression. Thinking about life before Lubizec fogged the mind, it weakened you, and it did absolutely no good whatsoever. Only the now mattered in Lubizec because the past had been snuffed out and the future was always in doubt. Who knew when a pistol might be leveled against the back of your head? Who knew when you might hear that terrible phrase, “I’ve got you now, birdie”? You could be whipped to death at any time. No, it was better to live in the present. There was only the now because anything on either side of that now didn’t exist.
Nevertheless, talk of escape fluttered through the barracks and a core of prisoners huddled together in their bunk beds. Zischer and Damiel were spooned together as they murmured about cutting the barbed-wire fence. Also squashed into their narrow wooden bunk was a former Polish military officer named Avrom Petranker. As far as the Nazis were concerned, Petranker was doubly dangerous because he fought against them in the invasion of 1939 and he also had Jewish blood in his veins. Next to Petranker was David Grinbaum. Tall and lean, Grinbaum had a moon-cratered face because he nearly died of smallpox when he was a child. Moshe Taube, who took part in the mock Seder, was also wedged into the bunk. They whispered to each other as the searchlight floated across the window like an unholy eye. Weird shadows were dragged across the walls and, as the wind howled over the roof, the five men whispered about escape. Slowly, as the searchlight passed back and forth, a plan began to hatch.
“All empires die.”
“Yes. This is true.”
“Guth is like a golem for the Nazis. He is a mindless follower. A dumb monster. He can be destroyed.”
Other prisoners were asked about escape and the idea made everyone itch with hope. As they went about the business of hosing out the gas chambers or stacking warm bodies into the pits, a strange idea began to take root in their heads: Maybe they would live to bear witness about what was happening in Lubizec?
These men had names like Jechiel, Aryeh, Josef, and Scmuel. Omet, Ravid, Joshua, Levi, Kazimierz, and Malachi. No one bothered with last names and, unlike Auschwitz, where a number was tattooed onto everyone’s arm, in Lubizec there were no such numbers. The guards referred to the prisoners as “rags” or “pieces of shit.” They did this because they saw no need to learn their names. Why bother? In a few months a fresh batch of prisoners would take their places. These prisoners were just shapes that dragged bodies from the gas chambers and yet, as much as the guards wanted these prisoners to be faceless and anonymous, the very opposite was true. The prisoners were all individuals. Some had freckles. Others had crooked teeth. Some were tall. Others short. One had bitten fingernails while another had a scar. One was bald. Another had pimples. One needed to trim the hair that sprouted out of his nose and another had large workmanly knuckles. Many of the prisoners had ghostly pink indents on their fingers where a wedding ring once sat. Such a thing proved that they were beloved, once. Most were married, once. Further back, they had all been rocked to sleep, once. At some point in time, the hot words of love had been whispered into their ears, and once, long ago, in what seemed like another life, they had all been the center of someone else’s universe. They were the sun. They were the stars and light. They were the molecules of God himself.
These men with names like Chaim, Dov, Avrom, David, Moshe, Jechiel, Aryeh, Josef, Kazimierz, Scmuel, Omet, Ravid, Joshua, Levi, and Malachi, these men who had once been cradled by loving mothers, these men who wondered what the world might be like when they grew up, these men looked at each other and decided to escape. It was dangerous but they agreed it was better than the oiled mouth of a gun being pressed into their foreheads. If they stayed in Lubizec, it was only a matter of time before they were tossed onto the Roasts.
But to go against what was expected—there at least was something, something to try. Even failure would bring a scrap of success.
The escape would take place after breakfast because they wanted their stomachs full of rye bread. Once they finished eating, that’s when they would turn on the guards. Guns would be taken away from the SS and they would shoot their way to the garage where they would hijack one of the “ash trucks”. They would then crash through the front gate and drive out towards freedom.
One of the prisoners, Josef Bau, used to drive buses before the Nazis declared that Jews could no longer run public transportation. Bau would be protected by the others as they ran in groups of three to the garage. The guards in the watchtowers would fire their machine guns—that couldn’t be stopped or avoided—but Avrom Petranker, the former Polish military officer, told his fellow prisoners to aim at a specific tower and, in this way, covering fire might allow a few men to reach the garage. No one expected to live. They all hoped to live of course, but it seemed more likely they would be gunned down. It was better than doing nothing, though.
“The world needs to know we did something,” Moshe Taube said. “Let’s die for a reason at least.”
On the morning of the escape, Chaim Zischer woke up early with a knot of fear in his stomach. He had been startled awake by a terrible nightmare of gunfire and he couldn’t fall back to sleep. He wondered how long it might take to die from a bullet wound. Thirty seconds? A minute? His eyes grew heavy and he dreamed about drowning in a lake of blood.
Sometime later, the wooden door of Barrack 14 was thrown open and Birdie yelled, “Antreten! Antreten!”
The rubber hose smacked against the bunks.
“Get up, you pieces of shit. Up, up, up!”
Again the hose whistled down.
The world was dim in the bluedawn sunrise and Zischer jumped down from his bunk. His muscles were stiff and he watched clouds of breath leak from everyone’s mouths. It reminded him vaguely of horses in a stable. They sprinted outside and Zischer pushed himself to the center of the group in order to keep away from the truncheons and whips. Folk music blared out from the central guard tower as the soft thunder of shoes filled the air. All three hundred prisoners formed up in the Rose Garden, and when they were called to attention, they snapped off their hats in one fluid motion. Zischer’s toes were cold and he wiggled them inside his shoes. Soon, he told himself. Soon. In twenty minutes he would be either free or dead.
He smelled the crisp air. Wind flapped against his trouser legs.
Up ahead, Heinrich Niemann paced back and forth. He nearly slipped on a patch of ice but righted himself just in time before falling down.
“You rags need to be taught a lesson!” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Look behind you.”
A low whispering filled the cold as the prisoners turned around. There, in the blue murk of morning, were three bodies tangled up in the barbed-wire fencing. They hung like fish in a net. One of them was so badly shot, most of his head was missing from the eyes up. Zischer thought about his own body pumping blood and how the liquid gears beneath his rib cage were going about the silent business of life. His veins were full of blood. His nerves sp
arkled with electricity. His cells were knitting new cells. His lungs grew big, then small, then big again. He was regenerating into a new person every second, and he wanted this to continue for years to come.
He studied a birch tree in the distance and wondered what it would be like to walk through a world without barbed wire always in front of him. It had been so long, but now the sun was coming up in a ball of orange, and he saw himself walking far beyond the perimeter of the camp. What would it be like to be free again?
“Eyes front!” Niemann shouted.
The prisoners faced the barracks in a rumble of noise. Their long shadows stretched across the trampled snow.
“Those sons of bitches thought they could escape,” Niemann said, pacing again. He held up a finger and laughed. “They thought they could cheat destiny. Stupid.”
Zischer realized the nightmare he had last night—the one with gunfire—wasn’t a dream at all. It must have been real machine guns shattering the night. Bullets really had zipped through flesh and bone. That’s what he heard. That’s what woke him. That’s what made his eyes pop open.
“We’re the masters of life and death around here. We decide when you Jews will die. And so, my lovely rags, get on your stomachs.”
They all lay down quickly because it would be dangerous not to. The snow was cold against Zischer’s cheek and he felt a frozen mound of sand press into his chest. He caught the eye of the man next to him. It was Josef Bau, who was supposed to drive the getaway truck.
What’s going on? they asked each other without words.
Fear washed over Zischer and adrenaline fireworked in his muscles when he heard the first shot. There was a pause, then another shot. The sound echoed into the trees. He wanted to lift his head to find out what—crack—was going on but if he jumped up now he would be shot for sure. But if he lay still, maybe, yes maybe, he would—crack—survive whatever was happening.
On the horizon, a few stars were still out. The sun was the color of a cantaloupe and he found himself thinking about the last time he ate a slice of melon. Their seeds are so slippery. So these are the things you think about before you die? Cantaloupe seeds?
The Commandant of Lubizec: A Novel of the Holocaust and Operation Reinhard Page 18
