Freedom (Jerusalem)

by Colin Falconer

  POLAND, GERMANY AND PALESTINE, 1944-45

  Chapter 21

  He would never, as long as he lived, forget the smell of the summer of 1944. Burning human flesh gives off a choking, clinging odor that is at once nauseous and sweet. The weather was hot and dry, the sky had turned smoke-red, and the sunsets were long and pink and beautiful. The trailing smoke of the chimneys became the feathery banners of the lost battalions at the train station.

  The death factory was now fuelled day and night by boxcars of Jews from Hungary and Italy, trainloads of gypsies from Romania. Most of them never knew Auschwitz as he knew it; they were there only long enough to be counted, stripped, gassed and burned, and all that remained of their passing was a broken suitcase on the platform, a boy’s football between the tracks, a child’s doll discarded on the sidings.

  But the sunsets they made were glorious.

  Soon the Krematorium had reached capacity and was unable to burn all those who were gassed, and Netanel was put in charge of an Arbeitskommando sent to excavate deep trenches in the forests above Birkenau. When the work was done the SS arrived with truckloads of corpses. Even Netanel found it hard to take and after two years in Auschwitz he thought he was used to any stink.

  Netanel’s kommando were ordered to throw the bodies into the trench and douse them with benzene. Then an SS sergeant threw in a match.

  A black plume of smoke rose hundreds of feet into the sky.

  Still the trains kept arriving. All night, every night, he lay on his bunk and heard the wagons rattle into the sidings.

  One day he was in the forest with his kommando, watching the flames spit from another trench, when a grey SS lorry pulled up on the slope below him. There were a dozen children in the back. Two SS sergeants jumped out. One of them hauled a wheelbarrow from the back of the truck.

  “Who’d like a ride?” one of the sergeants shouted. He was a big, cheerful lad with close-cropped blond hair. The children fought each other to get in.

  The man laughed, picked up a little girl and sat her in the wheelbarrow. “Hold on!” he shouted. He ran up the slope and the girl - she was no more than five, Netanel guessed - screamed, delighted.

  The man took her over the rise, out of sight of the others. He headed towards the flaming ravine.

  “God in heaven,” Netanel whispered.

  He closed his eyes. But that night in his bunk he could still hear the child’s screams, and the screams of all the other children who followed her. It stripped his soul like a flail and he made a silent vow to the dead child that he would survive and ensure that such obscenities never happened again.

  Netanel took the half loaf of bread from the table, and scooped up a handful of cigarettes. On the camp’s black market cigarettes were the highest denomination currency.

  Chaim was playing chess at the table with Alexandr; Shlomo was asleep on his bunk. Netanel went out the back door of the hut and waited in the shadows. A few moments later he heard the soft, foot-dragging shuffle of a Häftling.

  “Mandelbaum?”

  “Herr Rosenberg ...”

  “Here.” He gave him the bread. Mandelbaum immediately began tearing chunks off it with his teeth. Netanel waited; he understood this kind of hunger. Even now, when he could organize everything he wanted, he did not forget. It was like being poor; even if you one day became rich you still saw every small waste as a blasphemy.

  “How are you doing, Mandelbaum?”

  “There was another selecjwa yesterday.”

  “I know. You’re all right?”

  He tore off another hunk of the bread. “I worry they will make a mistake.”

  “One day at a time. It will soon be over. The British and the Americans are in France.”

  Mandelbaum continued to tear at the bread. “You heard what happened to the Orphan?”

  “Yes, I heard.” The Gestapo had caught him selling gold teeth to Meister Lentner at the railyards. The gold teeth, of course, were German property, redeemable at the ovens when their owner had no further use for them, and trading in them was illegal. The Orphan had escaped the noose however; they had shown mercy and sent him to work in the mines on the Silesian coalfields.

  “When all this is over I am going to find him and spit in his face,” Mandelbaum said. The bread was nearly gone.

  “You won’t see him again,” Netanel said. The average life expectancy for prisoners in the mines was three months.

  Mandelbaum crammed the last of the bread into his mouth and leaned against the hut in a sort of ecstasy. When you suffer all the time, Netanel remembered, a little less pain can be the most exquisite form of pleasure. “Bless you, Herr Rosenberg.”

  “Here,” Netanel said. He gave him the cigarettes. “You can buy anything with these. But first see if you can trade them to Mendelssohn for an easier kommando.”

  Mandelbaum hid the cigarettes inside his jacket.

  “Don’t let anyone know where you got them.”

  Mandelbaum leaned closer. The stink of him! “When all this is over, I am going to join my son in Palestine.”

  “What would you do in the desert? You’ll come back to Ravenswald with me.”

  “You won’t go back to Ravenswald, Herr Rosenberg. None of us can ever go back now.”

  No, you’re wrong, Netanel thought. I have one reason to return. I have to find out what happened to Marie. “Come back tomorrow night. Perhaps I can organize a little more bread for you.”

  Mandelbaum shuffled away; a freak, a Low Number who had survived two years as a Häftling. Among some of the prisoners he inspired something like awe, and perhaps hope. He had survived because of Netanel.

  Chaim looked up from the chess board. “You should be careful.”

  ‘Why?’

  “The SS should not find out you are soft on Jews.”

  “After morning Appel I’ll hit him just as hard as you. What I do with my bread at night is my business.”

  “Nothing is your business, Netya. Not in here.” Netanel threw himself on his bunk.

  He shared the Stübe with Chaim and two other kapos, German Jews like himself. These days he had a single bunk to himself with a real mattress, a warm blanket, even sheets. There was a tiny kitchen with a hotplate and a shelf for food. Food! They were given margarine and jam as part of their rations. They also received treasures like tobacco and insect powder and these could be traded on the black market or at the hospital for luxuries such as tinned food and fresh eggs. There was no bedtime curfew so they played chess after the last bell and long into the night.

  The four of them had withdrawn from the common law; they were hated, and, in turn, became hateful.

  “I overheard two SS officers talking today,” Chaim said. “Someone tried to kill Hitler.”

  “There’s always rumors,” Alexandr said.

  “It didn’t sound like a rumor. They said someone planted a bomb under his desk. Rommel was one of the plotters.”

  “Rommel!”

  “That was what they said.”

  “What happened?” Netanel asked him.

  Chaim shrugged. “I don’t know. Hitler is still alive anyway. But these two SS fellows were worried. The Americans and British are pushing east. They think they will be in Paris within weeks.” He looked at Alexandr and then at Netanel. “You know, the end of the war is going to be a very dangerous time for all of us.”

  There was a long silence as each of them forced themselves to think the unthinkable; of a day when their conduct might be judged by the standards of an outside world they had forgotten.

  A worse prospect was that they might be judged by their fellow prisoners. In the event of such a fate, the hangman’s noose might seem a mercy. Who will speak for me? Netanel thought. Only Mandelbaum. The others hate me as much as I hated the Orphan and Mendelssohn and the rest.

  “We must be away from here before then,” Alexandr said.

  “I agree,” Chaim said. “But how are we going to do it?” He looked down at the chessboard and mov
ed his bishop, taking Alexandr’s queen. “Checkmate,” he said.

  The autumn went on and on, bright and warm, as if the approach of the Allies had banished winter, heralding an endless summer. Then one day the silence around the camp was shattered by an explosion. The shock wave rolled through the camp from Birkenau.

  Soon afterwards Netanel heard voices sing the Internazionale, in Polish and Russian. It was followed by shouts in German, and the dull pop of Schmeissers. There was some screaming, then silence.

  Within minutes the news was all around the camp. A group of Sonderkommando had blown up the Krematorium.

  October, and the days were still bright and blue. The barrage balloons hovered over the Carpathian mountains like monstrous insects, and the steeple of Auschwitz - a nice touch, the church, Netanel thought, another of God’s little jokes - was still visible in the distance. Finally the evening air had turned chill. Even the approaching Allies’ could not hold back one last Auschwitz winter.

  Netanel’s kommando was unloading bricks at the Carbide factory. The work was demanding but he had quickly learned his new trade; Shouting and cursing and pummeling men’s backs with hollow rubber truncheons was not such a difficult task when you remembered the gas ovens at Birkenau and the children’s wheelbarrow rides in the Buna forest. Someone had to settle the debts of the past and these bastards were plainly not up to it.

  It was easy to despise the Häftlinge. He understood now how it came so easily to the SS. A starving man with his back bowed under a load of bricks invited either scorn or pity, and pity was out of the question in this place. These Jews had let this happen to them: they should have fought back. He despised them because they hadn’t, like his father; instead they had dragged him down with them. He began to think of them as if they were as much his enemy as the SS.

  A Häftling tripped and spilled his load of bricks. He lay groaning on the ground. Netanel ran over and clubbed him between the shoulders with his truncheon. “Get up, you dirty Jew!”

  The man looked up; a skeletal face with a stubble of grey beard and yellow-streaked eyes. He grinned and bobbed his head in deference. It was Mandelbaum. “Please, Herr Rosenberg. . .”

  “Get up, you bastard!” Netanel hit him again. It was a kindness, in a way. He remembered how a greater pain helped you forget the lesser ones, and kept you going.

  Mandelbaum struggled to his feet.

  “Pick them up!” Netanel screamed at him.

  Mandelbaum tried, but fell to his knees again. Netanel looked around; two SS were watching. He hit him a third time.

  “Mandelbaum, for God’s sake! Get up!” he hissed.

  “I can’t do it anymore . . .”

  “Get up, you bastard!”

  The siren sounded: the end of the day. Relieved, Netanel hit him twice more and turned away, apparently disgusted that the siren had ended his game. The two SS guards chuckled and walked away.

  Netanel looked around. Mandelbaum was still on his knees. He wouldn’t make the winter. But he has to, Netanel thought. He is supposed to be my absolution. Who will speak for Netanel Rosenberg’s soul when he is dead?

  When they got back to the Appelplatz Netanel noticed a gallows had been erected on the patch of lawn in front of the square. So, this evening there was to be cabaret.

  Netanel counted his kommando and shouted the number to the SS sergeant: “Kommando 58, sieben und sechzig Häftling, Starke stimmt!'

  “Squad 58, sixty-seven prisoners, number correct!”

  The searchlights were on, and the gallows was illuminated like the stage. Now for the theatre, Netanel thought. A Häftling was dragged out of a nearby building by two SS guards and hauled up the wooden steps on to the platform. His face was swollen and there were scabs around his lips and eyes. He could not stand without support.

  SS Major Rolf Emmerich ascended the platform. “Häftling 183095 has been condemned to death by orders of Gestapo High Command in Berlin for crimes against the people of Germany. Last month communist factions within the camp conspired to sabotage German property. In his full confession Häftlinge 183095 has admitted that he smuggled explosives from the Union factory to the communist traitors at Birkenau. Do you all understand?”

  “Jawohl!” thousands of voices echoed.

  Emmerich nodded at the guards. They dragged the man to the trapdoor and looped the noose over his head and drew it tight.

  “Comrades!” the man shouted. “I am the last one!”

  Netanel clenched his hands into fists, felt the nails bite into the flesh of his palms. Yes, some had fought back, he thought, they had not all gone meekly to their deaths in the ovens, like sheep. But my way is better. If I can only get out of this place, I will prove it.

  A long, shuffling silence.

  Then, unexpectedly, “Comrade, we salute you!”

  Netanel looked around to see which idiot had just signed his own death warrant. The man had his hand raised to his forehead in salute. There were tears glistening in the blackened creases of his old face.

  Mandelbaum.

  Rolf leaped from the platform and reached him in one stride. One blow bent him double, another sent him sprawling on to his back. He put his boot on Mandelbaum’s throat and looked around at the thousands of ghostly, staring faces.

  “Anyone else?” he said.

  With a barely perceptible nod of his head, Rolf gave the order. The trapdoor opened and prisoner 183095 jerked and twisted on the rope. The band broke into a Strauss waltz and the prisoners filed away while the man slowly strangled to death.

  “You!” Rolf shouted.

  God in heaven, Netanel thought. He means me.

  Mandelbaum was writhing at Rolf’s feet. “Kill him,” Rolf said. For a moment Netanel could not move. Rolf was waiting. He turned to one of the SS guards standing at the foot of the gallows. “Give him your truncheon!”

  The guard took the wooden club from his belt and shoved it into Netanel’s arms.

  “He’s in your kommando,” Rolf said. “Now kill him, or I’ll kill you.” He took his foot off Mandelbaum’s throat. Mandelbaum rolled on to his side, gasping for breath.

  Rolf stood back.

  I can’t do this, Netanel thought.

  Rolf unclipped the holster on his belt and took out his Lüger pistol. “Hurry up, kapo!”

  Mandelbaum is dead anyway, there is no choice. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for a reason; for the children in the forest, for my dead companions in the Leichenauto. I cannot die until I have made amends.

  He raised the club.

  Netanel looked down at his uniform. Like pulping a watermelon, he thought. The juice goes everywhere.

  “Leave him there for the Leichenkommando,” Rolf said, and walked away.

  Netanel looked up. A woman was staring at him. There was a white armband on her sleeve: “LAUFERKA”.

  Marie.

  The SS guard snatched the club from his hand and wiped it on Netanel’s striped uniform. He replaced it in his belt and followed SS Major Emmerich out of the square.

  Netanel looked around. Marie was gone. Only his kommando remained in the square, their eyes averted.

  Absolute silence.

  “Ah, my pretty little Marie,” Rolf said. He stood by the window, smoking a cigarette. The guard closed the door and Marie sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “You’re grey. You’re not sick?”

  She shook her head.

  “You saw the execution?”

  She nodded.

  “Did it upset you?”

  Nothing.

  “Your father was a butcher. It’s no different. It’s just meat.”

  Marie took a deep breath. She started to tremble.

  “What’s the matter, for God’s sake?”

  Still she did not answer.

  He slapped her face, hard. “You’re becoming quite tiresome.”

  She seemed to be having trouble breathing.

  “What is it? For God’s sake, say something!”

  Sh
e lowered her head and her hair fell around her face.

  Herrgottsacrament! He turned away in disgust and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray by the bedside table. “I think we shall have to do something about you, liebling. I think we shall have to teach you gratitude.”

  He went to the window and lit another cigarette. The Fliegeralarm sounded. He cursed softly, then bent down and turned off the bedside lamp. Scheiss! The Russians.

  He could hear them now. Every night they sent over their bombers, every day their armies came closer. The Russians in the east, the Americans in the west, a vice, squeezing out their lifeblood.

  He felt the ground shudder as the first of the bombs fell, saw an orange flame blossom for a moment in the night sky. Another, then another. Getting closer. He turned away from the window and in that moment the glass blew in and he was knocked to the floor.

  He heard Marie scream. When he picked himself up, she was lying face down, sobbing. He rolled her over. She was all right, it was just shock.

  Yes, perhaps that was what she needed. Shock treatment.

  He went back to the window. One of the bombs had hit an acetylene gasometer at the railyards. The Appelplatz was illuminated with a sunset of orange flame.

  Time was running out. These were the last days; a time of desperation, a time to take what you could and run.

  The Frauenblock was on the second floor of the administrative building, just inside the main gates. The SS guards had free access to its facilities whenever they pleased; it was also available to Aryan criminals serving their sentences as kapos or Blockaltester. They could earn chits for good behavior redeemable at the whorehouse once a month.

  Herr Kapo Lubanski approached the desk at the top of the stairs and threw his chits on the desktop. He hooked his thumbs in the belt of his uniform trousers and waited. The Frauenblock supervisor, a green triangle like himself, looked up and grinned.

  “Herr Lubanski, what can we do for you today?”