Finding Rebecca: A Novel of Love and the Holocaust (21 page)

There were no markings on the
warehouses. There was no sign above the door for the warehouse that held the
shoes or the glasses of the recently murdered, yet the Sonderkommandos seemed
to know almost instinctively what warehouse to bring each pile of stolen goods
to. They never made a mistake. Christopher thought about Rebecca as he walked
up and down the lines of warehouses. Every so often he would stop and look
inside, gesture to the SS guards on duty or frown at the prisoners working
inside. There was no way they could have killed her as soon as she arrived at
the camp, was there? He shook these images from his mind, forcing himself back
into the moment. Rebecca was alive, he told himself, and he would find her. He
would not allow her to share the same fate as those people. The more he thought
about her, the more the panic set in, so he tried to wipe his mind clean of
her. There was nothing he could do, not yet, not until he gained the confidence
of the administration here. He turned and walked back down the line of
warehouses and walked inside one, where prisoners were sorting through
spectacles, bottles and what seemed to be medicines. Christopher nodded to the
guard on duty, who saluted back. Christopher was looking at the piles of tiny
brown and white bottles littered across the wooden tables. None of the twenty
or so women working in the warehouse looked up at him. He walked over, fighting
the urge to introduce himself to the prisoner working at the table. Most of the
prisoners in Canada seemed to be women, better fed than the others he had seen
in the main camp, and, no doubt, content to have avoided more arduous and
dangerous work. He picked up one of the bottles, but the writing on the white
label was in Czech. He found another, written in German, ‘
Take once daily, for rheumatoid arthritis
.’ Christopher put the
bottle back down with a shaking hand. It fell onto its side and rolled off the
table, hitting the concrete floor with a crack as it smashed. The guard in the
corner whirled around and started to shout something but Christopher held his
hand in the air. “Take no notice; that was my fault.” The woman at the table
stared up at him, her brown eyes swimming with fear. Christopher looked back
down at her and then at the guard who had turned away once more. He held her
stare for a few seconds. She had thick, brown curly hair and her weathered face
could have been beautiful in another time or another place. “What is your
name?” he asked

The woman seemed surprised to be
asked such a question, and looked around and back up at Christopher before
answering. “Katerina Lehotska.” She answered in a thick Czech accent.

Christopher still stared down, not
knowing what else quite to say. “Work hard and stay safe, Katerina. I am the
new Obersturmführer of this section. You can tell the other workers that things
are going to change around here.” Christopher immediately regretted what he
said and felt an icicle of fear sliding down his spine. Katerina looked puzzled
and brought her eyes back down to the broken bottle on the floor. Christopher
resisted the urge to pick it up himself and walked back towards the door. A
gunshot cut through the air and Christopher hurried towards the sound of it. He
saw Breitner outside. “What was that?” Christopher asked. Breitner shrugged his
shoulders. Christopher ran past him and into the warehouse where the shot had
come from. The dead body of a woman in her thirties was strewn on the concrete
floor, her head pumping out ugly black-crimson blood. “What happened here?”
Christopher demanded. An SS man stepped forward as he placed his pistol back
into its holster.

“I saw her place a ring into her
pocket, Herr Obersturmführer,” the soldier said with the air of a man boasting
to his boss about a job well done.

Christopher gritted his teeth as he
looked down at the corpse. None of the other workers looked up, all still
sorting the jewelry on the tables in front of them. Christopher looked at the
guard, but knew that there was nothing he could do. The frustration burned
within him. “Get this body out of here!” he shouted. “Let this be a lesson to
you all, there will be no stealing here.” He stormed back out, but there was
nowhere to go, nowhere to escape. There were only the wires and the warehouses,
the crematoria and the shadows of the prison hospital. Christopher stood back
as several Sonderkommando jogged inside and emerged carrying the corpse of the middle-aged
woman. Once outside, they threw it onto the cart with the nonchalance of the
fishermen Christopher had watched in Jersey as a child slinging their nets, writhing
and wriggling with grey-scaled fish onto carts to be brought to market. The
woman’s body was taken away. The guard stood back at his post as if nothing had
occurred. Christopher walked back inside the warehouse, making sure to step
over the pool of blood, coagulating on the warehouse floor. The soldier who had
killed her was standing back against the wall. He saluted as Christopher
approached him. “Now hear this,” Christopher explained. “These prisoners here
are skilled workers.” The soldier looked completely perplexed. “There should be
no summary executions here. If there is a problem, if someone has stolen, you
will come to me. I don’t want the guards taking the rules of the camp into
their own hands. That way only anarchy will follow and it is of vital
importance that we maintain discipline at all times. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Herr Obersturmführer,” the
soldier saluted again, seemingly convinced.

Christopher nodded at him and, as he
turned around, saw that the Sonderkommandos were cleaning up the pool of blood.
The other workers, eight of them, all women, looked straight ahead.
 
Christopher stared at the backs of their
heads, amazed at their fortitude. Christopher saw that one of the women’s heads
was bobbing back and forth, only slightly, like a cork on the end of a fishing
rod in a pond. She was crying. Christopher had the urge to go to her, to tell
her that he was Obersturmführer in charge of these warehouses now and that they
would all be safe, but knew that no one could give that assertion, not here.
The smell of blood, of death, was thick in the air and it followed him outside
and as he walked down towards the crematorium once more. Breitner was standing
outside the last warehouse, carrying a small box full of what seemed like tiny
gold nuggets.
   

“Herr Obersturmführer,” Breitner
called out. Christopher approached him. “You should probably take these. The
last Obersturmführer here insisted on handling all the gold and jewelry
himself.” Christopher looked inside the box. It was full of gold teeth.

Christopher took the box from
Breitner, felt his body numbing.
 
“Thank you, Herr Breitner. I’m sure in a few days time I’ll be up to
speed with all the processes.”

Breitner ignored what Christopher
said and gestured towards a man standing beside him. “There is someone else you
will need to meet, Herr Obersturmführer.” Christopher noticed a particularly
healthy looking prisoner, in a black uniform, now standing behind Breitner.
“This is Ralf Frankl, chief Kapo of the Economic District.” Frankl nodded. He
was a stout, strong-looking man with pockmarks on a brutal face. Christopher
nodded in response.

“It is a pleasure to make your
acquaintance, sir,” Frankl said with a heavy Bavarian accent. “I am here to
help you maintain discipline at all times.”

“How do you explain what just
happened in warehouse 6?” Christopher asked.

“These Jewish dogs have to be kept in
line, Herr Obersturmführer. Force is the only thing they understand.”

“What were you sent here for Frankl?”

“Double murder, Herr Obersturmführer,”
Frankl replied, looking surprised at the question.

“You’ll fit in well then.”
Christopher muttered under his breath in English. The two men looked at him both
perplexed. “Well, Frankl, I am in charge here now and there will be no summary
executions, no executions without my say-so, is that understood?”

Frankl’s eyes opened wide. “But Herr Obersturmführer…”

“Don’t make me repeat myself, Frankl,”
Christopher said and walked away, leaving the two men to argue among
themselves.

Christopher went to his office at the
end of the line of warehouses, there for the express purpose of counting the
booty looted from the murdered. He sat down with the box of golden teeth, three
boxes of cash and three boxes of watches, necklaces, earrings and other
assorted pieces of jewelry surrounding him. It seemed a paltry return for the
murder of over a thousand people and he wondered how much the Sonderkommandos,
prisoners, guards and his own subordinates had skimmed off the top for
themselves. He sat there for the rest of the afternoon counting the Reich
marks, dollars, pounds and other monies of the people he had seen on the train
that morning. He divided it into neat bundles, wrapped in elastic bands and
placed them into a suitcase. There was a safe behind his desk and the code for
the door was written down in one of the drawers. He placed the suitcase full of
cash along with the jewelry, also in suitcases into the large safe, which was
about three feet wide and as tall as he was. He locked the door behind him and
returned to his desk, to stare out into space for what seemed like hours.
 

Christopher arrived back at his room
after eight o’clock. Flick had told him before he left the office that today
had been a very normal day. Many days were much busier. So the murder of a
thousand people was normal. The hatred for the Nazis burned through him, but he
controlled it immediately, smothering the flames inside as they ignited.
Control was the key. Lahm was out and Christopher was thankful for that as he
took off his jacket. There was a letter on the bed and a flame lit inside him
as he recognized the writing. He picked it up, almost able to smile as he tore
at the envelope. He drew out the letter and lay it flat on the bed as he sat
down. It was from his father.

22
^nd
September 1943

Christopher,

We have missed you whilst you were in training. We are settling in better
now, although Alexandra still misses Tom she understands that it is not
forever. We are doing as well as possibly can be expected. Berlin is different from
the city that I grew up in but we are gradually finding our way and I am sure I
will have regular work soon. Alexandra is now working in a local factory.
 
Cousin Harald has been very good to us
since we were released from the hospitality of the Reich. It is wonderful to
finally get to know Karolina and little Stefan is a joy. I hope that your new
posting is what you wanted and expected it to be. I’m sure if you remain calm
and focused you will achieve your goals and the Reich will be much the better
for your efforts. We are well. Do not worry about us. I received a letter from
your uncle yesterday. He is safe and well and fighting bravely on the Eastern
Front. He is due back on January 28
^th
for three days of leave. You
are in our thoughts always.
  

Your father,

Stefan Seeler

That was all. Christopher read it and
re-read it. The censors were everywhere. Christopher almost laughed at how his
father had referred to the internment camp they had been kept in, and then
released from, after only a few days. The other foreign born, non-German
citizens deported from Jersey with them had not been treated nearly as
leniently, and would likely be there for the rest of the war. There could be
little truth either in the offhand way in which he had referred to Alexandra’s
feelings about Tom. It had been difficult to see her in the pain that the
separation from Tom had caused her.
 

The door opened, and Christopher
resisted the temptation to immediately hide the letter and instead just looked
up with what he hoped was not a guilty face. It was Lahm. He smiled at
Christopher.

“What a day that was. How was your
first day in the camp? What are you doing again?”

“I’m in the Economic Agency.”

“So, you’re the man to know then.
What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?”

“Canada, the land of untold wealth,
we’ve all heard the rumors.”

“It’s just a lot of warehouses. I’m
just trying to do my job like everyone else.”

Lahm looked disappointed with both
the answer and his new roommate. “Have you had dinner yet?” he asked.

“Yes, I ate earlier.”

“Would you like to come for a few
drinks tonight? There are a few of the boys getting together later. There’s a
movie on too, or a showing of some play, I’m not sure what’s on tonight.”

“Okay,” Christopher said.

“Great, we’re playing cards later on
too. It’ll do you good to wind down; sometimes the work here can get pretty
stressful.”

Christopher folded up the letter and
placed it on the top shelf of his locker and followed Lahm out of their room.
Lahm was smaller than Christopher, blonde, and about twenty-two years of age.

“What do you do here, Lahm?”

“I work in the main camp, here in
Auschwitz. My duties vary from day to day but I mainly work in Blocks 10 and
11. It’s not an easy job, but I find it satisfying, you know, to be doing
something so important for the Reich.”