Scheisshaus Luck (19 page)

I continued to dutifully deliver my messages and patiently waited for the Allies so Mr. Meffre could give me a more vital mission. Shithouse luck saw to it that I never got the chance.

♦ ♦ ♦

I was at the bottom of a nearly completed trench on the plant’s perimeter, shoveling dirt onto a wooden platform, when I noticed PART II | AUSCHWITZ

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a big German Shepherd sniffing the leather toecaps of my canvas boots. Since the
boches
didn’t waste anything, I wondered if the dog was smelling the skin of his parents. He squatted in front of me and blessed the trench with a long, steaming turd. With strong kicks of his hind legs, the shepherd began to cover it, but quit when he heard the shrill whistle of his master. I picked the shit up with my shovel and deposited it next to a French
Ha¨ftling
on the platform.

‘‘
Merci pour le cadeau
’’ (Thank you for the present), he muttered.

My laughter was cut short when I spotted a group of SS officers passing by, pointing at buildings and jotting down notes. Standing at the rim of the trench, our jittery
Kapo
and
Vorarbeiter
pushed us harder. As we chopped away at the earth, we nervously watched the strutting, high-ranking Nazis. Their presence was highly unusual, and from a
Ha¨ftling
’s perspective, any deviance from the daily routine was a bad omen. These
boches
though seemed preoccupied with something more pressing than the labor of a filthy bunch of
Untermenschen (subhumans)
.

The following morning I found myself behind Joseph, the oldest member of our
Kommando
, as we goose-stepped through the camp’s gate. He was a frail, middle-aged Dutch Jew who wasn’t very bright. Many
Ha¨ftlinge
addressed one another by their first three numbers, which indicated one’s transport. Joseph’s first three numbers were 175, and that made him the butt of many jokes in our
Kommando
.

‘‘
Bist du ein Hundertfu¨nfundsiebzieger
?’’ (Are you a 175?) they would teasingly ask him.

‘‘
Ja, ich bin ein Hundertfu¨nfundsiebzieger
,’’ he would answer with a grin that always caused fits of laughter. Joseph never caught on to the joke. One hundred seventy-five was the number of the paragraph in the Nazi penal code that outlawed homosexuality, and as far as I could tell, Joseph was a simpleton but he wasn’t a

‘‘pinkie.’’

This particular morning Joseph had diarrhea, and the brownish yellow liquid was streaming down his pant legs as we marched. I was splashed and sprayed with every step, as were the men goose-stepping in front of him. As a matter of fact, they were getting it 128

SCHEISSHAUS LUCK

worse. Humiliated, poor Joseph weeped, wiping his tears and nose with his sleeve. When we arrived at our work site, the
Kapo
ordered Joseph to wash his pants at a faucet at one of the factory buildings across the road. Sniveling and bent over from cramps, ‘‘175’’ did as he was told.

The
Vorarbeiter
had us digging double-time on a new section of trench as the
Kapo
paced anxiously, continually looking down the road as if he were expecting an arrival. I noticed that there were German soldiers with binoculars positioned on the roofs of the factory buildings. This had to have something to do with the officers who were surveying the area the day before.

Joseph returned bare ass, his wet pants in his hands. Incensed, the
Kapo
ordered him to put his pants back on and dig in an area of the trench away from the rest of us. When the
Kapo
saw a shivering Joseph leaning on his shovel, he pointed at him and barked at the
Vorarbeiter
. ‘‘Helmut, let’s make a good impression!’’

The
Vorarbeiter
jumped into the trench and snatched the shovel from Joseph’s hands. Crying, Joseph sank to his knees. He didn’t see the
Vorarbeiter
raise the shovel, and he didn’t even moan as he slumped to the ground with his head caved in. None of us stopped digging. None of us even hesitated. We all knew it was coming.

The
Kapo
screamed at us to hide the
Drecksack
(dirt bag), and a quick thinking
Ha¨ftling
covered Joseph’s body with an overturned wheelbarrow.

A few minutes later the
Kapo
and the
Vorarbeiter
took off their caps and stood at attention as a black Mercedes convertible led by two motorcycles slowly passed by. I recognized Reichsfu¨hrer Himmler*, the boss of the SS, sitting in the backseat. Flanked by two of the plant’s engineers, he had come to inspect the fruits of his slaves’ labor. That was what all the fuss had been about. That was why 175’s body was under a wheelbarrow.

* There is no official record of Reichsfu¨hrer Heinrich Himmler visiting the I.G. Farben plant or Auschwitz in the spring of 1944; it is possible this was one of his doubles.

C H A P T E R 1 3

Every morning, once the
Kommandos
were counted and through the gate, the goose-stepping stopped and we became our true selves—a haggard, shuffling horde of slaves. A half-mile later, the
Kapos
would halt us at the Buna gate, where we would wait for the arrival of the British POWs. For some unknown reason, they and their Wehrmacht (German Army) guards had to enter the plant first.

Always whistling some popular tune, these well-dressed and well-fed POWs marched by us like strutting roosters. I would watch them go by with a twinge of envy and resentment, thinking that they wouldn’t be whistling such a happy tune if they were in my ill-fitting wooden shoes.

These strong fellows didn’t seem to mind working, mainly delivering supplies to the multitude of buildings that made up the plant. Pushing flatbed pushcarts, they would buzz back and forth, laughing and joking among themselves. It was probably a welcome relief from the idle monotony of their Stalag. They definitely enjoyed the opportunity for some contact with the civilians—the female civilians, to be precise. The POWs received chocolate in their Red Cross packages, and some of them bartered the sweets for

‘‘romance’’ with the local Polish girls working in the plant. With 129

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thousands of niches and dark corners, and not enough guards to cover the twenty square miles of plant grounds, it was easy for a hungry couple to duck away for a quickie. Hell, I would be whistling in the morning if I could soak my biscuit once in a while, but I would bust a lung singing if I could get my hands on one of those chocolate bars.

Ha¨ftlinge
weren’t allowed to mingle with the POWs, but there were always opportunities to have a quick, furtive conversation. In the winter that usually happened around a barrel with a fire blazing inside, where we warmed ourselves during lunch breaks. From time to time POWs would stop to thaw out, and they would always dis-creetly pass out a few cigarettes to us ‘‘stripees.’’ With the coming of spring, the pace of everyone’s toiling outdoors slowed, and that brought more opportunities to chat with our allies.

In halting English I asked a blond, well-tanned sergeant pushing a cart of steel pipes, ‘‘What new, mate?’’ Having overheard fragments of their conversations, I thought ‘‘mate’’ was a common first name for Aussies and ‘‘bloke’’ was a first name for most of the British POWs.

The sergeant gave me a smile and said, ‘‘We’ve landed in Normandy, and Jerry is running back to the ‘fatherland.’ We’ll all be going home soon.’’ No wonder they marched as if they were in front of Buckingham Palace.

‘‘Take it easy,’’ the Aussie said, winking as he left. With his drawl, ‘‘easy’’ sounded like ‘‘dizzy,’’ so I thought he expected me to be dizzy with delight about the landing.

A few days later we were digging a deep trench between two warehouses. The sergeant sauntered by with a few of his ‘‘mates.’’

‘‘Is this a mass grave?’’ the sergeant joked.

I didn’t find it funny because it could easily have become one.

‘‘Is war over?’’ I shot back.

He told me a few battles had stalled the whole campaign, em-phasizing ‘‘battles’’ with a swear word that with his accent I took to mean as ‘‘foggy,’’ which explained to me why they were held up. It PART II | AUSCHWITZ

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sure would be difficult to shoot those Nazis in that thick Normandy fog.

The news of the Allies’ landing quickly filtered through the camp, reviving our hopes and strength. The talk in the
Blocks
was that the end of the war was only a few weeks away. But D-Day also brought the war closer to us. Hardly a day passed without an air raid alert. When the sirens sounded, the civilian workers and guards scrambled into their concrete bunkers, where
Ha¨ftlinge
weren’t welcomed. We had to crawl into one of the pipeline trenches or roam blindly in the artificial fog that the Nazis pumped out to obscure the plant. In June and July they were all false alarms, the Allied bombers thankfully going after other targets in Poland.

The summer of 1944 was a brutal one, and it seemed that the SS had a ‘‘no shade’’ policy for
Ha¨ftlinge
. We were all baked crimson digging those trenches under the sun’s unblinking eye. I barely perspired because my body didn’t have enough water and oil. After toiling for twelve hours, my skin would be scorched and blistered.

Sunstroke and heat exhaustion now took the place of frostbite and influenza. Thirst now superseded hunger, but the heat made the water undrinkable. Cases of typhoid fever ravaged our ranks. I had never seen new arrivals—who were now mainly Hungarian Jews—

convert so quickly to
Muselma¨nner
.

‘‘Follow me. Today is your lucky day,’’ my
Kapo
informed me one morning as we entered Buna.

Apprehensive, I trotted after him toward a gray building. When a green triangle was being nice, there was reason to be suspicious.

We entered a well-lit, cavernous machine shop where the hissing of lathes, the clattering of mills, the whistling of grinders, and the pounding of shapers were skull-rattling. A
Ha¨ftling
was operating every noisy tool. A sergeant of the Wehrmacht in his late twenties greeted us. The cuff of his empty right shirtsleeve was pinned to his shoulder.

‘‘Herr Kies, here is your man. I hope that he’ll work out for you. I’ll pick him up at the end of our shift.’’

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Herr Kies directed me to a workbench. ‘‘This will be your station. Take good care of the tools and don’t lose any. We have an inventory.’’

All I could think was, Why me? How did I land this job? I wasn’t a machinist and I would never think of masquerading as one.

‘‘Look around for a while and get familiar with the shop. Can you read a blueprint?’’

‘‘Yes, sure.’’

Herr Kies nodded, then climbed the steps to a glass-walled loft.

What I had told him was more truth than bluff. I had become pretty comfortable with the basic language of blueprints. One of our neighbors in Nice was an architect who had designed my parents’ house and four others on the cul-de-sac. While we both waited for plates of his wife’s homemade ravioli, I would look over his shoulder as he worked and ask questions when he put his pencil down. I also studied the blueprints of the Tour de France bikes built in the bicycle shop where I worked. By no means was I an expert, but I was confident that they wouldn’t boot me back outdoors, as they had at the electrical shop.

Herr Kies returned and spread a large blueprint on my bench.

‘‘What is this?’’

I looked at the blueprint’s measurements. I had seen something similar in a Nice plumbing store. ‘‘Yikes, this is colossal.’’

‘‘But what is it?’’

‘‘Oh, it’s a hydraulic gate valve. I was just surprised by the huge specifications.’’

‘‘Nothing is small in this plant.’’

Herr Kies introduced me to the machinists and tool and die makers. Like every
Kommando
, they were a multinational group of yellow, red, black, and green triangles, every one of them an experienced craftsman.

‘‘Why me?’’ I finally asked.

‘‘Because I was told you speak four languages, and I need someone to translate to this bunch. I’ve had enough misunderstandings and mistakes.’’

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My
Kapo
was right, it was my lucky day. My duty of translating Herr Kies’s German directives into French, English, Spanish, and Italian was a wonderful reprieve from what I had endured the last six months. I felt like a human being again. Herr Kies was a good boss, treating us all with an even hand. Once in a while he would even sneak part of his lunch into my tool drawer. He had lost his arm in the battle of Stalingrad, but he wasn’t bitter about it. He considered himself fortunate because his wound had brought him home before his battalion was decimated.

The shop was responsible for assembling valves and fittings for pipes, and for repairing equipment for other shops, but its main duty was to line and glue plastic sleeves into five-meter-long pipes.