Spark of Life (21 page)

“Squeaking like a mouse,” declared Steinbrenner who kept looking at his watch. “Fifteen seconds to go!”

There followed another shot. This time it had not been fired into the air. The man who had laid his face in his hands jerked convulsively and then seemed to stretch out and sink deeper into the road. His blood formed a black pool around his head—like a dark halo. The praying prisoner beside him tried to jump up, but he managed to get only onto one knee and slipped sideways so that he landed on his back. He had his eyes rigidly closed and moved his arms and legs as though still about to run away yet unaware that he was treading air like an infant kicking in the cradle. A salvo of laughter accompanied his efforts.

“How are you going to take this one, Robert?” one of the SS-men asked the squad leader who had shot the first man. “From behind, through the chest or through the nose?”

Robert walked slowly round the kicking man. For a moment he stood thoughtfully behind him; then he shot him obliquely through the head from the side. The kicking man arched himself, his boots thudded heavily a few times on the road, and he sank
back. Slowly he pulled one leg up, stretched it out, pulled it up again, stretched it—

“That wasn’t such a good shot, Robert.”

“Oh yes, it was,” answered Robert indifferently without looking at his critic. “Those are just nerve reflexes.”

“All over!” declared Steinbrenner. “Your time is up! Close the gate!”

The guards actually began slowly to close the gates. Shrieks of terror rose up. “No jostling here, gentlemen!” shouted Steinbrenner with shining eyes. “One at a time, please! And there are still people who say we’re not popular here!”

Three of the men could get no further. They lay several yards apart on the road. Robert calmly finished off two of them with a shot in the neck; the third one, however, followed him with his head. He was half sitting, and as Robert stepped behind him he turned round and looked at him as though by so doing he could prevent his firing. Robert tried it twice; each time with a supreme effort the other one managed to turn round far enough to look at Robert. Finally Robert shrugged his shoulders. “As you like,” he said, and shot him in the face.

He put his weapon away. “That makes exactly forty.”

“Finished off forty?” asked Steinbrenner, who had approached.

Robert nodded. “On this transport.”

“You’re one hell of a guy!” Steinbrenner stared at him full of admiration and envy as at someone who had just set up a sports record. Robert was only a few years older than he. “Tops, that’s what that is!”

An older squad leader came over. “You and your banging away!” he grumbled. “Now there’ll be another fuss over the papers belonging to those you’ve just bumped off. They’re carrying on about it here just as if we’d brought along a crowd of princes.”

Three hours after the transport had lined up for registration, thirty-six men had collapsed. Four were dead. The transport had had no water since the morning. While the SS were occupied elsewhere, two prisoners from Block Six had tried to smuggle in a pail of water. They had been caught and were now hanging with twisted limbs on the crosses near the crematorium.

The registration continued. Two hours later seven men were dead and more than fifty lying around. Then, after six o’clock, things went faster; twelve were dead and more than eighty lying about on the ground. At seven there were a hundred and twenty and the number of dead could no longer be established. The unconscious men moved as little as the dead.

At eight, the registration of those who could still stand came to an end. It had turned dark and the sky was a mass of cirrus clouds. The labor gangs moved in. They had worked overtime so that the transport could be dealt with first. Once more the clearing gang had found weapons. It was the fifth time, always in the same place. This time there had also been a note:
We are thinking of you
. They had known for some while that those who hid the weapons for them by night were workers in the munitions factory.

“Just look at the confusion,” whispered Werner. “We’ll get through.”

Lewinsky pressed a small flat package against his ribs. “Pity we haven’t more. Two days from now we won’t have another chance. The clearing up will be over by then.”

“Make them march in!” commanded Weber. “Roll call will be later.”

“Damn it,” muttered Goldstein, “if only we’d brought a cannon with us! What incredible luck!”

They marched toward the barracks. “The new ones into the disinfecting chamber!” declared Weber. “We’re not going to have any typhus or itch brought in here. Where’s the chamber kapo?”

The kapo reported. “These people’s clothes must be disinfected and deloused,” said Weber. “Have we enough outfits for changing?”

“Yes, Herr Storm Leader. Two thousand more arrived a month ago.”

“Of course.” Weber remembered. The clothes had been sent from Auschwitz. Extermination camps always had enough clothing to hand on to other camps. “Get on! Into the tubs with the men!”

The command rang out: “Undress! Into the baths! Clothing to the rear, personal belongings in front of you!”

A swaying passed down the dark lines. The command could really mean to bathe; but again it could mean to be gassed. In extermination camps one was led naked into the gas chambers under the pretext of being given a bath. From the spray heads in the ceilings, however, flowed not water but the fatal gas.

“What’ll we do?” whispered the prisoner Sulzbacher to his neighbor Rosen. “Collapse?”

They undressed. They knew, as so often before, that they had to make a life-and-death decision in a few seconds. They didn’t know the camp; if it was an extermination camp with gas chambers, then it would be better to fake a collapse. This gave one a slight chance of living longer because as a rule unconscious people were not immediately dragged along. With luck, this chance could turn into survival; even in extermination camps not everyone was killed. If, on the other hand, it was not a gas chamber camp, then a collapse was dangerous; one could be promptly syringed to death as useless.

Rosen glanced over at the unconscious ones. He noticed that no attempt was being made to bring them round. He concluded they
were not going to be gassed; otherwise they would have taken along as many as possible. “No,” he whispered. “Not yet—”

The lines which hitherto had been dark now shimmered dirty white. The prisoners stood naked; each one of them was a human being but this they had almost forgotten.

The transport had been chased through a vast tub of strong disinfectant. In the clothing chamber each man had been thrown a few garments. Now the lines stood once more on the roll-call ground.

They dressed hastily. They were, so far as one could call it that, happy; they had not landed in an extermination camp. The garments they had received didn’t fit. For underwear Sulzbacher had been thrown a pair of women’s woolen panties with red braid trimming; Rosen a priest’s surplice. All the clothing had belonged to people now dead. The surplice had a bullet hole surrounded by a yellowish, frayed bloodstain. It hadn’t been properly washed. A number of the men had been given sharp-edged wooden shoes which came from a defunct concentration camp in Holland. For feet not used to them and bleeding from the road they were instruments of torture.

The distribution to the blocks was about to begin. At this moment the town’s sirens started. Everyone glanced at the camp leader.

“Keep going!” shouted Weber through the noise.

The SS and kapos ran nervously to and fro. The lines of prisoners stood there quietly; only the faces were slightly raised and shimmered pale in the moonlight.

“Heads down!” shouted Weber.

The SS and the kapos ran along the lines, repeating the command. In between they stared skyward themselves. Their voices were drowned in the noise. They made use of their truncheons.

Hands in his pockets, Weber walked up and down the edge of the ground. He gave no further orders. Neubauer came dashing from his house through the gate.

“What’s going on here, Weber? Why aren’t the people in the barracks?”

“The distribution isn’t finished yet,” answered Weber phlegmatically.

“Doesn’t matter. They can’t remain here. On this open ground they could be taken for troops.”

The howling of the sirens was changing.

“Too late,” said Weber. “In motion they are even more visible.”

He stood still and looked at Neubauer. Neubauer noticed it; he knew Weber expected him to run for the shelter. Annoyed, he too stood still. “Damned lunacy to send those men here!” he inveighed. “First we’re supposed to comb our own men through, and then they saddle us with a whole new transport! Crazy! Why haven’t the scum been sent to an extermination camp?”

“The extermination camps probably lie too far to the east.”

Neubauer glanced up. “What d’you mean by that?”

“Too far to the east. The highways and railways have to be kept clear for other purposes.”

Once more Neubauer was suddenly aware of the cold grip of fear round his stomach. “Sure,” he said, to calm himself. “To send troops to the front. We’ll let them have it all right.”

Weber didn’t answer. Neubauer looked at him crossly. “Make the men lie down,” he said. “Then they’ll look less like a formation.”

“Very good.” Weber strolled a few steps forward. “Lie down!” he commanded.

“Lie down!” repeated the SS.

The lines collapsed. Weber returned. Neubauer had wanted to go to his house; but there was something in Weber’s attitude he
didn’t like. He remained standing. Another of those ungrateful creatures, he thought. Hardly had one gotten him the War Service Cross than he became insolent again. Little wonder! After all, what had he to lose? Those few bits of tin on that ridiculous hero’s chest, that’s all, the hireling!

The attack didn’t come. After some time the All Clear sounded. Neubauer turned around. “As little light as possible. Go a bit faster with the distribution to the blocks. One can’t see much in the dark anyway. The rest can be dealt with tomorrow by the block seniors and the office.”

“Very good.”

Neubauer stood still. He watched the transport march off. The men rose with difficulty. Some had gone to sleep from exhaustion and had to be shaken awake by their comrades. Others lay there too worn out to walk.

“The dead to the crematorium yard. Take the unconscious ones along, too.”

“Very good.”

The file formed up and began to move down the road to the barracks.

“Bruno! Bruno!”

Neubauer whirled round. His wife was approaching from the entrance gate across the ground. She was almost hysterical. “Bruno! Where are you? Has anything happened? Have you—?”

She saw him and stopped. She was followed by her daughter.

“What are you doing here?” asked Neubauer furiously, but under his breath, for Weber was within earshot. “How did you get in here?”

“The guard. He knows us, after all! You never came back, so I thought something must have happened to you. All these people—” Selma glanced round her as though just waking up. “Didn’t I tell
you to stay in my private quarters?” asked Neubauer still under his breath. “Didn’t I forbid you both to come in here?”

“Father,” said Freya. “Mother was out of her mind with fear. Those huge sirens, so near—”

The transport turned into the main road. It passed close by the three of them. “What is that?” whispered Selma.

“That? Nothing! A transport that arrived today.”

“But—”

“No but! What are you doing here anyhow? Out with you!” Neubauer pushed his wife and daughter aside. “On with you! Go ahead!”

“The way they look!” Selma stared at the faces that were just passing through a shaft of moonlight.

“Look? They’re prisoners! Traitors to the Fatherland! What should they look like? Fat bankers?”

“And those others they’re carrying there, those—”

“Now I’ve had enough!” snorted Neubauer. “That’s the last straw! Squeamish talk! Those people arrived here today. Hasn’t anything to do with us what they look like. On the contrary! They’ve come here to be fattened up. Isn’t that so, Weber?”

“Yes, Herr
Obersturmbannführer
.” Weber cast a slightly amused glance at Freya and moved on.

“There you have it. And now out with you! Strictly forbidden to be here. This isn’t a zoo!”

He pushed the women on. He was afraid Selma might say something dangerous. One had to watch out on all sides. No one was reliable, not even Weber. Confounded nuisance that Selma and Freya had to come up right after the transport had arrived! He had forgotten to tell them to stay in town. Actually, Selma wouldn’t have stayed anyway once the alarm had started. The devil only knew why she was so nervous. A stately woman as a rule, but when a siren went off, just like an anemic flapper.

“That guard I’m going to take severely to task! To let you in here! Unheard of! Next thing he’ll be letting anyone in!”

Freya turned round. “There won’t be many who’ll want to.”

For an instant Neubauer stopped breathing. What was this? Freya? His own flesh and blood? Revolution! The apple of his eye. He looked into Freya’s calm face. She couldn’t have meant it like that. No, she had meant it quite harmlessly. All of a sudden he laughed. “No, I’m not so sure of that! Those here, this transport, they’ve been begging to be allowed to stay here. Begged! Cried! What d’you think they’ll look like in two or three weeks? Unrecognizable! This is the best camp in all Germany. Famous for it. A sanatorium.”