Spark of Life (25 page)

“And if he comes tomorrow?”

“If he comes, he’ll get twenty marks. If he reported me, the SS will come. Then I’ll not need the money at all.”

“He hasn’t reported you,” said Rosen. “Certainly not. He’ll take the money.”

Lebenthal had composed himself. “Keep your money,” he declared. “I’ve enough for tonight.” He saw 509 making a gesture. “I don’t want it,” he said, vehemently. “I have enough. Leave me alone.”

509 rose up slowly. While sitting down he had had the feeling that he would never be able to get up again and that his bones had really turned into gelatine. He moved his arms, his legs. Berger followed him. They were silent for a while. “Ephraim,” said 509 then. “Do you think we’ll ever rid ourselves of the fear?”

“Was it so bad?”

“As bad as possible. Worse than ever.”

“It was worse because you are more alive,” said Berger.

“Do you believe that?”

“Yes. We have all changed.”

“Maybe. But in our lives shall we ever rid ourselves of the fear?”

“That I don’t know. Of this one, yes. It was a sensible fear. One with reason. The other, the perpetual one, the concentration camp fear—that I don’t know. It doesn’t much matter, either. At the moment we must think only of tomorrow. Of tomorrow and of Handke.”

“That’s just what I don’t want to think of,” said 509.

B
ERGER WAS ON
his way to the crematorium. Beside him marched a group of six men. He knew one of them. He was a lawyer called Mosse. In 1932 he had participated in a murder trial of two Nazis as a representative of the plaintiff. The Nazis had been acquitted and immediately after the seizure of power Mosse had been thrown into a concentration camp. Berger hadn’t seen him since he had been in the Small camp. He recognized him because he wore spectacles with only one lens. Mosse didn’t need a second one; he had only one eye. In 1933 the other one had been burned out as a receipt for the trial.

Mosse walked on the outside. “Where to?” Berger asked him without moving his lips.

“Crematorium. Work.”

The group marched past. Berger now realized that he knew another of the men; Brede, a secretary of the Social Democratic Party. It struck him that all six men were political prisoners. They were followed by a kapo wearing the criminals’ green triangle. He was whistling to himself. Berger remembered it as a song-hit from an
old operetta. Automatically the words came to his mind:
Adieu, you little tinkle-fairy, fare well till we meet again
.

He followed the group with his eyes. Tinkle-fairy, he thought, irritated. They must have meant a telephone girl. Why did this suddenly come to his mind? Why did he still remember this barrel-organ tune and even its idiotic words? So many more important things had been long since forgotten.

He walked slowly and breathed the fresh morning. Each time he took this walk through the labor camp it seemed to him almost like a walk through a park. Five more minutes before reaching the wall surrounding the crematorium. Five minutes of wind and early day.

He watched the group with Mosse and Brede disappear through the gate. It seemed strange that new men had been ordered to work in the crematorium. The crematorium gang consisted of a special group of prisoners sharing the same quarters. They were better fed than the others and also enjoyed various favors. In return they were usually relieved after a few months and sent off to be gassed. The present gang, however, had been there only two months; and it was rare that outsiders were ordered to join them. Berger was almost the only one. At first he had been sent there just for a few days, to help out, and then, after the death of his predecessor, he had continued to work there. He did not receive better food nor did he share quarters with the actual cremating gang. This was why he hoped not to be sent off with the others in two to three months. But this was only a hope.

He walked through the gate and saw the six men now standing in line in the yard. They stood not far from the gallows which had been erected in the center. They all tried not to look at the scaffolds. Mosse’s face had changed. His one eye stared anxiously through the lens at Berger. Brede held his head low.

The kapo turned around and noticed Berger. “What are you doing here?”

“Ordered to the crematorium. Tooth control.”

“The tooth-plumber? Then make yourself scarce! You others, stand still!”

The six men stood as still as they could. Berger walked close past them. He heard Mosse whisper something, but he couldn’t catch it. Nor could he risk stopping; the kapo was watching him. Strange, he thought, that so small a gang should be led by a kapo—instead of a foreman.

The crematorium cellar had on one side a large slanting shaft leading to the outside. The corpses piled up in the yard were thrown into this shaft down which they slid into the cellar. There, if not yet naked, they were stripped, listed and searched for gold.

It was here that Berger worked. His job was to write out death certificates and pull the gold teeth from the dead. The man who had done it before, a dental technician from Zwickau, had died of blood poisoning.

The kapo who supervised the cellar was called Dreyer. He entered several minutes later. “Start!” he said crossly and settled himself at a small table on which lay the lists.

Apart from Berger, four other men belonging to the crematorium gang were present. They took up positions close to the shaft. The first corpse slid down like an enormous bug. The four men dragged it across the concrete floor to the center of the room. The body was already rigid. They undressed it quickly, stripping off the jacket with the number and badges. One of the prisoners held down the right arm, which was sticking out, long enough for the sleeve to be pulled off. Then he let go and the arm snapped back like a branch. The trousers were easier to strip off.

The kapo noted down the number of the dead. “Ring?” he asked.

“No. No ring.”

“Teeth?”

He turned the flashlight into the half-open mouth on which a thin streak of blood had dried.

“Gold filling on the right,” said Berger.

“Okay. Out with it.”

With the pliers Berger knelt down beside the head which was held fast by a prisoner. The others were already stripping the next corpse, calling out the number and throwing the clothes aside upon those of the first one. With a clatter like dry firewood, more and more dead now slid down the shaft. They fell on top of one another and became entangled. One of the dead came down feet first and remained standing upright. He leaned against the shaft, his eyes wide-open, mouth twisted askew. The hands were bent into half-fists, and a medal hung on a chain from his open shirt. He stood like this for a while. Other corpses fell clattering over him. Among them was a woman with longish hair. She must have come from the exchange camp. She came headfirst and her hair fell over his face. Finally, as though growing tired of so much death on his shoulders, he slipped sideways and toppled over. The woman fell on top of him. Dreyer saw it, grinned, and licked his upper lip on which a large pimple grew.

Meanwhile Berger had broken out the tooth. It was laid in one of two boxes. The second one was for rings. Dreyer booked the filling.

“Attention!” one of the prisoners suddenly called. The five men stood at attention. SS Squad Leader Schulte had entered. “Keep going!”

Schulte sat down astride a chair that stood near the table with the lists. He looked at the pile of corpses. “They’re eight men out there throwing them in,” he said. “Far too many. Get four of them
down; they can lend a hand here. You there—” he pointed at one of the prisoners.

Berger pulled the wedding ring from a corpse’s finger. This was usually easy; the fingers were thin. The ring was laid in the second box and Dreyer booked it. The corpse had no teeth. Schulte yawned.

The regulation was that the corpses should be dissected, the cause of death determined and listed in the files; but no one paid any attention to this. The camp doctor seldom came, never looked at the dead, and invariably the same causes of death were entered; usually heart failure. Westhof, too, had died of heart failure.

The naked bodies which had been booked were laid down close to an elevator. Upstairs in the cremation room this elevator was pulled up by two men whenever new supplies for the ovens were required.

The man who had gone out returned with four others. They were from the group that Berger had seen. Mosse and Brede were among them. “Forward, over there!” said Schulte. “Help strip them and book the clothes. Camp clothing in one heap. Civilian garments on another, shoes separate. Forward!”

Schulte was a man of twenty-three, blond, with gray eyes and clear regular features. He had been a member of the Hitler Youth even before the seizure of power and that was where he had been educated. He had learned that there were superhumans and subhumans, and he firmly believed it. He knew the racial theories and the Party dogmas and they were his Bible. He was a good son, but he would have denounced his father had he been against the Party. To him the Party was infallible; he knew nothing else. The inmates of the camp were enemies of the Party and the State, and consequently stood outside the concepts of pity and humaneness. They were lower than animals. Killing them was like killing vermin. Schulte had a completely calm conscience. He slept well and the
only thing he regretted was not being at the front. The camp had claimed him on account of a heart ailment. He was a reliable friend, loved music and poetry and considered torture an indispensable method of extracting information from prisoners, since all enemies of the Party were liars. In his life he had killed six people on command—two of them slowly in order to obtain the names of accomplices—and had never given it a moment’s thought. He was in love with the daughter of a provincial court councilor and wrote her charming, rather romantic letters. In his free time he liked to sing. He had a pleasant tenor voice.

The last naked corpses were piled up beside the elevator. Mosse and Brede lugged them along. Mosse’s face was relaxed. He smiled at Berger. The fear he had felt outside had been unfounded. He had believed he would end up on the gallows. Now he worked according to what had been told them. Things were all right. He was saved. He worked fast to show his good will.

The door opened and Weber entered.

“Attention!”

Every prisoner stood at attention. Weber stepped up to the table in shiny, elegant boots. He loved good boots; they were almost his only passion. Carefully he knocked the ash off the cigarette he had lighted against the stench of corpses. “Through?” he asked Schulte.

“Yes, Herr Storm Leader. This minute. Everything booked and registered.”

Weber looked into the boxes containing the gold. He picked up the medal which had been worn by the standing corpse. “What’s this?”

“A St. Christophorus, Herr Storm Leader,” declared Schulte eagerly. “A good-luck medal.”

Weber grinned. Schulte hadn’t noticed he had cracked a joke. “Fine,” said Weber and put the medal back. “Where are the four from upstairs?”

The four men stepped forward. The door opened again and SS Squad Leader Guenther Steinbrenner came in with the two who had remained outside. “Stand over there with the four,” said Weber. “Out with the others! Upstairs!”

The prisoners from the crematorium gang quickly disappeared. Berger followed them. Weber looked at the six who had stayed behind. “Not here,” he said. “Stand over there, under the hooks!”

On the traverse wall of the room, opposite the shaft, four strong hooks were fixed. They were about two feet above the heads of the prisoners who stood underneath. In the corner to the right stood a three-legged stool; beside it in a chest lay ropes tied into short nooses with hooks on their ends.

With his left boot Weber gave the stool a push so that it slid in front of the first prisoner. “Up with you!” The man trembled and stepped onto the stool. Weber looked at the chest with the short ropes. “Now then, Guenther,” he said to Steinbrenner, “the show can start. Let’s see what you can do.”

Berger pretended to be helping to load two corpses onto iron stretchers. As a rule he was not given this kind of work; he was far too weak for it. But when the dismissed prisoners came upstairs the foreman had yelled at them all to make themselves useful, so the simplest way out had been to pretend to be carrying out the order.

One of the corpses on the stretchers was the woman with the loose hair; the other a man who looked as though he were made of dirty wax. Berger raised the woman’s shoulders and pushed her hair under them so that, while shoving her into the furnace, it
would not be set on fire by the blazing wind, fly back and burn his and the others’ hands. It was strange that it hadn’t been cut off; at one time this had been done regularly and the hair collected. Now it was probably no longer worthwhile, since there were only a few women left in the camp.

“Ready,” he said to the others.

They opened the furnace doors. The blazing heat flared out. They shoved and the flat iron stretchers rolled into the furnace. “Shut the doors!” someone called. “Shut the doors!”