Sunrise West (7 page)

In May 1944 an Italian prisoner, just eighteen years old, had escaped from the camp. He was soon caught, brought back and interrogated brutally. Bachmayer, in order to endow the spectacle with mythological status, erected a podium for himself and his cronies. He took centre-stage
amid a bunch of select SS, they drank each other's health, and then, screeching with laughter, Bachmayer unleashed his Lord on the exhausted boy, who tried in vain to defend himself against the savage beast. His cries —
Pietà, Pietà, Comandante!
— tore the skies asunder. But our Valhalla Knights, enthused by the dog's good work, swayed merrily from side to side, their hands on each other's shoulders, singing the camp version of ‘Lili Marlene':

Heute keine Arbeit,

Maschine kaput,

Morgen meine Fräulein

Ficken will ich gut;

Morgen früh Morgen Sonnenschein

Wir muss in Wald spazieren geh'n,

Mit dir, Lili Marleen,

Mit dir, Lili Marleen.

‘Yes,' said our underground barrack historian, whose ebony eyes stood out like burning coals against his cadaverous white face, ‘some of the things that happened here sound more like nightmares.' A strange air of foreboding shadowed his voice, as if he was fearful of disembodied ears floating in the gloom to betray him. ‘But what nightmare could equal the realities of life in camp? That boy's death was registered as suicide by electrocution.'

He paused and nodded sadly.

‘I wish I could tell you some uplifting stories about Ebensee,' he added. ‘But who can produce a clean thing out of unclean matter?'

 

 
The Stillness of Death
 

The last commandant of Ebensee, Bachmayer's successor, was a notorious SS man, an ill-humoured sneerer who out-did all previous commandants in cruelty. He had once been a bouncer in a nightclub. Our barrack scholar, whom we called ‘The Rabbi', enlightened us: ‘This Bouncer, enwombed by Scylla and diswombed by Charybdis, whose barbarity has been handed down through the generations, was born an inverted kabbalist — he knows how to transmute life into dead matter.'

Among the Bouncer's many ingenious methods of bringing lives to an end was his habit of making us stand naked in freezing snow throughout the night, facing the furnace where piles of bodies were awaiting cremation. ‘Gentlemen,' he would announce with mock-compassion, ‘I promise you that corpses have a trouble-free life. You're in for a warm, radiant future.'

As the echoes of the approaching American artillery began to wake Ebensee's mountainous terrain from its lethargic sleep, and the mighty trees of the Schwarzwald that for years had kept the blue sky out of the prisoners' sight began to quiver, scores of inmates attempted to make their escape. Our Bouncer knew that his time was up, yet he went after these desperate freedom-seekers with all his might. When caught they were ceremoniously brought back, and, though they were already half-dead from beatings, he would hang them with enthusiasm and panache.

On such occasions the entire camp population was assembled to witness the
Lagerführer
's incredible triumph.
To ensure that everyone had a proper view, the Bouncer divided the camp into three rows. The first row of prisoners sat on the cold mucky ground in front of the gallows; the second genuflected behind them as if in worship; the third stood like a line of grey, resigned tombstones in some shimmering graveyard.

These executions were timed to coincide with evening roll-call — always the dying light, the horror of swinging ropes, the backdrop of gratuitous violence. To enhance the ceremony with his own malevolent sense of mischief, the Bouncer would force one of the victim's closest companions to kick away the stool supporting him.

The Bouncer's trusted informers included a certain electrician called Harvas, a stocky, short-legged man whose vacant face resembled a full moon where the twin tadpoles that passed for his eyes swam restlessly in muddy puddles. The Bouncer loved him dearly, not only for being a natural squealer but because Harvas understood the art of trust and betrayal.

Just a few days before our liberation, Harvas encouraged a Russian boy to cut a piece of rubber from a waterhose to mend his cracked wooden clogs, splinters from which kept aggravating the boy's already lacerated feet. Having performed his good turn, the treacherous messenger quietly reported the youngster's misdeed to his benefactor, who must have received it with relish. The boy, barely nineteen, was hanged. I remember the dark marble firmament, and the camp sinking into an eerie twilight, and the sad, insipid light dancing on the victim's features — what perfect touches to a well-thoughtout spectacle. As
the stillness of death grew around us, we prisoners were marched past the gallows in strict military formation, five abreast.

Afterwards, when ‘The Rabbi' kindled a memorial candle in the heart of our barrack, I heard him murmur: ‘
Bitterly weeps the night, her cheeks wet with tears
.'

 

 
Days of Reckoning
 

Spring. As if in a fairytale, a green pelerine was draped overnight across the shoulders of the stony mountains around us, and I wondered whether it was because these giants, conscripted by our enemy, now understood that it was time to assume a disguise. Look, I said to myself, how their pure snow-white caps stand like numb apostles concealing secret crimes. Their indifference struck me as malevolent, and un-pardonable.

At the beginning of May, Ebensee, which had been built to house three thousand inmates, contained ten times that number. Haggard, worn-out, half-demented men, driven like herds of cattle across the land of Cain, arrived here daily. I asked one of them, a former citizen of my city of the waterless river, how long he had been on the road and from which camp he had come; perhaps he knew somebody I had once known. He looked at me with suspicion. ‘Silly questions,' he said, ‘deserve silly answers, and idle curiosity brings men to grief.'

By the end of April, one loaf of bread was being given each evening to six working men — or to nine, in the case
of those whose lives were clearly ebbing away. Hunger took scores of prisoners every day. One evening, in Block 26, the body of a young Hungarian Jew was found with the buttocks sliced away.

When news of Hitler's death reached the camp, Raymond remarked with grim satisfaction, ‘The monster died like a rat in a dark hole, as I predicted.' Of course we rejoiced at his demise, but with a sense of sombreness. Levity had no place in the realm of tragedy, though perhaps we had simply forgotten how to celebrate.

The Bouncer took flight before dawn broke, leaving an indecisive Wehrmacht detachment in charge. At the next roll-call our new chief custodian told us that a ferocious air-battle over the camp was imminent. ‘Men!' he shouted passionately. ‘Avoid unnecessary casualties, save yourselves in our underground factories!' But we had been tipped off. During the long night before he absconded, the Bouncer had wired the whole underground complex with dynamite. His last wish had been to blow us to smithereens and bury us there. A resounding ‘
NO!
' rose from thirty thousand parched throats; it sent what was left of camp authority scurrying off like frightened mice.

Over the next few days our fate hung in the balance.

How bright was the morning of 8 May 1945. How peacefully the azure sky hung over our shaven heads. An early zephyr ruffled the resigned forest that had held us captive, and although we knew it was all over, nevertheless the years of pain and disenchantment, of hopes raised and repeatedly dashed, had taught us to hold our breath.

The whole camp emerged into the main assembly area, where we had previously been counted and recounted daily. Then the mass of men suddenly parted and drifted and regrouped and rearranged itself, forming into clusters of separate nationalities: Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Greeks, Spaniards, Italians and Poles. Out of nowhere, various national flags appeared. Naturally, we Polish Jews wanted to stand beneath the proud flutter of the red-and-white, but they pushed us away. ‘Shove off, Jew,' they said, ‘if you know what's good for you!'

So we, a few dozen of us, stood beside no flag, with no anthem to sing; we, the pariahs of Ebensee who did not belong. Although my generation of Jews was very much at home with Polish history, language and literature —
Å»
eromski, Słowacki, Mickiewicz, Sienkiewicz and Orzeszkowa were deeply embedded in our hearts – and though there were surely those among us who had proved, through the war years, to be far better Polish patriots than these base antisemites could ever hope to be, we were not in a position to argue with the brutes.

At this point something unreal happened, something amazingly beautiful. From behind the Sherman tank that had smashed through the camp's wire fence, a small squad of infantry emerged, as in a dream, and they sped towards the Polish flag. ‘
Cze
ść
, chłopcy!
' they shouted. ‘Greetings, boys!' The Polish prisoners responded enthusiastically with ‘Long Live Poland!' — to which the battle-weary squad leader reciprocated, again in Polish: ‘And may she live forever and ever!...'

‘But gentlemen,' he added, looking around. ‘We are Jews, from New York. Are there any of our brethren amongst you?'

 

 
Vision of Survival