The Commandant of Lubizec: A Novel of the Holocaust and Operation Reinhard (25 page)

The other men on the floor immediately knew this wasn’t the proper order of the Seder but they stuffed bread into their mouths and peeled boiled eggs. They were hungry and they didn’t know what else to do.

As for the newcomer, Moshe Taube, he asked the first of the Four Questions again: “Ma
nish-ta-naw ha-lai-law ha-zeh mee-kawl ha-lay-los?
”

The other men passed the wine amongst themselves. They left ghostly fingerprints on the bottle, and after each of them took a long swallow, they repeated the phrase. It was a small act of rebellion and it filled them with strength.

When it was Zischer’s turn to drink he glanced at the chiseled face of Sebastian Schemise and wondered if this German knew what they were doing.

The prisoners continued saying that single phrase—“Why is this night different from all other nights?”—as they tore off chunks of bread and peeled speckled shells away from boiled eggs. It didn’t represent a Seder in any way and this made Zischer feel like he wasn’t dishonoring his past. The six men continued stuffing food into their mouths because they were hungry, scared, and confused. They chewed and swallowed. They murmured that single line of Hebrew as the bottle was passed from hand to hand. Zischer bit into an egg and felt yolk on his tongue. It was the first time he had eaten an egg in years. It felt magical. Alive.

Birdie clapped as if he were watching a play. “Great show.”

“Yes,” Schemise said. “What comes next?”

The new prisoner, Moshe, looked angry for a moment—he was clearly tired of being mocked and ridiculed—and then he did something dangerous. He got onto his knees as the words of his ancestors continued flowing over his tongue and, while he recited the prayer for the dead, he stood up awkwardly in a pool of dusty light.

His voice grew stronger, more defiant.

A flashlight caught his hair and it surrounded him like a halo. He sang his lament and, when he finished, the guards clapped. They hooted and stamped their feet. Many of the prisoners in Barrack 14 had tears running down their cheeks and someone at the back broke down entirely.

Guth stayed in the shadows. The orange asterisk of his cigarette burned and faded.

When quiet returned to the barrack he dropped his cigarette onto the floor and twisted it beneath his boot.

“You see?” he said, lurching back into the light. “We don’t treat you so badly in Lubizec. Where else could you enjoy a Passover? Hmm?”

He pointed at the eggshells on the floor. “This is a
family
meal, yes?” He blinked a few times as if trying to focus. He twirled his wedding ring and was on the verge of tears. “I haven’t seen my wife and kids for … six months. Six lousy
months
.” He puckered his lips and let out an extravagant whistle. “I keep telling them to return, but they stay in Berlin. Fucking Berlin.”

He unbuttoned his trench coat and fished around for something. He stumbled and almost tripped over but he pulled out his wallet. He held it up like a prize and passed a photo to Schemise.

“My wife and kids.”

The new guard held it to the light. “Very nice, sir. Very nice indeed. A good-looking family.”

It is worth pausing here and mentioning that when Chaim Zischer was asked about this incident for a television documentary, he sparkled with rage. He leaned into the reporter’s microphone as his face flushed with anger. He almost spat out the words.

“Should I feel sorry for this man, this murderer, this killer of cities? No, I tell you. My family was
dead
, my son was
dead
, my wife was
dead
, my parents were
dead
, my brothers were
dead
, and he’s telling us how much he misses his family? Oh, please. There is a big difference between missing your family and having your family gone missing. I have no sympathy for Guth. Did he care about my family? No. No, he did not. He put them in an ashfield.”

Zischer then mentions that during the mock Seder he thought about the biblical exodus out of Egypt and he realized that Guth was a modern-day Pharaoh. The man stood before his slaves, dripping with gold and arrogance, and he walked around as if he were immortal, as if the universe had no power over him. Zischer thought about the ten plagues that freed his people from Egypt and he imagined each of them coming to Lubizec: the water changing to blood, the infestations of frogs, and lice, and flies, livestock dying off, horrible boils appearing on the master race, hail smashing into buildings, locusts devouring every green leaf as far as the eye could see, the three days of total darkness, and then, finally, death to every first-born son.

So where was God now? Where were the plagues to save his people? They didn’t need to be large plagues. God could change the chemistry of gunpowder so that bullets could no longer be fired, or he could break railroad ties, or he could bring tornadoes swirling down from the heavens to destroy the gas chambers. Anything would do. God didn’t need to send frogs or locusts. He could just stop the killing. That’s all he needed to do.

And as he looked at the Seder before him, Chaim Zischer decided that when his time came to stand before the Lord and explain his life, he would turn the tables on the Almighty. Instead of explaining his life, he would demand that God explain
his
decisions, and that he would pass judgment on what God had done in 1942. Where were you when my wife and son were destroyed? Where were you when hate ruled the world?

“Beautiful, sir,” Schemise said again. He returned the photo with a click of his heels and a little bow. The noise startled Guth and he
looked around as if realizing where he was. His face soured and he pointed to a few prisoners.

“Shoot him. Shoot him. And … him.” He turned on his heel and pushed outside. Snow came swirling in as he trudged into the darkness. The wind howled.

Schemise motioned for the condemned prisoners to come outside while Niemann and Birdie pushed their way to the door. They removed the wine bottle and dragged the light with them. Darkness swallowed the building. No one spoke. No one moved.

There was the sound of a padlock clicking into place and then boots squeaking away on fresh snow. A minute later a pistol cracked into the night three times and the wind picked up. The loose clapboard on the roof began to slap again. It sounded like a machine gun opening up.

All of the prisoners climbed back into their bunks except for the men involved in the mock Seder—they continued to sit on the floor. Chaim Zischer and Dov Damiel were surprised they hadn’t been shot and they realized that, in a way, death had indeed passed them over. But for how long?

The six prisoners whispered among themselves.

“Did you hear what Guth said? We’ll be dead by April.”

“We need to escape.”

“Yes, but how?”

“We could dig a tunnel.”

“Don’t be stupid. The ground’s frozen.”

There was a pause.

“Even if we escaped, where would we go?”

“Warsaw. We could go to Warsaw.”

“Or Kraków.”

Another pause.

“We’d have to liquidate the guards.”

“And Guth. I’d shoot him personally.”

“I’ve got you now, Birdie.”

A searchlight passed over the window and a shaft of white knifed in, momentarily blinding them. Purple dots and squiggly things
floated in Zischer’s field of vision and then, just as quickly as it happened, inky blackness was poured back onto the barracks.

Zischer let his eyes adjust. The murk took on new forms and he saw things come into focus. Everything seemed clear.

Someone whispered, “I have an idea.”

17

W
e know that some ninety thousand people died in Lubizec during December 1942 and that roughly the same number perished in January 1943. Towns like Slodowa, Barnow, Belz, and Pawlów vanished from the face of the earth. Synagogues stood empty as whole villages were drained of families. The number of human beings funneling into the camp forced the gas chambers to work almost nonstop during the day and the Roasts were in constant use at night. Two new pits were dug and the heat was so intense it melted huge areas of snow. An oily fountainhead of burnt flesh and boiling marrow blotted out the stars.

To make matters worse, the sun set at 4:15 in the afternoon and this meant the searchlights clicked on as the transports continued to roll in. Snow floated through massive cones of light and everyone jumped out of the cattle cars, frozen and eager for warmth. Thousands were marched off to their deaths with the promise that heat—glorious heat—waited for them up ahead. The guards said there were heavy coats, hats, scarves, and boots for the first people inside the showers.

“Quickly,” they yelled while gripping their whips. “It’s all waiting up ahead for you.”

Chalk numbers were no longer scrawled onto the side of the wagons because no one bothered to count how many people were stuffed inside anymore. The train manifest from the station of departure was now considered “good enough” for such bookkeeping purposes. There was no need to count the prisoners when they arrived into Lubizec because, as everyone now knew, once the
train was set into motion it was virtually impossible to escape. If
x
number of Jews departed from such-and-such a place, it was all but guaranteed the same number of Jews would roll into Lubizec. Whether they were alive or dead hardly mattered to the Nazis. The body count wouldn’t have changed and that was the main thing.

Guth spent more time in his office trying to figure out how to solve new problems like clearing snow off the rails and what to do with the ash now that the farmers could no longer use it for their fields.
^*

He had a pile of applewood stacked beside his potbelly stove and he kept it well stoked. Sometimes he twirled his wedding ring as he looked out his office window. Frost clung to the edges. A framed picture of his family was on the desk and he grew tense whenever he heard about more air raids over Berlin. It was during this period of frenzied slaughter that his relationship with Jasmine, which had been icy for many months, was finally beginning to thaw. She mentions in her unpublished diary that she “had decided to forgive Hans for all his little deceptions” and that perhaps she was being “too hard on him since he’s under so much beastly pressure.”

This “beastly pressure” of course involved the murder of thousands of innocent people, but Jasmine still didn’t see any fundamental problem with her husband’s job. She mentions in her diary how much she wanted her family back together again, and she also mentions that Guth began to worry that he wasn’t around for his children. He missed being a father. And so, at the end of February 1943, the Guth family talked seriously about living under the same roof again. Phone calls were made. Telegrams were sent. Large presents were mailed via
Reichspost
.

Inside Lubizec, however, the world was all snow and midnight. Chaim Zischer and Dov Damiel found themselves in a blur of arriving trains, naked bodies, and death. They had no stove in their barracks, and as they shivered in the dark, they tried not to think
about their lost families because this only resulted in crippling depression. Thinking about life before Lubizec fogged the mind, it weakened you, and it did absolutely no good whatsoever. Only the
now
mattered in Lubizec because the past had been snuffed out and the future was always in doubt. Who knew when a pistol might be leveled against the back of your head? Who knew when you might hear that terrible phrase, “I’ve got you now, birdie”? You could be whipped to death at any time. No, it was better to live in the present. There was only the
now
because anything on either side of that now didn’t exist.

Nevertheless, talk of escape fluttered through the barracks and a core of prisoners huddled together in their bunk beds. Zischer and Damiel were spooned together as they murmured about cutting the barbed-wire fence. Also squashed into their narrow wooden bunk was a former Polish military officer named Avrom Petranker. As far as the Nazis were concerned, Petranker was doubly dangerous because he fought against them in the invasion of 1939 and he also had Jewish blood in his veins. Next to Petranker was David Grinbaum. Tall and lean, Grinbaum had a moon-cratered face because he nearly died of smallpox when he was a child. Moshe Taube, who took part in the mock Seder, was also wedged into the bunk. They whispered to each other as the searchlight floated across the window like an unholy eye. Weird shadows were dragged across the walls and, as the wind howled over the roof, the five men whispered about escape. Slowly, as the searchlight passed back and forth, a plan began to hatch.