The Fighter (16 page)

So what? Do you think you'll win the war with your flying bombs? I'm lucky that the workday is soon over. As I'm leaving, one of the two workers tells me to go to the infirmary and show someone my eye. It is the first time they say something to me that is not an insult. It means they need me. I guess the Jews who preceded me were too weak to carry the machine for eight hours. If they lose me, they'll have to carry it themselves.

I know the doctor: Gamkhi, a Greek Jew who comes from Jawischowitz like me.

“The cornea is barely nicked, but you must be careful. If an infection sets in, you may lose your eye. All I can do is dress the wound.”

He dresses the wound in the camp's usual manner, with a small square of toilet paper.

“I wish I could stay here for a few days. You could watch my eye and I would rest. I have to carry a very heavy machine, but I am not eating enough. I'm getting weaker. If only I could sleep a little….”

“Look, this block is full of badly hurt men, many dying. If an SS doctor finds out I am keeping you here so you can rest, we'll both be in trouble. They watch me
because I am a newcomer. Maybe I can take you in next week.”

“What kills all these guys?”

“Exhaustion. They've reached the end of the line, you know….”

I go back to work. Every evening, I show my eye to Gamkhi. He changes my dressing, which turns black because of the rock powder.

I run into Brod.

“Where have you been, Wisniak? I haven't seen you for a long time.”

“I live in the blockhouse with the Russians. Also, I spend lots of time in the infirmary. I've hurt my eye.”

“Stone chip? The war is nearly over, but these bastards will torture us to the bitter end.”

“If we survive to the bitter end.”

“You're right. Too many comrades weaken and die in this camp. Listen: I've thought of a plan. I've told Gelber and four others about it. We'll need another seven or eight. We climb together into a tipcart and remove the hooks that hold the bucket straight. You remove the front hook, I remove the back one.”

“The bucket will flip and we'll fall!”

“That's my plan. If the accident happens right when we leave the station, before we reach our regular speed, we'll be hurt just enough to go to the infirmary.”

“Pretty clever….”

Brod's plan succeeds perfectly. We suffer from light bruises, but our boils and abscesses burst so that we are covered with blood. The SS run toward us with their whips, but they can't stand the sight of blood.

“Go to the infirmary, you stinking Jews,” they shout. “Quick!”

Gamkhi, whom I've informed about our plan, shows us a wooden board in a corner of the block. We clean our wounds. This means that we wash for the first time since we left Jawischowitz. Then we lie down on the wooden board, pressed close together. I sleep for forty-eight hours straight—waking only for soup. After four days, my comrades go back to work. Gamkhi keeps me because of my eye.

“The wound doesn't really justify it. I'll give you a job. I need an orderly.”

Close to three years after my arrival in Auschwitz, while I expect that I'll soon leave the hell of the camps forever, I'm back to the same task I was given on my first day: I carry corpses. A man is sitting on his straw mat, on the upper berth. Suddenly, without a word, he tumbles to the ground. He's dead. I go pick him up.

“Our block senior sends us to the infirmary when we're kaput,” his neighbor says. “Ten of us came here this morning to see the doctor. Three are dead already and he hasn't even examined us.”

I carry thirty bodies every day. The Russian war prisoners have stolen all the blankets. They tear them into pieces
to make shoes. The sick men use the straw mats as sleeping bags against the cold. When they die, I must pull them out of a straw cocoon soiled with their piss and shit. Often, I need to break their bony fingers, which hold the cloth with a desperate grip. It is not true that I'll soon leave the hell of the camps forever. I'll never leave. I'll be a Häftling, a camp prisoner, for the rest of my life. I've become numb. Otherwise, my job in the infirmary would make me crazy.

One week after us, other comrades hoping to rest in the infirmary provoke a tipcar accident. The SS were willing to believe it once, but not twice. They send their dogs to check whether the accident victims are really unable to stand up. The poor guys come to the infirmary on stretchers. Torn flaps of skin and flesh hang from their thighs like wallpaper coming loose. Four of them die within the first hour.

I turn to Gamkhi.

“I thought I had seen everything!”

“Yeah. I don't know how many times I've had the same thought….”

One of the wounded describes the dogs' rush.

“They attacked as if they wanted to eat us alive. The SS found it hilarious. I could see both the fangs of the dogs and the teeth of the SS. They were laughing like kids.”

Gamkhi dresses the wounds with toilet paper.

It seems that the SS, feeling death closing in on them,
want to bring along as many people as possible. Two or three bodies hang from every tree in the camp. Hanging is the usual punishment for trying to escape. Russian war prisoners, hearing that the Red Army has entered Germany, can't resist the temptation.

Around April 4 or 5, some two months after we arrived in Ohrdruf-Krähwinkel, they evacuate us again.
ⁿ

We return to Buchenwald. Thirty miles on foot, without eating or drinking. This is the very heart of Germany. We're very close to the city of Weimar, where the great poets Goethe and Schiller lived. When we pass through a village, the people insult us and spit at us. I remember a village we crossed soon after leaving Jawischowitz. The Poles watched us in silence. Some of them looked at us with a kind of compassion or pity.

We have been fed so little that we find it hard to walk. What's more, the SS seem to be in some kind of a hurry. We hear more gunshots coming from the rear than before.
My knees and my hip joints hurt terribly. I must summon my willpower to keep from screaming with pain and lying down on the road. I mutter under my breath: “You've held on for so long, Moshe. It would be silly to give up now. Come on, one more step. And another one….”

As soon as we pass Buchenwald's gate, I collapse on the ground. I see my comrades fight for a barrel of soup. It falls over. They lap up the soup mixed with mud, like animals.

Comrades carry me to a block and sit me down in a corner. I fall asleep right then and there. The next day, I hear rumors that the SS want to evacuate the camp. I can't walk. This time, I'll die.

Two days later, I can bend my knees. I can stand up. The Buchenwald men are dreamers.

“The Americans will free us any day now,” they say. “We've decided to wait for them. We'll refuse to be evacuated.”

The Jawischowitz comrades and I are too weak to oppose the SS. On the afternoon of April 10, they order evacuation.
^o

“Line up by five, you shitbags!”

We walk for hours. When my legs won't carry me anymore, I'll stop…. To my relief, we come to a railway station, where a train is waiting for us. Brod is there, as weak as me but still alive. We climb up on a flatcar.

“What do they want? Tell me, Wisniak…. The Americans and the Russians have captured most of Germany already. Do they want us to work still more?”

“They don't give a damn about the Americans and the Russians. They've always believed their real enemies were the Jews. Look at the SS on that passenger car's roof…. They'reaiming their machine guns at us. Ready to shoot at the dying and the dead.”

…

After a few hours, fifteen comrades or so are dead already. Others call out to the SS.

“Hey, we have some dead.”

“Good. You're here to die.”

“Where are we going?”

“Shut up, you stinking Jews, otherwise we'll shoot.”

The next day, old reservists replace the SS. They give us bread—a quarter pound each. They only know the number of men at the beginning of the journey, so we also eat the bread of the dead. This is not enough, though, since we get nothing to eat or drink for days afterward. The train moves slowly, stopping often. Like my comrades, I spend my waking hours crushing the lice who've been feasting on my flesh since we arrived in Krähwinkel.

We halt in a station. I notice something strange: the Germans don't insult us anymore. They don't laugh at us. We read fear on their faces. Children wearing uniforms are
waiting on the platforms. We ask our old reservists for water. We're amazed—they obey us!

The train starts again. Fifteen minutes later, low-flying airplanes come and shoot at it. Our old German guards jump down and hide under the cars. The Russian war prisoners—and some forty Jews strong enough to step off the train—scatter on both sides of the track. As soon as the planes vanish, the old soldiers emerge.

The lone SS commander is furious.

“You're not real Germans, you're cowards! Shitbags! You've let the prisoners go. Run and catch them at once. Pull a stunt like this again, I'll have you shot!”

In the middle of this mayhem, Brod and I don't move a finger. We're much too weak to climb down and run. We watched the air raid like it was a scene in a film that had nothing to do with us. The airplanes' guns killed only three comrades in our car. The Jews who ran into the fields and the Russians were not as lucky—half of them are dead.

The track is broken. We must all climb down after all. The SS commander asks the old reservists to sort us by nationality. There are French, Polish, Russian, and Czech war prisoners. And the Jews. We know what he wants to do—kill the Jews. Brod and I, as well as all the other Jews who came from France, try to go with the Frenchmen. We know when to seize an opportunity. That's why we've survived until now. The Frenchmen push us away.

“You're not really French. You're Jewish!”

What can we do? I decide to become Polish again. I should have guessed it: the Poles are more brutal than the French.

“Scram, you shitty Yid! Go with the other Yids!”

So I end up with the Jews after all. If the Germans shoot us, I'll die right away. If we have to walk, I'll die of exhaustion later.

Religious Jews begin to say their prayers. One of their faces seems familiar. Where have I seen this guy? Hey, this is Gelber! He mumbles while reading a prayer book. I can't believe it…. I saw him as naked as a worm every day when we took a shower after the mine. If he had owned a book, I would have known it. I realize that this is the first book I have seen in three years. How did Gelber (if this religious Jew is indeed Gelber) find a prayer book? I look at this question from every angle, but my weary mind can't find an answer.

They line us in rows of five. It is a trick. They want to convince us we're going on a march, the better to slaughter us. Several comrades try to run away. The soldiers shoot them down like rabbits. We resign ourselves to our fate. We obey the soldiers and follow the tracks. Over the first two or three hundred feet, the rails are broken after the air raid, or bent and twisted as if they were made of tin. Then the tracks are okay again. A freight train comes for us. They lock us inside closed cars, without even the tiny openings of the cattle cars. We suffocate. Some clever comrades pull small pieces of
steel, which they “organized” in Krähwinkel, out of their pockets. They begin to widen the tiny gaps between the floorboards. We work in turns. A guy I don't know suggests we escape together.

“They won't catch me. I'll go west and meet the Americans. Are you coming?”

“Look at me. I wouldn't get very far.”

After several hours, we remove a piece of wood, so at least we can breathe. We go on working and dislodge a couple more boards. Comrades climb into the opening and drop under the train, which is not moving fast. If I stuck to my principles, I would do it, too, but I can't. They hold on to the floor with their arms and slide down slowly to control their fall. I am too weak to even try. I have no more willpower. I'm waiting for the end.

I won't be able to narrate my adventures to my son. My comrades are dying silently around me. When the train finally stops (where is it going? to Pitchipoï?), whoever opens the door of this car will find only corpses inside.

A comrade is too close for comfort.

“You're sticking your elbow into my ribs, man! Stop banging your head on my back!”

He doesn't answer. I turn toward him and shake him. I was talking to a dead man.

The train stops, the door of our car opens. We are not all dead. Out of two thousand comrades who left the Jawischowitz mine, two hundred are still alive.

I hear vague calls or shouts. Do they say “gâteau”
^p
? No, it is “ghetto.” What does it mean? I crawl as slowly as a snail and tumble down from the car. Although my strength is gone, there is still some curiosity left in me. We are not in a camp, but in a city. It may have been a garrison long ago: the tall buildings that line the street look like barracks. Jews who are not as thin as skeletons, who wear a yellow star but no number, welcome us and help us. They carry the sick away on stretchers. I see no SS, no dogs, no kapos.

What's really strange is that these Jews with a yellow star are old. I mean, really old. In Auschwitz, we called a
man of forty
der Alter
(the old one). There was no way he could survive.

Our hosts are troubled because nobody told them we were coming. They open a kind of large basement for us. Tiny windows, close to the ceiling, let a little light in. We ask them where we are.

“The Germans call this place Theresienstadt, but its real name is Terezin. Before they invaded, it was Czechoslovakia.”