Panorama (63 page)

The day moves on wearisomely, time seeming fragmented, they having to file in again and again, after which the lost ones are led back into the barracks, then back out again, so it goes, over and over, roll call occurring as evening descends, all of them then suddenly pressed into an overflowing hut and ordered to get into their bunks. One bunk is meant to hold six men, but now twenty-five to thirty have to squeeze in, no one allowed to disrobe, though that is a ridiculous order, for the lost ones have no room to rest, screams traveling through the cool, damp, muggy air, which are then smothered, at one time “Sleep!” ordered, then “Everyone get ready to march!” Then someone finally says, “Everyone go to sleep!” The light is put out, the air in the hut grows heavier, then suddenly there is light, capos and staffers and who knows who else barging into the room with long sticks and beginning to aimlessly lash out at the lost ones and the bunks, yelling as they go, “We’ve had enough of you bums! The sanatorium is closed! Time for the pigs to come out! Out with you. Out! Get up, you weary sheiks! You miserable idiots! Rotten pigs! Money-grubbers! Assholes!,” the Polish and
Ukrainian curses following one upon another in a hellish uproar, and so on, and so on. That they finally leave is good, but first they have to pass through hell before they go, everyone has to leave the hut through the front door, no one allowed to stay behind, the collaborators lining up on the way out, such that everyone must pass between them, at which they hit the unprotected heads and bodies of the lost with their sticks. Finally everyone is gathered together outside and quickly counted once again, after which they begin to move on their own feet like a slow waltz toward the main camp road, picking up speed as they climb the ramps that serve as a narrow passage, garish arc lamps lighting their way, prison scribes hastily counting off the travelers shuffling through and calling out numbers, the count needing to be right, each lost one getting a loaf of bread, a hunk of margarine, and a slab of sausage, though many leave empty-handed.

Hurry! Hurry! Get in! Though no one really worries about whether the lost can reasonably fit into the cattle wagons, it being dark everywhere, the chaos churning the people into a teeming brew, sixty men to a car, there being no room to tuck away bodies and limbs, though slowly they push against one another, many wanting to remain comfortable and thus pressing at a neighbor, but finally all of the lost ones manage to gather together and the loading of the train cars is done. A long train has been put together, in each wagon a bench for the guards, and after they climb on the lost ones have to shove even more tightly together, the guards and their bayonets are from the army, two soldiers for each car, they also having machine guns at the ready. Finally the train pulls away, the journey lasting through the night and into a cool autumn morning, the countryside shimmering in the sunlight, the day beautiful, the journey passing through Silesia, where beets are harvested, fields tilled, on and on, the train stopping rarely, then traveling through the hills, soon after the mountains, it all looking much like Bohemia, home must be nearby, happy conjectures about where they are headed shared, Josef also beginning to feel hopeful, these appearing to be the flat lands, and indeed the train enters the plains and stops for a while. When the journey starts up again, hopes sink, Bohemia is not the final destination, though the landscape is beautiful, it being a pleasure to just look at the landscape, though only a few of the men have an eye for it, most of them having ceased to say anything, for they are hungry and tired and anxious, as
the train passes through Waldenburg, the high mountain with its snowy peak looming above, Josef pressing nearer to a crack in the siding in order to get a better view of the forest, pressing as if he might spring into the picture itself in order to escape into the countryside, though such thoughts are fleeting and bring no hope. They have already passed Hirschberg, Görlitz soon disappearing into the twilight. The long-silent soldiers in the car now talk in a friendly manner, asking for songs to be sung, Yiddish and Polish or Russian folk songs, doleful wise men mixing painfully with the knocking sounds of the train rolling into the distance, a second long night during which sleep is hardly possible. The unrest among the lost ones begins to climb, many showing no mercy toward their fellow travelers as they elbow them in the ribs, though finally this night passes and they find themselves in western Saxony, passing through Wurzen, Leipzig soon following, though the journey circumscribes the city limits, after which it stops, three wagons separated, this being Josef’s group, which believes it has reached its final destination.

This, however, turns out not to be true, and the journey continues, the lost ones growing ever more hungry and tired and anxious. A Slovak Jew, a doctor, begins to talk in a confused manner, he having lost his bearings, as Josef and two others talk to him and try to calm him down, the journey crawling forward, the train stopping often, though later they reach Halle, then finally Eisleben, night falling again, a third night spent on the train, the lost ones feeling very down, as vainly some try to keep up the others’ hopes, the disturbed doctor from Ružomberok now talking senselessly and continuously. The train has stopped again as he begins to thrash about and launches into a blaring tirade, even the German soldiers want to quiet him down, but nothing can control the madman as he screams about how the liberation has come, enough with the murder and oppression of innocent people, the revolution is here, the hour of reckoning and revenge, and whoever doesn’t lift a hand to help is a coward and a traitor, the hangman needs to be hanged, victory is certain if everyone takes a stand. The mad doctor then lunges at a soldier and tries with his bare hands to strip him of his weapon, the other soldier shooting him, though he doesn’t want to kill the disturbed man, and so he shoots him in the foot, the wounded man screaming all the louder, knowing that it’s the end for him, but before he dies he
curses Adolf Hitler, the destroyer of the people and the murderer of millions, cursing as well Josef Tiso, that dog of a priest who sold out Slovakia to Hitler and delivered the Jews to his slaughterhouses. Then some shots ring out from a machine gun in the car, the prisoners anxiously pressing against the walls, bright lights flash, the dying man is yanked away and put out of his misery with a single shot, after which the soldiers alert the transport commandant and are quite up front about it all, insisting over and over that, no, it was not a mutiny, the others were reasonable and quiet, only this one had gone crazy. Then the commandant begins issuing threats, the first being “We should kill them! The entire carload!” Some prisoners, meanwhile, have to take care of the dead man, which forces them to squeeze together even more, the corpse stretched out in the middle, which otherwise would have remained free, though if anyone were to say a word he would be killed without warning, the soldiers in the car standing, the journey pressing on in fits and starts throughout the night, the machine guns trained on the lost ones, who are silent and sit there motionless, from time to time a beam of light shining from a flashlight, until finally the train stops at a small station in Eichsfeld, the journey at last over.

The group doesn’t have it so bad here, which is how one talks about a good camp in the language of the lost. There are two factories that have been stripped of their previous contents and converted into a small slave camp that is overseen by those who run Buchenwald, wings for the Conqueror’s planes being fabricated here, many of the civil servants acting friendly toward the prisoners, while inhabitants of the village who work there are even kinder, yet many of the lost are weak, while others find no favor among the conspirator who runs the camp. Then one day a hundred and twenty men are needed for Langenstein, this also an outlying camp of Buchenwald, and so the weak ones are sent there, as well as those who are not liked, which includes Josef. It’s now been six weeks since he first came here, Josef amazed each day that he is still alive, there are many and much younger colleagues who have died, and who came with him at the same time to Langenstein, even on the very first day one of them stretching out and dying, another of the lost finding that his feet had swollen up, two days later his face was bloated, each creeping step becoming more and more difficult, his gaze growing empty and unsteady, at which the lost one was capable neither
of work nor of making a clear decision, though the slave drivers don’t want to spare him, and so he is holed up in a corner of the underground factory, while during roll call at the end of the day there is often one missing, no one able to find him and everyone having to look, until finally he is found, sometimes barely conscious, while at other times the accomplices and henchmen kill him on the spot, this being the home of unhappiness, at which someone calls out, “You two Belgians, quick! Hurry! Hurry! Go carry your buddy home!” At which they have to carry the dying or the dead back to camp, though for two broken-down and half-starved prisoners there’s hardly anything more difficult than to carry someone who is dying through the halls of the underground factory and then over the rubbish dump while being pressed by the henchmen to hurry as they schlep him back to camp.

Josef hears steps outside, these being the collaborators, the camp guards, and staffers, they soon bursting into the room with clubs and whips as they yell, “Everyone up!” Blindly they lash out at the lost ones, beating anyone who is not standing. Josef doesn’t wait, but instead wakes Étienne and Milan, his warning for them to flee hardly an advantage, for there are no lights on, since the windows cannot be blacked out, thus making it hard for the lost ones to handle their attackers and to find their bearings as one stumbles over the other, none able to find their things, their shoes gone, it also impossible to find the miserable washroom, where even if you have light and self-discipline there’s little you can do, each possessing a little piece of terrible soap, though hardly anyone has a hand towel or a toothbrush, eight washstands having to serve sixteen men at the same time, and which in turn are also meant to serve seven hundred to eight hundred men who are crammed into the small camp, where on some days there is not a drop of water to be had. No wonder, then, that everyone is full of lice, for lice scurry through the blankets and the rags that cover their bodies, there not having been a change of clothes available since Josef came to the camp, so everyone wears only what he has on his back.

Langenstein is a deep hole of horror, human brotherhood barely traceable here, it being better that it not show itself before the ever-lurking malevolence, most of the collaborators being hardened young men who wildly and maliciously run the place with complete abandon, their better spirits not allowing them to remain cool-headed, even the decent collaborators
needing to appear to succumb to the inhumanity of the place, as no one is able to escape such corruption. The small camp is only for skilled workers, who were generally selected out at Birkenau, barbed wire separating the place from the larger camp, where there are no skilled workers, it being a penal camp, the lost ones not allowed to move from one to the other without special permission. A band of collaborators runs things in the small camp, the camp guard led by a nasty Ukrainian, followed by the section elders with their followers, who hold back a large chunk of the spare rations granted the prisoners. The kitchen is located in the big camp, where a lot of food disappears straight off, the most valuable items regularly going to the conspirators who hold sway over Langenstein, for they take for themselves a measly and insufficient amount for each of the watch posts under their command, after which all the collaborators take their cut at each post, the lost ones indeed getting a couple of sips of brown, lukewarm water first thing in the morning, which sometimes is called coffee and other times tea, the lost ones getting nothing as they slave away during the day. Up until now there have been only two days when Josef had to stay behind in the camp, each day lasting up to twelve hours, the journey out and back taking a minimum of another two hours, and the roll call in the yard each morning and at night using up another two hours, which means sixteen hours total for each day. Throughout all this time there is nothing to eat, four weeks ago the prisoners having been served a midday soup while working in the underground factory of the little camp, but this was taken away as punishment more often than not, especially the Jews in general getting nothing, but now the soup is gone for good, and no one needs to be worried about getting hit while trying to get his share, for now they hold it back, even the civil servants in the works receiving meager rations, though the lost ones have the hardest slave labor in having to dig down in the caverns and work outside the mountain the whole day long with nothing to eat. Only after the roll call in the evening is there soup, which is usually served around eight o’clock, by then the soup cold and almost always sour, consisting almost entirely of water and salt, a few slivers of carrots and potato peels swimming in it, a liter of the disgusting liquid all that one gets for the week, only once long ago having been replaced by a light, sweet, runny gruel. Bread is also handed out in the evening, up until two weeks ago it having been a large
hunk, but since then it’s only been a thick slice, three times a week a dollop of margarine, and every so often a spoonful of lean raw ground meat or a thin slice of watery sausage or beet marmalade.

Their hunger is so immense that most of them immediately wolf down whatever is handed out, this being the smartest thing to do, for whatever you might carefully stash away under your blanket is almost always gone in the morning, while no matter how much yelling there is, there’s nothing to be done, and so the hungry one must wait until evening. More and more of the lost ones die because of hunger, there being no escape, as they lose their human appearance and shape, becoming unconscious and like animals, clawing away at unsuitable rubbish wherever they find it, at the hard ground in the camp, at the heaps of kitchen scraps, on the way to and at the work sites, everything and anything picked up and devoured as a dog would, even though it is strictly forbidden and they can be beaten for it, someone hanging signs on the lost ones that say: