Spark of Life (35 page)

“Why didn’t they simply leave this rabble during the retreat—” Neubauer promptly corrected himself, “I mean, during the strategic shortening of the line, where they were? They surely can no
longer be used for anything. Should have been left to the Russians or Americans to cope with.”

“There’d still remain the same problem of the bodies,” answered Weber patiently. “They say the American army has a great number of journalists and photographers. They could take pictures and maintain that the people are undernourished.”

Neubauer took the cigar from his mouth and looked sharply at Weber. He wasn’t sure whether his camp leader was making fun of him. However often he tried, he had never been able to find this out. As usual Weber’s face was noncommittal. “What do you mean?” asked Neubauer. “What are you talking about? Of course they’re undernourished.”

“I’m talking about the atrocity stories which the democratic press invents about us. The ministry of propaganda is warning us against it every day.”

Neubauer kept staring at Weber. I actually don’t know him at all, he thought. He has always done what I wanted, but fundamentally I don’t know anything about him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he suddenly laughed in my face. In mine, and maybe even in that of the Führer himself. A hireling without any real ideology. To him probably nothing is sacred, not even the Party. It just happened to suit him. “You know, Weber—” he began, and then broke off. There was no point in making a fuss. For a moment the sudden fear in his stomach had returned. “Of course the people are undernourished,” he said. “But that’s not our fault. The enemy forces us into it with his blockade. Or doesn’t he?”

Weber raised his head. He didn’t trust his ears. Neubauer glanced at him with strained apprehension. “Of course,” said Weber, unperturbed. “The enemy with his blockade.”

Neubauer nodded. The instant of anguish had passed again. He looked around the roll-call ground. “Frankly speaking,” he said almost confidentially, “there’s nevertheless a mighty difference between
the camps. Our people look considerably better than the ones over there, even these here in the Small camp. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes,” answered Weber, perplexed.

“It’s quite obvious if you compare them. I’m sure we have one of the most humane camps in the whole Reich.” Neubauer had a sense of smug relief. “Of course people die. Even quite a number. That’s unavoidable at such times. But we are humane. Here, those no longer able to work, don’t have to. Where else would you find that, for traitors and enemies of the State?”

“Almost nowhere.”

“That’s what I think. Undernourished? That’s not our fault! I tell you, Weber—” Neubauer suddenly had an idea. “Listen, I know how to get the people out of here. You know how? With food!”

Weber grinned. There were times, after all, when the old man emerged from the clouds of his own wish-dreams. “Excellent idea!” he declared. “When truncheons don’t help—food always does. But we haven’t any extra rations ready.”

“Then for once the camp inmates will have to go without. They’ll have to show some comradeship. They’ll just get less for the noon meal.” Neubauer stretched his shoulders. “Do these people here understand German?”

“A few perhaps.”

“Is there an interpreter?”

Weber asked a few of the guards. They dragged three men along. “Translate to your people what the Herr
Obersturmbannführer
is saying!” bellowed Weber.

The three men stood side by side. Neubauer took a step forward. “Men!” he said with dignity. “You have been wrongly informed. You’re on your way to a recreation camp.”

“Go on!” Weber nudged one of the three. They uttered something in an unintelligible language. No one on the ground stirred.

Neubauer repeated the words. “You’re to go to the kitchen now,” he added, “to receive coffee and food.”

The interpreters repeated it. No one moved. No one believed such talk. They had seen people disappear in a similar manner many a time. Food and baths were dangerous promises.

Neubauer grew annoyed. “Kitchen! March to the kitchen! Food! Coffee! Get food and coffee! Soup!”

With their truncheons the guards threw themselves at the crowd. “Soup! Can’t you hear? Food! Soup!” At each word they used their clubs.

“Stop!” shouted Neubauer angrily. “Who gave you orders to beat them up, damn you!”

The guards sprang back. “Get out of here!” yelled Neubauer.

The men with the clubs suddenly turned into prisoners again. Huddled together, they crept along the edge of the ground.

“They’re actually battering them into cripples!” snarled Neubauer. “Then we’ll have them on our necks for good!”

Weber nodded. “As it is, we’ve already been sent several truck-loads of dead for cremating from the station.”

“What happened to them?”

“They’re piled up at the crematorium. Just now, when we’re short of coal anyway! We need our fuel stock badly enough for our own people!”

“Damn it, how the hell are we going to get these people out of here?”

“They’re in a state of panic. They no longer understand what they’re told. Maybe they will when they smell it.”

“Smell what?”

“Smell the food. Smell or see it.”

“You mean if we bring a cauldron up here?”

“Yes. Promises don’t work with those people. They must see and smell it.”

Neubauer nodded. “Possible. Haven’t we got a number of wheeled cauldrons? Have one brought over here. Or two. One with coffee. Is the food ready?”

“Not yet. But there should be a cauldron left over from last night, I think.”

The cauldrons were wheeled up. They stopped on the road at a distance of about two hundred yards from the crowd. “Push one of them up into the Small camp,” ordered Weber. “And take off the lid. Then, when the people start coming, wheel it slowly back again onto the road.”

He turned to Neubauer. “We must get them to move,” he said. “Once they have left the roll-call ground it’ll be easier to get them out. It’s always like this. They want to stay where they’ve slept because nothing has happened to them there. For them, it means a kind of security. Everything else they’re afraid of. But once they’re in motion again, they’ll keep moving.”

He turned to the kapos. “First bring in the coffee,” he ordered. “And don’t wheel it back. Dish it out! Distribute it over there.”

The coffee cauldron was pushed right into the crowd. One of the kapos ladled it out and poured the brew over the head of the nearest man. It was the old man with the white bloodstained beard. The liquid ran over his face, turning the beard brown. This was the third transformation. The old man raised his head and licked up the drops. His clawlike hands fumbled about. The kapo held the ladle with the remains of the coffee to his mouth. “Drink! Coffee!”

The old man opened his mouth. His scraggy neck muscles suddenly began working. His hands closed round the ladle, and he
swallowed, swallowed, he was nothing but swallowing and slobbering; his face twitched, he trembled and swallowed.

His neighbor saw it. Then a second and third. They raised themselves, shoved their mouths, their hands, close; pushed one another, fought for the ladle, clung to it, a mass of arms and heads.

“Stop that! Damn it!”

The kapo couldn’t get the ladle free. He tugged and kicked, glancing cautiously over his shoulder to where Neubauer was standing. Others had risen in the meantime and were bending over the steaming cauldron. They tried lowering their faces into the coffee and scooping it up with their thin hands. “Coffee! Coffee!”

The kapo noticed that his ladle was free. “Order!” he shouted. “Get into line—one behind the other!”

It had no effect. The crowd could not be kept in check. They didn’t hear anything. They smelled what called itself coffee, something warm that could be drunk, and they blindly stormed the cauldron. Weber had been right: where the brain no longer registered, the stomach was still master.

“Now pull the cauldron slowly over there,” ordered Weber.

It was impossible. The crowd surrounded it. One of the guards made a surprised face and slowly toppled over. The crowd had pulled his legs from under him. He flung his arms about him like a swimmer and then slipped down.

“Form a wedge!” commanded Weber.

The guards and camp police took up positions. “Get going!” shouted Weber. “Make for the coffee cart! Pull it out!”

The guards broke into the crowd. They flung the people aside. They succeeded in forming a cordon round the cauldron and managed to move it. It was already almost empty. Shoulder to shoulder they pushed it out. The crowd followed. Hands tried to reach over their shoulders and under their arms. They continued pushing the cauldron out.

Someone in the moaning throng suddenly discovered the second cart standing some way off. He made for it, swaying grotesquely. Others followed him. But here Weber had taken precautions. It was surrounded by powerful men and promptly set in motion.

The crowd plunged after it. Only a few remained behind, wiping the sides of the coffee cauldron with their hands and then licking their fingers. About thirty others, unable to stir, remained lying on the ground.

“Drag them with you!” shouted Weber. “And then form a cordon across the road so that they can’t come back.”

The ground was littered with human filth; but it had been a resting place for one night. This meant a great deal. Weber knew it from experience. He knew that, as water must recede to the lowest level, the crowd would instinctively try to return here once the frenzy of hunger had passed. This he wanted to prevent.

The guards drove on those who had remained behind. They lugged along the dead and the dying. There were only seven dead—the transport consisted of the toughest last five hundred.

At the Small camp’s exit to the road several men broke away. The guards with the dead and dying couldn’t follow them fast enough. Three of the strongest fled back. They ran towards the barracks and pulled at the doors. That of Barrack 22 gave way. They crept in.

“Halt!” screamed Weber when the guards made efforts to follow.

“Everyone come here! We’ll get those three later. Watch out! The others are coming back.”

The crowd was coming down the road. The food cauldron had been emptied and while the SS were trying to form them into groups for marching off, the people had turned around. Now, however, they were no longer what they had been before. Previously they had been a single block, beyond despair, and this had given
them an inert power. Now, through hunger and food and movement, they had been cast back into despair; fear fluttered up in them again and made them wild and weak; they were no longer a solid mass but many single beings, each one with the remainder of his own life, and this made them easy victims. Moreover, they no longer crouched close together. They no longer had any power. They felt hunger and pain again. They began to obey.

A number of them had been cut off further up the road; some more on the way back; the rest were received by Weber and his men. They didn’t beat them over the head, only on the body. Slowly groups began to form. Stupefied, they stood four deep, their arms interlocked so as to avoid collapsing. A dying man was hooked in between each couple of stronger men. From afar, for someone not knowing what was going on, it could have looked as though a group of gay drunkards was tottering along arm in arm. Then suddenly some of them began to sing. They stared in front of them and raised their heads and held up the others and sang. They weren’t many and the song was thin and incoherent. They walked across the large roll-call ground, past the lined-up labor formations, out through the gate.

“What’s that they’re singing?” asked Werner.

“A song for the dead.”

The three men who had escaped were cowering in Barrack 22. They had forced their way in as far as they could. Two cowered half under one bunk. They had pushed their heads far under it. Their legs stuck out and trembled. The trembling ran over them, stopped for a moment, then began again. White-faced, the third one stared at the prisoners. “Hide me—man—man—” He repeated it over and over again, tapping his breast with his forefinger.

Weber pulled the door open. “Where are they?”

With two guards he stood in the doorway. “Get a move on! Where are they?”

No one answered. “Room senior!” yelled Weber.

Berger stepped forward. “Barrack 22, Section C—” he began to report.

“Shut up! Where are they?”

Berger had no choice. He knew the escaped men were bound to be found in a few moments. He also knew that the barrack must under no condition be searched. They were hiding two political prisoners from the labor camp.

He raised his arm to point into the corner, but one of the guards, glancing past him, forestalled him. “There they are! Under the bunk!”

“Get them out!”

A shuffling started in the crowded room. The two guards pulled the escaped men by their legs, like frogs, from under the bunk. The prisoners’ hands clung to the posts. They swung in the air. Weber trod on their hands. There was a crack and their hands gave way. The men were dragged out. They didn’t scream. They just uttered a soft high moaning while being dragged over the dirty floor. The third, the one with the white face, got up by himself and followed them. His eyes were large black holes. He looked at the prisoners while passing them by. They averted their eyes.

Legs apart, Weber stood in front of the entrance. “Which of you swines opened the door?”

No one answered. “Step out!”

They stepped out. Handke was already standing outside.

“Block senior!” bellowed Weber. “There was an order for the doors to be closed. Who opened them?”

“The doors are old. The escaped men tore out the lock, Herr Storm Leader.”

“Nonsense! How could they?”

Weber bent over the lock. It hung loose in the rotten wood. “Have a new lock put in at once! Should have been done long ago! Why wasn’t it done before?”

“The doors here are never locked, Herr Storm Leader. There’s no latrine in this barrack.”

“Doesn’t make any difference! Have it seen to.” Weber turned round and walked up the road behind the escaped men, who no longer resisted.