The Last Night At Auschwitz

CHAPTER I | A VOYAGE INTO THE UNKNOWN-2

Joachim, who had meanwhile moved a little, pushing us with his elbows in the vain attempt of getting some space, dared open his mouth, lips trembling, to ask me:

‘You said that there were other moments in history, comparable to those we have experienced for the past three years...’

I smiled at him, surprised by the fragility and suffering permeating his voice. During the past 24 hours Joachim had turned into a moribund, the moment he had been forbidden to dream his yeast dough recipes aloud. He had begun to cough spasmodically, in an increasingly suffocating crescendo, until he crouched down at our feet, out of my visual range. The ordeal that this tiny man was enduring down there, suffocated by overcoats and almost deprived of breathable air, made me truly appreciate my athletic build. When he got back among us, an hour later, the little guy’s face was scarlet and his eyes dull, opaque, and sunken in. I decided to answer his question nonetheless, to make him forget about our situation for a while. After exchanging a glance with Morritz, we pulled apart as far as we could, to make a bit more space for him.

‘Yes, my friend, there are other moments in history comparable to these wretched times, and we don’t even need to dig that deep into the past. The Great War was an absurd, utterly useless g******e in itself, where millions of so-called civilized people lost their lives. And behold, we haven’t learned anything from it, we’ve only refined our killing devices, we’ve sharpened our blade hilts only to start over again. All these crimes and atrocities have been committed in the spirit of relentless nationalism, of ethnicity and of nations’ independence...! I am firmly convinced though that one day these belligerent peoples will want to unite into a unique nation – United Europe – because all the economic, social and political levers will eventually lead to it. And these millions of deaths, of individuals that have given their lives for the abstract notion of homeland?! They will have died in vain, as it happened with all wars, in all ages of history . . .’

The heartbreaking scream of a woman nearby silenced me.

‘He died...! God almighty, he died!’

An endless series of screams followed, but the crowd, brutalized by cold, hunger and thirst just ignored them, waiting for them to die out, from sheer exhaustion. Scenes such as these had generated much emotion a few days before, when the first people had died in the wagon, too weak and breathless to cope with the dreadful conditions, as we could barely move our hands without disturbing those around us. Information was travelling fast from mouth to mouth: ‘His father died ... he was only 63, a remarkable man, a doctor ... suffocated.’ ‘His younger brother died ... of starvation . . .’

Now it was a small child, who couldn’t find a single drop of milk at his mother’s breast in the last 48 hours, but even this information had become commonplace and failed to arouse much interest. A simple statement, of the kin ‘maybe it’s better this way’, accompanied by a curt nod, would seal the grave of the newly deceased, giving them consolation and guidance towards the next world.

The smell of putrid flesh mixed with that of feces was so heavy that the mere realization of the fact that they were prisoners in that place induced instant, involuntary stomach spasms to many of them, without being able to throw up, as there was nothing to throw up. At first, we were ashamed of each other, trying to abstain from physiological needs for as long as possible, but we had to cope with it as best we could in one of the four ‘toilets’ improvised from some bags piled up in the wagon’s corners. The urine would immediately drain through the thick oak planks, but the rest stayed there, to accompany us throughout the voyage. We all stank awfully, competing with the corpses that had started to swell next to us.

The excruciating screeching of the wagon’s breaks and the inertia that followed the abrupt braking rocked the crowd from side to side so hard that the frail ones got trampled underfoot. The wagon stopped and absolutely everyone held their breath to better listen to the sounds outside. You could hear the barking voices of some German soldiers, who were running alongside the train.

‘Can you see anything outside?’ dared an impatient voice, lost somewhere in the middle of the wagon.

A swift rumor followed, quickly extinguished by lack of information. In the end, the guy who could see outside through the planks exclaimed something, which was picked up by the curious crowd, from mouth to mouth.

‘Bielsko-Biala!’ said mister Morritz, who had in his turn been informed by an old lady behind him.

‘What can it mean?’ I asked. ‘Where are we...? Unfortunately, this name doesn’t ring a bell...’

The stunned faces around were an answer in itself.

Again, the Germans’ voices got closer to our wagon. This time we could hear clearly enough what they were saying.

“There are few survivors in the first three wagons ... they were probably airtight, they suffocated... I liquidated them. We’re detaching them from the rest of the train right at this moment, herr Obersturmführer, for disinfection.”

“Check the state of the other four wagons.”

“Understood...”

As soon as the deadbolts were unlocked, the massive wagon door started to glide rightwards, letting in the light. It blinded us all and we instinctively covered our eyes with our hands. In the general bustle, both the dead and the living located near the door tumbled down, probably right at the German soldiers’ feet. Until we managed to sober up, we heard the metallic rattle of two bursts of gunfire, followed by the screams of the women in the wagon, frightened that their hour had come. The children were silent, hidden underneath their mothers’ skirts.

They heard the soldiers’ mocking laughter, which covered the hubbub of the terrified crowd.

‘A miracle...! They’re alive in here, almost all of them...!’

When my eyes adjusted to the light, I could see a glum person, dressed in brown clothes, probably SS, flanked by two soldiers armed to the teeth. The sky was light grey and it snowed sparsely, snowflakes blowing to-and-fro on occasional gusts of wind. Behind them, there was the platform of a small, partially wrecked train station, home to some dozens of crows patiently waiting for their meal.

‘Guten Tag,’ the person said slowly, breaking the glassy terror which had frozen us all.

Then he turned to the others:

‘Empty the wagon of debris, corpses, then re-seal it. Check the others also.’

The soldiers, holding napkins to their noses, rushed to the wagon and started pulling away the corpses, while the relatives were wailing despairingly. The crying was most probably driving them crazy because, for no reason at all, one of them grabbed a girl by the collar and, helped by the other, he pulled her out of the train, where they dropped her on the stone platform. Her every attempt to get up was met by boot kicks in the abdomen, so hard that the girl was soon inert. A woman wearing a scarf made way among the prisoners shouting something at the soldiers in a Slavic language, as far as I could tell. She was probably the girl’s mother. A gun butt across the head blew the woman’s scarf off and she dropped to the ground like a log.

The crowd around me pushed forward to get a better look, hiding the two women from my sight. However, two gunshots and the soldiers’ hysterical laughter forewarned me.

‘Did you see that b***h?! She wanted to attack us, no less... Anyone else wants to protest...?!’

The soldier who had spoken raised his submachine gun and aimed towards us. From where I was standing, I could well see the dark gun barrel and the muzzle through which Death could spit us in the face with lead. The crowd simmered down, staring in fascination at the gun in the fair-haired kid’s hand.

Within the next five minutes, under the supervision of the two soldiers with their guns pointing at us, all corpses had been silently unloaded. Only about two-thirds of those who had embarked in Vienna were still alive. Not for long though, because they brought other people from the other wagons, whom they pushed in with us as tightly as possible, constantly threatening to shoot them. Only when we were so crammed that we seemed packed like sardines were the soldiers satisfied and they shut the door. The sound of deadbolts locking was even harder to bear than the first time.

Still haunted by the killing of the two women, we all remained silent, striving to breathe, mouths greedy for air raised towards the wagon’s ceiling. In about half an hour, the locomotive signaled our departure and the wheels started turning, leaving the jokes and the pleasant journey wishes from the Nazis on the platform behind. It was only then that I could breathe a sigh of relief, casting meaningful looks at my neighbors, whom I could distinguish mostly from the glimmer of their eyes in the half-light.

‘Where do you think they’re taking us, mister Severin?’ said the physics professor, without any mention of what had just happened. We both knew that there was no point in reminiscing and commenting on the gruesome scenes we had witnessed.

‘I heard there’s a concentration camp somewhere in Poland ... or maybe more, who knows?! Some soldiers back from the front had made some comments and thus this rumor had spread in Vienna. It’s small wonder, as Hitler has declared himself in favor of them since the beginning. He even pointed out that he was doing nothing else than copying the model initiated by the British and the French in the colonies...’

‘And you think they’re taking us there...?! Is it good news, I wonder...?!’

We were silent for a while and I kept on looking straight into his panicked eyes. The little guy – who had been hiding at our feet until then – showed up, drinking in my every word.

‘Frankly ... yes! And you know why? Because they could have killed us right here, in Bilesko-B ... B ... whatever this place is called. Why so many scruples? We don’t mean anything to them, as you saw for yourself. This can only mean that they’re taking us somewhere to get us working in one of their many war factories. They need work force, after all, don’t they?! Since all German men are on the front, someone has to produce those bloody bombs, arms and tanks, don’t you think?!

Hearing my words, the little guy seemed to pick up again a little.

‘So, you mean to say that we’ll receive a warm meal...? Water and bread?! But that is wonderful!’

‘Yes, but we’ll have to work your ass off, as the concentration camp is not a boarding school for young ladies ... I’m certain of it!’

‘I would do anything for a bit of food, I’m dead serious! I’ve lost a lot of weight and I ran out of spunk. I’ll soon yield to a kind of soft lethargy from which I will probably not wake up again...’

I watched him sympathetically. He seemed to be a decent man, as long as he was not going back to his stories of warm sesame bagels and sourdough breads fresh from the oven.

Mister Morritz even smiled at me, he seemed excited about the perspective of factory work.

‘Your reasoning seems correct, mister Severin. It’s worth living a while longer, only to see what’s at the end of this road, isn’t it...?! Anyway, the good Lord won’t let us perish like this, He will take care of us’

Saying that, his moist eyes sprouted tears that sparkled in the dark, like the stars that he was studying with such passion. The scene we had just witnessed utterly contradicted his statement and he knew it as well as I did. And such scenes were probably happening right at that moment all across Europe, without “the good Lord” appearing to notice or to wish to intervene.