999, page 15
Working on snow removal allowed Edith and her sister access to one small pleasure: They would pick up cigarette butts left behind by the SS, scrounge old scraps of newspaper, and reroll the reclaimed bits of tobacco in the newsprint. At night, they lit these makeshift smokes from the fire in the woodstoves. Smoking was not a luxury; it had a practical purpose. “It helped stem the hunger.”
Early on, the solidly built Joan Rosner (#1188) was assigned to work in the kitchen. She could not help but feel a little pleased at the opportunity and hoped that extra food would be easy to pilfer. It was not. The SS watched the girls carefully and beat anyone caught nibbling on even a carrot peel. The hours were brutal, as well. The kitchen shift had to wake up at one o’clock in the morning to make the tea. The cauldrons where the soup and tea were made were mammoth. Two or three girls had to climb ladders to reach the vats, and from these precarious positions one girl filled the kettle, while the other two steadied it. Holding the cast-iron kettles steady on the wooden platforms was difficult, and as they wielded giant ladles to fill the kettles, the girls kept burning themselves on the hot metal. Once the kettles were full, the girls had to reverse and maneuver the full kettles back down the ladders to the ground. It was a Sisyphean task, and it did not take long for catastrophe to strike. One of the girls at the top of a ladder lost her grip when she was burned by the side of a swaying kettle; the cauldron toppled and spilled over a girl below. The screams as she was scalded to death must have disturbed even the SS guards on duty because it was immediately decided that the work was too heavy for girls, and “the boys started working there.”
On the construction site, there were even more accidents. Standing on top of one of the buildings, one of the Polish girls, Sara Bleich (#1966), slipped on a loose brick and fell two stories to the ground. Lying in the rubble of bricks and mortar, she stared up at the sky and wondered if this was the end. She was paralyzed. She had also broken her right hand. She knew better than to moan or cry and waited for a death blow from one of the SS or a dog to tear her apart. Fortunately, one of the kinder kapos ordered Sara to be carried to the newly set up re-vier, or hospital block. There, Dr. Manci Schwalbova set Sara’s arm in a cast and treated her back with fifteen minutes of ice, followed by fifteen minutes of hot compresses. It would take Sara six weeks to be able to walk again. By that time, thousands of Jewish girls and women would be in Auschwitz, and young Jewish men had started to arrive, as well. Despite her injuries, Sarah was reassigned to the demolition and construction detail. It was a “heavy-duty task, meant for men. For a young woman like me, it was [inhumane].”
Within a few weeks, girls falling from the tops of the buildings were no longer receiving any treatment. As the SS yelled for them to move faster and work more quickly, two more girls slipped and fell off one of the rooftops. As their twisted bodies writhed in pain, an SS walked purposefully up to them and raised his gun.
“We will have a vacation for having shot them,” he said. He shot one. His colleague shot the other.
Chapter Sixteen
The prolonged Slavery of women is the darkest page
of human history.
—ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
THEY CAME ON FINE STATIONERY and business letterhead, handwritten cards and typed letters. Some came with references from gentile business partners, neighbors, clergy. Rabbis wrote to state that certain members of the Jewish community were vital to the economic well-being of Slovakia, then had to write the government and request their own exemptions. Ever since the proclamation about young, unmarried Jewish women registering for work had been announced in that thunderous blizzard at the end of February, the Ministry of the Interior had been inundated with requests from Jewish families seeking government exceptions, called výnimka. These exceptions provided entire families with exemptions from “work service” and from “rehoming.”
As the reality of the departure of thousands of Jewish girls sank in, and as young men started to be called up for work, rumors that entire families were going to be relocated increased. And as that new rumor spread, more and more applications for exceptions arrived at the Ministry of the Interior. Even government officials were writing references now. The Minister of Education and National Culture, J. Sivak, was noted for helping his Jewish friends and colleagues. The Slovak National Archives has file boxes of these requests. Thousands of them. Pleas for recognition and justice, but mostly pleas for life.
There was a price to pay for freedom, even if you were lucky enough to be recommended for an exception. The irony that Jews had to buy themselves out of slavery cannot be ignored. This was a new economy, and the men reaping the rewards were the same fascists who were deporting Jews and confiscating Jewish businesses and properties.
The first transport had not gone according to Konka’s plan. Neither had the second or the third, or even the fourth. It had been harder than he thought to round up thousands of girls, especially in rural communities. Alexander Mach had been furious when Konka failed to deliver five thousand Jews in five days. He hadn’t even delivered five thousand on five transports. What would the Germans think of them? Konka was fired.
The new Chief of Department 14, Anton Vašek, was soon dubbed the Slovak “King of the Jews.” A tubby, beady-eyed bureaucrat with a lust for money and power, he was about to get plenty of both. With stacks of requests for exceptions arriving each day, his decision was a commodity worth paying financial inducements for. Processing the entreaties for exceptions was no longer carried out on a first-come, first-served basis, or solely dependent on regional governors or mayors; it was based upon who paid the most money the quickest. Vašek was amassing a small fortune selling exemptions—yet often avoided providing the required documentation that would protect the family that had paid him.
Although vitally important to Jewish families, the requests were not a priority for the ministers in Tiso’s government. The process was not quick, and without financial enticement, it took much longer. Is that why the wealthier Amster family got their exception before the Friedmans? Not that it mattered in the end; neither received the documents in time to keep their daughters home.
Emmanuel Friedman did not seem to realize that slipping money under the table was an option or that his daughters’ safety was for sale. Perhaps in early March, bribing government officials was not yet mandatory. By May, under Vašek, the cost of getting an exception was a reality.
They were strange-looking documents. Plentiful dashes, like inked Morse code, ran the width of the page to prevent any alterations. At the top of the page in all caps, the document states it is a legitimate document from the Minister of the Interior, the district and town, and finally a department number. Fourteen was the Jewish Department. Listed next were the head of the family’s name, profession, residence, and birth date, followed by a reference to the statute §22, which legally allowed the bearer of the document to remain in Slovakia. Then came the current date, followed by the Slovak version of Heil Hitler, a hyperbolic reference to the Hlinka regime used for all government salutations at the time—“Na Straz! To the Guards!”—and, finally, a hand-stamped ink authentication from the Minister of the Interior’s office and the minister’s signature. In later exceptions, Anton Vašek’s name would appear on that line. Gejza Konka’s was on the ones created in early March.
The next crucial part of the exception was the list of family members who would be protected by the document, their relationship to the head of the household, and their birth dates. This was followed by an additional reference number, and another Na Straz! salutation. After that section was validated once more by a representative of the Minister of the Interior, it was sent to a regional representative, the mayor or governor of the district, who then had to approve the paperwork. So there are three important dates on every document: the date on the upper portion of the document with the Minister of the Interior’s name is the date the document was in Bratislava. On the lower part of the document, where the mayor of the district is named, is another date. Over a government-issued paper stamp, a legal statement has been hand stamped with a final date, the squiggle of signature and the region’s seal.
One výnimka took at least a week to process in July 1942, but it could be processed only after a formal request had been approved and references from gentiles had been gathered to confirm the Jewish family’s position and importance to the state. In March 1942, delays were more probable because the process was still untried, which might explain why the mayor of Humenné told Emmanuel Friedman not to worry, his family’s exceptions were on their way.
What is most confusing is the length of time between the date next to the mayor’s signature and the date by the regional seal, which should have been available in the same government building, if not the same office. It is also a mystery why the Amster and Hartmann families received their families’ exceptions just a few days after the girls had been taken from their homes, hours before the transport left Poprad, while the Friedman and Gross families received theirs two to three weeks later. Of the many Jews in Humenné, about four hundred would eventually be theoretically protected by presidential exceptions due to economic importance or their having converted to Catholicism prior to 1941.
Emmanuel Friedman’s glazier business, like the businesses of other Jewish professionals, had been Aryanized. It was now run by a kindly gentile by the name of Mr. Baldovsky, who did not know how to perform the tasks of a certified glazier. For those duties, the German and Slovak governments still needed Emmanuel Friedman. These were top-secret jobs, which may sound odd. What business could have been so important that it required Emmanuel Friedman to be blindfolded before being driven to work by a government-appointed chauffeur? The fact was, he was regularly taken to a secret airfield in the countryside, where he spent his days repairing the windshields on bombers. Back in town, Mr. Baldovsky handled more standard duties.
It was after Passover when the Friedman family’s promised výnimka finally arrived. Emmanuel Friedman had been able to find out where Edith and Lea had been taken, either through a postmark on their postcard or through his government contacts. Then he did something that Mr. Amster and the Hartmann brothers had not considered. He asked Mr. Baldovsky to go to Owicim and free his daughters.
Like most people, Emmanuel Friedman still believed his daughters were working for the Slovak government and would be freed in three months, but he and his wife were miserable without Edith and Lea. Why not go to the administrative offices of the work center and present their government exceptions to the proper officials so that the girls could be released? Maybe they could release Adela Gross, as well.
Mr. Baldovsky and Emmanuel Friedman were not so completely naive as to neglect a contingency plan. If there was any trouble getting the girls released, Mr. Baldovsky would make contact with them and help them escape. Once they were on a passenger train, they would be safe because they had exemptions and were traveling with a gentile. That was the plan.
Mr. Baldovsky promptly boarded a passenger train for Žilina, then changed trains and headed for the Polish border.
WATCHTOWERS ROSE LIKE solemn giants in the blizzard. Clusters of snow clung to the barbs on the wire fences. The dark shapes of SS moved through the bright halos around the searchlights of the guard towers. A curtain of snow fell in the dark, clinging to the girls’ eyelashes as they hesitantly stepped onto the lagerstrasse for morning roll call. No one wanted to be out in this sudden April storm: not the SS, not the guard dogs, not the kapos. The new prisoners even less so. Wearing nothing but their slipshod clappers, their feet sank into ankle-deep snow. The wind crept through the bullet holes in their uniforms or up their bare legs under dresses. Ice burned the skin on their cheeks and shaved scalps. Lining up as best they could, blinking back the snow in their eyes, the girls tried to stand without shivering. Arrogant and superior, Commandant Rudolf Höss tramped past the prisoners in one of his rare appearances in the women’s camp. His boots were high enough that the snow did not fall inside his cuffs and as he stomped through the snow, he glared at the unhappy kapos counting the miserable girls. It was a dark dawn, and as “they were still counting us, I heard the SS woman [Johanna Langefeld] tell him, ‘In this weather we cannot send them out to work.’
“Höss stomped his boot and yelled at her, ‘For Jews, there is no weather!’ ”
That said it all. Edith glared into the fury of the storm. Why couldn’t they clean the blocks or something? How could anyone be so cruel? Or was it simply since the wardress had suggested it that he rejected her idea? The fight over who was in charge of the new women’s camp had only just started. Langefeld had not only lost, so had her prisoners. The girls marched out to work as the snow piled up around them.
To further drive home the commandant’s point, the SS man in charge of raising the gate yelled at the girls to take off their “clappers” because the sound of the backs of the sandals hitting their feet bothered his ears. That he could hear anything above the howling wind was hard to believe. But it was his prerogative to do what he pleased. If Commandant Höss could make Jews work, his staff could make them go barefoot. It was all about power. And Jews had none. The girls took off their so-called shoes and marched silently under the archway’s backwards motto: ierF thcaM tiebrA.
Soon after the order that the girls had to take off their shoes whenever they exited and entered the camp, the snow began melting; at least they weren’t walking barefoot in snow anymore. Now it was icy mud. For the girls working in the fields and spreading manure, a new problem arose. The wet clay soil sucked the sandals right off their feet. To lose your “shoe” was equivalent to receiving a death sentence. Linda lost hers in the first days of the thaw. The rest of the girls in the detail, fearing the loss of their own shoes, began removing them before they slogged barefoot through the cold, thick mud carrying manure.
MR. BALDOVSKY ARRIVED at the train station of Owicim, asked directions for the work camp, and walked directly up to the gates of Auschwitz. When the guards stopped him, he asked to speak with whoever was in charge. They looked at him incredulously.
—And who are you?
He introduced himself and brandished the exceptions.
—I have come to liberate Lea and Edith Friedman, from Humenné, who were mistakenly taken for government work service. These are the official documents that relieve them of duty.
The guards laughed.
—What language is this in?
—Slovak.
—We are German.
Mr. Baldovsky explained what the documents said.
—They are exempt from work! he exclaimed.
—In Slovakia, maybe. But we are in Greater Germany now.
They did not know whom he was talking about, anyway. Edith? Lea? Friedman? He had to be kidding.
—What are their numbers?
—They have numbers?
—Everyone has numbers!
Growing irritable, the SS cocked their guns and told the businessman to leave or they would shoot him. Mr. Baldovsky backed away. It was time to enact the contingency plan. He knew the Friedman girls well enough to recognize them, and Adela would be easy to spot with her mane of red hair. Wherever Adela was, Lea and Edith would surely be nearby.
Walking down the road, he made a wide circle around the barbed-wire fences surrounding the rows of brick barracks that comprised Auschwitz. Out in the fields, he could see befuddled creatures walking through snow and mud in their bare feet, carrying muck in their bare hands. Because they were dressed in ill-fitting clothes that blew open in the cold wind, he could see that they wore no undergarments. They had no scarves covering their almost-bald heads. They were certainly female, but they looked more like the golems of Jewish myth than like women.
Mr. Baldovsky shuddered at the sight of them. These certainly weren’t the well-brought-up Jewish girls he knew from Humenné. Scanning the pale gray and beige horizon, he saw nothing and no one else. Auschwitz must be an insane asylum. He concluded that Emmanuel Friedman’s information had been incorrect. There was no way that Edith and Lea were here in this hell. Having failed in his mission, he returned to Humenné and told Mr. Friedman and his wife, “Edith and Lea must have been taken somewhere else. There is no way they were in Auschwitz. That place is not a work camp, it is for the mentally ill.” What would he have thought if he had witnessed the girls in the demolition details throwing bricks down on the heads of other girls?
Edith sighs. “You can imagine, a normal person comes and looks around and sees those girls without hair walking around half dressed. He sees us without stockings, with naked legs in the snow. What impression do we make? Not the impression that we are normal human beings.”
BALDOVSKY’S ASSESSMENT THAT Auschwitz was housing for the insane was quickly becoming true. Many girls were losing their minds. The trauma caused by their abrupt removal from the kind and caring homes of their parents and being catapulted into such brutality caused severe disassociation. Stripped of their identities, emotionally shattered, exhausted, and dehumanized by physical and verbal cruelty, even strong-minded girls had trouble holding on to their sanity. Perhaps they had died and were no longer in the land of the living? Perhaps there was nothing beyond the fog rising from the swamps.
Madge Hellinger took on the task of sleeping next to the most fragile girls who talked out of their heads at night. Like a big sister or mother, she comforted them as they tossed and turned, plagued by nightmares. When they woke to the real nightmare of Auschwitz, she spoke to them gently and encouragingly. Comfort and connection were essential for girls who had no sisters or cousins with them. Being cared for by young women just a few years older helped calm the terror and shock of those first weeks.
