999, page 25
AS THE ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY of the first transport passed, Edith explains their bodies had learned better how to survive. “Not that things were better, but our bodies began to get used to certain conditions—weather conditions, living conditions. When we first came in, we didn’t know anything, but now we knew” how to survive. Starvation had taken its toll on mental acuity and physical strength, but once a body had adjusted to the lack of food, it also figured out how to sustain itself, at least for a while.
The occupancy level of the women’s camp was just over fifteen thousand, but women were about to be registered with numbers close to forty thousand. In one year, more than twenty-four thousand women and girls who had been registered in camp had died, most of them Jewish. Of the fifteen thousand women now registered, more than ten thousand were listed as “not used for work,” and 2,369 were defined as “not able-bodied,” which probably means in the hospital or in Block 25. Now that women’s deaths were finally being calculated at the end of each month, a clearer picture of the women’s camp arises out of the ashes of their history. The totals for the month of March 1943 reveal devastating losses: 3,391 women died in camp, 1,802 of them in gas chambers. That means 1,589 women died of disease, starvation, medical experiments, or violence.
With the typhus epidemic still raging, Commandant Höss ordered that all vehicles used to transport prisoners now had to be disinfected thoroughly. He also ordered that the prisoners’ clothing be disinfected after they were moved from camp. Reading between the lines of the order, one can see that he is referencing the trucks taking prisoners to the gas chambers. How else would there be clothing to disinfect without human beings in them?
THE POLISH MEN who drove the trucks in and out of the women’s camp in Birkenau and helped the girls in the leichenkommando were always asking for a little extra food, which Bertha and the other girls generously shared whenever they had any to spare. With these men came outside information, and as winter receded, they let Bertha and the others know that Passover was a few weeks away.
It is understandable that for some, faith was impossible. “Who needed religion there?” Edie (#1949) asks. “We could not have religion. We couldn’t have nothing. Who would be bothered?”
Bertha, for one, bothered. She and her friends decided to risk holding a Seder and let the others in Block 27 know their plan so that they could begin organizing food. One of the girls smuggled raisins out of Canada, and someone else organized a lemon and some sugar from the kitchen workers. Those were all the ingredients they needed to make raisin wine, except water.
The girls of the leichenkommando had access to drinking water, but they needed a container. Margie’s container was probably the one they used. In the middle of the night, the wine-makers set the container atop the wood-burning stove in the middle of the block and waited. A watched pot never boils; it takes even longer when your life depends on it.
In the preemptive silence of a Birkenau night, there was always a gunshot’s report, a troubled dreamer’s moan, a death-rattle breath, a scurrying rat. But in Block 27 that night, there was a sense of mystery in the darkness. This was God’s work. It gave their lives meaning. Resistance does that for the spirit.
With the water finally boiling, they added the raisins, lemon, and sugar and covered the container with a kerchief to keep the wine clean from debris. Setting it up high in the corner of one of the koyas so that the rats would not get into it, they left the wine to ferment and fell asleep.
Every twenty-four hours, someone stirred the wine with her spoon. On the second day, a few bubbles had formed on the top; by the third day, the raisins had risen and were bobbing about on the surface and starting to lose their color. The liquid had turned from clear to light amber. It was working! After a week of fermenting, the wine was dark brown—not the most appetizing color, but it was wine. The girls strained it through a clean cloth into their red bowls. Then, when the container was empty, they poured the strained wine back into the container, covered it again, and let it sit quietly on the upper koya until Passover.
Dr. Clauberg had a different idea about how to celebrate Passover. He had chosen Peggy and “another four or five from Poland, who were also long in Auschwitz” for sterilization experiments. “They dressed us in beautiful striped dresses, a nice three-quarter coat, a beautiful kerchief. I had a little hair already.” They were waiting by the door in the morning when Erna, one of the Slovak doctors who worked with Manci Schwalbova, saw them standing there.
“What are you doing here?” she asked the girls.
“I don’t know what we are doing here,” Peggy told her.
Erna went directly into the office to speak to Dr. Clauberg. “You don’t need to make experiments on girls who are a year already in Auschwitz,” she told him. “There is nothing anymore to make experiments on. They don’t have their period. Nothing. You are better off taking newcomers from the new transports.”
Ten minutes later, she came back out of the office and said, “Girls, go back to your block. You’re going to work.”
The curvaceous and beautiful Marta F. (#1796) from Prešov would not be so lucky. On April 1, 1942, Commandant Höss would designate Block 10 of the main camp, under the command of SS Brigadier General Professor Dr. Carl Clauberg, for sterilization experiments on women.
THIS YEAR’S SEDER would be different from the first year’s spontaneous recitation of prayers. And that was true all over Europe; secret Seders were being held by Jews in camps, in ghettos, in hiding, and by those who were barely free. This ancient tradition connected Bertha and her friends to a larger world—an invisible, spiritual world. They were not alone in Auschwitz. They were praying with thousands of their people, many of whom were now in the same predicament as the first girls had been a year earlier, or worse off. And still they prayed. “You play with your life to do something like this,” Bertha explains, “but it was worth it.” If they were going to be punished for being Jewish, they might as well act Jewish.
As evening descended and the shadows outside lengthened, the girls of Block 27 organized themselves on their koyas. One of the women in the block was a Hebrew teacher, and she instructed them as a rabbi would have, giving meaning to the rituals and reminding them of the prayers. The homemade raisin wine was poured into their red bowls and held over their heads. One of the girls had smuggled potatoes into the block. There was no matzo, but to eat a potato! The ritual fed their souls and brought God into the misery of their lives. If God could lead their ancestors out of slavery, how could he leave them in Auschwitz? “In the darkness, we prayed for freedom.”
Chapter Thirty
Postcard image taken from Eugene Hartmann interview, 1996.
USC SHOAH FOUNDATION—THE INSTITUTE FOR VISUAL HISTORY AND EDUCATION; sfi.usc.edu.
May 6, 1943
Dear Lenka!
We just received your card today. We have to take turns to write to you every week—and believe me, it is a cause of such heartfelt love. I will also send you something, but sadly everything is uncertain and difficult. I will send clothes and stockings. We are well. Only our great concern about you makes life bitter. Otherwise, all is well. We got something from Nusi [unreadable] but hear nothing about Magduska! We also read the cards from the Wahrmannova girls [also on first transport from Prešov], with whose parents we are often together. Please give them our most heartfelt wishes.
WE KISS YOU!
Pipapio [Grandpa], Lilly, Milan
Crossing its path in the mail was a letter from Lenka to her brother, Simon, that gives us insight into Lenka’s life as a functionary. She lets him know that the post is delivered to prisoners every Friday and apologizes that she “couldn’t write in December” as she had been ill “for a few weeks.” That she was ill and allowed to return to work says volumes about her upper-level position in camp. “We are here with a number of Prešov girls and have had the chance to spend some free time together,” she writes. “I have also made many new friends here.” No wonder the family was confused. If she was seeing lots of girls from town why wasn’t she also seeing her younger cousins? This was her first card to mention anything cryptic, though: “Nusi and Zola are with Zsenka, our cousin.”
Almost immediately Mama and Lilly wrote back. “Magduska’s mother [Irma] is very sick, Bela cries for Magduska and blames you that you do not write about her. Nusi’s mother would also like to know . . .Who is Aunt Zsenka?”
Prisoners were often so cautious with coded messages that they were indecipherable. But we can guess that by May 1943, the sunshine-faced Nusi Hartmann was dead. The postcard the family had received from her was one of those that had been postdated and sent after she died. We have no idea under what circumstances Olga Hartmann (Nusi) died or on what date. Magduska’s fate was also still a mystery.
“DRESCHLER WAS UGLY.” Everyone said so. Her big buckteeth protruded from beneath her lips even when she tried to close them. Notorious for beating and otherwise abusing prisoners, she was feared and hated by everyone. You certainly did not want to hear her shouting your number angrily, as if it were a death sentence. But then Edith and Elsa did. The mere sound of Dreschler’s voice screaming her number made the skin on the back of Edith’s neck prickle. What now?
—1970! Is still outside?
The number hung on the hot breath of the ugliest SS in the world. Elsa looked at Edith in terror. Did they face the wardress or run? And where could they run, especially with Edith’s limp? Slowly, eyes hugging the ground, Edith turned around.
Dreschler was pointing at them and almost hitting their block elder with her stick. “How do you let such prisoners go out for work, still?” She pointed at Edith’s tiny frame and Elsa’s terrified face. “They are here a long time. They have earned being someplace to work a little less hard, not to work so hard outside in rain, and snow, and freezing rain! Give them good jobs!”
Their block elder, Gizzy, who was also from the first transport and did not have a reputation for being either kind or fair, looked at the two girls with disdain.
—Now!
Dreschler yelled in the block elder’s face.
—You! 1970! You are a Stubendienst! Gizzy ordered.
Edith hesitated. Elsa didn’t move.
—You too! She waved at Elsa.
—Get inside!
Edith and Elsa scampered out of roll call and back into the block before Wardress Dreschler could change her mind. Except for her short stint in the white kerchiefs, Edith had worked outside for almost a year and a half. Few people could survive working outside for so long, certainly not those from the first transport. Edith couldn’t believe their luck. Suddenly, their lives had changed for the better. They would no longer be working every minute under the constant scrutiny of the SS with their dogs, and no longer be as vulnerable to SS whims. Of course, a few weeks later, Wardress Dreschler would slap Edith so hard that she flew through the air and landed centimeters from the electric fence. They weren’t that safe.
Getting the job as a block cleaner “felt like a whole new era.” As Stubendienste, Edith and Elsa now rose extra early to accept the kettles of tea when they arrived on trucks. They served the girls heading out to work before roll call then cleaned the inside of the blocks and the koyas, emptied the ashes in the woodstove, swept the dirt floor, and served the bread when the girls came back from work at night.
That first night in their new positions, Edith and Elsa were called by one of the other room attendants into the block elder’s room and handed a few pieces of extra bread. Edith watched as those in charge of their block showed her and Elsa the trick to cutting the bread into quarters that left the middle untouched, so the functionaries in the block could get extra portions. Edith had worked hard labor for so long that her loyalty was for those still suffering outside. Why should girls working less vigorously get more food?
“I don’t want this!” she blurted. “It’s stolen bread. Maybe because of this piece of bread, a girl died from hunger. It’s not bread for me.” She looked at the girl who had more weight on her bones than anyone else in the block. “And you don’t need it, either.”
“What? Do you think that by not eating this little piece of bread, you will stop it?” the girl yelled back indignantly. “You can’t stop it!”
“That is on your conscience,” Edith hissed. “You will do what you want, and we will do what we want.”
Elsa nodded in solidarity with Edith. “We don’t want this bread.”
They stuck to their allotted slices and turned their backs on the greed of the more fortunate. To refuse extra portions may not have been easy for some, but for Edith and Elsa, it was an act of spiritual resistance. One more instance in which young women did their best to preserve their spiritual values and act humanely in the face of so much inhumanity.
When the cauldrons of soup were delivered by the men that Sunday, Edith and Elsa helped ladle the lunchtime allotment into the girls’ red bowls. This was the first time either of them had been in a position to help those around them, and it did not take long for the girls to realize that Edith and Elsa were stirring the soup so that the vegetables and bits of meat rose to the top and were ladled into their bowls. Whispers began to filter down the line: “Elsa and Edith are mixing the soup. Get in Elsa and Edith’s line.” Girls changed lines and thanked Elsa and Edith for serving everyone equally. Starvation makes people stingy. It also makes you remember every slight. Survivors are quick to remember anyone who stole food from them, and every extra bit of food they were given.
Working as Stubendienste may have started as a relief, but nightmares were a constant in camp. One afternoon, Edith returned from running an errand and entered Block 13 to find Elsa sobbing hysterically. One of the women had gotten through the registration processing despite being pregnant. It happened sometimes. The woman’s belly wasn’t so far distended that anyone had noticed, her prison clothes hid the bump, and there had been no selections to reveal it. When she went into labor, Elsa ran to get Dr. Manci Schwalbova. It was dangerous to deliver a baby in camp. The crying could attract the SS or one of their many spies. Everyone involved could go to the gas for helping the mother. Such was the horror of life in a death camp—there could be no life. Certainly no new life. There was only one way to save the mother’s life, and that was to get rid of the baby.
It was before two o’clock in the afternoon, so the trucks had not arrived yet to remove the bodies piled outside the blocks. Elsa was the one who had to hide the baby under the corpses so that the SS wouldn’t find it and do an inspection of women prisoners. It was crying when she abandoned it.
Hyperventilating. Hysterical. Her eyes bloodshot from the torrent of tears, Elsa told Edith what she had done. They held each other and wept. The mother lay on the middle shelf, unable to move, lost without her child. Milk dripped from her breasts, untasted.
Edith’s eyes are red and brimming with tears as she recalls the incident. Anguished and sobbing, she blurts out, “How did I survive this thing?”
How did anyone?
TRUE TO HER word, Frida Zimmerspitz (#1548) had been working on a plan to escape from Auschwitz since the day she and her sisters arrived. Their younger sister Margit had come on a later transport with four more of their cousins. “We were a big family in the camp, and we didn’t want anyone to lack anything, so some [the Jewish kapo, Frances Mangel-Tack for one] assumed roles in order to protect the family,” Eta Zimmerspitz (#1756) says. “It is hard for me to explain . . .” It is not too hard to understand though. Families helped each other, and Frances Mangel-Tack made sure those who did not get jobs as functionaries got into Canada.
Eta and her sister Fanny (#1755), and their other cousin, Martha (#1741) lived in the same block as their cousins, the Zimmerspitz sisters. This should have worked in their favor, but the four sisters had formed a closed unit and did not allow anyone—not even their cousins—inside. Frida ran the entire block as if it were the Zimmerspitzes’ personal fiefdom. They were working a few sidelines as well. “The sisters got too popular,” says their cousin Frances Mangel-Tack. Popular with the SS maybe, but not with other prisoners. Frida was thought to be a spy for the SS.
“They were not nice,” Ruzena Gräber Knieža (#1649) says. One of the sisters even stamped her foot and yelled at Ruzena, “You haven’t died yet? You’re still here? I thought you died ages ago.”
According to Eta Zimmerspitz, the sisters didn’t even share the extra bread they purloined. They were considered the worst kind of functionary, lording their rank over the less fortunate and running a black market through the sorting detail, trading bread for gold, diamonds, and jewelry.
The SS “liked that [Frida] was spying for them,” Frances Mangel-Tack tries to explain in her eight-hour testimony with the USC Shoah interviewer. But “she was spying against them.” The story Frances tells is convoluted and confusing. She talks as if we should know everyone she is talking about, and it is hard to follow the players. But comparing her testimony with those of her cousins and other survivors, we begin to get a clearer picture of what Frida and her sisters were doing. It all had to do with greed. The SS wanted to smuggle contraband out of Canada to send home; the sisters collected the valuables brought to them by the girls in the sorting details, trading gold and valuables for food. Then they bartered the prisoners’ swag for special favors from the SS.
The girls in Canada risked their lives smuggling valuables out in their pockets and shoes, then made their way to the Zimmerspitz block, where they traded their valuables for food or medicine. “It was disgusting what they were doing,” Ruzena Gräber Knieža says, “selling bread to starving girls.” But gold is inedible, and in Auschwitz that meant it was less valuable than bread.
