999, page 29
“The normal army, the Wehrmacht, went strictly by the book. They shot partisans. In the case of Jews, they jailed them and asked the Slovak fascists to take over. Hence Jews caught between October 1944 and early February 1945 could still be deported to German camps.”
That is what happened to Ivan’s mother, sister, and the rest of his family. Deep in the mountains fighting with the partisans, he did not know they had been caught and deported. His mother, Eugenie, would die in Ravensbrück; his sixteen-year-old sister Erika would survive.
In a last desperate attempt to rid Slovakia of its Jews, the Hlinka Guard and German security police would arrest every Jew they could find that September. Over the next two months, an estimated 12,600 Jews would be deported, “mostly to Auschwitz.” As punishment for the uprising, almost no Slovak Jews were registered in the camp. As with the Hungarian Jews, upwards of two thousand people at a time were gassed.
WATCHING THE THOUSANDS of Hungarians and people of other nationalities moving steadily past them like a tidal surge on their way to the gas chamber changed everyone working in Canada. Faith diminished for even the most devout. Girls who had survived for two years did not pray as regularly as they had in the beginning. By Rosh Hashanah, 1944, no one from the first transport was fasting on Yom Kippur. New girls like Julia Birnbaum did fast, and she was not alone. At sundown on Yom Kippur, Julia folded her piece of bread into the pocket of her apron. She would have two pieces of bread tomorrow at sundown and hold her fast for the Lord, her parents and her people.
With a lovely soft face and arching high cheekbones, Julia was still a beautiful woman when she gave her Shoah testimony. Closing her eyes, she describes a scene that is clearly playing out as a movie in her mind. Sitting on their koyas that night, the girls who had decided to fast prepared themselves with prayers, rocking back and forth in the tradition of “davening.” In the midst of their prayers, SS Franz Wunsch burst into the block. He went “berserk. He got hysterical.”
“You idiots!” he screamed at them. “You still believe? You believe after what you see in the fire?” He took out his whip and began beating the girls “left and right.” He grabbed the scarves off their heads and tore them into pieces. “He was foaming from his mouth. He was not normal.” The girls fell to the floor to avoid his thrashing, and finally he ran out.
Helena always maintained that their love had changed Wunsch and softened his heart toward her people. Was that transformation wishful idealism, or had he been ordered to punish anyone caught praying on that holy night? Within months of saving Helena’s sister, he had beaten devout Jewish girls for praying and would soon perpetrate another atrocity that would come back to haunt him after the war. Whatever the backstory on Yom Kippur, Wunsch was an SS with a job to do, and being soft toward Jews was not part of his job description.
Chapter Thirty-Six
IT WAS SEPTEMBER 30, 1944. The Slovak men working in Canada, who were responsible for emptying the cattle cars, recognized their own families arriving on the first Slovak transports in almost two years. Friends. Former neighbors. Lenka Hertzka’s sister Lilly, the new baby, Lenka’s two-year-old niece whom she never met, and her mother—who had written so often and encouragingly to her, sent her tins of sardines and virtual kisses—were now standing in the line for the gas. For some reason, Milan was not with his mother.
It was soul-destroying torture for the Slovak girls of Canada. The few family members they had left on the earth—the only hope they had of ever having a homecoming—were now heading for certain death, just on the other side of the fence. Irena Fein saw her sister with her children. Did Irena suddenly wish she could rescue her sister as Helena had done? Would she have dared? Irena watched as the last of her family disappeared into the brick building of no return.
It only took a moment to look up and see someone you knew or for someone to see you. Torn between wanting to hide and wanting to see people they knew and remembered, they took turns watching the lines. But these were difficult, one-sided reunions.
Lined up outside the gas chamber, Klary Atles’s father and mother saw Margie Becker sorting the clothes in Canada.
“You look good, Margie!” Rabbi Atles called out to her. She was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a nice shirt. Her hair had grown out now and almost reached her shoulders. “Have you seen our daughter, Klary?”
It was a normal question to ask. They knew Margie had been on the first transport with her. Margie froze, unable to answer.
“Oh, she’s not alive anymore?” Klary’s father said, sadly.
“The crematorium was just two steps away.” Margie looked at them and thought, In a few minutes, you won’t be alive, either.
EARLY IN THE morning of October 7, 1944, as the night shift stood across from the day shift waiting to be counted and to exchange places—work for sleep—a huge explosion shattered the austerity of Canada. Smoke and particles filled the air. For once, the ash was not of human beings but of concrete. One of the gas chambers had been blown up.
How hard it was not to cheer the “boys of the Sonderkommando.” The girls could not even smile, though their hearts were singing joyously as the sirens wailed.
Within minutes, hundreds of SS leapt from the backs of trucks and jeeps, and thundered into Canada. Around Canada. Past Canada. The backs of fleeing boys bobbed between tree trunks, as visible as a deer’s white tail. SS bullets struck their marks.
Some of the boys ran into the sorting barracks, where they quickly buried themselves in deep piles of clothing. Several SS held the girls at gunpoint while others hunted for the culprits. Everywhere there was screaming. Yelling. Barking. Snarling. The girls were used to people dying quietly. The boys died loudly. Every shot ricocheted through the empathetic hearts of the young women. The lives of the “boys” of the Sonderkommando being snuffed out fractured the morning. There was one comfort: It was better to be shot than gassed.
In a thorough search of the sorting barracks, the SS stabbed mounds of clothes with their bayonets. SS Franz Wunsch found a boy hiding in the coats. SS Otto Graf found another. They dragged the boys outside and threw them to the ground, where they kicked and beat them until there was no breath left in their bruised and broken bodies.
“We knew now is the end of us,” Linda says. “Absolutely the end.” They had seen too much. It was only a matter of time before they, like the boys of the Sonderkommando, would be executed to keep the secrets of Auschwitz in the silent ash of its gray soil. There was no way they would ever be allowed to leave alive.
The next morning, the kettle of tea arrived with a whispered camp bulletin: Four young women had been caught. One of them was their coworker Roza Robota. They had not given up a single name, despite hours of torture. The underground network was safe.
The girls passed the news among themselves, sipping their tepid tea and hiding smiles behind their red bowls. The story of the girls who had smuggled the gunpowder to the Sonderkommando filled every female prisoner with pride, courage, and secret defiance. Maybe they would all die, but at least they had done something. Those young men and women had struck a blow for everyone, and everyone took it to heart. Maybe they would survive, somehow. Maybe the world would know the truth, someday.
Unfortunately, while the resistance had struck a blow, only one gas chamber was damaged beyond repair. The killing machine was barely going to limp toward the Final Solution.
Part Three
Map Showing the death marches from Auschwitz of male and female prisoners on foot. Detail: Map Showing the routes that women from first transport were forced to take after the death marches, leading to camps in Germany and Austria, 1945.
© HEATHER DUNE MACADAM; DRAWN BY VARVARA VEDUKHINA.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It is being honest
about my
my pain
that
makes me invincible.
—NAYYIRAH WAHEED, Salt
ROSE (#1371) WAS RELEASED FROM BLOCK 11 in the fall, but she was not returned to the farm in Harme. Instead she was commandeered into a work detail designated to clear up the rubble around the destroyed gas chamber. It was hard work, but she was lucky to be alive and out of Block Smierci.
As the Russian front neared, the SS moved prisoners deeper into the interior of Germany in preparation for a possible evacuation. On October 28, Bertha was transported to Bergen-Belsen with 1,038 other prisoners. Most probably on that transport was a young Dutch girl no one had yet heard of, Anne Frank. Bergen-Belsen “was the worst. We didn’t have strength anymore, the food was horrible, and there was no work.” Bertha did get some work; she was placed in the hospital again, “where there were piles and piles of dead bodies.”
A few weeks later Joan (#1188), Ella (#1950), and Ella’s sisters—Edie (#1949) and Lila (#3866)—were transferred to Reichenbach in Germany, about 200 kilometers from Auschwitz, where there was a weapons factory.
Back in Auschwitz, the only way prisoners knew what was happening in the outside world was through the prison grapevine, which came with the kettles of tea every morning. As the men carried the iron cauldrons to the blocks, they passed the latest news to the servers, who in turn gave the news to the girls standing in line with their red cups. “They were telling us that there were people in connection with the underground fighting against the Germans,” Linda recalls. The most important message was, “Keep going, keep going, maybe we will be the lucky ones who will come out.”
Things were definitely changing. Unbeknownst to the prisoners, Himmler had ordered the end of “killing with Zyklon B in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.” The transports had also stopped, but “the killing went on in different ways. They killed the people by shooting them. They brought some people, you know, thirty, forty people, which they killed. They let some of them in. But the mass killing was over.” The girls in Canada continued to work twelve-hour shifts, sorting clothing and other items. And there was a flurry of activity as the SS slipped into the sorting depot, “stealing clothing, and jewelry, and valuables. It was a bonanza.” Like squirrels storing nuts for winter, the SS pilfered “everything they could” to secure their own futures.
THE WINTER OF 1944 sent another arctic blast across Europe. Facing their third winter in Auschwitz was an unbelievable feat for the girls; hope was obscured by clouds lingering on the gray horizon. “Here and there, we found pieces of newspaper. So we saw the war is coming to an end.” Most of Europe was already occupied by Allied forces, and airplanes were flying overhead all the time. “They bombed quite a few times, but never the camp [itself],” Linda recalls, “and we were praying for it.”
Despite the report that Rudi Vrba and Frank Wexler had written and the maps they had drawn of the camps in the spring of 1943, the only buildings destroyed by bombs were two barracks full of brownshirts, German soldiers who were not even SS. Those young men had gone so far as to flirt with the Jewish girls and give them a loaf of good German bread, the first the girls had eaten in years. Minutes after the soldiers had given the girls their bread, the soldiers’ building was flattened. The prisoners’ blocks were safe. The SS headquarters, the electric fences, the tracks, the crematoriums and gas chambers—all remained intact. Captive inside the camp, prisoners were terrified that the end of the war would come too late to save them.
“I swear to you,” one of the SS told Linda and the others, “the only way to freedom for you is through the chimney.”
MEANWHILE, EDITH HAD HEARD that “there were a few girls from Humenné working in the sewing detail, and I told Elsa we should try to get the work fixing clothing.” She had good instincts. Even though they were working inside and cleaning the blocks, getting out of Birkenau was the smartest thing they could have done, as tensions and tempers escalated among the kapos and SS. The worse the war went for the Germans, the worse it got for their prisoners. With the help of one of their friends, Edith and Elsa got into the sewing detail “where we mostly just darned socks all day.” In this detail Edith found two friends from Humenné, the Gelb sisters, Kornelia and Etelka. It was the last job they would have in Auschwitz.
JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS, Linda and the other girls working on the night shift in Canada lined up across from the day shift. In front of the groups sat two nurses at a table. “The first five in the row had to go up a table,” where the nurses drew blood from the girls’ arms. The German blood banks were empty and now they needed their slaves’ blood. The girls winced at the prick of the needle and watched as their blood filled vials to save their enemies.
After so many years of being untouchable inferiors, being called and treated as less than human by their captors, suddenly their blood was suitable to be mixed with Aryan blood and save German lives? “They squeezed out the life, inch by inch of us. They squeezed out [our] blood, too.” As a reward, each girl was given a loaf of bread and some salami. The only positive thought that occurred to Linda was that the war must really be ending; why else would the Germans stoop to using Jewish blood? They were not blood “donors,” Linda insists. Not one girl there would have given blood to the German army freely. The Germans called Jews bloodsuckers; now “who were the bloodsuckers?” Linda asks. “Not the Jews. They literally sucked our blood out at the end. And it was done by force.”
ON CHRISTMAS EVE, an SS came into the block and announced, “We are going to have a special treat.” He clapped loudly and ordered everyone to the sauna. Slowly, Linda, Peggy, and their friends moved away from the relative safety of their block in Canada toward what they believed was certain death. The sauna was where prisoners were disinfected and processed, but ever since Crematorium V had been destroyed there had been rumors that the sauna had become a secret gas chamber as well. They looked at each other with black fear in their eyes.
“This is it,” Linda thought. At least she would die with Peggy (#1019), who had become one of her best friends.
Inside the large empty space of the disrobing area, a stage had been set up. “It was very nicely done.” The girls looked around the room in awe and confusion. SS were sitting on chairs at the front of the makeshift theater; there were Dr. Mengele and Dr. Kremer, the infamous SS woman, Irma Grese, and Camp Supervisor Maria Mandel. Silently, the girls settled in the back of the room. At least if the SS were there, they were not going to die by gas.
Onto the platform stepped two 0f the Greek girls, Susie and Lucia, who worked in Canada. Dressed in evening gowns, they were almost unrecognizable,. Susie cleared her throat. Hummed a note. Lucia hummed in tune with her. Then Susie opened her mouth and began to sing.
Che bella cosa na jurnata ’e Sole . . .
Their voices rose above the cement of the sauna and burst into the hearts of the girls of Canada. Linda and the others may not have known Italian or Neapolitan. They may not have known what the words meant. They may not have even known it was a love song. But as Susie turned her eyes to Lucia, and Lucia picked up the refrain, the girls knew the song was for them.
Ma n’atu Sole
Cchiù bello, oi ne’.
’O Sole mio . . .
Their voices lilted over the heads of SS and Jew alike. They shared the same air, the same blood, the same music, the same moment. The two sopranos serenaded their fellow prisoners, knowing full well what they were singing and what the words meant. How many years it had been since any of them had thought, What a wonderful thing, a Sunny day! Had felt the serene air after a thunderstorm, the fresh air.
They had lost sisters, brothers, friends, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, cousins, daughters, and sons. The room was awash with memories of sun-filled faces, now gone. Did Ruzinka see Aviva’s cherubic face in song? Did Helena cast a furtive glance at Franz Wunsch? For whom did Linda long or had she forgotten how to dream of love? Would any of them live long enough to ever see a lover’s face at night?
Their voices crescendoed higher and higher, lifting the girls’ hearts and hopes by octaves. Their faces became suns, their voices the girls’ path to some faraway place. Where love songs were supposed to die, “O Sole Mio” lived.
THAT NEW YEAR’S EVE, the SS drank and celebrated while the prisoners of Auschwitz held their breath. If the end was near, how much longer would it take? Would 1945 be the last year of their young lives, or the beginning of a new era? To celebrate the first dawn of the New Year, one hundred Polish women, along with one hundred Polish men—all political prisoners and most likely participants in the Warsaw Uprising—were executed by gunshot outside of Crematorium V. The girls working the night shift in Canada shuddered. Those sleeping woke. The skies overhead were ominous. There would be more executions. More transfers. More losses. In the four days between New Year’s Eve and January 4, the population of the women’s camp in Birkenau declined by more than one thousand. They were probably transferred to other camps, but the record is not clear about where they were transferred to, and being “transferred” often meant something else entirely.
Although American bombers were doing regular reconnaissance now, flying overhead and taking aerial photographs of the complex, Auschwitz was a nightmare that would not end. In the late afternoon of January 6, the girls in the sewing and laundry details were called outside for an afternoon roll call. Among those with Edith and Elsa were Rena Kornreich, her sister, Danka, their friends, Dina, Ida Eigerman, Ruzena Gräber Knieža, and others from the first transport. Anything out of the ordinary caused alarm; marching down the road toward Auschwitz I was ample cause for worry. They were halted in front of the executioner’s scaffold.
