Born Survivors (20 page)

A women’s block in a concentration camp

Those who slept on the bottom of the three-tiered bunks had the best position, but they were still pestered by the rats that scurried around in the damp earth and gnawed the dead skin from their feet. Those in the middle suffered terribly from heat and a lack of oxygen during the summer months, and those on the top burned up in the heat and were drenched in the winter, although they could at least eat the snow or lick at the rainwater. Whichever level the women were on, they all woke with stiff muscles and bruised bones.

With no work to do and nothing to think about but fear, hunger and unbridled thirst, Priska and the other prisoners dreaded each new hour and waited anxiously to learn their fate. Trapped in the foul air of the hut, each half-lit day seemed to stretch endlessly and the enforced idleness only demoralised
them still further. Many women had gone mad and wailed with longing for lost children, parents or loved ones. Their despair was contagious and death was seen as deliverance. Others – broken and indifferent – retreated into themselves, becoming mute and ghostlike as they blindly followed orders in a state of permanent mortal dread.

All were overseen by
Kapos
known as
Blockältesten
(block elders), who were either career criminals who’d earned themselves privileged status, or those who’d proved themselves capable of the kind of brutality the Nazis demanded. Some of these
Häftlinge
had been in Auschwitz for years and had learned early on that their only means of long-term survival was to mimic the incendiary hatred of their masters. Like all the prisoner functionaries in the Nazi system, their tenure depended on their competence. If they were seen to be too lenient, then they risked severe punishment and even a quick journey to the gas chambers. Those who displeased the SS were stripped of their rank and thrown into the very barracks they’d presided over, often to meet their death at the hands of those they’d terrorised. In this way, the
Kapos
helped ensure that order was maintained, especially after dark when there were no SS in the camp. In return for their collaboration they were allowed separate rooms just off the main block, better beds and food. They also had fuel for winter fires. The women in their charge weren’t supposed to talk or collaborate in any way and risked a beating or worse for the most minor infringement.

The prisoners did speak, though, whispering to each other at night in whatever language they shared about friends and family, husbands and lovers, children and their lost lives. Thoughts of children, parents and husbands tormented them. They yearned for colour and laughter, birdsong and flowers. Occasionally they would recite poetry or quote favourite passages from books. If they dared, they’d sing together quietly – often numbers from shows or soppy laments that sparked floods of tears.

Most of all, though, they talked about food. No matter how hard they tried not to, they tortured themselves by conjuring up from memory great feasts with recipes that featured only the finest imaginary ingredients. Salivating together in a stinking human tangle, they would recall family kitchens filled with the aroma of freshly baked bread, tables groaning with food, and the taste of sweet red wine. Only when it became too much to bear would someone yell at them to stop their fantasies and they’d fall silent again.

When they finally succumbed to mental and physical exhaustion they were pressed up against each other so tightly that they were forced into immobility. The SS guard dogs had bigger kennels. Jammed elbow to elbow, on their sides, if one woman had to turn over to relieve a hipbone pressed against the wood or climb down to use the bucket, then they would all have to turn. Their awkward, fitful slumber was punctuated by nightmares, the urgent call of nature, or heartbreaking dreams of home.

Every morning at around 4 a.m. the women were rudely woken with a shrill bell or the banging of a gong, accompanied by shouts and the pummelling of their feet as the female
Kapos
hurried them to and from the
Appell
to stand in lines and be counted and then counted again. Blinded by floodlights and stumbling in the mud, they had to stand five abreast for up to twelve hours in all weathers in the designated
Appellplatz
as they were repeatedly accounted for. Those who felt faint were propped up by their friends, as anyone with poor teeth, scars, or who was too weak to stand was in acute danger of being condemned.

Breathing through their mouths to avoid the ever-present stink of death, they were often naked in the biting winds and ice storms that swept in across the plain. Frequently it was Mengele who, with the quick professional eye of a doctor, decided if they should die that day or be worked to death in a factory for the Reich. So keen was he to do his duty that he often carried out such selections even when it wasn’t his shift.

One day he shocked Priska by walking up to her and roughly squeezing her breast. ‘I was very afraid that I would have milk, but thank God I did not,’ she said. Staring at her with his hazel eyes, the doctor who’d won an Iron Cross for his role in the Ukraine campaign contemplated her for a moment before moving on.

A prisoner whose breast was similarly squeezed was horrified when Mengele cried, ‘Milk! Pregnant!’ Like a director signalling an actor stage left, the slightest motion of his hand had her flung aside and sent to a female prisoner-doctor who told her after a cursory inspection that she was expecting. She denied it but the doctor insisted, so when she went to fetch a guard the woman took the chance to escape and ran back to the
Appell
, an action that saved her life.

Even Mengele had to sleep sometimes; so other medical personnel including Dr Fritz Klein, who patrolled with his dogs and a condescending expression, conducted some of the early morning
Selektionen
. After asking the women their names, ages and nationalities, he inspected their bodies for eczema, blemishes or deformities and then indicated with a jerk of his finger whether they would endure another day’s grace or soon be sucking on gas. A virulent anti-Semite who examined the women before him with obvious distaste, at his subsequent trial for war crimes Klein publicly declared that Jews were ‘the inflamed appendix’ of Europe that needed to be surgically excised.

Every night at dusk, the women went through the same deadly routine as their fates were evaluated once again. Those prisoners who’d given up or whose diarrhoea, disease or dehydration rendered them unable to remain upright were carried off – rarely to be seen again.

Edita remained close to her pregnant charge, helping her to stand up straight and sleeping alongside her to protect and warm her. Occasionally, and always at night, she would press her lips to Priska’s ear and whisper, ‘Open mouth.’ Priska would do as she
was told and a miraculous sliver of raw potato or a tiny piece of black bread would be slipped between her chattering teeth – ‘the most delicious thing I ever tasted’. She had no idea where or how Edita acquired these life-saving morsels in that desolate wasteland but without them, Priska is certain she wouldn’t have survived.

Day and night, the women were bitten by lice that hid themselves in every seam, nook or cranny, and multiplied too quickly to be eradicated. Hunting down and squashing the lice between forefinger and thumb whiled away a few hours. Without medical attention or the chance to remain clean, the bites that the prisoners felt compelled to scratch became infected, often fatally. Further weeping sores were caused by the lack of anything soft to sleep on and the gradual breakdown of the skin through dirt and malnutrition.

With up to eight hundred women in each block, disease rampaged unchecked through their defenceless bodies, with dysentery and diarrhoea a daily scourge. The washing facilities comprised a long trough in a separate barracks with two pipes that sputtered suspicious brown water, and there wasn’t a toothbrush or sliver of soap in sight. The women who had been there longest showed the newcomers how to use sand or grit to scrub themselves, and some used their own urine to clean their sores.

The women were only permitted to visit the block latrines once or twice a day. These comprised two oblong slabs of formed concrete fifty metres long, with fifty holes cut into each of them built over a shallow trench. Having been pushed en masse through the mud onto the faeces-smeared holes, the women were allowed only a few minutes each and had no choice but to wipe themselves with their hands, with dirty straw from their bedding, or on scraps torn from their clothing. The few women who were menstruating had limited means of soaking up the blood. That was one thing Priska didn’t have to worry about as her baby somehow stayed alive inside her shrinking body.

Latrine block at Auschwitz II-Birkenau

With cries of ‘
Weitergehen!
’ (Keep moving!) they were quickly marched back to their blocks until the next
Appell
, struggling to lift their feet and fighting to keep their life-saving shoes from being sucked into the greedy mud.

Each time they were allowed out, an increasingly desperate Priska scanned the camp right and left, praying for a glimpse of her Tiborko. But all she could see were hundreds of unused chimneys from the row upon row of other blocks, scores of wooden watchtowers known as ‘storks’, and the ever-present plume of oily smoke pouring from the furnaces.

Tibor had told her to think only of beautiful things, but what was there to see in this colourless marshland with its horizon of barbed wire where not a single blade of grass pushed its way through the
yellow clay? The stagnant air reeked only of death in that camp that stretched far into the distance. Birch trees swayed under vast skies but the sun was too pale to pierce the eternal gloom, and the birds had abandoned this forgotten corner leaving only a clamorous silence. Where was the rest of the world?

In that complex that specialised in the dismantling of the human spirit, the faces of the shapeless spectres around her were gaunt, their expressions catatonic. Transported East to nothingness and reduced to an inhuman existence, they’d become shadow people, half-mad or half-dead already. There wasn’t the faintest glimmer of hope in most of their eyes. Death seemed unavoidable and inmates often woke up next to a corpse – a fact they often tried to hide in order to claim an extra share of food.

Achingly homesick and longing for the faintest hint of beauty and gentleness, Priska began to grasp that her hopes of survival were ridiculously naive. Tormented by hunger and thirst, itching from her sores and barely able to stand her own smell, she could hardly believe what had happened to her since she and Tibor had been seized from their home. Where was the lovely life she’d known growing up in Zlaté Moravce? When she’d tutored her friend Gizka or gobbled up flaky pastries on the patisserie steps? What about her happiest moments with Tibor eating
Sachertorte
in the smoke-filled cafés of Bratislava, surrounded by vital, intelligent people? Or sitting quietly alongside him as he scribbled in his notebooks and puffed aromatic smoke from one of his pipes? Hitler’s unconscionable master plan had swallowed up her past and now she could only fantasise about such days.

Numb and deeply afraid as she was, there was a point when Priska considered giving in to the hopelessness all around her and allowing destiny to take her, along with the rest. But after losing three babies, the will to survive and the determination to bring her growing infant into the world was surprisingly tenacious. She had no idea if they would make it but whatever happened, she longed to see her husband for one last time.

Male prisoners were kept well away from the women’s camp at
Birkenau, housed in huts on the far side of the sprawling complex. Although a few of the men in striped uniforms were occasionally detailed to clean the latrines or carry out menial work in other sectors, those selected were usually wearing the pink triangles that identified them as homosexuals, so Priska’s quest seemed utterly futile. She began to fear that her suave journalist-cum-bank clerk of a husband had already ‘gone up the smokestack’ or been transported somewhere far away. As the days passed, so her hopes faded.

Then one afternoon, the God that she greeted every night before she closed her eyes finally answered her prayers. Through the coils of barbed-wire fencing she suddenly spotted Tibor in a small cluster of men passing her section of the camp. She recognised him immediately even though he looked so different – thinner than ever and almost transparently pale.

Hardly believing her own eyes and risking being shot or beaten to death, Priska ran through the mud in her clogs to the electric wire – being careful not to touch it – and was able to exchange a few words with him before they were discovered.

Tibor – who just weeks before had celebrated his thirtieth birthday with her – looked twice that age. He was, however, overwhelmed to see his ‘Piri’ and told her how fervently he’d been praying that she and their baby would survive. ‘That’s what’s keeping me alive!’ he cried.

‘Don’t worry. I will return. We’ll make it!’ Priska told him with renewed resolve, before they were forced apart and dragged back to their respective zones sporting fresh bruises.