The Commandant of Lubizec: A Novel of the Holocaust and Operation Reinhard (11 page)

“It’s a shower,” someone said.

Jozek Blatt looked up to see showerheads hanging from the ceiling. “That’s a good sign,” he said, pointing.

“Yes. A good sign.”

The air became more humid as others pushed in.

“Ugh. It stinks of chlorine.”

“Make room. Make room. I’m getting squashed.”

“Ouch. Careful.”

It could be that David Stawczinski, our imaginary piano teacher, closed his eyes and thought about playing a baby grand in some restaurant. Bits of Rachmaninoff twinkled in his ears and this calmed him. He tried licking his lips but his mouth was dry, and maybe, in these last few minutes of life, he glanced down at his hands. His knuckles and tendons had spent years learning how to tap dance across the stage of a piano, but now they were just curled fists against his chest.

When the metal door slammed shut and the screws were spun home, David’s muscles tingled for him to do
something
. But what? He could barely shift his weight from one foot to the other because there were so many men packed in around him. The room was electrified with fear and a low whispering began.

“What’s happening?”

“Where are we?”

“Stop pushing.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“Yes, fine.”

“They wouldn’t kill good workers.”

“It wouldn’t make sense.”

“No sense at all.”

“It’s just a shower.”

“Yes. Just a shower.”

An engine was clattering behind the wall and the guards beyond the door began to laugh.

David felt like he was going to hyperventilate and his head swiveled around at each new sound. He tried to swallow but he couldn’t. His throat was dry. His palms were sweaty. A wild energy gripped his muscles but he also felt paralyzed, jacketed.

“Will it take long to die?” a little boy asked.

David looked at the steel door and saw a glass peephole. An eye peered in. It looked to the right, the left, it blinked a few times, then disappeared. Someone on the outside shouted, “Time to die!”

“What was that?”

“What’d he say?”

“I couldn’t hear.”

At first there wasn’t much to notice except that the engine had shifted into a higher gear and something overhead made the vents change direction. David, like the other men in that room, looked up and began pushing at his neighbors nervously. Whispering turned into shouting as everyone began to realize why the engine was whining at such high speed and why the door had been screwed shut. The vents blew out something hot, but no one realized how much poison was spilling into the room because carbon monoxide is colorless, odorless, and tasteless.

The room began to sizzle with panic. Survival instincts kicked in and the men lurched against the steel door because it was the only exit. Those at the front were crushed and their rib cages cracked. The whole room floundered with shouting and hollering as men turned into beasts. They clawed and gouged for escape.

David began to feel lightheaded and he watched an old man with white hair begin to convulse. His eyes rolled back into his head while—in the corner of the room, in those places not yet soaked with gas—a young boy tried to climb the wall with his fingernails. He boosted himself up onto the backs of others and roared for help. Several men in the center began to vomit. Those against the door banged on it with their open palms.

“Let us out! Let us out!”

David found his hands doing things that surprised him. He punched and pushed and clawed and ripped. He burned with incandescent rage and wanted revenge against the Nazis for putting him in this caged-animal situation. He held his breath and told himself he’d be fine, that somehow he’d survive, and while he was thinking this an image of his mother floated into his mind. She was in a park, the sun was shining, and she held out her arms. Men jostled against him but David Stawczinski held his breath and focused on the park. He counted to ten. One … two … three …

He’d have to breathe again and he wondered how the gas would feel in his lungs. Would it hurt? Would he cough? He kept on counting.

Six … seven … eight … nine …

He made it up to twenty-three before he had to take another breath and when he opened his esophagus to let in the air it felt like he was drowning in a deep river of thistles. A dizziness made him see purple dots. Fireworks went off in his skull and he felt like he was falling off a tall canyon. He closed his eyes but that sinking, tumbling, dropping, oozing feeling remained with him. Men and boys collapsed around him as he continued to hold his breath. He stumbled backwards and began to weep. Another inhale. The room stank of vomit and piss and shit and although he could smell these things he couldn’t smell the gas that was killing him.

There was so much he still wanted to do, there was so much he still wanted to see. He felt an overwhelming sense of regret, not that he was dying, but that in thirty-two years his dreams had somehow eluded him. He wanted to perform in Warsaw, Kraków, and Lwów, he wanted to see Paris and walk around the ancient streets of Rome, he wanted to drink wine on the Mediterranean and ride a camel in the Sahara and maybe take an ocean liner across the Atlantic, but in one horrible moment he realized none of it was going to happen. None of it.

He closed his eyes and thought about his mother standing in a park. It was a beautiful cloudless day and he began to count. One … two … three …

His mother was waiting for him. He ran to her.

We can never know what it was like inside that gas chamber. We can only make guesses. We can only hypothesize and speculate. Precisely because we can never know what these victims were thinking or feeling, we bump up against the central paradox of Lubizec itself: Whenever we read eyewitness accounts from former prisoners, we know in the back our minds that at least
this
person survived, at least
this
person made it out, at least
this
story won’t be hopeless, and this means our focus necessarily shifts from death to life. The absolute unrelenting horror of the Holocaust is dulled because we know that eyewitness accounts by their very nature are stories of life. But Lubizec was not a place of life. It was a place of clockwork murder and annihilation. To understand it we need to read hundreds of thousands of stories just like David Stawczinski’s, and then we need to imagine each of them dying.

Our hearts, though, can only take so much horror.

Because of this, the victims become faceless ghosts that are pushed into gas chambers. We watch the door swing shut and we turn away. It’s easier to cope with Lubizec if we do this, but in order to understand the place in any meaningful way we need to know about women like Giesela Wilenberg and we need to imagine her worrying about what the guards will do to her naked daughters. Perhaps she draws them close and tells them everything will be okay. Maybe she wipes their tears away. It could be that she tries to be strong even though inside the secret corridors of her mind she is quaking. She holds their hands and when the steel door booms shut she leans into their ears. As the gas kicks on, she tells her daughters to look into her eyes.

“Look at me. Look at me. Are you listening? I have
loved
being your mother. Do you hear me? I love you. I love you. I love you.”

While we cannot know what these people were thinking or feeling we must not allow ourselves to see them as faceless numbers. That’s what the Nazis did—they were numbers that needed erasing. All the sunrises they had seen, all the lips they had kissed, all the shoes they had bought, all the tears and underhanded deeds and acts of generosity and presents and toothaches and music and
laughter and hugs and stomachaches and blisters and dancing, it all got snuffed out in Lubizec. Imagine 710,000 candles flickering away and then, in one gigantic storm, they are all blown out. There is a sudden intake of breath and then—

One of the more heartbreaking stories about Lubizec occurred on August 27, 1942, and we only know about it thanks to “Allied Forces Report No. 3042.” The story would have slipped into oblivion if Captain Joe Ehrenbach hadn’t interrogated Heinrich Niemann as well as he did in 1946. The fact that Niemann brought the story up at all suggests how unusual it was, even for Lubizec.

It was raining heavily that day, a real monsoon, and when the afternoon transport arrived everyone was surprised to find 150 boys stuffed into a single car. Apparently an orphanage had been liquidated near Warsaw, and as the rain came down harder and harder, Guth climbed onto his specially made wooden box. He held a black umbrella and spoke into a microphone as the boys cupped their hands to catch what was falling from the heavens. They opened their mouths and stuck out their tongues. Thunder rumbled in the sky and lightning shocked the horizon. The rain came down onto the platform so hard it looked like dancing sparks. One guard said it was like a river had been turned upside down.

“I think I saw Noah building an ark,” another guard joked. “It was a huge amount of rain.”

The boys weren’t listening to Guth so the guards began hitting them with truncheons. A terrible wailing filled up the platform as rain guttered off the cattle cars and, standing in the middle of the boys like a protective willow tree, was a tall man in a hat. When the guards asked who he was the man simply answered, “The director of the orphanage.”

Although we don’t know this man’s name (let us call him Aron Joffe so that at least he has a name), he could have abandoned these boys and taken his chances at Lubizec, he could have said he was by himself and that he was a hard worker, but that’s not what he did. Instead, this tall man stood in the middle of 150 terrified boys and did something profoundly good.

“You’re all with me,” he shouted. “Boys, boys. We’ll be shown to our rooms shortly. Hush now. Stop crying. You’re all loved.”

When order was restored, the guards stepped back under the long wooden awning. Guth stood beneath his umbrella and continued his speech as if nothing had happened. He smoked a cigarette and flicked it against the glossy wet train.

“Welcome to Lubizec,” he said, climbing down from his box.

The boys were herded into the Rose Garden, where they clustered around the tall man in a hat. Aron Joffe, as we are calling him, looked around as if sizing up the camp. He nodded as if coming to some kind of horrible realization. Water dripped off the brim of his hat.

“Boys, boys,” he said. “Listen. Do I have your full and complete attention? Good. As you’ve all heard, we need to take a shower. Yes, I know it’s raining and … yes, we probably don’t need a shower but … listen to me … listen … after
that
we’ll be given bread and butter and cookies.”

Some of them cheered.

“We need to follow the commandant’s orders first and then he’ll give us a big, beautiful meal.” He stressed the last word with a smile. “I’m sure the guards won’t hit anyone if we follow their orders. Isn’t that right, Herr Commandant? No more hitting?”

Guth usually went back to his office but on that rainy afternoon of sheeting water he stood beneath the hemisphere of his umbrella and nodded. The boys were then marched down a narrow path. They stomped in puddles. They took off their clothes and talked about eating boiled eggs, different kinds of cheeses, apples, and potatoes. The director of the orphanage encouraged them to think of other foods as he took off his waistcoat and unhooked his belt. He folded his trousers and took off his hat as the rain kept on coming down.

“What else will we eat?”

The boys began to shout. Toffee! Pierogi! Matzah ball soup! Pears! Cherries! Lamb! Salmon!

When the director was completely naked he covered up his penis with one hand and kept the list going, as if he were conducting a symphony. “What else? What else?”

The boys, all 150 of them, marched up the Road to Heaven shouting out food they would soon be eating. The guards stood in the pouring rain and didn’t raise their clubs. They simply watched the boys file past them into the whitewashed building as if they were on some kind of strange field trip. The director paused when he heard the clattering engine. He covered his mouth and let out a little gasp.

“Oh, my God. You boys are
so
wonderful,” he said with tears in his eyes. “Thank you for being so good and beautiful. You’re all loved. Do you know that, boys? All of you. That’s right. I’m coming too. I’m here, boys. I’m here.”

When everyone was inside, the man ran both hands through his wet hair and turned to Guth.

“How can you bring yourself to do this?” He broke down. “They’re such good boys. They’ve done nothing wrong.”

Thunder crackled and roiled the sky, but Guth said nothing.

Crying came from inside the brick building and the director wiped his eyes. He took a deep breath, smiled, and stepped in.

“It’s okay. I’m here, I’m here.”

Guth stood beneath his black umbrella and tried to light another cigarette as rain came down harder and harder, faster and faster. The huge steel door on Chamber #4 slammed shut. A moment passed, then another. The flowers outside the gas chamber quivered as the rain pelted them. There was the sound of a prayer being sung in the gas chamber but when the engine revved into a higher gear the singing turned into screaming. At first it sounded like they were all going down a roller coaster together, but then it turned into absolute terror. It was like a breaking wave of screams. Above it, a man shouted out words of love.

“I’m here, boys! I’m here!”

Hans-Peter Guth looked at the sandy path covered in little footprints. The rain began to fill them in.

More trains would be arriving tomorrow and he needed to send the weekly numbers to Berlin. He walked across camp, opened the door of his office, and leaned his umbrella against the wall. Thunder crackled across the sky, booming and rumbling. It made
the windowpanes shake. Guth sat down in front of his typewriter and consulted the train schedules.

They came from towns with names like Zakrzówek, Bilgoraj, Szczebrzeszyn, Sokal, and Sambor. Turka, Kolomyya, Wlodawa, Zamosc, and Sasów. Kielce and Grabow. Kraków and Lublin. Two came from Paris. One came from London. Two hundred and twenty-three from Berlin.