The Commandant of Lubizec: A Novel of the Holocaust and Operation Reinhard (9 page)

And then one day he was asked to drive a special train to Lubizec.

“What’s the cargo?” he asked.

“You’ll see.”

“More tanks? Troops?”

“Oh God, no. No, no. Something else.”

And so it was that Oski found himself carrying passengers in a way that stunned him. When he was interviewed in 2004 by that historian from the Holocaust Museum, he spoke matter-of-factly but occasionally he had to stop and take a long drink of water. He pulled on his left ear as if trying to block out a sound he didn’t want to listen to. The historian, David Zimmer, set up a small camera and it is clear that Oski Kszepicki is wrestling with ugly images from his
past. He swings between smiling and wanting to cry, all the while pulling on his left ear. From this thirty-minute interview we know he stopped his train many times to let other freight trains loaded down with tanks and artillery pass by. His cargo of people could wait in the blazing heat or the blowing snow because they weren’t weapons for the war. They weren’t considered valuable.

While his engine breathed quietly on a side track, he could hear screams from the back and if he turned his ear towards the wind he could hear people begging for water. The constant screams, especially from babies and young mothers, distressed him so he sat near the valves of his engine and went about the business of making sure the firebox was stoked with coal. He was pleased to have a modern engine that fed coal directly into the hopper by way of a mechanical auger. Shoveling coal wasn’t necessary because technology was making his life easier. But that didn’t mean his job was easy. Far from it. Sweat always rolled down his face and he was covered in grime. His hands were badly calloused from years of pulling stiff levers but he was content with this because it meant he could touch the warm metal without protective gloves. He knew that hundreds of human beings were trailing behind him in locked cars and he knew exactly where they were going, but he chose not to think about it. He stared ahead and didn’t think of the future.

The Germans always gave him a bottle of vodka—“to make the job easier”—and at first Oski had no interest in becoming a caricature of a Polish drunkard, but when he pulled into Lubizec for the first time he uncorked the bottle. By the third day he was used to drinking and powering the train. It was easy to drop the bottle into a fire bucket and go on pulling levers. He only had to worry about dehydrating from the overpowering heat and making sure that he slowed the train down in time. He took a sip of water and a sip of vodka. He alternated like that. Water, vodka. Water, vodka. He’d stick his head out the side and blast the whistle when he approached a road. Sometimes he might glance back at the cars and see hands grasping the air like they were trying to squeeze water out of nothingness. This made him turn back to the bottle of vodka. He focused on the
trees that blurred past him. Sometimes he worried about the Polish Underground dynamiting the line ahead and his engine tumbling off the tracks—but this never happened. He just kept going down the line.

When he reached the woods surrounding the death camp he came to a stop and listened to the clicking huff of the engine. He let out two long blasts of the whistle to signal that he was ready to approach the platform. A green light flickered on up ahead and, when he saw this, he let the massive steel wheels spin back to life. The train rolled down the tracks and came to a grinding, hissing, complaining, stop.

Oski Kszepicki never jumped down from the train. He cleaned the regulator rod or fiddled with safety valves or jiggled the ash grate as people were ordered out of the cattle cars. The train rocked slightly as hundreds of people jumped out at once. Shrieks of anguish filled the air and sometimes he blasted the release valve to drown out their noise. His engine had a life of its own and he went back to caring for it. The hot belly glowed with nourishing fire when he opened the iron grate. Heat pushed against his trouser legs and he felt the pores on his forehead open up. Sometimes he leaned out the window of his driving cab and watched people on the platform. They moved like bees in a box and there was so much noise. Corpses of infants were thrown out of the cars along with packages and suitcases. Ragged people held on to their children. They looked up at the gigantic WELCOME sign above the iron gate of the camp. The commandant stepped onto a specially made wooden box and delivered a speech.

“It was always the same,” Kszepicki told the historian. “It never changed.”

“And what did you do during this speech?”

“I greased the rods or looked at timetables. Sometimes I cleaned my hands with a rag.”

“Didn’t you … didn’t you feel
guilty
about bringing these people to their deaths?”

At this point in the interview Oski Kszepicki shakes his head. Nothing is said for a long time.

“I could have been replaced. Another would have done my job.”

“But
you
did it. Not someone else. You.”

Here Kszepicki stands up and leaves the room. The video camera stops recording. It starts up again later (we don’t know how much time has elapsed) and Kszepicki is back in his leather chair. His eyes are bloodshot and puffy as if he has been crying. The historian asks him to please finish the story. Kszepicki goes on to say that once Guth finished his speech everyone was marched through the gates. Guards beat people with rubber truncheons, which made them move faster.

“They were driven on like cattle. With whips,” Kszepicki added. “They were given no time to think about their situation.”

Luggage was strewn across the platform as prisoners in little teams began to clean everything up. Another team pulled the dead out of the cars. These corpses were thrown into a wooden cart and taken away—where to Kszepicki couldn’t say because he never went into the camp itself. Hoses were unspooled and the cars were washed out. The chalk numbers were scrubbed off with wire brushes and everything was made clean again. Chlorine was splashed into the cars and the terrible reek of a chemical cleaning agent filled up the air.

At a nod from one of the SS guards, Oski Kszepicki, that same little boy who once loved trains, would pull a long lever and his train would shudder back towards the village. At a roundhouse near a vegetable market he would set off towards Lublin, Kraków, or Warsaw. The train that had been packed with human beings thirty minutes ago was now completely empty, and the cars were left open to air everything out. The stink of chlorine trailed behind it.

At this point, David Zimmer, the historian, asks Kszepicki a simple question. “In your opinion, did the people around Lubizec know what was happening inside the camp?”

Kszepicki speaks without hesitation. “Yes. Absolutely. The farmers, they watched my train pass with a full load and I returned later, empty. Where am I taking these souls? They must have asked that question. Where? Even if you were blind to these trains, there were those bonfires of human flesh.”

Guth didn’t concern himself with the villagers living beyond the boundary of his camp because for him they were simply Poles that had been conquered by the Third Reich, they were second-class citizens. Serfs. Peasants. Laborers. It’s true he wanted to hide the meaning of Lubizec—but not from those living near the barbed-wire fence. No, he wanted to hide its purpose from the arriving Jews in order to keep them calm. If they realized the true intent of the camp before reaching the gas chambers his schedule might be thrown into chaos. And he wasn’t about to let that happen.

It slowly occurred to Guth that greater deception was needed, especially within the first ten minutes of arrival. After the victims were pulled off the train they stood on the platform and grew more nervous as each minute passed. They looked around and began to suspect they weren’t really at a train station at all. But where were they? After one particularly messy incident when a rabbi was shot for refusing to obey orders, the crowd almost revolted and Guth realized that the victims needed to feel safe, at least for the first few minutes of their arrival. But how?

The idea came to him as he studied his clipboard and paced up and down the empty platform. His boots clicked off the wooden planks and he made notes about loose nails that needed to be pounded back into place. He looked up and began to nod.

“Yes, that might be a solution,” he said.

He shouted for his deputy, Heinrich Niemann, and they marched off to his office where they made a long list of improvements. Later, when Niemann was interrogated by the U.S. Army about his role at Lubizec, he said the idea was the “mark of a genius.” The officer who transcribed Niemann’s testimony was horrified but he took excellent notes about what was said. Captain Joe Ehrenbach, from Brooklyn, was a Reform Jew but he didn’t tell Niemann this until after the interrogation was over. It is easy to imagine Captain Ehrenbach gathering up his notes (perhaps he smiles as he taps the
sheaf of paper onto the table) and that’s when he tells Niemann he is Jewish. Regardless, Ehrenbach’s work provides us with many private conversations between Niemann and Guth. In fact, “Allied Forces Report No. 3042” gives us a surprisingly clear picture of what happened next at Lubizec.

According to Niemann, Guth’s idea was put into action that same day. Phone calls were made. New supplies rolled into camp. Planks of wood were hauled off a train. Boxes too. Windows were unloaded along with sacks of nails, shingles, and guttering. It only took a few days to build a fake train station next to the platform, and Guth modeled it after a toy in his son’s bedroom. He brought the little model into camp and placed it on his desk. He called in his senior officers and ordered them to build a full scale replica, green roof and all. The men crouched down and examined the tiny station.

Guth looked out his office window. “When the Jews arrive they don’t see what they
expect
to see, which is a railway station. Well, we’re going to fix that.”

A rainfall of hammers echoed around the camp and the air filled up with the smell of freshly cut lumber. Used trolleys for luggage were lined up on the platform. Train schedules to Lublin and Kraków were framed. Travel posters to Berlin, Athens, and Barcelona were placed next to the exit, which led to the massive WELCOME sign. A large clock was placed on a wall and its gigantic hands were set ticking. The guards laughed at how realistic it looked. There were signs for the WAITING ROOM and the TICKET OFFICE. Suitcases were stacked beneath a large sign that read, FOR IMMEDIATE DELIVERY TO JEWISH RESETTLEMENT AREA.

Guth called it “The Last Station” or, sometimes when he was in a more festive mood, “The End of the Line.”

Now, whenever a train pulled into Lubizec, people could look at travel posters and train times. They could squint at a clock and imagine other trains coming and going. This wasn’t anything to worry about. It was just a junction, just a station.
Yes
, the arrivals could tell themselves with confidence,
we won’t be here long. We’re going somewhere else. No need to worry. This Lubizec is just a little stop on the
journey. We’re here to stretch our legs and maybe get something to eat
.

When everyone was off the train, Guth stood on his specially constructed box and cleared his throat.

“Welcome to Lubizec. I am
Obersturmführer
Guth, commandant of this little transit camp. We’re very sorry your journey wasn’t convenient but we’re at war and cannot spare more pleasant accommodation for rail travel. You will be given bread and cups of tea shortly. I give you my word as an SS officer that everything will be better now. Much better. We’ll take good care of you here.”

Sometimes a person might shout, “Thank you,
Obersturmführer
!”

Guth then announced they would be sent to work in a nearby village, but first they needed to be disinfected with a shower. Men and boys would go first. Women and girls would follow. All females needed their hair cut to reduce the spread of lice.

“You will be treated well,” Guth added.

They were taken into the camp at a run and the massive iron gates were shut behind them. After this, the truncheons and whips came out. The separations began.

Guth usually strolled back to his office around this time but occasionally he stayed to watch the Green Squad sort luggage. He paced up and down the ramp and pointed at trash that needed to be hauled away. He nodded at chalk numbers on the side of the cars that weren’t scrubbed off properly. He inspected many of the cars himself to make sure that no one was hiding in the darkness and “denying their fate.”

It was also around this time that Jasmine wanted to know more about the camp. For what reason, exactly, had she left her home, her family, all her familiar comforts, and traveled to this lonely godforsaken backwater? For what reason, exactly, had her plans and desires been derailed, pushed into the ditch? Arguments boiled up every night about the need to drink seltzer water instead of tap water, and about the strange orange glow on the horizon. What on earth were they doing in Poland and why on earth did they have to stay?

In order to get some peace, Guth did something illegal. Even though it was strictly forbidden to take photographs inside Lubizec
(or any other death camp), he took several snaps of the platform, the travel posters, the WELCOME sign, and of luggage being hauled away by blurry-faced prisoners. He also took photos of his office, the SS canteen, and the vegetable garden. He brought these photos home to prove that he ran a transit camp, to prove that he had some desire for a shared life, that he understood her feelings and cared about her curiosities. In spite of his military bluster, he wanted to be a good husband and father. That was important to Guth. He wanted a home life where the outside world could be shut out, especially after what he saw in the trenches of World War I. He could feel the space between him and Jasmine growing, and he took these photos because he could think of no other way to bind her closer. As we shall soon see, however, this only made matters worse.

Guth was so pleased with the effectiveness of “The Last Station” that he wrote a twenty-page report to his superiors about it, and twice a day he stood next to his specially constructed box, waiting to recite his lines. He lit a cigarette and stared down the narrowing tracks. He took several long drags and adjusted his hat. The train blasted its whistle from deep in the woods and a green light was activated that told the conductor to proceed slowly. A great huff of black rose up from the pine trees.