The Dentist Of Auschwitz (27 page)

In October 1944 my brother told me that the doctors from Auschwitz I had not been in the KB for three weeks. “Perhaps there won’t be any more selections,” he said. This proved to be true, and none of the inmates, even the most ill, were sent to Birkenau any longer. Our infirmary became full. The sick were now placed two to a bunk. In November the weather went from cold to freezing. Two more men from Dobra died that month. Days later two Polish inmates were caught hiding in a construction delivery truck. They were arrested and later hanged. The remaining Poles were then transferred out of our camp.

In the infirmary one day I heard loud moaning and recognized the voice of the orchestra conductor Harry Spitz. The band he conducted had ceased playing because most of the musicians had fallen victim to the strain of working in the coal mine. Spitz was well acquainted with me. When he saw me, he stretched out his hand and in a faint voice begged for water. I looked at him. The talented ex-husband of the German nightingale lay forgotten. I asked Dr. Lubicz what was wrong. “There isn’t much I can do to help him,” he said. “He has typhoid fever. He’ll either recover or die.”

I knew that Dr. Lubicz cared and that he would help if he could. Spitz was burning up with fever. “He wants water,” I told the doctor.

“You can give him some, but just a little.”

“Is he allowed food?” I asked.

“Nothing to eat,” the doctor said and left in a hurry.

I brought Spitz a cup of water and put it to his lips. Despite what Lubicz had said, I let him sip a little at a time for nearly a half hour. Then I gave him a few encouraging words. “Hold on, you have a lot to live for. In a few days the war will be over, and you will go back to Vienna.”

“I’ll try, dentist, I’ll try,” he murmured. His eyes closed, and he fell asleep. I watched as his chest rose and fell rapidly. This must have been the worst of his crisis, because from then on he began to improve. Sometimes it took little to turn an inmate’s fate around.

The Nazis tried to whitewash their failures. They came up with new phrases for defeat. “Consolidating forces,” “shortening defense lines,” was doublespeak. They also claimed that the long-awaited counteroffensive was about to begin. The German people continued to swallow the lies. In the meantime, Lipshitz heard that the Allies had taken France and were moving on to Germany through Belgium and the Netherlands. The coal mined by our inmates lay in heaps, unused. There was no purpose in keeping us there, but the dying continued. Nothing would motivate our obsessed captors to stop killing us. Was it Hitler’s Teutonic nonsensical idea of “super race” and “subrace?” Was it because his propaganda made us out to be
Unmenschen
? Or was it just that the Germans followed blindly in Hitler’s destructive wake? We saw Allied bombers flying over Fürstengrube with increased frequency. We looked up and prayed, hoping.

In December 1944 the mean winter storms arrived. Heavy snows fell and piled up in the camp. I still had the last kilo of dental gold that no one picked up. After Christmas the last non-Jewish inmates in our camp were shipped out. Except for the Kapos, Fürstengrube was now 100 percent Jewish. The Nazis bore down even harder on us.

During the first week of January 1945, all work, even construction, stopped. We knew that something significant was about to happen. We heard that the Allies had crossed the Rhein and were deep inside Germany. In the east, the Russians had crossed the Oder and were aiming for Berlin. It was obvious that the German armies were crumbling. Just when hope arose, a rumor swept the camp that we were to be sent deeper into Germany.

By the end of that week we could hear the war closing in. Artillery shells were arcing above us, lighting the night sky with their glow. Fighting grew so intense that we could sometimes differentiate among the weapons. We learned that we were to leave Fürstengrube, but there was no clue about where we were being sent. We feared Birkenau most. Josef Hermann assured us that while he didn’t know where we would be going, he knew that we were not going to Birkenau. “Whoever doesn’t feel strong enough to walk can stay,” he said. We didn’t believe that staying behind would be a safe option. Everyone who felt remotely capable decided to leave. The warehouse was opened, and inmates took the clothes or shoes that were still there.

I took a parting look at the dental station, which had been my security and my torture chamber for nearly a year and a half. Willy and Viky Engel were outside burning the SS office records, under the watchful eye of the newly promoted Scharführer Pfeiffer. Dr. Grosch left the station and returned to his barracks.

I gathered a bagful of dental instruments. Then I saw the melted gold clusters. I packed it all up and went to my brother in the KB. “Two hundred and fifty inmates will remain in the KB,” he said. They were aware of the jeopardy they faced, but they were too sick to travel. They knew that, walking, they wouldn’t have survived long. They hoped that the Russians we heard were approaching might save them. What later happened was reported by a lone survivor in the book
Hefte von Auschwitz,
by Tadeusz Iwaszko.

The SS left with the groups of inmates, and only a couple of foremen were guarding us. Hunger was our only companion. The next day we found outside the fence two dead horses. Those and potatoes we found kept us alive. We heard that the Russians were near. It almost seemed as if they were deliberately passing us by.

On January 17 about twenty SS men came. At first we thought they were also retreating and would not harm us. Anyway, as they saw us, they began to shoot at our barracks. One threw a hand grenade into the KB, where we were. One of them looked in and shot whomever he saw move. I was hit with a bullet in my leg, and I faked death. The SS men then placed explosives at the barracks corners and set us afire. The roof soon caved in, and a part of it fell on me. Most in the block were dead by then. I feared moving, because if they saw me they would kill me. But I also knew that if I lay there I would burn to death. When the flames reached me I had a decision to make. I slowly crawled out on my hands and knees and hid behind a pillar. Then I saw the same SS men going into another barracks, where I knew a few inmates were hiding. This time they didn’t bother to shoot them; they just burned the barracks down.

The people in the nearby villages must have known what was going on, yet no one came and stopped them. Finally, after the SS men left, a few of the villagers came to extinguish the fires. German soldiers in passing looked at us and said to them, “Don’t bother, those are only stinking Jews.” The 239 that were killed were buried afterward in one mass grave. [2]

²
Tadeusz Iwaszko,
Hefte von Auschwitz
16 (Auschwitz: Verlag Staatliches Auschwitz-Museum, 1978): 71. Quotation translated by Benjamin Jacobs.

A
t eight in the morning on January 11, 1945,
we were each given half a kilo of bread, two squares of margarine, and a generous portion of marmalade. The guards searched each barracks and destroyed whatever they thought had any value.

It was a dry and cold day. The snow blew around, and some of the roads were partly covered. We were arranged in fives, as usual, yet for some reason we were kept standing in one place. “We are waiting to meet up with Buna and the other camps around here,” Hermann said. Finally, near midnight, we were separated into units of one hundred and left Fürstengrube. One SS guard with a rifle marched about every ten meters beside us. My brother and I were in the second row. Srulek Lipshitz, the electrician, and Willy and Viky Engel were with us. The Kapos and the much-feared Oberkapo Wilhelm Henkel were just ahead of us. The sound of our boots echoed loudly in the silent night. Many military vehicles were passing us, also headed west.

Suddenly we heard a loud bang, as if a firecracker had exploded. We were puzzled. A few minutes later we passed an inmate lying dead on the road with blood trickling from his head. We had found the source of the noise. Soon Josef Hermann came along the lines with a warning: “The guards will shoot anyone who doesn’t keep up with us.” A few minutes later someone staggered and fell. We looked on in horror as a guard shot him. Before long so many lay dead on the road that we had to walk carefully to avoid stepping on the bodies. At about four o’clock in the morning we came to another group of inmates. They came from Buna.

It was still dark when we were ordered to stop at a big farm. The barn was open, and we were told that we would stay there the rest of the night. My brother and I dug ourselves into the straw; my dental tools lay beside me. My eyes shut, and I quickly fell asleep. When it was barely daylight the Kapos flung their whips and yelled, “Eintreten!” The guards seemed to be in a big hurry. We took our positions in the same rows and left without being counted. Then we learned that we were going to Gleiwitz, a city about seventy kilometers further on.

It had snowed overnight. The snow was heavier and more difficult to walk in. Our shoes got wet, and our feet froze. There were more inmate executions along the road. In the light of day we could clearly see that those who had barely begun to fall behind were shot and left on the snowy road. The killers were not embarrassed. It was routine now. At midday we were ordered to stop at the side of the road. Though the sun shone brightly above us, it failed to bring warmth to our line of half frozen, hungry nomads. I had saved a few scraps of bread and ate them in very small bites. After nearly three more hours of walking I felt weak. Everything looked fuzzy, and my knees buckled. “Josek, I can’t,” I remember saying to my brother as I weaved and staggered. He gripped me by my arm and asked Willy, who was on my other side, also to hold on to me. The three of us slowed down, and we kept falling back until we were in the very last row.

The other inmates recognized me. “It’s Bronek, the dentist. He’ll be next.” I was barely dragging my feet, and my head bobbed up and down. Three guards were behind us. Though fully aware of the consequences and though I tried hard, I stopped thinking about what threatened me. I just wanted to be left on the ground to rest.

“Berek,” my brother kept encouraging me, “move.” Josek and Willy practically carried me. “Berek, it isn’t far. We’ll stop behind this hill,” Josek urged me on in panic. But we did not stop there, and then I really felt defeated. My brother unfolded the blanket that I had carried away from Fürstengrube and draped it around my shoulders.

“Just leave me,” I begged him and Willy. But they kept holding on to me, insisting that we would surely stop at the next farm.

Suddenly Schmidt came by us on his motorcycle. “Was ist los mit dem Zahnarzt?” (What is wrong with the dentist?), he asked.

“He is too weak to walk anymore, Herr Lagerführer,” my brother answered him.

“Hold on, dentist, I’ll send the Lagerältester over,” I heard him say as he sped away. A short time later he came back with Josef Hermann on the rear seat, and I soon felt something being pushed into my mouth. It was vodka. Although it burned my mouth and throat, I swallowed it and took a few more sips. Suddenly I felt my legs grow stronger, and this enabled me to walk until we stopped at the next farm. There I sank to the snowy ground.

“Stand up and wait a few more minutes until we’re counted,” my brother said. That, I sensed, was my salvation, but it was too big an effort for my buckling legs. Josek helped me up and wedged me between a wagon and its wheel that were next to us. With that support I got through the roll call, and then we got food for the first time since leaving Fürstengrube. We were to stay overnight in the barn.

I remember someone shaking me. I opened my eyes, and my brother was staring at me. “Get out, or they’ll kill you,” he said, tugging on me. At first I didn’t know where I was. In my hazy memory I recalled the previous day. I couldn’t believe that I was still alive and was petrified at having to march yet another day. But feeling remarkably stronger, as if new life had been breathed into me during the night, I left the barn.

Several inmates were missing. The guard’s bayonets jabbed deep down into the piles of straw. “Raus!” they yelled, to scare them out. Soon three prisoners covered in straw emerged and were kicked into the lines. More threats followed, and when no others emerged from the straw, Pfeiffer yelled a warning: “I’ll give you one more chance before I burn down the barn.” That failed to bring them out. We counted and found that twelve were still missing.

That morning we got bread, butter, and coffee and left without the twelve escapees. Pfeiffer did not burn the barn down as he had threatened. That was the largest group of inmates I knew of ever to escape. It was another frosty day, and as we moved out the killing began again. It seemed as if we were on a unrelenting pilgrimage of death. At the next settlement was an old stone church with a slate roof and copper spires. In front of it were large heaps of snow. The guards grinned at pretty girls who watched us being dragged through their town. To them we probably did not look human. Outside the town one sign read twenty-eight kilometers to Gleiwitz. We hoped this death march would finally end there. Schmidt, with Josef Hermann behind him on the motorcycle, kept circling us. At noon we stopped to rest. The fields looked peaceful buried under deep snow. Because this region was now swarming with Waffen SS troops, we wondered if the twelve inmates who escaped earlier could elude them. Knowing how far we had still to go, Josek kept checking on me.

When we neared Gleiwitz, it was already dark. There the foundries, mills, and railroads were still intact. Some smokestacks emitted heavy, dark soot. We were led through the center of the town amid a large convoy of military vehicles, which passed us. Eventually we came to a large group of prisoners, who were enclosed behind an eight-meter-high wire fence covered with an iron roof that was normally used to store coal. Two railroad tracks ran to the inside. The prisoners came from the Deutsche Werke, an iron foundry outside Gleiwitz. Some inmates from Fürstengrube had arrived before us. The remnants of coal were everywhere. We each received a bit of bread, coffee, and a small sausage. We remained there through the night.