The Theory and Practice of Hell (24 page)

Not all the interior camp details boasted tolerable working conditions. There were important exceptions—the gardening detail, the cobblestone detail for the camp streets, the latrine detail. And members of other details, such as the prisoner hospital, bore a crushing responsibility.

Next to the quarries, the SS gardening details were the most feared work assignments. At Buchenwald they were in charge

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of SS First Lieutenant Dumbock, a native of Salzburg, who with his own hands killed at least forty prisoners and was par ticularly tenacious in persecuting his own fellow countrymen in camp. Many a prisoner hanged himself from the trellises amid the ornamental plants. One morning before roll-call assembly, walking for a moment along the garden fence behind my barracks, I myself saw a Gypsy dangling in the tall flowers. He had committed suicide during the night. A dead cigarette was still stuck in the swarthy face, now pale.

It is almost impossible to grasp what concentration-camp “ gardening” meant, unless one has witnessed it. It had almost nothing in common with the kind of work known throughout the civilized world as an agreeable and even invigorating pastime. The gardening detail involved labor in a wide, flat area, under constant control, exposed to every weather. It meant transporting stones or soil, by twos, using a carrying-rack, at a pace and in quantities quite capable of “ doing in” even strong men. Conditions in this detail scarcely improved at any time, either at Dachau and Buchenwald, or anywhere else.

On May 1, 1943, a job of manure-carrying was scheduled at Buchenwald—in place of a May Day celebration. Those prisoners who collapsed under the loads were attacked by dogs accompanying the drunken SS sergeants. Two Russians, Sergei Ncolaev of Voronesh and Fedya Fedorkim of Stalingrad, were struggling with a rack at quick time. Fedya, utterly exhausted, stumbled and fell. The rack with its noisome contents turned over, spattering SS Corporal Fritz Schulz. The corporal instantly shot the fallen Russian to death. The other Russian was attacked by the dogs and dragged to the ground. In an insane rage, the SS man trampled the prisoner with his hobnailed boots. What was left was torn apart by the dogs.

In the immediate vicinity another bloody scene was en acted. Vladislav Schezmit, a Pole, was a member of a stone-carrying detail, lugging loads at a run from the garden to the sewerage plant. An SS guard ordered the Pole to lift a stone slab of considerable size. The man was simply unable to do so. He could not even budge the slab, let alone lift it. “ Get going!” roared the guard, aiming a brick at the Pole, who

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collapsed in a welter of blood. “ Pick up the slab, you Polish dog! Pick it up!” Several SS men brought around the un conscious man by pouring a bucket of water over him. They dragged him up, propped him against a tree, and executed him for “ sabotage” by using him as a target and slowly shooting him to death. Six men were killed outright that day. Another three died during the night of beatings and dog bites.

The latrine detail was no less notorious, quite apart from the revolting character of the work. SS and prisoners had both appropriately dubbed it the “ 4711 Detail,” after the famous brand of Eau de Cologne. This detail was a prerogative of the Jews. At Dachau it long included Dukes Max and Ernst Hohenberg, sons of the erstwhile Austrian heir apparent, Franz Ferdinand, from his marriage to Countess Chotek.

The stone-splitting detail at Buchenwald included at times, among others, the sixty-year-old former Austrian Minister of Justice, Dr. Winterstein, and the Austrian State Youth Leader, Baron Duval. In rain and snow, heat and cold, these prisoners had to squat in rows on bricks, “ making little ones out of big ones.” They were naturally at the mercy of every passing SS man.

Nearly all the outside labor details operated under similar conditions. It is hard to say what aspect affected the prisoners most deeply—the beatings inflicted by the Detail Leaders, the methods used by many Prisoner Foremen, or the nature of the slave work itself. The very start of the workday brought a tragic farce—the struggle for tools. Tools were at a premium, and many of them were of poor quality. A prisoner who came off second best in this struggle was exposed to the constant danger of “ attracting attention,” of being reported as a loafer. Even so, this was but the least of the problems for those in the excavation and transportation details or, even worse, in the quarry detail. Only a factual report of incidents that actually occurred can convey the almost incredible reality.

Here is an incident that took place in the excavation and construction detail at Buchenwald in the spring of 1944. A group of Jews and Poles was attacking the stony soil, under the personal supervision of the SS Detail Leader. Even for vigorous men the work would have meant extreme exertion.

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To these emaciated and starved wrecks it was almost im possible. Fear alone drove them to try their utmost efforts. The fear was more than justified.

The Detail Leader spied two Jews whose strength was ebbing. He ordered a Pole by the name of Strzaska to
bury
the two men, who were scarcely able to keep to their feet. The Pole froze in his tracks—and refused! The sergeant took a pick handle, belabored the Pole and forced him to lie down in one of the ditches in place of the two Jews. Next he forced the Jews to cover the Pole with soil. They complied, in terror of their lives, and in the hope of escaping the ghastly fate them selves.

When only the head of the Pole was still uncovered, the SS man called a halt and had the man dug out again. The two Jews now had to lie down in the ditch, while Strzaska was or dered to cover them up. Slowly the ditch was filled with soil. When the work was done, the Detail Leader personally trampled down the soil over his two victims.

Meanwhile the rest of the prisoners kept on working at a mad pace, without a let-up, fearful only that they too might attract the attention of the brute. Five minutes later, two of them were called aside and ordered to dig up the two men who had been buried. The spades flew—perhaps it was still possible to save the comrades. In the dreadful haste, a spade cut open the face of one of the Jews—but he was already dead. The other still gave feeble signs of life. The SS man or dered both to be taken to the crematory.

It would not be correct to say that such scenes took place constantly. Had that been the case, there would not have been a single survivor of the concentration camps. But the significant fact is that they
could
take place at any moment. The stone carriers on these details—mainly Jews, Russians, and Poles—were often compelled to nm the gauntlet, staggering under their heavy loads. The most notorious of the SS punchers were always ready for such a “ pastime.” Of 181 Poles who arrived at Buchenwald on October 15, 1939, more than half perished in this way within ten days. From time to time the situation in these details became a living hell for the Jews. Forced to “ wash their faces” in thorny thickets, they naturally felt a sense of relief when they were employed in the

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senseless tasks already mentioned, such as building walls and tearing them down again.

Another example—the transportation detail. Fifteen to twenty men, harnessed to a heavily laden wagon, in place of horses, whipped on at double time. An SS officer on a motor cycle in the lead, to set the pace. The men, in addition, com pelled to sing! SS officers Plaul and Kampe, while still noncoms at the Sachsenburg camp, had coined the term “ Singing Horses” for this procedure, to the enthusiasm of their fellows. The work lasted from morning until dark, in terrupted only by a half-hour lunch period and the evening roll call. The trips were often broken by “ calisthenics” —up, down, up, down! Snow, sand, and gravel often had to be loaded with bare hands. Of course there was the inevitable quota of blows and kicks.

An old concentration-camp graduate is assailed by a curious feeling when citing such incidents. In camp they were scarcely noticed—they happened every day. It took an altogether different category of events to attract real at tention—the events in the quarries, for example. In all camps these quarries were veritable death traps. Some of the camps, like Mauthausen, consisted of almost nothing but quarries, apart from interior camp details. Work in the quarries was always hard, especially dragging the lorries uphill—if any one aspect can be singled out at all. Every night saw its procession of dead and injured, trundled into camp on wheelbarrows and stretchers—oftentimes there were two or three dozen. The mistreatment was indescribable—stonings, beatings, “ ac cidents,” deliberate hurlings into the pit, shootings, and every imaginable form of torture. Thousands fell victim. A favorite method of disposing of death candidates was to have them
push
empty (or even loaded) lorries up the steep slope. Even two men were altogether unequal to such a task. Inevitably they were crushed under the backsliding weight and the blows of their tormentors.

The penal companies, especially, were assigned to the quarries, as were certain selected victims. These pits were the hunting preserves of notorious SS sergeants and Prisoner Foremen. On May 1, 1943—a date already mentioned—the SS men at Buchenwald bet each other six cigarettes or two