Langbein Hermann. People in Auschwitz

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had been the night before, and yet every evening my clean shoes proved my

unbroken will. Afterwe had marched into the camp half-dead fromfatigue,

I began to clean my shoes.

In Monowitz there were facilities for washing, albeit inadequate ones, but

the inmates were given neither towels nor soap. As a consequence, Georges

Wellers and Robert Waitz write, ‘‘the majority of inmates washed only infre-

quently and even then very superﬁcially.’’

Primo Levi reports:

After a week’s imprisonment, I’ve lost any urge to be clean. I walk through

the washroom and see my friend Steinlauf, who is almost ﬁfty, rubbing his

bare neck and shoulders with little success (he has no soap) but with great

energy. He sees me, grabs me, and asks me directly and sternly why I am

not washing. Why should I? Would that help me? Would someone like me

better if I did? Would that lengthen my life by as much as a day or an hour?

On the contrary, it would shorten my life because washing is work and thus

a waste of energyand calories.Doesn’tSteinlauf know thataftera half hour

under the coal sacks there will no longer be any diﬀerence between him

and me?

Levi,who had become convinced that all of them had already begun to die, re-

jected Steinlauf’s notion, but the latter taught the young Italian a real lesson.

Levi continues:

I am sorry that I have forgotten Steinlauf’s clear and sensible words, the

words of a former royal imperial noncommissioned oﬃcer, holder of the

Iron Cross 1914–1918. And I regret having to translate his shaky Italian and

the simple speech of a good soldier into my own language, the language of

an unbeliever. But this is the gist of what he told me, and I did not forget

it then or later:

Precisely because the camp is a big mechanism that is intended to de-

grade us to the level of animals, we must not become animals. Even in this

place it is possible to stay alive, and we must have thewill to do so, if only to

report about it later and bear witness. For our existence, it is important to

do anything to preserve at least the structure, the shell, the form of civiliza-

tion. Even though we are slaves stripped of all rights, exposed to all insults,

and destined for certain death, we have one chance left, and, because it is

the last one, we must defend it with all our strength. It is the chance to

withhold our consent. From this it follows that we must wash our faces

without soap and dry them with our jackets. We must shine our shoes—

not because it is required but out of self-esteem and cleanliness. We must

104 n the prisoners

walk erect and not shuﬄe in our wooden shoes—not as a concession to

Prussian discipline but in order to remain alive and not waste away.

Not every inmate who was in dangerof being felled by the ﬁrst shock met a

Steinlauf in time.The sensitive observerPrimo Levi has explained more clearly

than anyone else could have why the Muselmann, that icon of Auschwitz, must

be near the beginning of a study on the subject of people in an extermination

camp:

They, the Muselmänner,the lost ones, arethe nerveof thecamp,thename-

less, ever renewed, and ever identical mass of mutely marching, toiling

nonhumans in whom the divine spark has been extinguished and who are

already too enfeebled to really suﬀer. One hesitates to describe them as

living or to call the death that does not frighten them a death, because they

are too exhausted to grasp it. They populate my memory with their face-

less presence, and if I could concentrate all the suﬀering of our time in one

image, I would select one that is familiar to me: a careworn man with a

bowed head and bent shoulders whose face and eyes do not betray even a

trace of a thought.

The Muselmann n 105

the inmate and death

nnn

A Muselmann’s fate in an extermination camp was preordained. From time to

time inmates who could no longer march briskly, those who were bandaged,

and emaciated persons whose ﬁtnessforwork seemed doubtful—in short, the

Muselmänner—were ‘‘selected.’’

The camp administration never made an oﬃcial announcement about the

purpose of these selections and the fate of the selectees. If it gave out any

information at all, it pretended that the prisoners had been transferred to an-

othercamp, or something of that sort. Since therewere frequent transfers and

every ss camp leader attempted to use such occasions to get rid of inmates

whowere a burden on the camp, including Muselmänner, doubts about the pur-

pose of a selection could arise—not so much among old hands, who were able

to observe all measures soberly and with detachment, as among those directly

aﬀected,whose situation KatalinVidor has described in these terms: ‘‘If a per-

son has reached a stage of utter helplessness, he begins to hope: perhaps not

. . . perhaps...perhaps...’’

In late 1942, when I was recuperating in the hkb of the main camp, I could

see through the window how selectees were treated. In my Bericht I wrote:

Sudden noise. The familiar roar of the capos, the dreaded intonation of ss

commands. I go to the window.

In front of my window there is the tangled barbed wire. There is little

space between theblock and thewire. People are now being herded. ssmen

bark commands. Ahead of them, capos busily run around and randomly

beat with their clubs the crowd of inmates jammed together.

I’m sure they’ve rounded up the Muselmänner again.This has happened a

numberof times. On such days the ss roll call leader picks out from the de-

tails marching oﬀ towork in the morningall thosewho attract his attention

and do not appear to be fully ﬁt for work. A black day for the camp.

‘‘Strip completely!’’

Now they have to undress in the cold, helped along by screams and

beatings.

Most of them surely know what is going to happen to them. I can read

it in their faces. Thinking that he is not being observed, one man stealthily

and quickly puts on his clothes again, but a capo catches him. I can hear

the blows and his screams through my window. Everyone wants to be the

last to take oﬀ his clothes. Perhaps the terriﬁed inmates hope that this will

enable them to cheat their way out of their fate.

‘‘Faster, faster! On with it!’’ In the background stands an ss man with

his legs apart.

Noweveryone has undressed. Pitiful skeletons.Their numbers are taken

down, and they are chased into the block.The sun is shining, and the snow

is glistening and merrily dripping from the roof. No one is in front of my

window; all I can see are big piles of dirty prison clothes along the wall.

Then I hear footsteps and muted voices from the corridor. I look outside.

Now there are long lines of naked inmates.The clerk of our block walks up

to each one with ﬁle cards in his hand, compares names and numbers, and

writes each inmate’s number on his chest with indelible ink. The corpses

in Auschwitz bear that number on their chests; these inmates are already

counted among the dead, and there has to be order. (In late 1942 not all

inmates had had their numbers tattooed.)

How they look at me, these freezing skeletons, as if I could help them,

as if I were to blame for what is to come. I quickly close the door again.

How must such a human being feel, standing naked in a corridor and

waiting to be loaded on a truck that will take him to the gas chamber?

But I don’t hear any motor vehicle drive up. Those men are still there

each time I have to cross the corridor on my way to the toilet. Some are

apathetic and in a squatting position, others have ﬂickering eyes. Do they

still have hope—are they still seeking a way out? Those who sit are repeat-

edly roused; the corridor has to be clear. It was in the morning, after the

early roll call, that I saw them being herded together in front of my win-

dow. Now it is evening, and they haven’t had anything to eat all day. And

why should they still be fed? If they want to drink, their only resource is

water from the toilets.

Now many are lying down. They are too weak to fear the blows that are

intended to shake them awake.Three of them are lying in front of my door,

and I have to step over them if I want to leave the room. One is dead, but

the two next to him are still alive. There is little diﬀerence among these

three.

The ss had forced a feeling of utter impotence on the inmates. Among the

numerous accounts of the methods they used for this is a scene described

by Hanoch Hadas to the Frankfurt court: ‘‘I had been assigned to a street-

cleaning detail and was loading garbage on a truck near the kitchen. Baretzky,

the block leader, walked through the camp, called an inmate, and slapped his

face. In an eﬀort to protect his face, the inmate raised his hand. ‘What, you

want to hit an ss man?’ roared Baretzky and rained blows on the man, tram-

The Inmate and Death n 107

pling him after he had fallen down. Then he took the wooden handle of a

shovel, placed it across the inmate’s neck, stepped on it, and seesawed until

the inmate was dead.’’

So a prisoner was not even allowed to raise a protective hand if an ss man

wanted to beat him. Muselmänner were in no condition even to think of self-

defense. As Kogon has observed, ‘‘To expect them to resist would mean to

misinterpret their mental state.They simplycould not go on.’’ Added to this is

the fact that fellow prisoners who came into contact with selectees as clerks,

nurses,or in other functions and were bombarded with questions usually sup-

ported the administration’s attempts at deception. Wellers reports that, like

many of his colleagues on the staﬀ of the Monowitz inﬁrmary, he answered

questions like ‘‘They aren’t taking us to the crematorium, are they?’’ by saying

they were going to be sent to another camp for rest and relaxation. Wellers

added to this white lie by saying, ‘‘This is an absolutely sure thing,’’ but after-

ward he wondered whether it would have been better to tell the victims the

truth and thus rob them of all hope in their last hours.

Even a person who faces certain death is not indiﬀerent to theway he must

die. Every inmate knew from ample experience that if ss men felt provoked

by an act of disobedience, they were capable of engaging in indescribable tor-

tures before the end was to come.

Jacques Furmanski has reported about his leave-taking from a friend who

had become the victim of a selection. On many earlier occasions this friend

had told him, ‘‘They aren’t going to get me. They’ll have to pay dearly for my

hide. I’ll know how to die.’’ Now the friend pressed his hand and said, ‘‘Be

good, old boy, and keep your courage up.’’ ‘‘I remained mute and numb in the

most awkward situation of my life,’’ writes Furmanski about that moment.

‘‘I didn’t know how to reply. Inside me I felt an imperative need to tell him,

‘Defend yourself, at least show something, we’ll support you!’ But as he was

standing before me, I felt that he was already far from us, that he had gone

away and was no longer thinking of anything.’’

Most of the victims of selections were Jews; in fact, only they had to line

up for some selections. That is why the phenomenon of innumerable people

allowing themselves to be led to their death knowingly and without attempt-

ing to resist has sometimes been described as typically Jewish. I agree with

Georges Wellers when he terms the fact that the overwhelming majority of

prisoners let themselves be herded to their destruction ‘‘like sheep’’ (as has

often been written) as typical of Nazi concentration camps. ‘‘Aryans’’ behaved

the same way in the same situation, and the only diﬀerence is that for them

this situation arose less often.

A Polish oﬃcer, an inmate who frequently had to help with the loading of

selectees onto trucks, has characterized their bearing as follows: ‘‘As a rule

108 n the prisoners

the victims remained relatively calm, and they always remembered to say, ‘Do

not forget the retribution!’’’ He remembers two brothers, one of whom was

selected. His brother killed him in order to spare him the ride on a truck to

the gas chamber.

Do not forget theretributionand do not forgetthevictims—these may have

been the last thoughts of many who were still capable of thinking.Thus there

once was a Hungarian inscription in a Birkenau barracks from which victims

of a selection had just been driven out. These words had been written on the

wall with blood: ‘‘Andreas Rappaport—lived sixteen years.’’

n Isolated instances of resistance, escapes from death in a gas chamber, and

demonstrations in thepresence of themurderershave been documented.Thus

Erich Altmann has recorded the end of Meilech Herschkowitz, a former the-

ater director. When that man was selected, he spoke to an ss man who knew

him from occasional Sunday performances: ‘‘I have been selectedand am to be

burned. Can’t you help me?’’ The ss man replied, ‘‘There’s nothing I can do.’’

‘‘Don’t you think, Herr Unterscharführer,’’ continued Herschkowitz, ‘‘that if

I have to die, I deserve a bullet?’’ ‘‘You’re right,’’ replied the ss oﬃcer, pulled

out his revolver, and shot the inmate. This happened in Birkenau in January

1944.

Eduard deWind recalls an Italian Jew who escaped from the block in which

selectees were waiting for transportation to the gas chambers and cheated his

way onto the Bauhof detail. There he carried bags of cement all day in order

to prove his ﬁtness for work and was praised by the foreman for his diligence.

Despite this, the sscamp physician had him removed and the block elder pun-

ished because he had not prevented the inmate’s escape from the isolation

block.

Other attempted escapes were more successful. Ella Lingens reports about

a Jewish woman who sneaked out of the inﬁrmary after a selection had been

announced and tried to get into another block that had not been threatened

with a selection. However, the block elder did not dare to admit a stranger

while the block was locked. Thus the escapee hid under a pile of corpses in

front of the barracks and had to stay there for four or ﬁve hours in the wintry

cold until the selection was over.

A sixteen-year-old Frenchwoman has described her ﬂight, together with a

friend, from Block 25, in which selectees had to wait for transportation to the

gas chamber. Because she was very thin, she was able to slip through the bars

of a window. ‘‘It may seem strange that we waited all night before we tried

this relatively easy route of escape,’’ shewrites, ‘‘but we could not have done it

at any other time without being immediately noticed and betrayed.You see, it

was to be expected that a block elder or dormitory elder would see us, or other

The Inmate and Death n 109

prisoners who would have tried to do the same thing, and then everything

would have been ruined.’’

The following incident occurred in the Birkenau men’s camp in late 1942.

A father and a son named Bentschkowski were housed in Block 8. The father,

who was around forty-ﬁve years old, was the owner of a small textile factory

in Paris, and the twenty-year-old son was a comfort and support to his father,

who became more feeble every day. One evening theyoung man returned from

work witha bloodyface and a head full of bumps. He had been so badly beaten

that he was not even able to eat his piece of bread. The next day, when the

morning roll call was as usual followed by the command ‘‘Labor details, line

up!,’’ the young Bentschkowski dragged himself back to the barracks and col-

lapsed. He was not able to rise and join the lineup. His father did not want to

leave him and lay down on the ground next to him. An inmate who was work-

ing as a roofer and thus had a good chance of observing events has described

what happened next.

Suddenly I heard bloodcurdling screams that were followed immediately

by the admonition ‘‘Sh’mah Yisrael !’’ (Hear, O Israel!). I watched how the

people who had been lying around were loaded onto trucks like inanimate

objects. Among them were the father and the son, my neighbors in the

barracks. The father cradled the mauled head of his son in his hands and

called out so loudly that it echoed in the empty camp: ‘‘Sh’mah Yisrael! Sh’mah

Yisrael!’’ And now something happened that I had never experienced before.

When those doomed to die were lying on the truck and the transport began

to move, other voices joined in the prayer, which invigorated the almost

lifeless human beings once more. We could see arms strengthen and frail

bodies totter upward for a moment. When they saw us on the roof, they

called out to us, ‘‘Avenge us if you ever get a chance!’’ One of the men on

the truck started to sing, and in the middle of the human tangle were the

father and the son, kneeling and embracing.

Manywomenwillalways rememberanotherscene. Frenchwomenwhowere

being taken to the gas chamber in a truck intoned the ‘‘Marseillaise.’’ This

demonstration of an unbroken will immediately before death was unusual.

Tadeusz Paczula remembers the end of an engineer named Popper, ‘‘a very

cultivated man’’ who had come on an rsha transport from Slovakia. In the

early period, when all Jews were assigned to the penal company, Popper was

sent from there to the inﬁrmary, suﬀering from cellulitis. One day it was or-

dered that all Jews were to be discharged from the inﬁrmary no matter what

their state of health was. Paczula bid Popper goodbye with these words: ‘‘Ta-

dek, tomorrow morning I won’t be alive any more....’’Paczula did not know

what to say to console him. ‘‘Both of us knew that this was the truth,’’ hewrote

110 n the prisoners

later. ‘‘The next day, when the ss men started to manhandle the members of

the penal company, Popper hurled himself at one of the ss men, who drew his

gun and shot him.’’

These were exceptions to the rule. The rule was that the inmates, being

exhausted unto death, an apathetic mass, let themselves be directed wher-

ever the all-powerful sspleased.The following incident was reported to David

Rousset. Selectees who knew their fate were being escorted to the gas cham-

ber. An old man whose legs could no longer carry him sat down on the way.

An escort yelled at him, ‘‘If you don’t go on, I’ll mow you down!’’ The old man

quickly blurted out, ‘‘No, don’t kill me, I’ll go on,’’ whereupon he got in line

again on the way to the gas chamber. Every minute of even the paltriest life

retains its value.

When the Birkenau family camps were to be liquidated, the situation was

diﬀerent. Thousands who knew one another because they had been interned

together for a long time and were in better physical condition than the Musel-

männer found out that they were to be killed. Even though ss men used any

means to camouﬂage their actions, their true purpose could not remain hid-

den from those who had been forced to live in the immediate vicinity of the

gas chambers. In theTheresienstadt family camp, a Jewish block elder named

Bondy, speaking in Czech, urged the inmates not to board the trucks as or-

dered by the ss. Bondy was knocked down by capos whom the camp admin-

istration had summoned to the family camp for this liquidation from other

parts of the Birkenau complex. Bondy was regarded as a ‘‘hard’’ block elder

whowas capable of slapping faces. Ota Popel is said to have attempted a warn-

ing also and to have suﬀered the same fate as Bondy. The ss had to exert its

full brutality in the liquidation of the Gypsy camp as well, because all tricks

intended to persuade the Gypsies to board the trucks willingly failed.

The inmates destined to be killed by phenol injections in the inﬁrmary be-

haved much like those selected to die in the gas chambers. Klehr, a medic

who killed more people by means of such shots than any other ss man, later

gave this expert explanation in a courtroom: ‘‘They knew what was in store for

them, but they did not oﬀer any resistance. They were completely worn out,

all skin and bones.’’

Here, too, there were well-remembered exceptions. Stanislaw Glowa, a

block clerk, reports about a Russian who arrived at the camp in a prison van

in the summer of 1942 and was taken directly to Block 20 and into the room

in which Klehr had assembled some inmates who had to assist him with his

injections. Glowa heard Klehr yell and ran to him. ‘‘I saw Klehr sitting on the

man with a syringe in his hand,’’ he writes. At a later date Glowa learned that

theRussianhad grabbed a stooland attackedKlehrwith it, but hewaswrestled

to the ﬂoor. Josef Farber remembers that a nurse whom Klehr had selected for

The Inmate and Death n 111

injection yelled that he was healthy. ‘‘Later we took his corpse away,’’ writes

Farber laconically.

n Pery Broad,whowas present at thebunker selectionsas a memberof the Po-

litical Department, has described the behavior of those doomed to die. ‘‘From

the overcrowded narrow cell comes a nauseating stench. A prisoner calls out,

‘Achtung!’ and with an apathetic expression the emaciated ﬁgures in theirﬁlthy

blue and white rags line up in a row. With the indiﬀerence of people whose

will to live is already broken they submit to the procedure that follows, a de-

cision between life and death that they may already have survived more than

once.’’

I witnessedthis procedure six times myself and have described my ﬁrst con-

frontation with the commission as follows: ‘‘I have already seen the vehicles

leave Block 11 as well as the trail of blood that they left in the camp. Well, it

may not be so bad. Am I trying to comfort myself with lies? Don’t I know per-

fectly well that Auschwitz is bad, terribly bad? How many death notices have

I written myself, giving the cause of death of murdered men as pneumonia or

cardiac arrest. Will my relatives at home also receive such a notice?’’

After the ﬁrst bunker selection, I was familiar with how this procedure

played out and described it as follows:

Jakob (the bunker Kalfaktor [handyman]) told me at breakfast that we

should sweepwell today. I know what that means. I dividethe bread and the

onions that I received from Robert into thirteen portions. ‘‘Better save it.

Then those who are left will enjoy it more.’’ Nevertheless, we eat together.

Then the waiting. The last hours for most men. If thirteen people with

strained nerves are crowded together in such a small space, you begin to

loathe everyone. Oh to be alone! A key turns in the lock. The ss camp

leader’s voice is too loud for the little cell.

‘‘Cell 8, housing thirteen inmates. Inmate 60-3-55.’’ He looks at his list

and motions with his hand: ‘‘Step aside, stay.’’ Behind me is a very young

inmate who has been planning to escape, as desperate as he is childish

and worn out. He would never have made it. ‘‘Out!’’ Then there is a ﬁfteen-

year-old Jew from Warsaw who drank coﬀee from a canteen while at work

without knowing that it belonged to an ss man. Now he, too, is ordered

out of the line, but he does not blanch. He spoke about dying like an old

man. Another one, another one.

Pery Broad has given this account of the shootings in the block yard:

An exceptionally strong inmate fromthecleaning staﬀ(undoubtedlyJakob)

quickly brings in the ﬁrst two victims. He holds them by their forearms and

112 n the prisoners

presses their faces against the wall. When they turn their heads to the side,

someone commands, ‘‘Prosto!’’ (straight ahead, an indirect conﬁrmation by

Broad that most of those were Poles). Although these walking skeletons,

some of whom had for months been leading a miserable life in the stink-

ing cellar cells, an existence that one would not inﬂict on an animal, could

barely stand on their legs, many of them called out in this last second,

‘‘Long live Poland!’’ or ‘‘Long live liberty!’’

Ota Fabian, a corpse carrier who had to be present at numerous shoot-

ings, reports that some Poles prayed, sang their national anthem or called out

slogans. Fabian remembers ‘‘Long live liberty!’’ and ‘‘Your turn will come!’’

For a time I was incarcerated in a cell whose ventilation shaft led to the

yard near the Black Wall. Thus I was able to count the shots, but I heard only

one shout; it was in Russian, and all I could make out was ‘‘Stalin.’’ I was pre-

pared to shout, ‘‘Long live free Austria! Down with fascism!’’—because I did

not want to be shot without speaking. I realized thatsuch a last demonstration

could not have much of a response, and might have none at all.The possibility

of active resistance did not occur to me. The victims were led to the courtyard

where several armed ssmen werewaiting for them, singlyor in pairs, and thus

any resistance would have been quickly squelched. Another inhibiting factor

was that naked victims were confronting uniformed murderers.

There was one attempt at active resistance, and the Pole Alfred Woycicki

has described it as follows: ‘‘On October 8, 1942, two hundred persons trans-

ported to the camp from Lublin were shot. Eighty inmates were added to this

group and taken to Block 11, where they were ordered to strip. They refused,

and therewas an uprising in the hallway. The block was locked and so was the

entire camp. Around 3:00 p.m. a large group of ss men came to the bunker,

and the executions were carried out. The vehicles that carried the corpses to

the crematorium left trails of blood on the camp road.’’

Wladyslaw Fejkiel has also reported about this attempt. Dr. Henryk Such-

nicki, a Polish army physician, and Genio Obojski, a vigorous young lad from

Warsaw, were summoned together with other inmates and taken to Block 11.

Likeall experienced inmates, Suchnicki knew what this callmeant,verycalmly

bid his friends farewell, and said, ‘‘I won’t be such an easy mark; those sons

of bitches will be surprised!’’ He and Obojski are said to have attacked the ss

men. Machine-gun ﬁre could be heard in the camp, and that is how the ss

ended this action. The Kalendarium prepared by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State

Museum lists this episode under October 28, 1942.

While the majority of the victims of camp selections were Jews, those shot

at the Black Wall were primarily Polish oﬃcers and intellectuals.

The Inmate and Death n 113