Lament

Lament

Arrival in Auschwitz

Soon, we found ourselves in front of one of the countless barracks. Its doors were like a gate and just as wide, open in both directions, as if eager to take us in. The barracks was about ten metres wide and forty metres long. There was no floor, so the ground served as one. In the middle, along the barracks’ length, was a brick partition that looked like a horizontal chimney. I later found out that indeed it was meant to act as both a stove and a chimney, though it never worked. This chimney duct served as a partition in the barracks. Along one side of the partition were two rows of desks. Behind each desk sat a man dressed in the striped concentration camp attire. Some SS men were walking back and forth behind those men, keeping an eye on them and on us.

We were ordered to stand on the other side of the partition. There, for the first time, we came face to face with kapos. These kapos were Polish inmates, and their task was to supervise the other inmates, using SS methods. They hit us using clubs, shovels, pickaxes or anything that was handy, and if nothing was available, they used their hands and feet to hit and kick. The SS men were there to make sure that the kapos were doing their jobs satisfactorily.

Someone announced that everyone whose family name began with the letter A should step over the partition and present themselves in front of a desk. The people behind the desks were asking questions and writing things down on forms. So it continued, letter after letter, until they got to the letter K. I stepped over the partition and positioned myself in front of a desk. Behind the desk sat a young Jewish man a couple of years older than me. He did not look emaciated, but his face was pale, actually white. He picked up a form from a pile, and looking up at me with visible compassion, he told me to empty my pockets. I had on me the dollars my uncle Hershel had given me on the last Saturday, before I went to hide, an hour or two before he and my entire family were taken away, plus the few marks from my father. As I reached into my pocket, I felt the few rubles I had taken from an empty Jewish home on Sunday morning, shortly before I got into the sled. I put it all on the table. An SS man saw the money and moved closer.

The man behind the desks asked, “Is this all?”

“This is all,” I answered.

While the SS man picked up the money and threw it in a nearby basket, the young man picked up a pen and asked me my name, age, vocation and a couple more questions. Then he asked one question that stunned me, “What is the reason for your arrest?” It sounded to me so preposterous that I suspected some trap behind the question. It seemed to me that my interrogator deliberately let me think for a few seconds. Maybe he did that to emphasize the absurdity of the whole process — the form, the questions and everything else. In a place like this, what purpose did all these questions serve?

The young man looked around, and seeing the SS man walk away, he said to me quietly, “I know the answer, but I am ordered to ask regardless.” He filled in the line on the form, asked me one or two more questions, put the form in another pile, then gave me a small piece of paper and said, “Step to the desk behind me and give him this scrap of paper.”

Behind that desk was another young Jewish man, about the same age as the first, with the same white face of a dead man. He took the piece of paper from my hand and told me to roll my left sleeve up to the elbow. He dipped a needle in an inkwell, and, glancing at the piece of paper, made a tattoo on my forearm, with the numbers 99347. In normal times, getting a tattoo with such a crude tool would be painful, but at that moment I was not paying attention. It was only the next day that my forearm swelled, but then I was confronted with so many other problems that I could not even pay attention to it. As soon as I received my number, I joined the other prisoners. From that time on, I was only a number and was always referred to as such by the Nazis and camp administration.