His reaction was understandable. This was an alien world. None of his past experiences, not even his darkest nightmares, could have prepared him for this. Still, I found it difficult to sympathize with him. I was too tired for that. And I had my own losses to bear.
Vilmos was talking to Gyuri, explaining what was happening and what we had to do next. “Stay close to us,” Vilmos said. “Move when we move. Do what we do. It will be all right.” Then, as if to underscore the enormity of the lie he’d just told, he grabbed the cap Gyuri had carelessly left on the bunk and stuck it on top of Gyuri’s head. "Don’t lose it. If you do, there'll be hell to pay."
The Blockalteste had nearly made it all the way to us. Vilmos turned Gyuri around to face the bunk and whispered to him to look busy. Vilmos pretended to be straightening a blanket. Gyuri looked blankly at him. I wanted to scream at him to not just stand there, that he might get us all in trouble, just by being close to us. But of course I kept my mouth shut.
"You, you, and you," the Blockalteste growled, poking three unfortunate prisoners with his stick. "Empty the buckets. Spill a drop and I’ll make you eat it.”
I breathed a sigh of relief that none of the three of us had been chosen for this disgusting chore.
"The rest of you,” the Blockalteste shouted as he turned and headed up the block, "better hurry up and go to the latrines. You don’t want to miss breakfast, do you?”
In truth, no prompting was necessary. We all knew haste was crucial. Because of Cyuri, we were at the far end of the block from the exit, so we had to push our way through the throng of prisoners. I took the lead. Vilmos brought up the rear, prodding Gyuri ahead of him. Some of the other prisoners did not take kindly to being overtaken, so I got my share of jabs and smacks and expletives as I cut a path for us to the exit.
The Blockalteste and one of the Stubendiensts were standing just outside the block. They spurred the prisoners to greater speed, often punctuating their commands with a harsh shove. Gyuri received one, which made him stumble in his oversized clogs and fall face down in the dirt. Vilmos and I rushed to help him up, accompanied by the raspy laughter of the Blockdlteste.
It was not yet fully light, though a gray hint of dawn was already creeping from the east. We were always roused before daybreak, as the Germans wanted our morning routine to waste as little daylight as possible. That way we could be at our work stations early, and they could extract more toil from us.
Over to the west, the chimneys of the crematoriums belched long tongues of fire and clouds of sickening black-gray smoke. That smoke used to be people not too long ago. Men and women and children. Babies too. None were spared save those the Nazis wished to exploit as slave labor, those from whom a little extra benefit to the Third Reich could be squeezed. Those spared were given but a temporary reprieve. They were to be killed through hard labor and privation.
Additional pillars of smoke billowed into the sky from the northwest, behind the trees that bordered the camp. It was said the Nazis had ordered giant pits to be dug there, that in those pits bodies were burned. The pits were needed because the transports brought so many Jews every day that the crematoriums could not dispose of them all in a timely fashion.
A dark cloud hung low over the camp like a shroud. The smell of burning flesh was thick and inescapable. Each whiff of air was like inhaling death straight into your lungs. We were breathing our loved ones, our friends, our fellow Jews. The smoke scorched our throats, singed our nostrils, seared our souls.
With Cyuri between us, Vilmos and I rushed to the first latrine block. Inside, hundreds of prisoners were waiting their turn. The many afflicted with dysentery or diarrhea shifted from one foot to the other as they fought to control their bowels. Some, their need overwhelming their shame, retreated to a corner and defecated on the floor. The block was gloomy, and the indescribable stench was an assault not only on our senses but also on our dignity.
It was a primitive facility; a structure similar to our regular block, only instead of bunks there were three sewer ditches that ran nearly the entire length of the block. Each ditch was covered by a concrete lid into which a few dozen circular holes had been cut. On each hole a prisoner sat, his trousers drooped around his ankles, his head bowed and eyes closed, no doubt striving for a sense of privacy where none was to be had. Each time a prisoner finished with his business, his seat was immediately taken by another. You had to get done quickly or you might get shouted at or worse. Thousands of prisoners had to use this latrine, and there were about ten minutes to do so.
There were no partitions and no toilet paper. We were not accorded the basic amenities human beings were entitled to, because in the eyes of the Germans, we were subhuman.
"Let’s go," I said when three adjacent vacancies emerged simultaneously. Vilmos and I raced to claim them. We pulled Gyuri along with us, but when we let go of his arms to sit down, he made no move to follow suit. His eyes were wet and dismayed, and he shook his head violently. "I can’t... not like this. I...”
"It’s either now or you’ll have to hold it in for hours," Vilmos said, with more patience than I could have mustered. He pulled Gyuri gently toward the toilets. "Just close your eyes and do what you have to."
With his cheeks flushed from a sense of embarrassment that I had lost weeks ago, Gyuri lowered his trousers and sat down quickly, hands covering his shaved groin. He flinched when his bare thigh touched mine. I had reacted similarly the first few days at the camp. The toilet holes were so close together that one could not avoid contact with those sitting on either side of him. By every sense but taste, one could not escape the public nature of the latrine. The most private act a man does was turned into a spectacle viewed and heard and smelled by hundreds.
After we had finished, we headed over to the washroom. Washing was also done in public, at rows of spigots over low troughs with other prisoners all around. The floor was wet and muddy, the water impure and murky. A warning on the wall forbade drinking it. The water was also cold, which deterred many prisoners. It seemed pointless to try to keep clean, especially since we had no soap. Our clothes were grimy, hard with sweat and dirt and bodily discharge, so why put yourself through the agony of running cold water on your skin? As soon as you put your clothes back on, you were enveloping yourself in filth.
Still, I gritted my teeth against the water’s chilly bite and rubbed at my skin as hard as I could. It was torture, but I did not relent. It was a matter not just of hygiene but also of principle. A man kept himself clean, and I desperately wanted to continue being a man, no matter how hard the Germans tried to make me into something less. But I had to admit, it was getting harder to find the will and the strength to go through this painful routine each morning. I could only imagine how terrible it would feel when summer turned into fall and then winter, and the temperatures plummeted. I tried hard not to think of winter. The way the old timers described it, hell was not a place of fire and brimstone, but Auschwitz in December.
'‘Hey," a voice sounded from my right. It was Hendrik. He was washing his hands, not bothering with the rest of his body. A wicked grin contorted his face. “Sleep well?”
"Perfectly," I said.
"Glad to hear it. Looking kinda skinny there. You better watch it or you’ll be a muselmann before you know it. And then it’s a one-way ticket to the gas chamber for you