Right now, he was enraged. His wide, craggy face was beet red, and his fists were clenched. He stomped around like a caged animal, talking animatedly to a couple of his underlings.
"What do you think brought that about?” I asked Vilmos quietly.
"I don’t know. I just hope he doesn’t hurt anyone."
Three seconds later, Vilmos’s hopes were dashed. The Lageralteste, bouncing about like a coiled spring of raw fury, caught an unfortunate prisoner by the shirt-front, landed a hard fist in his stomach, threw him to the ground, and began to deliver a string of vicious kicks and stomps.
I wanted to stop the beating. I wanted to punch the Lageralteste in the face. I wanted to handcuff him, throw him in jail, shoot him if that’s what it took. But I had no gun, no handcuffs, no authority as a policeman anymore. So I did nothing. Nothing but watch and be shamefully grateful that someone else's luck had run out and not my own.
The attack went on for about a minute. At first the fallen prisoner cried out in pain. Then his voice gave out. Blood spattered through the air with each kick.
Finally, out of breath and sweating, the Lageralteste stepped back from his victim. His boots and the cuffs of his trousers were red with blood. He turned away without a second glance at the beaten man and walked off. A minute later, a couple of prisoners picked up the dead man and threw him on top of the pile of bodies of those who had perished during the night.
4
Accompanied by five SS guards armed with machine guns, we marched out of the men’s camp to the sound of music played by the camp orchestra. The music was gratingly cheerful, probably some Nazi officer’s idea of a joke, and it did nothing to raise our spirits. I did my best to ignore the merry tune. I couldn’t tell you what melody the orchestra played that day, nor any other day. All I knew was that this was another insult meant to ridicule us and our torment.
Past the gate, we turned left on the road running parallel to the rail spur that had brought us to this place. We walked past the train platform where we were let out of the cattle cars in which we had journeyed from Hungary. Here we got our first sight of the camp. Here the men were separated from the women and children. Here we left all our belongings, apart from the clothes on our backs. Here was where the first selection took place, with SS doctors deciding who would live and who would die. Young children and their mothers, and those too old or feeble to work, were herded straight to the gas chambers. The rest were inducted into the camp as slave labor. My wife and daughters had been among the first group. So had my mother, probably. I wasn’t sure about my sisters, though, and as we walked down the road toward the main gate of Auschwitz-Birkenau, my eyes scoured the women’s camps on either side of our column.
The main women’s camp was just across the train tracks to our right, and there too kommandos were forming. Looking at those skinny women with their shaved heads and filthy, ill-fitting uniforms was like seeing an alien species. Were these really women, or a new kind of creature, a denizen unique to the separate world that was Auschwitz? There was a morbid sameness to them, as though they had been cast from the same decrepit mold. As though all trace of their personality and uniqueness had been expunged, so that now they were no longer separate women but part of a multitude. I doubted I would recognize my sisters even if I saw them. Would they recognize me?
On our left, in the camp section directly east of our own, more women resided. This section was filled to the brim with Hungarian women, the newest and largest group of unfortunates to fall prey to the Nazis. Here many women simply squatted on the dry ground or walked around aimlessly, searching for food or any respite from their suffering. Apparently, the large influx of Jews from Hungary had created a situation in which the Auschwitz authorities did not have enough work for all the prisoners. Almost daily, trains or trucks arrived to take some of these women away—not to the gas chambers but to work camps to the west. At least, that’s what the rumors said.
I did not see my sisters among these miserable women. I could only hope that they were spared the initial selection and that they too had been sent away from here. Any Nazi work camp would be terrible, but nothing could be worse than Auschwitz-Birkenau.
A little further on, we came upon a rare glimmer of light in the spiritual darkness of Auschwitz—one that drew the eyes of every prisoner in our column to the left. We were walking by the family camp of Czech Jews. Here, for some mysterious reason, the Nazis housed Jewish men and women and children together. And none of the prisoners’ heads were shaved. As we marched past, I heard the singing of children from what was known as the children’s block, where it was said that the Nazis had allowed a school of sorts to be established. It was the only place in Auschwitz where small Jewish children were permitted to live.
Hearing those beautiful voices raised in song, I felt my pulse quicken and a tiny spark of optimism ignite somewhere close to my heart. Here was life. Here was the possibility of a future. It made my steps lighter, my exhaustion a touch less severe. It wouldn’t last—it never did—but for the moment, the world was not entirely dark.
The last camp section before the main gate was a bleaker place. It was the quarantine camp for men, where new male prisoners were housed. Here they were initiated into Auschwitz and taught its harsh rules, and here a good many of them died due to mistreatment and the shock of their new reality.
All new male prisoners were supposed to spend a few weeks in quarantine, but due to the recent explosion in the prisoner population—an increase made up almost entirely by the Jews of Hungary—the system had broken. Some prisoners were immediately shipped to one of the many smaller work camps that surrounded Auschwitz. Others, like Cyuri, were placed in the regular men’s camp without going through quarantine at all. Some were not tattooed.
Prisoners did not work in kommandos while in quarantine, but that didn’t mean they were idle. Rather, they were subjected to endless roll calls, where they were made to stand for hours, or ordered to perform grotesque calisthenics, which sapped their strength and shattered their spirit, all to the amusement of the guards. Many kommandos were terrible, but quarantine was worse. My two weeks there had nearly killed me.
As we walked past the quarantine camp, clumps of fresh prisoners huddled on the other side of the barbed-wire fence, looking at us. They did not make a sound.
They watched us with eyes that were less than alive. The disbelief on their faces, a silent plea for help, cut me like a blade. I could not help them, could not even offer a word of encouragement. I’d be beaten if I said anything.
Our workplace was about two kilometers east of the camp. The trek there was torture. My tight clogs had chafed the skin of my feet, raising painful blisters, and each step brought a stab of pain. I’d stuffed some rags I’d found into my clogs to lessen the friction, but it was an imperfect solution. How I missed having a proper pair of shoes. I’d never thought my life might depend on having one.
Our task was to dig several trenches, for what purpose no one told us. One of the other prisoners speculated that these were anti-tank trenches, and they certainly could have been, given their planned width and depth. Vilmos saw this as a positive sign.
“The Russians can’t be far off if the Germans are taking these precautions," he said. "We need only survive a short while longer.”
I wasn’t so sure. True, the Nazi advance in the east had faltered and was then reversed. The news we’d heard before leaving Hungary in May 1944 said the Red Army was advancing across the entire front. But no one knew where the Russians really were. I did not think they were that close. Guns are loud and artillery more so. If the Russians were truly close, we would have heard the rumble of canons. But there was no rumble.