The screams expired in the dark steel joists high above the Albanian. The purr of the drill was drowned by them. The needlepoint went for the kneecaps. He watched.
He had survived beatings as a conscript in the army, and a killing attempt when shot in the arm in Moscow. He knew pain, but not fear. In two years in the army, stationed at the Kaliningrad base, he had been thrashed by NCOs and officers for selling off military equipment pilfered from stores, and for organizing the shipment of Afghan heroin out through the docks, but he had never cried out. After the fourth beating he had cut his infantry colonel into a share of his profits, then been left free to trade. His ability to endure what was handed out to him, with boots and clubs, by the NCOs and officers had made Reuven Weissberg, the Jew, a hero among the conscripts. He had never howled for the pain to be stopped. Had he done so, he would have disgraced his grandmother.
It was enough. The Albanian was burned, his knees were pierced and he had fainted with the pain.
Mikhail shot him. Stood behind the chair, held the pistol and fired one bullet. He thought he heard the cry of geese. If the Albanian had not fainted, Mikhail might have started up the chain-saw. The geese squawked and the shot seemed a faint retort. Blood spattered the concrete floor and the plastic hooded cloak that Mikhail wore.
Then the silence came, and the geese did not call. Weissberg sat for a moment, then glanced at his wristwatch. He told Mikhail they must hurry or be late. A body was to be moved, taken to open ground by the Teltow canal, and the plastic clothing disposed of, the chain-saw, the drill and the welding burner put away in the concealed safe. The warehouse was returned to the pigeons that nested on its roof beams. He and Mikhail worked fast, then dragged the body away, leaving a thin smear of blood across the concrete.
I learned it, every detail. I could have walked each step of it. I knew how long it took from beginning to end.
The women on the bunks at either side of me, level with me, in the barracks said I had no right to ignorance. I think they were jealous that it had protected me and not them. I was told what happened.
They came by train. If they were Polish Jews or Jews from the east, they expected to be murdered so they were controlled with extreme violence. They were so terrorized that they had no idea of how to resist, and they were exhausted from their journey. From the Germans, there was no pretence of a new life awaiting those Jews. It was different for those who came from the west, from Holland or France.
The western Jews, and there might be a thousand in the train transport, were greeted with deceit. Often they came in the best carriages with upholstered seats, had brought luggage with them and wore their best clothes. They came to this small station in the centre of a forest and had no idea where they were, or what awaited them. Their carriages were detached from the engine, then shunted to the siding. From the windows they saw flowers in pots, an orchestra played, and young Jews, who were dressed in railway uniforms, waited on the platform. They were helped down from the train and their heavy bags lifted for them.
They were escorted first to a building where they were asked — it is correct, asked — to leave their luggage, and ladies’ bags. Then they went through the gate into Camp 2. When that gate closed behind them, they were dead, but they did not yet know it. They were separated, man from woman, but the children stayed with the women. And they were moved on to a covered but open area. Already the bags were being searched for valuables and money by the Pakettentragers, Jewish men who could do this work and live a week or a month longer. The Jews from the train were now addressed by SS Scharführer Hermann Micheclass="underline" not an old man, a little more than thirty, with a smooth face, a baby’s. From a low balcony, he would say that he was sorry about the hardship of the journey from Holland or France, that he welcomed them, that because of extraordinary sanitary conditions at this transit camp — their home only for a short while before they moved to settlements in the east — everyone must be washed and disinfected. Then he would tell them in glowing words of the life that awaited them after they rejoined their men or women. He spoke so sympathetically, was so pleasant, that often at the end he was applauded.
An officer in a white jacket, appearing to be a doctor, then led these west European Jews into the yard and requested they undress. There were Ukrainian guards with guns, and the Germans with whips, but still the deception succeeded and the Jews retained their innocence. They undressed. It might be snowing or raining, or the sun shining, they might be young or old, with perfect bodies or ugly ones, but they had to undress to complete nakedness. They were led into the Tube.
The Germans called it the Himmelfahrtstrasse, that is the Road to Heaven, the Heavenly Way. It was about a hundred and fifty metres to the far gate, and the surface of the track was sand, and wide enough for three to walk abreast, and they could not see what was beyond the Tube because of the pine branches placed in the wire. Guards were behind them to hurry them, and ‘the doctor’ led at a brisk pace. Before they reached the end they came to the Barbers’ House. Here, the hair of the women was cut short — but the men were led straight past it. A few more yards and there was one more gate.
The officer, the ‘doctor’, worked now with great skill. He would make jokes, and talk, and then, abruptly, this gate was opened, and beyond it were the doors of the chambers that awaited them, and the sign above them was ‘Bathhouse’. They were pressed in, forced close. The chambers were four metres long and four metres wide, and they put many more than a hundred people in each. Six chambers could contain a thousand souls. Then the doors were shut.
Now, they did not have to be Polish, Ukrainian or Belarussian Jews to know the deception: the French and Dutch Jews, too, understood … By now the next train transport would have arrived at the station platform, the orchestra would be playing, the jewellery and money was gone from the bags, and the clothes moved to sorting sheds — it was a production line.
Many would sing in the last moment before the engine was switched on. Schma Israel! Adonai Elohaynu! Adonai Ehad. The voices would rise. ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord is good! The Lord is One.’ The engine killed the noise.
A German, Erich Bauer, was responsible for the good functioning of the engine, which had been stripped from a heavy Russian lorry. He was the Gasmeister, and his assistant was a Ukrainian, Emil Kostenko. Only once did I hear that the engine failed and the Jews were in the chambers for four hours before it was repaired. Then they were gassed with the carbon monoxide that was piped from the engine’s exhaust into the six chambers. There would be great screaming, but the engine and the walls made it seem like the rumble of artillery guns, and a Jew was always in place to chase after the geese and make them squawk. They sang, in the last moments of their lives, ‘God, my God, why have You forsaken me?’
The engine of the Gasmeister and his assistant could kill a thousand men and women and children in twenty minutes.
When the engine was switched off, the geese were left to run free and there was silence in the chambers, the far-end doors were opened and a Jewish Kommando started work to clear out the bodies and make the chambers available for the next transport — perhaps already listening to sweet words of reassurance or stripping naked or walking along the Tube. Most of the bodies still stood because there was not room for them to fall when they died.