would walk in step: Alma first, me last beside Danka, the cymbal player—another whale of a creature. I had asked to go with them; I wanted to see, to understand, if I could, why we existed.
Our parody of a band went on parade, playing a march of the cheeriest Tyrolean type, evocative of picnics in the Black Forest washed down with cool beer. Our barracks was about three hundred yards from the place where we gave our strange concerts morning and evening. The road was bordered with other barracks, and in front of each of them the deportees awaited the order of departure, which would not be given until we were in our place. The double hedge of wretched creatures between which our parade passed was the reverse of reassuring. I couldn’t see if these women were looking at us—I didn’t dare look at them—but I felt their eyes boring into me like a thousand needles.
Our platform, at the intersection of camps A and B, had four steps and lines of chairs: a bandstand! We took our places. Alma turned her head towards her audience as though sizing it up, turned back to her players, raised her baton and, while officers and
kapos
bellowed assorted
Achtungs
that echoed along the roads of the camp, an
Arbeitsmarsch
burst out, martial, exhilarating, almost joyful.
Eins, zwei,
went Alma’s baton;
eins, zwei, drei, fier…
ordered the
kapos,
and the march past began. From every roadway, every street, they passed before us. Now I dared to look at them. I forced myself to, I had to remember, because later I would bear witness. This resolution was to harden and give me strength until the end.
Haggard, tattered, paddling through mud and snow, struggling not to stumble, sometimes supporting one another—one of the few rights left to them—the cohort of prisoners proceeded towards the exit. And I suffered them all, en masse and separately: a look of hatred or scorn was like a knife wound; an insult was like being spat on. “Quitters, bitches, traitors!” one of them shouted. Others shrugged the bony shoulders which protruded from their rags. Just as painful to me were those women who didn’t even raise their heads, who passed by indifferently, detached from hatred and love, at the threshold of death. But perhaps those who smiled at me hurt most of all; their understanding was as painful as a complicity I had not earned.
It was only now that I began to grasp the insanity of the place I was in. In the quarantine block, shattered by the shower, the tattooing and the shaving, starving, dazed, beaten, I hadn’t been aware of what was happening to me, to
me.
Here, in the icy air of this winter morning, in this geometrical landscape of squat, stumpy sheds with barbed wire above them, the watchtowers, without a single tree on the horizon, I became aware of the extermination camp of Birkenau, and of the farcical nature of this orchestra conducted by this elegant woman, these comfortably dressed girls sitting on chairs playing to these virtual skeletons, shadows showing us faces which were faces no longer.
In the early morning light so peculiarly sinister, the
Arbeits-kommandos
set off towards their regenerating work, work through joy! I couldn’t begin to imagine that work. They were simply going to hasten their deaths. They, who had so much difficulty even in moving, were required to give their steps a military gait. And, painfully, I realized that we were there to hasten their martyrdom. One, two… one, two… Alma’s baton set the pace for the endless march past. With the tip of his boot an SS beat time while the last woman, followed by the last soldier and last dog, went through the camp gate.
Our Bread, Our Hope, Our Certainty
IT must have been about five in the morning. I couldn’t sleep; something approaching anguish had lodged in the centre of my chest. I wanted to escape, I wanted all this never to have been. As quietly as possible I climbed out of my upper bunk. The windows were set high in the wall, and like a child I had
Our parody of a band went on parade, playing a march of the cheeriest Tyrolean type, evocative of picnics in the Black Forest washed down with cool beer. Our barracks was about three hundred yards from the place where we gave our strange concerts morning and evening. The road was bordered with other barracks, and in front of each of them the deportees awaited the order of departure, which would not be given until we were in our place. The double hedge of wretched creatures between which our parade passed was the reverse of reassuring. I couldn’t see if these women were looking at us—I didn’t dare look at them—but I felt their eyes boring into me like a thousand needles.
Our platform, at the intersection of camps A and B, had four steps and lines of chairs: a bandstand! We took our places. Alma turned her head towards her audience as though sizing it up, turned back to her players, raised her baton and, while officers and
kapos
bellowed assorted
Achtungs
that echoed along the roads of the camp, an
Arbeitsmarsch
burst out, martial, exhilarating, almost joyful.
Eins, zwei,
went Alma’s baton;
eins, zwei, drei, fier…
ordered the
kapos,
and the march past began. From every roadway, every street, they passed before us. Now I dared to look at them. I forced myself to, I had to remember, because later I would bear witness. This resolution was to harden and give me strength until the end.
Haggard, tattered, paddling through mud and snow, struggling not to stumble, sometimes supporting one another—one of the few rights left to them—the cohort of prisoners proceeded towards the exit. And I suffered them all, en masse and separately: a look of hatred or scorn was like a knife wound; an insult was like being spat on. “Quitters, bitches, traitors!” one of them shouted. Others shrugged the bony shoulders which protruded from their rags. Just as painful to me were those women who didn’t even raise their heads, who passed by indifferently, detached from hatred and love, at the threshold of death. But perhaps those who smiled at me hurt most of all; their understanding was as painful as a complicity I had not earned.
It was only now that I began to grasp the insanity of the place I was in. In the quarantine block, shattered by the shower, the tattooing and the shaving, starving, dazed, beaten, I hadn’t been aware of what was happening to me, to
me.
Here, in the icy air of this winter morning, in this geometrical landscape of squat, stumpy sheds with barbed wire above them, the watchtowers, without a single tree on the horizon, I became aware of the extermination camp of Birkenau, and of the farcical nature of this orchestra conducted by this elegant woman, these comfortably dressed girls sitting on chairs playing to these virtual skeletons, shadows showing us faces which were faces no longer.
In the early morning light so peculiarly sinister, the
Arbeits-kommandos
set off towards their regenerating work, work through joy! I couldn’t begin to imagine that work. They were simply going to hasten their deaths. They, who had so much difficulty even in moving, were required to give their steps a military gait. And, painfully, I realized that we were there to hasten their martyrdom. One, two… one, two… Alma’s baton set the pace for the endless march past. With the tip of his boot an SS beat time while the last woman, followed by the last soldier and last dog, went through the camp gate.
Our Bread, Our Hope, Our Certainty
IT must have been about five in the morning. I couldn’t sleep; something approaching anguish had lodged in the centre of my chest. I wanted to escape, I wanted all this never to have been. As quietly as possible I climbed out of my upper bunk. The windows were set high in the wall, and like a child I had
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