Read Online The Fighter by Jean Jacques Greif - Free Book Online Page B

Marek and Laybich call our numbers, count us again and again. Marek the block senior orders:
    â€œ
Mützen ab! Mützen auf!
” (Caps off! Caps on!)
    This Marek probably dreamed of leading an orchestra when he was a kid. He wants our thousand caps to slap our thousand thighs together.
Mützen ab! Mützen auf!
Ten times. A hundred times. One hour. Two hours. We improve our act pretty fast when Marek kills five of us whose rhythm was slightly off.
    At eight, an SS inspects us and counts the dead. After he’s gone, we drink our morning “coffee,” then go look for a kommando. There is a kind of work pickup in the middle of the camp. The old-timers warn us.
    â€œDuring the first few days, you won’t be able to find akommando outside the camp. The kapos prefer to pick up men they already know. Don’t worry and just wait. So many die that you’ll get a job soon.”
    In the meantime, we work inside the camp. I find work in the undertakers’ kommando. We carry away the bodies lined up in front of the blocks. I’m a strong and healthy newcomer. I don’t look like the living skeletons who frightened me so much yesterday. The kapo decides I can carry a corpse all by myself. I hold his legs over my shoulder, like suspenders. He hangs down my back. His head bumps on my calves at every step. His hands drag on the ground. It seems to me he is heavier than a living man.
    We carry the bodies to the
Totenkammer
(the chamber of the dead), where a kommando of dentists under the supervision of an SS pulls out gold teeth. If someone doesn’t unload his corpse head first, mouth opened, the SS has him killed right away. This produces a new corpse, whom nobody had to carry—he walked to the Totenkammer on his own two feet. The SS is always angry because bodies come in with their gold teeth missing. Some prisoners sell theirs for a piece of bread. What’s more, the block senior and the kapos will look inside your mouth, hoping to see something shiny down there. Some pull out your gold teeth without killing you, others kill you first. I’m lucky! I was always too poor to buy gold teeth.
    I’ll go crazy if I have to keep carrying corpses. I’m ready to try the worst outside kommandos—the ones theold-timers tell us to avoid because their kapos are ferocious killers. On the third day, I try a digging kommando. We’re removing small hillocks in order to flatten a field where they intend to build a factory or something. The old-timers were right—the kapo and his assistants the
Vorarbeiter
(foremen) are murderers. They kill fifteen prisoners out of two hundred. They order us to bring back the bodies, so I end up with two legs on my shoulders and a head bumping against my calves, like yesterday.
    I change to another kommando. I work in a swamp, which we have to fill up with stones and garbage. Something very unusual happens here. Just as a kapo is going to beat a tall newcomer with his club, the guy grabs the club and hits the kapo. This is a terrible scandal, because the kapo is a German criminal. Nobody is supposed to pull one hair off a German’s head! All the kapos and foremen come at once to their colleague’s rescue, but the tall prisoner is fighting like a devil. He is a young, strong athlete, used to fighting and winning.
    The SS who stand guard over us think the whole mess is quite funny. The kapos call them for help: “Shoot him!”
    â€œGo get him yourselves, you cowards! Shitbags!”
    The tall man defies the kapos:
    â€œYou won’t kill me with your clubs. You’ll have to shoot me!”
    At least twelve kapos and foremen attack him together. He fights back bravely, but can’t resist for very long. In theend, they drown him in the swamp. When it’s over, the bastards take their revenge on us. None of the six hundred prisoners in the kommando is spared, and our tormentors kill fifty prisoners. All the other ones are