Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz

by József Debreczeni

With systematic resourcefulness the Nazis created in their death camps a subtle hierarchy of the pariahs. The Germans themselves remained mostly invisible behind the barbed wire. The allocation of food, the discipline, the direct supervision of work, and the first degree of terror—in sum, executive power—were in fact entrusted to slave drivers chosen randomly from among the deportees.

“Beside the train they divided us into two groups. The others had to go by truck. You haven’t seen them?” A singular, agonized smile comes over his sunken face. “Was the other group lined up on the left?” “Yes. We were told they’d get to ride on trucks.” This man in a striped uniform raises one of his thin hands and points into the distance. “See those chimneys there? That’s Birkenau. The crematorium city. The smoke there is already—them. Those who stood to the left.”

Slave making on a conveyor belt: shove a human being in at one end, and on the other out comes—a häftling.

“Appell [Roll call]!” The Appell is an assembly, an issuing of commands, a reading out of the duty roster, an occasion for reporting, a cross-examination, a trial, and a carrying out of sentences all wrapped up into a single concept and a single act.

An SS sergeant. He must be around forty or fifty. Every night, after the Appell, he takes out his violin and, hesitatingly, plays raspy, maudlin tunes for the listening stars. So far he’s beaten twenty-two people to death with his cane and shot nine to death with his revolver during the Appells, for all those lined up to see. He’s a hefty Teuton with watery blue eyes, blond hair, and glasses. He has a slaughterhouse in some small town in Pomerania. His wife is now running the business. Yes, there’s a war on; duty calls.…

But who was now thinking of November mornings? This was already more than enough. Busy as we were drowning in the miseries of the present, we could not imagine that even greater horrors could follow.

“Don’t you even thirst for revenge? They knocked the operating knife out of your hands, but you can still get your hands on a pig stabber.” “Yes, but what good is that? A man can’t punish. Who can guarantee that death is a punishment? Maybe life is.”