Auschwitz_ A Doctor's Eyewitness Account - Miklos Nyiszli [55]
As soon as Dr. Mengele and Dr. Thilo left the crematorium, I followed them and headed directly for D Camp, where the SS group which supervised the incorporation of foreign prisoners into forced labor battalions was installed. In this camp the prisoners necessary for that program of slave labor in force throughout all Germany were portioned out. The head was an Oberschaarführer. I found him alone in his room. I introduced myself and showed him Dr. Mengele’s pass.
I explained to him that my wife and child were interned in C Camp. After having tracked them down with Dr. Mengele’s help, I had been doing all I could for them. Nevertheless, I knew the fate in store for C Camp, and thus had to arrange to have my family sent to some place far from here. He concurred and promised to help me.
That week two convoys of 3,000 prisoners were due to be sent from C Camp to western Germany’s war plants. “These factories are the best setup,” he said, “since the lodging and food do not aim at exterminating, but rather at the maintenance of good conditions for the workers, in order to assure maximum productivity.”
I left a box of 100 cigarettes on his table. He accepted the package and promised that if my wife and daughter volunteered during the selection, he would assign them to one of the two convoys. I had got what I wanted. I hurried to C Camp, but there my job was even more difficult. I had to make my family understand that they had to get away from here. I could not tell them the truth, for I would only start a panic, which would be fatal for all of us. I asked for my wife and daughter in the overseer’s little room, and tried to make them understand that, however painful it was for me, the situation demanded that they leave. They would have to renounce my help. For my part, I too would have to forgo the pleasure of seeing and helping them. Some time this week there would be a selection to fill a convoy quota. They were to volunteer for one of the convoys, preferably for the first. I explained to my wife that serious motives forced me to advise her thus; I asked her to tell all her acquaintances to volunteer as well for the convoys but that she say nothing more about it.
I might add that during the filling of work quotas, the SS commission first accepted volunteers for the convoys, and used arbitrary incorporation only when the number of volunteers did not attain the required number. Nevertheless, there were few volunteers, since nobody wanted to forsake the advantages of his present situation—that of not working—for another. Few were willing to volunteer for forced labor when the food rations were insufficient even to sustain life in the KZ. Poor, short-sighted women, if only they had understood the mentality of the Third Reich’s KZ, they would have realized that those who did not work did not live.
My wife and daughter realized, however, that my reasons for making such a decision must be good, and they promised to volunteer for the initial quota. I made my good-byes, but told them I would return in two days to bring them some warm clothes and food for the journey.
When the two days were up, I returned to C Camp to bid them a last farewell, bringing the clothes and provisions with me. But I did not return alone. I was afraid to take such a load of packages through the C Camp gate. Some high-ranking officers might have been in the neighborhood when I arrived and become curious. So I asked one of the crematorium SS guards, whom I had treated for pleurisy, to come with me and help carry the packages. This time I did not visit my wife and daughter in their barracks, but had them sent for from a deserted point along the barbed wire enclosure. It was there we held our last conversation. We threw the packages over the barbed wire. The place was so out of the way that nobody saw us. With the barbed wire strands separating us, it was impossible for us even to kiss