Auschwitz_ A Doctor's Eyewitness Account - Miklos Nyiszli [63]
After that it took only a few seconds to break out the machine guns, hand grenades and boxes of dynamite. Firing broke out, the SS stationed at one end of the room, the Sonderkommando at the other. A hand grenade tossed into the midst of the SS killed seven and wounded a number of others. Several kommando men were also killed or wounded, and the situation of the survivors was becoming increasingly desperate. But when a few more SS dropped, the remainder, about 20 in all, took to their heels and ran for the crematorium door. There they were met by reinforcements, more than enough to turn the tide of battle in their favor.
The rest was history. Seven of us were left in the crematoriums. The twelve fugitives were rounded up during the night. They had succeeded in crossing the Vistula, but were completely worn out and had sought shelter in a house they thought might furnish them with at least a temporary hiding place. But the owner had informed an SS detachment combing the area, and all twelve had been ambushed and recaptured.
I was already in bed, almost asleep, when a new burst of machine-gun fire roused me from my state of semiconsciousness. A few minutes later heavy footsteps echoed in the hallway. My door opened and two SS staggered in, their faces covered with blood.
The twelve prisoners had attacked the patrol that had brought them back to the crematorium courtyard, in a desperate effort to seize their weapons. The twelve had had only their fists to fight with; the result had been swift and sure: all twelve had been quickly killed. But they had succeeded in badly mauling the SS guards, who now asked me to treat their wounds. I mutely carried out their orders.
The loss of these twelve companions was a terrible blow to me. After so much effort and loss of life, still no one had succeeded in escaping to tell the world the full story of this hellish prison.
Later I learned that news of the revolt had nevertheless reached the outside world. Some of the KZ prisoners related the story to the civilians who worked with them. And besides, the tongues of certain SS guards were said to have wagged.
It was indeed an historic event, the first of its kind since the founding of the KZ. Eight hundred and fifty-three prisoners, and seventy SS were killed. Included among the latter were an Obersturmführer, seventeen Oberschaarführer and Schaarführer and fifty-two Sturmmänner. Number three crematorium burned to the ground. And number four, as a result of damage to its equipment, was rendered useless.
XXVIII
I AWOKE DEPRESSED AFTER A NIGHT OF troubled sleep. My nerves were more shot than ever: even my colleagues’ whispered conversation, the sound of their footsteps, grated on me like sandpaper.
I was in a foul mood as I went with my associates once again into the dissecting room. En route we had to cross the incineration room. The unfriendly concrete floor extended to the very edge of the ovens. They had finished the job of cremating our comrades by midnight last night. The cooling ovens gave off a feeble warmth. The thirty new Sonder men, stricken by the tragedy they had been made to witness on the day of their arrival, were sitting or lying in deadly silence on the beds of the deceased.
But this condition lasted for only a few days. Life soon resumed its normal course, as evidenced by their desire for a good meal and cigarettes, and especially for brandy, the blessed remedy of all Sonderkommando men, the panacea for crematorium sickness. After having gone without clothes in the KZ barracks, they enjoyed the comfort of decent ones. Personal hygiene was once again a reality: showers, plenty of water and soap, towels in abundance. I watched them as an old sergeant might watch a group of new recruits. They