Auschwitz, 24th July 1943
MEYER was conscious of keeping his feet as the line of men marched under a gate that shouted ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ - 'Work Will Make You Free'. This must be some kind of hard labour camp.
He could see what looked like barracks up ahead, as well as guard towers and sentry boxes. They were kept marching until the full line of men had snaked through the gates. Then the command to halt was barked out by the guards.
It was very quiet considering the number of prisoners and guards that were there. Then he heard what, at first, sounded like birdsong but turned out to be the squeak of a wheel-barrow being slowly pushed by a short, thin man wearing a striped uniform. He looked as if the colour had been entirely removed from his face and clothes, only leaving different shades of grey.
The man’s eyes bulged from his sunken cheeks and, for a split-second, his eyes met with Meyer’s as he passed. Meyer could see something in that gaze. He had seen it before in the courtroom; it was when someone was found guilty. No matter how petty or extreme the crime, that moment of being told that you were guilty and would be punished was difficult for everyone to bear, even if that moment was fleeting.
The man looked guilty and frightened, but the look was unfocused, almost dead. And what else did Meyer see in those eyes? Was that pity?
The wheelbarrow man passed by, followed at his shoulder by another thin, grey-striped man who looked almost identical, although slightly taller. Both were escorted by a guard with a rifle over his shoulder.
The smell was worse now. Perhaps the men who had passed him also carried the odour on them. It may have insidiously infiltrated their very being, breathing in the stench every day until it escaped from their pores. And then that sweet tang in the air. It sent a shiver down his spine even in the heat of the sun.
Meyer’s tongue was dry. He hadn’t been this thirsty for a long time. How long would they have them stand in the heat of the day before allowing them shade and something to drink?
He hoped Klara and the girls were not stood in the heat like this and that they had been looked after a bit better than the men. He was sure that even the Nazis would discriminate between how men were treated and how women and children were looked after.
Meyer watched as the guards quenched their thirsts from their water canteens. When would they give them water? He felt the grey dust from the camp stick to his face and clothes and wondered if this was sucking the colour from him, leaving him like the men with the wheelbarrow.
Soon he heard the false birdsong of the barrow approaching from behind. As it passed, he could see the two striped men now holding a handle each, struggling to push it over the baked, hard dirt, and the arms and legs of the two dead men from outside the gates hanging over the rim of the barrow.
A few moments later there were further shouts, and the line of men began to move again. This time it was a faltering walk forward. Meyer could now see that they were being taken slowly into a wooden hut.
As soon as he was inside, instructions were barked at the men to undress. There were more of the striped men inside, who were gathering up the clothes being discarded on the floor and taking them out of a side door.
Meyer removed his clothes and shoes as quickly as possible and dropped them on the floor next to one of the striped men.
The striped man tapped his own hand and wrist and indicated towards Meyer’s watch and fingers. His wedding ring and his precious watch. At first, Meyer thought that the man wanted them for himself, but then he realised that everything was being removed; rings, necklaces and watches. Meyer pulled off his wedding ring and, feeling his stomach lurch at losing this symbol of his love for Klara, dropped it onto his pile of clothes.
“Your watch,” said the striped man, his voice like sandpaper, and tapped his wrist again.
Meyer unbuckled the watch and turned it over one last time to read the back, ‘For all eternity, Klara’, before letting it slip from his fingers on to the pile of clothes that, until a few seconds ago, had belonged to him.
One of the SS officers who was shouting commands saw that Meyer was now naked and whipped him with a stick.
“Out the back! Quick! Move!”
Meyer pushed past those who were still undressing, back out into the hot sun. He did what he could to hide his modesty, but outside were more shouting guards and a buzzing noise which sounded like a huge insect.
There were rows of chairs which looked like the metal-framed and wooden-backed type that he had sat at in school. Above them ran a wire, from which hung large electric shavers. Naked men were being pushed into seats, their heads shaved before being pushed off again and ordered towards another hut.
Meyer stood for almost thirty seconds before being pulled by his arm and pushed into a chair by a striped man. His head was pulled to the side, then forward, then the other side, as the buzzing roared in his ears and raced over his scalp.
Before he knew it, he was pulled to his feet and pushed away from the chairs. Guards were barking orders at their newly shorn visitors.
“Move! Quicker! Through that door!”
Meyer could hear something from inside the concrete building he was being herded towards. He couldn’t quite make it out through the incessant buzzing of the razors and the shouting. It sounded like gas or air escaping from a pipe.
“Inside quickly!”
The press of the naked men took Meyer in through the door of the building. The sound was water. There were shower heads in the ceiling, spraying out water mixed with disinfectant. The flow of men took Meyer out of a rear door to the shower, back into the sunlight, where there was a line of trestle tables. The striped men were also here, directing the wet, naked prisoners to one table or another.
Meyer was directed from one striped man to another until he was finally directed to a table where an SS officer sat. The officer sat with a lined book in front of him and held a beautifully ornate fountain pen in his hand. Without looking up, he started asking questions.
“Name?”
“Manfred Meyer.”
“Date of birth?”
“8th of August 1905.”
“Place of birth?”
“Leipzig.”
Meyer watched as the columns were filled out in the register book.
“Profession?”
“Criminal lawyer.”
“Religion?”
“Atheist.”
The officer looked up at him and sighed.
“Religion at birth?”
“My father was Jewish.”
The officer wrote ‘Jude’ in his book.
The officer then turned to an assistant and stated, “Prisoner number 414894, Jew.”
The assistant dropped a folded set of striped clothes onto the table along with some wooden clogs. The officer pushed these towards Meyer and shouted, “Next!”
Meyer quickly picked up the clothes and turned away from the table. He could see others with their clothes going into a brick building that looked like a barracks, and decided to follow the crowd.
Once inside, Meyer watched the almost silent scramble to get dressed as quickly as possible. Nobody spoke. The only sound was the rustling of clothes and the sound of the wooden clogs as the men left the building.
He examined the bundle he had been given and began to get dressed. He had striped blue and grey trousers which he quickly put on, a grey-white vest, a blue and grey striped jacket which had a sewn patch with the serial number '414894' and a yellow triangle over a red triangle forming a Star of David, and a matching striped hat, all of which seemed to be clean and perhaps even new. All except the clogs, which had obviously already had more than one owner.
As soon as he was dressed, Meyer followed the crowd through the door at the rear of the building and back into the warm summer day.
He found himself in a square where a knot of SS officer’s smoked cigarettes and laughed at each other’s stories. Guards with rifles slung ove
r their shoulders pushed and shouted at the prisoners as they arrived in the square, organising them into ranks.
Meyer found himself in the fifth rank from the front, sandwiched between two men also marked with the Star of David. They both had the haunted look that the wheelbarrow men had shown. Meyer wondered if his eyes betrayed the fear and uncertainty that he felt.
The seemingly never-ending line of prisoners kept coming, until finally, the last man left the building, the door was shut behind him, and he was ushered into his position in the rear rank. But instead of something happening, the SS officers walked from the square leaving the men standing in the sun again.
The man to his left whispered something that Meyer couldn’t make out. He whispered again, this time loud enough for Meyer to hear.
“What is your name?”
Meyer whispered back his name.
“Itzhak Frank,” came an unrequested reply.
“Do you know what they did with the women?” whispered Meyer.
“I’m not sure. All I need is a drink of water.”
Meyer and the men stood for another thirty minutes before the SS officers returned, this time with clipboards, and started shouting out names which required a reply of ‘present’. Every single name that was called received an answer.
Once that exercise was complete, the name-checking started again, this time by a different officer. All names called out this time were to leave the ranks and line up next to an existing prisoner that the officer called a ‘kapo’.
Once a certain number of prisoners had left the ranks, the kapo led them away with the aid of a guard. Another kapo then took his place and the roll of names continued. Meyer was in the third group called out.
“Good luck,” whispered Itzhak Frank.
“You too,” replied Meyer.
He made his way quickly to the front and lined up with the others who had been called out. The kapo was a large man, thin but with obvious strength in his muscles, although he walked with a pronounced limp. His drawn cheeks betrayed a lack of teeth, while the scars on his face and a flat nose, broken at least once, were evidence of a violent past. Around his arm was a black band decorated with the word 'KAPO', while on his jacket, next to his prison number, he had an inverted green triangle.
There was a break in the calling of names and Meyer’s kapo nodded to the officer, turned, and led Meyer and the other men away from the square.
They were led silently to outside another brick building and told to line up. The kapo then produced a folded piece of paper and started another roll call. An armed guard stood several metres behind the tall man, his rifle hung over his left shoulder. This time, Meyer counted the names. Twenty-seven, including his own name, were called out. The kapo seemed pleased that there was no-one missing from his list and nodded to himself.
“I am Kapo Langer. You call me 'kapo', 'sir', or 'Herr Langer',” he started. “You will be in my hut and I am your leader. You tell me everything that is happening. You do as I say. I am the law in the hut. I am God.
“You can see from my uniform that I wear the green triangle. This means that I am here because I have been through the court system. Not because I am a queer, a communist, or a Jew. It is because I killed a policeman in a robbery.
“Even though you are Jews, you have all been born in Germany. That gives you certain privileges. The first one is that you will not be tattooed with your prisoner number. But you will have your photograph taken.
“You are lucky enough to have survived the selection process and have been chosen to work in the labour camp. Although, some would say that the others are the lucky ones.
“Welcome to Auschwitz.”