The journey went on, in fits and starts, in thirst and in stink, for three days. Maybe more, it was hard to tell. It meant that when the train finally stopped, when the wagon door was finally pulled open, those stacked inside felt relief and, strange to say it, gratitude. They felt sure the worst of their ordeal was over. They felt sure that, wherever they had arrived, it had to be better than what they had just endured.
This was their expectation as the train inched through the central station in the city of Lublin, juddering to a halt just past it. It may even have lasted for a second or two as the doors of the cattle truck were pulled open to reveal the welcoming party: a phalanx of SS men, armed with rifles, machine guns, sticks and whips.
But then the order came.
‘Men fit for work aged between fifteen and fifty are to leave the cars. Children and old people remain.’
SS officers were marching up and down the length of the train, barking out a version of that instruction, always in German, though sometimes more concisely put:
‘All men between fifteen and fifty, out!’
What? That made no sense. They had been told over and over that families would not be separated, that they would be resettled in these new villages together . They had had the word of the Slovak president, Father Tiso, himself. That’s why those newly-weds had rushed their marriage.
Perhaps it was not an actual separation; maybe it was just a matter of sequencing: the men between fifteen and fifty would get off the train first, and the women, the children and the elderly would follow. Could that be it?
The answer came swiftly. No sooner had the younger men hauled themselves out of the wagons, clambering down as best as their legs, stiff with immobility, would allow, forming a line by the railway tracks as instructed, than the doors of the cattle trucks were pulled shut. Once he had got his bearings, Walter could see that the station was surrounded, chiefly by guards in distinctive uniforms who turned out to be Lithuanians, armed with automatic weapons.
A reflex made those left behind in the wagons reach towards their husbands, their sons, their brothers, poking their hands through the gaps in the timbers of the cattle trucks. It was not a gesture of farewell so much as a plea, a desperate grasping for the consolation of touch. The SS men saw it too and responded with great efficiency, moving along the length of the train with their whips and sticks, striking those outstretched hands, whether they belonged to a bereft grandmother, bewildered toddler or new bride. Eventually, and with effort, the train wheezed away. The men watched it recede. Their families were gone.
The men comforted themselves by speculating that perhaps those they loved were being resettled after all. At the very least, they were not here, being herded into line by the SS, who used their sticks and whips as prods as they warned the men that they were about to march and that they had a long trek ahead of them .
If it would be easier, the men were told, they were welcome to put their suitcases on a truck; they would receive them later. Many took advantage of that offer, but not Walter. He was travelling light, with only a knapsack on his back. Besides, he had something the other men lacked. Younger than almost all of them, he had experience. Enough of it to have taught him that trust was a fool’s game. Had he not learned that lesson when he made the mistake of trusting Josef, after their shared escape from Nováky? The bag would stay in the hands of the only person Walter could trust: himself.
The march was into the city of Lublin, though Walter noticed that their captors did not take main roads. The SS preferred to stick to back streets, as if they did not want this procession – like an ancient parade of slave drivers and their captives – to be seen. But once they had passed through Lublin, once they were on the open road, heading south-east of the city, any restraint was dropped. One SS man saw Walter’s wristwatch. At gunpoint, he demanded it. Walter gave it to him.
After a while they passed a clothing factory. In the courtyard, lined up, were hundreds of prisoners, perhaps a thousand of them, obviously Jews. They all wore the same thing, a uniform of dirty stripes, and they were queuing for food. Walter stared at the men and felt his spirits sink.
The arrivals’ destination was a site originally designated as a prisoner-of-war camp, known locally as the ‘little Majdan’ thanks to its proximity to the Lublin suburb of Majdan Tatarski. In Polish: Majdanek. But its official designation was as a Konzentrationslager , a concentration camp. Though that, as Walter would eventually discover, was an understatement.
4
Majdanek
H E CAUGHT HIS first glimpse of it as they approached from a small hill, spotting the watchtowers, barracks and barbed-wire fence. But it was only once the gates of Majdanek opened before them that Walter and his fellow deportees saw those who were already imprisoned there. They looked like ghouls rather than men. Their heads were shaved and their bone-thin bodies were covered with threadbare uniforms, in those same macabre stripes. Their feet were in wooden clogs or else bare and visibly swollen. Walter did not know who they were or what had happened to them.
They never made eye contact with Walter or any of the newcomers. But they did speak to them. One came towards Walter straightaway, to deliver a warning that he and all the others would soon be deprived of their personal belongings. The rest carried on working – fetching, carrying, sweeping or digging – but out of the corner of their mouths, they would ask ‘Any food? Anything in the pocket? ’ It was a practised routine, the words fired out automatically. And when someone tossed a morsel of food in their direction – it was too risky to hand food over directly – the reaction told Walter all he needed to know about life in Majdanek. The prisoners pounced on those tiny crumbs, fighting over them. They seemed to snarl, like starved dogs. And when guards stepped forward, to beat the prisoners with clubs, striking them on their backs as they hunched over the scraps, the captives ignored it, as if even the chance of a tiny bit of cheese or bread was worth the pain.
But Walter and the other new arrivals were not to be tourists in Majdanek for long. They were moved at speed through the camp’s rigidly demarcated sections: one for the SS, one for ‘administration’ and a third for prisoners, which was itself further divided by barbed wire into five sub-sections or ‘fields’ – Walter would be in Working Section No. 2, along with plenty of other Czech and Slovak Jews – with a watchtower in the corner of each, and two further rows of electrified barbed-wire fencing surrounding the entire area. Walter noticed that in this outdoor prison made up solely of drab, wooden barracks, nothing grew. He could not see a single tree. It was as if the earth had been scorched.
Induction was immediate. First, despite Walter’s resolve to trust no one, he was parted from his backpack. He was ordered to hand it in at a barracks which styled itself as the Left Luggage counter. The absurdity of that designation – more than that, the smirk it contained, the mockery of those who saw it – would soon be obvious even to a Majdanek novice. True, when Walter surrendered his bag he received a ticket for it. But that only added to the black-is-white dishonesty of the whole exercise: once left, this luggage would never be reclaimed.
Next came the ‘baths’， though that too was misleading. It was another barracks, except it was equipped with troughs and reeked of disinfectant. The new prisoners were ordered to strip and then immerse themselves in fetid water, like sheep in a dip. Those who hesitated were hit with sticks.