For Walter it was eye-popping wonder and the beginnings of a dark knowledge. For the others, the hours in Kanada had borne more tangible fruit. Somehow these prisoners had defied not one but two searches to bring back all manner of riches. One had come away with a bar of soap, another had hidden several sausages about his person. Out it all tumbled: six cans of sardines delivered by one inmate, two pounds of figs stashed by another. There were lemons, salami, a ham, even a packet of aspirin. And that was before you took a glance at the men’s feet. With great discretion, almost every one of them had got rid of the wooden clogs that were standard issue for Auschwitz prisoners and swapped them for real shoes: some of them suede, some of them in a crocodile skin that was comically incongruous. Walter would do the same before long, once he had been reassured by the older hands that stolen footwear would bring no punishment. It was seen as a perk of the job.
Indeed, a place in the Clearing Command allowed a handful of inmates a life of improbable, surreal luxury. Female sorters would find themselves wearing new shoes and clothes, and fresh underwear, every day. They might sleep in silken nightshirts and on cotton bedsheets. They had access to perfume and stockings and, if they were working the night shift, might spend the afternoon bathing in the sun, cooling off with a splash of water , or reading one of the many books that the condemned had packed into their suitcases. They did this even as the air was filled with the odour of burning flesh.
But at this moment in Block 4 the hoard spilling out of the men’s sleeves, trousers and tunics was not quite like that. The Kanada prisoners had not taken these items to serve as creature comforts for their own use. Their function was very different. A lemon in Auschwitz was not merely a lemon. It was a unit of currency. And so it was for every one of the spoils of Kanada.
The term of art was ‘organising’。 If you wanted to survive Auschwitz, you had to ‘organise’： meaning, you had to take what was not officially yours, either by stealing it yourself or trading with someone who had. The basic coin of the realm was the food ration. Those in charge of ladling out the soup or handing out the bread would hold some back, so that they could ‘organise’ a favour with an extra dab of margarine or morsel of potato. But thanks to the presence of Kanada, the inmate economy of Auschwitz became much more elaborate than that.
Delicacies and luxury goods could buy whatever was needed, even if the rate of exchange was often perverse. A diamond ring might be swapped for a cup of water; a bottle of champagne traded for quinine tablets; a precious gem for an apple, to be passed to a sick and hungry friend.
The value of cash was different in Auschwitz. Walter was once sorting the goods from a transport of Polish Jews from Grodno which, by the standards of Kanada, were of poor quality, certainly nothing to compare to the treasure that accompanied Jews from France, Holland or Belgium. He had picked up a loaf of bread which felt odd in his hand. The consistency of it was not right. He broke off a chunk and saw that it had been partially hollowed out. Inside was what turned out to be $20,000, in hundred-dollar bills.
Walter had to make an instant calculation. He could do as he was supposed to, and deposit the cash in the trunk set aside for money and valuables. Or he could try to keep it. Though what would be the point? The needs of an Auschwitz prisoner were almost infinite, but they had little use for money.
Even so, Walter decided to take a risk. He hid the 200 notes and waited till he had a break to relieve himself. It made no sense, he knew that. If he were caught with the cash, death would be the sanction, he was sure of it. But he took the risk all the same. And this time no one stopped him.
When he reached the lavatory, or the hole in the ground that served that purpose, he did not hesitate. He took the money and threw it away. Was it an act of resistance? Partly. He and the other prisoners in Kanada had already made a habit of using twenty-dollar bills as toilet paper （though for this purpose English pounds were preferable, since they were only printed on one side ）。 Better they be used that way than allow the Nazis to get hold of hard currency. So yes, it was a small act of sabotage. But destroying $20,000 was also an act of spite . He could not keep that money himself. There was no one he could give it to. Still, he could see no good reason why the Germans should have it. Either that money would further enrich the Reich or it would be destroyed. The people who had earned it had been destroyed, so it was right to destroy the money. That was Walter’s logic. The lavatory felt like the right place for it.
Which is not to say that he did not find things he valued in Kanada. Among the most poignant discoveries in the luggage of the victims were textbooks and exercise books: confirmation that the Nazis had successfully tricked the Jews into believing the ‘areas of resettlement’ would be genuine communities, complete with schools for their children. All papers had to be burned of course, but one day Walter came across a children’s atlas. Instinct made him flick through the pages until he found a map of Silesia: he remembered from his own schooldays, which now seemed a lifetime ago, that that was the region that took in the triangle where the borders of Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia met – or used to meet, at any rate. He ripped out the page and hid it under his shirt.
When the moment came, it was back to the latrine. Except this time, he would wait before destroying what he had taken. As methodically as he could, he studied the map, working out exactly where this camp, and he himself, were. He then got rid of it, but not before he had committed what he had seen – and what it meant for his dream of escape – to memory.
Most of Kanada’s bounty was precious in a more direct way, because of what it could buy. For an intricate black market operated in Auschwitz, among the ‘old numbers’， those veterans who had secured positions as Kapos or block elders, especially. They traded goods they could get hold of for privileges, but also for safety and for human lives: their own and those they chose to protect. A block elder would have access to rations intended for the prisoners nominally in their care. A Kapo in the kitchen had access to meat. Both could use those goods to buy preferential treatment, for themselves or for others.
In the Auschwitz financial system, Kanada played the role of central bank: it was where the wealth was stored. And yet there was a perverse paradox: Jewish prisoners who worked there had better access than either their Kapo overseers or their Nazi masters. Most SS men could not simply stroll in, browse the wares and help themselves to what they fancied. They needed an inmate to pilfer the item for them. In return, the prisoner needed to be sure no SS man would check him on his way out. Precious wares in return for a blind eye. That exchange would form the basis of a set of transactional relationships that developed between members of the SS and the handful of Auschwitz prisoners who could get anywhere near Kanada.
Those relationships soon created a hierarchy among the prison population. Inmates with access to Kanada’s riches could bribe Kapos and SS men for better workplaces for themselves or for their relatives or friends. They might buy from the block elder a better position in the barracks or a much needed rest in the infirmary with a promise that they would be protected, rather than left to die.
Officially, the SS did not tolerate such corruption. They would inspect barracks, ostensibly looking for stolen goods: in truth, they were extorting the block elders, demanding to be paid off with Kanada delights. The elder had to give the SS men what they wanted, and so would lean on any inmate who could ‘organise’。 In return, that inmate would see an improvement in his own conditions.