For a second, Walter thought this might be it. This might be the moment of mass hysteria, the trigger for uncontrolled panic, that he had been waiting for. These Jews from Paris, Marseille or Nice, or wherever they were from, might they now turn on their captors, demanding to know what the hell was happening here? Could the strongest even rush at the SS, perhaps overpowering one of them, maybe even grabbing a gun? In the melee that would doubtless follow, as the Nazis sought to re-establish control, somebody could make a run for it, escaping into the darkness. It could be one of these new arrivals; it could be one of the men of Kanada command. It could be Walter himself.
But then the truck made one more push, its engine groaning, its springs creaking, as it finally hauled itself over the tracks and on to the other side. It drove off, out of the pool of electric light and back into the night. It was gone. And with it went that noise of lamentation and shock. The wailing stopped and quiet fell once more.
It had lasted all of three or four seconds, and then it had vanished. For that briefest of interludes, the Jews on the platform had looked into the abyss. Walter watched them, exhausted after their journey and innocent of the depravity that, by now, was routine for him and his comrades, and saw how they steadily gathered themselves and regrouped. They acted as if the truck had been a trick of the light, a mirage that could not possibly exist, not in the world as they knew it. They concluded that it was their eyes, not their captors, that were telling lies.
So there was no rebellion on that or any other night. The French Jews who had stepped off the train lined up, as ordered. They followed the SS finger that sent them to the left or right. Those sent leftward marched without noise or fuss to the gas chambers where, within the hour, most would be dead.
Still, that wail, too brief though it was, gave Walter hope. It proved that, once the bubble of delusion was burst, people would respond, if only as a reflex.
He had drawn a conclusion that would become an article of faith, an unshakeable creed that would drive every decision he took next. He now understood that the difference between knowledge and ignorance, between truth and lies, was the difference between life and death.
It was clear to him from then on that the Jews destined for destruction could defy their fate here only if they knew of it, incontrovertibly and before it was too late. Somehow Walter had to get out of this place and tell the world what was happening. He did not know it yet, but he was about to meet the people who could help.
11
Birkenau
T HE MATCHMAKER WAS a louse. Specifically, the bearer of typhus. The cull of late August 1942 had brought only a temporary reprieve. Weeks later, it was back. The proof came in the wobbling, stumbling figures of prisoners once again doing their best to stand tall as they went before the hawk eye of Jakob Fries. Despite the pickings of the ramp available to his part of the Kanada detail, and the improved nutrition they brought, even Walter felt himself succumb to dizziness, his gait as unsteady as if he had helped himself to some of the contraband liquor that found its way into Auschwitz. The solution, he and his friend Josef decided, was to hide away for a couple of days, safely avoiding the inspections that might send them to the infirmary – where SS doctors conducted their own twice-weekly mini-selections, on Mondays and Thursdays, to weed out the unfit – and an early death.
Both of them reported themselves to one of the ambulance stations that, following the earlier typhus outbreak, were now dotted around the camp and which had the authority to give slave workers a day or two off. The boys thought they had done well, playing the system.
But it was an act of the most dangerous naivety. For Walter and Josef had inadvertently turned themselves in. They had done Fries’s work for him. Walter only discovered that through one of those arbitrary acts of kindness that seemed to punctuate his life in those years. He had gone earlier to thank the orderly who had marked him down for a supposed day off. Now the man, a Polish prisoner, told him the truth: that he had registered Walter for the hospital where he would be lethally injected with phenol. In a gesture of generosity that made no rational sense, the man agreed to take Walter’s name off the list.
Walter went to find Josef, to explain. But his old friend, a comrade since Majdanek and a fellow veteran of Buna and, earlier, the SS food store, would not listen. He was convinced that it was Walter who had been tricked, that it was safer to be on that list than off it. Josef was wrong, and when the time came he was led off with those branded as carriers of the dreaded typhus. Later Walter would learn that his friend did not die at the doctor’s needle. At the last moment, he fought off the Kapos and made a dash for the fence, where he was shot. Doomed it may have been, but Josef Erdelyi had held true to the dream the pair had discussed right at the start: he had tried to escape.
There was little time for grieving, not when Walter could feel the typhus tightening its grip. He lay low for a while in Block 4, but there was only so long he could expect others to cover for him. He was too weak to work at the ramp, but was convinced there were places in Kanada itself he could hide away unnoticed. The challenge, given that he could barely walk, was getting there and back, past the ever-watchful Fries. But two comrades agreed to prop him up, taking an arm each and all but carrying him to Kanada, loosening their grip only for the few yards when they passed the Oberscharführer and Walter had to walk unaided. In his feverish, drained state, even those ten paces demanded deep strength; but he did it.
Once in Kanada, they led Walter into the warehouse where the clothes were sorted. This was the domain of the secret paramour and recipient of stolen love tokens for whom Walter had played courier. She remembered Walter’s act of sacrifice and agreed to let him take refuge. The hiding place was ingenious: the young women lifted their sick, teenage fellow prisoner on to a lofty pile of old clothes, soft enough to serve as a hospital bed and so high he was safely out of view. There they brought him tablets to bring down his temperature and the odd glass of sugared lemonade.
For three days, he was ferried back and forth to that impromptu clinic. But it was not enough. Walter was not getting better. He weighed a mere forty-two kilograms , around ninety-three pounds or less than seven stone. The typhus, the flogging from Wiegleb, the surgery with minimal anaesthetic, they had all taken their toll. His adolescent vigour had deserted him: now he could barely move, let alone walk. It was obvious: he was dying.
The only hope, and it was slim, was medical treatment. That meant a return to round-the-clock rest in Block 4. Laco, the Slovak dentist who had got Walter and Josef into Kanada in the first place, the man who had acted as a human crutch walking Walter past Fries, found the right medicine. What’s more, he arranged for a prisoner orderly from the infirmary to come to the barracks and inject it.
Like Walter and like Laco, he was a Slovak. His name was Josef Farber. The mere sound of his voice was such a blessed relief to Walter, after nights of sweat, delirium and hallucination that he did not think too much of the questions this seemingly old, grey-haired man – in fact, he was in his thirties – asked as he readied the needle. Walter submitted to the interview easily, chatting away, volunteering the story of how he came to be prisoner 44070: Majdanek, Nováky, the trip to Budapest, the night flight from Trnava, all of it. In a moment of supreme vulnerability, desperate perhaps to put himself in the hands of someone who might help, he dropped his guard altogether.