HENRY by Katrina Shawver

Author:Katrina Shawver
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-63393-520-4
Publisher: Koehler Books
Published: 2015-10-11T16:00:00+00:00

PROMOTION TO COOK

Kazio convinced Kapo Nierychło and the SS man that I was ready to become a cook. I had put on some weight. You had to be strong to be a cook, to maneuver the heavy kettles of water. In the kitchens we had forty huge kettles, each with one hundred liters capacity, and we would cook all day. Sometimes the Polish underground tried to save priests or older professors by getting them positions as cooks. I remember one of the laborers in the kitchen was the ex-archbishop of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. But it was still very hard work, and most couldn’t keep up. They didn’t last long. Always the SS were walking around watching us so we don’t steal.

As a cook, I had a white outfit. Germans were very insistent the kitchen be clean. When I passed by other prisoners, they stand aside to let me pass. I was prominent. I was somebody. A cook was somebody in Auschwitz, and it was a very good job. The cook was above the potato peeler. We had food, and better food than other prisoners, like marmalade and margarine from the prisoner barrels. Cooks lived in Block 25, next to the kitchen. We had only a few steps to reach work, but we had to get up very early to prepare morning coffee for the camp and start the soup for the day.

There were about forty cooks for twenty kettles of soup and three helpers for each cook. For breakfast, prisoners get coffee. It was nothing but brown water—no sugar, no nothing—and a piece of bread. Then, lunchtime was soup. I made the soup, so I know what was in it. Water, a few potatoes, beets, leaves, something like that. Everything went in the soup—dirty leaves. Maybe some powdered chestnuts or a little flour to thicken it. You know, you boil it down.

As more Jews were shipped to the camp, we’d get barrels every morning of whatever food leftovers were found on the prisoners. Jews could only bring twenty pounds of luggage, so what did they put in their luggage? They brought the best of what they had. You’d find diamonds hidden in toothpaste, dollars tied and hidden in coffee. Whatever I find went in my soup—toothpaste, marmalade, mothballs, anything. The SS gets the barrels with unbroken jars for the SS kitchen and dining room. We got the broken jars so you had to pick the glass out.

Henry broke out in a big grin.

One morning I sat down with a broken jar of marmalade to have a taste, and there’s something in it that looks like a finger. I found a condom in my marmalade. It was the size of my pinkie finger, rolled and tied, sewn shut so it’s waterproof. I looked around quickly to make sure no one was watching. My friends would be jealous because I am so lucky to get a condom for breakfast. I broke it apart and I found five one hundred US dollar bills.

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