A Little Annihilation by Anna Janko

Author:Anna Janko
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: World Editions
Published: 2020-05-16T11:51:26+00:00

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The President

Some of the villages in the Zamość region stolen by the Germans—they took over the more affluent ones—had a paramilitary structure. These were known as “black” villages because the newcomers—Germans from Bessarabia with their families—were armed and wore black uniforms. In one such village, on February 22, 1943, the future president of reunited Germany, Horst Köhler, was born. The village was Skierbieszów, which was emptied of its indigenous inhabitants in late autumn of 1942, during the night. They were given twenty minutes to get dressed and pack the most necessary items. Then they were carted off to the camp in Zamość. They were taken through the forests because the German settlers—among them Horst’s parents, the Köhlers—were already using the main road. The day had yet to break when the new owners stepped into the open homes. They walked into rooms that belonged to someone else, lit stoves that belonged to someone else, fed livestock that belonged to someone else, and went to sleep in the same beds from which those others had been rousted during the night. Horst was undoubtedly also sleeping in his mother’s belly (she was more or less six months pregnant at the time) … In a big house in the middle of the village, very pretty, with a porch. Inside a room still faintly reeking of mortal terror.

That house belonged to the Węcławik family, who had been driven out with the rest. Ultimately they wound up in the barracks at Auschwitz. Czesław Węcławik’s wife Zosia was pregnant, like Horst’s mother, and gave birth in the camp. Her baby was “pricked”—meaning the child was given a lethal injection of phenol straight to the heart. She, too, died immediately, after the same kind of injection (in Block 25, surrounded by a high wall, barred windows without glass, bare bunk with no straw). She was twenty-one years old, pretty, with light-colored eyes and full lips, and was named Zosia. It was early in that cold May of 1943 when she went, with her child on her arm, to the death block where she was killed by Unterscharführer Hans Nierzwicki.

Someone said that a German doctor threw the child into the burning oven right before her eyes, but her husband Czesław would not confirm this: no one wants it to be so. So let that story be about some other woman’s child.

There were several Węcławiks from Skierbieszów in Auschwitz, so I don’t know for certain if that Zosia was indeed mistress of the house taken over by the Köhlers, but even if she wasn’t, she lived nearby. About a hundred children from Skierbieszów perished in the camp. In order to feel something rather than simply register the number, you have to hear their names and how they called out “Mama” just before being stabbed with a needle. That could all be heard in the neighboring barracks.

Generalplan Ost. Himmler directed its realization from Berlin, while Odilo Globocnik conducted operations from Lublin (where his name is remembered to this day). The

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