Scheisshaus Luck by Pierre Berg; Brian Brock

Author:Pierre Berg; Brian Brock [Brock, Pierre Berg; Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Europe, Political Prisoners - France, 1939-1945, Auschwitz (Concentration Camp), World War II, World War, Holocaust, Political Prisoners, Political, Pierre, French, France, Berg, Personal Memoirs, Historical, Biography & Autobiography, Military, Personal Narratives, General, Biography, History
ISBN: 9780814412992
Publisher: AMACOM
Published: 2008-09-03T05:00:00+00:00

P A R T I I I

THE DEATH MARCH

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C H A P T E R 1 6

The first columns of Ha¨ftlinge began to move. The men of my Block stomped and shuffled about to keep warm as we waited our turn to be ushered out. With the receding sun behind them, the peaks of the Carpathians glowed like the wicks of smoldering candles as a thinly stretched nimbus lowered a crimson veil of snow onto them.

Everyone was grumbling. January was by no means the time to be taking an evening stroll. Finally, a guard in a thick field gray coat waved us forward. This time there were no musicians playing a martial tune as we walked in rows of five through the gate. The quiet was unsettling.

The SS led us back down the road that we had all traveled after unloading from the cattle cars. The Buna plant was to our right, its barbed-wire fence bordering the road. The plant itself was a loom-ing silhouette against the winter twilight. No lights shone inside, no smoke spewed from its multiple chimneys. The Nazis had deserted it. Buna was a dying monster. How I hated and feared that beast when its heart furiously pumped methanol through its snarled network of veins. And now that it was innocuous, I should have felt happy—overjoyed—but I wasn’t. Hadn’t I dreamt of seeing it like 167

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this? Yes, but the slave had become overacquainted with his task-master. I knew what it expected from me and that I could endure its many tortures. What monster was I being herded to now along this icy path? Could I survive its demands, its torments, or would it be the one to finally devour me and spit out my ashes?

Rumors circulated that we were headed to the town of Gleiwitz.

No one knew exactly how far that was, but it became increasingly apparent that we would be walking all night. We slipped through the darkened town of Auschwitz, which was situated near the main camp. As I chewed over whether the SS had also emptied Auschwitz and Birkenau, I caught glimpses of town folk watching us through the cracks in their closed shutters. I imagined that the Poles were glad to see the Nazis leave, but were wracked with fear of what would come when the Soviets marched through their streets. For my fellow Ha¨ftlinge and I, the Red Army meant only one thing: freedom. But as a Muselmann’s fate would have it, we were being forced to flee from our liberators.

The snow was becoming deeper, filling my wooden shoes and turning my feet into icicles. I feared frostbite wouldn’t be far off. It would have been nice if my benefactor had packed a pair of galoshes with all those warm sweaters. I had no way to judge the distance we had already traveled, but I was pretty sure we had been on the move for about four hours. Deep bomb craters now bit off large chunks of the road, slowing our advance.

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