The Last Survivor by Frank Krake

Author:Frank Krake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2022-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

16

The Revier

Husum, October – November 1944

During the first month, Wim had left through the gate in the dark and come back in the dark. After roll call and dinner he had sometimes wandered for an hour along the barracks, but the camp was so small and the supervision so sharp that there was little to ‘organise’.

Now that he didn’t have to leave, he slowly but steadily got a more complete picture of what took place in the camp. In the mornings he worked with the doctor up until the march out. The Blockälteste counted him and thought he officially belonged to the infirmary staff. He stayed inside until, according to the rules, he could go back to work for Doctor Thygesen. He lived as a shadow. There was always something extra to eat, he stayed warm and dry, he wasn’t beaten and he didn’t have to toil away. He helped the patients in the Revier and passed their questions on to the doctor, who as a result only went into the infirmary when strictly needed. After that first time, Thygesen never mentioned the matter again and increasingly allowed Wim to carry out small medical procedures as well, such as cleaning and wrapping wounds.

Behind the office was a broom closet, about a metre and a half square. He’d organised a clean straw mattress, which he pushed up against the wall during the day. He leaned a handmade broom and basin against it, so that it wouldn’t immediately draw any attention during a check. After the doctor’s consultation hours in the evenings, when the doctor would lie down on his mattress in his office, exhausted, Wim grabbed his things in the closet, lay the straw mattress on the floor and pulled the door shut behind him. He could then sleep diagonally on the closet floor, his knees slightly pulled up. He hadn’t lost his touch; it felt just like before. The only difference from the draughty house of his childhood was that instead of just one stepfather prowling around, here he had as many as thirty – every one of them so ruthless that his stepfather looked like a softy.

In the beginning, he was still awoken by the prisoners who lined up outside in order to be the first ones seen by the doctor. Sometimes that started at three o’clock. Wim then caught some snippets of their heated discussions with Albartus Dokter, but soon he slept through even this. His hiding place came in handy during daytime checks as well. Whenever a Kapo showed up, he crawled between the straw sack and the wooden wall, keeping out of sight in the dim closet.

During Wim’s first week, the barracks that bordered onto the Revier had been added to the infirmary. It was the first of a whole series. They’d now been in the concentration camp for six weeks and every week a barracks was converted. The number of sick cases rose alarmingly and prisoners would sometimes simply fall dead during roll call or at work, withered and emptied.

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